6
As Dalton and Nicky scraped the layers of old, curling paint from the weathered boards of the gazebo, Clara napped in a lawn chair beneath a shady maple tree. The morning’s trip to the hardware store seemed to have worn her out. They’d spent hours online yesterday considering every imaginable color scheme and Dalton had though it was decided, sage green with crisp white trim. But all the choices at Baxter’s Friendly Hardware Store this morning had overwhelmed the old woman and they had to start all over again. Clara finally decided on a color palette of lemon, guacamole, and very cherry. The gazebo would be stunning. It would also be a lot more work than Dalton had originally thought.
As they worked, Nicky stopped periodically to check his text messages. Dalton let his phone vibrate in his pocket, unanswered. He perched on top of a ladder, working in rhythm to the music streaming on Nicky’s phone.
“Dude, this is gonna be a lot of work,” Nicky said.
“Yep.”
“You’d seriously rather do this than work for the carnival?”
He shrugged. “For now.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“Not so much.”
“Seems to me that it would be interesting though, moving around, meeting new people. Better than being stuck in one place all the time.”
Dalton considered the boy’s wistful expression. “You don’t have to join the carnival to move around. There are other options.”
“Now you sound like my dad. He wants me to join the military.” His voice took on a stern, fatherly tone, “Learn some responsibility.”
“And you don’t want to?”
“I dunno. Maybe.”
Dalton ran his hand across the section he’d just finished. There had to be a dozen layers of old paint on here. After they were scraped, the boards would have to be sanded smooth, which would add hours to the job.
“I’d rather help Harper run the food truck,” Nicky said.
“Do you like to cook?”
He shrugged. “Meh.”
Dropping his scraper in the pocket of his utility apron, Dalton climbed back down the ladder. “What would you really like to do, if you could do anything you wanted?”
“No question. I would one?hundred per cent design video games. I’ve built a few already, but they’re pretty mediocre. There’s an amazing program I want to enroll in at a school in New York City. My dad won’t fund it, though. He says it’s unrealistic.”
Dalton felt a pinprick of empathy. At Nicky’s age he’d dearly wanted to be an actor, an idea that had met with the same assessment from his own father. But then, Dalton’s career had been non-negotiable since his birth.
“You’ll figure it out.” He hoped for the kid’s sake that was true.
“Do you do any gaming at all?”
“I used to, a little.”
“What do you play?”
“I played Vengeance for a while.”
“Dude, no way! I love Vengeance. Have you played part five yet?”
“No, I stopped playing about a year ago.” He’d stopped everything a year ago…
“Aw, bro, we’ve gotta play sometime. The graphics are amazing and the game play is incredible.”
“Yeah, maybe we should do that.”
As Nicky talked animatedly about his game, Dalton kept quiet. He moved the ladder over a few feet, carefully considering his words. He shouldn’t manipulate Nicky for information, but the need to know overwhelmed his good judgment.
“I imagine Harper will need your help with the food truck before too long. Looks as if you’ll be an uncle soon.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“I don’t know if she’s gonna keep the baby. She might put it up for adoption. She hasn’t decided yet.”
For some reason, the thought filled Dalton with disappointment. “What does the baby’s father say?”
“You mean Bo the shmo?” He brushed a shower of paint chips from his hair. “He doesn’t say anything anymore.”
That’s complicated too…
“Personally, I think she’d be a great mother. I mean, she helped raise me and I’m straight-up stellar.” He grinned. “She’d do better than Babe Wayland would, but it’s not my business.”
“Babe, the woman from church yesterday?”
“Yeah. She’s a control freak. Ever since Ashley died, she’s all up in Harper’s business. Like she thinks Harp’s her substitute daughter or something. And now she says she wants to adopt the baby. It’s weird. She didn’t even seem like she wanted to raise her own kid. Ashley spent most of her time here, with us.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yup. Aunt Clara pretty much raised her too, just like she did with us.”
“What happened to Ashley?”
“Oh, dude, it was a mess. She was?”
The screen door banged, and Harper walked toward them.
Nicky immediately clammed up.
Dalton could swear she was glowing as she crossed the lawn. Or maybe it was just a trick of sunlight.
Clara stirred. “Home from the festival so early, darling?”
“The festival ended on Saturday, Aunt Clara.” Harper bent to kiss her aunt’s cheek. “I had a doctor’s appointment this morning, remember?”
“Are you sick, darling?”
“No, Aunt Clara,” she said gently. “It was an appointment to check on the baby.”
Clara’s face lit up. “You’re having a baby? Oh, darling, how wonderful!”
“Yes, I’m due in October, remember we talked about the little pumpkin pie?”
Clara’s brow creased. “It seems as though I do.”
“You just forgot for a minute.”
Clara reached out and cupped Harper’s baby bump with her hands. “A little pumpkin pie, yes, it seems as if I do remember that now.”
The scene before him was beautiful and it tugged at Dalton’s heart strings. Strange, how this family seemed to have opened the flood gates that had been firmly shut for a year. But this had nothing to do with him. In a few days, a week at most, he’d be long gone.
“Who’s ready for lunch?” Harper asked. “I thought we could warm up the leftovers from yesterday. There’s still a ton of food left.”
“I’m in.” Nicky threw down his scraper and helped Clara up from the chair.
They all headed for the house.
Over heaping plates of meatloaf and potatoes, Harper and Dalton discussed the new color scheme for the gazebo.
Clara, it seemed, was still thinking about the baby. “I remember you playing with your dollies as a little girl,” she said. “Remember how we would make them dresses and you’d walk them in their own little stroller while I walked Nicholas? You were a good little mother, even then. I wonder if we still have that stroller?”
“Aunt Clara, I?”
“Oh, and remember the tea parties? How you’d dress your dolls all in their prettiest dresses and set out little cups of juice and plates of cookies for them?”
“Hey, I know, let’s have a bake off,” Nicky chimed in. “We could get out the Little Baker’s oven. Oh, wait.”
“Nicky, don’t start,” Harper warned.
“Oh, I’m starting. Check it out, D, this one time Harper was holding a bake off competition for her dolls, but she didn’t have any of those cake mixes for her Little Baker’s oven, so she tried to make her own recipes. Don’t ever mix vinegar and baking soda, that’s all I’m saying. Talk about a meltdown!”
“I was eleven years old!” Harper protested.
He waggled a finger, and in a voice that sounded remarkably like Clara’s, said, “Old enough to know better.”
She laughed, a sound that delighted Dalton’s soul, and threw a balled-up napkin at her brother.
“Now stop!”
But he didn’t stop. As they finished the last of Clara’s cream puffs, Nicky pulled more family stories from his arsenal. Stories of Harper’s early kitchen disasters; of charred grilled cheese sandwiches, leathery Thanksgiving turkeys, and pie crusts that required a chain saw to cut through.
Back outside, Dalton pondered the things he’d heard. Having grown up an only child he could only try to imagine the family portraits Nicky painted. There were no warm Christmases in his box of childhood memories. There were cruises to the Bahamas and ski trips to Aspen, mountains of expensive gifts. Everything a child could want except what Dalton wanted the most. A thing he could never fully identify until years later when he’d been embraced by Tasha’s big, loud, Jamaican family.
Tasha…
~*~
By evening he had a blister on his hand, dried paint in his hair, and an aversion to rap music that would likely last a lifetime. It was the most enjoyable day he could remember spending in a year.
With Clara tucked into bed for the night, Harper joined Dalton and Nicky in the yard with glasses of cold lemonade. “Are you two still at it?”
“Just cleaning up,” Dalton said. “We’ll be running out of daylight pretty soon.”
“Hey, Harp? I was thinking about going out for a while tonight.”
“That’s fine. Have you got a hot date?”
Nicky shrugged. “Sort of.”
She grinned. “Do tell.”
In Dalton’s peripheral vision, two cops came toward them across the yard. Their purposeful strides caused an uneasy fist to tighten in his gut.
Unaware of them, Harper addressed her brother. “You’ll have to put gas in the car, though. And don’t be speeding around town.”
“I won’t.”
The cops approached the gazebo, the younger one holding back while the older, heavier set one rested his arm on the railing. Dalton scanned his badge. Jamison.
“Evening, folks. Are any of you Nick Blessings?” he asked.
The question erased the smile from Nicky’s face. “I’m Nicky.”
“Come on out, son. We’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.”
“What’s this about?” Harper asked.
“We got a report of another car being broken into on Saturday night over by the festival grounds. Some money was stolen. We had a witness come forward who says they saw someone who looked a lot like Nicky hanging around the area.”
“Well, they lied,” Nicky said. “I didn’t break into any car.”
“Mind telling us where you were on Saturday night, around ten o’clock?”
Dalton noticed Nicky’s hesitation and was sure the cops did too.
He shrugged. “Driving around.”
“Driving around where, exactly?”
“Just around town.”
“Was anyone with you who could verify that?”
Again, the hesitation.
“I was alone.”
“We also know that you went to the pawn shop this morning and bought a video game and a silver bracelet. We have copies of receipts totaling a hundred dollars. Which coincidentally is the exact amount of cash that was stolen.”
“I gave him that money for helping out at home while I was working in the food truck,” Harper said. “This is ridiculous.”
“Why don’t you come down to the station with us, son, and we’ll sort it all out.”
Nicky shot a frantic glance at Harper.
“He doesn’t have to go with you,” she said. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Maybe he has and maybe he hasn’t. Either way, it would be much better for him if he went with us willingly and answered a few questions. It might make the judge want to be a little more lenient, later on.”
“Lenient about what?” Nicky’s voice cracked.
“Oh, I don’t know…” The old cop ticked off the offenses on his thick fingers. “Criminal mischief, breaking and entering, burglary. Those are felonies, son.”
Dalton stared at the older man, incredulous. Felonies? Nicky was a minor, which meant if there turned out to be a case at all, it would be heard in juvenile court. A hundred-dollar theft was a misdemeanor at worst. Surely the cop knew that.
Jamison jingled the change in his pocket. “People go to prison for felonies, I would imagine.”
Harper’s face drained of color.
The wheels in Dalton’s mind began to spin furiously. He’d seen this kind of intimidation before. It would more likely be a matter of paying restitution, possibly some community service, maybe probation. If Nicky was even found guilty. This cop was being way too heavy handed. But there was no good reason for Dalton to get involved. He should stay silent, let the justice system do its work.
“I’m coming with you.” Harper said.
“You his legal guardian, Ma’am?”
“Our Aunt Clara is.”
Despair graced Harper’s face. Clara would be about as much help right now as a fishing pole in the desert.
“It’s your aunt’s right to be present then, Miss Blessings. Let’s go, son.”
Dalton knew how this worked. These two cops had an agenda. They’d haul the kid down to the police station, make threats, coerce a confession. No way would he let that happen. He set down his scraper and took off his utility apron. “I’ll be right behind you, Nicky. Don’t say another word until I get there.”
The two cops exchanged glances, and then the older one, Jamison, smirked. “No disrespect, pal, but you’d better just go back to your painting and mind your business. What this kid needs is an attorney.”
In those seconds his decision was made. Once he crossed this threshold there would be no turning back. It would create a domino effect of choices he did not want to make, secrets he did not care to reveal. And though everything inside him urged him to walk away, he leveled his gaze at Jamison, gathered all the courage he owned, and pushed the words out. “I am his attorney.”