Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
The camp bus pulled into the elementary school parking lot at four-thirty on Sunday afternoon, right on schedule.
Shane leaned against the side of his truck, watching April pace beside him.
She'd been doing that for the last ten minutes—three steps left, three steps right, checking her phone, twisting her hands together.
"He's fine," Shane said for the third time. "They would have called if anything was wrong."
"I know." April didn't stop pacing. "I just missed him. I missed him so much and I also loved having the house to ourselves and now I feel guilty about it. Is that weird?”
Shane caught her hand as she passed, pulling her close. "Not weird. You're allowed to miss your kid and enjoy adult time. That's called being human."
The bus doors opened with a hydraulic hiss, and kids started pouring out like ants from a kicked hill. Kevin appeared at the top of the steps, his backpack hanging off one shoulder, hair sticking up in every direction.
"Mom! Shane!" Kevin waved both arms over his head like he was directing aircraft. Several other parents turned to look, and Shane felt April tense slightly against his side. They hadn't exactly announced their relationship to the world yet, but that was about to change, once they talked to Kevin.
Kevin hit the ground running, literally, and crashed into April hard enough to make her stumble. Shane steadied them both, one hand on April's back.
"Guess what! Guess what!" Kevin was bouncing. "I remembered everything Shane taught me on our hike and I beat Regis at the orienteering competition!"
"That's wonderful, baby." April hugged him tightly, breathing in the smell of campfire smoke and kid sweat. "I'm so proud of you."
"He got so lost!" Kevin pulled back, grinning. "Like, totally lost. And I found the last checkpoint first! The counselor said I was the best young navigator he’d ever seen!"
Shane grabbed Kevin's duffel bag from where he'd dropped it. "Good job, bud. Sounds like you had fun."
"It was awesome! My flag football team won. Oliver was on the other team, and he hates flag football because he’s not very good so when he fell, I helped him back up.
And at archery I got the most bullseyes, and at the campfire quiz I knew all the answers—" Kevin was walking backwards toward the truck, still talking at full speed.
"And when we did the relay race my team won because I was the fastest and I had to help Oliver back up again, and—"
Shane caught April's expression shift. Just slightly. Just enough that he noticed the way her smile went from genuine to fixed.
They loaded into the truck—Kevin in the back seat beside Pete, who he hugged while still talking—and headed toward April's house.
Shane drove while April half-turned to look at her son, asking questions about the food and his cabin and whether he'd gotten any sleep at all.
He barely answered them and continued bragging.
"Oh, and the spelling bee!" Kevin leaned forward against his seatbelt. "We had this camp spelling bee thing and I almost won that but Oliver came in first because he always does, and that’s cool. But Regis got knocked out in the first round." He laughed. "He was so mad his face turned red!"
"Kevin." April's voice had an edge now. "That's enough." She turned back around and faced the windshield.
Kevin didn't catch it. "But Mom, it was so funny! He couldn't even spell 'necessary' and that's like, super easy—"
"I said that's enough."
This time Kevin heard it. He sat back, his grin fading slightly. "I'm just saying what happened."
"You're gloating." April kept her eyes forward. "We don't gloat when we win and we really don’t gloat when someone else loses."
Shane glanced in the rearview mirror. Kevin looked confused and a little hurt.
"I'm not gloating," Kevin said. "I'm not competitive. I'm just always the best at everything."
Shane felt April go rigid in the passenger seat.
April whirled around to face her son. "Is that your attitude?"
Kevin shrugged. "Not attitude. It's the truth. I beat Regis at orienteering, and at archery, and at the quiz, and—"
He wasn't reading his momma's cues as she raked her fingers into her hair on either side of her head, her face scrunching into a pained frown.
"That's enough. I didn't raise you to be arrogant."
"Mom! I'm not! It's just the truth."
Shane pulled into April's driveway and put the truck in park, but neither April nor Kevin noticed. They were locked in their own standoff.
April pointed toward the house. "Just go to your room. You’re so good at spelling? Great, I want you to write 'I am humble' a hundred times in one of your notebooks."
"Mom! That's not fair!" Kevin stomped his foot as his voice rose to a shriek on the last word. Pete lowered his head, then curled into a ball.
April lowered her voice to a dangerous tone. "Go now before you're in real trouble." She pointed toward the house again.
Shane saw it coming, saw Kevin's face crumple and then harden, saw the eight-year-old boy make the worst possible choice—
"I hate you!" Kevin yelled.
April's face went blank. Perfectly, terrifyingly blank.
"Join the club," she said quietly. "It's hardly exclusive."
Kevin slammed his foot against the floor of the truck again, then threw his door open and pulled his backpack and duffel bag out.
He dragged his feet walking to the front door.
April was already out of the truck and on the porch unlocking it for him by the time he got there.
Kevin disappeared inside without looking back.
Shane followed them inside, Pete trotting at his side for once, instead of Kevin’s. April stood in the front room, arms wrapped around herself. Down the hall, Kevin's bedroom door slammed hard enough to rattle the pictures on the wall.
April waited for the sound to fade before pinching the bridge of her nose in a futile effort to keep the tears from falling.
"It doesn't matter whether I left Vegas or not. It doesn’t matter that they never met each other," she whispered. "He sounds just like his father."
The first tear fell.
Shane moved toward her, slowly and carefully, like approaching a wounded animal. "April—"
"Don't." She held up a hand. "Just... don't tell me I'm overreacting."
"I wasn't going to."
She looked at him then, and the pain in her eyes hit him like a fist. "I love my boy so much.
No matter what. But I hate seeing that man inside him.
What if I can't change Kevin? What if it's in him already, that cruelty?
And he grows up to be a real bastard and hurt everyone around him and it's all my fault that I couldn't counter it? "
Shane kept his voice steady, though fury at Vince Romano was a hot coal in his chest. "April, that's not gonna happen.
Kevin's not cruel. He's a good kid. But when he's angry it comes out in cruel ways sometimes.
He's hardly the first kid who's ever yelled 'I hate you' to his momma.
Doesn't excuse it, not at all. Totally unacceptable.
But it doesn't mean he's a bad seed or whatever. "
"So what am I supposed to do?" April's voice broke. " I try reasoning with him, he doesn't listen because he's off in a daydream. I try to punish him, he lashes out. Thing is, he's not wrong about being the best at everything." She laughed bitterly. "But I hate seeing that arrogance about it."
Shane guided her toward the couch, and she let him. They sat, and he angled himself to face her.
"Is it arrogance?" he asked carefully. "'Cause I don't see it. I see a kid who's confident. He doesn't lord his skills over the other kids."
"No, but he will. He will if I don't change it."
"April, I've never once seen Kevin win at something and be an ass about it.
He just told us that at camp he helped Oliver twice.
He helped Regis when he got lost—Regis, the kid who's been tormenting him all year.
I watched him clap for other kids when they did their speeches at the graduation. I've—"
"Are you saying I don't know my own kid?"
"I'm not saying that at all." Shane reached for her hand, and after a moment, she let him take it. "Actually, what I'm saying is that you don't know yourself."
April reared back, a look of total confusion on her face. "I don't know myself? What's that supposed to mean?"
"You don't see how you're projecting Vince onto your son when they are two completely different people. Kevin is smart and good at sports, yeah. Hell, good at everything he puts his mind to, and he knows it. That's not arrogance. It's confidence. He's just stating fact, not being a dick about it."
"Not yet. That's what I keep telling you. I'm not projecting anything. It's going to turn into arrogance if he keeps doing it. If I don't fix it."
"That's another place where you don't know yourself."
"What? What don't I know about myself?" She threw her arms up, exasperated. "That I can't fix it?"
Shane waited until she was looking at him again. Really looking.
"That there's nothing to fix because you are an amazing mother. I'll repeat—there is nothing to fix because you. Are. Amazing." Shane paused, his mouth tilting into a smile despite the weight of the moment. "You. You're amazing, April Taylor. Amazing."
He took her face in his hands, thumbs brushing away the tears on her cheeks.
"And I love you."
The words hung in the air between them. Shane had said them before, whispered them in the dark, breathed them against her skin. But never like this. Never in the middle of the day in her living room with her son down the hall and fear written all over her face.
April's breath caught. "Shane—"
"I love you," he said again. "I loved you when we were seventeen and I love you now. And I love Kevin. That kid? He's not Vince. He never will be. Because he has you in his blood and in his life."
"But what if—"