own room?”
He sounded like a five-year-old, simultaneously thrilled and apprehensive at the prospect. If he was afraid, I didn’t blame him. Jericho had decorated many of my dreams in the past week and a half, propelling me from a sweat-soaked sleep with my hand searching desperately for my gun more times than I cared to admit. And Michael had ten more years of that evil bastard to contend with than I did. The things that he dreamed of I couldn’t even begin to guess. If he wanted to bunk with me until he was ninety, I wouldn’t hold it against him.
“Maybe,” I answered noncommittally. “Tell you what. You take a look. If two of them are in good-enough shape, then take the one you want. If only one is livable, then sorry about your luck, kiddo. You’ll be stuck with me for a while.” That left him an out. If he found only one to be acceptable, we would go with that and there would be no embarrassment on either side.
“Okay.” Carefully placing the shell back in a cloudy glass bowl, he headed for the stairs. It was circular, a wrought-iron monstrosity that showed the red bloom of rust. At the top and out of sight, he called down, “You know you’re not half as clever as you think you are, but . . .”
It had been obvious all along that my college psych classes were sadly lacking compared to the ones he had been exposed to, but I kept on trying. Yeah, I kept on trying, and I kept on getting shot down, I thought ruefully. “But . . . ?” I prodded, flipping the switches to check the lights. The utilities had been kept on all these years in the name of Babushka’s long-gone gentleman friend. It was just one more way of keeping the place untraceable. “But what?”
There was a pause and then, “Thanks.” Footsteps creaked overhead as he hurried away from the stairs and toward the bedrooms. He wouldn’t want to get caught up in a wave of gooey emotion or anything. God forbid. I allowed myself a small grin and headed back out to the car for our stockpile of groceries. We’d switched roles, Michael and I. When we were kids, he’d been the open one. Every emotion he felt he wore on his face, so clear and bright that it couldn’t be missed. Hell, you would know what he felt before he knew himself. I’d been more like our father in that respect and, to be honest, I still was—aloof, a little distant. But not with Michael. He needed to know how I felt, and he needed it pretty badly. It was the only evidence he’d been able to accept so far that I considered him family . . . no matter what he considered himself. Photos and stories were suspect, but emotion couldn’t be faked. Michael was too damn smart not to see through anything that wasn’t completely genuine.
Turned out he picked out two bedrooms for us. I wasn’t surprised, and I couldn’t have been any damn prouder. What did surprise me was the pang of separation anxiety I felt. I was worse than any overprotective mom waving good-bye to Junior on the first day of kindergarten. But I bit my tongue and stood in the doorway to watch as he shook out the sheets. Apparently the cleaning service had skipped this bedroom. Dust billowed in huge clouds and I waved a hand in front of my face. “Sleeping on a bare mattress isn’t that bad.” I coughed. “Maybe you should give it a try.”
Blond hair sticking up in dusty spikes, he shook his head. “No. I’m done with sleeping in cars and going to the bathroom in bottles. No bare mattresses either.”
“Aren’t you the picky one? Wanting clean sheets and real bathrooms. You’re like a little girl.” I ducked as the sheet was snapped in my general direction. “I never did teach you to write your name in the snow, but we’ve got a whole shitload of sand out there to practice in.” Another fierce snap of the sheet expelled me from the room.
That evening I made my first home-cooked meal in months. In the condo, I lived mostly on takeout. Natalie had managed to get me involved in cooking despite myself—mainly by threats or promises. Both involved kissing, soft touches, and the occasional brisk swat to my ass. Needless to say, after Natalie had her wicked way with me, a Cordon Bleu chef had nothing on me in motivation, if not talent. Since she had left, I’d done much less cooking, but you never really forget how to make a tuna casserole.
Michael regarded the steaming pile of cheese, fish, and crackers on his plate with a dubious frown. “What’s wrong with hamburgers? I like hamburgers. And pizza.”
“This is healthy.” I didn’t know what they’d fed him from that place before I snatched him, but the kid now had a love of junk food that was passionate, if not borderline obsessive. I sat down at the kitchen table and dug into my helping. “Growing boys need healthy food once in a while.” I knew it was true. I’d read it in a magazine.
Spearing a chunk of cheese with his fork, he stretched it out from the plate in a near-foot-long streamer. “Healthy. Useful in grouting tile maybe, but healthy?”
“And what do you know about grout?” I grumbled, taking a bite and swallowing. It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t that good either, but it rose above the grout standard.
“There’s a book in the bathroom.” He moved his fork in a different direction, snapping the cheese like an old rubber band. “And lots of fuzzy green grout.”
It was another black mark against the not-too-accomplished cleaning service. A haphazard dusting seemed to be the best they could do. “Eat your food or the next thing I fix will be fuzzy-grout casserole.”
With a long-suffering sigh he stuffed the forkful into his mouth and chewed with such grim resignation that I may as well have served him fried roadkill. “You know, I could learn to cook. Just to help you out. A way to thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”
“Yeah, you’re a real humanitarian, pizza boy,” I scoffed. “Now eat.”
Before he finished with the meal, I knew more about the clogging effects of cheese on the heart than I cared to. But the next time we came across a cheeseburger or loaded pizza, I was sure I would hear about nothing but the glowing health benefits. After dumping the dishes in the sink like true bachelors, we set up camp on the couch and turned on the TV. Without cable there were only three channels and two of them were full of snow. We were living in the dark ages here. I skimmed through them, then switched off the television in disgust. “Hang on. I think there might be a checkerboard in the closet.”
A checkerboard and books on bathroom repair were the sum total of our entertainment here. I didn’t mind the change from the bright lights and greased poles of Miami. I didn’t mind it at all. The closet was stocked with boxes and broken vacuum cleaner attachments, but I sifted through it to find the red and black box. Beneath it I found a photo album, one that had belonged to Babushka Lena. I hesitated for a second, then piled it on top of the checkers box. Placing them on the table next to the sofa, I sat down and lifted the album into my lap. “I know you’re not much for photos.” I moved over until I was shoulder to shoulder with Michael. “But I thought you might want to see some of me when I was less frightening to the naked human eye.”
He cocked his head doubtfully at me. “Less frightening? I’m not sure I can picture that. Are you sure they’re really you? They can do amazing things with computer effects.”
“Funny. You’re a funny guy. Bet you scored an F in that class,” I said sourly. I riffled through the book and stopped at one I recognized of myself. About two years old, I was trying to ride the family dog. Lying across his back with my arms around his furry neck, I was bare-ass naked and grinning like a loon. “The traditional naked-butt baby picture. A favorite of grandmothers everywhere.”
“I do pity the dog. He probably never recovered from the trauma.” Michael’s finger stroked the glossy surface. “What breed was he?”
“A mutt, Lab with a dash of Saint Bernard, I think. I cried like a baby when he died.” I elbowed him and added, “Tell anyone that and I’ll have to kick your bony butt.”
So underwhelmed by the threat that he didn’t even feel the need to roll his eyes, he reached over to turn the page himself. “Who’s that?”
“Our . . . my mom.” She’d been caught in the act of nothing in particular. The only occasion was a trigger- happy kid with a new camera, namely me. I didn’t recognize the background—a slice of muted wallpaper and the leaves of a potted plant. It wasn’t the kind of thing a young boy paid attention to. Mom was looking over her shoulder at me, startled but with the merry and indulgent smile that rarely left her face. She had always been so happy. I’d wondered more than once over the years if she knew what her husband did for a living. How could she not? She was a grown, intelligent woman; after years of marriage she simply couldn’t be that blind. Yet . . . somehow I thought she was. It could be I didn’t want to believe she wasn’t as picture-perfect in her purity as I saw her to be as a child. And it could be the sun rose in the east and set in the west. With the incredibly obvious bit of psychoanalysis out of the way, I just looked at the picture—looked at it and treasured the feeling it sparked in me. I might be a thug and worse, but damn if I hadn’t loved my mother.
Pale blond hair caught in a loose French braid and high Slavic cheekbones joined with blue eyes and porcelain skin. She wasn’t a beautiful woman; she was more than beautiful. The cheekbones were a shade too sharp, the eyes a little too round, and the mouth overly generous. But it all came together in a shining whole—much like it did in Michael. His features weren’t as much like our mother’s as I remembered; time had changed him from a male
