by Anna Adams
“I was walking in the woods and I heard Eli talking to Lucy.” He explained what Eli had said, but she seemed to hear him on a weird delay, where she understood him about five words after he’d spoken.
“You can’t be right.”
“I know how you feel. You’re tempted to let it go because pretending your son can get better on his own is less frightening than looking a possible suicide in the eye.”
She refused to acknowledge that word. “Kids say crazy things when their pets are hurt.”
“You’re afraid for him. I’ve felt it since the first time I saw you together.”
No one looked that somber without reason. She stood, angry that he should read her mind. “Do you get off on saving the day?”
“I was waiting for you to say something like that. Listen to me. I’ve been through all the stages.”
Fear chilled her. She burrowed into the soft leather chair.
“You want to think I’m wrong because you should have seen if your son was in trouble, and I don’t know you well enough to drive when you rush your dog to the vet.”
“I hope you’re a raving lunatic.”
“I feel your fear for Eli.”
She tried to lick her lips. She couldn’t. Her mouth had gone completely dry.
“You can’t put your finger on it. You’ve talked to him, but he acts as if you’re the one with the problem.”
“You’ve been eavesdropping—are you a peeping tom?”
“My wife, Madeline, killed herself a little over a year ago.”
“No,” Beth said. “I knew she died, but—”
Aidan came closer. His body warmth reached out to her. All her blood must have drained somewhere. “I tried to help her, but she thought I was her problem—that I used the doctors and hospitals to get her out of the way.”
“Aidan, you must be seeing things.” No wonder his features looked honed by every second he’d lived. “That doesn’t mean my son—”
“You’re absolutely right.” He knelt in front of her. “Prove me wrong. Take him to a doctor. Force him to talk. Lock him in a room where he can’t hurt himself, but make sure.”
Her errant blood rushed back into her brain. She leaned over to still the spinning room.
“I don’t want you to live as I do, wishing I’d left Madeline no choice but to get well.” Stumbling like a sleepwalker, he went into the hall.
He couldn’t be right. It was his guilt talking.
“Eli.” She yelled his name, running to the front door, hearing only the too-slow slap of her shoes on the wooden floor. “Eli?”
He and Lucy loped out of the woods. Beth ran to meet him. She pulled him into her arms, finding enough strength to lift her son, whom she hadn’t been able to hoist off the ground for over a year.
“Mom, let me go.” He flailed for freedom. Thinking she was missing out on a game, Lucy jumped on both of them.
“Stop, Lucy.” Beth let Eli go, and the dog fell back, cowed at her unusual sharpness. Beth stared at her son, aware she was doing everything wrong. “You have to be honest.”
“About what, Mom?” Fear entered his eyes. “What did you find?”
“Find?” More important questions pushed his out of her mind. All the times he’d said he was tired, or his “stupid” teachers had given ridiculous homework. His refusal to have friends over and his matchmaking scheme to replace himself. “Are you so upset you’d think of hurting yourself?”
He backed up, tripping in the grass. She grabbed his arm to keep him upright. “What?” He shook her off.
“I heard something that scares me, that maybe you feel as if you didn’t want to live.”
“Who told you that?”
“I need to know.” He wasn’t confused. A child should be confused. He stared straight at her. “I want to help you.”
“Are you nuts? I’m eleven years old. Why would I kill myself?” He darted around her. “I’m a kid.”
She felt as if she were falling. Around her the plants waved their tender heads in earth warmed by early spring sun. Life went on, growing, flourishing, while her world imploded.
An eleven-year-old couldn’t claim he was too young to consider suicide unless he’d thought hard about it.
She’d been mooning over Aidan Nikolas when Eli needed all her attention. She covered her eyes and tried to think.
IT COULDN’T HAPPEN. Not to Eli. Eli wouldn’t do that….
She had to do something. If there was even the smallest possibility this was the reason for Eli’s troubling behavior, she had to do something.
She tore up the stairs and listened outside Eli’s door, afraid to go in, afraid to stay out. Something thumped the door. Something else thudded to the floor. It wasn’t Eli, throwing himself around. Even her beloved, injured eleven-year-old boy couldn’t move that quickly.
She reached for the doorknob, trying to find words. She’d have to accuse him, and he’d already belittled her suspicions. She’d better find out more than she knew about teenaged boys in this kind of trouble.
Beth went to her room and opened her laptop. Before she reached the Internet, she swore at her own blank-mindedness and reached for the phone.
Brent Jacobs had cared for Eli since the day he was born. When his receptionist, Lisa Franklin, answered, Beth asked to speak to Brent.
“Can I help you, Mrs. Tully?”
“No—please let me talk to him. If he’s busy, ask him to call me as soon as he can.” She didn’t want Eli labeled. Honesty was such a small town—not necessarily filled with small minds—but Eli’s teachers probably also used Brent, and gossip sometimes traveled in the guise of concern.
“Hold on.” Lisa’s annoyance crisped her voice. “I’ll see if Brent’s in consultation.”
A few moments later, she heard Brent: “…wouldn’t ask for me if she didn’t have a reason.” The phone scraped across a hard surface. “Beth? What’s up?”
She started crying. The tears surprised her, lodging in her throat and squeezing out of her eyes. “It’s Eli.”
“Did you say Eli? I can’t understand you.”
She wrestled for control. “Eli,” she said. “I think something really is wrong. It’s not just hormones like we talked about the other day.”
“You don’t mean he’s hurt?”
“I’m trying—” To be calm, which was utterly ridiculous. The words spilled out of her. Everything she’d worried about, all the questions he’d palmed off. She ended with Eli’s too-adult response to suicide.
“Wait—wait,” Brent said. “Bring him in. Lisa, we need an appointment for Eli Tully—yes, I know we were closing, but he’s a child and he needs help. We’ll stay open for him.” He turned back to the receiver. “Beth, our first step is a workup, to see if there’s a physical reason for all this.”
“Physical?”
“Let’s start there. It could be something else, but we’ll begin with his physical condition.”
“You know what’s gone on at our house. The divorce. His father never turning up. His home burning down, me dragging him across town and putting him into a school where the kids formed cliques the first time they saw each other at Mommy and Me classes.” She mopped her face with the hem of her shirt. “And he’s too late to fit in.”
“Be sensible. You’re not powerful enough to cause all of Eli’s problems. Your first task is to get him into my office because I doubt he’ll be glad to come.”
“And if that makes it worse?”
“We can’t let him decide. Suicide rates for children in his age group keep rising.” Brent stopped. “If he gets too upset, tell him I’ll come there, but either way, he’s having a physical. The worst that could happen is he’ll be able to use the certificate for sports this summer.”
“Eli’s favorite sport is snowboarding. Even this school doesn’t make snow so the kids can practice.” She switched hands and wiped the sweat off her palm.
He turned away again. “What? Okay. Beth, can you be here at eigh
t-fifteen?”
“Sure.” She looked at her watch. “Thanks, Brent.”
“No need to thank me. Good luck.”
“I’ll take all I can get.”
She set the phone on her desk and squared her shoulders, preparing to face her own child. What if she drove him to act?
She couldn’t think of that. He was more likely to die if she waited and hoped for the best. She went back to his room.
“Eli?”
“Leave me alone. I locked my door.”
“Do you know how many times you locked it when you were a baby?” She’d had bobby pins then. She plunged her hands into her hair, finding nothing. Van would have the right tool around here. He must have left for the airport already or he would have come to investigate the commotion.
Eli opened his door and turned his back on her. “I don’t want you breaking Uncle Van’s house.”
“What do you mean?”
“You get some idea in your head and you won’t let it go.” He sounded a little like his father. Or maybe he was trying to make her mad so she’d leave him alone.
“You and I need to see Dr. Brent. We have an appointment tonight.”
Eli stared, his stillness unnerving. “You’re nuts.”
“I hope so with all my heart.”
No emotion flickered in his eyes, but his mouth curved in half a smile. He’d forgotten to change his expression.
“I’ve been closing my eyes every time I look at you,” Beth said.
“Huh?”
“I should have seen sooner. What’s hurting you, Eli?”
“Don’t talk to me as if I’m a baby. Nothing’s wrong, and your old boyfriend, ‘Doctor Brent,’ isn’t going to poke at me.”
“My old boyfriend? He’s never been that, and he is going to give you a physical if I have to wrestle you all the way to the car and into his office. I’m scared to death of losing you.”
“What the hell difference would it make?”
Beth eyed her son, her heartbeat the only sound she could hear. After her parents had died, she’d taken up swearing as a sword and a shield, and Van had despaired. Finally, his unfailing support had convinced her to let go of the anger.
“Losing you would make every difference.” Choking on tears, she couldn’t finish.
His eyes glittered as he began to cry, too. She didn’t know whether to be afraid or relieved. He’d shown so little emotion since she’d made him come home from Campbell’s.
“You love me too much,” he said. “I don’t know if I can live up to that.”
She wanted to cry for her son’s old, old soul, but she wouldn’t. “I don’t mean to smother you.”
“I’m all you have.”
“No, Eli. I have a life—and so do you. You have years to go to the Olympics or become a physicist—or cure cancer. Can’t you look forward to them?”
After a steady, staring second, he shook his head and a new flood of tears slid, unheeded, down his face. Beth rocked back and forth on her heels.
“Can I hug you?”
He nodded, and she wrapped her arms around him. She held him loosely until he grabbed her so tight she wheezed as the air left her lungs.
“Can we go see Dr. Brent?” she asked.
He nodded against her T-shirt. “If you change clothes so no one will see I was crying on you.”
“I’ll be right back.”
In her room, she peeled her shirt over her head and held it to her cheek. She kissed the moist spot where her son had cried. She’d fight hell and all its demons for him. He might as well get used to it.
“MR. NIKOLAS? Can you hear me?” Ron, the IT guy, all but shouted in Aidan’s ear.
“Sorry.” Focused on the lighted windows up at Van’s house, he’d forgotten his top secret help on the phone. “What did I do?”
“You’ve installed the remote access software incorrectly. I can’t see you.”
He looked down at his brand-new, so far useless laptop. “It’s worse than that. I forgot to hit Return so the machine would log me onto the network.”
“You need to do that.”
He jabbed the key.
He’d glimpsed Eli and Beth in town. They’d been crossing the parking lot to visit the Honesty Medical Center while he returned to his car from buying the remote login software from the SuperComputer across the street. How long had they stayed? What had they done?
Would that little boy be okay?
Aidan didn’t want to care. But who could turn his back on a child?
“Hold on, sir. I’m in.” On the monitor, screens began flashing up and down.
“You haven’t mentioned doing this for me, have you?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s not that I’m afraid of my mother.”
“I am, sir.”
Aidan laughed. It felt odd after so much seriousness. “She can’t fire me.”
“She’ll definitely fire me if anyone tells her or your father I’ve been setting you up.”
“I’ll call at night again if I have to speak to you. My parents must have gone home hours ago.” The screens kept coming up and closing. “Imagine how you’d feel if you couldn’t get to your computer, Ron. You’re setting me up to access everything I have at the office?”
“I’ll be a few more minutes. When I’m finished, you’ll need to change your password.”
“I’m making a note.” He stood, his cell phone to his ear. Someone passed in front of a window up on the hill. “Ron?”
“Sir?”
“You don’t need me to do this?”
“No. I can check everything when I finish because I have your login.”
“Thanks.”
“Call me back if you have any problems—but don’t leave a message.”
“No,” Aidan said by way of agreement.
“I’ll give you my private e-mail. Use that if you need me.”
“Thanks,” Aidan said. “Seriously.” He flipped the phone shut. He was outside before he considered the consequences of butting in again. He climbed the hill before he could stop himself. And he rang the doorbell only as he realized he might be imposing on a family in distress.
Footsteps came down the stairs inside. Aidan slipped the phone he was still holding into his back pocket. Beth opened the door. Her face paled, but she smiled and came out, shutting it at her back.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “I wanted to thank you for telling me about…” She turned around and looked up at the skylight over the door. “But I didn’t want to leave Eli alone.”
“He’s in there?”
“Upstairs, not speaking to me, but he went to the doctor.”
“The tests,” Aidan said.
“You know about those? How do you survive while you wait for the results?”
He rubbed the back of his head. “I pretended nothing was wrong. I’d do it differently if I had another chance.”
“I’m afraid this is my only chance, too, and I don’t know what to do.” She strangled on her own words. “I’m so afraid.”
“Where’s Van?”
“He left tonight. Is something wrong at the cottage? Maybe I can help you.”
“No, Beth. I came up to see about the two of you. I wish you had Van.”
She pressed the heels of her palms to her temples. “Thank you.” With new composure, she let her hands fall to her sides. “But I’m sure we’ll be fine, and you’ve already been kind to us.”
Kind didn’t remotely resemble what he felt, but they were talking intimately because they’d been through similar troubles. “I don’t mean to interfere.”
“Don’t say that. Eli all but admitted something’s wrong. He let me take him to the GP.” She breathed twice, hard. “Brent—he’s our doctor—talked to Eli on his own, but Eli won’t tell me what they said, and then Brent told me it was a good thing we saw him. None of that would have happened if you hadn’t spoken up.”
“I am sorry I scared you and then walked off.”
“You were hurt, too. And I don’t mind being scared if it means he’ll be all right. I’m afraid to leave him alone, but I’m trying to give him room so he knows I trust him.”
She seemed smaller tonight, her cheeks softer. He wanted to hold her. “How long did your doctor say you’d have to wait?”
“Until tomorrow. The next day at the most.” Startling him, she took his hand in both of hers. “Thank you again. He means everything to me.”
Aidan eased his hand free because she was offering gratitude and he needed more. Needed her keenly after living in the strange isolation of Madeline’s illness. Physical contact, especially because he wanted Beth without knowing her, without knowing why, made him back away.
“I understand Eli,” he said, putting her son between them again. “My father started our company, and as he succeeded, he moved us up the ladder, into nicer houses, with more standoffish neighbors. Eventually, the ones like Mr. Jingles’s lady friend, let us know they wanted nothing to do with our new money.”
“Your father was probably trying to give you a better life than he had.”
“I’m not complaining, but I’ve been where Eli is, and it felt as if summer would never come.”
“Every year?” She moved to the porch rail and sat.
“Every year,” he said. “Until I made myself popular—with a Harley and a really cool boat.”
Beth’s confidence returned in a smile that started his heart pumping overtime.
“I’d rather he was sure of himself instead. I barely managed to replace his video games and my laptop. Van gave Eli one of his old ones.”
“Weren’t you insured?” That information was none of his business. He could tell by the change in her wide eyes.
“That’s a long story, and my son and I have already mired you in our problems.” She pushed her hands down her legs, not knowing she made him ache to follow the slow, graceful progress of her fingers over the curves of her thighs. “Do you want a beer?” she asked.
“A beer?”
“You know, to drink?”
“Sure. No one said I couldn’t.”
“But maybe alcohol is off limits until your doctor tells you it isn’t.” She looked him over as if everything that had happened during his hospital stay was written on him.
