The Kindness of Strangers (41 page)

“I never told her where I was staying.”

“Okay,” Nate said, but in a weird tone like he didn’t really believe him.

Jordan hated the wringing feeling in his chest. He opened his mouth, took a deep breath, and felt as if he were stepping off a cliff. “I was afraid she’d just leave.” That was true. His dad had been so far away. Jordan had even looked at it on a map. All those days of seeing his dad in every shadow, and the whole time he’d been halfway across the country? Jordan had been afraid his mom would run away, too. It hurt to say it out loud. And he shouldn’t even think it, so he deserved to hurt. “I thought I’d never get to see her again.”

Nate put the ice pack back on his bruised cheek. “Jordan, man, don’t you hear yourself? You say she never hurt you, but why would she run if she’s not guilty?”

Jordan hated Nate for asking that. He was glad Nate’s nose was swollen, glad his lip was split and that he probably tasted the rusty metal of blood when he moved his tongue.

Nate leaned his head against the wall and said, “It’s fucked up, man. I’m sorry.” Nate touched his stitches with his teeth. “But we’re all okay. We’re all safe.”

Safe. Jordan thought about that, saw the word in bold type, in all capital letters, on white paper:
S-A-F-E.
Exactly how it sounded, no tricks, but . . . it felt like a word from some other language.

Maybe he really, finally was safe, with his dad in jail. Maybe no one would believe his dad’s stories. Maybe his mother did love him. Maybe with his dad in jail, his mom really would change.

Jordan brought a hand to his face and lined up his own fingertips on the crescent-shaped nicks his mother’s nails had left there. He squeezed until his eyes watered again, for the bad things he’d thought about her.
Keep your mouth shut, Danny,
he prayed, picturing the impossible task of picking up all those coffee beans and stuffing them back in the sack.

Chapter Twenty-two
Nate

N
ate pulled the van into his own driveway and scowled at the car parked in the front of his house. Reece was here. He was picking up Jordan for some art-therapy class, but he was way too early. Nate knew that Reece was early on purpose.

Nate slammed the van door and hefted his gym bag to his shoulder. He’d been skating with Mowaza. He hadn’t been on the ice since he got kicked off the team, and he was surprised at how much he’d missed it. Skating was part of his “pre-Jordan” life. Goose bumps tickled his scalp as he recognized that some things about the pre-Jordan life were
better.
Fostering Jordan had been his idea, so he shook the feeling away and went in the back door.

A street-fair aroma hit him—strong enough to reach through his swollen nose—at the same time Mom’s laughter reached his ears. Damn. He walked into the kitchen. Mom and Reece sat at one of the kitchen islands and were just laughing their asses off about something.

“Hey,” Nate had to say. They didn’t even hear him come in.

“Hey there, big guy,” Reece said. Damn, the man was such a goof.

Nate squinted at some sunflowers in a vase next to Mom. “Where’d ya get those?” he asked.

Sure enough, Mom blushed. “Reece brought these. Wasn’t that nice?”

“You’re early, aren’t you?” Nate asked Reece.

Mom furrowed her brow with her “What’s up your butt?” look, one she frequently used on him in public.

Reece just laughed as if Nate had made some joke.

“Where’s Jordan?” Nate asked.

“He’s changing clothes,” Mom said. “He was helping me in the garden. How was the rink?”

Nate shrugged and wandered over to the stove. He looked into the skillet of simmering chicken pieces and breathed deep. The aroma transported him downtown to the National Folk Festival last summer and the Cajun ribs on those giant trash-can grills. The spicy meat had kicked ass, washed down with the beer he, Tony, and Mowaza had convinced some hippie guy to buy for them. “Wow,” Nate said. “What are you making?”

“Jambalaya.”

“For what?”

“Actually, for us.”

“You’re a lucky man,” Reece said to Nate. Nate didn’t answer him.
Don’t be expecting me to invite you to stay.
“And I didn’t mean to interrupt you, Sarah,” Reece said. “You go back to what you were doing.”

“Oh, you didn’t interrupt me. I’m always doing something in here. It’s my therapy.”

Nate reached into a skillet and snagged a piece of chicken, dropping it on the counter when it burned his fingertips. He gingerly touched the chicken piece and gauged it safe to put in his mouth. “That’s hot. Spicy hot.” His lower lip throbbed where the stitches had been removed yesterday. Most of his bruises had faded to green and yellow, only his nose still a light, puffy blue. Mackenzie liked to kiss his bruises, brushing them with her lips and eyelashes, which made him a little sad they would soon be gone. “I like it.” The spices opened his stuffy nose, made him breathe easier. The flavor on his tongue took him back to that sweaty, humid night downtown, where thousands of people danced shoulder to shoulder on Courthouse Square. Mackenzie twirled in her red sundress. That was the first night they’d kissed each other, sitting under the trees.

“Wanna help me?” Mom asked.

Nate was embarrassed that he was acting like such a baby. “Sure.” He set down his gym bag, glad to stay here instead of leaving her alone to laugh like that with Reece. “What do I do?”

“You want to chop these scallions?”

“Okay.”

“What can I do?” Reece asked, standing.

“You can cut this celery,” Mom said. She gave Reece a cutting board, and Nate used the wooden chopping block. Nate cut several bunches of the sharp green onions into tiny slivers, relishing the satisfying feel of the slice. Mom alternated between stirring the crackling, popping chicken pieces in the skillet and tending to a giant pot on another burner.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Nate said, wiping his hands on his jeans. He was hoping it was Mackenzie. She’d said she might come by after her volleyball practice. But when he opened the door, he stared at Kramble, holding an arm of bright orange-and-yellow tiger lilies. Damn. For a second Nate panicked that he’d forgotten Mom’s birthday or something.

“Hi,” Kramble said.

Nate wasn’t sure what to call Kramble. Mr. Kramble? Detective? Officer? He
wanted
to call him a jerk and tell him to get out and stop coming around so much.

“Is your mom at home?”

“Yeah.”

Kramble cocked his head at Nate. When the detective opened his mouth to say something else, Nate stepped out of the doorway and said, “Come on in. Follow me.”

Nate led him into the kitchen and hated how Mom’s eyes lit up when she saw him and the flowers. A crowded feeling pressed against Nate’s chest. The two men greeted each other and acted like it was perfectly natural for them both to be here, bringing flowers and just kicking it with Nate’s mom.

“Nate, could you keep stirring this for me?” Mom asked. He fumed as he stirred, and Mom put Kramble’s flowers in another vase. All the fresh flowers reminded Nate of his dad’s funeral and how their house had started to stink of dying flowers, rotten water, and pollen in the weeks afterward. He watched Mom smile at Kramble and hoped she remembered that, too.

Nate kept stirring, scraping the bottom of the pot harder than he needed to. Kramble didn’t seem to have any
reason
to come over, like at least Reece had. Now he just showed up whenever he felt like it.

Jordan and Danny came into the kitchen. “Oh, man, that smells good,” Jordan said. Nate stared at the kid: He smiled. His face was rested and tan from working with Mom in her garden, the scabbed cuts around his mouth faint now, like cookie crumbs he hadn’t wiped away. “Did you ever make that for my mom?”

Mom bit her lip. “Um . . . no, I don’t think so.”

Jordan turned to Reece and said, “In your official home-visit report, could you tell them I’m starving to death here?”

Everyone busted up with laughter again at that. Even Nate had to smile. Jordan had made a
joke
. That was a first.

“I know what you mean,” Reece said in a stage whisper. “Her cooking isn’t fit to eat, is it?”

Jordan smiled and shook his head. He whispered, “I only eat seconds to be polite.”

Mom grinned like some maniac. Shit, now even
Jordan
was flirting with her?

“Here, Danny,” Mom said. “Will you chop some tomatoes?” She scraped the scallions and celery that Nate and Reece had chopped into the pot Nate was stirring, then placed four tomatoes on the cutting board.

“We should have a party,” Jordan said. “When my mom gets out. You could make all her favorite food, and all of you could come over to our house.”

Mom kept smiling somehow, but it was frozen. Nate hated the hold-your-breath silence in the room.

Nate had expected Jordan to freak after his mom got hauled away by the cops for the second time, but he’d become cheerful, more relaxed. Maybe he was relieved to have his dad locked up. That made sense. What didn’t make sense was the way the kid talked all the time about getting to live with his mother. Nate had even talked to Dr. Bryn about it the other day, lingering after a session, asking, “Could I talk to you about something? Alone?” Dr. Bryn had asked a worried-looking Jordan to wait in the lobby and closed the door.

“Why does he do that?” Nate asked. “We all
know
Mrs. Kendrick molested him. Why would he want to live with her?”

Dr. Bryn sighed and coiled one of her curls around her finger. “Sit down.” When Nate had, she said kindly. “He wants to live with her because she’s his mother.”

“Yeah, but—”

Dr. Bryn held up a hand. “The fact that Jordan loves his mother and wants to live with her has nothing to do with whether she’s innocent or guilty.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Nate.” Dr. Bryn smiled, eyebrows raised. “You asked me a question. Do you want to hear my answer?”

Nate shut his mouth and leaned back in his chair. “Sorry.”

“Children often love the parents who abuse them. A child usually fears losing that parent if he reports the abuse more than he fears the abuse itself. Kids are willing to tolerate ongoing abuse from parents if it means they’ll get
any
sign of love or kindness.”

Nate nodded, but her answer still didn’t cut it for him.

“For Jordan,” Dr. Bryn said, “his continued support of his mother and his constant verbalized wishes to live with her are intentional announcements to us, to everyone, that his mother didn’t hurt him. If they get to be together again, it ‘proves’ her innocence in his eyes. It’s part of his denial, Nate. Jordan is mightily skilled in denial. Eventually he needs to confront how his mother used him and betrayed him, but that’s
really
hard work. Try to imagine it. Most victims of sexual abuse work on that for their entire lives. It would be unrealistic for us to expect an eleven-year-old to sail through his emotional recovery, right?”

Now Nate felt stupid. When she put it that way, it seemed miraculous that Jordan talked to the Ladens at all.

“For now,” Dr. Bryn said, “Jordan finds it lot easier to avoid the hard work and just pretend. He’s telling us what he thinks he
should
tell us.”

She looked at Nate to see if he followed. “Do you see—just because he
says
it doesn’t mean he
believes
it. He’s trying to convince himself every bit as much as he’s trying to convince everybody else. The truth is something he’s avoided for a long time. It’s how he survived. And it’s helping him survive still.”

Now Nate stirred the jambalaya with renewed force. Dr. Bryn had been cool to talk to him. Nate had told Mom about the conversation. It helped a little, but it still felt like a kick in the shin every time Jordan chattered away about “getting” to live with his mom after the trial.

No one spoke after Jordan’s party suggestion. Nate suddenly felt he had eaten too much, even though he’d only had one chicken piece, and the room was hot and uncomfortable. He saw Mom look to Kramble. What were people supposed to say?

“You really want to live with your mom again?” Danny asked. Nate looked at his brother, who seemed sincere and bewildered.

Jordan’s eyes were fierce as he turned to face Danny. “Yeah, I want to go home. I mean, you guys have been nice and everything, but I miss my mom.”

Nate’s knuckles were white on the ladle he held.

“But your mom—” Danny started.

“She didn’t do anything,” Jordan said, staring at Danny.

“But—”

“She didn’t do
anything.
” Jordan overenunciated each word, and his blue eyes sparkled with a high-fever shine.

Nate didn’t like the belligerent look on Danny’s face—the look he got those rare times he was sure he was right about something.

“But Jordan’s mom did too—”

“
Danny,
” Mom said in a warning voice. He turned to her, and she shook her head.