By any definition of the word, John could claim it to be a great week, a week that was about to culminate in asking Kate Toscano if she’d do him the honor of becoming his wife. There were those, of course, who’d probably tell him he was rushing things. The truth, though, was exactly the opposite, a reality brought home to him as he withdrew the small black box that had been residing in the drawer of his bedside table for the past fourteen years.
His memory flashed briefly on all the agony he’d put himself through in trying to find just the right ring. There’d been only one jewelry store in Avalon Bay that year and goodness knew that if he had ever paused more than a nanosecond at its window displays, word would have spread like wildfire from one end of the town to the other that he was going to propose. His worst dread was that Kate would hear about his intentions before he got the chance to declare them.
It seemed funny now to remember how he’d hatched the plan to buy her ring out of town where he wouldn’t encounter anyone he knew who might blab. At his first choice, Spring Lake, he ran into two of his mother’s best friends. At the Mall, he ran into Lenny. The belief that no one would possibly recognize him in the sprawling mecca of Atlantic City backfired when he ran into none other than Kate herself out shopping for bikinis with Maria.
And so in desperation, he had resorted to the one venue left that would assure relative anonymity, an online jewelry site that could express his purchase to him for an extra charge of $19.95. He had even planned his whole schedule around getting to the mailbox first, a feat he might have accomplished if a nauseous Jeremy hadn’t come home early from school after lunch that day and beat him to it. At least, John reflected, his younger sib had put it on his bedroom dresser instead of leaving it out in plain sight.
Whether or not Jeremy told anyone about it became a moot point within twenty-four hours. The same mailman who had delivered John’s order had also delivered Kate’s acceptance letter to college. The part of John that wanted to give her the ring anyway was canceled out by the part that knew it was wrong to force her to make that kind of a choice.
And so there it had sat in the drawer until now.
He opened the box, uncertain of what additional memories it might unleash. Instead, he saw a simple white-gold band with three small diamonds; a ring that almost seemed too ordinary and commonplace for the accomplished and beautiful woman she’d become. He glanced at the bedside lamp, wondering whether there was enough time to rush out and replace it with something more befitting and worthy of her. And this time, unlike before, he didn’t care how many people saw him or who knew how much he loved her.
The phone rang.
It was Lenny asking him if he wanted to play some stick and catch a flick.
“Already got plans,” John told him. “I’m going to Kate’s.”
Lenny groaned that if he kept it up he was going to become domesticated and wouldn’t be fun to hang out with anymore.
By the time Lenny finally signed off, it was too late for John to go look in any jewelry store windows. With dismay, he realized it was also too early to show up for dinner. If there was one thing he’d learned about being a guest, people always freaked out if they weren’t quite ready for you.
Luke’s mouth spread into a thin-lipped smile as he tried to look past her into the house. “Aren’t you going to invite me in? Sis?”
Time had improved neither his unkempt looks and grunge threads nor the ingrained indifference of his manners. His lanky frame easily topped six feet by several inches and, from just the visible preview of his sinewy arms and neck, was no stranger to tattoo parlors. Kate inwardly shuddered that he’d ever had a physical relationship with Cassy, much less given her a child. If I slam this door in his pock-marked face, he’ll only put his fist through it.
Determined not to show that his attitude or his scrutiny could intimidate her, she asked him what he was doing there.
“Three guesses,” he responded with a sneer, “and the first two don’t count. You got something of mine and I’m here to collect.”
She firmly informed him that he’d come at a bad time.
Luke snorted in disdain. “Yeah, well I’ve been havin’ a bad year!” he replied, nastily counting off the particulars on his fingers. “My ol’ lady buys it, my drummer gets busted for meth, and my kid gets grabbed by his do-gooder aunt!”
Her adrenaline level began to furiously rise, fueled by the sight of an empty car parked on the street. The one he’d come in and, quite possibly, the one he was planning to take Jimmy in. If it came to that, she’d have to do whatever she could to stop him. “There’s a time and a place for us to talk about that.”
“There’s no ‘us’ in any of this!” he hotly snapped, taking a menacing step closer. “He’s me ‘n’ Cassy’s kid and I just dropped two gigs in Frisco to fly the hell back here! Now, are you gonna give ‘im to me or not?”
“You’re in no position to make those demands, Luke.” She could hear that the water had stopped running upstairs and talked louder so that her mom might hear their heated conversation. “And if you don’t stop yelling, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“You stole my kid!” he accused her with hatred blazing in his bloodshot eyes. “They can lock you up for that!”
“What happens next is for the courts to decide.”
He repeated the accusation she’d gone behind his back in Vegas and that there were laws against it.
“There are also laws against deserting your child.” She informed him that they’d been trying to locate him since Cassy’s death but hadn’t had any success owing to his transient lifestyle. “Where did you expect your son to go?” she challenged him. “He doesn’t even know you!”
He ignored her question, replying instead that she’d been asking the wrong people. “When you got the right friends,” he boasted, “stuff has a way of gettin’ done.” An oily tone crept into his voice. “And I do mean gettin’ done permanent.”
Kate’s eyes conveyed the rage within that he dared to think he could threaten her. Responding in kind, though, was probably exactly what he wanted and it took every ounce of control for her to tell him they had nothing further to talk about.
“You can’t keep me from takin’ my own kid,” he cut her off. “I’ll be back for him.”
And with that, he turned, swaggered across the grass, and drove off.
A sheer panic like she’d never known before welled in Kate’s throat and whatever residual discipline she’d employed to keep from shaking in Luke’s creepy presence was now completely drained as she scrambled to deadbolt the front door.
“Is he gone?” Lydia called down.
“For now, at least.” She hurried upstairs and clung to her mother outside the bathroom door. Jimmy, oblivious to the drama that had been just transpired, was happily splashing in the tub with the new bath toys his grandmother had bought him.
“If he’d tried to come up here,” Lydia said, “I would’ve locked us in the bathroom and screamed my head off out the window for help.”
Kate smiled despite her frazzled nerves. “I really need to get you a cell phone, Mom.”
“Well, it was either that or clobbering him good with a lamp.” No jury would convict her, she maintained, since it clearly would have been self-defense. “We should call the police,” she said in her next breath. “Maybe they can catch him.”
“And do what, exactly?” Kate said, infuriated with the compromising position he’d just put them in. “It’s going to be my word against his and you know darned well the first thing he’s going to tell them is that we kidnapped his child.” She glanced at Jimmy and feared for the worst. “We can’t let them take him away.”
Lydia was appalled that such a thought would even enter the equation. “Just one look at that filthy man and they’re going to know he’s not even suitable to raise a houseplant!”
“Unless it’s weed.”
Lydia pounced on her daughter’s response to suggest that the police could arrest him for drugs. “Do you think he was on something? Did he look crazy? You know they don’t stand for that kind of gang stuff in Avalon Bay.”
“He’s not in a gang, Mom, and even if he did get busted for possession, it’s not going to make him go away.” Her mind was racing the entire time her mother was talking.
“I don’t see how he even got here in the first place. Did he say he flew?”
“Could’ve just been an expression. Frankly, I don’t know how he could have sprung for a ticket.” With fares as pricey as they were, she opined, it’d be more likely he’d use that kind of money to support his sleazy lifestyle.
“You know if you hadn’t started looking for him,” Lydia cynically pointed out, “he’d never have known.”
“Unfortunately,” Kate said, “that might have put us in even more trouble. To get a guardianship, you have to show you’ve done everything you can to find the missing parent.”
Unspoken between them was the irony that they should have been rooting for failure instead of success.
Jimmy was now gleefully squealing and tossing his wet toys out of the tub. As Lydia crossed over to calm him down, she reiterated that she still thought that calling the police was a good idea in case Luke came back later that night. “Of course, I’d like to see his face if John is the one to answer the door.”
With a start, Kate realized that in the aftermath of her brother-in-law’s ugly visit, she had totally forgotten John was even coming.
“Your mom’s right about notifying the police,” he said after they filled him in on what had transpired. “If they’ve got a heads-up that this guy could make trouble while he’s here, you need to tell them as much as you can remember about what he said to you.”
Kate was adamant about the risk that someone from the county’s Child Protective Services would want to remove Jimmy to foster care in the interim of a court fight and that he’d be scared and confused.
“Which is exactly what the county folks don’t want to have happen,” John assured her. “The stability you and your mom are giving him right now is going to count big-time. And don’t forget Gabrielle and Susan. You’ve got them in your corner who’ll vouch that taking him away from you could have catastrophic effects.”
The mention of Jimmy’s school set the alarm bells ringing even louder in Kate’s head. “What if he tries to go see him while I’m at work?” An expletive escaped her lips in the remembrance that tomorrow was Monday, her first day at the newspaper. Cliff would be expecting her bright and early. “I’ll just have to call and tell him something’s come up,” she said.
“And what about the next day?” John asked. “And the day after that?” He squeezed her hands tightly in his own. “You can’t let this guy scare either one of you into changing your whole routine.”
“But what if,” Lydia started to say.
“’What if if is all he’s got,” he interrupted her. “You can drive yourselves crazy trying to guess what his next move’s going to be but until he actually does something, you can’t let it take all your energy.”
He asked Kate to repeat what Luke had told her about his having friends. “I didn’t think he was even from around here.”
“He’s not,” she said. Nor, she added, could she imagine anyone in their right mind loaning him money for airfare or motel rooms.
“Or a lawyer,” Lydia piped up.
“Even if they did,” John pointed out, “he’s got to be on a tight clock. I think his end game’s to scare you into giving him money to make him go out of your lives so he can scurry back to that rock he crawled out from.”
Kate reminded him of Luke’s demands that she give him his son.
“Only because he knew you wouldn’t,” John said. “That’s why I also don’t think he’s going to do anything illegal to try to take him.” It was further consistent, he noted, that Luke hadn’t divulged where he was staying or given her a number to call. “All part of the intimidation to keep the ball in his court and make you wonder when he’s going to pop up next.”
“Well, it’s not like we couldn’t call the motels around here and ask if he’s registered,” Lydia suggested. “Wouldn’t it help to know where the little creep is staying?”
“As creepy as he is, he’s also got the right not to be followed around. But we’ll let the police make that call. Whoever he says his friends are, have probably already told him that.”
Lydia wanted to know if they could at least assign someone to keep an eye on the house.
“Only in the movies, I’m afraid. If you’re worried, though, there’s no problem with Jimmy staying at our place for a couple of days.” He winked at Kate. “And I’m sure Shelby wouldn’t mind sleeping on the bed and playing guard dog. Besides, he probably already knows about me and that I was a cop. He’ll think twice about coming to my house.”
Kate reminded him of his own words about not changing their whole routine.
“Then I’ll change mine,” he gallantly offered, “and lay a sleeping bag on this side of the front door.” He smiled.
The oven timer went off, causing both women to jump.
“I’ll go see to dinner,” Lydia excused herself, though, in truth, none of them except Jimmy felt much like eating.
John pulled Kate into the loving protection of his strong arms. “Whatever it takes, honey, nobody gets to you without having to go through me,” he promised.
A hot tear rolled down her cheek. “I don’t want to lose him.”
“And I don’t want to lose either one of you.”
It wasn’t until he returned home after dinner and felt the ring still in his pocket that he realized the evening had ended quite a bit differently than he originally planned.