Page 44 of Running Scared
Ed practically bounced on his toes.“Now I wasn’t a contractor,” he said, “but I can hold a hammer and a wrench.I wouldlovea good project.”He gave the pool a dark look.“And my youngest appears to have some time on his hands.Now it gets too hot to work out here much past one, but if we make a list of projects today, you and I could meet in the kitchen early tomorrow and do some damage.”
“Absolutely!”Connor stood and patted his thigh absently so Cathy would follow him, and together they ambled past the swimming pool and toward the small structure in the corner of the backyard, beyond the garden.
“Well, bless him,” Julie said, smiling at them in bemusement.“Ed has beendyingfor a new project.”She turned her beaming face toward Bailey.“Your father has just made my Christmas card list.”
Bailey gave her a quiet smile.“He’ll love staying out here for a bit,” he confessed.“His neighborhood is getting a bit… suburbanated is how he puts it.Too many houses, not enough sidewalks.He used to be able to walk Cathy by keeping her by his heels, but now he’s got to put a lead on her, and whileshe’sa good girl, you can see it pains him.”
“Well, as long as he doesn’t take up partying or playing loud classical music at midnight, he’s welcome to stay as long as he likes.”
Bailey hated to bring this up, but staring at the chain link fence around the property, the Victory garden, the battered picnic table, the cottage with the peeling paint, he felt like he had to.“Are you sure you wouldn’t like us to pay rent of some sort, ma’am?”he asked uncertainly.“We hate to be a burden—”
She waved her hand in dismissal.“Of course not,” she said.“Now if either one of you cares to make dinner or spring for groceries, Ed and I wouldn’t say no.But if all you’re doing is drinking my soda and eating PB&J, well, that’s no more or less than the kids and their friends have been doing since Val got old enough to bring Vinnie home for Friday night scramble.”
Bailey remembered Vinnie, but he hadn’t realized the friendship had been thick enough to harken back to middle-school days.“I’ve met Vinnie,” he said, “but what’s Friday night scramble?”
She cackled.“Well, I worked at the local IGA—it’s a chain store now, but for thirty years, we’d comb the shelves on Thursday nights for the expired food.Some of it we gave to the local seniors clubs, and some of it went to the food shelters, but the owner knew me and knew I had, in his words,dozensof kids floating around the house.My kids were always good at bringing home their friends, mind you, and then word got out, and they’d bring home the kids who maybe didn’t get fed all the time at home.So the kids would come over on Friday night—usually we’d have at least twenty, counting mine—and I’d have frozen pizza after frozen pizza cooking in the oven, and everything from Pop-Tarts to chips to canned fruit or applesauce or Little Debbie and cookies on the kitchen table, and bags full of canned goods, soup, and such.And the kids would eat and play games down in the basement—or later in the little cottage—and when it was over, they were invited to bring home a bag of food for their folks.”She gave a happy little sigh then.“It’s been a while since we’ve had a houseful, but even grown, my kids still invite their friends over on Friday nights.There’s always a combination here.Even Prock, who brings his little girls, or Laure, who brings the boys.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of work, ma’am,” he said respectfully, and again, that casual wave of the hand.
“Nonsense.Do you think I’ve had to do dishes or clean up on a Friday night even once in the last thirty years?”She laughed heartily.“No.It… it’s a good sound when people are enjoying your hospitality.It’s a good feeling when your kids think of your home as a safe space.”Her expression grew sober.“We… I mean, I have no idea how so many of our children ended up on the rainbow side of things, but so many of their friends didn’t have homes like ours.”
“Where everybody was loved?”Bailey asked, not wanting to get into politics.
“Not just the queer kids, either,” Julie said baldly.“So many kids who… I don’t know.I always assumed that I was simple.I couldn’t see a thing wrong with them.They seemed like perfectly nice young people tome,but folks get strange when their kids get older.Let’s just say we had a number of kids staying in our basement or in the cottage until Ed and I felt okay about letting that kid go home.”
Bailey felt his eyes burn, and he swallowed.“My charge nurse,” he said gruffly.“At the hospital.She… she brings fudge and homemade teddy bears and kid’s sweaters into the ER.It’s like the one night a week she doesn’t spend at home, she spends with friends who make these things, and she says the same thing.That she’s simple and can’t think of a thing to do on her off hours besides make things for the people who end up coming into the hospital on their worst days.I don’t think it’s being simple at all,” he said after a moment.“I think it’s knowing thatkindnessis simple.Putting rules on it, caveats, conditions—that’s when things get complicated.”
“I’m not smart enough for complicated,” she said with a laugh.“Neither is Ed.Not destined for greatness, either one of us.But our children….”She glanced over at the young men at the pool.“That’s why the names, you know.”
Bailey blinked.“What about the names?”He tried to remember if Dean had mentioned anything about his name during that quiet revelation the day before.
Julie’s gurgle of laughter should have been a warning, but it wasn’t, not even a little bit.By the time the two dads (as he now thought of them) returned from the cottage, all flushed and excited with a list of supplies they’d need to get that afternoon to start work in the morning, Bailey knew so much more about Dean and the close network of siblings who’d been blessed—and cursed—with names from lives few of them had been destined to lead.
Except for Dean and Chance, Bailey thought, casting an aching glance at the pool, where Reg had peaced out and was stretched in the shade with a paperback book while Anthony continued to do laps and Chance napped in the sun, golden and unimpeachable.
So many sacrifices, so much dreaming and hope, so many “simple” choices to create a generation of children who would continue to put good into the world, continue to be each other’s ride or die, continue to hope and dream andlearnand aspire and try.
Bailey wanted so badly to talk to Dean then, to tell him that helovedhis name, and his siblings’ names, and that he wanted in—in on a family that would provide hope and food and kindness to an entire town full of children, in on two parents who couldn’t afford their own education, or even a lot of money for their children, but who wanted their kids to feel like they could aspire to be anything they wanted, in on the entire Royal family.
Bailey’s father was right—he and Dean weren’t at the accepting place yet, but they couldn’t get there until Bailey saw him again and told him…everything.From loving Emmett to grieving him, from meeting Dean to the scary L-word that Bailey had been thinking in his head, in his heart, forweeksabout Stanford Dean Royal, but hadn’t had a chance to talk to Dean himself about.
It was now more than forty hours since Dean had pushed Bailey out of an airplane, and Bailey was half crazy with the inclination to go flying back over the desert and jump out again, all so he could talk to the man he loved, so the two of them could go about forging their own place together in the world, so Bailey could be part of this family too.
Gin
“YOU DOnot have gin,” Dean told Marcus, his eyes half closed, his cards resting on his chest.
“I do too,” Marcus said.
“You do not.You would have needed a book of kings and one of threes, and since I have the last king and the last three in my hand, you either didn’t count right, or you pulled them from another deck.”He scowled at Marcus grumpily from under his lashes.“I could have been sleeping if you were going to cheat.”
Marcus grunted.“I wasbored,” he confessed.“And losing.I wanted to see how alert you were.”
“How alert was I?”Dean asked, wondering if he should wrap his scarf around his face again and just give it up and sleep.The heat was making him somnolent—but the boredom was making them both itchy.
“You can still keep track of a deck with your eyes closed,” Marcus said in disgust, throwing down his cards.Casually, he leaned back and took a gander through their vent to the outside world and saw the usual stand of nothing.Birdie had been gone for about sixteen hours, and if the compound got supplieseveryday, those trucks should be back soon, although that didn’t meanBirdiewould be.Either way it was late, late afternoon, and the heat was unbearable under the shade of the parachute and unlivable outside of it.They’d been on uncomfortable stakeouts before, but the tension of knowing what they had planned at the end ofthisone was making them both fratricidal.
Dean didn’t deign to answer, and the ensuing silence sat thickly on the two of them.So thickly, in fact, it was almost like a noise.
