He didn’t protest. He handed Kate his crutches and she put them in the back.
Jack climbed into the rear seat, and Kate took the front passenger. Sara quickly turned the dial on the GPS to direct them through the labyrinth of Miami to get them home.
She handed her cell to Kate. “Send a text to Gil to come over with full padding. He needs to get rid of some energy.”
She didn’t have to say who “he” was. Kate glanced over the seat at Jack. He looked like a cross between a volcano about to erupt and a man who was going to sink into a depression and never come out of it.
Kate sent the message and they went home.
FIFTEEN
Kate was sitting on a stool in the kitchen and she looked at the clock. Again. “How long have they been at it?”
“Two hours and ten minutes,” Sara said. “Neither of them can take much more.”
Behind them, coming through the open doors, was the pounding sound that Kate was beginning to recognize: leather hitting leather. Since they’d returned from Gena’s house, Jack and Gil had been boxing. Or rather, Gil held the hand pads while Jack hit them.
For a while, Kate had watched them, but the anger on Jack’s face had been too much for her. She remembered Sara saying that Jack’s fights with his father had been sick making. Scary. Kate could believe it.
She’d left the men and gone to her bedroom to have a long telephone chat with her mother. She heavily sugarcoated it all. Yes, everything was fine. Yes, she was working, had already sold a house. Yes, she was still seeing Alastair Stewart. Nothing serious yet, but maybe. No, Sara hadn’t thrown one of her temper tantrums. Yes, Kate had been thinking about moving into her own place.
After she got off the phone, Kate took a shower and left her rooms. Jack was still pounding away or clunking about on the stone pavers in his cast.
“Gil will make him stop,” Sara said. “And it’s not all boxing.”
Kate had seen that Gil was ordering Jack to do sit-ups, push-ups, hobble fast on his crutches. Anything to burn off the energy from what he’d heard.
Abruptly, there was quiet, and moments later, Gil walked through the house. He was sweaty and exhausted. He started to speak but then shrugged and went out the front door.
Jack came behind him, wearing only baggy shorts and his cast. His entire body was dripping sweat. It was cascading off him.
Sara handed him a tall glass of water, which Jack drained. She refilled the glass from the refrigerator door and he drank that one. Halfway through the third glass, he sat down on the stool beside Kate.
The women looked at him.
“Roy really did think he was protecting me,” he said.
“That’s what all this—” Sara motioned to his sweaty upper half “—was about?”
He finished the third glass of water. “Naw. This is about Gena. But I’ve been thinking about Roy. Any more of that fruit left?”
Kate got up and began preparing a plate for him. Anybody who’d heard what he had today deserved to be waited on. “Cheryl wanted respect. That’s what came through to me. She knew what people thought of her mother, so she was determined to get their respect.” She pushed a plateful of orange segments to Jack.
“And she had a boyfriend,” Sara said. She put a fat towel over Jack’s head and began to rub his hair dry.
It was such a loving, mother-son gesture that for a moment, Kate looked away.
“But Roy...” Jack trailed off.
“Was protecting you.” Kate started peeling a mango. “Maybe he ran over your bike to force you to stay away from a girl he thought was introducing you to too much, too soon.”
“Yeah.” Jack was smiling, his mouth full.
Kate glanced at Sara. It was nice to hear him say something good about his father.
“Respect,” Sara said. “What Cheryl said to Elaine interested me. She couldn’t leave Lachlan because if she didn’t earn respecthere—in this town—it didn’t matter. Why do you think that was?”
Kate was eating a mango slice and Jack had a banana.
