CRAIG
CRAIG
Kathryn’s silver Audi parked on our driveway is not a welcome sight.
I pull Roxy in alongside, shut off her engine, and take several moments to stare blankly at the house while savouring the last dregs of my pleasant high. Once I’m inside, it’ll not take long for me to sink.
If I’d stayed in college this afternoon, I’d have arrived home about an hour ago. This means Gary will have had about an hour to play his favourite game.
Can’t hide out in the car forever, though. Only delaying the inevitable.
“Craig?” Mum calls from the kitchen the instant I’ve snicked the front door closed behind me, and that alone is enough to make my stomach drop.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Come here, please.”
That she’s acknowledging my entrance is unusual, never mind summoning me for an audience.
“One sec,” I yell, taking off my Vans. Kathryn’s needling titter carries along the hall as I line the pair up alongside the welcome mat, and my dragging crawl toward it feels much like a plank walk into shark-infested water. “Hey.”
When I step through, the two women are sitting with cups of tea at the breakfast bar. Stopping just inside the doorway, I see Christopher in his highchair happily squishing grapes into the tray. He immediately looks up and garbles at me. Kathryn turns her head to flash a too-chirpy smile, but Mum reacts to my appearance with little more than the tight pursing of her lips.
Like hell am I going to start this off. “What’s up, little dude?” I return Christopher’s eager grin, moving a pace closer to him. “That’s quite the mess you’ve —”
“Leave him be,” Mum snaps, her blue gaze slamming me before I can take a second step. “He’s perfectly content.”
“Oh. Kay.”
She doesn’t stay fixed on me for long. “You can save your fussing of him for after we’re done here.”
“Done with what?” I force myself to ask.
This must be just as tough for her as it is for me. Glancing sideways at Kathryn as if for support, she appears to be gearing up for an interaction greater than we’ve shared in weeks, possibly even years.
Stalling a little with a sip of her tea, Mum swallows and modestly clears her throat. I’m deliberating the worth of making a hot beverage of my own, just for something to do to distract from the tension, when she finally chooses her point to begin. “How have you spent your day, Craig?”
My eyes catch on Kathryn, looking on with a reserved curiosity, and I work to school my expression correspondingly before I hedge, “I’ve been to college, Mum.”
“And this afternoon?”
“I… took a half-day.”
“Why?”
“Because.” I’ve got nothing. “I’m on top of all my work.”
A cough from Kathryn scarcely covers her slip of amusement while Mum frowns at me like I’ve just told her the blackest kind of lie. “Oh?” she says. “Well, I fail to see how when you’ve been absent from a majority of your classes all week.”
And, okay, that’s Gary’s first card on the table, and we’re into the game. But I’m not unprepared for this play. “My tutors permitted me to take study leave in the library. You can call and check. Or, if you give me a minute, I have the permission slips in my bag, all signed off. I work better alone, that’s all.”
Mum is swift to mask the few seconds she needs to absorb my reply behind an admonishing look sent Christopher’s way. He’s gleefully swiping grape carcasses off his tray to the gleaming tiled floor.
“Mamama,” he giggles at her, unrepentant.
Then, pushing back her stool to stand and stooping down to clean the splatter, she tersely counters, “And you had permission granted for your early leave from campus today, too, did you? An exercise of field study, was it?”
“It’s not —”
“Now, Samantha,” Kathryn interjects over me, tone placating. “Gary did say he seemed all out of sorts this morning.”
I legitimately despise her. On a level almost equal to that of her preciously demonic son. If the woman is at all aware, though, she shows no sign.
Mum straightens up with a cupped hand of pulp, shaking her head, and skirts widely around me to the kitchen bin. “Be that as it may, he still needs to explain himself.”
“Like I said, Mum, I’m ahead on my work. I only missed one class this afternoon. It’s not a big deal.”
“Don’t you dare tell me what’s not a big deal !” she rebukes, a disturbing echo of Sebastian’s earlier snipe.
I try to figure out how she wants me to react as I track her clipped return to the breakfast bar. “I’m… sorry,” I offer with a shrug, knowing that’s not it.
She settles back on her stool, pausing for another sip of tea. “ Sorry doesn’t answer where you’ve been, Craig.”
Satan’s matriarch lays a comforting hand on Mum’s arm, and it doesn’t take a genius to realise that the only reason she’d be concerned about where I’ve spent my afternoon is if she already knew.
Hooking my agitated fingers through my belt loops, I’m prompt in turning my complete focus to the undemanding solace of Christopher’s cheery face, and it’s impossible to deny him a small smile. “I just needed a break,” I answer with the simplest truth, but even to my own ears, it sounds like a weak defence. I try again, “I’ve been helping a, uh… friend.”
And that’s the cue Mum takes to strike — with the unerring accuracy of a cobra. “Which friend would that be, then? Your special friend, the odd little artist? Or the other one, the cocky ingrate you’ve been helping ever since his mutt took off?”
“Bas,” I reluctantly volunteer.
“The same friend who just so happens to own a clapped-out Ford Ranger?”
An instant chill courses through my veins. “Yeah.”
“And what exactly is your return on this costly and laborious favour you’re doing him?”
I’m stricken. Because holy shit! For all that I expected Gary to send me a message of this kind — a cautioning threat — why would he be forfeiting what he wants by revealing his whole hand this early into the game?
“It’s not like that, Mum,” I manage to grind out past the rapidly expanding lump in my throat. What other cards must he have hidden up his sleeve?
“You’ve been putting this boy ahead of your academic responsibilities.”
“My acad —”
“You’ve prioritised his wasteful demands on your time over your family’s needs.”
“No. I’m just taking some time —”
“Yes, Craig, it is like that. And it ends now.”
“— for myself.” My head whips back around so fast that Mum startles, Kathryn blanches, and I feel sick. “What?”
“You can’t afford such distractions. Your future is too promising to be sacrificed so lightly.”
It absolutely is not the time to puff out a derisive snort, and I forcefully choke it back. But I’ve come so damn close to victory today. Another couple of hours, and that engine would have roared.
If not for Sebastian leaving me to meet Brianna and the thought of him witnessing my success being too satisfying to forgo, I may very well have been cranking it to life right now. Instead, here I am, and of course, the high I floated home on has made for a breakneck fall. “Since when is doing a good deed for someone such a troublesome issue?”
Mum doesn’t even attempt to curb her snort. “After all your secrecy and lies over it, you’ve made that argument null and void.”
“Craig,” Kathryn neatly steals into my unguarded pause, jolting me halfway out of my skin with her direct address. “Gary made a request of you today, did he not?”
She only ever talks about me, not to me. I’m gratified to see her smile waver and shrink a little under my glare.
Still, she pushes on. “He asked if you could help him catch up to the rest of the class?”
“Gary didn’t ask for help.” My head has started shaking. “Gary never asks for anything.”
Whatever the reaction I’d hoped for with that proclamation, I don’t get it. Seems Kathryn’s chosen to somehow interpret my statement as a compliment, the way she chuckles. “If my son didn’t make himself clear, then I apologise on his behalf. He’s too proud for his own good sometimes. And I understand your hesitation; really, I do. But please, if you could at least think about it? A good deed for the greater cause of bringing the two of you closer again, right Sam?”
I can only stare — in a dumbfounded and horrified kind of way.
But it doesn’t suit Mum to notice, and so she determinedly doesn’t. “It’d be a far better use of your time. More beneficial to you than hanging around that cursed school or fiddling with that damn wreck of a truck.”
It makes sense to me now. A hideous understanding has dawned, so obvious I should have sussed it from the get-go.
This morning’s little chat had been nothing but a gambit, just a test to see how easily I might fold. Gary was all too aware he didn’t have enough on me to force my hand his way. He also knew that, by following through on his threat to spill and letting Mum spring to her own conclusions, my hand would be forced for him.
I’m screwed. “Are you telling me I’ve no room in my life for anything but study?”
“Until you make wiser choices in what you fill your life with,” Mum replies, “yes.”
“Until Dad chooses for me, you mean.”
“Your own actions have led you to the position you’re in, and you’d be well-served to remember that.” An impervious veil slides over her expression. “Any issue you have with it should be raised with him, not me.”
I bite down on my tongue, my jaw hardening alongside my fists because, yeah, she knows as well as I do that discussion won’t happen. The only silver lining to this ugly, Godforsaken scene is my dad’s absence from it. Once Mum fills him in, though, he’ll no doubt have plenty enough to say to me.
It’s Christopher who interrupts the treacle-thick moment that follows next, no longer sounding perfectly content with being excluded. “Ayg,” he calls out, his hands slapping into his mess. “Mamamamayg!”
My move for him is instinctive, but Kathryn’s immediately off her stool and by his side, cooing at him. A fresh surge of white-hot frustration creeps through me like acid at her presence and involvement in this.
“I am not about to stand back and let you go down that road again, Craig,” Mum continues, unmoved. “Your father and I have made you fully aware of where it’ll lead you.”
And yep, I need this conversation to stop. Now. There’s a telltale tremble to my voice that I loathe but can’t hide as I repeat, “It’s not like that, seriously, Mum, I swear.”
Her hand snaps up, palm out as if she’s reached her limit in looking properly at me. “Your word has to mean something before it can make an impact. Trust must be earned, son, and it’s long past time you started thinking beyond yourself.”
“Whatever,” I mutter petulantly, for lack of anything else worth saying. My back has already turned on her when she’s done with her reproof. “Message received.”
I can feel Kathryn’s gaze passing over me as I start away, raising the fine hairs on the nape of my neck, and my heart pangs at the sound of Christopher’s keenly disquieted call.
“Where are you going?” Mum’s question comes out more like an accusation.
That’s exactly how I take it. “To see Alex. Or is he forbidden to me as well, now?”
She elects against dignifying my snipe with a response, and instead, I hear her murmur a withering aside to Kathryn. I am kept ever conscious of the blade’s edge Alex walks in the minds of my parents. But no matter how much they’d like to, he is one person who can’t be cut from my life — not even by Tinwell. I’ve made it out the kitchen and several steps along the hall, thinking myself in the clear, before she pipes up at me again.
“Craig, wait.”
I stop.
“Take your brother.”
Without realising it, I’ve held my breath, which is now very noticeable as I expel it in a rush. “What?”
“Take Christopher with you, please.”
I’m slow to turn back around, sensing an underlying point I’m missing.
Mum doesn’t leave me wondering over it for long. “If he’s with you, I’m guaranteed you won’t pull a disappearing act to avoid facing your father.”
And for the first time ever, if only for the briefest of moments, I’m incensed enough to consider refusing to take the kid off her hands. I simply don’t have it in me, though, to pass up time with my little dude. Or to deny Alex of it.