Janice Johnson - This Good Man

“I already owe you a few thousand,” Anna admitted. “Bless you. We’ll be an hour or two.”

“I’ll have his bedroom ready.”

Anna was smiling when she finally made the turn out onto the highway.

* * *

CALEB HOVERED AT the head of the stairs where he knew he couldn’t be seen. Voices drifted up from the kitchen.

“I’m not sure where he is.” That was Paula Hale, who with her husband ran this place. “Caleb’s been spending a lot of time with Diego. They’re probably over in the cabin Diego shares with another boy.”

“I’ll take that coffee, then. Thanks.” This time, Reid’s voice came to Caleb clearly. He must be facing the stairs. “Sugar?”

“You always did have a sweet tooth. And you can’t tell me you’ve forgotten where I keep the sugar bowl.”

Caleb’s brother gave a low chuckle. “I was being polite.”

“You weren’t polite when you lived here. Why start now?”

This time they both laughed.

Caleb felt weird, an unseen third presence. He knew Roger, Paula’s husband, was outside working on Cabin Five. This place was an old resort that must have been shut down, like, a century ago. Most of the boys were paired up in the small cabins. The Hales’ room was on the main floor in the lodge, and Caleb and another guy were in bedrooms upstairs. If there were any girls in residence, Caleb had been told, they always had the rooms upstairs in the lodge so they were near the Hales. Otherwise, those bedrooms were used for new boys, until they had “settled in.” That was how Paula put it. Caleb wasn’t sure how he would ever prove he had, or even if he wanted to. He didn’t like it here—but nothing on earth would make him go back to his father’s.

“You know he doesn’t have to be here.” Paula’s voice came especially clearly.

What did that mean?

Stiffening, Caleb strained to hear Reid’s answer. It was brief, an indistinguishable rumble.

What you need isn’t anything I have in me. Remembering the expressionless way his brother had said that, Caleb sneered. Was that what Reid was telling Paula?

He couldn’t catch the beginning of what Paula said in response, but the tail end made his heart thud. “...you could prove abuse if you wanted to.”

“You refusing to keep him here?” Reid asked more clearly.

“You know that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“He needs to know you want him.”

Caleb quit breathing through the long silence that followed. And then his brother’s voice was so soft, he came close to missing it.

“I do.” Pause. “And I don’t.”

A skim of ice hardened in Caleb’s chest. The I do part was a joke. The only honest part of that was I don’t.

Paula said something, and then Reid did, but their voices were fading. They must have left the kitchen for what Paula called the great room.

He needs to know you want him.

I don’t.

His brother had found him, rescued him, but then palmed him off on someone else because he couldn’t be bothered.

Caleb eased down the stairs, then out the kitchen door without even pausing to grab a parka.

* * *

“YOU DON’T?” PAULA SAID. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Reid made an impatient gesture. “Come on. You know what I mean. I’m not father material. I told Caleb I’m damaged, and it’s true.”

Paula didn’t take her gaze from his as she sat on one of the benches at the long tables where meals were served in the main room of the lodge.

Despite having stayed in touch and contributed financially, he hadn’t actually seen either of the Hales in something like ten years until the day he’d brought Caleb here. He had been shocked to see Paula’s long braid was turning gray. She’d always looked like an aging hippie to him, but that had been from the perspective of a boy. Now she really was aging. Roger’s dark hair and beard were shot with gray, too. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He’d imagined them, and this refuge they guarded, as eternally the same. Reid hated to think about the time when they couldn’t take in kids anymore.

“Damage heals,” Paula said calmly.

Straddling a bench across the table from her, he had the uneasy feeling she was seeing further below the surface than he wanted her to. He’d forgotten the way she could always do that.

“I think you’re underestimating yourself, Reid. You’ve changed your life for the sake of a boy you didn’t know a couple of months ago. What’s that but love?”

Love? He snorted. “I feel responsible.” So responsible, he’d started job hunting in central Oregon the minute he’d brought Caleb here. Left a job that satisfied him for one he wasn’t so sure he was going to like. Yeah, he’d gone out on a limb for this brother, but he’d rather call it guilt than love.

“Responsible? Why?”

He eyed her smile warily. “He’s my brother.”

“You’d never met him. It’s not as if you grew up with him.”

“I swore I’d know if that son of a bitch ever had another kid. Instead, I let it go. Caleb has gone through hell because I shut my eyes.”

“No,” she said, correcting him, “he’s gone through hell because your father is abusive. You have no responsibility for your father’s sins.”

He stared at her, baffled and frustrated by her refusal to understand what he was saying. “So I should have shrugged and gone on with my life?”

“Neither of us could have done that.”

“Then your point is?”

“Is this about Caleb at all, or are you trying to save yourself?”

Not reacting took an effort of will. “What kind of psychobabble is that?” he scoffed.

“Same kind I’ve always thrown at you.”

Reid gave a reluctant chuckle.

“Do you see yourself in Caleb?”

“Save the crap, Paula. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“You’ll always be one of my kids.” Her voice had descended a register, letting him hear the tenderness, tying and untying a knot in his chest.

Reid cleared his throat. It didn’t do anything for the lump centered beneath his breastbone. “I’m sorry I haven’t been back to visit in so long.”

“Caleb made you revisit your past.”

Oh, crap. Here we go again. “I’m giving him the same chance I had, that’s all.”

“You’re doing more than that, or you wouldn’t have moved to Angel Butte,” she pointed out. “You’re trying to be family, Reid.” She reached across the table and laid her hand over his. “He needs you and you need him.”

He bent his head and looked at her hand, which was getting knobby with the beginnings of arthritis. So much smaller than his hand. Still so unfailingly...loving.

Shit. Did that mean he knew what the word meant after all? He’d have told anyone who asked that all he felt for Paula and Roger was gratitude and admiration, but...now he wasn’t sure that was true. He’d just as soon the possibility hadn’t occurred to him. Love had never been a safe emotion for him.

“Maybe so,” he said, hearing his own gruffness. “And I’d better go hunt him down before he decides I’m not here to see him at all.”

“Yes, you should.” She let him come around the table to her and lean over to kiss her cheek, but she grabbed his hand before he could turn away and looked at him with those penetrating eyes. “You’re a good man, Reid Sawyer. Trust yourself.”

He felt about seventeen again, as if his feet were still too big, and his cheeks turned red at any compliment. “I may be a decent man,” he said finally. “But good? No. You’re a good woman, Paula Hale. I don’t measure up.”

He tore himself away then. Her voice followed him. “You will, Reid. I have enough faith for both of us.”

Faith. Out of her hearing, he grunted. There was a word more foreign to him than love.