The Rebuilding Year (9 page)

“Right.”

John opened the door of the truck and gave Ryan a boost up and in. Ryan’s head spun dizzily. John’s hand was warm and secure on his elbow. John tucked Ryan’s feet safely inside the doorframe, slammed the door, and walked around. Ryan waited for his friend’s face to reappear. When John sat down beside him, Ryan sighed. “I’m so fucked up. I don’t know what the hell I want.”

“Don’t worry about it.” John’s voice was deep velvet in the darkness of the cab. “You’ll be asleep before you figure it out. And then in the morning, all you’ll want will be some aspirin.”

Ryan tipped his head back and shut his eyes. “Y’know, John, you’re a pretty smart guy.”

“Right.” John’s voice rumbled into the distance. “I’m damned brilliant.”
 

Chapter Six

Coming into LA in November was like turning back the clock, John thought. It was warm and sunny and green. Where it wasn’t dry and brown. Last night in the hotel he hadn’t slept much, wondering what kind of reception he would get. Time to find out.

The Carlisles lived in a very nice house. In this neighborhood, having a swimming pool was apparently required, and a half-circle driveway was standard. John parked on the drive and climbed the white steps to the front door. He resisted the impulse to check his hair again before ringing the bell. The first notes of the Pachelbel canon echoed behind the closed door. Typical.

Then the door was pulled open and he was looking at Torey. She hesitated for just a second, long enough to make his heart sink. Then she exclaimed, “Daddy!” and her arms locked around his waist.

“Hey there, squirt,” he said, hugging her back. “Missed you. Are Mom and Mark in?”

“Mark’s up in his room,” she said. “I think Mom’s out back with the pool guy.”

Okay, do not picture that, rein in the overactive imagination.
“Do you think I can come in?”

“Sure!” She pulled the door wide. “Why are you here? How long can you stay?”

“A few days, and I’m here to see you. How about we go find Mom, and clear it with her, and then you can pack a bag for the weekend and we’ll have some fun?” Okay, telling Torey before asking Cynthia for permission was dirty pool, but he was tired of Cynthia’s games and he was going to see his kids.

“Mark too?” Torey asked.

“Of course Marcus too.” He chucked her under the chin. “Don’t make that face. He’s your brother.”

“Exactly.” She grinned. “Mom’s in the back. You can go through there. I’m gonna go tell Mark.” She sprinted for the stairs yelling, “Hey! Butt-face!” John sighed. God, he’d missed them.

He followed the directed route, and ended up at open patio doors. Outside, Cynthia stood on the tiled deck beside the pool, next to a slim, tanned boy in a white T-shirt and black pants. Quite innocently, of course. She was saying something about leaves in the filter. John leaned in the doorway and waited for Cynthia to notice him.

She looked younger than the last time he’d seen her over a year ago. More tanned, more fit, a little heavier, her blonde hair cut in a shining cap. She moved with confidence, gesturing about something. California obviously suited her
. Or maybe it was marriage to someone other than him that suited her.
She eventually finished with the pool boy, dismissed him, turned back to the house, and froze.

“John.”

“Hello, Cynthia.”

“What are you doing here? Who let you in?” She looked around as if expecting an armed assault team.

John bit his lip. “I rang the bell. Torey let me in. She’s grown another inch.”

Cynthia sighed. “What do you want, John?”

“I want to see the kids. My kids.”

“This isn’t a good time. They have plans for later.”

“Break them.” John let a hint of his anger show through. “Cyn, I scraped together the funds for those two plane tickets, which you’ve been sitting on and changed twice now. If you won’t let the kids come to me, I figured I’d come to them.”

A voice came from behind John. “Won’t let us?” Mark’s voice squeaked, his new baritone cracking into a light treble. “Mom?”

John turned quickly.
Shit.
He’d sworn never to badmouth Cynthia to the kids. “Hey, Son,” he said. “Just a problem with timing, I’m sure. But I have some flexibility right now. So I figured I’d take a long weekend and come out here.” He turned back to Cynthia, baring his teeth in what should have been a grin. “I’ve got hotel reservations for a couple of nights. I’ll take the kids; they can show me their new city. I’ll have them back to you Monday night.”

“Um.” She looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know if they’ll want to miss the movie premiere. And the horseback riding on Sunday.”

“There will be other chances,” Torey said stoutly from behind Mark. “I want to spend the time with Dad.”

That’s my girl.

“Marcus?” Cindy pressed. “You were going to play some laser tag with the baseball team, I heard.”

Mark shrugged one shoulder awkwardly. “It’s no big. He flew all this way. It’s almost Thanksgiving. I guess I don’t mind hanging with Dad this weekend.” John would have been more depressed by the lackluster tone of that, if he hadn’t spotted the stuffed backpack sitting by the boy’s feet.
He was already packed.
John held back a more honest grin.

“Then it’s settled,” he said. “Ten minutes to pack and we head out. The limo awaits.”

“A real limo?” Torey asked, looking toward the front door.

They really have changed social groups.
“No, baby, sorry. Just a kind of boring rental car. But it comes with a driver who’s willing to go anywhere you tell him. So it’s sort of like a limo.”

Her, “Daaad!” was long-suffering.

He smiled. “That’s down to nine minutes for packing now, squirt.”

“Nine minutes!” Her shriek was pained. “Dad, I can’t pack my stuff that fast.”

“Try.” She scurried up the stairs and he heard her footsteps overhead.

Mark glanced at him from under his bangs and gave the first hint of a smile. “Want to bet she can’t do it in under a half hour?”

John stuck out a hand, and clasped his son’s long fingers in his own. “You’re on.” God, he was going to enjoy this weekend.

When the airport shuttle dropped him off in front of his house, there was just the faintest hint of pink in the morning sky. John paused, bag at his feet, to stretch and look around. An overnight flight was not kind to someone his height, especially when it was full. He decided that when he went to work, his first job would be to hike around campus. He could check some of the mulching he had the crew doing yesterday while he was gone. A hard walk would get out some of the kinks.

No one walked in LA, apparently. The kids had looked at him like he was crazy when he’d suggested it. Thank God for GPS in rental cars.

He’d let them choose what they wanted to do. It hadn’t been perfect. After all, a girl of twelve and a boy of almost fifteen can hardly agree on what day of the week it is, let alone what to do with a free afternoon. But they’d managed. When Torey had begged for shopping, he’d managed to fit it in by dropping Mark off at his baseball team’s end-of-season laser-tag party. That way, Mark didn’t miss the time with his friends, and John got to sit around in a mall watching Torey try on clothes.

Torey. God, she was growing up before his eyes. Wearing a bra, for Christ’s sake. Which apparently it was now okay to let show under your clothes, because when he down-checked a shirt for showing her straps, she’d rolled her eyes. He’d given up on the fashion commentary early. A mother, watching her daughter go in and out of the same changing rooms had offered some advice—
if it’s really too tight or too low-cut, you either tell her it makes her look a little fat or the color doesn’t do good things for her. But use your veto wisely.

The third time he’d come out with, “The color doesn’t do good things for you,” Torey had about died laughing. But they’d found a few pieces they both liked, without him having to put his foot down officially. And later, after the movie, he’d given Mark a bonus, letting him drive the rental car slowly around the dark vastness of the mall parking lot. Totally illegal, but there was nothing the kid could run into, and he
was
almost fifteen.

It had been Ryan’s suggestion, when he had begged for tips about where to take the kids in LA. Along with a list of attractions, he’d suggested driving for Mark. Apparently Ryan’s older brother had let him take the wheel when he was twelve and got his first growth spurt. Ryan claimed the resulting hero worship had taken years to wear off. It had worked on Mark too. The kid had sat up out of his slouch for the first time, and paid rapt attention.

They’d done some of the tourist stuff, him letting the kids show him their city. They got off on correcting his errors, so he’d pulled out a few extras for them. And truly, he hadn’t known stuff like the origins of the HOLLYWOOD sign. By the end of the weekend, his credit cards were about ready to burst into flames. But the early distance between them had vanished. He got goodbye hugs from both kids when he dropped them back home. And Mark had said he liked his early birthday gift.

They were LA kids now. Clothes, vocabulary, activities. But they were still
his
kids. And they both wanted to come back to York at Christmas. Cynthia had promised, and John would hold her to it this time. As fun as the weekend had been, he wanted to see them back here, running up those steps, leaving that yellow door open so he could yell at them.

He felt a warm glow as he picked up his bag and headed down the walk. He liked this house, he realized. Really liked it. He’d felt pressured by Cynthia when she made him buy a bigger place. He’d gone out and gotten the biggest one he could afford. But somehow it had grown on him over the past year.

It welcomed him home. There was a light on by the door and the shine of a lamp deep inside. Probably the kitchen. He glanced at his watch. Yep, six thirty a.m. Ryan would be up, yawning, pouring that first cup of coffee.

In the past months they had quickly fallen into a routine. Ryan was up first, and moving around in the kitchen when John straggled in closer to seven. The coffee would be brewed in the old thermos. John would pour himself a cup, and give Ryan a hard time about doing it wrong. Just because. In fact it was hard to do drip coffee wrong. Ryan would be at the table, eating a bagel and a banana. If he had a quiz, there might be a book propped up against the tissue box in front of him. If the subject was hard, there would be a little crease between the guy’s dark eyebrows as he concentrated. But he’d look up and smile when John came in.

He’d been surprised to find himself missing Ryan’s company in LA. Every now and then, he’d wanted someone adult. Someone who would get his worst puns, or roll his eyes in sympathy when his kids gave him pure teenager disdain. And Ryan knew LA. He would have been a help when they got confused in the downtown streets. Maybe sometime Ryan would want to visit his brother out in California, and they could combine trips.

John dumped his bag by the stairs and headed for the kitchen, drawn by the scent of coffee. And there was Ryan, leaning against the counter waiting for the toaster. He was wearing loose PJ pants and an old T-shirt. His black hair was rumpled and damp from his shower. He looked perfectly at home. And when he saw John, his smile was sweet and warm.

“Hey, look what the cat dragged in.”

John took one step forward and stopped. What was he going to do? Shake hands? Hug the guy? He’d been gone for three days, for Christ’s sake. He converted the motion to a pass at the coffee thermos. Which was, after all, why he’d gone in there. Yeah, that was good. He rolled the dark liquid on his tongue.

“Three days without the good stuff. I was going into withdrawal.”

“Did you eat anything? I could toast you a bagel.”

John shook his head. “I ate some kind of vending-machine crap at the airport. I don’t think my stomach is ready for real food.”

Ryan wrinkled his nose in sympathy. “Hate those red-eye flights. So, tell me about your weekend. Was it worth the trip?”

“Hell yeah.” He peered at the younger man. “Do you really want to hear about it?”

“Of course I do.” Ryan juggled his hot bagel onto a plate and dug in the refrigerator for the butter. “I feel like I know your kids already. And after all, if they come to visit, I’ll have to live with them.”

“Yeah. Cynthia promised they’d come out here in December. She said it in front of them, so I hope this time she’ll follow through. Which means you’ll have to share a bathroom with two teenagers, unless you decide to use mine.”

“No sweat.” Ryan licked a smear of butter off his thumb and set down the knife. “I grew up sharing a bathroom with three brothers, I can handle just two.”

John blinked. “Three brothers? I thought you had two brothers.” At the look on Ryan’s face, he quickly added, “None of my business. I just…”

Ryan was shaking his head slowly. “I had three. Andrew, who’s in San Diego with his family. Brent, who is now in Boston. Then me. And David was the baby, a year younger than me. He died ten years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t talk about him much.”

“You don’t have to…”

Ryan looked up at him. “No, you know. It’s kind of fucked up that I don’t talk about him. Like, he’s dead, so it’s like he never existed. I tell people I have two brothers. Like he’s not important.”