Forever Promised (27 page)

“Two days ago,” she snapped. “The funeral is next weekend. Are you going to be decent and let my family come?”

Deacon shook his head. “Lady, if I have my way, we will be hell and gone from Levee Oaks next weekend. You could not pay me enough to put my family through that kind of pain.”

Deacon had been wrong. Apparently he
could
feel pity.

“How come they get to be your family?” she asked plaintively. “My girls have gone, my boy’s a faggot—how come you get to have my people? That’s not fair!”

Deacon felt the weight of his own people at his back. “It’s what we make it,” he said simply. “I’m sorry for your loss. May your church be the solace you always dreamed it would be.”

He turned then, and Shane and Jeff each took a step sideways. Jon had the E-Z UP, Mikhail had the soccer balls, and Collin was coming back from getting signed off with the ref. Megan and Shannon were both standing with a contingent of parents, glaring at someone whom, as far as Deacon knew, they had never met.

“Hey,” Megan said out of the blue, “how did you know they were here? I mean, here we were, playing soccer. We’ve never seen you at practice before—what the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

Melanie blinked at her. “I… well, everyone knows what his truck looks like! I saw all the cars—”

“And you decided to come here and tell the family about a death,” Shannon said, looking at Megan. Both of them had their arms crossed.

“Classy,” Megan sniped, her long face showing disdain in a way Deacon never would have guessed.

“Sounds like something my family would do,” Shannon said thoughtfully. She curled her lip and shook her head, and her clown-car-red hair frizzed around her ears. “Now
there’s
something to strive for. You need help, coach?”

Both women were looking at Deacon expectantly, their kids coming up to them with their hands full of cookies and juice boxes, and Deacon’s grin was full and heartfelt.

“You guys are awesome. We’re going to the frostie for ice cream—you want to meet us there?”

They met eyes and shook their heads regretfully. “Sorry—we’ve got pizza night. It’s a tradition—but thanks for asking!”

And that was it. No beatings, no screamings, no hysterics. Melanie was left alone, no scene to make, as the business of a productive community streamed around her.

Deacon was mildly surprised to realize he hadn’t even thought of having a panic attack, and not once had he blushed. Interesting. Melanie might have been stuck in her place in the world, but Deacon, it seemed, was making progress.

He had no doubt the support of the people who followed him to Collin’s mom’s shop to have ice cream were much of the reason why.

Crick
:
Like Sand in the Hourglass

T
HEY
spent the weekend of Bob’s funeral at the beach in Monterey.

Not everybody could make it, but Jon and Amy could, and so could Drew and Benny. Mikhail and Kimmy were going to join them on the way home, since Gilroy and the Faire were less than an hour away, so family, but family small, and Crick was relieved.

He hadn’t been to the beach with Deacon since they’d gone to Seattle five years ago to visit the family of his friend who had been killed in Iraq.

The beach at Monterey was a little warmer than the beach at Seattle, but it was still sandy and, on this day, saturated with sun.

Parry’s soccer games were on Friday nights, and the family had packed up in three different cars and caravanned down early the next morning.

It had been Deacon’s idea—he’d proposed it in the ice cream shop after Parry’s soccer game the week before.

They’d had the plans halfway made before they were done with ice cream—Jeff, Collin, and Shane were professing to be green with envy—and it wasn’t until then that Crick saw the relieved, almost secretive look on Deacon’s face and realized something was up.

“What did Melanie want?” he asked during a quiet moment as the rest of the family chattered around them, and Deacon just looked at him.

Crick knew then. It wasn’t so much a lightbulb as a series of connections. Crick’s eyes widened. “So, next week…?”

Deacon didn’t meet his look. “It would just be really great,” he said quietly, “if no one in this family had to hurt any more because of that man. I was going to tell Benny before we split up.”

“Yeah,” Crick said. “Okay.”

He knew. He knew Benny was going to sniffle on Deacon in spite of how well-adjusted she’d seemed the day they’d visited the clinic. You didn’t just say good-bye to someone in your life like that without tears, even if they were tears of frustration or anger for what this person
should
have meant to you, if only he hadn’t been a reeking, venomous douche bag.

There had to have been
something
about Bob Coats that had seemed decent and human, twenty-odd years ago when Crick’s mother had first met him.
Something
must have seemed worth having. Bob had held down a job then—had he appeared to be a good provider? Crick couldn’t remember if he’d been handsome before the years of drinking had taken their toll in coarsened skin and exploded veins. Had there been a time when it had looked like Bob would be a good father? Did Melanie think that even if he wouldn’t be a good father to the son she had, maybe he’d be a good father to the children she’d have with him?

Something, Crick thought wretchedly, watching Benny cry on Deacon in front of the town frostie while Drew held Parry Angel and looked at Crick in resignation. Something to give him a reason for why the man had been able to father children and then destroy them.

Well, maybe not destroy.

Benny gave a little hiccup and then took a step back, wiping her face on her sleeve. A half smile played at her wide mouth. “So, the beach at Monterey, huh?”

Deacon shrugged, but he didn’t look embarrassed. “I’ve had worse ideas.”

Benny stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “I’ve been there for some. I think it sounds like a wonderful idea.” She turned to Drew and her daughter. “You guys ready? Mommy’s done being sad.”

Drew snorted. “As if!”

“Hush, or I’m going back in there for more ice cream.”

Drew’s cheeks widened in a patently insincere smile. “I think you should. Ice cream is good for you. You need more ice cream.”

Benny giggled and kissed him over Parry’s head; she was leaning against his leg in a casual gesture of trust. “Home. Let’s go home and scare up something better than ice cream, okay?”

“But Mama, there is
nothing
better than ice cream!” Parry said soberly, and they were still discussing the benefits of frosty desserts when they got into Benny’s car and drove away.

Deacon turned to get in the truck when Crick stopped him with a kiss. That Deacon’s cheeks colored was actually sort of charming. Crick knew there would still be panic attacks and shyness, but for some reason, telling a bunch of little kids on the soccer field which direction to run, and then talking to their mamas about team photos and snack, seemed to have given Deacon just the slightest edge over the thing that had shaped his life. Either that or he’d just extended his definition of family. Crick deepened the kiss and pinned Deacon, helpless and hungry, against the side of the truck, sighing and relaxing when Deacon’s hands came up to cup his neck and pull him even closer.

Crick ground up against him, and Deacon pulled away, resting his forehead on Crick’s shoulder and gasping for air.

“That was awesome. What’d I do?”

“Are we really going to Monterey?”

“Yeah. Why not? We’ve got the money, we’ve got people to take over for a couple of days. I call time-out. Let’s go play. I mean”—there was barely a hitch in his voice, but Crick heard what wasn’t there—“Jon and Amy aren’t going to be here forever.”

Crick dropped a kiss in his hair. “How bugnuts do you think the dog is right now?”

Deacon let a laugh escape. “The technology to measure that dog’s psychosis has not yet been invented.”

“Yeah. Should we take him to the beach with us?”

“God, what a pain in the ass!”

“Yeah, but should we?”

Deacon smiled a little. “Please?”

A
ND
so it was that now, even as Crick watched from his little kick-back sand seat next to a sleeping Parry, he could see Jon and Deacon throwing the stick for the giant Labra-donkey that lived under their porch. Mumford had ridden down in the pickup with Deacon and Crick, his head hanging out the open window in the back, his tail thumping against Crick’s head for pretty much the entire three-hour trip. Once they arrived at the beach, he took off for parts unknown practically before the truck stopped. Deacon ignored him.

“Aren’t you going after him?” Crick asked, struggling with the chair and the blanket and umbrella. Deacon had the ice chest and the beach bag and the useless fucking lead for the dumbass dog.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Because he can run faster than me.”

“What if he bites someone?”

“He hardly chews his food.”

Crick had to concede—Mumford had an amazingly soft mouth. His ancestors had obviously been bred as bird dogs, because the dumb animal had been mouthing the same stuffed toy for almost three years. It was stinky and drool saturated, but there wasn’t a bald spot on it.

“What if he knocks someone over?”

“Hard to do that when you’re in the water,” Deacon said, and sure enough, the dog was a quarter of a mile away, paddling like he owned the freakin’ ocean.

“What if a whale eats him?” Crick asked, because the plaintive rhythm of the questions was fun, that’s why.

“I would actually
pay
someone to take a picture of that.”

“Okay, what if a
shark
eats him?”

“Then we give thanks to his stupid spirit for warning us before we threw the kids in.”

“The kids aren’t going to swim!” Crick protested. Not in Monterey, where the water was fucking cold, especially in October!

“No, but they have life jackets on for a reason. It’d be nice to know that if they get swept away, they’re not just bobbing there like a really big lure.”

Crick glared at Deacon for a moment, outraged, and then he saw that full mouth fighting so hard against a grin that he was tempted to drop all his shit and slug him.

“You bastard.”

“You were asking for it.”

“I’m gonna beat you once I dump this crap, you know that.”

“You’d have to catch me first.”

“I will seriously pummel you until you bleed.”

“What’d he do now?” Jon asked, laughing as he carried his own armload of crap through the parking lot with them. Drew and Benny had apparently hit all the lights—they’d been there for a good half hour, and Benny had called Crick and said they staked out a place by the dunes so they could back up into the shade of the overlook. The sun was hot enough to make walking through the parking lot uncomfortable, and for a minute, Crick had the time-honored response to going to the beach: looking at a picture in an air-conditioned room would be a lot more fun.

But a picture wouldn’t smell like yarrow and salt water, and a picture wouldn’t have the roar-swish sound beyond the dunes. Crick got a firmer grip on his chairs and blanket and gave thanks he wasn’t Amy, who had Lila by one hand, a beach bag over one shoulder, and Jon-Jon on her hip.

And then it occurred to him.

In a year, he
would
be Amy, except with only one kid. The conflict of excitement and terror that crashed over him left him without any words.

Which was fine, because for the moment, Jon was taking care of all of the silences.

“Forget what Deacon did now, what the hell is your dog doing?”

“Being shark bait,” Deacon said, with that same deadpan delivery.

Jon snorted. “I don’t know if he’d pass the interview for that job. He has to be smart enough to bleed.”

Deacon snickered like a little kid. “Then you should go swimming too—you’d fail that interview in a hot second!”

“Me? I am wounded! Wounded, I tell you!”

“Mommy! Daddy’s hurt!”

Lila tugged at Amy’s hand and tried to escape to go check on her father, who was so close to collapsing from laughter Crick wanted to kick him.

“Daddy’s not hurt, sweetheart,” Amy said sweetly, glaring at her husband. “He’s just stupid. He’s like that a lot.”

“Oooh, Mommy! We’re not allowed to say ‘stupid’ in school. That’s a
bad word!
”

By now Jon and Deacon were laughing so hard they could barely breathe, and one thing and one thing only was stopping Crick from kicking one of Jon’s feet behind his other one to send him sprawling: God, they both needed this.

Jon and Deacon giving each other shit, laughing—they needed this memory of them, of their families, of a good time untainted by worry.

Deacon ran with the stupid dog and with Jon and the kids until the kids wandered off and started building sand castles because they were tired. The dog collapsed on the sand next to them, and eventually the girls ended up asleep on the big sandy dog, covered with a towel so they didn’t burn. Parry’s curly brown hair stuck out wildly next to Lila’s straight blonde fuzz. Jon-Jon was currently curled in a ball next to Amy, quietly drooling on her leg.