one sock. I couldn’t get my left sock on. And I couldn’t wash my own damned foot.
Everything throbbed—head, shoulder, knee. My feet were cold. I was going to have to ask for help.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door.
“Yeah?” I growled.
“Thought you might be ready for a cup of coffee,” Seely said through the door. “And an extra hand. As I recall, I had the devil of a time with shoes and socks when my wrist was broken.”
I sighed. “It’s unlocked. How did you break your wrist?”
The door swung open. “I wasn’t a very coordinated child. Fell from the monkey bars when I was seven. Daisy had to do everything for me at first, which sorely offended my dignity. Here.” She held out a tall walking stick. “Duncan dug this up in the attic yesterday. He thought you might be able to use it.”
I put down the washcloth and took the stick. It was made of walnut, a dark, burled wood that felt smooth and cool to my fingers. “How about that.” I smiled, bemused. “I’d forgotten all about this thing. Funny. I must have seen my father use it a hundred times, but the one time that floated into my head just now…”
“Yes?” She set the mug on the tiny bit of counter next to the sink.
“We were in Crete. Me and my dad, that is. Annie was only a month old, so my mom wasn’t able to go with my dad that year.” I leaned the stick against the wall. There wasn’t really room for it in this little scrap of a bathroom, but it made me feel good to have it near. “We’d climbed this little rise overlooking the dig, and he was using his stick to point out a city that didn’t exist anymore. All I saw was this reddish maze of crumbling walls in the section that had been excavated. He saw so much more—the granary, the wide, dusty street leading to the temple. Maybe even the people on that street.”
“He had vision. It sounds like a good memory.”
“Yeah.” I thought about how excited I’d been to go with him. How hard I’d tried to see what he did…and failed. “It was the first time I’d gone with him. I guess that’s why that memory sticks out.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven. It was summer, of course. I remember—hey!”
She’d knelt and was reaching for my foot. “Must have been hot.”
“Blazing. You don’t have to do that.” I tried to retrieve my foot without creating a tug-of-war.
“Quit that or I’ll tickle you.” She ran the washcloth over my sole. “I’ll admit I’m not a real nurse, but I’m pretty sure this sort of thing is part of the job.”
I scowled. This was every bit as embarrassing as I’d thought it would be. “No, you’re a paramedic. So why aren’t you working as one?”
“Because I couldn’t hack it.” She grabbed the towel. “So why is your brother married to your son’s mother instead of you?”
Sucker-punched. I hadn’t seen that one coming, and for a second couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” She dried my foot carefully, giving me the top of her head to look at instead of her face. Even with her hair pulled back, her hair was all crinkly, like a shallow stream wiggling over rocks.
Or like Doofus wiggling all over even when he was trying to stand still. I sighed. I felt as if I’d just kicked a puppy—and gotten bitten for it. “Don’t apologize. I asked for it. I jabbed at you because I don’t like needing help for every little thing. Can’t complain if you jab back.”
“Okay. Hand me your socks, will you?”
I did, and she pulled a sock on my left foot. It felt weird to sit there while she did that. “I’m surprised none of the busybodies you talked to yesterday filled you in about me and Gwen.”
Seely looked up then, her face all smoothed out. “I really am sorry. I’m not usually such a bitch.”
That annoyed me. “You’re not a bitch at all.”
“I can be, when my temper’s up.”
“I have a temper, too, but no one calls me a bitch.”
She laughed. “I have a feeling no one calls you anything but ‘sir’ when you’re mad.”
“You haven’t been around my family.” I liked that I’d made her laugh. It was a good sound.
“You’re obviously close.” She tossed the washcloth in the sink. “Um…Gwen did say that you’d only known Zach for a few months. She said that was her fault.”
“It was my fault as much as hers.” I didn’t like talking about it…but I didn’t like her thinking I was the kind of bastard who’d ignore his son, either. “I didn’t know about Zach’s existence until last March. Gwen and I met when I was on vacation a few years ago. It didn’t work out—at least, I decided it wouldn’t work out. She has money, you see. Family money. A lot of it. I didn’t deal with that well when I found out. She, uh, threw away my address when I left, so by the time she realized she was pregnant, she didn’t know how to find me.”
“How did you learn about Zach, then?”
“She hired a detective. That was after she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer.” I added firmly, so she’d know the subject was closed, “She’s okay now. Anyway, she brought Zach here for a visit, and while Zach and I were getting acquainted, she and Duncan fell for each other.”
They’d fought it. In hindsight I could see that it must have been hell for both of them. They’d known I’d wanted to marry Gwen, and Duncan at least had accepted that I had a prior claim. But at the time I hadn’t been able to see anything except how betrayed I’d felt when I found out, how thoroughly my dreams had been destroyed.
Seely rested her hand on my knee. “I’m glad you told me. If Zach is going to be here often, I wouldn’t want to say or do the wrong thing.”
That was a good reason for having shot off my mouth. Not the real reason, maybe, but while we were on the subject…. “You should probably know something else. If Zach starts talking about the bad man and the policeman who shot him—well, that really happened. Maybe someone filled you in on that?”
They hadn’t. Useless bunch of busybodies. Why hadn’t they told her the stuff that mattered, so I wouldn’t have to? I didn’t like thinking about that night. The strobing red of the cop car lights, the hard white light inside the store, where a crazy bastard had held Gwen and my son at gunpoint…the fear, raw and jagged like a gutful of broken glass.
I’d failed them. No matter how often I told myself there was nothing I could have done to protect them, the bitterness of my failure didn’t go away.
But Seely would need to know the basics, so I told her about the holdup of a convenience store last April, and how Gwen and Zach had been among the hostages taken by a not-too-bright gunman. And how Duncan had saved them.
“My God, Ben. You said something about Zach having had a lot of uncertainty in his life, but I never imagined anything like this.”
“He seems to be doing okay. Gwen took him to this guy who does play therapy. That’s where kids tell their stories with toys,” I explained, “and the therapist sort of plays with them, only in a way that helps them work through things.”
“What about you?”
“I wasn’t part of it.”
“That’s what I mean. There’s nothing worse than being helpless when someone you love is hurting or in danger.”
Uncomfortable, I said, “I don’t usually blather on so much. I just thought you ought to know.”
She chuckled. “You call that blathering? I