Oh, yeah. She’d seen the guy. A muscle-bound, Harley-riding guy with an intimidating stare, and most likely an IQ lower than he could bench-press. Starting on her own salad, Harper told herself to relax. She was sure he wasn’t dangerous. The Riviera Enclave was an exclusive gated community and the Lowensteins were vigilant in their screening. Added to that, the longest they ever sublet was a month. So the man might be a little intimidating, but he wasn’t likely to have any real impact on their lives.
“His name is Diego. He fixes things and secures stuff. He doesn’t got a kid, but he likes pets.” With the look of wide-eyed guile that he’d perfected, Nathan smiled at his mother. “That’s a good thing, right? In case we ever had to go on a job that’s overnight like the one you did in San Diego last summer for that music lady, there’d be someone next door to feed a pet. If we had one, I mean.”
Nicely done, Harper thought, appreciating how many creative ways he could make that pitch. While he rambled on about the care and needs of a kitten and debated the cuteness factor of gray tabbies versus orange, she pulled the warming chicken and finished fries from the oven.
“Chicken fingers?” Nathan exclaimed, pausing in his recital of possible cat names. His excitement slid into a frown as he noted the potatoes she was scooping onto the royal-blue Fiesta platter. “And fries? Why’re we having Saturday food? Isn’t today Wednesday?”
“Sure it is. But you’ll be at camp on Saturday, so we’re having Saturday food today instead.” Nathan’s jaw dropped. He gave a war whoop at the same time he shot out of his chair and launched himself into her arms.
His grateful enthusiasm was almost enough to drown out her concerns.
“You’re the best, Mom. The absolute best. Thanks. I’m gonna call Jeremy. Can I? Can I? I want to tell him so we can bunk together.”
“After dinner.” Harper held on a moment longer. Then because she knew she had to start getting used to it, she slowly let go. She scooped her fingers through the wavy mass of his hair, then tilted her head toward the table. “That way the two of you can talk as long as you like.”
That he’d still have words for later was just one of those things that always amazed her about Nathan. He’d talk through the meal about everything from camp to the LEGO project he was working on to baseball and back again. Unlike his mother, he never ran out of words. Never had to search for them.
But she was searching now. For the words, for the right way to tell him what she had to share. As he scooped his last fry through his ketchup, she still hadn’t figured it out. But like most of motherhood, she realized she’d have to figure it as she went.
“Leave the dishes for now, Nathan.” She laid her hand on his arm to keep him from jumping up from the table. “We need to talk.”
“Am I in trouble?” His face creasing, Nathan settled into his chair again.
“No, sweetie,” she rushed to say, sliding her hand down to mesh her fingers through his smaller ones.
He was growing so fast. Once, those fingers had been tiny as they’d wrapped around hers, his just-born eyes staring into her face as if she were his world. Those fingers had gripped hers as he’d taken his first teetering steps; that hand had held tight the first day of school.
She’d spent her entire life trying to protect him. To give him the best and keep him as happy as she could. Now she had to hurt him. God help her, she blamed Brandon.
Harper took a deep, shaky breath as she tried to fight back the tears clogging her throat, then gave her son a reassuring smile.
“You’re not in trouble. I just need to tell you something.”
“Something bad?” he ventured when she bit her lip, trying to gather the words she still hadn’t found.
She wanted to assure him that it wasn’t bad. She wanted to continue ignoring Brandon’s existence. His death shouldn’t change that.
Except that she couldn’t. And it did.
Once again, Brandon had managed to turn her entire world upside down, and once again, he hadn’t stuck around to watch the fallout.
SO THIS MUST be what it felt like to get run over by a truck.
A very large, dirty truck overloaded with painful regrets and parental guilt.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, head resting in her hands, Harper used her fingers to try to massage away the pain throbbing a tango on her scalp.
He’d taken the news well.
Too well.
She’d told him that the man who’d fathered him was dead, and Nathan had simply nodded. He hadn’t asked any questions. He hadn’t been interested in Brandon’s heroics as a SEAL, or why he’d never been around. He didn’t care what was in the box of effects sent to him by the person who claimed to be Brandon’s best friend. The first time he’d shown any emotion was when she’d suggested he might want the glass-fronted rosewood case of medals to keep in his room, and that’d been to throw the case back into the packing box with a scowl.
Before she could ask if he wanted to talk about it, or if he had any questions, he’d demanded to know if they were done yet so he could call Jeremy.
Harper hadn’t known what else to do other than wave him toward the phone. Maybe he was just too excited about camp to focus on the other. Or maybe he simply didn’t care.
She’d spent the rest of the evening watching for signs while pretending not to. She’d done her yoga in the TV room while he chatted on the phone. She’d worked on her laptop in the dining room while he’d tossed his baseball in the backyard. And she’d curled up with him on the couch while he grumbled over his summer reading.
But she hadn’t seen a single sign of grief or confusion. He’d been his usual, upbeat self.
Maybe he was repressing something.
Or maybe he simply didn’t care.
“Mom?”
Harper jumped to her feet, hurrying down the hall to Nathan’s bedroom.
“What do you need, sweetie?”
“I can’t find my baseball.” In Thor pajamas, wrapped in the bedtime scent of coconut soap and bubblegum toothpaste, Nathan sat in the middle of his floor surrounded by LEGO pieces. “I wanted to use it as the power source, but it’s not here.”
“Power source, huh?” Harper knelt down next to him, careful to avoid jabbing a tiny plastic block into her knee. “Is this going to be a space station?”
“Yeah. It’s gonna be Kylo Ren’s hideout.” He didn’t look at her, but Harper didn’t need to see his eyes to conclude he was upset. “He’s gotta recover and learn to control his temper and figure out stuff.”
Kylo Ren. Harper’s breath came slow and painful as she tried to figure out how to ask her little boy if he was suddenly relating to the villain’s father issues. She wanted to gather Nathan tight in her arms and rock away any pain, soothe any confusion.
Her eyes burned as she looked at the top of her son’s tousled hair as it lay drying in shaggy waves. He wasn’t a baby anymore. And while she didn’t claim to understand much about the male ego, she knew her little boy was already too much a man to accept either words or hugs until he was ready for them.
She didn’t know what it said that she grieved over that more than anything else today. But there it was.
So she did what she always did. She sidestepped the emotional drama and went for the practical.
“You were playing with your ball when you were in the yard. Did you leave it out there?”
“Maybe.”