“Maybe we should slow down,” Jack says.
“Slow down? We’re like five blocks from home.”
“You’re pretty fit for an old man.”
“I’m thirty-five, Jack.”
“You’re closer to seventy than you are to the day you were born.”
“Thanks for that dose of perspective, asshole.”
“Ha!”
“But at least I can take my wife to see an R-rated movie without having to show identification every time.”
“Barely,” Jack says. “What is up with that anyway?”
“With what?”
“Our baby faces, you still getting carded for booze.”
“Chalk it up to good genes and large pores.”
“Huh?”
“That oily skin and bad complexion you hate right now is a gift.”
“A gift from whom? The Devil?”
“Oily skin now equals fewer wrinkles later. All the Fitzpatrick men looked fifteen to twenty years younger than they really were, at least in the face.”
Jack moved in with us late last summer, several months after everything went down at his sixteenth birthday party. It was Beth’s idea, but our transition from siblings to something else was surprisingly seamless.
My wife has been very supportive, and not just because we have a full-time free babysitter. And by “free” I mean I slip Jack money when Beth isn’t looking. We still haven’t quite figured out how to tell Sasha and the twins that “Uncle Jack” is actually “Half Brother Jack,” so we haven’t told them. Debbie and Jack are still struggling to define their new mom-turned-grandma/son-turned-grandson relationship. He only just started talking to Mom again a few weeks ago.
Gillman, for all his LDS quirks and fundamental flaws as a human being, has actually been my go-to mediator in this. He was the one who suggested that, with Jack now less than a year from being of legal majority age, we just keep a lid on everything. “Your choice, Hank,” he said to me. “Sue your mother for paternity rights and make the next year a living hell for everyone you know, or just be quiet for twelve measly months and Jack is yours anyway.” I think I might need to send Gillman a gift basket. Or maybe a can of red wheat for that weird-ass food storage he keeps in the basement because Joseph Smith told him to do it.
Jack and Laura have grown close—or at least as close as the distance between them will allow. Ian took their daughters back to Pennsylvania a couple weeks after the funeral while Laura spent some time in Empire Ridge settling up her mother’s affairs and getting to know her son. She went back to Pennsylvania a couple months ago. Ian has a new job with PNC Bank in Philadelphia. Last I heard, he and Laura were in counseling and doing well. Jack says they’ve moved into an eighteenth-century townhouse in the Old City district that they’re restoring, and that it has a spare bedroom for when he visits.
I’m not particularly happy at Gillman being a confidante in family matters or Laura managing to forge a connection with our son by being little more than his goddamn instant messenger buddy for a few months, but I’ve kind of lost the right to bitch about it.
“How’s the college search going?” I say to Jack.
“It’s going,” he answers in typical non-committal fashion.
“You narrow down the list yet?”
“The usual subjects,” Jack says. “IU, Purdue, Butler, Wabash, Notre Dame, a few others.”
“Others?” I ask. “What others are there?”
“We’ll see,” Jack says. “I feel like it’s all going to come down to Notre Dame.”
I smack him across his back shoulder. “Damn right it is, but Mom tells me I might need to chip in for tuition.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Since when has that been part of the master plan?”
“Oh, I don’t know, since you stuck your penis inside Laura’s vagina?”
“Bitter much?”
“You were the one who asked.”
“I doubt you’re going to need my help. When was the last time you got anything less than an A-minus on a report card?”
“The second grade.”
“And how much money is coming to you via the annuity settlement with the auto auction?”
“Twenty-six thousand dollars a year until I’m twenty-six years old.”
“After taxes?”
“Yes sir.”
“Hell, I’m the one who’s going to be hitting you up for a loan.”
We approach our house, stopping at the end of the driveway. Beth is backing out. She rolls down her window. “Good run, boys?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I’m dropping the kids off at school,” she says to me. “See you for lunch?”
“Not today, honey. I have to drive up to the Indy office.”
“I thought you were working from home this week.”
“I wish. The boss is flying in from New York this afternoon. He’s really on my ass about hitting my numbers this year.”
“What are your chances?”
“Slim to none. As they say in publishing these days, down is the new up.”
“Well, good luck, babe.”
“Thanks.”
Beth rolls up her window. Just as the window is about to seal shut I hear her shout, “Stop licking your sister!” She backs the minivan into the street, then drives away.
“Let’s go inside and get some coffee,” I say to Jack.
“I don’t like coffee.”
“Since when?”
“Since forever.”
“Can I blame Gillman’s caffeine-free Mormon ass for that?”
“If you want.”
“I do.”
“I could go for a hot chocolate, though.”
We walk inside the house. I start some water in the kettle for Jack’s hot chocolate, pour myself a cup of coffee.
“Honey,” Jack says.
“In your hot chocolate?”
“No, you called Beth ‘honey.’”
“Yeah, so?”
“You two seem to be in a happy place lately.”
“I guess.”
“You don’t sound particularly optimistic.”
“I’m as optimistic as the sacrament of marriage allows me to be, Jack.”
“Gee, that’s cheery.”