by Kim Fielding
So he kept his head down and shivered, and he didn’t look up even when a car stopped in front of him and a door slammed. A moment later a pair of boots appeared in front of him. Familiar boots—purple Fluevogs. But he still kept his eyes on his phone.
A long, silent moment passed. Then… yep. There it was. The sigh. “You need a heavier coat, Parker.”
“Mom.” Nothing more—just that one warning word. Then he stood, tucked his phone into his back pocket, and braced himself for the hug. And the kiss, complete with lipstick marks on his cheek. If he were tortured, he might admit he was thankful for the hug and kiss, that they smoothed a few of the jagged edges inside him. That without them he might have fallen apart completely. But only if he were tortured.
His mother let go, and he stood for a second, allowing her to scowl at him. She wore yellow leggings, a black dress with gray boomerang shapes, and a fuzzy purple scarf. No coat, but then she’d spent the past four hours or so inside her car. Her hair was shorter than the last time he saw her, and although she was letting most of the natural gray show, she had a purple streak in front. Her eyes looked tired.
He had no idea what she saw as she gazed at him. Five feet eleven inches of disappointment, probably.
Parker bent and picked up the biggest box. Rhoda used the key fob to open the back of her modestly sized SUV, and he wrestled the box inside. She brought him the suitcase, then the other two boxes. Everything fit just fine; he didn’t have much stuff.
He shut the hatch, they got into the car, and his mom pulled into the flow of traffic. They got all the way to Tacoma before either of them said a word.
“I’m going to need to pee,” she said. “And eat. I missed lunch.”
“Fine.”
“Did you have lunch?”
“I’m not hungry.”
Her only response was a humph.
Several miles later, he took a forward step. “I can drive, you know. If you’re tired.”
“I’m fine.”
And that was it between them until she took an exit in Chehalis, where she filled the gas tank and then parked at the Burgerville. She left him in the SUV and went inside. He leaned his head against the window and pretended to be napping.
When she returned ten minutes later, she held a paper bag and two paper cups. She handed him one of the cups as soon as she got inside. “Chocolate,” she announced. Then she dug in the bag and gave him a wrapped sandwich. “You don’t have to eat it. But you can.”
And, well, he was a little hungry now that he smelled the food. Plus there were no Burgervilles in Seattle, and he really liked their turkey burger and milkshakes. So he ate in silence while his mother did the same, and she didn’t even blunt the edges of things by turning on the radio. He would have sold his soul for one of her NPR shows, the ones she liked to talk back to.
After the food was gone, Parker gathered the trash and threw it in a nearby can. On his return, he reclined the seat and closed his eyes, felt the wheels rolling beneath him as they left the parking lot and returned to the freeway. Tried not to feel his heart shatter a little more with every mile that passed.
She finally spoke up somewhere near the Mt. St. Helens signs. “I didn’t like him anyway.”
“Mom.”
“He’s flaky, and I don’t think he treated you very well. When you two came down to visit, he kept interrupting every time you tried to say something.”
Parker rolled his eyes and turned to look out the side window. His mother was right. Logan was terrible about letting Parker finish a sentence. And he was flaky even by Parker’s standards.
“And even if he’d been a perfect gentleman—which he wasn’t—dating a coworker is a bad idea.”
Well, duh. Which Parker almost said, except he wasn’t twelve anymore. And even though he’d needed rescuing by his mommy yet again, he was pretending to be an adult. He made a sour face instead.
The truth was, he’d known from the beginning that it was stupid to hook up with someone he worked with and even dumber to move in with him. Sure, some people could probably pull that off, but those were people who had better romance track records than he did. Parker’s longest relationship had been four months, and that one lasted so long only because the guy in question was in Colorado for one of those months.
Parker had a tendency to jump right into idiocy, a tendency his mother had remarked on more than once. She didn’t call it idiocy, of course. She just said Parker should try to be less impulsive. Same thing.
“Logan’s really cute,” he mumbled. “We had fun together.”
Now it was his mother’s turn to roll her eyes. Instead of replying, she swore at a BMW drifting into their lane. “Pay attention to the road, numbnuts!”
Despite the situation, Parker chuckled. “You’ve been spending time with Nevin, haven’t you?”
Nevin was one of his mom’s friends, a regular at P-Town. He cursed more than anyone Parker had ever met, and more colorfully, but he was also a really good cop. And he and his husband, Colin, were adorable together. Relationship goals, right?
“If Nevin were here,” Parker’s mom said, “I’d ask him to ticket that shit-for-brains. Although I suppose this wouldn’t be in his jurisdiction.”
It had occurred to Parker more than once that she would have made a great detective. She liked to investigate things, and her interrogation skills were excellent. As she demonstrated a moment later when she patted Parker’s knee. “Tell me what happened with Logan, honey.” Ah, so she was playing good cop for now.
“Ugh.”
“Ugh?”
“The apartment was in his name ’cause he lived there first, right? So every month I gave him my half of the rent and utilities, and he paid it all. Only it turned out he hadn’t been. And he’d been tearing up all the overdue notices, so I never saw them.”
“What did he do with the money?”
Parker grunted. “He claims he invested it, but I doubt that. Oh, and he’s been getting this really complicated tattoo all over his back.” It was really good art, and it must have cost a fortune. But when Parker had asked how he afforded the ink, Logan said the artist was a friend who was giving him a huge discount.
“He was stealing from you.”
“He…. Yeah. I guess so.” Parker hadn’t looked at it that way until now. “This morning the apartment manager showed up while Logan was at work. She said if we didn’t pay the back and current rent, we’d be evicted.” Deep in his heart, Parker hadn’t been shocked to learn that Logan was avoiding the bills. It was exactly the kind of thing Logan would do.
“You confronted Logan over it?”
“Yeah. I was pissed off, Mom. So I went to work to talk to him about it, and we got in a huge fight, and that upset all the dogs, and our boss canned us both.” Yes, it had been especially dumb for Parker to confront Logan so impulsively, and at the doggie day care. But at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that Logan was now unemployed too and would soon be homeless. Logan’s family lived somewhere in Oklahoma—a location he claimed had no redeeming value—so if he had to resort to parental rescue, he was going to be stuck somewhere he hated.
“I’m sorry, Gonzo. You liked that job.”
He had. Doggie day care might not have paid all that well, but it was a lot of fun. Beagles and golden retrievers never judged him or made him feel inadequate. They were thrilled if he rubbed their ears and tossed a few toys around.
Parker and his mom remained silent for a long time, until they reached the outskirts of Vancouver, Washington. “Thanks for coming to get me,” he mumbled. “Even though I’m a screwup.”
“I’ll always retrieve you. And I love you even when you make mistakes. Do you think you’ll stay in Portland for a while this time? I could use the help since I’m about to be down two baristas. Ptolemy’s doing a postdoc, and Deni’s expecting a baby any day now.”
He didn’t know whether she was truly desperate or just trying to make him feel better. “Sure, I can stick around
for a bit.” Back to living with his mother and working at P-Town. Neither of those was a fate worse than death, but dammit, he’d been doing them when he was sixteen. It would be nice to have made some advances in maturity and independence over the past decade. He pictured himself at ninety, tottering around the coffeehouse with his mom still giving him advice on how to be an adult. And oh yeah, he’d still be sleeping in his old twin bed. Completely and tragically single.
Ugh.
Maybe he should consider becoming a monk. The kind who locked himself in a cell and took a vow of silence. Did they still have that kind? The only ones Parker knew about for sure were the monks in Mount Angel who made fudge. Well, he could do that too, couldn’t he? Spend his days in a long black robe, making candy and praying. Too bad he was an agnostic Jew.
He’d just have to find a secular way to get his act together.
RHODA PARKED the car in her driveway. This wasn’t the house in Beaverton that Parker had grown up in. As soon as he graduated high school, his parents sold that house and bought this one instead. It was in Southeast Portland, much closer to P-Town, and had a lot more character than the one in the suburbs. Over a hundred years old, this bungalow boasted lots of interesting architectural details, with a modern kitchen and bathrooms.
She helped Parker schlep his stuff into the house and set the boxes on the living room floor. “Your room’s not made up yet. I didn’t have enough lead time with this crisis.”
He scowled at her. “I am at least capable of making up a bed.”
“Glad to hear it.” She disappeared up the stairs, probably to change clothes. She had a whole suite up there—bedroom, sitting area, and huge bathroom. Hers alone, ever since Parker’s father died. Parker had one of the ground-floor bedrooms; the other served as Rhoda’s home office, and the bathroom sat across the hall.
He carried his suitcase into the bedroom, sat on the bed, and sighed, gazing at the painting of Bigfoot and a unicorn watching TV in the middle of a forest. One of Rhoda’s friends had painted it for her as a gift, and she’d decided Parker’s room was the perfect place for it. Which it was.
But despite the painting, and despite the fact that he’d inhabited this room off and on over the past eight years, it didn’t quite feel like home. Not that he’d shared the apartment with Logan for very long. Not that Parker had lived anywhere for very long since he was a kid. In fact, cumulatively, he’d spent more of his adult years in this room than anywhere else. He landed here every time he fucked up. Yet it wasn’t… it wasn’t where his heart wanted to be. Of course, his heart hadn’t told him where it did want to be, the stupid thing.
He stood, pulled off all the bedding, and wadded up the sheets for a later trip to the washing machine in the basement. A set of clean sheets waited in one of the drawers under the mattress. A captain’s bed had been the coolest upgrade in the world after he outgrew his Thomas the Tank Engine toddler bed.
Parker had just finished making up the bed when Rhoda knocked on the open door. The scarf was gone, and she’d changed out of her purple boots and into a pair of kelly green clogs. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m cool.”
“I’m heading to the shop for a couple of hours. Deni says it’s busy. Want to join me?”
He shook his head. “I think I’ll unpack and do laundry. And wallow. Want me to make us some dinner?”
She walked over and tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. “That’d be great. There’s pasta, some chicken breasts, maybe—”
“I’ll figure something out, Mom.” He wasn’t a great cook or anything, but he’d learned to make simple dinners when he was in high school and his parents worked long hours at P-Town.
“I know. I have confidence in you.”
Ouch. She meant well, but it hurt anyway. “I’m really sorry I messed up again,” he murmured.
“Oh, sweetheart. You have such an open and trusting heart. I’d hate for you to close it off. Just maybe… be a little more careful?”
He bent to kiss her cheek. “I’ll try.” And he would. But he wasn’t optimistic about his success.
DECIDING TO make a good start of things, Parker woke up early the following morning, showered, and dressed. Making coffee seemed redundant when he was about to go work at P-Town, so he was yawning as Rhoda drove them the two and a half miles to work.
Conscious that their schedules wouldn’t always mesh, he asked, “Do you still have my bicycle?”
“It’s in the basement. But do you really want to ride in the cold and rain?”
“I won’t melt.”
“At least tell me you have a decent raincoat.”
He chose not to answer.
As soon as Rhoda unlocked the café door, Parker got to work. While she readied the till and received deliveries of baked goods, he pulled chairs off tables, adjusted window shades, and filled containers with milk, sugar, and sliced lemons. He helped Rhoda fill the display case with goodies—pausing to eat a fantastic cherry-almond Danish. Then he wiped down the long glass countertop and made some pitchers of iced tea. These were all familiar tasks he’d been performing for years, and he and Rhoda had the timing down perfectly. The first pot of drip brew was ready exactly as she unlocked the door for their first customers.
“Parker! I didn’t know you were back in town.”
Parker tried not to cringe as he greeted the big man in the green uniform. “Hi, Jeremy. I just got here yesterday.”
“Welcome back.”
“Thanks.”
Parker gave him a weak smile. There was nothing wrong with Jeremy Cox. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was an enormous hunk of gorgeousness, with bulging muscles, a square jaw, and tightly cropped light hair, and his park-ranger uniform only added to the vision. He looked like a movie superhero and acted like one too. As a matter of fact, back when Parker was a high-school senior, Jeremy was one of his first real crushes, an intense puppy love that had Parker stammering, swooning, and secretly drawing little hearts in his school notebooks. Jeremy was only a few years younger than Rhoda, so Parker realized even then how impossible the whole thing was, but that hadn’t stopped him from dreaming. He’d outgrown the crush long ago—mostly—but was still embarrassed when Jeremy saw him repeatedly fail at life. And God, Parker would be mortified if anyone knew how he’d once felt.
“The usual?” Parker asked.
“Yep.”
The usual was an oversize Americano, no milk, in a huge mug Rhoda kept just for Jeremy. “Anything to eat with that?”
“Nah. Qay’s been bugging me to cut back on sugar and fat. We’re not getting any younger, yada yada. I’ll have a sensible, boring breakfast later.”
Parker smiled at the fondness in Jeremy’s expression when he mentioned his husband. “How’s Qay doing? He started grad school, right?”
That made Jeremy beam. “Yeah. A few more years and he’ll be Dr. Hill. He’s doing great. Will you be here this afternoon? I’ll tell him to stop by after class.”
“I will, and please do.”
It was inspiring to know that Qay was doing well. He’d spent most of his life embroiled in much bigger problems than Parker’s—drug addiction, mental illness, minor brushes with the law. And he had a pretty horrific childhood, complete with parental abuse and rejection. But he managed to pull his life together, marry the amazing Jeremy Cox, and become an academic star. If he could do it, maybe there was hope for Parker. If only Parker didn’t have to wait until his midforties to get there.
P-Town became busy almost immediately, but Deni and two other employees arrived to help handle the rush. Parker loved it when he had to hurry around at work—it made him feel competent and kept him from dwelling on his personal disasters. Some of the customers were regulars who recognized him from his previous P-Town gigs, and almost everyone was unusually pleasant because Rhoda had an uncanny knack of attracting good people. It was her superpower. Parker had no other explanation for it. She also managed to cultivate a varied customer base: rich, poor, qu
eer, straight, old, young. People of every imaginable ethnic background. And yes, some of Rhoda’s people were decidedly… eccentric, but that was cool too. Parker enjoyed them all.
“Hey, Gonzo. Take a lunch break.”
Parker looked up from the sink full of dirty dishes. “Let me finish these first.”
“Benny just clocked in—let him do them. You go find something substantial to eat and rest your feet for half an hour.”
Parker didn’t want a rest—too much opportunity to dwell on his shortcomings—but he’d never yet won an argument with his mother. He turned off the water and dried his hands on a towel. “Want me to get you something?”
“I brought some leftovers. Now go. Shoo.”
A few minutes later he stood under the front awning, trying to decide what to have for lunch. The neighborhood offered several opportunities, many of them within his limited budget. A man in a denim jacket, his sandy-colored hair in a ponytail, strode toward the café door and nodded at him. Parker smiled back. The guy was handsome, and although he appeared preoccupied or worried, he was humming quietly to himself. After he entered the coffeehouse, Parker returned to ruminating.
He’d finally settled on the Thai place and had taken two steps in that direction when his phone rang. He didn’t know the name, but he recognized the 206 area code.
“Hello?”
“Is this Parker Levin?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“I’m Detective Jocelyn Saito. Seattle Police Department. Mr. Levin, we have some questions to ask you.”
Chapter Two
WES USUALLY liked the drive from southern Oregon to Portland. The first part had some nice forested mountains, and the straight shot up the Willamette Valley brought green fields and distant hills. Sure, traffic would get obnoxious as he neared Portland, but he generally didn’t mind. He was rarely in a hurry, and the van’s great sound system had been a worthwhile splurge.
