Chapter 31
31
S imon pulled to the side of the road on an impulse. There wasn't a kitten or anything huddled. It was the middle of town and this time there was an ice cream store that drew his attention.
He’d had a good day, or so he thought. Despite work going well and the fact that he’d managed to get his mother the money she needed, he felt like something wasn’t quite settled.
Maybe it was that he was damn broke now. He’d scraped every last bit for his mother. He needed to eat the groceries that were in his fridge and not go shopping before he got paid again, but he'd be okay. He might even want to reconsider the several dollars for the ice cream cone.
Still, he was already parking, and he hadn’t done this in a long while. It all seemed almost perfect, and he needed the mental break.
It might be the last warm day for a while. It had been cooler the last couple nights and today had simply popped the thermometer back up. He needed to get home to Kitten, but he wouldn’t be long and even as he climbed out of his car, the ice cream shop tugged at him .
He’d found parking about a block away and headed back, his work clothes maybe a little over the top for the people casually shopping the square. The place was relatively busy, and it made him smile that a smaller town like Breathless was clearly prospering.
He headed inside and waited through three customers, one a young mother with a child who could not decide what he wanted. The kid was maybe five, and Simon thought he remembered himself being very decisive at that age.
When he was at the counter, there was no decision to make. “Chocolate, waffle cone, please.”
The ice cream would probably drip out the end. He would just need to eat it fast enough. But he could. Without saying much more than please and thank you to anyone, he took his cone and headed across the street to the park where he sat on the bench by himself. He watched the kids playing on the playground on the other side as he bit into the cone.
That first bite of chocolate ice cream took him back. It had been freedom.
A different bench in a town halfway across the country. It had been the first time he was on his own. He thought he’d gotten away and he was proud of the five-dollar bill he’d found on the street. That ice cream was victory.
He could almost imagine his mother coming and sitting down beside him.
But he took another bite and enjoyed the sunshine and willed the feeling of freedom to return. Instead, it was Carlisle who came and sat next to him. Simon startled, almost dropping his cone.
“That looks good,” she said with a smile, but he shook his head.
“What are you doing here?” Not a great question, almost rude. But she’d interrupted his reverie, and he didn’t know quite how to respond .
“Oh, Jane and I had to go change a registration at the town hall. Then I walked past the shops and bought a shirt.” She grinned and lifted the pretty purple bag, lined with white tissue as if that would show him what she’d gotten.
She almost looked like she would ask for a bite of his ice cream. Not wanting to share—he wasn’t sure he could, it was more than an ice cream cone—he turned a bit away. As if that would discourage her. But it was his. It represented a core memory of sitting on the bench, eating his ice cream.
“Is everything good with your mother?” The tone of her words sounded like the question was almost out of the blue. But it made him wonder if she knew exactly what he was thinking about.
“It is. I’ve got her taken care of.”
“That’s good.”
Simon decided to confess the rest of it because, if she wanted anything out of him for the next eight days, she was going to be shit out of luck. “I am now completely out of money. This cone is the last of it.”
He faked a large grin and took another bite.
Moving her purse, she settled it and the pretty shop bag across her lap and sat with her arms crossed over her things as if protecting them from park hooligans or such. Simon didn’t see any.
She didn't ask for a bite. She just sat and watched the afternoon pass by for a few minutes without saying anything. Maybe it was more of that ER nurse stuff. Maybe she sensed there was something more here and she was willing to let him stew in it while he finished the cone without offering her any.
He wasn't surprised when she asked, “What is it about the ice cream cone? It seems pretty intense.”
He opened his mouth, intending to say “nothing,” or maybe “I just like chocolate ice cream.” But he wasn't even sure how much he actually did like chocolate ice cream. He only knew that it brought back that day.
There was something oddly comforting about being here on the park bench. It was almost as if they were in a bubble despite the fact that they were in public and people passed by periodically on the sidewalk behind them.
For whatever reason, it made him feel safe. “When I was five years old, I ran away.”
He didn't look at Carlisle, just stared ahead, finding a tree to focus on rather than the kids at the park in case somebody should notice. She didn’t seem to react much to a five-year-old running away from home, so he kept going.
“I made it into the center of town—a little place a lot like this actually. I found a five-dollar bill on the sidewalk. I had all my clothes stuffed into a backpack. No actual money. I hadn't thought money would be necessary. I used it to buy myself a chocolate ice cream cone and I sat on the park bench and ate it.”
That was enough wasn’t it?
Not for Carlisle. She wanted everything, even if he didn’t have everything to give.
“What did your mother say?” She asked as though it were a funny story and not necessarily the almost-tragedy that it had been.
“She said, Hello, are you lost?”
Only then did he turn and look at Carlisle. She was staring at him, finally, as if he weren't making any sense. He was, she just didn't know it yet. And he didn't know why he was telling her this story. He'd kept it close to the heart for years. His mother knew. Darcy knew. Even Stephen knew—his mother had told the man back before he destroyed her trust.
“She asked if you were lost?” Carlisle reiterated.
Maybe he hadn't answered her fast enough. “She didn't know me. I was a random little kid sitting on a park bench, eating an ice cream cone. Or so I thought. She told me later I looked pretty bad. Apparently, my clothes were stained and dirty. My hair looked like it hadn't been washed in a week—and it probably hadn't.”
He saw Carlisle's expression and nodded as if she had said anything he could agree with. “I was a foster kid. It was a bad house, so I left.”
“And your mom found you on a bench?”
He nodded, eating the last end of the cone as it threatened to drip down his hand. It had dripped on him that day. “She stayed with me. And when the police tried to take me back to my foster house, I pitched an absolute fit. In fact, I got away. I bolted down the street.”
Carlisle's mouth fell open. This had been the day he'd met the woman who changed his whole life.
“What happened next?” Carlisle pressed.
Of course she did. If he’d gotten away, how had his mother become his mother? “I was not very fast. I was five. But my reaction was enough to make my mom realize things weren't right. Since the police were having a terrible time with me, and I was reasonably calm with her—because she promised me I'd never have to go back—they worked things out. She got emergency authorization to be a foster parent. She made sure I didn't go back to the family I ran away from. About a year later she officially became my mom.”
The ice cream had been a portal back to being a very dirty and uncared for child. To when he believed he was just a little runaway who could blend in with the crowd.
“She adopted you,” Carlisle smiled as she stated it. “That's a great story.”
He liked that she took it for what it was: the best possible change in his life. One that made all the difference. He didn't think about what made him run away that day. He thought about the fact that he'd met his mother.
Carlisle nodded as if absorbing it. The two of them stayed sitting side by side, understanding but not making eye contact. She finally spoke. “It makes more sense now why you're so dedicated to your mom.”
He was opening his mouth to protest. But she shot him a look and put one hand on his arm as if that would stop him from speaking. To her credit, it did.
“Some people are very dedicated to their families because they just are. I'm relatively dedicated to mine, though somehow my brother's still not really talking to me. But, if you remember a life before your mother, and if your mother put in that kind of effort for a kid she found on a park bench, then that makes a lot of sense.”
Carlisle’s words were comforting. The whole time he'd known her, he’d had these moments where his feelings for her burrowed deeper. He felt it again, worming further into his heart, whether he wanted it to or not.
No matter how she felt about his dedication to his mother, she would probably come up against the brick wall where it was his mom or her. Simon hated to even think it, but it wouldn't be a choice. Carlisle had been around for several months; His mother had been there his whole life. He'd been there for Darcy's whole life. They needed him.
Still, the feeling of Carlisle settling deeper into his bones made him wish he could keep her.
She stayed silent again for a few moments. Then, maybe because she felt the same odd bubble of safety on the stupid little public park bench, she told him, “I saw the scars on your back. Are they from when you were a foster child?”
The warm feeling fled, his spine stiffened, and Simon froze solid where he sat.
A Belle always brings her good china. When asked, she’ll tell you it’s nothing to worry about.