Christian spread the cape out over the sharp, burned grass and sat the boy on it, gave him the water bottle and watched him take gulping swallows. In that black cape the kid would have been all but invisible to a car from behind. The thought sickened him.
With an effort he kept his voice gentle. "You must never, ever, walk on the road. Where's your mother?" First, the backpack registered, then the guilty defiance on the child's face. "You're running away?"
"Me and Roland."
"Hell, you've got the rat with you-where is it?" Out came the listless white rat from a half-zipped pocket to be watered and revived, while Christian panicked about the best way to handle this. Parenthood was for idealists. His own childhood had made a benevolent worldview impossible.
John Jason's eyes filled with tears. "I'm finding my daddy. I'm gonna make him come home."
Shit. Where was Kezia when you needed her? She'd know exactly what to say. "You miss him."
John Jason started howling. Great, Kelly. Christian handed the kid his T-shirt, watched him wipe his nose on it, smearing snot across one plump cheek. Christian reclaimed the T-shirt and awkwardly wiped the kid's face clean. "C'mon, let's get you home." John Jason howled louder.
Christian unzipped the backpack, threw out a couple of apple cores and fashioned a bed in a pair of pajamas. "Put the rat in here." Reluctantly, Christian then swung the partially closed backpack to his shoulder, telling the rat through gritted teeth, "Stay put, vermin."
John Jason stopped crying. "He's Roland, not Vermin."
"Give me your hand."
"Carry me!"
"You can walk for a bit."
John Jason's lower lip trembled again and, feeling trapped, Christian picked him up. One small hand latched on to his bare shoulder, the other kept hold of Christian's T-shirt, trailing it down his chest. Christian felt something distinctly cold and slimy on his bare skin and tried to ignore it. He set off.
John Jason started crying again. "Mummy's gonna be mad."
"I'll tell her not to be."
The child leaned back against Christian's arm and assessed him doubtfully. The untanned portion of his face made him look like a reversed raccoon.
Christian grinned at the sight and John Jason sighed and rested his wet cheek against Christian's chest.
"Will you get my daddy, too?"
Christian patted the child lightly on the back. From what he'd heard-despite his best efforts not to-John Jason was better off without the man. "I think your daddy is too far away for anyone to find." In a hell of his own choosing.
The child said sadly, "But I need a daddy." Christian suffered a surge of helpless rage against all men who shouldn't be fathers. "I need him to do something," added John Jason.
"What?"
"Build me a tree house. Mummy says she can't do it an' she got mad when I said Daddy would have if she hadn't made him run away. She sent me to my room an'I hadn't done anything. So I ran away, too."
Christian shifted the child over to his other arm. He was surprisingly heavy. "Is that rat still lying still?"
John Jason checked. "Yep."
Around the next bend Marion's farmhouse came into view. With any luck the kid hadn't been missed. "Y'know, the real Batman wouldn't have run away. He would have known it would make his mummy sad." Jeez, I can't believe I'm saying this.
"Batman doesn't have a mummy!"
"Sure he does. Her name is Batmum and she fights tooth decay and snotty noses."
John Jason pushed back to gaze solemnly at him and Christian couldn't keep a straight face.
"Noooooo!" The kid burst out laughing.
"You're right I'm tricking, but running away makes things worse." Unless you're a grown-up, then it works just fine.
"You ran away from Auntie Kezia," said John Jason blithely. At Christian's frown he hastened to add, "Mummy said that."
"Mummy was wrong." Christian put the child down and opened the gate.
"No-" John Jason led the way down the path "-she never is."
Christian was tempted to cast a seed of doubt in the kid's mind just to pay Mummy back for gossiping. "Who was she talking to?" he asked abruptly, rapping on the open door.
"Auntie Kezia."
"And what did she say?"
"She said don't tell Christian I went looking-" John Jason looked at him, suddenly confused. "She said don't tell."
Christian hunkered down to his level. "Tell what, son?"
"John Jason!" The phone pressed to one ear, Marion swept down the hall like a dynamo, grabbed her son and hauled him into a one-armed embrace. "Where have you been!" She held him away from her, scanned him for damage and hugged him again. "It's okay, Kezia." She sighed her relief. "Christian found him … call you later."
She dropped the phone and squeezed her son. "I only realized he was missing ten minutes ago. Where'd you find him?"
Christian pleaded John Jason's case, then accepted lemonade he didn't want for the sake of getting the information he did. John Jason was sent grumbling off to the shower. "Don't push your luck," Christian advised him.
"I'll launder this." Marion picked up Christian's T-shirt. "Sit down while I find you another."
Ignoring his protest, she left the room, coming back with a man's faded blue sweatshirt. "Put this on."
It was too short, and tight across the shoulders and biceps, but one look at Marion's face and Christian kept his mouth shut. The last thing he needed was more tears.
Her embarrassment plain, she said, "I've been meaning to get rid of his clothes, but some have memories, y'know?"
A couple of weeks ago Christian would have thought she was crazy. Now he could only nod grimly. "How are you settling in?" he asked to make conversation.
"You know, I was scared about being on my own again but it's been good for me." Bringing a jug of lemonade and two glasses over to the table, she attempted to pour it but her hands shook too much.
Christian took over. "It's okay, he's home safe."
"What about next time? I'd die if I lost him, too!"
Her outburst startled Christian so much he reached out a hand to cover hers. "Muffet?"
"Ignore me, I'll come right." Still, her return grip on his hand made the bones ache. "It's just so hard raising him on my own. John Jason needs his father, and where is he? Probably drinking himself to oblivion in some hellhole."
"Let me give you money."
She laughed at that, released his hand and sat down. "What is it with you, Kelly, that you keep trying to buy off women?"
He grinned back reluctantly. "I don't know," he admitted. "It's only happened since I got back. Normally, I'm the one getting offers. I must be losing my touch."
Marion's expression sobered. "What you can do is tell me whether you intend to close the hotel if Kezia refuses to take it. Working there is the only thing keeping me sane." Seeing Christian hesitate, she added, "I can keep a secret."
"It will stay open."
"Thank God."
"Now tell me something." He repeated what John Jason had said.
Marion looked at him steadily. "I just said I keep secrets."
"Kezia implied that she came after me all those years ago, but I'd already left town. Later she told me she hadn't. Which one do I believe?"
Marion would never make a poker player. He pushed back from the table. "Thanks for the lemonade."
JOE UNPACKED HIS BAG AT the cheap Auckland motel that constituted his halfway house. Alcoholic Anonymous' Big Book came out first, along with details of a local AA meeting. No photos, no personal mementos. The night he'd run, sickened by what he'd done, Joe had only taken his shame.
He sat on the end of the bed, pulled a coin from his jeans' pocket and held it, remembering. The day after he'd hit his wife, still half drunk and more desperate than he'd ever been in his life, he'd sat in his car on a deserted byway with a loaded shotgun and tossed this coin to see whether he would live or die. The coin chose life.
And so he'd emptied the family's savings account and gambled it on one last chance at salvation-rehab. It was a selfish act, and whenever he teetered on the verge of giving up in those first bleak weeks he'd reminded himself whose money he'd be throwing away.
So he submitted to the physical hell of detox and to the psychological hell of holding a mirror up to his soul. Exposed as a loser.
Joe tucked the coin back in his pocket and walked to the window. Nothing to see but asphalt. "I'm an alcoholic," he said out loud. Now I can admit it. He looked at the phone.