I huff a dry laugh. “Not even that. When the ambulance arrived, and paramedics couldn’t do anything for her, the police followed soon after, and all I could see was my career going down the drain. But Kelly stepped up, insisted Josie had tripped and fallen backward.” I sigh. “I’d pushed her, but not hard enough to cause bruising. My career probably helped, as did the fact that I’d literally just returned from a tour. The cops wrote it up as a tragic accident, and expressed their sympathy for my loss while thanking me for my service.”
“Was it post-partum depression?”
I lift my chin toward my prez. “That’s what I thought at first, but then Kelly, so shocked at how close her grandson had come to harm, blabbed out the whole fuckin’ story. Unbeknownst to me, because no one fuckin’ told me, Josie was bipolar and averse to taking her meds. Kelly had told her she’d never keep me if she didn’t keep up with her medication, and for months, that threat had worked, so she relaxed her monitoring of Josie. She stopped going around so often, having come to think that being in a relationship and having a baby had worked some kind of magic and that her daughter didn’t need her constant hovering.But Josie reverted to her old ways. Ace was turning out not to be an easy baby. Maybe looking after him on her own had become too much, or perhaps the sleepless nights had taken their toll and made her forgetful. We’ll never know the truth of it, but she’d gone cold turkey, and, possibly exasperated by postpartum depression, it resulted in her entering psychosis and trying to fucking kill our son.”
Prez shakes his head sadly, and Tempest rubs his temples.
I finish the story. “I didn’t re-up. I only had months left to serve, and due to the fact I’d just lost the mother of my son and was responsible for such a young child, I was kept close to base for the few months I had left remaining.” Pausing, I take a deep breath. “I knew Ace was mine, but up to then, I’d thought Josie had him. The care and nurturing I’d left up to her. Most of the time, through no fault of my own, I wasn’t there. But what happened caused me to reconsider my thinking, and I made a vow. I hadn’t been there for the first six months of Ace’s life, but I sure would be from that point on.
“I blamed myself for not noticing anything was wrong. I blamed Josie for keeping her health issues to herself. And, I placed guilt on Kelly for not telling me and for leaving her to manage alone.” I shake my head.
“Fuck, Bro. No wonder you’ve always been so protective of Ace.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I mumble. “Ace wasn’t an easy baby, as I said. He rarely slept through the night. When he moved on to solid foods, it was hard to find anything he liked. He’d fixate on objects you’d give him, without using them for their proper purpose, and he’d scream when I tried to dress him. I quickly learned it was certain textures he didn’t like. Of course, I just thought he was a normal baby. What did I know about how they behaved?
“I tried my best, but I didn’t have eyes in the back of my head. When Ace was eighteen months old, he tried to climb onto the table using a chair. Fell off and broke his arm.” I heave a sigh. “Nearly lost him to the system then, when CPS got involved. X-rays showed his arm had been broken before. And when they investigated further, his right leg had been broken as well. Fuckin’ Josie had been hurting him ever since he’d been born. I was blamed, but the injuries were old. It was a dicey few months, but in the end, they accepted he must have been hurt while I was on tours.
“Kelly helped me as best she could during that first year I was looking after him alone, but she was diagnosed with stage four cancer, and deteriorated fast. When she went, there was nothing to keep me in North Carolina. I packed up and drove across country to Arizona, where my ma and dad had retired. Dad had long since died, but Ma was still here and very much alive. I fell in with the Kings, found a family, and a new team to have behind me. And, well, you know the rest.”
CHAPTER THREE
FREAK
Both Bullseye and Tempest stay silent when I finish talking. I suppose I’ve given them a lot to chew on. I’d gotten a bad case of verbal diarrhoea once I’d started, and probably spouted too much. I blame the drinks I had earlier, and the whisky which Bullseye keeps topping off.
“This woman coming here tonight, she stirred up old memories,” Bullseye comments after a full minute has passed.
I raise and dip my chin. “More than that, she’s brought up old concerns.” I look up and meet their eyes. “Bipolar runs in families.”
Prez glances up sharply. “But Ace isn’t bipolar.”
“No,” I agree. “The genes he inherited from Josie manifested as autism instead.” I preemptively glare, in case either offers commiseration. It may have been a long journey, but Ace is a fantastic kid. His intelligence is off the fucking scale. His condition is a blessing, not a curse. I fucking love my kid and will always defend him.
I underestimated Prez, as he fast cottons on to the heart of my worry. “And now this Antoinette wants to see your boy? You think she might also be unstable?”
“If what she says is right, she’s Josie’s twin,” I remind him.
Tempest looks thoughtful, then offers his view. “Doesn’t mean she is. She might have won the lottery as far as her mental issues are concerned. She could be a well-balanced woman who just wants to connect with her nephew. Makes sense if the rest of her family is gone.”
“I’ve been protecting Ace all my life,” I rasp. “And that’s not going to stop. Just because she’s got a birth certificate that looks genuine…”
“And looks enough like Josie for you to mistake her for your ex,” Prez interrupts.
“Yeah, that, too.” I wave my hand dismissively. “It does mean I want to find out everything about her, including her full medical history, before I even think about letting her within a mile of Ace. But Genie’s drunk himself into a stupor, and Pippa…”
This time, it’s Tempest who doesn’t let me finish, “Is too busy screaming her new husband’s name.”
“Yeah,” I respond, offhandedly.
Prez motions toward my glass, but I’ve drunk too much already, and I really need my senses about me. So I shake my head, and he puts the bottle he’d picked up down.
“How did she find you?” Deep lines appear on Tempest’s brow.
I huff a mirthless laugh. “Because my fuckin’ genius son put his DNA on one of those ancestry databases. They found each other on there, according to her. And get this, they’ve been emailing back and forth.”
“Fuck.” Both Prez and Tempest voice the sentiment simultaneously.
There’s silence for a moment, then Prez frowns. “Freak, Pippa and Genie won’t be able to help until tomorrow. There’s nothing anyone can do now. And you need to talk to Ace before you start thinking about how to proceed. Why don’t you go get your head down, then talk to Ace in the morning?”
