I stopped at my house Tuesday after work to drop off my equipment before I went to soccer practice at four—an effort to distract myself from the fact that I couldn’t have my usual session with Dr. Crisp.
He was still in jail, and I had no idea what was going on. I even tried to wheedle something out of the poor addled girl at the Healing Choice front desk, but she wasn’t talking.
I missed Sullivan’s grins and his sandbox and his ability to make me talk about things I thought were completely ridiculous and turned out to be parts of myself I never knew. And yet even as I longed to be sitting in the Alice in Wonderland chair, I knew that without what he’d already taught me, I’d be tearing the light fixtures from the ceiling.
I turned to the coffeepot instead and had some espresso brewing when the doorbell rang. J.P., Poco, and Victoria were all standing on my front porch. With Alex. His face was drawn into a knot of ten-year-old misery.
Heart halfway up my throat, I wrenched the door open.
“Alex needs to talk to you, Mom,” Poco said.
Victoria put her hand on his back and all but moved him bodily into the room. J.P. followed like backup in case he decided to bolt. It didn’t take the CIA to see there was coercion going on.
Victoria deposited Alex on the couch and sniffed the air.
“Do I smell coffee?” Poco said.
“I don’t even drink the nasty stuff and it smells delicious to me.” J.P. leaned over Alex. “We’re going into the kitchen so you can talk to your mom. Do we still have a deal?”
He nodded, miserable gaze fixed on his sneakers.
I fired questions at J.P. with my eyes, but she just motioned me toward the sofa and disappeared into the kitchen with Poco and Victoria. For once, I was getting nothing out of her.
I pulled the ottoman up and sat down, my knees almost touching Alex’s. “You have something you want to tell me?”
“Not want to. Have to.”
“You can tell me anything, and I promise I won’t yell at you.”
He pulled in his chin. “You never yell at me.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “I’m not going to start now. What is it, Alex?”
His eyes went to the wall above my head. “Well, y’know that day Miguel got hurt and stuff?”
My heart stopped. “Yeah.”
“I was supposed to be doing chores, you know, like dumping garbage in the compost pile, only I really wasn’t.”
“Where were you?”
“I was in my room messing with this cell phone I found.”
I felt my eyebrows rise. “You found a cell phone?”
“Yeah. It was on the floor in the hall and I thought it was a toy, only when I got in my room, I saw it was for real, except it didn’t belong to anybody.”
“It had to belong to somebody.”
He rolled his eyes. “No, Mom. It didn’t have any numbers in the contacts or anything.”
“So . . . you were playing with this cell phone and . . .”
“I heard Jake’s door, like, bang open, and then they were in the hall right outside my room.”
“They?”
“Ian and Jake. Ian was yelling at Jake.”
He looked at me as if to let the enormity of that sink in.
“Yelling?” I said. “I thought they were best friends.”
“Yeah, me too, and it freaked me out, so I just stayed in my room.”
I tried a smile. “With your ear to the door, I bet.”
“No—Ian was yelling really loud.”
“About what?”
“Soccer. About how if Jake hadn’t of told that bean-eater kid— that’s how he said it—if Jake hadn’t of told him to try out for the select team, then Ian would of made it.” He rolled his eyes. “Which is totally bogus, because everybody said Miguel was way better than him.”
“So he was blaming Jake for his not getting picked for the team.”
“Yeah. He said a bunch of other stuff too.” Alex scrunched his face. “If I say it like he did, I have to cuss.”
“Got it,” I said. “Go on.”
“Ian said he was tired of the Mexican kid getting what he was supposed to have. He said that kid already beat him once and he couldn’t do anything about that, but he could do something about this. Y’know, the soccer team.”
“Right.” Some of this was making sense, some of it wasn’t. “So then what happened?”
“Ian said—” Alex deepened his voice to teenager level. “‘You owe me, man. You’re gonna go with me, and we’re gonna make him drop out and let a real American play.’ Jake said, ‘What are we gonna do?’ and then they went in the study where we do homework on the computer and stuff. Next to Jake’s room.”
“Could you still hear them talking?”
“No. I heard the printer going, though. And when they came back out in the hall, Ian was yelling again.”
“About . . .”
“About the cell phone. He was all screaming about how he knew he brought it in and what the—blank—did Jake do with it.”
“You had it,” I said.
“I was just gonna hide it, because I hate Ian. Everybody thinks he’s all good and cool and all that, but if you don’t do everything his way, he’s way mean. Grown-ups don’t know that.”
“Like he was being with Jake.”
“Yeah, only I don’t think that ever happened before. It sounded like Jake was gonna cry.” Alex made a fist. “I woulda just punched him in the face.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “So, what did you do about the phone?”
“Ian said he was gonna have to call on our house phone, so when they went down to the kitchen, I opened my door to put it back out in the hall. I didn’t want Ian yelling at Jake anymore.”
“How did that work out?”
“It didn’t,” he said simply. “I was closing my door again, and Ian came down the hall and about busted it down. I shoulda punched him in the face right then, except—”
“Except what?”
“He’s a big dude.”
“I know. What did he do?”
All the spunk that had begun to rise seeped away. “He threw me on the bed. Told me if I didn’t keep my mouth shut he was gonna tell Dad I stole his phone. I tried to kick him, but Jake told me to stop, so I did.”
I closed my eyes and pulled my anger in. I’d deal with it in some sandbox later.
“So is that why you never told anybody this before?” I said. “Because you didn’t want Dad to know you took Ian’s phone?”
He shook his head. The misery returned to his face.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” I said.
“I watched out the window when they left.”
“In what?”
“Taxicab.”
“Seriously?”
“I guess that’s who Ian was calling. It kind of weirded me out. Kids don’t take taxicabs.”
Not unless they’re trying to cover their tracks.
“I waited for them to come back because I was gonna tell Jake that he shouldn’t hang around with Ian anymore, only that’s kind of hard because him and Ginger are around all the time—but I was gonna tell him that anyway, and then only Ian came home.”
“In a cab?”
“I don’t know. I just saw him walking up the driveway.”
“How long was he gone?”
Alex twisted his mouth in thought. “I watched two shows, so it was like an hour.”
Then there was no way Ian walked all the way back from downtown. Someone must have dropped him off out on the main road.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I wasn’t gonna do anything, but Ian came in my room and acted like we were best friends or something.” He gave me a blank look. “Like I really believed that. He must think I’m stupid or something.”
“What did he say?”
“He was being all nice and saying he was sorry he got mad at me before. He said we had to forget about that because Jake got in trouble. He said he was gonna get him out of it, but he couldn’t do it if I told anything about what I heard before they left.” The brown eyes filled with sudden tears. “He said if I told anybody, Jake was gonna go to jail and it would be my fault. He said I had to pretend I didn’t know anything about it, and he would fix everything for Jake. But he hasn’t fixed it, Mom!”
His face crumpled, and I reached out and pulled him against my chest. He cried as if he’d been holding back a flood—because he had, for four torturous weeks.
I rubbed his back until the sobs subsided and he pulled away to drag his sleeve across his eyes. I stuffed a Kleenex in his hand before he could go after his nose.
“It’s okay, Alex,” I said. “You did the right thing telling me.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“What? We’re not going to let Ian hurt you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“But now you’re gonna be mad at Dad because he’s the one who brought Ian to our house and you guys’ll never get married again.”
He honked noisily into the Kleenex while I fumbled for a reply. I had no idea what to do with that . . . but he’d already been through enough for one afternoon.
“I’m not mad at Dad for this,” I said. “I’m just glad you told me.”
He looked expectant. I groped for another subject. “Cade’s mom is tough, isn’t she?”
“I guess so.”
“What did she do to get you to tell me all this?”
Alex blinked. “She didn’t. It was Bryan’s mom.”
“Victoria? Mrs. West?”
“She said she felt like God was saying she should get me to tell. It kinda freaked me out, but I figured if that was true, I might get struck down dead or something if I didn’t.” He wadded the Kleenex and went for a layup into the magazine basket. “Do you think it’s true? Or was she just trying to freak me out?”
“I think it’s the real thing,” I said.
Then I grabbed his squirmy self and rocked it for as long as he would let me. GH
Will, Dan, and I met in a sandwich shop around the corner from the jail at five thirty, right after soccer practice. Will had ordered an assortment of tortas for all of us, but he was the only one who ate any. He chewed and listened while I related all Alex had told me, just as I had to Dan the minute I’d arrived at Burn Lake. He’d been eerily quiet since then, even for him.
“That tells us a lot,” Will said.
“Why do I hear a but in your voice?” I said.
“Because the only way to use it is to put Alex on the stand. Which means Nina Hernandez will have a chance to cross-examine him. She’ll have a field day with that.”
“But he’s telling the truth!”
“She’ll cast doubt by badgering him about why he waited so long to tell. ‘Aren’t you making it up now to try to keep your brother out of jail?’ That kind of thing.”
“He’s not! This has been killing him.”
“We know that. But she’ll be able to confuse him enough to get him to stumble over it somehow.”
Dan stirred. “It’s still Alex’s word against the evidence.”
“Right.” Will put down the end of his sandwich and dusted the creamy palms of his hands together. “This establishes that Ian had a motive, but it was still Jake they found behind the wheel.”
“So you’re saying you can’t use any of this,” I said stiffly.
“Not saying that at all. I can use it when Ian takes the stand.”
“You’re calling Ian?” Dan said.
“No. Hernandez is. Ian is her surprise witness.”
“What?”
Will shook his head at me. “I don’t know why—she doesn’t have to tell me that—but with the information you just gave me, which she does not have, I can probably corner him on cross.”
“That’s perfect!”
“It would be even more perfect if when I lay all of this out to Jake, he’ll tell me the rest of the story.”
“Why wouldn’t he now?” Dan said.
“One thing hasn’t changed: he thinks if he tells, somebody’s going to get hurt.” Will picked up the check and got to his feet. “I’m going to go see if I can convince him otherwise.”
We sat in silence, Dan and I. He dropped his face into his hands, elbows on the table, and it occurred to me for the first time what this meant for him. Mixed with the hope that his son didn’t commit a murder was the threat that his future stepson did, a kid he cared about. It didn’t stop me from what I was about to say, but it made me say it with more sensitivity than I thought I was capable of.
“You know I’ve been seeing a therapist,” I said.
He pulled his hands from his face and nodded absently.
“He’s helped me figure out I can’t control all of this in my usual control-freak fashion. But as a mother I can take responsibility for the part Jake thinks he is responsible for but isn’t.”
“Ryan, what are you talking about?” Dan’s voice was weary.
“Jake’s afraid of the threat. If we take that away, he has no reason to hold back anymore.”
“How are we supposed to do that?”
I folded my hands on the table, close to his. I could almost feel the tension pulsing through his fingers.
“Please don’t think I’m trying to come between you and Ginger,” I said. “This is not about me wanting to hurt her or split you two up or anything like that. And I know you like Ian. You treat him just like you do Jake and Alex.”
He was alert now, and watching me.
“But if what Alex says is true, and I believe it is, then Ian is the one threatening Jake. The bomb thing happened after Miguel died, and whatever Ian was going to do to ‘fix it’ wasn’t going to work anymore. He had to do something more to keep Jake quiet.”
I watched Dan swallow hard, but he nodded.
“If we can prove it was Ian who set the bomb,” he said, “or that he at least had something to do with it—Ian goes to jail, and the threat is over.”
“And Jake talks. I’m sorry, Dan, but this is our son—”
“How do we prove it?”
I sat back and let him get his face under control.
“I don’t know,” I said. “When I picked up my car from the police, they said the bomb was made from Ivory soap shavings and gasoline in a jar. That evidently creates a chemical reaction that makes an explosion. The only piece they found was the jar lid from some kind of powdered dye, like maybe a crafter would use. The rest of those ingredients, though, you can find in just about anybody’s bathroom and garage.” I blew out air. “Ian doesn’t even have a garage.”
“He’s staying at my place.”
I stopped with an oh on my lips.
“Ginger lost her apartment,” Dan said, “and she’s been living in one of those residence inns, but I couldn’t see Ian being cooped up like that. I said he could stay with me.”
“This could be a good thing. Was he staying with you when the bomb went off?”
“Yeah.” His voice split in half.
“What’s wrong?”
“He was there alone the whole weekend. Ginger and Alex and I were away.” His face worked. “That clears up something else that’s been bugging me.”
“Yeah?”
“You said the Mountains’ coach told everyone I canceled the game that day?”
“Right.”
“I didn’t. He called me. Or at least I thought it was him. The message on the phone was garbled.” His voice trailed off. “I’ll look around at my place,” he said finally. “But what do we do if I find something?”
Even before the words We’ll drag Ian’s sorry little butt straight to the cops completely took shape in my mind, I stopped myself. “Why don’t we do whatever’s going to help Jake first, and then we’ll deal with Ian?”
Dan looked at me as if I’d just taken off a disguise. Maybe I had.
“I’m going to go ahead and get started on that,” he said.
He scraped back the chair and stood with his hands on the back of it, opening and closing his fingers. The detritus of his art had gathered in the folds of his knuckles, the only sign of the artist who lived in a dream world. He was now a man very much in touch with the real, and it was taking him apart.
“You’re a good man, Dan,” I said.
His eyes misted, and with a final squeeze on the back of the chair, he left.