The cuckolded go unheard under the squeals of zealots. We are saved. Turn this harlot into a queen, she made her bed and lays in it like a grave. I used to lay with her, but deicide is damnation. -Jackson Killian
Chapter Eight
I made a pot of coffee and cleared the table while Jack smoked, occasionally catching a glimpse of him through the curtain. I'd just set the final cup upside down in the dish-drain when I heard the door, and Jack was back in the kitchen, accompanied by a cloud of cool air.
I folded my dishtowel as I leaned back against the sink, watching him unload his pockets. He set his Pall Malls together with his lighter atop the microwave before slinging his jacket over the back of a chair.
With hands like manacles, cuffing first one wrist, then the other, he pushed up the sleeves of his faded gray thermal. The table wheezed softly as he rested his ass against it; his hands clasped the edge, tension causing the veins to stand out on his forearms.
I could almost feel them under my own hands, like Braille. I remembered running my palms over those paths, how they led me up over his biceps to his shoulders. I loved having the ability to touch something on the inside of him, the blood under his skin.
I let myself look a lot longer than I should have, then dropped my eyes to the soles of his shoes before lifting them up to find him watching me.
The warm light directly over his head cut contrasting bright planes and deep shadows into his face. I had the fleeting feeling, strong but gone as soon as it had come, that he'd been seeing something similar in me.
"It hurts. To look at you," he finally said, his voice a sad whisper. "You look the same. You look like my wife. But you're not. And that child—Quinn. Looks like you. Looks like me. Looks like the years you stole."
I marveled at how he managed to accuse me constantly. "Are you writing a song?"
He chuckled, a throaty hum of a laugh, and pushed back from the table with a graceful economy of motion. "No. I don't have any music in me right now. Just regrets. Come sit down, Kit. Let's talk." His fingers seemed to caress the top of his chair before they curled around the post and dragged it out.
I left the towel on the counter and slid onto the bench across from him.
We just looked at each other.
I wasn't sure how to begin—where—or what to say. The impulse to apologize kept clogging my throat, and I swallowed it down.
He found words first. "There's an acrobat living in our apartment now. With like, fifty cats."
My nose scrunched. "Really?"
He nodded and shifted in his seat, leaning a forearm on the table. "I, uh. I was sort of... forgetting you. What you looked like. Carolyn doesn't keep pictures of you."
My smile was bitter. "No. I bet she doesn't."
"You have... or, you had, all our photos. I haven't any."
I didn't say anything, trapped for a moment to ponder the difference between not having any photos, and not being able to look at the ones you did have.
"And nothing on Facebook, either, nobody has pictures of you posted."
There was only one way to interpret that. He'd been through the online accounts of our former mutual friends in pursuit of my image. But it was always my camera, my film.
I sometimes wondered after our old acquaintances. Those who hadn't "unfriended" me after Jack left were lost when I'd closed my online accounts.
"When I saw you... at the concert. Well, that doesn't matter, really. I just. I needed it. I needed to not forget you."
"I get that."
"When you weren't in Vegas..." He ran both hands through his short hair, surfacing from the motion abstracted, no longer with me.
"It was like... I knew, when I got there... I wouldn't find you."
His eyes snapped back to me with blunt appraisal, and I felt suddenly substantial under his renewed observation.
"When I talked to the pit boss, he acted as though he didn't know who you were."
"Which one?"
"Um. Shit. The one with the crooked front tooth and the ponch."
Gregor. Shrewd eyes always watching from under his thick coif of white hair. He was omnipresent, somehow seeing everything that went on front of house.
I'd get the smile ready every time I caught him approaching me, but he knew. "You don't fool me, girl. Stop looking morose or I'll have Reggie send you home without pay."
He never had, though. Usually his reminder was all I needed to play-act the rest of the way through my shift, loving everyone and everything in sight.
I was only a waitress, so Jack had been free to gamble at Caesars if he'd wished. That didn't keep Gregor from noticing—hawk-eyes or sixth sense—he always knew when spouses or siblings were in the casino.
I couldn't imagine him not remembering me, not remembering Jack.
"Gregor didn't remember me?" I asked, huffy. "Psh. I only worked there for a million years."
"Oh, he remembered you. I realized later he just didn't want to tell me anything."
That made more sense. "When were you there?"
"I guess it was about a year ago now... what?"
I'd straightened at that—a subtle, uncontrollable stiffening of my spine, and he'd noticed.
...about a year ago...
I'd spent the last sixteen hours thinking of it. Even in sleep the words had vibrated behind my closed eyes, scorched into my brain and flavoring my dreams with ash.
...revived at the scene...
I'd racked my brain about the date, yearning backwards in time for some notion of where I'd been that day, what I'd been doing while Jack was overdosing. If I'd had any gut-feelings or women's intuition—anything—any emotional hint about what Jack was going through.
My eyes traced a line of wood-grain on the table—one that led away from him. I tucked my hair behind my ears and felt my lips purse, recognizing all my tells as I did them, as I displayed my thoughts against my will. I felt my lip between my teeth and removed it.
Despite the years that separated us, Jack still knew how to read me. As I did him.
He had his own tells. Something in the way his brows came down over narrowed eyes. The slow close of his lids and exasperated flick of his eyes sideward as he studied me.
The swerve of his jaw before he actually opened his mouth to speak.
"You shouldn't believe everything you read."
A quiet burble emanated from across the room–the coffee pot whispering the end of its cycle. I glanced over at it, the carafe opaque in its shadowed nook. Jack was nodding infinitesimally when I looked back at him, and I got up without a word.
I didn't see what I was doing, vision blurred by the charge of Jack's eyes on my back. I was abnormally aware of the muscles in my arm as I raised my hand to open the cabinet. The coffee pot was absurdly heavy, and I gripped it tight as I poured, feeling its weight in my shoulder and neck.
The ice cube I dropped into Jack's mug left my fingers cold and the radiant heat of my cup contrasted sharply with the chill.
I set his cup on the table in front of him, but he didn't touch it. I sat down, the bench harder underneath me than before. I sipped from my mug, excusing my eyes for a moment to get my bearings.
It was uncomfortable. The cup felt awkward in my hand and hot against my mouth. I lowered it to the table—the whole action overt, deliberately evasive. I moved under the pressure of an invisible spotlight, and that made it even harder to look at him.
I licked my lips and lifted my gaze.
He raised his eyebrows, as if to say: Are you ready now?
I opened my mouth, could hear air becoming breath in my lungs. But I couldn't speak. I had no idea what I had intended to say.
"Go ahead and ask."
"Why don't you just tell me what happened."
He spun his cup around so he could see the image on the other side. It was a MRAH mug and it was covered in baby animals. "I'm not going to do that. It's not your business."
"You told me to ask."
"Answering a few questions is a whole lot different from me giving you a monologue about the last five years of my life."
But that's what I want.
As if I'd spoken aloud, he pushed his cup back and leaned on his forearms, giving me a cordial, interested look. It was blatantly fake, condescension singing in his shaded eyes. "Okay. Why don't you start then. Fill me in on what you've been up to. As if... as if I was just some school chum, some casual acquaintance. Tell me about your divorce, Katie." —He emphasized the name: Kay-tee, and my lip curled in annoyance. "Tell me about your drinking problem, and your restless nights– "
"Enough, Jack."
This was going downhill fast, faster than I thought.
We glared at each other. And in the tension I found my tongue.
"What did you overdose on?"
He turned his face towards the window. "Yeah, all right." He looked back at me, an unfeeling humor hardening his features. "Pills mostly. Contraindicated by our mutual friend Jim Beam. Nice of you to inquire, by the way. The card you sent was lovely."
I answered his sarcasm with my own. "Glad you enjoyed it."
"Nothing says, 'I could give a shite' like complete silence. A much appreciated sentiment from you."
I thought of Jack being held on a code 5150—a mandatory 72 hour psychiatric hold—as cards and flowers and balloons showed up in his hospital room. Him declining calls to send well-wishers directly to voicemail. Had he been hoping for my number to pop up? Had he been looking for my signature on some sympathetic yet optimistic Hallmark card?
This too shall pass.
Keep your chin up.
It hadn't occurred to me last night that he could have been living the last year of his life thinking I knew about this. Knew about it, and didn't care.
I swallowed. The sound was very loud. "You told me... not to contact you– "
Jack flared, tripping over his own words as they left his mouth in an almost incoherent slur of temper. "And you've always been such a biddable miss? My ass, Kit. You do what the fuck you like and you know it. Fucking stubborn, you are–"
I held up a hand, determined despite my thundering heart, but words still poured from him in a jumble.
"—single-minded bitch, only concerned with your way, your world, and my staying clear, staying away from you. Anything we had, anything I meant to you, you just killed it... didn't you? You just set your mind and buried me alive..."
He was tumbling into lyrics, just like always. Only hearing himself.
When he paused to breathe, I asked, "Do you want a pen to write all that down?"
He sneered. "Fuck you, Kit."
I got up and refilled my cup, leaving him to simmer in his chair. I brought the pot to the table, but he covered his mug with his hand and shook his head. I put it back on the burner and flipped the switch, the red glow dying under the plastic.
"I didn't know. I don't know what I would have done if I had... but I didn't.
It was plain by his expression that he didn't believe me, and I realized in that instant—I was devoid of sympathy or concern. A drained apathy had stolen into my heart; I felt nothing.
It was brief, but for a blessed second I was over it. Done with Jack and his constant attitude. Done grieving for this man, this effigy of my husband.
Let him try me, I thought. Let him just try.
I felt powerful; something I hadn't felt in a long time. Emotions really do make you weak.
"You know, Jack... have you ever... have you ever tried to look at this whole mess from my perspective?"
He still looked angry, but also expectant.
"You've made it very clear that you hate me for what I did. Both then, and now. But... I don't hate you. I know it doesn't change anything. But I did... what I did... for you." It was matter-of-fact; it was easy.
He didn't say anything, but some of the hostility was fading from his face.
"And for me, too. I can look back now and say... you were right, that night. In Vegas. I wasn't happy. Your unhappiness was bleeding into every part of me. But—I could have gone on that way. Tolerating it. Indefinitely."
The table suddenly seemed very long, with Jack on the other side of it, finally listening. Finally hearing me. It was apparent in the tilt of his head, the pained compression of his mouth, the furrow of his brow. His eyes looked brown under the soft yellow light and then they disappeared as his lids closed.
"Anyway... my point is that... that night. Do you remember when you told me to stay away from you?"
Eyes still closed, he gave a small jerk of the head that I interpreted as a nod.
"That night, the things that happened between us... it wasn't what I wanted. When you said... 'never contact me again, and I mean never.'" I imitated his anger and tone in a cartoonish way, and caught the slightest upward tilt at the corners of his mouth before it vanished.
"I just couldn't imagine never. That morning... when you were just gone... it was like you'd died. Never... is such a permanent thing."
It was like I was talking about someone else's mistakes, seeing them from some superior position. I could look down on me and say yeah, she fucked up bad. But who cares.
Who really cares.
"Anyway." I tucked my hair again; feeling the thick weight of it come free almost as soon as my hands moved. "I went to extremes to honor that request."
My cards were coming down, and I scrambled to hold onto my detachment, even as I felt it oozing away from me. "You want to hear about my addiction problem?"
Our eyes met and I gave a self-deprecatory chuckle. "You want to know how my recovery goes? I make the choice... every day... not to look you up. Not to start a new Facebook. I won't use today. Every day. Somehow, I think you know what I mean."
He avoided my eyes—an admission in itself. I went on, discomforted by his aloofness, but not deterred. "And then last night is when I found out about... you... dying."
He rolled his eyes, finally surrendering them to me. "I didn't die. I– "
I held up my hand. "Not my business," I said, coldly.
He looked abashed, and shook his head. Again, letting the gesture go on a long time. But when he spoke he had the softer tone, the gentle care of the man I loved.
"Never. Never is a permanent thing. I've felt it too. A lot has changed for me... since we've been divorced. Some things are better, that's true enough. But many things are worse."
He sighed. A long slow inhale, a short sharp exhale.
I had the strangest notion that we'd never really known each other. I'd striven my whole life to be one with this man when such a thing isn't possible.
As close as two people can be, there's always skin and self-conscious bullshit separating you. You can never truly taste their mind, breathe their fear, consume their motion and survive on their soul. You have to satisfy yourself with the external waste, the outside. The mask. That infernal fucking mask. You work to get behind it, to get in—–to let them in, but it's only ever a room within a room within an unknown universe, too vast and mysterious to truly be discovered.
It should've been me I'd embraced.
I sat with a stranger. A stranger whose face I knew.
"It was a really bad time for me. My anger at you... had left me. Left me just... lost. I needed... I needed to not forget you... but no one knew where you were."
"I didn't tell anyone where I was going."
He leaned forward, putting folded arms back on the tabletop. "But you told Carolyn."
I sighed. "Well. I didn't tell her. I mailed her a letter."
"Sent her some photos too? Of Quinn?"
I nodded and gave him a quizzical look.
"Saw one. In a drawer when I was looking for the spectacle repair kit." He smiled a bit. "I thought it was me. But. I didn't look too closely."
Well. At least she didn't just pitch them into the trash can. "Why didn't she tell you, Jack? Did you ask her?"
"I did. You know how she is– "
"I don't. Her telling you... It was the only reason I told her."
"She's... protective."
I snorted. Manipulative, more like. "So that's what you call it when she lies to you for your own good, but not when I do it? Protective?"
I could hear my watch ticking. I looked at his forearms again; my eyes drawn to the veins burrowed under his skin. Just under. Under my hands but untouchable.
"Is that what you thought you were doing, Kit? Really?" His eyes were beseeching, puzzled. The vulnerability there melted my austerity.
Jack was Jack.
And I was Kit.
It was an epiphany—why the name hurt so much. It was as if it was the name of my true self, a secret me that only I knew. Someone only Jack knew. I was damned because I'd never known Jack's secret name, and I'd never stopped loving him. Stranger though he might be.
"I told you as much."
"You said you did it because I hated my life?"
We just looked at each other, the kitchen still around us, and I wondered if Jack felt even half the remorse I did.
"Do you know what it's like... to feel... like the person you love is unhappy? There's nothing you can do about it. Nothing you can do to change it. And you know... sometimes you can reason that it's their problem. I told myself that. That you were unhappy with you, not me. But sometimes you can't. I was part of the problem. I allowed you to be complacent. I wanted nothing more from you than you. I was okay, happy even, with the simplicity of our lives. With you just being... average. But you needed more from yourself."
The words tasted like freedom; I hadn't realized how much I'd needed to explain myself. Not to anyone but Jack. He was the only one I needed to hear this.
"After. After Evan, you were driven– "
"By rage."
I shrugged. "You certainly weren't driven by love."
He pulled his hands into his lap, popping a knuckle. "I've always been driven by love."
"Maybe. But it didn't seem that way to me. I don't think it was love that motivated you to set me up with your roadie."
"No," he agreed with a grimace. "More like. Blind stupid fury."
"That was very... strange, Jack. You know that?"
He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat, as I had a moment ago. "I wanted to hurt you."
He clenched his hands into fists, further exaggerating the veins in his arms. "I wanted to punch you in the face for what you'd done. When I saw you. That morning in Tahoe, when I saw you trying to get off the floor, I wanted to stomp you down and grind the heel of my boot into your back until something broke. How dare you. You were mine, not just because of me, because of us... I'd never felt that way about anything, anyone. Not like that."
The scene played out in my mind, not as it had happened, but as Jack described it. Instead of mute resignation, I saw him furious, waking Evan with his fists and leaving me crippled by his rage.
"I didn't know I could feel that way. I'm not... a jealous man. Or I didn't think I was... I guess I'd just never had real cause to be. Because that day, I wanted to do murder."
The memory of that morning was hazy for me, the day following reduced to a few pictures and feelings my mind had clung to. Jack standing stupefied in the doorway, his duffel slung over one shoulder.
"What the fuck," he'd said, the bag hitting the ground.
When I'd finally gotten my feet under me, the room still spinning but Jack standing square in the center of it—I'd already made my decision. The stupidest decision I'd ever made.
"When I found out. When Evan... with that daft look on his face, had denied it. Denied fucking my wife. I don't know. I knew he wasn't lying. I knew you were."
Jack looked at me, a subtle torment in his eyes. "I realized, you'd never outright admitted anything."
I hadn't. I'd played politic; giving ambiguous answers and letting him hear what he wanted. Himself, mostly.
"I thought at first you'd done it to punish me. Playing some kind of game..."
His hand went through his hair, and I had another moment of deep understanding. Fleeting but forceful. I understood what it was like to be Jack living in that time after we separated. Fueled by a fuck-you fury that pushed him through heartache and desolation. Blind ferocity that propelled him into a studio somewhere, into the arms of women he didn't want. I saw it; I knew it. I felt it, so intense, and was able to recognize it for what it was.
Being inside of him.
"That might be true, Jack. I honestly... don't remember how I came to the decision that morning to... mislead you. Maybe I did want to hurt you."
"Did you plan that whole charade?"
I'd started to sip my coffee and his question caused me to choke on it. I coughed.
"Do you need me to hit you? Hard?" Jack asked, smiling. "Because I will."
I smiled too, my eyes watering. "Um... no. I think I'm okay. Wrong pipe."
I pushed my cup away. "Evan didn't tell you what happened?"
Jack's smile died, the sun sinking behind it's perpetual cloud. "Uh, yeah. He uh... said that you drank too much. You and his sister?"
I nodded. "I don't remember much from that night. But I do remember being in a shower with Sara. She threw up on my dress. Or I did. We were both pretty messed up."
"Lovely."
"Maybe I did just drink too much. But at the time I thought maybe... well. A lot of our drinks were bought for us, brought to us. By people we didn't know."
"Kit. You know better than that."
His chastising almost felt like he cared, and I shrugged, not wanting to be melodramatic. "People do stupid things... sometimes." I'd meant to say when they're unhappy, but the last minute detour was better.
He knew what I meant, though. He heard the words I hadn't said, and I could see him thinking of that night in Vegas. I acknowledged it with a little nod. As if to say, you and me both.
"I think... I think I was crazy then. Like, really cracked. I've thought about it and my reasoning just seems absurd to me now. But then, Kit... I mean. It made perfect sense at the time."
His lip quirked up on one side, a disgusted humor that resonated with me, too.
"I just... I had to make it true, I had to make you not a liar. I needed you to transgress, because I felt like such a fool. For believing you. It was so obvious, the lie. I'd have seen it if I'd just slowed down to look. But I didn't. And it railroaded me."
"I'm sorry, Jack. You have to know how much I wish I could take it back– "
"But you can't." His voice harsh, decisive. Honest.
"No. I can't."
"And you can't take back all the ways I betrayed you, after you betrayed me. I have to live with that. I hate it. Do you understand me, Kit?"
His face was so earnest, like he really needed me to get it. I thought I could almost understand, but the emotion distorting his features was crippling me. The bone deep comprehension I had of him a moment ago had gone, leaving me answering his imploring face with an open mouth and furrowed brow. Again I sucked in the air I needed to make words, but all I did was craft short little sighs that wouldn't be more. I closed my mouth, just shaking my head.
"The way I left. I left you. For nothing."
The statement was terrible between us. Filled with all the ways we hated each other.
He had left—not taking anything but the clothes he wore, his wallet, and his truck.
He hadn't even taken his wedding ring—I'd found the white gold circlet glimmering against the black side table by the door. I'd not seen him remove it, but I'd imagined it a million times. Him twisting it off and setting it down, the curtain dropping on the closing act of our marriage.
I thought he might come back for his other stuff at least, if not for me. But he never did. He just left it all.
I'd eventually bagged and boxed up most of it, thinking I could ship it somehow. I'd emailed him for his address, fantasized about him showing up on our doorstep wanting notebooks or clothes. My heart would hammer into hysterics any time someone knocked at my door—but it was always Bernice who lived across the hall, wondering if I'd gotten her newspaper.
It was never Jack.
Finally I'd completed the divorce paperwork online, using his mother's address and copying him via email.
"You don't know Kit. You can't understand... what it's like. When a man. Loves. How and what that means. You just, you just can't. Women are emotional. Men feel."
He said it like that should be enough of an explanation, but it wasn't. I needed more than that. "What do you mean?
Jack's mouth was a grim line—determined to stay silent. In another life I might have dropped it; there at that kitchen table I wouldn't. More than anything I needed that peek into his brain.
But he got out of answering it anyway.
Jack heard it first, his eyes darting in the direction of the mudroom. The pressure in the house shifted as a muted triple tap knocked the door, then it swung open.
Devin stood in the doorway, his hair slick from the rain and drawn back behind his ears. Cold air swirled in with him, the temperature in the room plummeted.
His eyes found mine and moved to Jack.
Time and reality seemed to alter and I could see us—Jack and I—from Devin's perspective. Only briefly, a split second out of my body.
I sat, my shoulders curled in. I could feel it as I observed myself, though I hadn't been aware of it a moment before. A guarded posture, my hands cupped around my coffee mug, head bent with eyes staring at Devin. I carried shame in those eyes. In that posture. I could feel it all through me, not just in that instant. But every day, shouldering so much guilt it impacted me physically.
The shadows around my eyes that I ignored every time I looked in the mirror shouted to him from my face, maybe made deeper and darker by the previous night's emotional excursion into This Life not Right. I'd fallen asleep on the couch, exhausted from emotional overload; the melancholy music creeping into my dreams and keeping me from reaching the full depth of sleep.
Aware all night, of Jack.
I looked like someone I never wanted to be. I looked like my mother before she died. Younger, certainly, but with a weary resignation like gravity, pulling me down.
And Jack, across from me, frozen in this photograph with annoyed hostility marking his face. The cords of his twisted neck popped through his flesh. His brow, a prominent ridge over rueful eyes, lips pressed thin. The bones of his face stood out despite the stubble scruffing his cheeks and chin. I noticed the glint of silver in his new beard and at his temples, just a few strands, but shining bright under the cast of yellow light.
Was it his obvious look of aggression that squared Devin's shoulders? Or just the fact of his presence? Devin had never let himself into my house to find a man. Not once.
He straightened from his normal slouch. It propelled me back into myself, and, as though someone else turned my wrist as I settled back in, I glanced at my watch.
It was early.
Devin saw it and spoke before I asked.
"Lock-down," he said simply. This wasn't the first time the high school had been on lock-down. The last time there had a been about a million sirens racing towards my house from all directions, and Devin hadn't appeared until hours later. He'd been kept in a locked classroom for three hours as the campus was combed for a threat that was never found. Kids had been released 45 minutes past late bell and I'd wondered, if I were a parent of a student, would I have been notified.
I stood; for some reason feeling like I needed to lay hands on him and assure myself that he was fine. "So they let you out early?"
"I was under the bleachers when I got the text, so I decided to check out."
My voice cracked. "Do... do you know what's going on?"
He shook his head. "Probably a gun. That's what it usually is."
I felt fear, not only for Devin, but for Quinn too. Did a safe school exist anymore? Jack's eyes were like a physical touch and I wondered if he realized what I was thinking; if he felt it himself, or if being a parent was so new an experience for him that the cold hand squeezing my stomach ignored him.
"Do you have homework?" I asked, not sure why. I held my hand out and he slid out of his backpack and handed it to me. He was okay and I had his backpack to prove it.
"You look familiar," Devin said, jerking his chin towards Jack.
Jack Killian wasn't really Devin's type of music; at least, I didn't think so.
Still looking at me, Jack spoke. His voice a bit deeper than it had been a moment ago. "Yeah, I get that a lot."
Devin answered with a scoff, and again I was seeing us through his eyes. I was hearing the derisive ego in Jack's voice, and I knew for sure that if Devin wasn't here I would've heard something different. Disinterest, maybe.
"You get that a lot? What kind of answer is that?" The tone of his voice too had changed; no longer the shy, soft-spoken boy I knew, but snide with a hint of rebelliousness. I could see him back-talking teachers or parents, instigating others with a sharpened tongue.
Devin turned to me then, gesturing at Jack. What he said was, "Who is this guy, Katie?"
But it sounded like: Why is this douchebag in your house?
"Devin, this is Jack... Jack Killian."
Devin stared at me, a perplexed look marking his features. I tried to remember if Devin had ever had reason to know Quinn's last name—he must've seen it on the paperwork yesterday—and realized the look to be false when he pointedly turned to Jack and said, "Who?"
It reminded me of the tumblr site I'd been to the night before: Jack cavalier; dismissing the whole human value of a personal relationship by not acknowledging the other participant in any way. Devin knew who Jack was, but what he was saying to Jack in so many words was: You're irrelevant.
In that word—that single word—was a world of accusation. Where have you been?
Devin tipped his head back, looking down his nose at Jack, and I wondered where he learned such an adult expression of disgust. Then he nodded. "That's why you look familiar. You're Quinn's father."
Jack's response was the twitch of an eyebrow, communicating in his own economical way: I am, and who the fuck are you.
"What are you doing here?" This isn't your place.
"I'm here to see my son." None of your fucking business.
Devin wasn't wearing a jacket, just a baggy olive sweater over a blue flannel. I saw Jack look at Devin's hands, the thumbs sticking out from fraying holes in the material. A line appeared in his forehead, right between the brows, and he looked at me.
I felt like he knew everything about me right then. That I could never hide from him—which wasn't true, but his scrutiny still seemed to skin me, showing him my insides. My glossy guilty guts, all out and on display.
He turned his attention back to Devin, exploring his face with a new, curious expression. I looked too, and found the boy I knew entirely gone, a man in his place.
Devin's tone was low, menacing. "You show up here... out of nowhere, with a court order..."
I recalled Devin, just yesterday saying, "Who does this guy think he is?" Real anger on his face and worry warping his tone.
It seemed that his aim was to find out.
Devin's teeth weren't bared; there was no fur standing up on his neck—but what I saw, vividly, was a wolf getting ready to strike. I understood how the sweet boy I knew could elicit the wrath of a whole pack full of angry teenagers. I recalled the teacher comments on his most recent report card despite his 3.70 GPA:
Obstinate attitude in class.
Behavior needs improvement.
"... sending over a fifty/fifty custody order... hiding behind the government like a coward..."
I knew then that Devin could fight with no mercy, that his words could cut people down to nothing. I'd just never seen it.
Jack leaned back in his chair, looking fatigued. Almost forty, he looked it, especially in contrast with Devin—unlined and animated. "You don't know the history– "
Devin's interruption was quiet, but emphatic. "I don't need to know the history," he sneered softly. "I know Katie."
Jack was getting annoyed; a quick glance my direction showed me how ridiculous he thought this whole conversation was. "You don't know shit."
"Hey– " I started, wanting to shut this down.
"I know you abandoned a woman and a child, for what? You've enough balls to start something but not finish it? There's a term for that. It's called a deadbeat dad."
Devin was making a lot of assumptions, some of which were wrong, but Jack did have problems finishing things he started, and he knew it.
I could see red flushing up his neck, not embarrassment. Temper. Devin almost looked satisfied, and I wondered further at the perplexing nature of teenagers. Did he want a fight? Did he think I wanted one?
"You need to get your facts straight about who abandoned who."
I tried again. "Dev, look– "
"Aw, did big, bad Katie keep you from sending a check?"
"First time I knew Quinn existed was less than a week ago, so you tell me. How do I abandon a person I've no earthly notion exists?"
I didn't know what I expected from Devin then, for him to turn accusing eyes on me maybe, because what did happen surprised me. More because it was so intuitive, like he knew where Jack kept and nurtured his guilt.
"Like an ostrich with his head in a hole." He had the brazen recklessness of youth, hot anger with no restraint. Jack was the opposite. I could see him, cold, calculating, biting his tongue.
"Look, kid. Whatever you think you know, you don't. Does he, Kit?"
I cleared my throat, the feeling of discomfort multiplying. How was I to explain anything sufficiently under such circumstances?
I sighed and shook my head. "No. I'm the bad guy here."
"And the fucking martyr too, apparently." Jack stood, and I held my hands up in a gesture of I don't know what you want from me.
Jack was tall, or he had always seemed to be, standing a bit over six feet. But he wasn't big; a lean man with wiry muscle, narrow through the hip, torso widening in a V shape to cut shoulders. The whipcord build of a rockstar.
Devin shifted, coming to stand in front of me as Jack gained his feet. Just as tall, he'd filled out since I'd first met him. Accustomed as I was to seeing him so often, I hadn't really noticed the breadth of his body.
Jack regarded me; looking from my face to Devin's, pointedly observing Devin's stance in front of me and the bewildered expression on my face. He snatched his pack of cigarettes from the microwave cart at his back. "Kit - we'll continue this later."
As Jack left, I heard Devin singing softly. "Brave, brave, brave, brave, Siiiir Robiiin."
I tried not to smile, but the gleam in Devin's eyes was too much. "Bravely ran away?"
The engine of the Town Car turned over, grumbled low and then whined as the car backed out of the driveway.
"I guess he's a hider too. Hiding behind his music."
I was surprised. For the millionth time that day. "You know who that is?"
"Of course. It's Jack Killian... Para Pacem?"
I nodded. "Didn't think you listened to shit like that."
"I don't. Some girls I know do, though. And he was on a list Guitar magazine did a couple months ago about the most underrated guitarists making music in the modern era."
My brow arched.
"Most of the article was bullshit. Jack White was on it. The dude isn't underrated."
I smiled and Devin did too. Jack White should be canonized as far as Devin was concerned.
"Couldn't he be so great, that any amount of acclaim would still be an underrating?"
Devin shrugged. "It was still a bullshit list."
He gave me a half smile and I returned it.
"You don't seem like a hider anymore, Dev."
"You have to hide when you have half a dozen gangbangers chasing you. Either that, or get the crap beat out of you. Or worse."
Devin was himself again, shoulders slouched, smile warm.
"I'm kind of blown away by your nerve. It's a wonder we ever met."
He huffed. "I'm not afraid of a pus—Sorry... a um... pansy, like Jack Killian. He makes music for women, for Christ's sake. Besides, I've got like thirty pounds on him."
I shook my head, but it was with amusement. Devin pulled out the chair Jack had vacated and sat in it, eyeing the remnant of coffee in the bottom of the blue mug. "Sorry I scared him off though. I mean, if you guys were... you know, making progress or whatever."
He didn't seem like he felt sorry. More, proud.
"It's okay." And it was. Jack and I had been in the middle of something important, and I was sorry to lose the momentum of it. Sorry to lose the strange exhilaration I still felt being in Jack's company. But more important was my need for Devin to understand his own role in my life.
Jack was Quinn's father. But Devin was my friend, a pseudo-son, and I wanted him to never fear my deserting him the way other women had.
Jack didn't need me, didn't need my constancy. Didn't need me to trust him, nor did he trust me. But Devin did need those things. Even if he would never admit it.
I plucked Jack's coffee mug from the table and set it in the sink. "Can I get a cup of that?"
I poured him one and pulled the creamer from the fridge, setting it at his elbow. He glanced up at the wall-clock. "You work tonight still, yeah?"
"Yeah. I've got a couple hours though."
"Do you want me to... do you want me to stay here tonight? With Jeanie, in case he comes back?"
Devin would sometimes stay; often because he didn't want to go home, other times because I think he had a crush on Jeanie, and because it wasn't an unusual occurrence, I agreed. "Sure."
I sat down across from him. "But... it's okay, Dev. Jack wouldn't hurt– "
"Yeah. But he might come back, looking for you, right? I think I should be here."
Devin poured some cream in his coffee and then twisted in his seat, looking around expectantly.
"Sugar?"
"Yeah. Oh, I see it." He slid his chair back and grabbed the sugar caddy from the counter. Sitting back down, he dumped a big spoonful into his coffee and stirred.
"So... I don't suppose you want to talk about it?" He said to his coffee before raising his eyes to look at me.
I didn't. But for the first time, I felt like I could.
My coffee had long since gone cold, but I drank it anyway. "I don't really know where to start," I said, after setting my cup back down.
"Begin at the beginning, as the king said to the white rabbit."
Our eyes met, and I saw the crinkle I felt in mine reflected in his, his dark lashes tangling at the corners.
So I did. It didn't take long. Even with Devin interrupting with questions it only took about ten minutes to explain the pertinent stuff. I told him briefly about meeting Jack in Tahoe and our marrying in Vegas. I didn't talk about the details of our relationship, summing up by simply describing Jack and his depression. I gave the shortest account I could of the confrontation in the Harrah's hotel room—where I was found in a compromising position—and watched Devin's face carefully, looking for any sign of judgment.
"Lying by omission, Katie," he said, echoing my description of the course of events that caused Jack to leave me, "is not the same as outright lying. He should have known– "
"You don't have to take my side, Dev. I don't even take my side."
He pushed his hair back with his huge hands before holding them out, palms up. "I'm not. I'm just saying... it's different."
"If someone did that to you... would you feel betrayed?"
He considered, really considered, and for that I loved him all the more.
"Yes," he said finally. "But I wouldn't just leave."
No. He wouldn't. Because he'd been left, maybe. Or maybe it was his youthful perspective. Though wise, there were some things he just hadn't experienced yet.
"Well... he probably wanted the excuse to escape. That's what I thought, anyway."
"But... he must have come back, because..." His shoulder lifted in a half shrug. "Quinn."
This was where I really wanted to make a long story short. "He did... He'd found out... about the lie and, well, I don't know if he came back to Vegas just to confront me, or if he just happened to be passing through, but he did. And...that was when..." I trailed off, embarrassed and unsure of how to sum up that escapade.
"For old time's sake?" Devin asked. Not embarrassed.
I met his eye. "Something like that."
He nodded, contemplative. "Sounds like a soap opera."
"Yeah," I agreed.
Devin drank from his cup. He set it down with a thunk and said, "I don't like him."
"I noticed."