Читать книгу Calling the Shots - Ellen Hartman - Страница 9

AS HE DROVE HOME, BRYAN had half an eye on the road. Allie was silent in the seat next to him, her face flashing in and out of clarity as the shadows thrown by the streetlights blinked across the car. He couldn’t really see her. Couldn’t tell what was going on with her.

Didn’t have any idea what to say.

All he knew was that the kid Clare Sampson described wasn’t his kid. His Allie was competitive, driven even, but she wasn’t a bully.

Was she?

As soon as that traitorous doubt entered his mind he wanted to step on the gas and drive, take him and Allie down the road to a new town where they could start over. That’s what he’d always done, hit the road, let his commitment to his sales job run interference for him. He’d never taken his daughter with him on the road, never expected to have to, because she’d always been safe at home with Erin. He’d understood that his role was to make the money, that was what his wife had wanted from him. But now the roles were changed. He and Erin were divorced last year. Three months ago, she’d left Allie with him, and Allie, apparently, was beating people up left and right.

He hit the blinker before he made the left onto Green Avenue.

Screw Clare and her kid and everyone else. His kid was not a bully. He knew Allie.

What a freaking nightmare.

“Is she really going to call the cops?”

Those were the first words either of them had spoken.

“No. Of course not.” He wanted so desperately to reassure her that he lied. He had absolutely no idea what Clare had in mind. What would he want if the situation were reversed; if Tim had been the aggressor? He hoped to hell Clare was a more forgiving person than he was.

He made the last right turn and pulled into their driveway.

“Dad!” Allie said, hunching her shoulders and tucking her face into the front of her Twin Falls Cowboys jacket.

He followed her horrified gaze out the car window to the front of the little white Cape Cod where he and Erin had spent their entire marriage and where Allie and Erin had lived after the divorce.

“Sorry. I forgot.” He threw the car into Reverse and pulled out. They’d sold the house when Erin decided to go on the road with the band, and Allie had moved into his apartment. He hadn’t had time to keep the house up and Erin wanted the money.

He drove to the apartment complex and pulled into the empty space outside their door. The light over the front door and the one on the deck were both off, the windows dark. The lights were supposed to be on a timer, but it looked as if that was one more system he’d set up that wasn’t working the way it was meant to.

“You want to tell me what happened?” he asked.

“Mr. Jackson already did.” Allie stared straight ahead at the dashboard while she spoke. “It was exactly what he said. I punched Tim first and then we had a fight. I…” Her voice wavered and she stopped. When she started again, her tone was more defiant. “I hit him really hard and I wanted to hurt him, but then some grown-ups broke it up and now his mommy is going to call the cops. All right? That’s what happened. Exactly that.”

Her chest was rising and falling with her rapid breaths.

“Allie, that can’t be the whole story.”

“It is.” she said. A few tears slid down her cheeks. “I beat Tim up and that’s it.”

Bryan put his hand on her shoulder. “Listen,” he started, but she pulled back and opened her door.

“He’s an idiot. Why is he even on the team?” she yelled.

“Did he do something or say something to you?”

“No. Nothing.”

She slammed the door and ran through the thin coating of snow on the walk. She pulled the extra key out from under the empty planter on the cement steps and opened the front door. He watched it all unfold and he didn’t move a muscle.

In his mind, he saw what should happen next. He was supposed to go after her and get this sorted out. If she’d been honest about what prompted the fight, maybe he could have done that. He imagined himself following her into the house. They’d sit at the table in the kitchen and he’d make hot chocolate or they’d share a plate of Oreos. He’d tell her that she was grounded and she’d have to write a letter apologizing to Tim and another one to Danny, and there’d be extra chores so she could work off some of the money for the damages. He’d be stern and she’d be sorry and then he’d make a joke that wasn’t very funny and she’d smile anyway and things would be okay again. He’d seen Full House. He knew how it was supposed to work.

Except she hadn’t been honest. It wasn’t as simple as she punched Tim, Tim fell down. He sighed. Thirteen years in sales had taught him about reading people.

He had no doubt that she’d started the fight or that she’d wanted to hurt the kid. She’d definitely told the truth about those parts. But there was more to it than that. She wasn’t a bully. She was hurt and angry and something that happened between her and Tim had upset her deeply enough to make her snap.

So yeah. It was his job to reinforce that hitting people wasn’t okay. She needed to be disciplined, but she also needed to be helped. Unfortunately for Allie, he’d been caught up in his job for most of her childhood, and even when he’d been around, Erin hadn’t let him take the lead on much of the parenting. She’d said it was disruptive to the routine if he did things his way when he was home.

He’d felt so guilty over not being able to give Erin and Allie everything he’d planned that he’d decided the best thing he could do for them was to work and make sure they had everything they wanted. And now that he was in charge he was out of his depth.

He flipped his phone open and scrolled through to Erin’s number. She might be off living out her childhood dream of being a hairdresser to the stars, or at least to the latest designer girl band, but she should be able to spare a few minutes to tell him what the hell to do for their daughter. Was it asking too much for him to want some advice? After all, she disrupted the routine in a pretty freaking thorough way when she left them for her job.

Of course, she didn’t pick up. She rarely did when he called her. He left a message but didn’t go into detail.

He should work out a code with Erin so she’d know which calls she couldn’t ignore. He’d text the code word and that would be the sign that he wasn’t messing around. The code word could be Uncle.

He rested his head on the steering wheel briefly before climbing out and opening the trunk. He grabbed Allie’s hockey bag and her stick and his own suitcase and leather laptop case. The skates and gear samples he’d taken on his sales calls could wait until morning.

When he hitched the bags higher on his shoulder, his knee protested, but he refused to baby it. The accident that ended his hockey career had controlled him for a long time, erasing his choices, forcing them to move back to Twin Falls, and him into exactly the kind of sales job his dad had had and that he’d sworn he’d never take. He’d decided years ago that he wouldn’t acknowledge the pain from his knee any more than he’d let what might have been rule him.

When he pushed the front door open, the shower was running in the bathroom down the hall. Allie had the music on, too, some band he didn’t recognize blasting over the noise of the water, so any chance of an immediate conversation was gone.

Bryan kicked the hockey bag to the side and then unzipped it and took the wet shin guards and socks out. He laid them on the drying rack around the corner in the living room, unrolling the striped blue-and-green socks and shaking out Allie’s jersey.

He stretched it flat to dry. Allie’s number seventeen was the same one he’d worn. Same color, same team, same name. James, number seventeen, Twin Falls Youth Hockey.

Erin would have killed him if he’d put the drying rack in the living room when they lived together. Hockey gear smelled like a pungent combination of dampness, sweat and locker room, but to him that smell was home. Before Allie, his best times had been on the ice. Hell, even after Allie, his best times had been at the rink, watching her skate and knowing this was one thing they shared, the one thing he was sure he could talk to her about that he knew better than Erin.

Home hadn’t ever been comfortable for him. He’d been out of his parents’ house, boarding with strangers during his junior-hockey days by age sixteen. He’d been married before college, and then he and Erin had so much upheaval in the beginning of their marriage. They probably shouldn’t have lasted as long as they did, probably wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been away so much.

Even this apartment, the first place he’d ever lived on his own, felt temporary. He’d picked it because it was close to his old house. Danny and a couple other guys helped him move his stuff in and he’d never done another thing to make it his own. He’d been living there for almost a year before Allie moved in and he’d had to go out and buy silverware and a set of dishes so she didn’t have to eat out of take-out containers every night.

He kept planning to get some better furniture or maybe even look for someplace bigger—the apartment had two bedrooms but the living area was small and he and Allie were constantly tripping over each other. He wished he knew what Erin’s plans were after the tour ended. She hadn’t said she was staying in California, but he didn’t really see her coming back to Twin Falls. If she wanted Allie to move to California with her, where would that leave him? Would Allie want to go?

He picked up Allie’s stick and leaned it in the corner with the other five or six already balanced against the wall. If only teenage girls were as uncomplicated as a sheet of ice and a couple of nets.

TIM’S ROOM WAS DARK but Clare knocked and when he didn’t answer, she went in anyway. He was an indistinct lump under his covers and for a second she was able to fool herself that he was six again and the worst problem in his world was the possibility that Target would be out of the red Power Rangers costume and he’d have to be the blue one for Halloween.

“I’m sleeping,” he muttered. Still angry at her.

“Tim, let’s talk about this. What are you thinking?”

He sat up abruptly, his face half-lit by the streetlight outside his window. The one eye she could see was swollen almost shut, turning his familiar features grotesque. “What I’m thinking is that you keep butting in when we already talked about Allie and you’re supposed to let me handle it.”

She came into the room and sat on his bed but he pulled away, lying back down, facing the wall.

“The parameters have changed since I agreed to stay out of this situation.”

“I’m not one of your software projects, Mom. You aren’t involved. I’m handling it.”

“Tim.”

“Mom.”

“I don’t even know what it is. Why is Allie bullying you?”

“She’s not bullying me.”

“I saw what she did to you tonight.”

“That wasn’t bullying—it was a fight.” His tone implied that she was being dense on purpose, but she wasn’t. She was trying to understand.

“I don’t see the difference if the outcome is you’re hurt and she’s not.”

“Did you want me to hit her back?”

That stopped her. What exactly had she seen? Allie and Tim, rolling on the floor. Had he been defending himself? Was it still bullying if he’d chosen not to fight back? Would she have wanted him to hit the girl?

“Why can’t you explain what’s going on? Is this your idea of teenage rebellion?”

“Where do you even get this stuff, Mom? It’s not rebellion. It’s me, living my life. You always want to fix everything for me, but you have to butt out.” He pulled the covers tighter over his head. “You can make me move seven times a year, do the new-kid thing every single grade, but you can’t tell me how to be me.”

Clare sat, taken aback by his anger. She’d seen Tim “do the new-kid thing” as he put it, many times. It hadn’t ever bothered him. They moved a lot, following her software security consulting jobs around the country. She’d ridden out the bumpy beginnings often enough to know he’d decided the fastest method to make friends in a new town was to get noticed. Mostly that strategy involved acting up in class or on the school bus. Her son had a lot of energy and when he put his mind to something, he generally saw results. Half the time she’d laughed with him about his efforts to jump-start his social life.

She felt instinctively that this issue between him and Allie was different, more personal and more dangerous. If only she could be sure she was pushing him to let her help because she was a responsible parent and not because he’d closed her out for the first time.

She jostled the bed as she stood up and Tim twitched the covers even tighter. She didn’t lean down and kiss the blanket in the approximate location of his forehead. She didn’t smooth the covers across his feet, making sure they were tucked in tight at the bottom of the bed the way he liked. She didn’t even touch him gently on the shoulder or give his knee a reassuring pat. The pat would reassure her, but it would make him mad.

She waited for a second.

She knew she had issues. Her only sibling, Gretchen, had been diagnosed with a fatal neuromuscular disease at the age of ten. As soon as they’d gotten the diagnosis for Gretchen, almost before the family had processed the news, the doctors had hustled eight-year-old Clare through testing to find out if she had the same time bomb ticking inside her.

When her tests had come back negative, she’d felt such fierce relief and then horrible guilt. She and Gretchen had always shared everything and suddenly they were on opposite sides of a chasm. For the next ten years, their family had revolved around Gretchen—a desperate search for a cure, treatments meant to slow the inevitable and extend her life, gifts and wish fulfillment and last time to see this, do that, be here, and above all, worry. So many ordinary things—infection, a fall, even overexertion—were dangerous and Clare grew up hemmed in and protected right along with Gretchen. Even emotions were dangerous. How could Clare feel stifled by the caution and care that might be saving Gretchen’s life? How could she be angry about anything when she was the one who got to grow up? How could she indulge her wild side when Gretchen was so reduced?

Clare might be overprotective now, but she wasn’t an idiot. She knew damn well that the root of her worst, most instinct-driven decisions was buried deep in the screwed-up psyche born of being Gretchen Sampson’s healthy little sister.

The trouble was, being aware of her issues wasn’t always enough to help her decide if a decision was a good one or one warped by her past.

She backed toward the door, one hand pressed flat against her lips to keep from saying anything that would upset Tim further. It was hard to be silent when her every instinct was screaming at her to help him. Now. Her work in computer security was all about immediate action in the face of immediate threats. That world made sense. This wasn’t work, though, this was Tim. Immediate wasn’t the answer this time.

She flicked on the light in the hall and then pulled his door almost shut. “I love you,” she whispered, loud enough for him to hear, soft enough for her to deny he’d heard if he didn’t answer her.

“I’m not quitting hockey.” His voice was muffled by the blankets. “It’s how you fit in here.”

It was possible that the only word she hated more than hacker was hockey.

She pushed the door partway open again. “You’re going through a rough time.” She understood that much, but she couldn’t let him defy her. “That’s the only reason I let you stay on the team after you signed up behind my back. If I say you’re quitting, you’re quitting.”

Tim threw off the covers and sat up. “The reason I had to sneak behind your back is because you won’t listen to me about what I want. You drag me all over the country for your job and nothing I say matters. If I’d asked you if I could play hockey, what would you have said?”

She took a moment. She wanted to say the right thing but she also wanted to be honest. “I’d have asked why. You were happy figure skating in Baltimore. Why did you want to start hockey now?”

“’Cause,” Tim answered, his expression giving her no clues. He pressed on with the relentless teenage antagonism she was still not used to. “Then what would you have said?”

He had her and they both knew it.

“I imagine I would have said no. I have reservations about the risks of hockey, and frankly, Allie is a great example of the kind of kid who plays, the kind of kid I wanted you to avoid.”

“That’s why I didn’t ask.” He shook his head and his long hair fell straight across his forehead, making him look younger than he was. “You would have talked me out of it or talked me into something else. Hockey is mine. I like hockey. When you live in Twin Falls, you play hockey.”

“But the bullying—”

“It’s not bullying!” He flopped down and rolled up in his blankets again. “Close the door,” he said. “And turn out the light.”

Clare nodded. He couldn’t see her, but she wanted to acknowledge him, to make it seem as if they were having a conversation, not a shouting match.

She pulled the door shut, turned out the hall light and then went into her own room, fumbling until she found the light switch on the left side of the door when she’d been sure it was on the right. The new house was still unfamiliar. She hoped that would change soon.

When Tim was little, picking up stakes and moving to wherever her next freelance contract led had been exciting. She and Tim would scope out the town, making lists of things they wanted to visit, buying maps, researching on the Internet. They’d both enjoyed discovering a new place, meeting people, trying the local activities. They’d played games memorizing local landmarks so they wouldn’t get lost while they learned how to get around.

She hadn’t seen Tim’s change of heart coming until it was too late. Two years ago when he was in fifth grade, she’d accepted a longer-term contract in Baltimore. The city was terrific and they’d taken full advantage of all the attractions. She’d been having such a good time that she hadn’t even really noticed that for the first time, Tim was living somewhere long enough to put down roots. Not just the kind of roots where he knew the pitching rotation for the Orioles, but the kind of roots where he knew his way around his friends’ kitchens and got voted class president in sixth grade.

The economy tanked right when her contract was coming to a close and she’d been lucky to get this gig at a local bank in Twin Falls. Relieved to have the work, she probably hadn’t paid as much attention as she should have to Tim’s protests about having to move again. She’d been so sure his anger was temporary or a general symptom of this personality disorder known as being a teenager.

He wasn’t coming around.

He still missed his friends from Baltimore and at the same time, he was working hard to make sure they also put down roots in Twin Falls. He was digging in.

He’d tried to make her promise they wouldn’t move again until after he graduated from high school, but she couldn’t. She was on a nine-month contract here. The business economy wasn’t anywhere close to stable and, as her recent experience looking for a job had proved, she didn’t have a hope of predicting where her next contract would take them.

What a mess.

The house they were renting was bigger than their norm and her bedroom—what the Realtor had called a master suite—stretched the entire southern wall of the house. There were built-in bookcases on either side of the door. She’d brought two cartons of books up from the garage before she left for the rink, but she didn’t have the energy or the interest to unpack them now. She lifted one box onto the other and slid the stack back against the wall.

Standing at the foot of the bed, she started to undress, putting her blouse in the net bag she used to store her dry cleaning, wiping her shoes with the soft cloth she kept in her closet before sliding them into the shoe bag, choosing a set of blue-and-white striped pajamas. She picked her coat up from the end of the bed and put it on a hanger, but then reached into the pocket and pulled out the card the rink manager had given her. What was his name? Jackson. Bryan had called him Danny. She would have to remember that.

The card read “Community Mediator, Lila Sykes.” Followed by a phone number and the line, “No one should have to do this alone.”

True, Clare thought. She might be alone in this new town, but that didn’t mean she had no one to talk to. Her computer was on the desk near the window. She sat down and called up a video-phone screen for Lindsey, her best friend. The time difference from New York to Seattle meant it was early enough that Lindsey might be out at dinner, but luckily, she was home. Seeing her, so familiar, so dear, almost made Clare start crying.

“Hey!” Lindsey said. “I’ve been dying for a distraction, how did you know?”

“I wish I could say I’m psychic, but the truth is, I need advice.”

“Shoot.”

“Tim got in another fight with that girl I was telling you about. A bad one this time.”

“Is he okay?” Lindsey was Tim’s godmother and his number-one fan.

“Fine. I don’t know how, but he’s fine.”

“For God’s sake, Clare, what is wrong with that girl? Where are her parents?”

“I met her dad tonight. He…well…let’s just say he doesn’t seem to know his daughter very well.”

Lindsey held her fists up to shadow box the screen. “Say the word and I’ll come out there and teach him and his spawn some respect.”

“We’ve had enough punching around here.”

“I could egg his car, at least.”

Clare smiled for the first time in what felt like forever. Lindsey was so much more to her than a friend. They’d met the first day of kindergarten and—except for a three-month stretch in seventh grade when they’d stopped talking while they both tried to attract Gene Fisk, the first boy in their grade to hit six feet—they’d been best friends ever since. Lindsey had idolized Gretchen every bit as much as Clare had and she’d been the only one of all their friends who’d really understood what it felt like when she’d died.

Lindsey’s house had been Clare’s refuge. With four kids in the family and a rotating lineup of pets, the house had been chaotic enough that Clare was forced to be outgoing when she was there. She could finally relax and be herself.

She and Lindsey had gone to Stanford together and now her friend worked as a software test engineer in Seattle. Lindsey’s house was down the street from the one she’d grown up in, where her parents still lived. She was Clare’s emergency contact, the executor of her will and the only person who’d been at every single one of Tim’s birthday parties. After Clare’s mom died and her dad continued to grow more distant, Lindsey’s steadfast friendship had come to mean more to her every year.

Clare’s face felt hot and there were tears in her eyes. She hadn’t realized how much she wanted to talk to Lindsey about Tim’s attitude.

“How about instead you tell me what to do next?” She pushed her glasses up on her forehead to rub her eyes. “He’s really mad at me about moving him again. I understand what he’s saying, that we don’t live the same way as other people. But that’s always been okay with him. We get to see all these new places and meet people and we’re not tied down. Do you think he actually wants to settle down or could this be a phase or…I don’t know…him pushing back against me and my values?” She was talking too fast.

“Your values?” Lindsey asked. “You move all the time because of your values?”

Clare was confused by Lindsey’s surprise. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing. I guess I never realized. I’m sorry,” Lindsey said. “What I mean is I assumed you were eventually going to land somewhere, once you got to the point where you could…” Lindsey shrugged on the computer screen.

“Could what?” Clare asked.

“Relax?” Lindsey suggested.

“What does that even mean?”

“It means, for a while there, your life was a minefield. In the space of four years Gretchen died, you had Tim, you graduated from college and then your mom died. I didn’t blame you for wanting to get far away from Seattle. It made sense that you weren’t ready to really connect with anyone or build new relationships.”

“Freelancing meant I had more time for Tim,” Clare said.

“It’s been good for you.” Lindsey put one finger on the screen. “Listen, I’m not trying to fight. It’s just, I guess because you never sold the house here that I always thought you’d be back.”

“I can’t sell it, Lindsey, but I can’t come back.”

Clare’s mom had died in a car accident while driving home alone at night from a bereavement support group. Her father moved into an apartment a few years later and gave Clare the house. Tim had been about two at the time and she had briefly considered settling in Seattle, close to Lindsey and her father, but she hadn’t been able to face living in the house. Frankly, she thought her dad gave it to her because he couldn’t stand to live there or to sell it, either. Her dad was more and more withdrawn, even from Tim, so she could only guess at his feelings. She tried not to think about the place beyond making sure the taxes were paid and that when she signed with new renters they had decent references.

“I worry about you sometimes,” Lindsey said. “You have so much to offer if you ever decide to put down roots somewhere. Maybe Seattle isn’t that place, but maybe there is a place that could be home for you.” She paused. “If you’re ready for a home. Which you might not be.”

“Maybe for me, home isn’t one place, it’s a feeling. How I feel about Tim and you. Can’t that be true?”

Lindsey shrugged. “It can be. But is it? For Tim, too?”

Clare looked out the window into the dark backyard. A spotlight mounted on the house lit the snow-covered bushes. “If my son was going to lobby for a permanent address, I don’t know why he picked this one. It’s freezing cold and all anyone wants to talk about is hockey. I mean, we lived in Monterey, we were in Baltimore, we had that place with the river in the backyard in Indiana…and he’s digging his heels in over Twin Falls, New York?”

“It might not be where so much as when. He’s thirteen. I bet being the new kid is harder in middle school.”

“That’s what he said.”

“I’m not colluding with him, I swear, but I remember how tough middle school was, and it got worse every year straight through high school. Maybe he’s nervous about fitting in.”

“He doesn’t seem nervous. He seems mad.” Clare sighed. “What’s with all the maybes, anyway? You’re supposed to be telling me what to do.”

Lindsey frowned. “I should probably skip the advice and just come throw eggs. I bet I’m better at revenge than I am at sympathy.”

“If I decide vandalism is the appropriate response, you’re my first choice for second-in-command.”

“Throwing eggs is hardly ever appropriate, Clare,” Lindsey said in a prim tone. “I believe the phrase you’re looking for is ‘emotionally satisfying.’”

“Thanks, Lindsey. I’m pleased I picked an appropriately bloodthirsty godmother for Tim.”

“I got your back, my friend. Fists or eggs, whatever you need.”

LATER, AS SHE LAY ON her side, holding the extra pillow close to her chest, listening to another snowstorm tapping on her window, the fight played over and over in her mind. With everything she did to keep him safe, that mess had happened right under her nose. She heard the crack of Tim’s head on the ground, the shattering of the window, him saying, “I’m handling it.”

Tim didn’t understand yet that so much about life couldn’t be handled. You could go along the way her parents had with your two daughters and your ordinary life on a friendly street in a good neighborhood and life could still run so far off the rails you’d never find your way back.

No one could expect to handle life. Loving anyone sometimes seemed like the biggest, stupidest mistake you could make. She couldn’t un-love Lindsey or her dad, and Tim was a part of her own soul, but she could try her best to keep him safe.

That must be what all parents wanted, right?

She remembered the confusion and determination in Bryan James’s voice when he’d told her that Allie was a good kid. She wondered what he’d said to Allie once he caught up with her. Did he have the right answers? Or was his house full of the kind of empty upset that hers was?