Nick
You, me, and two others. You’re staying for dinner, right?
Tina
Hell yeah, I am. You have a dining table? I can deal with no stove for one meal, but I can’t deal without a table to eat off of.
I snort alaugh.
Nick
Yes, I have a table. I even have real dishes and cutlery.
Tina
Oh good. I was worried it would be paper plates and plastic forks.
Oh, my phone’s ready. I’ll see you later.
“That has to be your girlfriend to have you grinning like that.” Carson walks into the room wearing some clothes he obviously borrowed from Jared. Carson has a good six inches on the other kid, so the jogging pants are several inches too short, but at least they fit around the waist. I hadn’t thought it through when I offered him my clothes, but there’s no way anything I own would stay on this kid’s body, at least not without some serious belting.
“Oh, uh...” I hesitate, unsure of how to respond. Tina could have eventually been my girlfriend before I agreed to take on the raising of two teenage boys, but now I doubt she’ll want that kind of relationship with me. I could easily prove that I wouldn’t need looking after, but I don’t think the same could be said about two kids. And I’d never expect her to compromise her life for my sake. “As much as I’d like her to be, I don’t think that’s going to work out like I’d hoped.”
He nods more sagely than a kid his age has a right to. “I hear you. Unrequited love is the worst.”
I smother a chuckle. “Oh, yeah? You have a lot of experience with that, do you?”
“Not in the way you’d think,” he says with a heavy sigh. “But unrequited is unrequited, no matter who it is, right? So I know a thing or two.”
Shit. He’s talking about his parents. He’s talking about loving his parents and them not loving him back, and now I’m going to cry in front of this teenage boy and he’ll think I’m too much of a baby to take care of him properly. Why did I think I could do this? How can I support this kid when the mere mention of his parents makes me cry?
“So...” he says, breaking my runaway train of thought. “Can you help me with something?”
I school my features, swallow my sadness, and say in my most competent sounding voice, “Of course. What do you need?”
“I think I need to deal with my parents. With their bodies, I mean.”
My mouth drops open at his casual tone. Even now, he doesn’t seem that upset.
“You think I’m weird, don’t you?” he asks when he sees the look on my face. “Because I’m not completely fucked up over my parents’ death?”
“I mean, something like that crossed my mind. Not that I think you’re weird, but that you’re handling this a lot differently than I would if it were my parents.”
He nods. “Yeah. I think if I had a different relationship, or any relationship, with mine, things would be different. But they chose alcohol over me a long time ago. I’ve been dreaming of getting out of that mess for as long as I can remember. You know, I couldn’t tell you the last time I even spoke to them. Most days, I’d go straight to my room and lock the door as soon as I got home. I doubt they would even remember I lived there if it weren’t for that social worker showing up a couple of times a year. They were strangers to me, like I was to them. It’s hard to miss something you never had.”
The silence that settles around us should be uncomfortable, but instead, it feels more like acceptance. After a few moments, I lean forward and say, “Okay. Then let’s get started on the funeral arrangements.”
Tom Selleck's Mustache
Tina
“So he’ll be ableto transfer all his contacts and stuff over?”
“You bet, ma’am. And if he has trouble, bring him in and we can help him figure it out.” The young man working at the cell phone store assures me that Carson won’t have an issue recovering his contacts. I’ve never tried to set up a new phone without having the old one right next to it, so I’m not so sure, but this guy seems confident.
I pay for the phone and tuck the box into the bag of clothes I also picked up for Carson. I realized when I was driving into Spitz Hollow that Carson most likely lost all his clothes in the fire, along with all of his other belongings, so I picked up a fewthings for him before I came to get the phone. Well, I picked up several things that took far too long to find, but it’s not a big deal. It’s not that many clothes, but it’s enough to get him through a few days until we have time to take him shopping. I’m sure he has so much on his mind right now that he’s not worried about the clothes he’s wearing, but it’s not like I can do much else for him right now. I’ll leave the clothes at Gloria’s office when I drop off the phone and she can make sure he gets them.
Since I left the chief’s office earlier, all I’ve been doing is checking tasks off a list. Pick up new phone. Check. Buy some clothes. Check. Call Wade about finding me a new place with an extra bedroom for Carson. Check. Get groceries for dinner at Nick’s. Doing that now.
