Found: One Son

by Judith Arnold

  Michael Molina smiled crookedly and held the bag up to the window, as if to convey that he had indeed brought the chicken for her.

  “KFC! KFC” Jeffrey chanted.

  Images flashed through Emmie’s brain: Michael sitting on her patio last night, telling her how he’d lied to her in San Pablo, telling her how he’d allowed her to think he was a mild-mannered college professor rather than a bounty hunter. Michael in bed with her at that charming inn where they used to meet and make love. Michael shooting and killing a man. The For Sale sign, and breakfast for dinner because she lacked the strength to prepare a real meal.

  She was overloaded. Overstressed. Too tired to fight both Michael and her exuberant son.

  She opened the door a crack. “I thought this would be more practical than flowers,” Michael said.

  Damn him for looking so handsome. The past five years hadn’t done any damage to his face or his physique. He was still tall and lean, dark and angular and irresistibly handsome. In a pair of jeans and a white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he looked neat and composed, the exact opposite of how she felt.

  The hell with it. Let him and his chicken invade her house. She didn’t feel like fighting with him or Jeffrey.

  She swung the door wider. “This isn’t a good day,” she warned him, stepping back so he could enter.

  He studied her in the afternoon light spilling through the doorway. “I have a feeling you haven’t had a good day for a while,” he murmured. And she cursed him again for being so perceptive. “How about you and Jeffrey. joining me for supper?”

  The entry filled with the aroma of fried chicken. Jeffrey did a victory dance around the living room, his boisterous activity registering at least five on the Richter scale. “KFC! KFC!” If she told Michael to leave and take his chicken with him, Jeffrey would probably accuse her of child abuse.

  Besides, Jeffrey was likely to have some not very good days soon enough, when she broke the news that they were being forced to move. She might as well give him this much. “Jeffrey, stop shouting,” she said, catching him on one of his circuits around the room and holding him in place. “This is an old...friend of Mommy’s.” She struggled over the word, but an old friend sounded safer than an old lover, or an old con artist. “His name is Mr. Molina.”

  “You can call me ‘Michael,’” Michael interjected, shifting the KFC bag into his left hand so he could extend his right to Jeffrey.

  Jeffrey gazed up at the tall man and earnestly shook hands with him. “I like KFC,” he said.

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing I brought some for dinner.” Michael smiled briefly at Jeffrey, then lifted his gaze back to Emmie. He appeared to be hoping for as much enthusiasm from her as he’d gotten from Jeffrey.

  He would have a long wait, she thought coldly, turning from him and stalking down the hall to the kitchen, assuring herself that she was totally unmoved by his enigmatic smile, his soulful eyes, his beautifully male physique.

  It occurred to her, as she entered the kitchen, that letting Michael into her house had been a major step. Just two days ago, she’d seen him and felt sick inside. Yesterday she’d granted him a hearing. She’d been distressed by what he’d said, but she’d listened.

  She hadn’t forgiven him. She was still determined to keep him from making any claims on Jeffrey. Yet...he was in her house. Bit by bit, he was making inroads.

  She didn’t like it. But she was too drained to fight right now.

  “I can set the table,” Jeffrey bragged, bouncing around the kitchen. He was obviously pleased with Emmie’s guest. It was so rare that she had a man in the house—a man she would introduce as a friend. She didn’t date; she didn’t have the time, and she didn’t really have the interest, either. On a few occasions she’d invited colleagues from the Oak Hill School over for wine and hors d’oeuvres, but the primary-school faculty included only two men, and they were both married and brought their wives. What little Jeffrey glimpsed of Emmie’s parties before he was shooed off to bed would not have given him the impression that Peter and Hank were friends, and they certainly didn’t pay Jeffrey any attention when they visited.

  Michael was definitely paying Jeffrey attention. He kept his distance, but he was looking at the scampering boy intently. His observation of Jeffrey unsettled her even more. Did he know? Had he guessed?

  As far as she was concerned, any suspicions Michael might harbor with respect to Jeffrey were irrelevant. He’d lost all claim to his son when he’d disappeared from San Pablo. She didn’t care why he’d left. What mattered was that he had left, and he had no place in Jeffrey’s life.

  “If you’re going to set the table,” she reminded Jeffrey, “you’d better do it. This bucket of chicken is going to get cold.”

  “Stick it in the oven for a minute,” Michael suggested, lifting the bucket out of the bag. “I bought some mashed potatoes and coleslaw, too. Oh, and sliced pickles.” He pulled tubs and condiments from the bag and placed them on the table, doing a better job of setting the table than Jeffrey had accomplished with all his dashing around and boasting. Without awaiting instructions from Emmie, Michael put the tub in the oven and turned the dial to the warm setting.

  He was taking over, and she didn’t like it. “Here, Jeffrey,” she said, handing him a stack of plates just so she could feel she was contributing to the dinner. “Put these around the table, please. Michael, what would you like to drink?”

  “Have you got any beer?” he asked.

  Cerveza, she thought, the Spanish word gliding naturally through her brain. She taught her class a bit of elementary Spanish each year, but cerveza wasn’t a word they needed to learn at their age.

  She had a few bottles chilled in her refrigerator. She poured a glass of Chablis for herself, deciding she needed to have the edges of her thoughts muted more than she needed to keep her guard up around Michael. He’d already insinuated his way into her home, and she’d been completely sober when she’d let him in. What difference would a glass of wine make?

  Michael was still watching Jeffrey as he painstakingly folded three paper napkins from the yellow wooden dispenser on the table. Emmie watched Michael. She didn’t sense any great rush of sentiment in him. The sight of this little boy who was his own flesh and blood didn’t reduce him to a puddle of mush—if he’d figured out the connection between them.

  How could he not? Every time she looked at Jef frey she saw Michael. In his eyes, his coloring, the adorable quirk of his smile, she saw echoes of Michael.

  She would probably need more than one glass of wine to get through this meal, she realized.

  Michael donned the hot mitts that hung from a hook on the side of the oven and pulled out the bucket. They assembled around the table, Jeffrey with his milk in a Cookie Monster cup, Michael with a beer and a glass and Emmie with her delicate goblet of wine. She arranged the serving utensils in the containers of mashed potatoes and coleslaw, helped Jeffrey into his chair and pushed him close to the table. Then she sat, and Michael took his seat across from her. She reached for Jeffrey’s left hand, and Jeffrey stretched his right hand to take Michael’s.

  “We like to say grace this way,” Emmie explained in answer to Michael’s questioning look.

  He nodded and gathered her left hand in his right. If it was a rarity for her to have a handsome man in her house, it was even more of a rarity for her to have a handsome man holding her hand. She told herself she was responding to the novelty of his touch, not the familiarity of it. Surely, after so many years, she had forgotten the strength of Michael’s hands, the shape of his fingers, their warmth and power. She had forgotten what his hands had felt like on her body, loving her. She had forgotten everything—and what she was feeling now had nothing to do with remembering.

  “We are grateful for the food we eat,” she murmured, lowering her eyes and giving Jeffrey’s hand a maternal squeeze. “Thank you, God, for the bounty on our table tonight.”

  “Thank you, too, Michael,” Jeffrey c
himed in.

  Emmie smiled faintly at Michael. “Yes, thank you.”

  He glanced at her, then turned his gaze to Jeffrey, studying the boy as he dug a heaping spoonful of mashed potatoes from the bowl. “I love mash potatoes,” Jeffrey announced. “They’re like clay. You can make stuff with them.”

  “Except, of course, that you know better than to play with your food,” Emmie chided gently. “Would you like a drumstick, Jeffrey?”

  “Yup! I love drumsticks,” he told Michael.

  Michael’s attention shuttled back and forth between Jeffrey and Emmie. He probably didn’t know what to make of Jeffrey’s passionate declarations. Emmie could have explained to him that when a boy was four and a half, he didn’t shade his emotions well. With equal fervor, he loved his mommy; his stuffed bears, Teddy and Frumpy; his best friend, Adam; and drumsticks.

  But she didn’t want to explain Jeffrey to Michael. She didn’t want to give him that much access to her son.

  “Mommy doesn’t make mash potatoes too much,” Jeffrey went on. “She says baked is healthier. She says there’s vitamums in the skin and you gotta have vitamums so you can grow big. I bet you ate lots of vitamums when you were my age, huh?”

  Michael smiled tightly. “I guess I did.”

  “And if I eat potato skins and all those other vitamums, I can grow up to be just as big as you. Right, Mommy?”

  She didn’t want to think of him growing up to resemble Michael in any way. But of course, she couldn’t prevent it. He already resembled Michael too much.

  “Are you moving?” Michael asked abruptly.

  Panic gripped her. She’d been so worried about his making the connection between himself and Jef frey she’d all but forgotten about the For Sale sign beside the driveway. She certainly didn’t want to talk about it now, in front of Jeffrey.

  Jeffrey’s dark eyes grew round. “Are we moving, Mommy?”

  She gritted her teeth and considered kicking Michael under the table. It was too late to signal him to shut up, but she wouldn’t mind inflicting a little pain. “I’m not sure,” she said, shooting Michael a lethal glare. “I haven’t decided.”

  “If we moved to Florida, we could go to Disney World every day,” Jeffrey said. “Can we do that, Mommy?”

  “No, sweetie. Mommy works in Wilborough. We’re going to stay here.”

  “Can we go to Disney World?” Jeffrey asked.

  Thanks a heap, she wanted to snap at Michael. His tactless question had led to this. “I hope we can go someday,” she said carefully, “but it’s a big trip, and very expensive.”

  “Like, but if we moved to Florida it wouldn’t be so ’spensive,” Jeffrey reasoned. “It would just be a little trip, and then we could just pay a little money.”

  “I wish it were that simple,” Emmie said with a sigh. She would be thrilled to take Jeffrey to Walt Disney World, but first she had to find affordable housing-which meant moving out of this unaffordable house. She glowered at Michael, who looked contrite but also confused, as if he understood that he’d done something wrong but couldn’t fathom exactly what.

  “Todd went to Disney World,” Jeffrey prattled on, oblivious to the undercurrent of tension between the two adults at the table. “He goes to my school. Do you know him?” he asked Michael.

  “Uh-no, I don’t.” Michael looked even more confused. Emmie smiled. Let him flounder. Let him realize how completely out of touch with Jeffrey he was.

  “He said there’s lots of scary rides, but he wasn’t allowed to go on them, cuz they’re so scary. They’re not for little kids,” Jeffrey reported solemnly. “Maybe next year I’ll be big enough and then we can go.”

  “Maybe,” Emmie said, relieved that Jeffrey seemed to have forgotten the subject of moving. If Michael had an ounce of sense in him, he wouldn’t bring it up again in front of the child.

  Apparently Michael had an ounce of sense. He ate in bemused silence, observing Jeffrey as he shoveled his food into his mouth and chattered about school: the collision he and Todd had created with their Matchbox cars, the yucky sandwich-some kind of pink meat with green olives stuck in it-that Adam had brought for lunch, the game of dodgeball Jeffrey had won in the yard outside the school. “I think we’re making something for Mother’s Day, but I’m not supposed to tell you,” he reported.

  Emmie smiled and ruffled his hair. “It’ll be our secret,” she swore.

  “Some kids do Father’s Day, too,” Jeffrey said. “Not everybody, though. I don’t,” he told Michael without a moment’s hesitation. He shrugged, used his fingers to pile the last small mound of mashed potatoes onto his fork, and devoured them. “Can I have cookies for dessert?” he asked. “Do we still have choco-chip cookies? Those are my favorite,” he told Michael. “What’s yours?”

  “My favorite cookie?” Michael’s voice sounded rusty. Emmie prayed with all her heart that he wasn’t thinking about how Jeffrey didn’t do anything for Father’s Day.

  “Yeah. I like choco-chip. You wanna hear something disgusting?” Jeffrey laughed gleefully. “Adam’s favorite cookie is fig bars!”

  “That’s...really disgusting,” Michael managed. “I prefer chocolate chip cookies.”

  “Me, too. Can I have some for dessert?” Jeffrey asked Emmie.

  “We’ll have dessert in a little while. Why don’t you take your plate to the sink, and then you can be excused.”

  “Okay!” Jeffrey climbed down from his chair, carried his plate and cup to the counter by the sink and fled the room, happy not to have to sit at the table getting bored while the grown-ups lingered over their meal

  Emmie wasn’t deliberately lingering. She simply didn’t have much appetite. In fact, she hadn’t had an appetite since Michael had arrived in Wilborough.

  He scanned the room, as if to make sure Jeffrey wasn’t lurking in the doorway, eavesdropping. Then he turned back to Emmie and leaned forward. “He doesn’t know you’re moving?”

  “I haven’t told him yet,” Emmie admitted. She didn’t owe Michael any explanations, but she saw no point in refusing to discuss her impending eviction with him. As long as it didn’t have to do specifically with Jeffrey, she was probably safe talking about it with Michael.

  “Why are you moving? Are you going back home?”

  “Home?” A faint, sad laugh escaped her. “This is home.”

  “What about Richmond, Virginia?”

  “There’s nothing for me in Richmond,” she said laconically. Maybe this wasn’t a safe subject, either.

  Michael wouldn’t let it go. “Why not? Have your parents relocated?”

  “My parents and I don’t get along.”

  “Because of Jeffrey?” he guessed.

  So much for avoiding the subject. “My relationship with my parents is none of your business,” she said in as calm a voice as she could.

  She didn’t fool him. He must have known he’d hit a bull’s-eye. But fortunately, he also must have figured out that the subject was a painful one for her, because he reverted to the topic of her impending move. “So, you’re selling this house and moving... where?”

  “I’m not selling the house. It isn’t mine to sell. I’ve been renting it, and now the landlord wants to sell it. Actually—” she recalled her conversation with the real-estate agent earlier that evening “—his son wants to sell it. I have no choice but to move.”

  “Why don’t you buy it?” he asked.

  “I can’t afford it.”

  He sat back in his chair, regarding her. “It’s not a mansion, Emmie. How much is the guy asking?”

  She realized with a pang that she longed to unburden herself to another adult. Her life was full of work and Jeffrey, and although she had friends on the faculty at school, she couldn’t confide in them about her precarious finances. “He’s asking more than I can afford,” she said, relieved to get it off her chest. “I could meet the monthly mortgage payments if I had enough of a down payment saved up. But I don’t. So I’m going to have to find another pla
ce to live.”

  He tapped his fingers together the way he had last night. “Here’s the irony of it, Emmie,” he said. “I’ve been thinking I’d like to settle in the area, and now you’re moving.”

  “Settle in the area?” Her voice sounded oddly breathless. “You mean, in Wilborough?”

  “There isn’t much available in Wilborough,” he conceded. “A few apartments, but nothing exciting. Some of the neighboring towns have more units for rent. I hadn’t really given much thought to buying, but I don’t know...maybe I should.”

  “Buying?” She cleared her throat with a sip of wine. “Why do you want to move to Wilborough?”

  His gaze locked onto her, holding her captive. “You know why, Emmie.”

  “Michael.” Still that strange breathlessness choked her voice. “I don’t want you living near me. You told me your horrible story last night, what happened to you, how awful it was. I appreciate all that, but it’s history. We’re history. I’ve moved forward with my life, and if you haven’t you should.” I don’t want you making claims on my son, she thought desperately.

  “I’ve moved forward with my life, too. I consult for companies doing business in Latin America and for the government. I get paid a lot for my knowledge. I can live wherever I want. Including Wilborough.” His gaze circled the room. “Including this house, even.”

  An icy shudder tore down her back. “Fine, then,” she snapped. “Buy the house. Our lease runs out at the end of June, and then you can have it. Talk about ironic,” she added under her breath.

  He sighed. He looked as solemn as Jeffrey had when he’d stated that scary rides were not for small children. “I didn’t mean I’d buy it right out from under you,” he said, his voice low and earnest. “All I’m saying is, we’re connected, Emmie. I’m not convinced we’re history. We made promises to each other five years ago—”

  “And you broke your promises.”

  “I told you why.”

  “You said you wanted my forgiveness. All right. Fair enough. If I forgive you, will you go away?” I don’t want to share Jeffrey with you. Jeffrey. is all I’ve got, the one person in the world who brings me joy and makes me feel whole. I don’t want to turn his life upside down—or mine.