Finding Zach (5 page)

He hung up the phone and stared at it a long moment, then went to get his duffel bag and his nap.

H
E
WOKE
to the smell of onions and peppers frying and shook himself fully awake before stumbling sleepily into the kitchen. Annie stood in front of the stove, singing cheerfully. David joined in on the chorus of “La Bamba.” She turned around, and he caught her around the waist and danced her around the stone floor of the kitchen, singing and dripping olive oil.

Laughing, she tugged herself out of his arms, reaching for the paper towels. “Silly ass,” she scolded, “now the floor’s all slippery.”

He took the towels from her hand and pushed her gently in the direction of the stove. “You cook, I clean up, okay?” in a mock-foreign accent, like Gilda Radner on the old
Saturday Night Live
.

“You’d better,” she warned, grinning, “or you don’t get any fajitas.”

“You couldn’t be so cruel,” he said mournfully, and got down on his hands and knees to clean up the spilled oil.

She looked good, he thought, despite the fact that every time he’d seen her in the last three years her hair had been a different color. It was a bronzy-blonde this time, and it looked good. “I like the hair,” he said. “It wasn’t that color at Sandy’s last Mother’s Day.”

“It was Sandy’s idea, actually,” she said. “Your sister thought the brown was too mousy, so I went and had it foiled. I’m about due for a touchup.”

“Not yet, I don’t think,” he assured her, and tossed the greasy paper towels into the garbage can. Sliding up onto one of the barstools at the breakfast counter, he rested his chin on his hands and said, “So. How is he?”

She didn’t answer, concentrating on turning the peppers and onions and chicken onto a platter. She set the platter in front of him, then got a plate of tortillas out of the warmer. “Sour cream coming up,” she said, and got it out of the fridge, along with salsa and shredded cheese.

He let her putter, until she’d sat down across from him and started assembling her own fajita. “How is he, Mom?”

“He drinks too much and drives too fast, and if he kills himself it will destroy Jane and Richard,” Annie said savagely, and she started to cry.

He reached over and covered her hands with his. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She wiped her eyes with her napkin and said, “It’s not your fault, Davey. It’s just been so tense for so long. It’s not that he’s mean to us or anything. In fact, he’s too nice. He’s so polite and sweet, but it’s all a front, you can tell that. He smiles but it’s not real. And Jane and Richard smile, and they don’t mean it. And it’s gotten to the point that I don’t mean it, either.” Her fingers tightened on David’s. “He moved into the chauffeur’s old apartment over the garage two months ago, but it isn’t any easier. Richard hasn’t had a live-in chauffeur since Alan retired; he uses the firm’s drivers, so it’s not like he needs the space….”

“You’re babbling, Mom,” David said gently.

She took a breath. “Yeah, I am. Shit.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“I told Jane and Richard that you’d be staying with me until you got someplace else and they both looked so sad. Jane asked if you’d mind if they came to visit while you were here.”

“I wasn’t the one who shut them out,” David said bitterly.

“Well, honey, what would you have done if it had been you in their place? He was so fragile and he just freaked out when they asked if you could see him.”

“I know how it went,” David cut her off. “I heard him. I was there, remember?” He got up, appetite gone, and started to wrap up the rest of his fajitas. “I’ll finish this later, okay?”

“I’m sorry, love,” Annie said quietly.

“I’ve had two years to get used to it,” David replied, “you’d think I would have.”

“How did Jerry take your coming back here?”

“We broke up a few weeks ago, just before I got the job. Timing was pretty good, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, love, I’m sorry….”

“It wasn’t working out, anyway. I’m just shitty at relationships.” He put the plate into the refrigerator and closed the door, thumping his forehead against the cool white surface. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

“He and Jane and Richard have been in therapy since he got back,” Annie offered.

“What is that, ten months?”

“Nine, really. But they started even before that, while he was still in the rehab center.” She hesitated, then went on. “Richard asked if you wanted to come back to work. They’ve got a whole new graphic arts division….” She trailed off when she saw David shaking his head.

“No, too close. Besides, I like teaching. I put in my time at Tyler Tech—I don’t need to do it again. Community college doesn’t pay much, but I don’t need much. Besides, I’m still painting. I can make enough money to live on from that, even if I didn’t have the interest from the investments. I’m flush, Mom. I can do what I want. Not too many twenty-five-year-olds can say that, huh?”

“No, love.”

“And Maggie’s been talking about me doing a show at a gallery in Colorado Springs. Seems she’s friends with the owner, and showed him some jpegs of my stuff.”

“It’s nice you’re still friends with her.”

“Yeah, not a lot of girls would still hang out with a guy who dumped them the week after graduation because they were the wrong gender,” David said dryly. “She told me once that if I’d busted up with her over another girl, she’d have been pissed, but that I couldn’t help being gay. Then she tried to set me up with her cousin.”

Annie laughed. “That’s Maggie.”

“She’s apartment hunting for me. Since the college is here in Wesley, I’m trying to stay this side of the Springs, maybe one of the suburbs. I don’t want a long commute, and I want to stay near the mountains.” He turned and leaned back against the fridge. “I spent too long on the flats. I need me some hills.”

“You and Richard,” Annie said. She sighed wistfully. “I wish you would stay here, Davey. Jane and Richard wouldn’t mind, and it’s time….”

“Hell, no,” David said brusquely. “No way in hell am I going to stay here a minute longer than I have to. I love you, Mom, but I just can’t take the chance. He’ll go postal, and Dick and Jane will blame me.”

“Oh, don’t call them that,” Annie scolded. “It irritates the shit out of them.”

“Zach was the one who came up with it,” David said, then winced. “Shit.”

“Besides, I told you, they don’t blame you. It’s something Zach has to get through, not you or them.”

“Well, he’s not, now, is he? That’s assuming he even gives me a thought. For all I know, he doesn’t even care if I’m alive or not.”

“He asked me about you a few weeks ago,” Annie said quietly.

David looked up, his heart aching. “He did?”

“Oh Davey,” his mother sighed. “You still love him, don’t you?”

“Shit,” he said again. “I never stopped, Mom. But he’s not the same kid I knew before… before all this happened. I know that. You said I don’t have to get through this, but I kinda do. What did he say? God, I feel like I’m in high school again.”

“He just asked, sort of, I don’t know, quietly, if I ever heard from you. I said, ‘Of course I do, he calls me all the time,’ and he just said ‘Good’ and went back out to the patio. Never said another word. Of course, he doesn’t talk much to me. Just please and thank you. That was the first time he said more than that, and it was just six words.” She was quiet a moment, then said, “He doesn’t say any more than that to his parents, except in their therapy sessions, and for all I know, that’s all he says then too.”

“He was always a polite kid.”

She shook her head. “Polite, yes, but there’s something… missing now. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like he’s polite because he thinks that’s how he should be, not just naturally courteous the way he always was. It’s like he’s reading lines in a play he’s not terribly interested in acting.” Again, a head shake. “Well, I guess if he was normal he wouldn’t be in therapy seven days a week, now would he?”

“Does he do anything except therapy?”

“Well, physical therapy too. And he has a couple of cars he works on. But usually he just disappears until suppertime, and even then half the time he doesn’t eat with Di… Richard and Jane. He’s got a kitchenette in the apartment and he’ll cook something up there. I do his grocery shopping for him, and sometimes I clean up there, if he asks. He’s very tidy.”

“Quiet and tidy. Sounds like a serial killer.”

“David!”

“Well, you know, that’s how the neighbors always describe them. ‘He was quiet, always kept to himself, but, boy, his yard was tidy.’” David snorted. “Jeez, I hope the therapy works or they’ll be digging up Dick and Jane’s garden looking for bodies.”

“David Philip Evans, I’m going to smack you so hard….”

He laughed at her. “Still want me to move in here?”

She softened. “Oh, honey, I wish you would.”

He shook his head. “No, trust me, it’s better this way. I promise I’ll find someplace close, and we can visit all the time, okay?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“No, what I want is for things to go back the way they were seven years ago,” David said with a sigh. “But that ain’t likely, is it?”

“No, honey. It’s not.”

Chapter 3

T
HE
sun parlor where they had their therapy sessions was empty when Zach went in, but the French doors to the patio stood open, the gauzy drapes fluttering gently in the breeze. He crossed the room and looked outside to see his mother drinking coffee at one of the little white wrought-iron tables that circled the pool. She wasn’t reading, although a book was open on the table in front of her; she was just sitting, drinking her coffee and looking out over the pool and the gardens beyond. Stray tendrils of fading blonde hair had escaped her neat chignon; she batted at them absently, tucking one strand behind her ear. She was so beautiful, Zach thought, his heart aching, and so sad. Even when she smiled, she never lost that little bit of sadness in the back of her eyes. He wanted to fix it, but didn’t know how.

He didn’t move, or speak, but suddenly she knew he was there in the sunroom, and turned, a smile on her face. This was her first smile of the day, the one that reached her eyes and made them shine; the one that said that for a moment she’d forgotten to be sad, forgotten what he was, forgotten everything except here was her beloved son, and she was glad to see him. He smiled back, kept the smile when hers faded to just lips, that ache back in her eyes. “Morning, sweetheart,” she said cheerfully.

He nodded.

“Did you want some coffee? I think there’s still some in the carafe.”

He shook his head. “No, thank you,” he said carefully.

“Did you eat breakfast?”

He nodded again.

“Annie’s calling in a grocery order today; did you need anything?”

He thought a moment, then said, “Milk.”

“Okay, I’ll have her order some for you. Anything else?”

“No, thank you.”

They gazed at each other across an unbridgeable gulf, then Zach heard the door open behind him and turned in relief. His father and the therapist came in together. Zach waited and saw the same smile curl his father’s lips, brighten his eyes a moment. “Hey, Zach, morning.”

Zach nodded at him in response. “Good morning, Dr. Barrett,” he said politely to the therapist.

“Good morning, Zach.”

Jane came into the sunroom at Zach’s back, saving him from having to say anything about her whereabouts. “I’m here,” she said gaily, and Zach flinched. She used to talk that way all the time, and he had loved it; now, it was so patently artificial it scraped his nerves. “Shall we get started?”

They sat in their usual spots: his parents on the wicker loveseat, the therapist in one armchair, Zach in the other. Zach folded his hands in his lap and waited.

After a moment of silence, Jane said, “There’s something we need to tell Zach.”

Zach’s head came up and he stared at them expressionlessly. Inside, his guts had gone tense. She looked so solemn, so worried; he ran over in his head everything he’d done since yesterday, everything that could have possibly pushed them over the edge, made it too difficult to keep him. Were they going to send him away, maybe back to the nursing home; or worse—was he on the verge of getting committed? That’s what they did with wackos, locked them up so they couldn’t hurt anyone else…. A fine sheen of sweat beaded on his upper lip. He didn’t think he could tolerate being locked up again….

“It’s about… it’s about David.”

Zach went blank. Then fear roared through him and he grabbed the arms of his chair to steady himself. “What about him?” he asked, his voice shaking. Was he hurt—was he
dead
?

“He’s home,” Jane went on, and Zach realized he hadn’t said the last few thoughts out loud. “Annie told me yesterday he’s staying a few days here—well, at the gatehouse—until he gets an apartment. Apparently he’s got a job teaching art at Wesley Community College. But she says he’ll stay away. Zach won’t have to see him—he’ll stay away from us.” She gave Zach a bright, fake smile; she’d seen the fear on his face. “So there’s nothing to worry about, honey.”