Chapter Forty- Four
Chapter
Forty-Four
“I’m making the right assumptions?” Mark’s
mother said once she’d regained the power of speech. “If I’m not…if
I’m jumping to the wrong conclusion…please tell me now.”
She was sitting behind the wheel of her car,
ready to drive away. When Mark had followed her downstairs and
tried to get into the passenger side, there had been a long moment
when he really didn’t think she was going to unlock the door and
let him in. Possibly it was only the threat of a public spectacle
that had made her relent. Or maybe it was the glimmer of hope that
she had misunderstood what she’d just seen.
But Mark wasn’t enough of a coward to lie to
her now. “No. It’s what it seems like.”
Now she was staring at him and he half-wished
she had just driven off. “I’d heard rumors,” she said slowly. “But
those people with the rumors, they just said that you were
helping him. With innuendos, of course—that’s what you can
expect when a gay man helps anybody, apparently. But I didn’t
believe even that much. I knew that you had good sense, and…” She
stopped scolding for a moment, just long enough to see that she
wasn’t really angry, or at least not just angry. Mostly she was
hurt and confused. It made it much harder for Mark to even try to
defend himself. “I knew you hated him as much as I did,” she said
in a softer voice.
“I did,” Mark admitted. “But then I got to
know him. By accident. Through Alex, mostly. Scott Wilson’s son.
Alex is living at the farm where Lucas works, I was counseling
Alex…”
His mother held up a hand. “I don’t think I
can hear this,” she said. “Not now. With your father not even in
the ground yet!” She seemed to seize that idea and find new energy.
“My God, Mark, what would your father say?”
“I expect he’d be just as angry and confused
as you are.” There was no point in pretending differently. “And I’m
sorry you found out this way. And at this time. I really am.”
“This is…” She stopped talking and dug a
tissue out of her purse. Mark wanted to reach out for her but he
was pretty sure he’d be rebuffed. She’d come to his apartment to
help him sort through photographs for her husband’s memorial
service. She hadn’t been braced for this, and she’d already had far
too many shocks lately.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
She finished wiping her eyes and blew her
nose, then said, “Are you? Are you really sorry? Then you should
fix it.” She sat for a moment as if collecting her thoughts, then
said, “You’ve had a rough time lately, just like I have. Your
father, and your job, and the awful violence. You’ve been under
stress and you released it in an inappropriate way. That’s all. It
was just a mistake. But you’ve always been good at fixing your
mistakes. You’ve always cleaned up after yourself. That’s what you
need to do now. Just…get rid of him. This doesn’t have to go any
further. No one else has to know, and I can…I can forget about it.
It will take me some time, but I can do that.”
“I love him.” Mark hadn’t planned the words,
had barely even begun thinking them in his own mind, but they felt
right as they passed his lips. “Maybe you can forget, but I can’t.”
He thought of Alex, stubbornly refusing to let his father push him
back into the closet, and he said, “I can’t and I won’t. I’ve never
felt like this before. I know it’s hard for you, but for me? It’s
wonderful. I feel alive, like—”
“Stop it!” His mother wasn’t crying anymore.
She was staring straight ahead, jaw clenched and hands gripping the
steering wheel. “I will not listen to that. You can’t say those
things, not to me!”
“Okay,” Mark said after a moment. “I won’t
say them. But I can’t stop feeling them. He’s the last person in
the world that I should be in love with, but that doesn’t seem to
matter. It’s not something I can control.”
That was when Lucas appeared in the doorway
of the apartment building. Jeans and a sweatshirt, no raincoat or
umbrella. He didn’t even look around him as he turned and headed
down the street. Mark and his mother both watched him walk
away.
His mother didn’t say anything for far too
long and when she did speak her voice was cold. “Get out of the
car. Put the pictures together and I’ll have someone pick them up
tomorrow morning. Be at the funeral home on time and properly
dressed, and don’t you dare bring that murdering son-of-a-bitch
anywhere near my husband’s memorial service. Do you
understand?”
“Of course I won’t bring him,” Mark said. “Of
course not. But, come upstairs, Mom. I’ll make you some tea or give
you a big glass of brandy or something, and we’ll… You can be angry
about one part of my life without pushing me away completely, can’t
you?”
“Not right now I can’t.” Her bottom lip
trembled as she said, “I was counting on you to get me through
these next few days. I needed you to be strong, and to let me lean
on you. Now…” She looked at him as if he were a stranger. “Now I
just don’t trust you anymore. I don’t understand you.”
“I’m still me, Mom. Come on…”
“Get out of the car, Mark. Find the pictures.
And for God’s sake, think about what you’re doing.” She was looking
ahead now, her eyes fixed on the road as intently as if she were
steering it through a blizzard. “Think about who you’re
hurting.”
“I will. I mean it. But, Mom…” Mark wasn’t
sure if he should push it this far or not, but it wasn’t as if he
hadn’t lost all the same people his mother had, and maybe she
needed to be reminded of that. “Think about who you’re hurting too.
We need each other. We’re all that’s left, and—”
“We’re all that’s left and you’re spitting in
the face of our family! You’re…with…with the man who destroyed
us!”
“I don’t think we’ve been destroyed—” Mark
started, but his mother wasn’t interested in hearing it.
“Get out of the car. Don’t call me. I’ll let
you know when I’m ready to discuss this.”
And that was that. Three times she’d told him
to get out—he couldn’t keep ignoring her request. And he really
didn’t have anything left to say. Nothing that would be productive,
at least.
So he climbed out of the car and watched as
she drove away through the rain. She didn’t turn to look back at
him. He stood on the sidewalk for a moment, then started moving.
This was his fault. He should have controlled the situation, should
have spoken to his mother earlier and at a time when she wasn’t
already reeling from another loss. He’d been too passive and it had
turned into a mess. Now he needed to make sure he didn’t let the
same thing happen with Lucas.
He jogged to his car and steered it in the
direction Lucas had been walking. It wasn’t as easy to find him as
it should have been. Mark drove straight to the halfway house, his
eyes peeled the whole way, but Lucas was nowhere along the route.
He hadn’t been gone long enough to have made it home, but maybe
he’d gotten a ride, so Mark pulled out his cell, called the house,
and asked for Lucas. Not there.
Damn it. Mark didn’t want to let this wait.
Lucas was so insecure, so ready to blame himself for every damn
thing that went wrong. It had been endearing at first, another sign
of the man’s determination to take responsibility for his mistakes.
But at a time like this it just made Mark crazy, thinking of Lucas
somewhere, wet and cold, sad and guilty. He thought of what he’d
said to his mother. Yeah. He loved Lucas. That was the only way to
explain the churning anxiety in his gut, the almost overpowering
need to find the man and save him from his own demons.
He brought the car back to his apartment and
started along the route again. He was driving even more slowly now,
trying to think like Lucas. It wasn’t easy. His first instinct had
clearly been to get out of the apartment—a pretty good idea, under
the circumstances. He’d turned toward the halfway house when he’d
left the building. The other direction would have taken him
downtown and Lucas wasn’t the sort to seek out crowds when he was
upset. So Lucas would have walked, head down in the rain, not
paying much attention to his surroundings… Mark drove so slowly
that people were honking at him and speeding by with angry
gestures, but he ignored them. Where would Lucas have gone?
Mark felt a quick spark of excitement when he
saw the stone building looming out of the rain, but dismissed it
quickly. It was a church, and that was where Mark would go,
not Lucas. Still, he had no other ideas, so he found a parking spot
and jogged up the wide stairs to the imposing wooden doors. This
was the town’s United church and Mark had been there a few times
for meetings and community functions, but it didn’t have the same
emotional resonance as his own building had for him. But this
wasn’t about Mark, it was about Lucas.
And there he was. Sitting in one of the back
pews, staring up at the altar as if searching for answers. There
was a puddle at his feet and Mark knew from experience that the
church custodian would bitch about this sort of thing to the
minister, but nobody was bothering Lucas. The whole place seemed
deserted, actually, although there was probably somebody not far
away keeping an ear on things, if not an eye.
He eased into the pew and slid down until he
was next to Lucas, close but not touching. Lucas glanced over at
him in surprise. “Mark. What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“And you looked here?”
“Divine inspiration.” Who knew, maybe it had
been.
“I’m really sorry,” Lucas said with a furtive
look over his shoulder to be sure no one was listening. He wanted
to protect Mark from any other loss of privacy, and it made Mark
want to hit something. Lucas shouldn’t have to be so worried about
this.
“It wasn’t your fault. Just an awkward
coincidence.”
“Is your mom pissed?”
“She’s upset,” Mark said carefully. Maybe too
carefully, because Lucas’s expression made it clear he knew there
was more to it than that. Mark shrugged. “It had to happen at some