“Mrs. Alvarez, maybe. Or my teacher, Mrs. Jackson.”
“I’ve got them both in my cell.” Bo navigated to one of the numbers and hit Send. Both numbers went straight to voice mail. “We’ll try them later,” he said gently. “So, how about your…stepdad?” Yeah, how about him? Yolanda had married Bruno, and they’d moved to Houston. The guy had played the role of AJ’s father for several years. He might not be able to help with the current situation, but it could be reassuring for the kid to hear a familiar voice.
“I can’t call him,” AJ said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know his number.”
Son of a bitch. Bo bit his tongue. What kind of loser just fell out of touch like that? He flinched, feeling a sting of guilt. He liked to think he’d have stuck around, but would he?
He grabbed a thick Irish fisherman’s sweater and put it on. His best friend’s wife, Sophie, had given him the sweater for Christmas. Bo wasn’t Irish and he wasn’t a fisherman, but she had told him there was some quality of the wool, from blue-face sheep, that kept a man warm and dry. The pattern of cables and other fancy stitches used to be the knitter’s signature, surrounding the wearer with her spirit, protecting him from harm and bringing him luck.
He hoped like hell the sweater would bring him luck today. He and AJ were going to need it.
“Damn, this thing itches,” Bo said, running his index finger around the neckline of the sweater.
“Then why are you wearing it?”
“Because Sophie gave it to me. And we’re going to see her about your mama today and it’s always a good idea to wear something a woman gave you when you’re going to see her. Women like that. Yeah, that’s a good rule. One thing I know for sure is that when a woman gives you a sweater, you’d better by-God wear it.”
“Even though it itches.”
“I’ve suffered worse than that to please a woman,” Bo said, with a flash of memory he’d thought long gone. “Do you know, I used to eat hominy grits for breakfast every time my mama fixed them. You like grits?”
AJ clutched at his throat and made a gagging sound.
“My thoughts exactly. Speaking of food, let me get you something to eat.” He went to the kitchen and opened the fridge. “We got that pie we brought home from Friendly’s, and…You like pepperoni pizza?”
A nod.
“Then get over here and eat. You sleep okay?” he asked the boy.
A shrug. “It’s kind of noisy around here, so—” A loud beeping from outside drowned out the rest of his words. The racket came from a garbage truck backing up, and the beeping was followed by the hiss of hydraulic lifts and the crash and bright clatter of the Dumpster being emptied.
When the racket subsided, Bo said, “At night, the bar downstairs can get pretty rowdy, especially on the weekend.” Living over the bar used to feel like the best of all worlds. Now it made him feel…inadequate, somehow.
“Tell you what,” Bo said to AJ, trying to sound cheerful, “how about you get dressed and we’ll head over to Sophie’s, and she’ll get to work figuring this out.”
AJ grabbed some things out of his suitcase and headed into the bathroom. The shower hissed to life.
Then, a few minutes later, he emerged from the bathroom, backlit by a cloud of steam from the shower. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, the garments wrinkled but clean-looking. His hair was slicked into place, parted on the side with knife-blade sharpness. His olive-toned skin glowed from a vigorous scrubbing. In the diffuse light, he looked like an angel, so beautiful Bo was momentarily speechless.
Their bellies full of cold pizza, apple pie and Orange Crush, which was the closest thing to juice Bo had, they headed downstairs. It had snowed all night, and the car’s windshield was crusted with ice and dusted with snow.
Bo swore, then caught himself in mid-cuss, inventing a new word on the spot. “Fuuu—dge-a-mania,” he improvised, retrieving a scraper brush from the trunk of the Z4. “Hard to believe people choose to live in this sh—stuff.” He shut up, realizing AJ wasn’t listening at all.
The boy was scuffing his feet across the crusty surface of the parking lot. His eyes shone with fascination. Steam rose from his still-damp hair and puffed from his mouth. There were tall heaps of snow from the plows, blanketed by a fresh coat. The snow had nearly buried a couple of cars, which had been left by regulars who knew better than to drive themselves home after they’d had a few too many. From the hilltop vantage point, there was a long view of the town below and the lake in the distance, the rooftops dusted with more snow.
He tried to imagine what this world was like for AJ. No one had asked his permission to pluck him from the southern metropolis of Houston and plunk him down in the small snowed-in town of Avalon. He was a stranger in a strange land.
“Crazy, huh?” Bo said. “All this snow.”
“It’s so cold,” AJ said. He all but disappeared inside Bo’s olive-drab parka, size Large–Extra Tall. The parka reached AJ’s knees, the sleeves hanging well below his hands.
“Damn cold. Especially for a Houston boy.” Bo wondered if saying “damn” was okay in front of a kid. “Be careful on the ice,” he added.
AJ slid his feet across the crusty surface of the parking lot. His low-top Chuck Taylors had no traction at all, and he held his arms out to steady himself. “I’ve never seen snow before,” he said.
“Yeah, well, you’ll see plenty of it in this town,” Bo assured him. “Can’t stand the stuff, myself.”
AJ scooped some off the hood of a parked car, flinching at the cold as he watched it melt from the palm of his hand.
“We’ll get you some warm clothes and boots right away,” Bo promised. “And I need a cup of coffee, bad. Then we’ll
