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“Shouldn’t you do something?” Jordon gestured to the ceiling. “Call someone?”
He’d been playing surrogate dad to his sister’s kid since Jordon was two and her husband, a firefighter, had lost his life in a warehouse fire. Mark took Jordon camping, drove to Cleveland to go to ball games, taught him how to fish. He just never brought him home to Columbus with him.
“They’ll stop soon enough,” he said now, wishing he’d done as Dana had suggested and stayed with Jordon in Cleveland while she went on an overnight trip with her new boyfriend on his cabin cruiser along the Ohio River.
He’d been afraid having the boy around while she was getting ready—maybe asking questions—would make her change her mind about going. Ken, a widowed doctor she’d met at the club where she worked, was the first guy his sister had dated since her husband’s death.
“You’re nothing but a pig and a jerk and I can’t believe I married you…”
Jordon glanced up again, his brow furrowed. “He might hit her.”
Possibly. But Mark didn’t think so. If this evening went true to form, Jordon was soon going to be hearing something else his sister didn’t want her adolescent son listening in on.
“Don’t you touch me, you…”
Yep, here it came. Mark jumped out of bed.
“How about some ice cream?” he asked, pulling on shorts and a T-shirt over the briefs he slept in.
“It’s almost midnight!”
“So?” he said to the boy. “I know a shop that’s open until one from May ’til September. You saying you don’t have room for a banana split?”
Jordon loved banana splits.
“Sure!” His nephew said, just as the sounds overhead started to change. “I’ve always got room for that.”
“Then get your rear next door and grab a shirt and some shoes.”
Moving out to the tiny space that served as a living room, Mark raised his voice, ostensibly to be heard from the spare bedroom next to his, avoiding the sight of the wrought-iron bars on the windows—a necessity in this neighborhood—as he grabbed his keys.
He had Jordon out of the apartment and onto the street before the going really got good upstairs. And he took the long way to the ice cream shop two blocks away. He figured he had at least an hour to kill.
“WHY DO YOU LIVE in that place?” Jordon asked, when his boat-shaped dessert dish was completely empty, as Mark nursed a cup of decaffeinated coffee, regardless of the eighty-degree temperature outside.
“I’m too lazy to move,” he answered the boy.
“You, lazy? Give me a break.”
“I’ve done a lot a work on the place,” Mark tried again, wondering how such short hair got so rumpled as he ran his hand through it. “What about that entertainment system? Can’t beat that, huh?”
“’Cept the room’s so small you get kinda dizzy watching such a large screen.”
Yeah, he hadn’t anticipated that consequence.
“It’s’cuz of that stupid sex offender stuff, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “It does make things a little difficult.”
“It’s not fair, Uncle Mark. You didn’t do anything.”
His family had never tried to hide from the horrible turn Mark’s life had taken that night at the lake, not far from Wright State University during his freshman year of college. He and Dana had told Jordon about Mark’s past as soon as they’d thought the boy was old enough to understand.
They’d thought that was preferable to him hearing about it somewhere else. From someone who maybe wasn’t in possession of all the facts.
“Yes, I did, son. There was forensic evidence to prove that I did.”
“You were at a party with a bunch of college kids.”
The place was empty except for the old guy working in the back room.
“I had way too much to drink.” Readjusting his long legs beneath the short, square table, Mark tried not to think about the bed he’d just left.
“And you haven’t had anything to drink since.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that I broke the law.”
“Yeah, and served your time.”
Though Jordon’s voice was changing, he still looked young for his age. Even with the too-long hair and baggy clothes.
“Some crimes you pay for for a lifetime.”
“The girl said she was twenty-one.”
“She was bruised.” He squinted against the harsh fluorescent lighting.
“There were two other guys with her, too.” Jordon’s hazel eyes—a family trait he shared with Dana and Mark—were wide and glinted with emotion. “They had to have hurt her. You wouldn’t have hurt her.”
“But I can’t remember what happened.” He’d tried everything from revisiting the scene to hypnosis, and still not one clear recollection of the latter part of that night came to him.
“You know you wouldn’t have hurt her.”
He did know that. Which was the only reason he could sleep at night. But he also knew he’d had sex with a sixteen-year-old girl at the same time that there were two other men having sex with her. Had they taken turns, watched each other? Had two of them touched her at once? The thought sickened him.
Stopped him in his tracks.
“I think you should move. You got the money.”
He did well for himself.
“There’s no law against it, is there?”
“No. I’d have to let the sheriff know, and reregister with my new address.”
“Then why not do it?”
Jordon was growing up, choosing to tackle mature issues. Mark decided to be honest with him.
“Because if I did, everyone in the new neighborhood would be notified about me being there. I’d likely have hate mail, things thrown at my house, signs put in my yard and people running scared with their little kids.”
“That’s bullshit!”
“It’s life.”
His life, anyway.
“I’m comfortable where I am, son. People know me.”
“It’s a ghetto.”
Not quite. But close.
“You could get gunned down taking out your trash.”
“We’ll stay in Cleveland next time your mom leaves town, okay?”
“I think you should move.”
Mark gave up trying to convince his nephew of things he had a hard time accepting himself.
CHAPTER FOUR
AMAZING, REALLY, how quick and easy it was to disassemble something that had taken fifteen years of hard work to build. Agree to split all assets in half, file papers, wait thirty days and the state of Ohio dissolves a union once destined to last a lifetime.
Sara hadn’t even been able to fully wrap her mind around the idea before the marriage was legally ended.
Providing male oversight on the last day of June, while the movers took her half of the household out of the home in which she’d hoped to raise children and grow old, her father gave her hand a squeeze.
She nodded.
And that was the end of any conversation they were going to have on the subject.
“When do you close on the new place?”
“A couple of weeks.” The new house had been vacant and the owners were letting her rent it until the paperwork was complete.
Retired sheriff John Lindsay stood up straight, staring out the front window toward the moving van. “Brent seen it yet?”
“No. Why should he?”
“Has he found a place?”
“Chloe has a place on a lake. He’s moving in with her for now.”
“She got kids?”
“Two.” Don’t let it show, she ordered herself. Don’t let it show and it won’t hurt nearly as long.
Her father’s nod said more than she wanted it to. He saw the irony in the situation. Her husband had refused to have babies with her—a woman who desperately wanted to have a chance for do-overs in that department—and yet he was willing to take on another man’s children for someone else.
She couldn’t stand his pity. All her life she’d had her father standing over her, watching her hurt. The pattern had to stop.
“Have you called him? Seen if he’s changed his mind?”
Sucking in air, Sara counted to ten, squeezing fingers to her thumb as she did so. “No.”
Two brawny, sweaty, unshaven young men were loading her dresser. Part of a set that was now split up.
“Don’t you think you should?”
Her father wanted what he thought was best for her, she reminded herself, while her mind screamed silently.
The man was unfaithful to me! An adulterer, dammit. More than once. For years. How could you want him to ever come near me again?
“He chose Chloe.”
“You’re better for him. He’s going to realize that.” But he’s not better for me.
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. She’s going to be a high-powered attorney someday.”
A furniture pad went over the dresser.
“He has his own power. What he needs is a woman on his arm who knows how to make him look his best.”
As much as Sara cringed at the description, she knew that her father had just paid her his idea of the highest compliment. How he survived in today’s world, with his chauvinistic views, she had no idea.
“I guess he doesn’t think so.”
One nightstand was next.
“Did you split the mattress set, too?”
“No. I gave him the set in exchange for the bed frame. I didn’t want the mattress we shared, anyway.”
“What about the cars?”
“I got the Lexus.” Leaving Brent the Expedition. She’d had to give up the boat, too, but it was worth it. She had no use for a recreational vehicle she could neither get into nor out of the water by herself.
“Good for you.”
With a nod, her father was gone—outside, giving last-minute instructions to the crew he’d hired.
BY SIX THAT EVENING—the first of July, a new month, a new life—all boxes and belongings were off the truck. Just as the Two Man Movers van drove away, the pizza delivery guy pulled up. Paying him and taking the hot cardboard box, Sara climbed over cartons on the way to her new kitchen.
The walls were green, but they were going to become yellow before the week was out.
“Dinner’s ready!”
