by Pandora Pine
“That’s a good point,” Ten agreed. “I was wondering earlier if Kaye had lost the will to live.”
“She might have. Being married to your Dad was her whole life. It was her reason for living. So, what she needs now is a new reason for getting out of bed in the morning. I know it’s going to sound crazy, but the things that helped me out were books and those catalogs from the bedding stores that Dad used to bring me.”
“What?” Fitzgibbon sounded stunned. “I knew the books were helping you, but the catalogs?”
Greeley grinned sheepishly. “I’d been living on the streets for so long and it was the thought of having a bedroom of my own that got me through some of the toughest nights. You’d go home and I’d be in that bed all alone and I’d just picture that room in my mind. What would my bed be like? Would it be a soft mattress or a hard one? What kind of comforter would I have? Would I get a television or posters on the wall? Dumb stuff like that. I’d go through the catalog and put different marks by the things I liked. Stars for what I couldn’t live without and smiley faces for things I didn’t need but really wanted.” He shrugged, his face tinged with embarrassment.
Fitzgibbon wrapped an arm around his son’s shoulders and pressed a kiss to his dark hair. He whispered something to him that Ronan couldn’t make out. Whatever the words were, they made Greeley smile.
“You think Kaye needs something like that to give her a spark?” Ten asked.
“I do. I know you’ve been out of her life for a long time, Uncle Ten, but is she a dog or a cat person? Does she garden? Is she a reader? Does she do puzzle books like Shelly? We could help with stuff like that before we go back home.”
Ronan grinned at the kid. He was incredibly thoughtful, that was for sure.
“My mother wasn’t kind to you at all, Greeley. Why would you try to help her like this?” Tennyson asked. He didn’t sound like himself at all.
Greeley tilted his head to the side. “When I was living on the streets of Boston, do you know how many people walked past me like they didn’t even see me? You and Dad were the first people who saw me for the person I could be and not for the drug-addicted throw-away I was.” The teenager shrugged. “Your Mom might be bitter and filled with hate toward people like us right now, but maybe me reaching out to her with kindness will be what turns her around and opens her heart to our family.”
Ten swiped at the tears forming in his eyes. “It’s not gonna be easy you know. She’s a bit of a tough nut to crack.”
“So was I, remember?” Greeley elbowed his father.
Kevin snorted. “I remember. God, help me, I wanted to take you over my knee and spank the hell out of you the day we met.”
“Maybe that would work with Kaye?” Ronan brightened at the mere thought.
Tennyson looked at him in disgust. “God, no!”
“I don’t mean spank her like that, babe” Ronan waggled his eyebrows at his fiancé.
“Eww, Uncle Ronan!” Greeley buried his face in his menu.
“Nice! You see that? You’ve scarred my boy for life.” Fitzgibbon started to laugh.
“You were the one who brought up spanking, Cap.” Ronan shrugged as he turned to Tennyson who was rolling his eyes and laughing. Well, at least he’d managed to put a smile back on his fiancé’s face. At the moment, that was really all that mattered.
27
Tennyson
What had surprised Tennyson the most was that Fitzgibbon and Greeley were all in for the trip to Kaye’s house after lunch. He’d assumed father and son would want to be dropped off at the hotel so they could spend the afternoon at the pool or hiking in the woods behind the property, but they’d both insisted on coming along.
Ten was in no mood to dissuade them from coming along. The more, the merrier, in his mind, although he couldn’t imagine his mother was going to feel the same way when she saw the gay pride parade marching up her driveway. Tennyson snorted.
“What’s funny?” Ronan asked.
“I was just thinking about how Kaye is going to react when she sees all the gays standing on her doorstep.”
Ronan set a hand on Ten’s thigh. “You have to stop thinking about it like that, babe. We’re here to help her out. Who cares if we suck dick on the side. Like it or not, we’re her family.” Ronan parked the truck in the driveway that was empty, but for David’s car. “Right now, we’re all she’s got.”
Ten nodded. Ronan was right. He grabbed the bag of food from the Main Street Café and hopped out of the truck. Straightening his spine, he steeled his nerves for the confrontation he knew was coming.
“Looks like the lawn needs to be mowed. I can do that,” Greeley said from behind Tennyson. “Do you know if your Dad had a lawnmower?”
Ten had no clue whatsoever. “I don’t know, but that sounds like a good place to start.”
“I’ll also check around for anything else that needs some work. Leaky faucets and stuff like that,” Fitzgibbon said. “Might not be a bad idea to see if the car needs an oil change or other maintenance.”
Things like that hadn’t even crossed Tennyson’s mind. Since he hadn’t lived with Kaye and David in over thirteen years, he had no idea what kind of shape the house or the car was in. “Thanks, Cap. I would really appreciate that. Ronan and I can get Kaye out to the grocery store while you guys work on the house and car.”
“There’s my gay man with a plan.” Ronan smacked a kiss against Ten’s cheek before he rang the doorbell. He rocked back on his heels while he waited for Kaye to answer the door. She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get there.
“Do you think she’s still in bed?” Ten rang the bell again. He was starting to wonder if they should look for a hide-a-key.
“What do you want, Tennyson?” A haggard looking Kaye opened the door a crack. She was dressed in a robe and her hair wasn’t combed.
“We brought lunch.” Ten held up the bag.
Kaye didn’t budge from her spot half hidden behind the door. She eyed the bag of food and the four men standing on her doorstep.
“For the love of God, Mom.” Ten rolled his eyes and pushed the door back. He gasped when he stepped past his mother and into the kitchen. All of the drapes and shades were closed, casting the house into near darkness. He could see there were a couple of wrapped casserole dishes on the counter and dirty dishes stacked in the sink. A couple of days of newspapers were tossed around the living room. The house was a disaster. He flipped on the kitchen light and motioned for everyone else to come inside.
“I’m not in a state for receiving visitors, Tennyson,” Kaye said distractedly as everyone marched past her into the house.
“Hello, Mrs. Grimm.” Greeley took her hand. “It’s so nice to see you again. Why don’t I make you up a plate for your lunch while you go get dressed? Hmm?” He smiled at her.
“I, well, I…” Kaye seemed to be speechless.
“Come on, now.” Greeley patted her hand. “You get dressed and I’ll take care of everything out here.” He smiled again.
Kaye nodded. Looking a bit less defeated than she had a moment ago. “I suppose I could eat something.”
Tennyson sighed with relief as Kaye walked down the hall toward her bedroom. “Christ, Greeley, I’m going to start calling you the miracle worker after what you just did.” He’d never seen anyone handle his mother like that before.
“It’s that empathy we were talking about this morning. I just somehow knew what she needed.” Greeley shrugged as if the words coming out of his mouth were a surprise to him too.
“I’ll make up a plate if you guys want to clean up around here?” Ten looked around at Ronan and Fitzgibbon. “Don’t do too much at once. I don’t want her to feel overwhelmed.”
“You’re a good son, you know.” Ronan pressed a kiss to Tennyson’s lips.
Tennyson wasn’t so sure he believed Ronan, but this wasn’t the time to argue the point. He headed into the kitchen behind his future husband and looked through the cabinets until he found a clea
n plate.
Ronan started hand washing the dishes in the sink while Tennyson put Kaye’s lunch together. By the time he was bringing it to the dining room table, it was all cleared off and the living room was also back in some semblance of order. He really did have the best friends.
When Kaye came out of her bedroom a few minutes later, dressed, with her hair in order, all four men were sitting around her dining room table. “Oh, you’re still here.” She frowned, but sat down at the table.
“Yes, Mom, we’re still here. I got a message today that you weren’t doing so well.” Ten folded his hands in front of himself.
“A message? From whom?” Kaye looked down her nose at Ten.
Ten groaned inwardly. He knew he’d made a mistake the minute the words left his mouth. He wasn’t used to having to guard his words. Everyone in his life knew he spoke to spirits and he never had to hide that face from anyone. “Look, Mom, I know you don’t believe in my gift, but Ronan’s mother, Erin, has been staying here with you. Watching over you.”
“You realize how crazy that makes you sound, Tennyson?” Kaye wasn’t pulling any punches.
Ten had a choice to make here. He could either agree with his mother, or bust out all the facts Erin had shared with him and possibly scare the shit out of her.
“We had a great lunch down at the Main Street Café, Mrs. Grimm,” Greeley interrupted. “Cal Foster told me that the turkey avocado club was one of your favorites, so I got it today. It was delicious.” He pointed to the untouched sandwich on her plate.
Kaye raised a silent eyebrow at the teenager, but picked up a triangle of the sandwich and took a bite. “It’s the apple wood-smoked bacon, you know,” she said after she swallowed.
“Of course it is,” Greeley grinned. “Bacon makes everything better. You know I was thinking I would go out and mow the lawn after lunch. If that’s okay with you?”
Kaye narrowed her eyes at Greeley. “I’m not paying you.”
Greeley laughed. “After that, I thought, I’d rake up and bag the clippings too. While we were at lunch, I was looking online and October is the perfect month to plant spring bulbs. Wouldn’t that be fun, Kaye? We could go out to the garden center over in Severance and pick out some nice daffodil bulbs and maybe get some container mums for out front?” Greeley held up his phone to show her pictures of burgundy chrysanthemums.
Kaye shrugged and bit into a pickle spear.
Ten bit his lip to keep from laughing out loud. He had no idea how to handle his cantankerous mother, but it seemed Greeley had her number. He was content to sit back and watch the teenager handle things for the moment.
“I know Uncle Ronan and Uncle Ten want to take you food shopping too, while Dad and I look at David’s car to make sure it’s safe for you to drive, with winter coming and all.” Greeley shrugged when Kaye remained silent.
Kaye daintily wiped her face with her napkin before setting it back in her lap. “Young man, you talk about this man being your father,” she pointed to Fitzgibbon, “and Tennyson and Ronan being your uncles, but the truth of the matter is that none of you are related to each other at all.”
Greeley laughed. “You’re right. None of us share one drop of blood in common. Well, with the exception of you and Uncle Tennyson, of course.” He looked back and forth between them silently, looking like he was considering his next words carefully. “You didn’t want him anymore, so we took him in and loved him for you.”
Kaye gasped, but otherwise stayed silent. Her eyes were glued to Greeley.
“My family didn’t want me either. Drugs were more important to my real mother and then the fact that I was gay was more important to my foster family. When Captain Fitzgibbon found me and saved me, I got a third chance at finding acceptance and a family of my own. Blood didn’t matter. Love did. I love the men sitting around this table with me. They are my father and my uncles and no DNA test can tell me any differently. They’ve been here for me through the darkest days of my life and I’ll be there for them through the brightest days of theirs. I’m going to be a groomsman in their wedding next month.” Greeley’s voice beamed with pride. “I’ll be my father’s best man when it’s his turn to walk down the aisle. I’ll be the best cousin and big brother there ever was when the babies start to come.” He stopped for a minute and looked around the table. “Don’t you want to be a part of that too, Kaye?”
“Babies?” Kaye scoffed. “There won’t be any babies, Greeley. No adoption agency is going to allow gay men to adopt a child.” She wrinkled her nose.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Kaye. On two counts,” Ronan said.
“Oh, am I now? Are you going to tell me how different things are in your hippy-dippy liberal part of the country where family values have all flown out the window?” Kaye raised an eyebrow at Ronan.
“Gay couples are allowed to adopt children in Massachusetts, but that’s not what I’m talking about.” Ronan elbowed Tennyson and pointed to his phone.
Ten knew what Ronan wanted him to show his mother. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to. Not to prove a point. He sighed and unlocked his phone. Scrolling through his pictures, he came to one of himself and Carson. “This is Carson. One of my business partners from back home. You probably recognize him from the reality show.” He turned the phone around to show Kaye.
“I remember him. He’s one of your gay friends.”
Tennyson sighed heavily. “He’s a friend, Mom. This is Carson and his husband, Truman.” Ten showed her a picture of them together standing in their kitchen.
“How lovely.” There was no light in Kaye’s voice.
Tennyson was starting to feel like this conversation was going nowhere, but he knew this was where it was about to pay off. “These are their babies.” He flipped the phone around again to show a picture of the family of five. “That’s Brian, Stephanie, and Bertha.”
Kaye narrowed her eyes at Tennyson’s screen. “They let gay men adopt three infants?”
“No, Mom,” Ten said patiently. “Those babies are Carson and Truman’s biological children.”
“You said they were gay? How can they be gay if they had babies?” Kaye looked completely confused.
“They used a surrogate and in-vitro fertilization, like couples who can’t conceive naturally,” Ronan said.
“That’s against the church,” Kaye said quickly. “It’s not up to man to do the work of God. Only God can create life.”
“Did you ever stop to think that God gave man the ability to do this work for him?” Fitzgibbon asked. “So that more couples could enjoy the miracle of becoming a parent?”
Kaye frowned at Fitzgibbon, but stayed silent. She kept staring at the picture of Carson and Truman’s family.
“I know you don’t believe in my sexuality, Mom, but Ronan and I are getting married on November first. I also know you don’t believe in my gift, but Ronan and I are going to be fathers too. Sooner, rather than later, to a beautiful baby girl. I’ve seen her.” Ten took a deep breath and blinked back the tears he could feel forming. He smiled at Ronan when his husband-to-be took his hand. “Take a look around you. We’re offering you a second chance at having a family. The second chance we all gave each other. If you take it, you’re in for life. There won’t be any long conversations about the past, only your promise that you’ll let your own feelings go. If you don’t take this chance, then you’ll be on your own here.” Ten sat back in his seat and hoped his mother would consider his words and not make a snap decision.
“Well, if we’re going to the supermarket, I’ll need to make a list.” Kaye got up from the table and moved into the kitchen.
It wasn’t an undying declaration of love, but it wasn’t an outright dismissal either. At this point in time, Tennyson would take it.
28
Ronan
By the time they’d gotten back to the hotel later in the afternoon, Ronan was exhausted. It shouldn’t have been that hard to take one woman food shopping, but it seemed everything with Kaye was
an exercise in patience.
To make matters worse, he’d gotten a cryptic text message from Sheriff Reed that Ronan hadn’t told Tennyson about yet. How many more things could go wrong today?
“Tah dah!” Tennyson announced, coming out of their bedroom shirtless, wearing his bright yellow swim trunks.
“Wow, you’re certainly sunshine on this bullshit day.” Ronan found his lips curving into a smile.
“Good! That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” Ten slipped his arms around Ronan’s hips and pressed a kiss to the side of his neck. “Put your bathing suit on and we’ll go get some sun together.”
He’d like nothing more than to go up to the pool and relax with Tennyson. They could both use a little bit of color for their wedding too. “There’s something I need to tell you before we go, though.”
Tennyson deflated in front of him. “Jesus, Ronan. Please don’t tell me it’s bad news. I don’t think I can take any more of that that today.”
Ronan hated the defeated look in Tennyson’s dark eyes. “To be honest, babe, I don’t know what it is.” He slipped his phone out of his pocket and pulled up Barlow Reed’s text before handing the phone to Ten. “This came in half an hour ago when we were unloading your mother’s groceries.”
“My office, all of you. 7am.” Ten looked up at Ronan with confusion written all over his face. “What the hell does this even mean?”
Ronan snorted. “I have no idea. I have a couple of theories, but he could want to see us for any number of reasons.”
“Do you think he wants us back on the case?” Ten asked as he started working Ronan’s shirt up over his abs.
Ronan grinned at his lover and lifted his arms into the air to make Ten’s job easier. “Maybe. I can’t see where it was Boone’s business to kick us off the case just because we found the journal. There might not have been anything probative in the pages to help the case.”
“What do you mean?” Ten winked at Ronan before pulling his shirt up and over his head. Ten’s fingers tangled in the soft fur of Ronan’s stomach.
His dick stiffening in his pants, Ronan tried his hardest to concentrate on the conversation at hand. There would be time to satisfy his craving for Ten later. “What if all Shannon Bradley wrote about was what a nice man her husband was and that she had the best kid in the world? That won’t exactly lead Boone to her killer, right?”
