Fireside (17 page)

“Okay, they’ve been asking where he is. Let’s go, big guy.”

She watched him walk away with their son, confused by her own emotions. Despite their rocky, unplanned beginnings, Logan had turned out to be a loving father. Sometimes, when the three of them were together, she could so easily picture them
staying
together. She glanced again at Jenny and Rourke, awaiting their baby together, ready to be a family.

“Remind me again,” Julian teased, “what are the O’Donnells doing at my farewell party?”

She gently slugged his arm. “It’s a family thing, and you know it. Thanks to Charlie, they’re family.”

“It’s cool. I never had much in the way of family.”

“You do now,” she pointed out, gesturing around the room. He and his brother, Connor, had reconnected a few years ago, opening a world to him. He’d told her so, and he’d talked a little about his childhood, being raised by a single mom. He’d admitted it was lonely.

She set down her beer, no longer thirsty.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Sure. I’m jealous of you, though, heading for another adventure. And Sonnet, studying abroad.” She thought about her best friend, spending the semester in Frankfurt. “When she and I were little, we always said we’d travel the world together. I’m jealous because it’s not an option for me.” She smiled up at him. “Then I look at my little boy, and I get over it, so don’t feel too sorry for me.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you.”

What
do
you feel? She wished she had the courage to ask. She thought about the things unsaid between them. She thought about the one time he’d kissed her. It had happened a year ago, but it was the kind of kiss you thought about forever. She wished he’d do it again. But there never seemed to be a good time for them.

“Go mingle,” she said, shooing him away. “All these people are here for you.”

“What about you?” he asked. “Are you here for me?”

She teetered on the verge of giving him an honest answer. “I’ll meet you at the station when you leave next Monday,” she said.

He offered a half smile, and a look that said so much more than words. “Seems like I’m always telling you goodbye.”

Ten

I
n the fussy candy-colored mansion, Bo felt like a bull in a china shop. He was surrounded by fragile knicknacks, precariously displayed in rooms that had names that made him think of that old board game—the parlor, the library, the rotunda. The butler did it in the pantry with the meat mallet. The maid did it with the feather duster in the linen closet. The baseball player did it with Kimberly van Dorn in the bedroom….

Yet despite the ornate furnishings, waking up at Fairfield House was unexpectedly pleasant. In his little alcove bed, AJ slept like the dead, and Bo was careful not to awaken him. Sleep was the only escape the poor kid had from worrying about his mother.

On the nightstand beside the bed was a small photograph in a plastic sleeve. It was the only photo AJ had of his mother. The shot depicted the two of them with their arms around each other, grinning straight at the camera. In the background was some kind of fair or carnival. In the smiling, dark-haired woman, Bo tried to see the girl he’d once loved, but too much time had passed. She looked like a stranger to him. Yet in the photo, the bond between her and AJ was tangible. The kid clearly adored his mother, and having her ripped away from him was probably the emotional equivalent of an amputation. Bo just hoped they could resolve this soon and end the boy’s hurt.

Bo went down to the kitchen for coffee, where he encountered Kimberly van Dorn. The moment he spotted her, he’d felt an instant surge of attraction, a reflex as automatic as breathing, because she was
that
beautiful. Never mind that she had been sending out not-interested signals since the moment he’d shown up on her doorstep.

“Hey,” he said.

“Good morning.” In plain jeans and a sweater, her hair still damp from the shower, she looked kind of vulnerable, maybe fragile in a way. “Help yourself to breakfast.”

“Thanks.” He grabbed an orange from a fruit bowl and stood over the sink, peeling it.

“Is AJ all right?”

“As all right as he can be, given the situation. Thanks for asking.”

She nodded and took her coffee into the dining room. Bo felt a little easier after the exchange. She seemed cautiously willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything about how pretty she was, but damn. That would be like walking past a
Playboy
centerfold and not stopping to admire it. For the time being,
Playboy
was going to be as close as he could get to an actual relationship with a woman, because having a kid didn’t leave him any time for dating.

On the AJ front, things were not going so hot. He’d come downstairs and refused breakfast. A few minutes later, he sat slumped in the passenger seat of the Z4, staring out the window and staying conspicuously silent as they drove into town, on their way to register him for school.

“I never saw the snow except in pictures,” Bo said, “until I moved up here in ’04 to play baseball. Why anybody would want to move here if he didn’t have to is beyond me.”

En route, they passed the offices of Peyton Byrne, Esq., a local lawyer, the establishment marked with a discreet hand-lettered sign. Bo never looked at that sign without feeling an unpleasant twinge of memory. Last year, Byrne had repped some crazy-ass woman in bringing a paternity suit against him, and he’d had to hire Sophie Bellamy just to get the test results—negative—admitted before the court. After AJ, Bo had been scrupulous about birth control.

Bo decided not to share that particular Maury-Povich moment with his son. He did want to get more friendly with the boy, though. Win him over a little. Ordinarily, this was not a chore for Bo. Growing up as he had, he had learned at an early age to turn on the charm in order to get what he wanted. Sometimes, personal charm was the only thing in his arsenal.

“There’s a winter carnival every year,” he continued, gesturing at Blanchard Park as they passed it. “They’ll build an ice sculpture as big as a house. They cut huge chunks of ice from the lake.”

“Uh-huh,” AJ said, his breath misting the car window as he kept his gaze trained away from Bo.

“You ever read a book called
The Last of the Mohicans?
” Bo asked. AJ liked books. Maybe they could find something in common.

“Nope,” AJ said.

“It’s by James Fenimore Cooper. I had to read it for English class when I was in high school. And I’m sorry to tell you, it was the most god-awful, boring thing I’ve ever read. It’s about the Indians who lived here when the French and English guys first came over. They had a word for the big water between the forested mountains—
Glimmerglass.
I didn’t much care for the book, but I still remember that word. When I look at the lake, I can kind of see how the guy came up with a word like that. I swear, in the summer that’s just how it looks. The rest of the story, I can do without. I usually like fighting in books, but in this one, even the fighting was boring. The whole thing is about a white guy named Natty Bumppo, living with the Indians. Who the hell could take him seriously with a name like that? Natty Bumppo, for chrissakes.”

“How is that any less weird than Bo?” asked AJ.

“You got me. Hey, listen, I thought after we finish with the school stuff today, we could go to the gym. I have to stay in training. Sixty throws a day, minimum. You might like the gym. Good pickup games of basketball, a pool. Great snack bar, too. What do you say?”

“Sounds okay.”

So much for trying to sweet-talk the kid. And honestly, Bo didn’t blame him for being unhappy and suspicious. Given the way Yolanda had misrepresented Bo to AJ, it was no wonder the boy didn’t trust him. To salve her own conscience, or perhaps to mollify her now-ex-husband, she’d led AJ to believe his biological father had never cared enough to want to see him, and that the presents and monthly checks were sent out of guilt. She’d characterized him as a ballplayer living the high life. That part, at least, had a grain of truth. He was a baseball player. If drinking and getting laid regularly constituted the high life, then yeah, he’d cop to that. What was omitted was the fact that, up until a couple of months ago, he’d earned next to nothing from baseball. The checks often represented his food budget for the week. Yet he’d never once considered stiffing AJ. Bo remembered what poverty was like, and he wouldn’t wish it on any kid.

No doubt the idea of a new school was contributing to AJ’s sullen mood.

Bo didn’t say anything, though, and he didn’t let AJ’s silence bother him. The boy was doing okay, considering everything he’d been through.

They turned down a freshly plowed street toward the town square, a bustling area of shops and restaurants and old-fashioned brick buildings. A few blocks later they arrived at their destination—Avalon Middle School. The moment the Z4 nosed into a visitor’s spot in the parking lot, Bo had the sensation that all the air had been sucked out of the car’s interior. The tension was that strong and palpable.

“It’s going to be—” He broke off, regrouped. No point in filling the kid’s head with platitudes. “Listen, we got no choice about this. The best thing you can do for your mother is toe the line, and that means going to school—”

AJ took a deep breath like a swimmer about to dive into frigid water, and pushed his way out of the car. At the main entrance, Bo identified them through the intercom and they were buzzed inside. A sign indicated that the main office was about halfway down the hall. It was a long, deserted hallway lined with lockers on one side and banners and announcements on the other. There was a flyer announcing a broomball tournament, a sport that was probably as foreign to AJ as kabuki theater. The classroom doors were shut, though he could see AJ’s nervous glance darting to the narrow glass windows as he sought a glimpse inside at the other students.

AJ’s pace quickened, as though he didn’t want to linger in the hall. His instincts proved correct, because a few seconds later, a bell shrilled through the hallway. Damn. Bo had forgotten that singular shriek of the school bell, but AJ clearly had not; he shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to hunker down into his parka like a turtle into its shell. The floodgates burst open and students flowed in a churning mass from the classrooms.

Another thing Bo had forgotten—how god-awful loud kids tended to be. There was shouting, laughter, the stamping of feet. A few kids spotted Bo and gave him a wide berth; he was an adult. An interloper. Fewer still noticed AJ, but those who did stared holes through him. Watching them, Bo realized diversity was not a strong suit at this school. Amid the mostly-Anglo kids, AJ already looked like a misfit.

Battling the current of students flowing through the hallway, they made their way to the office. Though quieter than the corridor, the office was a hive of activity, with clerical workers at computer terminals, teachers checking their in-boxes, the school nurse dealing with two peaked-looking students. At the front counter, Bo waited for a few minutes. No one noticed them.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” he said to one of the women working at a computer.

Glancing up at him, she seemed harried and overworked, with wispy pale hair and an air of distraction. The sign on her desk identified her as Ms. Jensen, the attendance clerk. “Can I help you?”

He offered his best smile, the one that usually worked even on the crankiest of females. “Bo Crutcher,” he said, “and this is my son, AJ Martinez. I called earlier. I’m here to enroll him.”

The smile failed him. She pulled her mouth into a prune shape. Then she took out a clipboard and handed it to him. “You’ll need to fill out this release for his records. Date and sign it at the bottom.”

Her brusque manner irritated Bo. AJ didn’t seem surprised. Just subdued.

Bo had come prepared—Sophie had told him to bring all the documentation he had. He handed Mrs. Jensen a thick manila envelope. “Here’s his birth certificate, immunization record and latest progress report and contact information for his school. And an emergency guardianship form. He just moved here from Houston.”

She paged through the documents. “What’s the emergency?”

“His mother had to go away…temporarily.”

“How is that an emergency?”

“How is that your business?” Bo asked the question with a smile, but the question made his point.

She sniffed. “Proof of residency?”

“Right here.” He indicated the lease agreement he’d just signed with Mrs. van Dorn.

“Social security card?”

Bo turned to AJ. “You got one?”

AJ shook his head.

“Will mine do?” Bo asked, taking his from his wallet.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “He has thirty days. In this country, it’s standard.”

Now he got it—the attitude, the suspicion. This woman had made up her mind about AJ, tried and convicted him, knowing nothing more than the kid’s name. “In this country, it’s mandatory for a kid to go to school,” he said.

“Does he speak English?” she asked. “Because the ESL classes meet on a different campus—”

“Lemme check on that,” said Bo. “Yo, AJ,
¿habla inglés?
”

“Dunno. Is that what they speak in this country?” AJ asked quietly but pointedly.

Mrs. Jensen pruned her mouth at him, then studied the paperwork they’d brought. “This isn’t certified,” she said, handling the birth certificate as though it smelled bad.

“It’s a certificate,” Bo said. “Doesn’t that mean it’s certified?”

“I need a certified certificate. Not a hospital certificate. Not a mother or souvenir copy. A
certified
certificate. He cannot be enrolled until I have that, along with the records from his previous school. And I can’t send for the records until you complete this form.” She indicated the pages on the clipboard.

“I’ll be quick, ma’am,” Bo said, filling out the form. He bit his tongue. He knew if he let go of it, he’d be in big trouble. But he couldn’t help himself. As he handed over the clipboard, he said, “I know you must be in a hurry to get to your doctor appointment.”