Janice Johnson - All a Man Is

Mr. Santana had to be seventy-five if he was a day. He’d had cataract surgery recently on one eye but the other remained clouded. He’d continued running the store after his son was killed in an armed robbery and he was left to care for his daughter-in-law and her three children. The oldest boy, Javier, was an earnest seventeen-year-old who helped his grandfather every minute he wasn’t in school. Sweet Mr. Santana was known throughout the neighborhood for his kindness to children.

Matt had very likely gone there to shoplift because he knew Mr. Santana’s vision was poor.

“It gets worse,” Julia warned, and now Alec could hear fear along with anger in her voice. “He was already drunk.”

Son of a bitch. His thirteen-year-old nephew had gotten wasted? “Where is he?”

“Oh, his room.” She sounded hopeless. “But you know how much good putting him on restriction does.”

Alec knew.

“I’ve done some thinking today, Alec. I’d...like to talk to you if you can come over whenever you get off. Or—it can wait until tomorrow if you’re tied up.”

“No,” he said roughly. “I’ll be there after dinner sometime.”

“Thank you.” All the grief he’d begun to believe she was letting go of was there again, so heavy he could feel the weight. “Tonight,” she said, and was gone.

* * *

ALEC STOOD IN Julia’s kitchen, leaning one hip against the edge of the tiled counter, and tried to conceal his shock at Julia’s announcement.

He couldn’t help watching her as she busied herself pouring them both cups of coffee. Julia—his brother’s widow—was a beautiful woman. Elegant, but not flashy. He remembered being surprised the first time he met her, because Josh usually went for buxom blondes, and the girl he was suddenly serious about was neither. Petite, no more than five foot three or four, she had the fine-boned build of a dancer. Alec learned later that she actually had taken dance classes for years, without being serious enough to consider it as a career. Her straight brown hair was a rich color with a warm cast, more like maple than mahogany, he had decided. And then there were eyes of a witchy green-gold she had passed on to her daughter but not her son.

When he’d first arrived this evening, he’d spent a few minutes with Liana. Skinny and small for her age, she had darker hair than her mom. He heard about her fascination with the algebra her fifth-grade advanced math group was currently studying.

“There’s this boy who likes me,” she had added shyly, pink tingeing her thin cheeks. “I mean, I guess he does. His name’s Tyler. He told Jose, who told Brooke.” Brooke, Alec knew, was Liana’s best friend. “He wants me to be, like, his girlfriend or something.”

Girlfriend! He’d had damn near as much trouble grappling with the concept of this little girl having some guy after her as he did with the idea of Matt boozing. They were turning into teenagers before his eyes.

They had been at just about the worst possible age to lose their father.

Alec hadn’t trusted himself to talk to Matt yet. Instead, he’d left Liana instant messaging with friends and retreated to the kitchen.

“What happened to playing with Barbie dolls?” he asked plaintively.

Amusement lightened Julia’s distress, if only for a moment. “What’s she doing?” When he told her, she laughed. “Oh, she still has her Barbies and plays with them, too, but mostly by herself. She’s not sure which friends will think it’s totally uncool and childish.”

“She’s ten.”

“Almost eleven. Sixth grade is in the middle school, you know. There’ll be dances.”

“Older boys,” he said with the voice of doom.

He expected her to laugh again, but she didn’t. “Alec, I think I need to take the kids away from L.A. You’re so important to them.” She bit her lip. “To me, too. That’s why I’ve been so reluctant to do this. But you know my parents would like to have me close, and I have to believe Matt would do better in a small town.”

The small town where she’d grown up was on a lake somewhere north of Minneapolis. Half the country away. More than half.

Alec felt sick. He had the impending awareness of devastation. In a distant part of his mind, he’d known he loved his niece and nephew, and, sure, Julia, too, as much as he dared let himself. When Josh had been killed in Afghanistan, Alec had naturally stepped in, assuming some of his brother’s responsibilities. Julia and the kids were family. That was what a man did.

Until this moment, he hadn’t understood that they were the three people he loved most in the world. He didn’t know how he could survive without them.

“Your mother drives you crazy,” he heard himself say hoarsely.

“I wouldn’t move in with them. I’d get us our own place.” Her face was pinched as she searched his face. “What would you suggest? That I close my eyes and stab a pin into a map, pick someplace to go at random?”

For a second he had double vision, those red pins floating before his eyes, and he thought with an astonishing burst of anguish, Julia. What if somehow, someway, that creep came across her? Los Feliz, the part of L.A. where she and Alec both lived, was upscale. She was pure class and beautiful. He—whoever he was—would like her. Want her. Hate her.

She and the kids would be better off, safer, away from overcrowded, smoggy, crime-ridden Southern California.

This was the moment when Alec realized he would do anything at all for her, Matt and Liana. Anything for them, and to keep them in his life even if he was painfully aware he was destined to remain on the outside looking in.

“We’ll pick somewhere,” he said. “I should be able to get a job running a police department in a peaceful small town somewhere. Don’t go home to your parents. Let’s stay together.”

The shock in her green-gold eyes was such that, for a terrifying instant, he thought he’d blown it. And then those eyes filled with tears. “I can’t ask you—”

“I’m offering.” He couldn’t let himself touch her, so he didn’t move. “I’m ready for a change, Julia.”

She pressed fingers to her lips, laughing and crying at the same time. “Oh, God. If you mean it...”

All the fear left him in a rush. “I mean it. I’ll go online and start looking tonight. I’ll let you know where I find possible job openings. You can research the towns. We’ll find the perfect one. I promise.”

There was a minute there when he thought she wanted to throw herself into his arms. But, as always, she turned away. Snatching up a dish towel, she began mopping her face.

“Do you think this is what Josh would want us to do?”

She always did that, produced his brother’s name as if she were lighting a candle at his altar.

And I’m pathetic to feel jealous. Worse than pathetic, he thought in disgust. Why wasn’t he glad she’d loved his brother so much?

“Yeah.” He pulled a smile from the hat. “Josh would say go for it.”

CHAPTER ONE

“EW, GROSS! MO-OM! Mattie just spit on the floor,” Liana whined.

“Tattletale,” her brother snarled. “And don’t call me Mattie again or I’ll make you sorry!”

The dull throbbing in the left side of Julia Raynor’s skull sharpened until she felt as if a drill bit was viciously driving through her forehead. She stole a glance in her rearview mirror to see her children glaring at each other.

She should have separated them by letting one ride in front, but she’d lost her temper this morning when they started fighting about whose turn it was.

“Both of you,” she’d snapped, “backseat. No argument. We’re not doing this.”

She’d wonder why Matt wanted to ride up front, given how thoroughly he seemed to detest her, except she knew. Keeping his sister from getting what she wanted seemed to be one of his few pleasures.