Steve waits on Denise’s stoop. Denise told him Jesse was staying at a friend’s, news that made him giddy. Last night, he was so self-conscious for a million reasons, not the least of which was that there was an eleven-year-old in the room next door.
She pulls up a little after ten, and he loves that, before she gets out of her car, she lets down her hair, tosses it, and checks her teeth in the mirror. He tells himself not to be overanxious and be a gentleman, but as soon as she lifts up on her toes to kiss him, those ideas fall away, and he practically carries her into the house and rips the clothes from her skin.
* * *
“Excited to see me,” she giggles when he rolls away breathless.
He would apologize, except he doesn’t like to lie.
He takes her hand and brings her fingers to his lips, and she curls into him. “I’m glad you called,” she says and purrs against him. “Why did you?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
She pushes up on her elbow, and the sheet falls to her waist, revealing her perfect breasts.
“No,” she says. “I mean I get that the sex is good.” She beams proudly. “But I thought you were leaving. What changed your mind?”
He hesitates before saying, “I discovered something that put me behind a day.”
It’s very slight, but a shadow passes across her eyes. “Yeah? What?” she says, almost innocently, causing the air to pulse.
“Probably nothing.” He sweeps a tendril from her face.
“You know, for an FBI agent, you’re a terrible liar.” She flops back to the mattress and draws circles on his chest with her nails, a tingling sensation that’s intoxicating.
“You were right about Otis having a black heart,” he says, feeling like he owes her something.
She nods her head against his shoulder, then, after a second, says, “So drop it. He’s dead. If he died because it was his time or because somebody decided it was his time, who cares? What difference does it make?”
He sighs and takes hold of her hand to still it, the tingling no longer pleasurable. “I can’t.”
She sits up again, this time pulling the sheets with her so she’s covered. “Why? You just said Otis was evil.” Softening her tone, she says, “Explain. Help me understand.”
He looks away as a lump forms in his throat. He never talks about Danny. He can’t.
Gently she touches his cheek and turns his face. “Please.”
He closes his eyes from her green ones, unable to take the earnestness, but then there, in his mind’s eye, is Danny, eternally young, looking at him with Charlotte’s wise eyes and offering a small nod of encouragement.
“I used to be married,” he starts. “And I used to have a son. Her name was Charlotte, and his was Daniel, Danny.” It takes a second for him to start again. “Charlotte and I had been together since high school, and we got married straight after graduation. We wanted to get married young because we thought we were going to have a whole brood of kids.” He smiles at the memory. “She wanted ten. I wanted to go for the full dozen.”
Denise laughs.
“But it wasn’t in the cards. Danny was a difficult birth, and it made it so Charlotte couldn’t have any more.”
Her hand is resting on his heart, and he feels its comforting warmth.
“It turned out okay. Quality not quantity, we used to say.” He smiles again. Charlotte would also say, “Small but mighty.”
“It wasn’t until Danny graduated high school that things began to unravel. Danny chose to go to UCLA. He was thinking of going into medicine and becoming a pediatrician. He wasn’t entirely sure, which was okay. We figured he had time to figure it out.”
He stops, and it’s a full minute before he finds his composure to start again.
“Danny was gay.” He opens his eyes to see Denise’s reaction, relieved when there is none. “Every weekend, dozens of gay kids would gather at this one particular bar. Those who were over twenty-one or who had fake IDs went in, and those who didn’t hung out on the sidewalk. Danny was a good-looking kid.” He sits up. “Do you want to see a picture?”
“Of course,” Denise says, sitting up as well.
Steve pulls his pants from the floor, retrieves his wallet, and shows her the photo.
“He looks like you.”
Steve smiles. He thinks Danny looks like Charlotte, but he used to love when people would say they looked alike. Denise continues to hold the picture as he leans back against the headboard and as she leans against him.
He caresses her shoulder, lost in the memory of his life before.
“And something happened?” she says.
He takes a slow breath, this part of the story always impossible. “He met someone.”
“Okay.”
“It turned out he was sixteen.”
“Okay?” she repeats.
“Danny was nineteen.”
She pushes off him, her brow furrowed and her face tilted, a cross of confusion and incredulity, like she sort of understands but that what she’s thinking can’t be right.
He gives the smallest nod as he says, “The boy’s parents found out, and Danny was charged with statutory rape and child molestation.”
Her eyes widen. “Are you kidding? They arrested him for having sex?”
“With a minor.”
“But Danny was only nineteen?”
Steve closes his eyes again, his throat so tight with emotion he’s not sure he can go on. Bad as the beginning of the story is, it turns unbearable.
“He went to jail?” she asks.
“Six months in prison,” he manages.
“Prison for a nineteen-year-old for having consensual sex with a kid he met outside a bar?”
Steve doesn’t go into the details of why the punishment was so harsh—the bad draw of judge, the overzealous dad of the victim, the unfortunate fact that Danny was a month more than three years older than the other boy which made it a far worse crime in the eyes of the law.
“The hard time nearly killed him,” he says. “And when he got out, he wasn’t the same. We tried to help. Got him therapy, tried not to push, gave him space.”
Denise takes his hand, entwining her fingers in his. “Did he go back to school?”
“Had no interest. Instead, he got a job at a record shop and moved into a small studio apartment across town. We never saw him, and he rarely returned our calls.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “That must have been hard.”
He shakes his head. The hard part is what comes next. Damaged as Danny was, Steve knew eventually he’d get better. He just needed time.
“Two weeks before his parole ended, a month before his twenty-second birthday, he was murdered.”
Denise gasps.
“He answered his door and was shot in the chest.”
“Someone shot him?”
“A mother of three,” Steve says. “A woman who had never shot a gun in her life. Who didn’t even own one until that day.”
“I don’t understand. Why?”
“Because two days before, her youngest daughter, who was ten, had been pulled from the hallway of their building into the stairwell and raped. The mom, crazed with anguish and rage, discovered a child molester vaguely fitting the description given by her traumatized kid lived in the adjacent building and concluded Danny was the rapist.”
“No,” Denise says. “Oh. That’s awful.”
“The actual rapist was a maintenance worker from Queens.” He blows out a breath. “The woman got off on a plea of temporary insanity and was required to go to counseling. The whole thing was treated like a joke. The DA, knowing Danny was an accused sex offender, couldn’t settle the case fast enough. It was as if killing him wasn’t a crime and his life didn’t matter at all, like he was less than human simply because he had a record.”
“So that’s why you do what you do?” Denise says.
He nods, swings his feet from the bed, and starts to redress.
She sets her hand on his back. “Pain like that changes you.”
He pulls on his pants, suddenly very tired. “Either changes you or destroys you, but it sure as hell doesn’t leave you the same. And I know you don’t agree, but Otis is part of the whole of what I need to defend. Innocent until proven guilty needs to apply to everyone, including Danny and Otis and every other criminal who’s done their time.”
He stands and starts for the door, but her voice stops him. “He had your smile.”
He turns back to see her holding Danny’s photo toward him.
“I’m glad you told me, and I understand how badly you still hurt.”
Normally, he hates when people say things like that. Most people have no idea what it’s like to have your soul ripped from your body. But Steve knows Denise lost the love of her life when she was seventeen, a boy she’d been in love with since she was a girl, so the words have weight.
“What happened to Danny is awful,” she goes on. “And you’re right to be angry and to want to stop it from happening again.” As he takes the photo, her hands curl around his. “And people like your son deserve to be able to move on with their lives and live without fear.”
Her eyes hold nothing but compassion, and he finds himself falling into them.
“But people like Otis don’t,” she says.
He flinches and tries to pull his hand away, but she holds it tight, then steps closer so his hand is against her beating heart.
“And until our justice system can differentiate between the two, you won’t convince me that condemning the guardian angels who serve the justice our system can’t is worthwhile.”
He nods as the glimmer of hope he held for this thing between them becoming something more is extinguished.
“But I think you are,” she says.
His brow crinkles. “You think I’m what?”
“Worthwhile. And I’d like you to stay.”