Her Perfect Man (16 page)

They were bad for each other. Leave it at that.

Her cell phone rang. Kim saw the call was from Lynnette and frowned. They hadn’t spoken since their confrontation weeks ago and Kim had no desire to speak to her now. She almost let the call go to voice mail, but some urge made her pick up.

Let’s see what bullshit Lynnie’s come up with now.
“Yeah?”

“Kim?” A childish voice wavered. It was T.J., Lynnette’s son. Kim sat up, her anger instantly changing to concern.

“Yeah, Teege, what’s up?”

Words burst from the boy in a flood.

“Something’s wrong with Mom. She’s real sick, throwing up and locked in the bathroom, and she’s crying and I’m scared ‘cause I think she took some stuff—”

“What stuff?” Kim’s whole body went cold with fear. “What stuff, T.J.?”

“I don’t know,” T.J. sobbed. “I’m scared, Kim. I don’t know what to do, I called Tommy but he won’t answer—”

“Okay. Okay.”
Come on, bitch, pull it together.

The kid’s already terrified and you’re just making it worse.
“Did you call ?”

“No, I called cousin Tommy—”

“Listen. T.J. Call .” Kim grabbed her keys and was already at the door. She forced herself to sound composed and in control, though she was shaking and her hands felt numb. She spoke the way she imagined Charlie would in an emergency, keeping his students calm and safe from harm.

“You know how to do it, right? Just like on TV.

Call and tell them what you told me. I’m coming right over. I’m coming down my stairs right now. I’m at my door.” She pushed the door open, hurried down the front steps and raced to the curb where her car was parked.

“I’m scared, Kim,” the little boy bawled. “Don’t hang up on me.”

“I’ve got to, Teege, so you can call them. I’ll call them, too. They’ll stay on the phone with you, okay?

It’ll be all right. I’m in my car now. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

T.J. was still wailing when Kim shut her phone.

His sobs cut through her like a knife. She felt as though she were abandoning him. She dialed , told them what she knew, and gave them Lynnette’s address.

When she got to Lynnette’s place, the EMTs were already there. A burly police officer spoke quietly with Tommy while T.J. clung to his cousin as though he were a life raft.

The bathroom door was open as the EMTs examined Lynnette, who was slumped on the toilet in her nightgown. Pasty-faced and floppy as a rag doll, she insisted she was fine and there was nothing to worry about.

T.J.’s face was pressed to Tommy’s side. Tommy patted the child’s back with his large hand while the cop looked on with a sad expression. Kim came over and squeezed the little boy’s shoulder. “Hey, Teege, you okay?”

T.J. nodded, his face still pressed against Tommy’s bulk. “You did good, honey, real good,” she murmured. “You’re a hero.”

She gave Tommy a meaningful look over T.J.’s head and mouthed
What happened?

“T.J.” He gently pried the boy from his side.

“Why don’t you go into your room for a few minutes and play one of your games, okay? Your mom’s fine.

It’s all going to be okay, I promise.”

That promise meant the world to T.J. Kim could see it in the child’s eyes when he gazed up at his big cousin. Tommy smiled and patted his shoulder. “Go on.” It wasn’t until T.J. left the room that Tommy let his true emotions show. His eyes flooded with tears as he shook his head sadly. “God Almighty. That poor little kid.”

“I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“T.J.’s message was incoherent, but I knew something was wrong and headed right over. Thank God he got hold of you.”

“He’s the one who called ,” Kim replied.

“Yeah.” Tommy gestured to the policeman. “This is Officer Collins. The dispatcher sent him over when T.J. called. They didn’t want to leave a child alone, not knowing the mother’s situation.”

Kim nodded to the officer, wondering if Lynnette would be in legal trouble along with everything else.

The EMTs were packing up their equipment in preparation to leave. One of them approached. “Are you relatives?”

“I am,” Tommy answered.

The EMT looked tired and frustrated. “Well, she refuses to let us take her anywhere, so there’s really nothing we can do.”

“But she—I thought she took some pills,” Kim stammered.

“She showed us what she took. It looks like it was a combination of stuff from the medicine cabinet—over the counter stuff. The combination apparently made her as sick as a dog. But no barbiturates, no sedatives or sleeping pills. Even if she had taken something dangerous,” the man went on, “she refused our assistance. Legally we can’t force her to do anything.”

Tommy shook his head in disgust. “That selfish bi—” He caught himself and swallowed the rest of the word.

“She claims she wasn’t trying to kill herself.”

The man shrugged. “So I don’t know what to tell you folks. But maybe she needs to talk to somebody.” He tapped the side of his head. “You know what I mean.”

“What she needs is a swift kick in the ass,”

Tommy growled, crossing his arms over his chest.

Kim’s eyebrows flew up. Tommy was usually inclined to cut his cousin slack. But she should have known that protecting a child would always come first with him.

“Come on, Rashon, let’s go,” the other tech said.

“I’m coming. You folks take care.” He turned to Lynnette, still sprawled on the toilet seat. “You too, ma’am.”

Lynnette’s chin rested on her chest, but she gave a murmur of acknowledgment. Rashon and his partner left.

Officer Collins turned to Tommy. “Well, I think I have what I need for my report. You’re gonna make sure the boy’s all right?”

Tommy nodded. “He’ll be staying with me until his mother gets her act together.” He shook the officer’s hand. “Thanks a lot.”

The cop left. Kim was frightened by the look on Tommy’s face. He was a man using every ounce of will not to explode. “I am so angry at her right now,”

he said at last. “For putting her son in that position.

For scaring the crap out of him like that. It was pure selfishness.”

He stood like a stone, his arms folded, then suddenly burst into action like a statue come to life.

He marched into the bathroom, took the wastebasket that held the empty pill bottles and dumped them into the sink.

“Let me see here. Let’s just see what it was you decided to poison yourself with. Aspirin. Okay.” He picked up the bottle and tossed it back into the wastebasket. “Guess you don’t care if you burn a hole in your stomach. What’s this?” He looked at another bottle. “Gummi vitamins. What, not only do you scare the shit out of your son, you steal his vitamins to do it? Nice job, Lynette. And this. Let’s see. Oh, great. Tylenol. You never heard that too many of these can destroy your liver? Real smart, cuz. And what have we here? Stool softener? Oh, you’ve
got
to be kidding me.” He scooped up the whole mess and dumped it back in the basket, which he dropped carelessly to the floor.

Lynnette slumped ignominiously on her “throne”, unable to look her cousin in the face.

“Don’t, Tommy.”

His voice was thunderous. “Do you know what you put your son through? Do you have any idea? He was afraid you were going to die.”

“I’m sorry.” Lynnette’s face scrunched up in shame. “I wasn’t trying to scare him. I just—”

“You just what? My god, Lynnette, what the hell were you thinking?”

Kim had to step in. She’d never seen Tommy like this before. And as much as she understood his anger, the situation was out of hand.

“Okay. Hold on,” she said. “Tom, I know you’re pissed. So am I. We’re scared and shaken up.” She glanced at Lynnette. “All of us. But let’s not forget about Teege. The walls are thin, he can probably hear everything that’s going on. It’s not gonna help him if we’re all screaming at each other.”

Tommy went still again, summoning his self-control. He nodded his agreement, and Kim could see him forcing his rage to subside, trying to once again become the mellow, even-tempered man the world knew.

“You’re right.” Quietly he left the bathroom, then went to T.J.’s room and knocked on the door.

When Lynnette’s son appeared, Tommy spoke in a cheerful voice. “Pack some stuff, okay? You’re gonna spend a few days with me. That’ll be fun, huh?”

The boy looked confused. His nervous gaze bounced from Tommy to his mother.

Lynnette twisted her mouth into something meant to resemble a smile. “How fun. You go ahead stay at cousin Tommy’s for a while.”

His eyes wide, his face still red and puffy from crying, T.J. shook his head. “I don’t want to. I want to be with my Mom.”

They all knew that T.J. was afraid to leave his mother, afraid something bad might happen to her if he wasn’t there to protect her. The poor kid felt it was his job to watch out for her. Tommy shot Lynnette a look of pure contempt.

“It’s okay, babe,” Lynnette told him. “Go with Tommy. I’m okay, really. It was just a dumb accident.”

T.J.’s eyes narrowed and his child’s face suddenly took on the cynicism of an adult’s. He might be a kid, but he wasn’t stupid. “Nobody takes all that junk on accident, Mom.”

Lynnette’s smile collapsed in despair. “Please go with Tommy. I’ll be okay.” She drew in a shaky breath. “I won’t be by myself. I’m gonna go to grandma’s for a while, hang out with her.”

The boy’s small face crumpled in suspicion.

“Really?”

“Really. Promise.” Lynnette tried for another smile. “You know nothing bad’s gonna happen there.

Grandma’d kick my butt if I tried something stupid.”

“Yeah.” T.J. actually smiled back. He knew his grandma. “Okay.”

Tommy patted the boy’s arm. “Go get your stuff, champ.”

T.J. returned to his bedroom. Tommy stood in the bathroom doorway as though to keep his cousin from escaping. Or perhaps he was keeping T.J. from further harm.

Lynnette sagged against the back of the toilet as soon as her son was out of sight. Now that the worst of the drama was over, Kim suddenly became aware of the sour smell of vomit. She put the plug in the bathtub drain and turned on the tub faucets.

Lynnette turned her head. “Whatta you doin’?”

“Fixing you a bath. You stink, girlfriend.”

Lynnette gave a weak laugh. “Yeah.”

Kim sat on the edge of the tub. “So you want to explain that totally dumb shit move of yours?”

The blonde shook her head weakly. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself, I swear.”

Kim glanced at Tommy, whose arms were once again crossed over his chest. “Well, what were you trying to do, scare the living crap out of us? Cause if so, you succeeded.”

“Mead dropped me.”

“What?” Kim asked. “Meat?”

“
Mead
.” Tommy pronounced the name with emphasis. “As in Mead Templeton. The man she’s been sleeping with—or should I say creeping with.

The married man.”

Lynnette blinked at Tommy in confusion, then suspiciously at Kim. “Did you—”

“She didn’t tell me a thing,” Tommy said.

“Then how’d you—”

“For God’s sake, your son told me. You think you’re so smart. How do you think you’re going to keep a relationship like that on the low when you bring the man around your son? And Mead Templeton is not exactly a nobody in this town.”

Mead Templeton. Kim knew he was some well-connected lawyer whose name periodically appeared in the local section of the paper. “You said he was separated.”

Lynnette sighed, her shoulders drooping low.

“Yeah, well, he’s not anymore. If he ever was. He’s gone back to
her
.” She mimicked a low sonorous voice. “‘It’s for the sake of the children, you know.’

His
children
are in their twenties, for fuck’s sake.”

In other words, not much younger than you.
Kim willed herself not to roll her eyes. The irony of the situation was completely lost on Lynnette. But not on Tommy, whose lips curled in derision.

“That’s it. He just stopped calling, stopped coming by. He wouldn’t even accept my calls. Had his stupid secretary running interference for him.”

“Did you really think he was going to leave his wife?” Kim felt no smug satisfaction at her friend’s plight, no righteous feeling of
I told you so
. All she felt was a heavy sense of sadness that Lynnette had gotten herself—and her kid—in this situation.

“I was just trying to make him pay attention to me.” The blonde’s voice was so quiet now that Kim had to lean in to hear it over the sound of the filling tub. “I called and finally got hold of him. Maybe his secretary was out or something, I don’t know. But I told him if he didn’t come over today, I’d kill myself.”

Kim and Tommy spoke at the same time.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“My God!”

“I didn’t plan it. I didn’t even expect him to answer. I just got flustered and said the first thing that popped into my mind. I had to get him over here. I knew if I could talk to him face to face, I could change his mind.” Lynnette’s gaze pleaded with Kim to understand. “You see?”

But Kim could only shake her head in disbelief.

She suddenly realized that the water had risen high in the tub. “Oh, shit.” She quickly turned it off.

Lynnette continued her story.

“He told me not to do anything foolish and I hung up on him. Then I, you know, I fixed myself up.

I wanted to look really good when he got here.”

Which explained the lacy nightgown in the middle of the day. Maybe sexy when Lynnette first put it on, but now it was rumpled, puke-stained, and smelly, anything but seductive. The lipstick she’d applied had been rubbed off, the mascara ran, the rouge looked like two red spots on a doll’s plastic cheeks.

“Then I thought since I threatened to kill myself, I should take something—so it wouldn’t really be a lie—”

Tommy growled. “That has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Lynnette ignored him. “So I just swallowed whatever was in the medicine cabinet. I didn’t know it’d make me upchuck so bad. T.J., I don’t know, maybe he heard me on the phone. I feel terrible my baby had to go through all that.”