13. Chapter Twelve #2
“Fiona,” Ron said gently. He put his hand on her arm to try to cool her down.
She wrenched it away. “Well, they did,” she snapped. “Our son was never like that before he met them. What was he even doing in the car with your husband that night, Joe? Was it that? Were they going to get drugs?”
This time, Ron’s “Fiona!” was more insistent. She sucked in a breath to lay into him too, but before she could—
“Grandad!” Benjy yelled as he rounded the end of the road. “Grandma!”
He dropped his backpack onto the drive and bolted up to tackle-hug his granddad.
Skinny arms clenched around the man’s waist as Benjy buried his head in his chest. Ron’s face softened as he hugged Benjy back, his hands careful as if the kid might break.
It was Benjy who broke away to hug his grandmother and kiss her cheek.
“I have so much to tell you,” he blurted out as he stepped away, his hands flying as he talked. “I’m doing OK at school, and we have a cat—sort of, part-time, but he’s cool—and I’m going to learn to fly!”
Fiona’s face creased into an expression that tried to be amused, worried, and confused all at once.
“Fly?” she said. “What, like, Superman?”
Benjy snorted. “No,” he said. “In a plane. But I have to learn all about other stuff first. What’s wrong with Cody? Hey, Code. Don’t be scared. This is my grandma and grandpa!”
While Benjy stooped down to try and distract Cody, Joe glanced over Fiona’s pink sweatered shoulder to where Quentin was getting out of the car.
His head was tilted down to listen to something that Jessie was saying…
from the way she pointed, presumably, it was information on who the older couple was.
“Benjy, why don’t you take Cody inside?” Joe said. He handed over his door keys to save any need to hunt for Benjy’s. “Your grandparents will say bye before they leave.”
That made Benjy look up, his face creased with disappointment. “Can’t you stay for dinner?” he protested.
“No,” Joe said. He made himself smile as Benjy gave him a puzzled look, and softened his refusal by waving the letter. “They just brought some mail over that I needed to see, but they have somewhere to be.”
Ron’s nostrils flared briefly, but he put his hand on Benjy’s shoulder and patted it.
“Not this time,” he said. “But maybe you’ll be able to come and stay with us soon. How’s that sound?”
“Back in Juneau?” Benjy asked, looking confused. “You mean, in the summer.”
“Maybe,” Ron said. “We’ll play it by ear.”
Benjy gave Joe a confused look, but after a second, shrugged it off, picked Cody up, and headed toward the house. A minute later, Jessie darted past them to join him, leaving Quentin, now carrying Benjy’s backpack, to stop next to Joe.
“Everything OK?” he asked as he leaned in to brush a kiss over Joe’s cheek. The gesture made Joe melt inside and clench his jaw at the same time. He loved it, but if he was right about the source of this morning's complaint, it wasn’t going to go over well.
It looked like he’d made the right guess. On cue, Fiona’s mouth twisted in disgust, the pink of her lipstick bleeding into the grooved lines.
“So now you’re letting your…your…”
“Boyfriend?” Joe suggested. He was pretty sure that wasn’t the word they’d used when they’d complained to the school.
Fiona gave a performative shudder of distaste. “Whatever you want to call it,” she said. “Maybe Alan’s parents are OK with you bringing this… stranger around their grandchildren, but we’re not. What do you even know about him? He could be a pervert or a—”
Before he could finish, Ron put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “Fiona,” he said. “We don’t need to fight it out here. That’s for court.”
She glared at him for a moment, then gave in as she turned her back on Joe. Once he was sure that she was done, Ron turned back to Quentin.
“It’s not about you being gay,” he said. “We don’t want you to think that.”
“Bit late,” Quentin said.
The dry bite made Ron look briefly on edge and Joe wince to himself. This was not the time for Quentin’s new resolve to stop calling people stupid just because they were to slip.
“Joe is free to…move on with a new partner,” Ron forged on. “That’s up to him, but Benjy doesn’t need anyone new in his life. He had a Dad, and he has us, and as his grandparents, we aren’t comfortable with your being around him. That’s all. It’s not personal.”
Joe took a step forward. “It’s not your call, Ron.”
Ron looked at Fiona and then back at Joe.
“Not yet,” he said. “But that could change, and…maybe it would be in your best interests to make that easy for us. A drawn-out custody battle would drag your name through the mud, and Tess’s current situation would come out, too.
Do you think that’s what is best for anyone? ”
Heat flushed from Joe’s chest up to his ears. He could feel his temper rattle at his temples like a drum. Before he could say anything, Quentin tugged him back to stand next to him.
“I think that at this stage it’s best to involve lawyers,” he said.
Fiona turned back around, a thin, tight smile on her face, and gave Joe and then the garden a once-over. There was no one she could see the hole in Joe’s sock, but Joe curled his toes in obscure shame anyhow.
“Good luck affording one,” she said. “Three kids, a mortgage, and helping your sister pay for rehab—might as well have flushed that down the drain. And all on a teacher’s salary? There can’t be much left at the end of the month.”
Ron glanced at her and made a subdued ‘enough’ gesture.
“Think about it, Joe,” he said. “Benjy is a smart boy. He deserves everything. Can you provide that for him? Can Tess? I know you can’t pay for his basketball camp this summer because they contacted us to let us know the payment was late. He’s gone every year. His Dad went every summer.”
Joe flushed. It wasn’t true—it had been late, but he had paid it. It had just been thanks to a nursed along credit card and a very slim margin.
“I–”
Ron didn’t give him a chance to object. “Are you really going to fight us over custody, when you might not be able to keep a roof over his head for long? Have you thought about that?”
That made Joe flinch because he had. He did. Every month, when it was time to work out what bills could be put off another few weeks and which needed to be paid. The lump sum for the mortgage came out first, and every month he had to cut things a little tighter.
Maybe they had a point.
Great. Joe cleared his throat and tried to swallow the salt-scratch taste of depression from the back of his throat. Like it wasn’t hard enough to deal with the pressure from Tess’s in-laws without his own brain taking their side?
“That’s–”
A warm, broad hand settled in the small of Joe’s back, calmly reassuring.
“That’s not your business,” Joe said as he rallied. “I think maybe it’s time to say goodbye to the kids and go.”
There was a pause as Ron and Fiona looked at him and then each other.
“Then he can too,” Fiona said in a clipped voice as she pointed at Quentin. “I don’t want you around my grandson. What sort of man takes on… this without an ulterior motive?”
The swipe of her hand on ‘ this’ took in the house and Joe, and presumably the kids.
For a second, Joe felt like he was sinking, his chest hot and his throat tight.
This was it. This was what he’d been afraid of.
That he’d let something into his life and then it would be taken away, and he’d be alone.
It would have been OK if he hadn’t admitted it was real. That made it hurt more.
Quentin gave Joe’s back a reassuring rub.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “And slander would be a very bad idea. I have a very good lawyer.”
Ron put his arm on Fiona’s shoulder. “So do we,” he said. “Tell Benjy we had to go, but we’ll see him soon.”
****
The shame of opening the overdue drawer was just as bad as Joe had thought. He sat cross-legged on the living room floor, on the other side of the coffee table from Quentin, and watched him look through one creased, wrinkled demand for money at a time.
How high did the debt have to go, Joe wondered, before Quentin realized the sort of albatross that was around his neck?
“I suppose I could have fought Alan’s family over the estate,” Joe said.
“But I…I’d already lost Alan; I couldn’t lose Jessie as well.
And I didn’t need it. Maybe I don’t make a fortune as a teacher, but I make enough, and I still had the joint savings and the house, and my health insurance is surprisingly good. ”
Quentin glanced up from, judging by what Joe could see of the letterhead, his Sallie Mae student loan.
“And then?”
Joe leaned forward, knees crooked up and elbows braced on them.
“It turned out that we’d not been doing as well as Alan had made out,” he said.
“He’d taken out a second mortgage on the house and had some debts that I didn’t know about.
I mean, don’t get it wrong, he’d turned it around.
If he hadn’t died, he would have been able to pay all that off.
It’s just…he did. I could still float that, though.
It was tight, but it was doable, but then Tess got sick… ”
He trailed off for a moment and had to take a deep breath against the memory of how much like drowning that had felt.
“Three kids are more expensive than two,” Quentin said.
“You have no idea. Benjy plays football, Jessie took up the viola, and Cody has ear problems, and they all eat so much. God, they’re expensive.”
“And you’re paying for your sister’s—”
“Part of it. The excess. Although, since she’s apparently checked herself out before they could throw her out, I guess that’s one bill I won’t get next month.
So, every cloud, I guess.” Joe said with a smile that was more of a grimace.
Then he pulled a face and rubbed the back of his wrist over his mouth.
“I don’t think that, sometimes it just feels like I should.
I guess. Anyhow, there you go. Sorry, you really didn’t win much of a prize. ”
Quentin gave him a narrow-eyed glare that made Joe squirm. It was true, though. Widower with three kids on his hands and enough debt to fill a drawer. That was a booby prize if anything.
For now, Quentin let the self-criticism slip by unchallenged as he tidied the bills into a stack in front of him. One hand rested on the paper, and Quentin gave Joe a sombre look.
“I don’t suppose there’s any way you’ll let me fix this by throwing money at it?” he asked hopefully.
“No!” Joe said. “That’s not why I’m with you, so you’ll bail me out. Besides, pilots might make good money, but you can’t just…subsidise my life.”
Quentin made an ‘eh’ face as he leaned back on the couch. He scratched the side of his jaw as he heaved a cheek-puffing sigh and stared at the bills. Joe watched him for a second and…
It had occurred to him. He wasn’t an idiot. It wasn’t cheap to become a pilot and, good wage or not, Quentin was careless with money in a way that meant he’d had it for a while.
And it wasn’t like Joe hadn’t noticed that Quentin’s stepdad had the same surname as the airfield the Cessna was on.
There was just a point where you started to think that maybe it was a bit more than ‘comfortable’ or ‘set’.
“Are you rich?” he asked. “Like generational wealth rich?”
Technically, with two weeks of dating under their belt, that could be considered jumping the gun. Sometimes it was best to just know.
Quentin glanced at him and shrugged apologetically. “I am not hurting for money,” he admitted cagily. When Joe glared at him, he sighed and raked his hair back from his face with both hands. “You know, most people would take my family being well off as a good thing.”
“Yeah, but you’re not well off, are you?” Joe pointed out. “You’re rich. Maybe, rich, rich.”
“My step-dad’s rich,” Quentin corrected him. “Mom’s wealthy. I’m doing OK.”
They stared at each other. Joe could feel that hot, tight panic in his chest again. It wasn’t about the money—not really. A little, but not really.
Quentin leaned forward, elbows on thighs and hands dangled between his knees. “On a scale of ‘Huh’ to ‘Eat the Rich,’ where are we? Ball park?”
Good question.
“I guess I just…don’t want you to think that’s what this was,” Joe said. He gestured at the table. “I know I’m not exactly solvent, right now, but that’s not why we’re together.”
A slow, warm smile, oddly sweet and so sincere it took Joe’s breath away, curled the corner of Quentin’s mouth.
“I’d assumed that wasn’t it,” he said. “Since you won’t let me use money to make your problems go away.”
“Maybe I’m playing the long game,” Joe countered from knee-jerk contrariness. “Alimony can be forever.”
Quentin raised one of those ridiculously well-sculpted eyebrows of his. He gestured at the bills, fingers spread wide to include them all.
“So if we get married, you’ll let me pay these?” he asked. “Because I can look up how long getting a marriage license would take?”
Joe reached over the table and took his debts back, except for one that Quentin managed to grab.
“I’m not going to get shotgun married so you’ll pay off my creditors,” he said.
“This isn’t Bridgerton. And we’re not getting married until I’ve paid off my own debts and no one can accuse me of using you for your money.
I don’t need you to save me this time, Quentin.
I just need someone I can talk to about it. ”
Quentin gestured his surrender and leaned back into the couch.
“OK,” he said. “But you let me use my lawyer to scare your in-laws into line?”
It was tempting, but…
“I don’t much like them, right now,” he said. “But they are Benjy’s grandparents. I don’t want to have to tell him you sued the roof from over their head.”
“No lawsuits,” Quentin promised. “Just an official response from a law firm with a lot of names on the letterhead. And remember, they are slandering me as well.”
Joe hesitated, but that seemed…reasonable. He gave in with a shrug. “What else?”
Quentin flapped the bill he’d grabbed. “I get to pay this one,” he said. “It’ll make me feel useful.”
It was for cable and only— only! —fifty dollars. Joe could have refused, but this one he let Quentin have.
That was the thing. It wasn’t the money. It was the fact that Joe brought nothing to this relationship. He just took…and at some point, Quentin and his family were going to realize what an albatross he’d hung around his neck.
Worst part? He’d already known that, but he’d still let it go on long enough that now everyone was going to get hurt.