by L. A. Witt
Andreas snorted. “You don’t have any honor in the bedroom.”
“Fair point. Is it five yet?” It was 4:40. “Close enough. Can we take these back to my place for the night? I really want to get changed before we dig in to them.”
Andreas gave me an odd look. “Don’t you have to help move Asher tonight?”
“Nah, that’s tomorrow.” And I was grateful for that, because it was going to be a shit show and I needed a little more time to mentally prepare myself for the process that was moving my older brother into a damn nursing home. He was only thirty-five, and so deep in the grips of early-onset Alzheimer’s that my parents couldn’t handle him by themselves anymore. I’d offered to move back home to help, but I was quietly, shamefully grateful that my parents had refused point-blank. “Home?” I asked hopefully.
“Yeah, we might as well.”
Just what I wanted to hear. Hello pain pills, sweatpants, and new case files. It was the perfect evening in.
Darren and I jumped into the files as soon as we got home, but an hour or so after we’d settled in, we both started getting hungry. Neither of us felt like cooking, so around seven, I walked down the street to pick up some takeout.
The second I walked back through his front door, soda cans and food bags in hand, I knew his mother had called. Darren didn’t have to say a word. He was on the couch, surrounded by open files and his ever-present legal pad, but he wasn’t looking at them. His gaze was fixed on the TV screen. I doubted he even saw what was on. No one watched commercials that intently. Lips tight, jaw clenched, he barely acknowledged me.
Shit. He didn’t need this today. Or any day, really.
I cleared my throat. “I’ll, um, put this on some plates.”
He just nodded, still staring blankly at the TV.
I went into the kitchen, and once I was out of his sight, I swore under my breath. The only time I’d felt more helpless was when he’d gotten hurt. When there’d been nothing I could do except hope to God he didn’t bleed out right there in front of me, and whenever I slept these days, I could hear the doctor reminding me how much of a possibility that had really been.
There was nothing I could do now either. I couldn’t even go with him when he visited Asher. My presence—a new face—would only confuse and upset Asher. All I could do was be there when Darren came back.
I glanced into the living room. He was still staring at the TV. That would probably be our evening, then. I could only imagine how bad things were over at his parents’ house.
I plated our food and poured our sodas over some ice. He probably wasn’t hungry anymore, but he’d eat, if only so he could take a pain pill and knock out for the night. We both knew he wasn’t often in enough pain anymore to warrant continuing through the rest of his prescription, but I wasn’t going to judge him for a little chemical relief from the hell he was going through right now. Though I’d sure as shit keep an eye on him in case he got hooked.
His brother had started deteriorating rapidly while Darren was recovering from his injuries. Asher hadn’t understood why Darren didn’t come visit him, and no one dared tell him his little brother was in the ICU. Then he’d started going downhill. Fast. The worst part was that Darren had either been in serious pain or on even more serious drugs for the better part of the last month. He’d been devastated when he’d started bouncing back, only to learn that his brother had gone in the opposite direction and was being moved into a home.
And visiting him again . . . Jesus. Every visit took a heavier toll than the last. Asher still remembered him for now, but every day there were bigger holes in his memory. It was only going to get worse from here.
I glanced at Darren again and sighed.
What can I do? I don’t know how to be there for you.
Well, I could start with giving him some food. I balanced our plates on one arm and our glasses in the other hand. As I moved into the living room, I said, “Still hungry?”
He blinked a few times and looked up at me like he’d forgotten I was even here, or that he’d wanted food in the first place. His eyes flicked to the plates, and some life came back into him. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. Here, let me get this out of the way.” He quickly moved all the files aside, and I set the dishes down. “You were a waiter once, weren’t you?”
I laughed as I sat beside him. “For one miserable year after high school, yes.”
He switched off the television. “Looks like you got some use out of it.” He smiled faintly. I knew damn well he wasn’t feeling it, but I ran with it.
“You don’t want to know how many plates I dropped before I got the hang of that.”
Another hint of amusement. “How many can you carry at once?”
“Five or six, if they’re not huge.” I picked up a fry and dipped it in ketchup. “Got a second-degree burn once because I had a plate here”—I tapped my upper arm—“with a bowl of soup on it, and someone crashed into me.”
“Ouch.”
“Eh. Got me the night off.”
The conversation died away, and with it, that glimpse of the Darren who’d been here before I left. I didn’t know how to get it back. I wasn’t even great at filling weird silences with people I’d known for years. Navigating a new relationship with a new partner who was going through two different kinds of hell at once was some expert-level shit that I didn’t know how to handle.
Darren took a few bites from his burger before he set it back down. “So, um. I need to call out tomorrow.” He absently dragged a fry through some ketchup. “My mom needs a hand with packing Asher’s things.”
“You already have tomorrow off.”
His eyes lost focus and his hand stilled, but then he shook his head. “I had the dates mixed up. They’re moving him the day after tomorrow.” He ate the fry, and after he’d washed it down, muttered, “Guess I need two days off. Chief’ll be fucking thrilled.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll cover for you.” I sipped my own drink. “I’ll just tell him you’re at home going through all this shit.” I gestured with my burger at the files we’d abandoned.
“Thanks.” His voice was thick with numbness. Silence fell again, and damn if I knew what to do with it.
My mouth had gone dry, but I managed a bite of my burger. After I’d taken another drink, I said, “Is there anything I can do?”
“There isn’t anything anyone can do.” He picked at his food. I thought the silence would linger again, but it didn’t. “He’s asking for his wife.”
“He is?”
Darren nodded, staring at the coffee table with unfocused eyes. He wasn’t even trying to eat now. “The last week or so, he’s been asking for her.”
I swallowed, not hungry anymore myself. “What do your parents tell him?”
“Depends on how lucid he is.” Darren sighed, pushed his plate away, and gingerly leaned back on the couch. “Sometimes they can tell him they’re divorced. Other times . . .” He rubbed his forehead. When he lowered his hand, he looked fucking exhausted and sounded even worse. “How do you tell a man who’s convinced his wife just left the room that she’s been gone for years and isn’t coming back?”
“Jesus,” I whispered.
His lips tightened. Then he looked at me with haunted eyes. “This is the part when things start getting really bad, really fast.”
“How bad? And how fast?”
“Well, no one will come out and say it, but I’ve done research on his condition. At this stage, when we’re putting him in a home . . .” He closed his eyes and pushed out a long breath. “Once that happens, most people go downhill very quickly. There’s no stopping it, and there’s no slowing it down. And even though my parents refuse to say it, the fact is . . .” His Adam’s apple jumped, and he met my gaze. “Asher will be gone within a year. I’m almost sure of it.”
“Oh my God. I’m sorry, Darren.”
He didn’t speak. He looked toward the TV as if it were on, and his jaw tightened again. When we were on the subject o
f his brother, and his expression darkened like that, I’d quickly learned what it meant. No matter how much he tried to hide it, his mind always circled back to that place.
Cautiously, I said, “If you get the test, at least you’ll know.”
“Yeah?” He glared at me. “And then I’ll know I get to look forward to circling the drain for a few years before I forget everyone and everything I’ve ever known?” He sniffed sharply. “No, thank you.”
“Or you’ll know that’s not in your future.”
“It’s a fifty-fifty shot at knowing if I’ve got a time bomb in my DNA.” He shook his head. “I’ll pass.”
“Darren, it’s—”
“This isn’t like HIV, Andreas,” he snapped. “What you have, it can be managed. You might not ever have a negative effect.” He gulped, and his voice wavered slightly. “If I have this, then there is nothing I can do. Nothing.”
“Okay. Okay.” I put up my hands. “I’m sorry. But if you do want to get the test, you know I’ll support you.”
“I don’t want to. But . . .” He dropped his gaze and his voice. “Thanks.” Before the silence could set in once again, he cleared his throat. “You want to just watch a movie or something tonight? Something stupid?”
“Sure. We can do that. What are you in the mood for?”
He sat up a little and reached for his drink. “How about Anchorman? Haven’t seen that one in a while.”
Ice water trickled through my veins, but I forced my expression to stay neutral. “Sure.” I nodded. “That sounds good.”
I didn’t dare tell him we’d watched that one three nights ago.
The next morning, I went into the precinct alone while Darren went to help his family. I ignored the icy stares—I was getting used to those—and headed up to our little corner of the bull pen. The desks near us were vacant now. After the fallout from Trent Newberry’s expansive network, a number of cops in our precinct had gone to prison, and the two detectives sitting near us had quickly jumped at the opportunity to move their desks elsewhere. Fine by me.
I’d brought a handful of Trent’s files with me, and stacked them on my desk. We hadn’t made much progress on them yesterday, which wasn’t surprising. Question was, where to start?
Well. I exhaled. No better place to start than the beginning.
I grabbed the first folder off the top and flipped it open.
Three or four files later, as I was looking over some of Trent’s handwritten notes and getting nowhere, approaching footsteps pulled my attention away. I looked up, fully expecting a snide comment or maybe another “accidental” coffee spill, but it wasn’t a cop.
“Hey, kiddo.” I stood as my eldest daughter came up to my desk. Good—I needed to talk to her anyway, mostly to ask about the friend’s apartment where she’d been crashing. She’d considered staying with me, but her friend was closer to work. Which was fine since I spent most nights at Darren’s these days, and wasn’t quite ready to explain that to her. “So, um, how’s the job going?”
“Eh.” Erin hugged me gently, then leaned against my desk. “They’re keeping me busy.”
“And your professor’s happy with it? For the internship requirements?”
She nodded.
“Good. How’s the apart—”
“Can I talk to you about something?”
I blinked. The way she’d blurted out the question made my heart stop. After Trent had tried to use her as a pawn, I was on a hair trigger when it came to protecting my kids.
“Um. Yeah.” I cleared my throat and tried to play it off as nothing. “Sure. What’s up?”
She shifted her weight, glancing around the bull pen. “Can we do this someplace else?”
“Anywhere you want.” I paused. “Why don’t we take an early lunch?”
Erin chewed her lip. “I should tell Mark, then. He’ll—”
“I’ll send him a text. Don’t worry about it.”
I stashed the folders in a locked file drawer in my desk, then grabbed my jacket and keys.
My daughter was quiet the whole way out of the precinct and down the road, just nodding silently when I suggested the ancient Irish pub on the corner. This early in the day, most people were at work, so the place was practically deserted.
When our food came, she was a little chattier, telling me about her latest adventures working as an intern for Mark Thibedeau in Internal Affairs. I kept it under my hat that her job wasn’t helping with the hostile work environment Darren and I had found ourselves in recently. Every cop in the city was convinced he and I were in IA’s pocket now, and having my daughter working up there wasn’t exactly a point in our favor. But she needed the internship and God knew IA needed help sorting through everything that had blown up in the last month. In another month, she’d be done and back at school two states over. Good thing her other classes were online this semester.
I pushed my empty plate away and took a drink. “All right. So. You wanted to talk about something.”
“Yeah.” Erin squirmed, staring at her mostly finished food. Then she pushed her own plate away and tucked her hands under the table. “So . . .” She gnawed her lip and refused to look me in the eye.
A million worst-case scenarios flooded my brain. “Erin? Whatever it is—talk to me.” Just please don’t let it be . . . or . . . or even . . . I tamped those thoughts down. No sense working myself up. Except I was already worked up. Fuck. What was going on?
She brought her hands up again and wrapped them around her drink. “There’s a rumor going around the precinct.”
“Could you narrow it down a little?”
Her eyes flicked up to meet mine. “About you.”
My heart thumped against my ribs. “Still might want to narrow it down.”
She released a long breath through her nose. “Well, it’s . . . kind of two rumors, I guess. I’ve heard a lot of people say you’re a drug addict.” Her eyebrows flicked up slightly, and I schooled my expression, refusing to let anything show.
“And the other?”
She swallowed hard, holding her drink tighter. “They say everyone thought you were doing pain pills or something. But that someone recently figured out it was something else.”
I dug my teeth into the inside of my cheek. Shit. This was not a conversation I was ready to have with her. “Did they?”
Erin nodded slowly, and she leaned in closer. “Are you a drug addict?”
“No.” I looked her right in the eye. “I’m not addicted to anything.”
She studied me. Then, barely whispering, “Do you have AIDS, Dad?”
I broke eye contact first, regretting it instantly because I knew damn well it was a tell. Thumbing the thin paper placemat under my plate, I took a deep breath. “I . . .”
“Oh my God.” She sat back. “You do, don’t you?”
Fuck. There was no way out of this. I could have choked every last asshole at the precinct for letting these rumors fly. I didn’t care what people said or thought about me. I did care when it was within earshot of one of my kids.
Ignoring the churning in my gut, I looked at her again. “I have HIV.”
Her lips parted. “Seriously?”
I nodded. “It’s under control, though. The medications, now—it’s been undetectable for a few years, and—”
“A few years?” she squeaked. “How long have you had it?”
Oh, now wasn’t that a loaded question?
I sat up and folded my arms on the table. “I was diagnosed before Emily was born.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh God. Does she have it?”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, we’ve had her tested repeatedly, and she’s always come up negative.”
“What about Lisa?”
I winced, and yeah, she probably had her answer even before I spoke. “She’s positive too.”
“Oh.” Her expression was blank, eyes wide like she was shell-shocked. “How . . . how long has she had it?”
I exhaled. No point i
n lying to her. “We don’t know. But she . . .” I closed my eyes and tried not to get sick. “She most likely got it from me.”
Erin’s breath hitched. “Whoa.”
I opened my eyes again. “And no, I don’t know how long I’ve had it.”
“But you’ve known for at least . . . almost five years, right?”
I nodded.
“Do Ben and Casey know?”
“No.” I drummed my nails on the table and my heel on the floor, trying to relieve this nervous energy. “And neither does your mother.”
She held my gaze for a moment. Slowly, her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned into a straight line. “Have you bothered to tell anyone?”
The anger in her tone caught me almost as off guard as this whole line of questioning. “Erin, it’s—”
“Dad, Jesus.” She threw up her hands. “You’ve known for five years that you have this, and it never once occurred to you to tell your kids? What the fuck?”
“What difference would it have made?” I growled back. “It’s under control. It’s—”
“Because you’re our dad and we shouldn’t get blindsided by crap like this? Because it’s not something I should find out by hearing rumors about—” Her voice cracked, and she shakily went for her drink. After she’d taken a swallow, she slammed the glass down hard enough to make both of us jump. In a softer, shakier tone, she said, “What the hell, Dad?”
I didn’t have an explanation. I had nothing. When had I intended to tell them? Quite possibly never as long as no complications arose. And what if I had? The question had to be on her mind—where did I get it? How quickly would that lead us down the path of how much I’d slept around after their mother had divorced me? How I’d been depressed and reckless and thrown caution to the wind despite telling my kids to always use protection? How there was a chance Emily wasn’t their only half sibling? How it was possible I’d infected other people along the way, and how much that ate at my conscience even now? And while we were on the subject of “things I wasn’t ready to tell my kids,” how many more men than women there’d been?
