Billy's Bones (31 page)

“I guess I was hoping,” Kevin said quietly, “that when everything finally came out in the open, she’d come around. She’d finally see that I wasn’t just an ungrateful little brat—there was a
reason
for the things I did, even if I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. But… I guess there was never anything that would make her choose me over him.”

Tom reached out and caressed Kevin’s shoulder. “Some people invest so much of their time and energy into fabricating a safe, comfortable world for themselves they’ll turn on anyone who threatens that illusion.”

Kevin made a disgusted sound. “She chose a child rapist and murderer over her own son. Why do you have to keep defending her?”

“I’m sorry. That’s the psychologist part of me talking, always trying to find reasons for why people do things.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe I’d like to hear from the
boyfriend
part of you for once.”

Tom wasn’t put off by Kevin’s irritability. He slid closer to him and said, “The boyfriend part of me hates that cold-blooded bitch for what she’s done to you. For ignoring the warning signs when you were a boy, for distancing herself from you when you needed her, and especially now, for pulling this shit when she should be embracing you and trying to make amends.”

Kevin smiled sadly. “Well, we’re definitely not inviting her to the wedding.”

That startled Tom, but he tried not to show it. They’d never discussed marriage. After all, they’d known each other less than a year. Tom didn’t know if Kevin was serious about that or not. But it was a pleasant fantasy, and for now Tom decided it would be nice not to have his own safe illusions deflated. So he didn’t try to get Kevin to commit to the offhand comment. He just settled back in the tub and let the jets massage his body while he gazed up at the clouds sailing by overhead and intertwined his fingers with Kevin’s.

He was surprised when Kevin moved to straddle him, sitting in his lap with both hands braced on the edge of the tub on either side of Tom’s head. Kevin leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth, long and passionately. As their bodies writhed against one another in the water, Tom could feel Kevin’s growing erection rubbing against his stomach, and he grew hard in response.

Kevin had never been this bold before, and Tom wasn’t sure how to react. But Kevin didn’t seem to be changing his mind, and it felt wonderful, so Tom relaxed into it, kissing back and caressing the solid, sharply defined body he’d been presented with.

Eventually, Kevin broke the kiss long enough to chuckle into his ear. “We’d better move this upstairs, unless you want to spend tomorrow emptying all the water out of this thing and cleaning the filters.”

“Ew. No, thanks. Let’s go upstairs.”

They climbed out and dried off, though Kevin made sure Tom stayed interested by making playful grabs at his erection and occasionally nuzzling his neck. Shadow still couldn’t be trusted to stay outside unsupervised, so they brought him in with them but abandoned him at the foot of the stairs.

Despite Kevin’s enthusiasm, he wasn’t ready for anything as radical as anal sex. Tom wasn’t sure if he ever would be. Certainly Tom was willing to be the “bottom,” if it was a matter Kevin not liking the way it felt to be penetrated, but Tom knew there was more to it than that. Thanks to his father, anal sex was too closely tied to rape for Kevin. Tom still hadn’t learned if Mr. Derocher ever forced himself that way on Kevin, but Kevin had witnessed his father raping Billy. It was possible he would never be able to enjoy it after that ordeal.

But they found other ways to pleasure each other with their hands and mouths. Kevin was squeamish about Tom ejaculating into his mouth, so Tom made sure he didn’t. But he took Kevin joyfully, and when Kevin gasped, “I’m gonna come!” and tried to pull away, Tom held him there as he pulsed thick semen into his mouth, exulting in the taste of him.

Afterward, they lay together, kissing gently, and Kevin commented, “I can taste it in your mouth.”

Tom laughed. “Sorry about that. I happen to like the taste.”

“I don’t.”

“I can brush my teeth, if you like.”

Kevin groaned and rolled over onto his back. “What really bothers me is that I can’t get rid of
him
. Whenever you and I do something together, I can’t stop remembering how
he
did the same thing. It’s sick!”

Disturbing, certainly.

“We can’t force ourselves not to remember things,” Tom told him. “But remembering them drains them of their emotional power. You know this. Think about how much worse you felt when you couldn’t remember what was making you feel this way.”

“I guess.”

“I hate to kill the moment, but… how did we go from discussing your mother’s letter to ‘Let’s push our sex life to the next level’?”

Kevin smiled and shook his head. “We didn’t. We went from discussing
marriage
to ‘Let’s fuck’.”

Suddenly, Tom felt a wave of nervousness hit him. He lifted his head up on one arm so he could look Kevin directly in the eye. Those sleepy hazel eyes gazed back at him with open affection. “I thought you were joking.”

“Well, I admit it kind of just popped into my head. I haven’t had much time to mull it over yet. But is it something you’d be willing to consider?”

“Uh-uh,” Tom replied with a smirk. “I’m not having you ask me on a whim. Especially right after sex. If you think about it for a while, and it still seems like a good idea, then you can ask me.”

“Will you say ‘yes’?”

“No cheating.”

Now that they were cooling off, Tom became aware of the whining and scratching at the door. He grabbed a few tissues off the nightstand and wiped his stomach. Then he tossed them into the trashcan and went to open the door.

Shadow burst in and jumped up on the bed and half on top of Kevin, who suddenly found his face being bathed by a sloppy dog tongue. “Agh! Jesus! I don’t want you French kissing me right after I’ve had sex!”

Laughing, Tom restrained Shadow long enough for Kevin to climb out from under him. Then he joined the two of them on the bed, Shadow lying contentedly between his two daddies while they both scratched his chest.

“Dumb dog,” Kevin said, smiling affectionately at the pooch.

“Wait a minute,” Tom said. “Didn’t we leave him at the bottom of the stairs?”

Kevin laughed and bent forward to nuzzle the dog’s chest while Shadow sighed in doggy ecstasy. “Looks like you’re a stair-climbing pooch now. Look out, world!”

Tom scratched the dog’s ear and mused, “He must have decided whatever he was afraid of wasn’t as bad as being alone.”

“Yeah,” Kevin said. “I know the feeling.”

Twenty-Nine

T
HE
investigation into Billy’s death was finally resolved to the satisfaction of the police and the New Hampshire District Attorney’s office, and Billy was laid to rest in a proper cemetery plot. Since he and his father had lived in Stark only a short time, the family had no real ties there. The funeral ended up being held down in Littleton, NH, so Billy could be interred near his grandparents, and Kevin was informed through Chief Burbank that he would not be welcome.

Kevin respected Mr. Sherrell’s wishes on the matter, but a week after the funeral, he and Tom drove down to St. Rose Cemetery to find the grave. As cities went, Littleton wasn’t very large—only about five thousand residents—but St. Rose was still a fairly large cemetery with a number of recent headstones, so finding Billy’s was an exercise in frustration. But eventually they spotted it.

Kevin stared silently at the grave for so long Tom finally felt compelled to ask, “Would you like me to give you a moment?”

Kevin looked up at the expanse of manicured lawn and headstones—it was early spring now, so the grass was green against the backdrop of pine trees that bordered the cemetery. “No. I don’t really have anything to say. I know it wasn’t really my fault, but I still feel like I should have… I don’t know. Fought harder to save him.” He held up a hand to silence Tom when he seemed about to say something. “Yeah, I know. I was just a kid. But Billy’s father was right. If Billy had never met me, he’d probably still be alive today.” He looked down at the lonely gray marble headstone again. “Maybe it would be me here instead.”

Tom couldn’t stay silent any longer. “I’m glad it’s not! Not that I’m glad it’s Billy, but…. It shouldn’t be
either
of you!”

Kevin smiled at him and extended a hand to touch his arm. “It’s okay, counselor. I’m still alive, and I intend to stay that way.”

With that, he turned and walked back to the truck.

T
HE
drive back to Stark was largely silent. Kevin was lost in dark thoughts that Tom knew better than to intrude upon. It wasn’t until Kevin turned onto a side road Tom didn’t recognize that he asked, “Where are we going?”

“I have a stop I want to make.”

A couple of minutes later, he pulled over on the side of the road near Emerson Road Cemetery and got out of the truck. He strode purposefully through the cemetery, with Tom at his heels, until he came to an abrupt stop by one of the graves.

The headstone read:

Jack Kevin Derocher

Beloved Husband and Father

1942–1989

“The woman formally known as ‘Mom’ used to insist I come down here to pay my respects to you,” Kevin said to the headstone. “So here I am, fresh from the grave of the only person you actually murdered. I just wanted to let you know, I finally figured it out. I finally pieced together why you killed yourself. It wasn’t conscience. You didn’t have one. You were too good at passing blame. It was always my fault for being too pretty, or Mom’s fault for being too much of a bitch, or Billy’s fault for leading you on….

“No, the reason you never laid a hand on me after that night was because you were terrified of me. You really thought I’d find a way to kill you if you ever got near me again. And when I went away to Hampstead, you thought it was all over. You thought it was all gonna come out in my therapy sessions, so you did the only thing you could think of to escape everything coming down on you—you killed yourself. Poor Daddy. You didn’t even know I’d forgotten everything. I couldn’t give you away because I couldn’t remember a goddamned thing from that night, you stupid fuck!”

He paused for a breath, but Tom knew better than to say anything. Kevin’s eyes were glazed over, as if he weren’t really seeing anything there.

“Pay my
respects
,” Kevin muttered and spit on the ground. “If it wouldn’t be disrespecting all of the
decent
people buried here, I’d whip it out and piss all over your grave. That’s how much
respect
I have for you. You were an evil fuck, and you destroyed the lives of everyone around you. Not just Billy’s, which I hope you’re tortured in hell for, and not just mine. Mr. Sherrell was a bastard, but compared to you, he was an amateur. You took him out without even lifting a finger—stole his son away and had him railroaded out of town in one shot. And Mom? Was she always such a cold-blooded harpy or did decades of living with a man who preferred his own son to his wife do that to her?

“But I’m really here to talk about me. The sick thing is, I think you believed you loved me. You thought what you did to me was affection, and you thought I loved you back. I think you
needed
me to love you. But you stole my life from me. Not the way you did with Billy—you left me breathing. But I don’t remember a moment of my childhood that didn’t belong to you. Playing, going to school, trying to make friends…. Even when you weren’t there, you were there, lurking in the back of my mind, the filthy secret I was afraid people would find out about. I didn’t even dare tell Billy. I was scared to death he’d ditch me if he found out what I let you do to me. And then….”

Kevin paused and swallowed hard. “Twenty-five years. And even though I couldn’t remember any of it, you were still there all the time—every time I tried to have sex, every time I tried to get close to someone. Tom says I’ll never be completely free of you, and he’s probably right. But I’m telling you now,
I don’t love you
. You tried to make me, but that was the one thing you couldn’t force me to do. I stopped loving you when I was five, and no force on earth will ever make me say I loved you after that. I love Tom and Shadow, and I think I loved Billy. I’m pretty sure I love Tracy, and maybe I can even manage to love Mom a little. But not you. Not ever.”

He stood there for a long time in silence until Tom, at last, felt compelled to reach out and take his hand. Kevin’s fingers closed around his, and slowly Kevin turned to look at him. His eyes were threatening to brim over, but he blinked it away and said, “Let’s go.”

Still holding hands, they turned their backs on the gravestone and walked away.

Epilogue