Unprotected Hearts

by Rachel Kane

  People were really starting to stare now. Trent didn’t care. He was headed toward the exit, every eye on him. He could hear Jace behind him.

  Out on the sidewalk, Jace got his hand on Trent’s bicep and stopped him. It wasn’t gentle.

  “You can’t run away from this,” said Jace.

  “That’s exactly what you’re asking me to do, run away.”

  “Don’t twist my words. You know what I mean. You can’t pretend everything is normal. You have to come with me.”

  It was true that there was something inside Trent that wanted to go with Jace. Badly. Yes, things were going wrong with their relationship, things he couldn’t fathom, movements inside of them he did not yet understand. But he couldn’t help but notice, Jace hadn’t mentioned the relationship even once. It had been nothing but business this whole time.

  This hand on his bicep was the first touch he had had from Jace in days. Not even a hug when he’d first reached the restaurant.

  Wasn’t it clear why that was? Wasn’t it painfully obvious? It was something Trent hadn’t wanted to look at very closely. He didn’t want to analyze this fear at all. But there it sat inside him.

  The last time Trent had been in danger, the closeness had grown and grown between him and Jace. And now he was in danger again, and they had never felt further apart.

  The only change was that now Jace knew about Trent’s psych history.

  Trent understood. Once people know you’ve got a real disorder, once people know the extent of it, they have a way of avoiding you. They treat you like you have a communicable disease. He’d faced that over and over, especially since getting out of the hospital, and even though he hated it, at least it was a dynamic he understood.

  It just hurt so much, coming from Jace.

  He knew he had to talk about it. He knew the only sensible thing to do was to speak his fear and try to work through it, but with Jace’s hand on his arm, and that glare on his face, and this new, sharper fear pressing into his mind like a blade, Trent could not speak. He couldn’t say the words he needed to say.

  “I don't want to go with you,” he said finally. “I want to go home. I want to watch TV and eat popcorn and forget my troubles for just one night. I'm done with this interruption of my life.”

  Jace looked like he was ready to lash out. “I don't know why no one will listen to me about the danger you're in, but this is crazy. It's insane. You have to come.”

  “Crazy? Insane? Is that what you think of me?”

  “What? Oh for the love of god, Trent, you know I didn't mean it that way!”

  “It doesn't matter. I'm exhausted by all of this. Good night, Jace.”

  He didn't look back at all. Couldn't. If he did, he might go running back.

  He couldn't do that. Not with Jace in full control-freak mode. And not until he could figure out how to talk calmly and rationally about the relationship, without the intrusion of Grumman every five minutes.

  25

  “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal about this,” said Harlan.

  “My hands are tied,” said Jace. He looked around the guest room he had been staying in, a pillow clenched in his fingers. In his mind, he felt like there should be things to pack. He should be throwing things into a suitcase violently to show his anger and frustration.

  But he didn’t have anything with him but the clothes on his back (which were borrowed), and the jeep downstairs (also borrowed). So instead he was making the bed. Violently. But neatly. Feeling ridiculous for doing so, but he had to do something so he didn’t punch a hole through one of Harlan’s nice clean walls.

  Meanwhile, Harlan walked into the bathroom and looked into the mirror. He poked at the bags under his eyes. Any other time, Jace might have been concerned with how exhausted his brother looked. Not right now.

  Harlan said, “So what are you going to do? Run away back to the mountain?”

  “I don’t see what else I can do. I’ve got to protect myself from all this. I don’t want to get hurt.”

  “Or you could, you know, stop being such a baby about it.”

  Jace grunted; the insult was meaningless to him. He pulled the duvet up onto the bed, and smoothed it out. “I can’t sit on Trent like I’m a mother hen. But I can’t watch him getting any further destroyed by this, either. I know you. He’s refusing to testify, and you’re going to badger him, and then he’ll break down and do it. And then what?”

  “Then we win at trial and everyone goes home happy.”

  “Or they kill him. Do you honestly not get the danger here?”

  “You’re overreacting. Grumman didn’t send hitmen. If he had, you’d already be dead. They weren’t there to hurt you, just to threaten you.”

  “You weren’t there.”

  “No, I wasn’t. But I know that Grumman doesn’t leave a trail of bodies behind. That’s not his style. Intimidation, sure. Bribery, you bet. But murder?”

  “He poisoned an elementary school.”

  “Touche.”

  “And now he’s poisoning my life.”

  Harlan leaned against the bathroom door, frowning. “I think you stretched the metaphor a bit, but fine, fine, I won’t argue with you about this. I just think it’s a shame you’re leaving. I’d enjoyed having you around this week. I know Dodi has too. We’ve haven’t always gotten along—”

  “Don’t start.”

  “No, I’m serious, I’m not going to bring up ancient history.”

  “It’s not that ancient.”

  “Wow. You really do know how to hold a grudge though.”

  Jace stared down at the bed. It looked like no one had ever slept on it before. He glanced around the rest of the room. Pristine. He had vacuumed earlier. It felt like cleaning up a crime scene, erasing all traces of himself.

  “I’m not holding a grudge,” he said. “What’s gone is gone. You had me protect David, and I failed. You had me protect Trent, and I failed. It’s probably better if I stop listening to you.”

  “Does Trent know you’re leaving?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’re not just going to stomp back home, are you? You’ll tell him first? You owe him that, at least.”

  “I’m not doing some self-pity thing here, Harlan. I’m not taking my poor hurt feelings off to the woods. Of course I’m going to tell him.”

  “It just seems a little strange, is all.”

  “What does?”

  “You say he’s in grave danger…then you leave.”

  “He doesn’t want my protection,” said Jace.

  Harlan laughed. The sound was hollow and strained. “I think all that time in the woods has dulled your mind. You’re not mad because he doesn’t want your protection. You’re mad because you think he doesn’t want you.”

  “Maybe after this case crushes your law career, you could go into couples counseling.”

  “It’s so obvious,” said Harlan. “Just look at you. So wounded.”

  “If my relationship with Trent has any substance to it,” said Jace, “we have to figure things out, away from danger, away from stress. Otherwise I’m nothing. I’m a servant to him. Don’t you know that feeling? When someone needs you, without really wanting you?”

  “I think my awful dating record speaks for itself. Honestly, Dodi’s the only one in the family capable of keeping a boyfriend.”

  “But that has to end. At least, for me it does. Either Trent and I have something real, or we have something shallow that only exists because of the drama in our lives. But we have to have some space to figure out which. Some time away from all of this.”

  Harlan frowned. “So I guess if I asked you to convince him to testify…”

  “No. We’re not going through that again.”

  “So you’re seriously going to ask him to leave with you?”

  “I already asked him.”

  “And he said…yes?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  �
��Before, I was just asking. Now it has to be an ultimatum.”

  Harlan rolled his eyes. “How do you think he’s going to respond to that?”

  The sense of hopelessness that had been flickering around the edges of Jace’s consciousness began to grow stronger. “I don’t know. I’m hoping he will see my reasoning.”

  “He seems awfully intent on getting his life back together. Bad time for you to be laying down the law about getting out of town.”

  “It’s what I need. It’s what we need, if there’s going to be a we with him and me.”

  “Okay, but look. I had my secretary find some apartments he can look at. Will you at least tell him to give the office a call? If he decides to stay—”

  “He won’t. At least, I hope he won’t.”

  “But if he does. Have him call.”

  When Jace left the apartment, it felt like he was saying goodbye to his brother for the last time. He knew that was foolish, but there was a feeling inside him that his life was about to irrevocably change, one way or another. His old life—the life he had been hiding from, out of sorrow, out of grief—was about to be cut off from him forever.

  26

  The meeting at the school reminded him so much of the deposition that Trent thought he might have a panic attack. He had already taken his anxiety medication this morning, and it was doing absolutely nothing to cut through the electric urgency of his fear.

  There was the long table, with a space at one end for him. The principal, assistant principal, and a couple of members of the school board were already in the room, waiting for him.

  “Trent, good to see you,” said the principal, but she did not look happy, and her tone was frosty.

  He took his seat. The vinyl chair squeaked under him, and seemed to be a couple of inches low. It made him feel like a teenager getting in trouble at school. “Thanks,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see everyone today.”

  “We take this quite seriously,” said the principal.

  Trent’s brow furrowed. He hadn’t told them anything yet. As far as they knew, he might as well have been out sick. “What do you take seriously?” he asked.

  One of the men from the school board spoke. “We’ve received some troubling reports from members of the community, Mr. Sinclair.” He tapped his fingers against a manila folder in front of him. “Very troubling indeed.”

  The realization struck him: Grumman had gotten here first. It wasn’t enough that all was going to be revealed at trial. It wasn’t enough that Trent had come in to throw himself on their mercy; he’d gotten here too late.

  It began to sink in slowly, as he looked from face to face.

  “I guess I don’t need to ask what was in those reports,” he said.

  “It’s so disappointing, Trent,” said the principal. “We welcomed you into our little home here at the school. The kids grew to love you. You’re the best librarian we’ve had since I’ve been here. How could you hide this from us?”

  Trent sighed. “I know. It’s not easy to talk about. Surely you see that. Who really wants to work with someone who might have a panic attack at any point? It sounds so dramatic, so needy. But sure, I should have mentioned that, at some point. And I should have mentioned the hospital. Presumably the hospital is the main thing in those reports? But I agonized over whether to mention it or not. I looked up all these legal websites to see if I had to confess to being hospitalized, and it all seemed legally in the clear, even if socially, it was always hiding back there, waiting to jump out and ruin things.”

  The principal scowled. In fact, she looked a little confused. She glanced over at the school board men.

  “To be clear,” she said, “it’s not so much the hospitalization we’re concerned about, although that was surprising.”

  The man who had spoken before nodded. “I think we could have overlooked that. In fact I think legally we would have to overlook it.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Oh, Trent, let’s not play games,” said the principal. She opened the folder in front of her and slid it towards Trent. “I don’t care if you’re on a thousand pills a day. It’s this that is causing us nightmares.”

  What caught his eye first were the diagrams, but they didn’t make sense out of context. His eyes crept back up the page.

  It began with an email: Trudy, we want to make you aware of some material that has come to light as part of a lawsuit involving Mr. Grumman. It was found on the personal computer of your school librarian, Trent Sinclair, a witness in the case. We believe we are legally clear to present this to you, although please don’t share it further, as it may interfere with law enforcement efforts in the future. Sincerely, Tom Springer.

  It was the reference to law enforcement that made it all click into place. The diagram was a floor plan of the school, with entrances and exits marked. Arrows showed where doors could be chained, preventing exit. The area in the basement where the fire sprinklers were controlled was circled, with an explanation of how to turn them off.

  His heart pounded as he studied the picture further. It was a plan to set the school on fire. It was detailed. It was accurate. It was horrifying.

  That anyone could have come up with such a document was bad enough, and made him feel sick. But Springer wanted the school to believe it had come from Trent.

  “This isn’t mine,” he said.

  “Oh, Trent,” began the principal, but her voice trailed off.

  “It’s not. Look, Springer is right about one thing: I am—or was—involved in a case against Mr. Grumman. But this is slander, right here. This is made up, it’s fictional, and the only reason they gave it to you was to punish me.”

  The school board man shook his head. “So we’re to believe that a benefactor to our schools like Mr. Grumman—a man who has given thousands and thousands of dollars to our programs—has decided to make a school librarian look bad, out of nowhere? That he just made up something this…this sick?”

  “You don’t understand,” said Trent. “He has been after me. He’s had people following me. They tried to kill me, and when that didn’t work, they decided to ruin me.”

  The principal sighed. “We were told about your hospitalization for paranoia, Trent. Are you getting treated for that now?”

  “I’m not paranoid,” said Trent. “He is literally after me.”

  The school board man threw up his hands. “I don’t know what to do here, Trudy. Do we go to the police?”

  “We’ve been asked not to,” the principal said. “But I think it’s clear Trent has to go.”

  “Well, of course.”

  “You people are insane,” said Trent, rising from the table. “You know, I came in here feeling awful about myself, because I was going to lose my job for trying to do the right thing. I could believe you’d hem and haw about whether I could stay, once you knew my medical history. I could believe you’d try to nudge me out on disability or something. But never in a million years would I guess you could fall for something like that. So obviously manufactured, so clearly…so clearly…”

  His words slowed to a halt, as he realized the brilliance of Springer’s scheme. Any defense he offered would make him look crazy. Not benign crazy. Dangerous crazy. The way the principal had shrunk in her chair when he stood up was evidence of that.

  “Maybe we should call school security,” said the assistant principal.

  “No need,” said Trent. “I’m leaving.”

  He wanted to say how ashamed he was of them. How, in all the time he had tried to hide from his past, believing that they would not be sympathetic to it, at least he had never thought them capable of something like this.

  He didn’t realize until just this moment that part of him had expected things to go very differently this morning. That he might make his tearful confession, and they would accept him back. He’d been telling everyone how he was going to lose his job…and yet, until this moment, he hadn’t realized he was nurturing this tiny, tiny hope that he
was wrong, that he could keep his job, that everything could go back to normal.

  As he walked towards the school exit, one final time, he thought how strange it all was. How the humiliation of losing his job simply wasn’t enough. How Grumman and Springer had to be sure he was absolutely crushed.

  He walked out into the cold December air feeling like a dead man, a zombie, an empty shell.

  27

  “You can't,” said Jace.

  “He certainly can,” said Harlan.

  “It's my decision,” said Trent. “I've thought about it and I'm sure it's the right thing to do.”

  The school meeting had done something to his head. It was like a dense fog surrounded him, blocking his vision and seeping into his skull. He hardly understood what he was doing. His thoughts gradually coalesced, his vision clearing, his intention becoming conscious.

  Grumman had gone too far. It was obvious. No matter what happened, the punishments would never stop coming.

  So to Jace’s horror and Harlan’s delight, Trent had arrived at Harlan’s apartment and announced, “I'm going to testify.”

  He explained what had just happened at the school. Jace shook his head, while Harlan’s eyes went wide.

  “Can you sue the school?”asked Jace.

  “You don't get it,” said Trent. “It’s not just the ridiculous accusation. It's that Grumman can keep coming, for as long as he pleases. He's toying with me now. Showing me his power, reminding me why I must not testify. Well, fuck that. He may never pay for what he's done to my life but he can damn well pay for something.”

  “No,” Jace said simply.

  “It’s not your decision,” said Trent.

  “I think I have some stake in this,” said Jace. “If he still sees you as a threat, why would he stop trying to hurt you? You can't go up against him.”

  “You're not listening. It's settled. I'm doing this.”

  “Maybe I ought to leave you two alone,” said Harlan. “Just come by the office later and let me know what you decide.”