And Then She Was Gone(24)
Jack grinned.
She looked up longingly. “Only one?”
Jack leaned toward her. She pressed her soft lips to his, and this kiss lasted longer. Jack made gentle strokes on her cheek with his thumb. With each touch, the tension between them slipped away.
Kelly’s hand glided along Jack’s arm. Her fingers traced along his hand and stopped at the rough scar that circled his wrist.
Jack immediately pulled his hand away.
“How’d you get that scar?”
He stiffened. “It’s nothing.”
“I thought you always told the truth.”
Jack sat back in his seat, rolled his head away, and stared out the window. “You don’t want to hear it.”
Kelly’s fingers reached out for his hand. “I do.” Her voice was soft.
Jack exhaled.
Kelly tilted her head and waited.
Jack was honest to a fault, but right now he wanted to lie. Something inside screamed, Say you cut yourself on a can, or fixing a bike—anything but the truth. Yet another part of him wanted to share what had happened to him. He wanted her to know about his sordid past, and not run in the other direction.
“Before I came to Aunt Haddie’s,” Jack said, “I stayed in some pretty bad places.”
“Foster homes?”
“No.” Jack reached out and put a hand on the steering wheel. “Motels that rent by the hour, crackhouses, whorehouses. Places like that.”
Kelly smiled awkwardly as she waited for the punchline that wouldn’t come.
“Well, when I was little, I loved the show Cops. You ever seen it?”
She shook her head.
“I thought they were the best. One night, there was this party going on, with druggies and prostitutes. I was alone in the kitchen. It was one of those galley kitchens.” Jack pulled his hands apart as if he were stretching taffy. “Like one narrow hallway with a stove, a sink, and a little window at the end.”
Kelly nodded.
“Well, I was looking out the window when some cop pulled over a car on the street below. I got so excited, I ran into the party and yelled, ‘COPS!’”
Jack chuckled. Kelly just kept her eyes glued to him.
“I wanted them to come look with me, but the druggies went nuts. Everyone freaked and ran for the door. At the time, I thought it was funny. So… after everyone had calmed down, I did it again. I yelled ‘COPS!’ and they started running for the door again.”
Kelly moved closer.
“Then this ghoulish-looking guy came over to me and asked, ‘Do you want to play cops and robbers, kid?’ I never had anyone to hang with. So when someone finally asked, I was all excited. He took me into the kitchen and pulled out a set of handcuffs. They were real ones. I wanted to be the cop, but he told me that I was going to be the robber. I just wanted to play with someone. Anyway, the guy cuffed me to the radiator. It was one of those old bare-metal types. It didn’t take me long to figure out he wasn’t coming back anytime soon.”
“That’s horrible.” Kelly’s fingers traced the scar. “But how did you get the scar?”
The memory of that sensation hit Jack like a Mack truck. “It was winter. It got cold out, and the radiator came on.”
Kelly’s fingers stopped moving.
“They were metal cuffs. That old radiator got as hot as a blast furnace. Heat traveled straight through the chain to the metal cuff on my wrist. It burned my skin.”
“Oh, Jack.”
“I finally figured out to pull my shirt over my head and then down my arm. I tucked it between the cuffs and my skin.”
Kelly’s eyes were moist.
Jack clicked his tongue. “He put the cuffs on me at two minutes past midnight. There was a clock on the stove. Candi, she was a hooker at the party, she found me at eleven twenty-two.”
“You spent all night chained in the kitchen?”
Jack shrugged and looked up at the roof.
“How old were you?”
“Five.”
“Who was watching you?”
“She was passed out in the next room, too.”
“Who’s she?”
Jack’s hand tightened around the steering wheel. “The lady who gave birth to me.”
“Your mom? She was there?”
Jack nodded.
“Why would your mother take you to a place like that?”
Jack peered out the window at the trees silhouetted against the night sky. “That was home. For that week anyway.”
“But you said the party was all druggies and prostitutes. Why would your mother have people like that over?” Kelly’s question faded into awkward silence.
Jack debated about just saying his mother was a drug addict. That was partly the truth. “She was a hooker,” Jack admitted.