Sparring Partners (21 page)

Jesse's smile widened to an all out grin.
"You've got no idea."

Henry cuffed him on the back of the head as
the waitress walked away with another wink. "You're a quick study,
kid. Dangerously quick. Now tell the man what he needs to know
before that hole in his stomach starts to bleed and I have to take
him to the emergency room."

Henry pushed the plates of food the waitress
set in front of him across the table to Jordon. "I already had
breakfast. Eat."

Jordon started to object, then his stomach
rumbled. Still he hesitated.

"Don't make me pull out my gun."

Jordon wasn't all that hungry, but he took a
bite. Then another. That must have satisfied Henry because he
redirected his attention to Jesse. "Spill it kid."

Jordon continued to eat as Jesse described
how he met Reed.

"I met her at court the first time. I
wouldn't talk to her. I wouldn't talk to anyone, really." Jesse's
voice cracked and he took a sip from his water before he continued.
Jordon watched him carefully, noticing the slight shake of his hand
as Jesse set his glass back down.

"Didn't talk to her at the first foster home
they put me in either. Or the one after that. She wouldn't give up
though. Reed just kept coming. She'd sit with me for an hour just
staring at the wall with me." Jesse looked at Jordon, and the
bleakness in his eyes held another emotion Jordon couldn't quite
define. Awe, maybe. Or respect.

"Do you know how hard it is to get a lawyer
to sit with a kid for an hour?"

Jordon nodded. He did know and he paid an
exorbitant amount every six minutes he needed B.H.'s lawyers.
Rarely did he need a full hour.

"Well, Reed sat with me in court and at five
different foster homes. Just sat. When I didn't answer her
questions she'd take out a cross-word puzzle and sit beside me. She
always left the puzzles. A new book every time. It got to the point
where she'd start a puzzle and I'd finish it and leave it open for
her next visit. I'd get transferred to a new foster family and I'd
think 'she'll give up this time'. But she never did."

"Eventually you had to talk to her." Henry
said.

Jesse shook his head in wonder. "Yea. I had
to make her go away sometime. I knew sooner or later she'd leave,
and I wanted it to be on my terms."

"So what did you do?"

"I tried to make her mad. So mad she'd
leave, or think I was a lost cause, and leave me alone."

"It didn't work?" Henry said, stating the
obvious.

Jesse smiled warmly, the love he felt for
Reed obvious in every line of his face. "No. It didn't work. I told
you she's never been really mad at me. The closest she comes is
when I don't eat enough organic protein."

Jordon was willing to eat a case full of
organic soy-goo if she'd never look at him again with that empty
look that chilled his heart and threatened to shatter his bones.
Jordon shook himself and pushed the plates away, noticing for the
first time he'd eaten everything Henry ordered. None of it
organic.

"Spill the rest of it, kid. Jordon wants to
know everything, and he doesn't look up to prodding it out of you."
Henry glanced at Jordon while refilling his water glass from the
pitcher the waitress left on the table. "So what did you do to piss
off Reed that backfired so badly she quit her job to adopt
you?"

Jesse turned to Henry. "How do you know
that?"

Henry lifted his shoulders and turned over
his left palm. A full shrug would have jostled the table. "It's my
job."

"If you already know, why ask me?"

Jordon spoke. "I don't know what happened
between you and Reed. I don't know enough about her, and I'd like
to. Know her that is. I'd like to know what worked for you so I can
see if it'll work for me." Surprisingly enough that was all true.
Jordon wanted to know all there was to know about his wife.

"I managed to piss her off without trying.
You tried and she took you home. See how that's not meshing? What
did you do?" Jordon didn't add, 'to get her to love you', but it
echoed through his heart none the less.

"I told her the truth."

Jordon didn't say anything, but his
expression willed Jesse to continue.

"That last foster home was hell. Reed could
see it and she wanted me out, but the judge wouldn't sign an order
for a new foster family." Jesse looked down. "I'd already been
kicked out of so many homes the County was running out of places to
put me."

Jesse took another sip of water and looked
first at Henry, and then at Jordon. "Reed went ballistic. She saw
my black eye, it was nothing really, no big deal, but she wouldn't
let it go, she started railing on my foster-father who was at least
a foot taller and a hundred pounds of fat heavier, about how she
was going to have his meal-ticket pulled and see his ass in jail.
She was really something."

"What did you do?" Henry asked.

"I went up to her and touched her shoulder.
That was all. I touched her shoulder and she calmed down. She made
me talk to her though. She threatened to call the cops if I
didn't."

"So you told her the truth?" Jordon
said.

"I did." Jesse looked at Henry, his tone
accusatory for the first time. "If you know the facts about me and
Reed, then you know how I got into the system in the first place,
right?"

Henry nodded.

"Did they tell you I was there when it
happened?"

"No."

"Well, I saw the whole thing. My mother was
in and out of consciousness, begging him to do it. I saw that look
on his face and I knew he was going to kill her if he gave her any
more. He knew it too. I saw it in his eyes. He looked right at me
while he did it. I only left for a second. I had to go to the
bathroom. I couldn't hold it anymore."

"It's okay, kid. That's enough." Jordon held
out his hand toward Jesse, but the kid ignored him.

"The needle was already in her arm. When his
thumb hit the plunger I ran toward them, but I was too late. That
poison was already pumping through her veins. I yanked it out and
ran for the phone." All the emotion emptied from Jesse's voice. It
was as if he were recalling a movie he'd watched, not his own
personal hell.

"I called 911, picked up my baseball bat
from the kitchen, and went back to find my father. He was already
dead. He shot up right after he killed my mother."

"You told Reed all that?" Henry asked.

"No. She already knew. She heard the 911
tape. She had photos of our house. She didn't need me to tell her
the facts."

"Then what truth did you tell her that night
in the foster home?"

"Leave the kid be, Henry. It's not
important."

Jesse looked at Jordon with those eyes
straddling the twin worlds of despair and hope. "It is important.
She's important." Jordon didn't have to ask what 'she' Jesse was
referring to.

"Yes she is. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Jesse.
Finish it."

"I told Reed that night that I was going to
take that baseball bat and bash my father's brains in. She filed
for adoption the next day." Jesse looked from Jordon to Henry and
back again. He seemed to be waiting for some kind of response. "Did
you guys hear me? I picked up a bat with the intent to kill my own
father."

"We heard you the first time, kid." Henry
looked at Jordon for a second before turning back to Jesse and
throwing an arm around his shoulders. Jesse's cheeks pinked under
his tanned skin but he didn't pull away. His gaze was questioning
when he looked at Jordon.

"What Henry means, Jesse, is that both of us
understand. We would never judge you for doing what we ourselves
would have done. Reed's no different. I know enough about that
woman to know she'd kill for someone she loves."

A look of relief and then acceptance flashed
across Jesse's face, pulling at Jordon's chest, squeezing his
heart. He wouldn't have left this kid either. Reed was one hell of
a woman. She had a samurai's soul. Jordon threw down a seven dollar
tip on a twenty dollar tab.

"Let's go home."

On their way back to the car Jordon asked,
"So what happened to the foster-father who popped you?"

Jesse smiled. "Reed punched him in the eye,
and then called the cops. When he tried to make a complaint against
Reed, no one would back up his side of the story. Not even his
wife."

Jordon laughed wishing he could have seen
it. Better yet, that he could have taught the guy some manners
himself.

"Think I'll get off that easy?" He asked
Jesse.

"Not a chance."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

When Reed didn't come home that night,
Jordon chalked it up to pissed off woman needing time away. When
she didn't come home by the next evening, everyone at Potters Woods
began to worry. It wasn't like her, or so he'd been repeatedly
told, to stay away without calling. He really needed to talk with
her, if for no other reason than to tell her the concrete drive was
still curing, whatever that meant, and it couldn't be driven on for
at least four more days. She'd have to park on the road and hike
in. He thought she ought to know that if she came home after
dark.

Jordon checked his watch for the fifth time
in as many minutes. Too early to head to the dojo, too late to
still be hanging around the kitchen for lunch. Finn and her painter
buddy, Peter, were leading a group of senior citizens in an
afternoon class on watercolors. Charlie was leading a group of what
he called non-traditional graduate students in reciting bad poetry,
and Jesse was helping the lawn service trim, mow, and otherwise
keep the grounds beautiful. Henry was taking turns spying on Finn
and her painter friend, and doing legitimate surveillance, under
the auspices of keeping Jordon and everyone else in Potters Woods
safe. Everyone accounted for.

Except Reed.

The house seemed empty without her. Jordon
wondered what made him think he could survive a week, much less a
month, trying to be a normal guy.

"You're never going to get her back moping
around here all day long."

Jordon turned from the kitchen windows to
find Irma sneaking up on him in her wheelchair. He was going to
have to throw sand in her wheels so he could hear her coming. "I'm
not moping."

"Sulking then. Not very attractive, a grown
man sulking."

"I do not sulk."

"Do too."

"Now who's being childish?" Jordon said,
turning back to the sink to pour himself a glass of water. He
didn't need advice from a grumpy old lady today, or any other day
for that matter. He just needed... "
ouch
."

Jordon whirled around to confront whatever
hit him. He looked down to find Irma scowling up at him brandishing
an overly long, needle pointed umbrella. She'd hit him behind the
knees with it, and it stung like a son-of-a-bitch. If she didn't
already have one foot in the grave he'd kill the old bat.

"What was that for?"

"Someone needs to beat some sense into you.
I couldn't reach, so I poked you with my umbrella instead."

"Do that again and I'll dump you and your
umbrella in the pond."

"You wouldn't dare."

Jordon's eyes narrowed as he smiled evilly
down at her. He didn't normally threaten women, but this one needed
it. "And I'll watch until the bubbles disappear."

She cackled at him. Surprisingly enough the
sound made him smile. "Good one, Bennett. I knew you had some
gumption in you. Mind you, it's not easy to see under all that
pretty-boy pouting you've been doing. Good to see you've found your
backbone."

"Irma, I know how to disable the brakes on
that thing."

She reached behind her, into her seemingly
bottomless basket, and pulled out a small set of screwdrivers
wrapped in a leather pouch and waved them at him. "So do I boyo.
Check them every morning. I built airplanes during the war. There
isn't anything these old hands can't fix."

Jordon looked down at those old hands
shaking and stained with age spots and the telltale purple bruising
from the blood thinning medication she was taking. Yet, they were
the hands of a working woman whose toiling days of brute strength
had turned into a twilight of frailty, steeled only by the
formidable strength of her will.

Even though she was a giant pain-in-his-ass,
Irma MacDonald was one hell of a woman. Potters Woods seemed to
attract them. Jordon took the screwdrivers from Irma's hand, tied
the leather cord around them, and put them back in her basket.

"Why are you pestering me?"

"Why are you staring out the window, waiting
for your life to turn out the way you want it to, instead of
finding a way to make it happen? I got news for you, boy, nothing
worthwhile ever gets done by wishing it so."

Jordon jolted as if he'd been slapped. Is
that what he'd been doing? No wonder he felt like such an idiot.
Sitting around twiddling his thumbs never worked for him before,
why should it now? He was a man of action after all, and it was
past time he'd acted.

"You're a cranky old coot, Irma, but there's
nothing wrong with your brain." Jordon said, bending down to kiss
the crinkly-paper skin of Irma's cheek. "Thanks!"

Irma shooed him away with a wave of her
hand. "'Bout time you got some sense. Now get out of here and find
your woman before I poke you again with my umbrella."

Jordon laughed, feeling the tension leave
his shoulders, he was suddenly lighter than he'd been since Reed
left. "Yes, ma'am."

He had a plan.

He had a purpose.

Find Reed.

Whatever happened after that was up to her.
He'd prefer to make love to her until all her anger and frustration
exhausted itself, but there was merit in taking her over his knee
and tanning her hide for the scare she'd given him. All of them,
really. But him mostly. Not that she'd go easy. That was okay
too.