Fire and Rain (12 page)

“Donald called a little while ago.” Terry pulled out a slip of paper. “He said when you get up to call him.”

“Thanks.” Jos stared at the number for a few minutes before getting up and going into the kitchen to use the phone.

“How are you feeling?” Donald asked when Jos explained who it was.

“Tired, but feeling better. I got those papers you needed.”

“Kip gave them to me, and things are looking good. I got a colleague to help file them, and he may have a line on a place to live. Café Belgie is looking for a server. It’s both lunch and dinner shifts, but I understand the tips are quite good there. Darryl is the chef-owner, and his partner, Billy, runs the restaurant portion. They’d like to see you tomorrow. Do you have a nice shirt and pants?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can bring some by. The important thing is to dress for the job and to be prepared to demonstrate your skills.”

“What time do they want me there?” Jos asked, excitement filling him for the first time in quite a while.

“Be there at ten. I’ll stop by with clothes. You can bring Isaac. They understand about kids and taking care of them. At one point they turned the back room into a sort of day care for Billy’s twin brothers. Just be on time. I’m sure they’ll talk to you, and don’t be surprised if they ask you to go right to work to check your skill level. They need someone right away that they can easily train.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Great. See you in the morning.” Donald disconnected, and Jos figured he finally had something to be happy about. This time when he joined the others, he sat on the floor next to Isaac and watched cartoons with him. Terry seemed content to read, and as the afternoon wore on, he got ready to go.

“Call if you need anything,” Terry said as he walked to the front door.

Jos got up from the floor, his legs a little stiff. “Say good-bye to Terry,” he told Isaac, who jumped up and raced to his new friend, giving him a hug.

“Can we really go swimming?” Isaac asked Terry, jumping up and down until Terry lifted him up.

“Sure. You and Jos let me know when you want to come, and I’ll arrange it.” They shared a hug, and then Terry put Isaac down and he raced back in front of the television. Isaac was happy, as witnessed by the fact that he didn’t walk or shuffle anywhere, but zoomed, and his eyes held the same sparkle they’d always had before their mother passed away. Jos had begun to think he’d never see that again. It made him happy, even if it was directed at someone else.

Jos walked Terry out and stood on the porch as he descended the stairs with a little lift in his step. “Thanks for everything.”

“No problem,” Terry said, stopping to turn around at the bottom. “Get some more rest and don’t try to do too much. Kip was really worried about you when he left. He said if you weren’t feeling better that he was going to take you to the hospital when he got home, and I was to watch you carefully. His words. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like that.”

“I don’t understand,” Jos said.

Terry rolled his eyes. “He and Red are a lot alike. They’re both in-charge kind of guys, and they’re cool under fire. They assess situations and act rationally even when the world is falling apart around them and bullets are flying. It’s what makes them good cops. But Kip was really worried. Before he left, he went in your room and stayed a few minutes, just watching you and biting his nails. The guy cares about you. Red and I were beginning to think that he was going to get serious about that twit Jeffrey.” Terry shuddered slightly.

“But I don’t understand what he can possibly see in me,” Jos admitted, looking down at himself.

“Maybe you should ask him,” Terry suggested. “I know what it feels like to have all your confidence ripped away. You feel like you can’t do anything right and you just want to hide. But then if we’re lucky, we meet someone like Red—or Kip—who can see past all that. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it’s pretty special.”

“But I’ve only known him a few days. How could he know that much about me?”

Terry chuckled and took a few steps back up the stairs. “They’re police officers. They’re trained to know who to trust and assess lies and truth within seconds. They have a sense for people, and I can tell you that if Kip didn’t see something in you and didn’t care about you in some way, you wouldn’t be here. These guys don’t let people come into their lives easily. There has to be something special.”

“Isaac,” Jos said, but Terry shook his head.

“If that’s what you think, then you’re way off. Kip could have called child services and had him put into protective custody if all he was concerned about was Isaac.” Terry bounced down the stairs once again. “Think about it and see if you don’t come to a different conclusion.” He walked to his car, and Jos went back inside, joining Isaac in the living room in front of the television.

After a few minutes, Isaac got up from the floor and sat next to him on the sofa, leaning against him as he watched the show. “Why did Mama have to go away?” Isaac asked.

“I don’t know,” Jos said and thought about what he could say to try to help. “There are a lot of things I don’t know the answer to, and that’s one of them. Sometimes people die and go to live with the angels. Someday, a long time from now, you’ll go live with the angels too, and then you’ll see Mama again.”

“Will she know me when I’m big?” Isaac asked, his eyes filled with disbelief.

“Your mama will always know you.” Jos felt tears welling and hugged Isaac to try to cover them. The last thing his brother needed was for him to go to pieces. He was so close at the moment, every emotion built up over weeks right at the surface, and Jos knew if he let them come, there was no way he could stop them again. “Mamas always know their children, especially angel mamas. And I think that sometimes, late at night, if you’re really quiet, they come down and watch over you when you’re sleeping to keep the monsters away.”

“So it’s good to have an angel mama,” Isaac said.

“It’s good to have a mama who loved you and cared for you, angel or not. And you’ll always have me to care for you too.”

“Like an angel brother,” Isaac said, and Jos nodded, thankful when Isaac turned back to the television so he didn’t see the tears as they ran down his cheeks.

WHEN KIP
came through the door a few hours later, neither of them had moved much. Isaac bounded off the sofa and ran right up to Kip, laughing as Kip lifted him into his arms.

“How are you feeling?” Kip asked Jos as he carried Isaac into the room. Kip set Isaac down almost immediately. “Where’s Pistachio?” Isaac looked around. “Why don’t you go find him so he isn’t lonely?”

Isaac nodded and hurried away while Kip sat next to Jos on the sofa, gently wiping Jos’s cheeks with his fingers.

Jos sniffed and took a deep breath. “I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?” Kip stood and pulled the blanket from the back of the sofa, spreading it over Jos’s legs before sitting back down on the edge of the cushion.

“Yeah.” He sat quietly and then leaned against Kip to share his warmth. God, he smelled good. Jos inhaled again just to take in another dose of his musk. “I talked to Donald, and I have an interview tomorrow. He said he’d help me so I have some clothes to wear.” Jos shook his head. “I still can’t figure out why everyone is being so kind.”

“Sometimes people are nice,” Kip said. “Not always, but there are times in our lives when we have to accept that not everyone is a pile of crap.”

Jos stiffened. “Sounds like you know firsthand.”

Kip nodded. “I didn’t have stellar parents either, and I spent a lot of my time on the streets with my friends. See, my mom and dad loved something more than my sister and me.”

“You have a sister?”

“Had,” Kip corrected. Isaac bounded back into the room with Pistachio under his arm and flopped down onto the floor to watch more cartoons. “I had a sister,” Kip clarified and then grew quiet.

“What happened to her?”

“She died,” Kip said.

“Okay,” Jos said, growing more and more curious by the second. “What happened?” He figured that since Kip had brought it up, it would be okay to ask, but as soon as he did, he regretted it. The look of sheer pain that filled Kip’s eyes left him cold, and Jos pulled the blanket more tightly around him.

“Like I said, Mom and Dad loved something more than they loved us: alcohol. They were both really big drinkers, so Adrienne and I didn’t have very much. Mom and Dad went out to bars a lot. I was six years older than Adrienne, and one Saturday when she was eight, Mom took us to the beach. She seemed sober and was in a really good mood. So we packed a picnic and went off for the day. Of course Mom included a flask in the things she packed, and while we were swimming, she was filling her lemonade glass with something more than summer fun.”

“How did you get home?” Jos asked.

Kip shook his head. “It was always my job to look out for Adrienne. I knew what my mom was like, but I let my guard down that day. We were at the state park at a lake, and they had one of those floating rafts that the kids love to play on. Everyone was having a great time, and Adrienne wanted to show me how she could swim. Somehow Mom had paid for swimming lessons for her.”

Jos held Kip’s arm a little tighter. “Oh my God.” He could see where this story was going, and it was already scaring him. He glanced at Isaac, who was engrossed in what he was watching and didn’t seem to be paying them any attention.

Kip shook his head. “She and I swam out together, and she did really well. She climbed out of the water and jumped up on the floating dock with her hands in the air like Rocky.” Kip smiled and then it faded. “I was still in the water when some of the bigger boys started getting rough. They were pushing kids off, and I saw Adrienne get pushed off. I jumped up on the raft and muscled the kid off the side, sending him flying into the water. I was so mad. I remember yelling at the kid to leave my sister alone, and when I went to the side to find her, I couldn’t.”

“What?”

“I dove in and tried to find her, but the water was cloudy and I couldn’t see much. Others dove in and so did the lifeguards, and they got her pretty quickly and brought her to shore. My mother was hysterical when she saw Adrienne on the sand. She wasn’t moving, and they did mouth-to-mouth, but she never came around.”

“It was an accident,” Jos said.

“I know that. The kid hadn’t meant to hurt her—he was playing. But my mother never saw it that way.”

“She blamed him?”

Kip shook his head. “She blamed me. I should have been watching out for her and taking care of her. My mother was too drunk to do it, so it was my job, and Mom never let me forget it.”

“She blamed you… when she was drunk?”

“It was easier than blaming herself. I was fourteen, and my childhood effectively ended that day. Adrienne was gone, and for the most part so was my mother. She drank even more trying to forget, and my dad could barely talk to me for a long time. At one point he told me that it wasn’t my fault. Dad eventually got sober. He blamed my mother for what happened. Home was not a very happy place after that.”

“What happened?”

“My mom went downhill from there. My dad tried to help her, but I think after that, she was beyond help. Eventually she just drank herself to death.”

“At least your dad didn’t blame you.”

“No. But by then I blamed myself. Dad said I should let it go, but I couldn’t. Adrienne’s death haunted me. There had to be something pretty badly wrong with me.”

“My God. Jesus. My mother was no real prize….” Jos sighed. “Believe it or not, I can see my mother reacting the same way.” Jos had stayed at home longer than he’d wanted—even though he’d needed to get out of that house pretty badly—for Isaac’s sake.

“It took me a lot of soul searching before I could let myself believe that I wasn’t to blame for Adrienne. Not that I really believed it. I never realized how powerful guilt was until I tried to deal with it.”

“How did you?” Jos asked. He wasn’t sure he could handle it if anything happened to Isaac.

“I had this friend. I used to mow her grass and take care of her yard. After Mom died and I got older, she took me in. Joanie was more like a grandmother than a friend, and she had this mother-in-law’s house in the back of her property. She said I needed some time away from my family to think about what happened. She also said it was time I was on my own. Her son, Parker, was a police officer. He came around a lot, and he used to talk to me about what it was like.”

“What about your dad? Did you work things out with him?”

“Yeah. As I let go of some of the guilt and really started to heal, I learned just how much my dad was hurting too. He’d lost Mom and his daughter. We were each other’s only real family by that point, and we got to know each other as adults. Of course he died a few years ago, and I ended up moving back into the house I grew up in. Joanie died last year, and I saw Parker when he came back for the funeral. He and his partner live in Frederick, Maryland, and they have two children through a surrogate.”

“So you don’t feel guilty now?” Jos asked, wondering about this widely circular story.

“I think I always will. I keep wondering if I’d have paid more attention to Adrienne, if things might have been different. But I’ve learned to live with it. I don’t feel guilty about it as much as I regret what happened. Joanie told me once that Adrienne would be really angry with me if I hung on to what happened for the rest of my life.”

“What was she like?”

“What was who like?” Isaac asked. He got up off the floor, climbing on the sofa to sit next to him. Jos put an arm around Isaac’s shoulders.

“Kip was telling me about his little sister. She died when she was young.”

Isaac blinked and looked up at both of them. “So she’s with the angels, like Mama.”

“Yes,” Kip agreed. “Adrienne is definitely with the angels.” Kip stood up and turned away. Jos saw him wiping his eyes. He and Isaac hadn’t had the best mother in the world, but she hadn’t turned her back on them. Not that it mattered now. His focus had to be on raising Isaac and trying to make sure he was happy.