the condiments, stopped off for a basket to carry their load, and headed to the aisle
where he"d left Lincoln. He rounded the corner and almost dropped the basket full
of groceries.
At the other end of the aisle was Emily Shaw, standing motionless, staring up
at Lincoln.
Jay took a shaky step, then another. Lincoln spotted him first. The look on the
man"s face was pure panic. Of course he knew who she was. He"d seen her at the
courthouse for the arraignment and sentencing, neither of which Jay had gone to.
Jay quickened his pace. “Emily?”
She turned to him. “Jay.” There was no anger in her voice. “I tried to catch
you, but you were running in the other direction. I figured I"d wait with your…” She
gestured to Lincoln but didn"t look at him. “I didn"t know the two of you were
friends.”
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The basket slipped from Jay"s hand and fell to the floor, tipping over, the
ketchup bottle smashing the buns, the chips crunching underneath.
Emily held out a hand to Lincoln. “Emily Shaw.”
Lincoln looked at her hand but didn"t move. He raised his gaze to Jay, his eyes
asking for something. For help? For permission?
Jay nodded, and Lincoln shook her hand.
“Lincoln McCaw.”
The name hung in the air, like a new melody for an old song. Jay didn"t want
to hear the hatred and disgust of the original. Not any longer. That was written for
a man who didn"t exist.
Emily watched Lincoln. Her eyes moved rapidly, scanning his face. Jay wanted
to demand she stop. She"d never find what she looked for, not in Lincoln.
The silence continued on. Oddly, Jay couldn"t break it. Finally, she faced him.
Without speaking, he pleaded his case, pleaded for her understanding. She broke
her stare and glimpsed the items in the basket at his feet.
“You"re off to have lunch. I won"t keep you. It was nice to see you, Jay.” She
stared at Lincoln again, and her mouth curved up at the corners. Jay had never
seen her smile like that. Her smiles were usually poised, perfect, contrived. This one
was sad, with a hint of something else. Confusion? Resignation?
She dropped her head and rounded the corner for the next aisle.
“She knew.” Lincoln slumped and sat on the edge of the beer cooler.
“Yeah. Before you said your name, I think. After, for sure.”
“I recognized her right off. She just walked up to me after you left.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. Until you got here.” Lincoln glanced at the stack of beers inside the
cooler beside him. “I expected… I don"t know. More.”
“Me too.” Jay didn"t want to think on what that meant or what Emily had
thought about seeing him and Lincoln together. The time for truths was long
overdue.
How could he explain to everyone what he wanted? How was he supposed to
convince his mom to leave Lincoln alone? How could he tell her he had no intention
of keeping their deal?
* * *
“Yeah?”
Adam stood in the hallway between the living room and the kitchen. “Can I
ask you a question?”
Lincoln tossed the newspaper he"d been reading onto the coffee table. “Of
course.”
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165
“When did you know you were gay?”
So much for reading the sports section. Lincoln gathered the rest of the paper
from the couch and tossed it onto the table. “About your age.” Talking to the kids
about sex wasn"t something he wanted to do, but he wouldn"t lie to them. There was
too much important shit for them to know. If they wouldn"t ask Nancy, then he"d
give them the facts. He just wished he had more knowledge on the sex-with-women
thing. Then again, Adam wasn"t asking him about women, was he?
Adam sat beside Lincoln and said, “Did you get beat up?”
“Once or twice.”
“They must have been big guys.”
Lincoln laughed. “Sometimes it"s not about size. It"s about how many. There
something you want to talk about, kid?”
Adam pulled his cell out of his back pocket, scrolled through a couple of
messages, then flipped it shut and tossed it onto the coffee table. Lincoln had all
day. He"d just wait until Adam could work up the nerve to get out whatever he
wanted to say.
“Yeah, I guess.” Adam crossed his arms over his chest and sank farther into
the couch. “The other day I was arguing with this guy Troy after gym class about
dirt track racing. He said the rules for each series—weight limits, the engine, the
tires—are all the same. And that"s bullshit. They"re all different. Everyone knows
that.” He bit the side of his thumbnail.
“You had it right.”
“I knew it, and he kept arguing with me. Then this scrawny kid I"ve never
talked to before backed me up, said my uncle was a driver, and I"d know what I was
talking about. Troy and his friends got pissed. They pushed the kid down and
kicked at him. Bloodied him up good.”
“Not just because he agreed with you?”
“No.”
“"Cause he"s gay?”
“I don"t know. They called him a fag. Everybody calls him a fag.”
“What"d you do?”
Adam sat taller. “Nothing! Honest!”
“But maybe you should have?”
He was quiet for a minute. “You mean, I should"ve helped him? But then they"d
think I was a…”
“Fag?”
“Sorry.” Adam slouched onto the couch again, his arms folded in a pissed-off
pose Lincoln had used plenty of times. The kid wasn"t pissed at anyone but himself.
He shook his head. “I guess I did the wrong thing.”
“Only you can answer that.”
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“I guess…someone wanted to help me, and when he needed me, all I thought
about was myself.” He threw his arms in the air, and his hands landed on his thighs
with a smack. “I just didn"t want to get suspended again. Mom would"ve killed me.
They might"ve expelled me if I got into another fight.”
“I understand that. But sometimes you have to do what you know is right,
despite the consequences.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“You never said what that first fight was about.”
He shrugged and sank back to the couch again. “It wasn"t a big deal.”
“Must have been important enough to fight about.”
“Someone just said some shit to me.” He looked away.
Just as Lincoln had guessed. Maybe Adam hadn"t changed all that much after
all. “About me?”
Adam nodded. “He said since you raced and knew what you were doing, they
should"ve sent you to prison for the rest of your life.” He faced Lincoln. “Which is
bullshit. I looked it up online. Most people don"t serve any time at all. It"s only
"cause you raced.”
“Yeah. But I don"t want you fighting over me, no matter what.”
“Thought you said some things are worth fighting for? Isn"t family one of
them?”
The kid was also smarter than he let most people know. Lincoln nodded and
tapped the kid"s knee with the side of his fist. “Anyone who means something to you
is worth it.”
Adam rose and crossed the room. He stopped beside the couch. “Jay seems
cool.”
Lincoln laughed. “He is.”
“He"s uh, kinda young.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh…duh. He"s closer to my age than yours.”
“Hey!” Lincoln grabbed the sports section off the coffee table and tossed it at
Adam who successfully dodged the newspaper.
“I"m just sayin".” Adam laughed as he headed for the hall again.
“Adam.”
He stopped. “Yeah?”
“It"s good you see your mistake. Mistakes help you figure out what kind of man
you want to be.”
Lincoln almost missed the next words as Adam turned away. “I want to be like
you.”
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167
Damn, if that didn"t hit him in the heart. He"d never been more thankful he"d
agreed to live there. Maybe Nancy was right. Maybe the kids didn"t need a father.
Maybe Jay had been right too. Maybe Lincoln could be what they needed.
But Adam had said something that hit a nerve too. Lincoln should be more like
the kid. Not vice versa.
Time to face the truth.
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Chapter Twenty-four
Jay sat in the living room of the Shaws" home, Stuart Shaw on the sofa
opposite him. Neither man spoke.
Magazines and newspapers were piled into a large, uneven stack beside the
couch. A sewing basket sat on a table beside a chair. Several blouses were wadded
up next to the basket. The room no longer smelled of lemon furniture polish. It
reeked of dust. And sweat? A binder lay on the coffee table. A football playbook open
to a printed diagram of a play. Maybe Stuart"s entire college team had sweated on
the pages while they huddled around the notebook, memorizing the play for their
next game. Funny how the book was sitting out even though Jay had called ahead
for the visit.
Not funny was what else was sitting out. A framed photo of Katie at her high
school graduation. Jay hadn"t seen that picture in over a year.
“Sorry about the house,” Stuart said. “She"s finally grieving. Really grieving.”
Was that a good turn of events? Jay was doing his best to move on, and Emily
Shaw had decided it was time to lose it. How could Jay explain what she"d seen the
other day?
She entered the room with a tray of coffee cups and gave a slight smile as she
passed one to Jay, but the smile faded with a deep breath as she sat on the couch
beside her husband. They looked battered. Wrinkled. Hard. When had they aged?
Emily had crow"s-feet forming at the corners of her eyes. She wore dress slacks and
a blouse, both wrinkled like she"d worn the same clothes all week. Stuart had fared
worse. His eyes were squinted to slits and deep lines crossed his forehead. There
were also signs of a thinning hairline. How had Jay not noticed the changes in them
before?
Silence filled the room as they drank their coffee. Jay didn"t know what to say,
and the Shaws, it seemed, didn"t either.
But Jay had to speak. For them. For himself. For Lincoln.
“I feel bad I haven"t visited more. By myself.”
“We"re glad you"re here now,” Emily said. “Aren"t we?”
Stuart didn"t answer but gave a slight nod.
“I was surprised to meet your friend at the grocery store,” she added. “I wasn"t
aware you knew him.”
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169
“I imagine not.” The words left Jay"s mouth harsher than he intended. He
didn"t want to be angry anymore, didn"t want there to be only grief that held them
together. A part of him didn"t want to lose the Shaws in his life. They had given him
Katie. He owed them something.
“Does he know who you are?” Emily asked.
“He does.”
“It seemed… Well, you were touching him. And the way he looked at you… It
seemed you were more than—”
“What?” Stuart"s eyes shot open wide.
She didn"t answer him.
“Emily?”
She swung her gaze to her husband, then back to Jay. “It seemed like you were
intimate. Like lovers.”
“What?” Stuart"s eyes widened as he glared at Jay. “You"re gay?”
Jay opened his mouth to explain, and the other man cut him off.
“What was our daughter to you?”
“I loved her. I"ll always love her.”
“But you"re sleeping with this man?” Stuart teetered on the edge of the sofa,
his body looming large before Jay. Even with Todd"s warning, he hadn"t believed
that Stuart Shaw might actually hit him. Stupid. The man spent his career
slamming into people for money and now trained the next generation to do the
same.
“It"s more than that,” Jay said.
Emily set her cup and saucer on the table. The loud clink of porcelain to wood
didn"t match the graceful movement of her hands. “It looked like it might be.”
Odd how the delicate pink and white fine china hadn"t broken with the force
she"d used to set it down. Even stranger how Jay"s life seemed more fragile than the
china. Was he going to lose everything to be with Lincoln? “I want to keep seeing
him. I want a future with him.”
Her jaw dropped. Stuart stood and strode across the room to the large picture
window. A flock of birds sitting in the bush outside took flight as he drew near. Jay
stared at the man"s tense back. He had expected anger, yelling, disappointment.
Not the silence.
Emily"s calm whisper startled him.
“It"s that serious?”
Jay looked her way. “I"d like it to be.”
“I"m not sure—” She breathed deep and picked up the coffee cup and saucer.
She raised the cup in front of her, but didn"t take a sip. “I"m not sure what to say,
Jay. I want to understand, but—”
Stuart scoffed, his back still to the room.
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Emily set the cup onto the saucer and lowered them to the table, the move
more refined than earlier. She spun the cup until the handle stuck out at a perfect
right angle. The precise gesture combined with the thin layer of dust on the coffee