He didn’t answer her and she didn’t wait for him to do it. She patted his face, straightened and walked quickly away.
Colt’s eyes followed her and a memory hit him as they did.
He heard her voice coming at him from a long time ago. It wasn’t soft, it wasn’t a whisper, it wasn’t like it was five seconds ago, filled with so much love, mixed with a mother’s longing to take away a hurt she couldn’t ease. It was filled with anger and determination.
He was sixteen and sitting on the side of an exam table in the ER. His nose was broken, a bandage across it, the cut under his eye stitched, his knuckles wrapped, his eye swollen shut. His father wasn’t stronger than him, not at that time, hard living had worn the strength right out of him and definitely not when he was as shitfaced as when he started it with Colt. But he was wily, he was mean and he didn’t have a problem not fighting fair. Colt gave him a good thrashing but his Dad got his licks in for certain.
Feb was sitting beside him. She’d hooked one of her feet around his calf and she was swinging their legs together. She had his hand wrapped tight in hers, palm against palm, both of them resting on her thigh and he could feel the muscles flexing as she swung their legs together. Her moving their legs jarred his body and it hurt his busted ribs but he didn’t say a word, he wouldn’t have stopped her if he was in agony.
Morrie was standing across from them, his shoulder against the wall, his eyes looking out a window, his thoughts unpleasant.
Jack and Jackie were out in the hall with Hobart Norris, the Chief of Police back then. Jack’s voice was a murmur, as was Hob’s, as was Jackie’s but suddenly Jackie’s voice grew louder.
“I don’t care, Hob, you hear me? Social Services be damned. You go back to that Station, you make your calls and you cut through your goddamned red tape.”
“Jackie,” Hob said, raising his voice too but trying to calm her.
“No, I see you don’t hear me, so I’ll explain. That boy in there’s not goin’ home to those two jackals. I been sending him back there for eleven years, each time it cut me to the quick. I also been talkin’ to you ‘til I’m blue in the face. I’m tellin’ you, he’s not goin’ back there again. You tell me right now he has to go, I’ll tell you right now I’ll pack my kids and my husband in our goddamned car and you’ll never see us again.”
“I’ll take it you mean Colt too when you talk about ‘your kids’,” Hob stated.
“Damn right I do,” Jackie returned, not missing a beat.
“Not a good idea to tell me your plan to kidnap Alec Colton, Jackie,” Hob was trying to joke.
This was not a good idea, Colt knew it, Feb knew it, Morrie knew it. They knew it because they heard it, heard it through something they’d never heard before.
They heard Jackie Owens shout.
“A sixteen year old boy is black and blue in there, Hob, and you joke?”
Jackie had a temper, it was lethal but it was quiet. None of her kids ever heard her shout.
But those words bounced around the hall, around the room Colt, Feb and Morrie were in, hell, they were probably heard throughout the hospital.
“Calm down, Jackie,” Hob warned.
“I’ll calm down when my boy puts his head down at night on a pillow under my roof!” Jackie shouted back.
That’s when Jackie laid claim to Colt at least in any official way. He might have felt like a cub wandering around, having never had a lioness who was there to protect him who was meant to keep him safe. But he wasn’t one. Or he would be one no longer.
“He’s not defenseless, woman,” Hob was losing patience, “you should see what he did to his father.”
“No, I shouldn’t. I did, I’d get the itch to finish the job Colt started,” Jackie shot back, Colt heard Morrie let out an amused snort and Feb squeezed his hand.
Hob tried a different tactic. “Jack, talk to your wife.”
“Why? She’s talkin’ sense, far’s I can see,” Jack said.
“Jack –”
“Cut through the red tape,” Jack interrupted.
“Impossible,” Hob replied.
“Then tonight’s your night to become a miracle worker,” Jack returned.
At that moment Feb dropped her head to his shoulder and Colt forgot about his night when she did, wondering, if he was living with Jack and Jackie, how they’d feel if he asked their daughter on a date.
He didn’t go home to his mother and father’s, never stepped foot over their threshold again. He didn’t know if Hob fixed it or Jack and Jackie just didn’t bother following the rules and he never asked.