The Way Things Are (6 page)

“Remind me why we need a ride?” Jay asked.

“No.”

In the car, Ken chuckled. “Your dad stumbled on an assault in progress this morning. He saved a kid about your age, but then he had to come down and give a statement.”

Jay brightened up a bit at that. “Oh. Is that why you were late?”

Patrick swallowed hard and forced himself to look away from Jay’s new juvenile probation counselor. “More or less, yeah.”

“I thought you were letting me sit there to teach me a lesson. Again.”

“Nah. That didn’t work the last time, so I don’t see why it would now.” He could still feel the PO’s eyes on him, and it was beginning to make him twitchy. Patrick shifted again, trying to will his pants to magically become a size larger. “That’s what you do if you’re smart. You learn from your failures. You don’t keep repeating them
forever
and just hoping that things will somehow turn out different if you do it all over again.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Come on, get in the car,” Ken called out.

A ride would be faster than waiting for a bus. And he was broke enough that the five dollars it would cost to get them both home represented a significant amount of money. “A ride would be great. Would you mind taking us to the docks? My truck’s there.”

“No problem. Mr. Connelly, you better ride up here. I doubt you’ll fit comfortably in the back.”

Patrick sighed. “Yeah, all right.”

Patrick opened the back door and nodded for Jay to climb in. When the kid was crawling into the car, Patrick tried to discretely adjust himself through his pants pockets, took a deep breath, and then climbed into the passenger seat beside the man with the annoyingly sexy voice and the amazing eyes.

Patrick buckled his seatbelt and hesitantly reached out to shake the man’s hand, bracing himself for the contact. “Thanks for this,” Patrick said, gesturing to the car. Ken pulled out of the parking lot, heading downtown. “And I didn’t catch your name.”

“Ken is fine. Jay talked to my boss, Mary Anne, last night, and he mentioned that he’s been through this process before.”

Patrick turned his attention to the windshield. “You could say that,” he muttered, focusing on the buildings around them to distract himself. If he was so hard up that just being near a sexy stranger turned him on, it had definitely been too long since he’d gotten laid. About three and a half years too long, since the whole single father thing effectively ruled out any chance he had to meet someone. Maybe it was time to let Corbin set him up with somebody after all.

“Well, since this is the first time he’s been arrested in the state of Washington, he’s got a fresh slate. As you probably know, my job as Jayden’s JPC is a little more intensive than having him come down to my office to check in once a month. I prefer to spend an hour or so talking with a new client’s parents, assessing the child’s home situation and their likelihood to reoffend, and have a clear set of expectations in place before I meet with the child. But since today’s been kind of a mess all around, I figured we could just sort everything out now, so you can relax today and he can get started on his community service tomorrow. Would it be okay if I follow you home after I take you to pick up your truck?”

“Home?” Patrick almost bit his tongue. It was already five. He spared a nervous thought for his living room, remembering all the unpacked boxes, along with the stack of dirty paper plates and pizza boxes Jay was steadily building around the end table. Combined with the empty beer cans he’d scattered around the apartment, it was sure to make a shitty impression. “Now’s not the best time, to be honest. We just moved in two weeks ago, and we haven’t finished unpacking yet. Everything’s kind of cluttered. And I’ve got a second job I’m supposed to be at right now.”

“It shouldn’t take more than an hour. I’d like to get this out of the way quickly so your son has as much time as possible to complete his community service obligations.”

Patrick squeezed his eyes shut and tried to block out that damn voice. “Hmm?”

“Ten hours of community service might not seem like much, but I’ve found that when kids put community service off until they last minute, they never get done.”

“I agree, but….” Patrick wondered if the pizza boxes could be written off as a mere consequence of moving. He might just leave all of their shit in boxes so he had a ready-made excuse to avoid cleaning up for a while. “Our apartment really is a mess.”

There was a long pause, and Patrick dared to glance at him. “I’m sure it’s fine,” he said at last. “I try to work closely with my clients’ parents. I’d like you to think of me as a partner in this process, and I’m not going to judge you for not being able to pull off the whole
Better Homes & Gardens
thing. Can I call you Patrick?”

“Patrick, Pat, whatever. We’ve been through this a few times, so it’s nothing new. Unfortunately.”

“I kind of figured. Between the detention screening intake forms, the probation assessment done at the hearing, and the report from the arresting officer, I’ve got three different statements about how often Jay’s been arrested.” Ken turned toward the back seat for a second. “There are no records of you facing any charges in King County prior to this, but your probation officer in New York faxed me your case file when I contacted him. There’s a lot to it.”

“Yeah, Jay’s old PO and I had a bet going about how long it’d take before he had to get all of Jay’s paperwork and shit together. I figured it’d be at least two weeks…. He won by three days.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Jay muttered.

“I know you’re a good kid,” Patrick said. To Ken, he added, “He really is. But he’s kind of obsessed with art. He draws all the time. He was eleven the first time he got arrested for vandalism, and he’s been arrested a lot since then.”

Patrick knew there was no way around explaining his son’s problem, even if it sounded like bullshit every time he said it out loud. “He’s got a graffiti problem. I know how insane and stupid that sounds, but it’s the best I can come up with.”

“And what were the results of those arrests?”

“The first few times, they made him do community service stuff but kept it off his record. The fourth time, he was formally charged, and the punishment has been worse each time. Fines, restitution, community service. They even made him serve two weeks in juvenile hall, but none of it did any good. I moved us here hoping that things would be different if I got him out of New York, but you can see how well that’s worked.”

“What do you mean when you say none of it did any good?”

“I mean it doesn’t stop him from doing it again. He’s always sorry. He always feels bad. But he always does it again.”

“Maybe we can work on that,” Ken said quietly. “Will he face any kind of punishment or restriction at home because of this most recent arrest?”

“Oh, he’s grounded. I work nights, so I’m going to have to call the house phone on my breaks to make sure he’s home overnight.”

“All night long?”

“Yeah.” Patrick shrugged. “I admit I hate waking him up at night. But it’s the only way I’ve figured out to keep him home. I’ve even tried babysitters, but as soon as they’re asleep, he’s gone.”

“Does he have a cell phone?”

“Yeah, just a basic one for emergencies. And that reminds me, I’ve got to shut it off.”

Patrick tried not to gasp as that beautiful, easy smile lit up Ken’s face again. “You’re taking away his cell phone?” Ken asked.

Patrick forced himself not to smile in return. “You know about call forwarding? It can transfer any call to one number to another number. You can set it up automatically, and there’s no way for the person calling to know which number the call is actually being answered from.”

Ken nodded. “I know about it, yeah.”

Patrick couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he nodded to the backseat. “So does Jay.”

“I only did that once!” Jay called.

He dug his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and pulled up the application that allowed him to manage his contract from his phone.

“What if he needs his phone?”

Patrick turned to the side and found Ken looked amused but not angry. “We’ve got a landline. And he knows the rules. When he’s grounded, it gets shut off. This is a lot easier with a smartphone too. I can suspend his phone service with the push of a button. The first time I had to do this, I still had a regular phone and I had to wait on hold for a friggin’ hour….”

Patrick thought he might have actually heard a chuckle from the driver’s seat.

“Plus, they can still dial 911 and all that if they’re not hooked up. If there’s an actual emergency, he’s still covered. Otherwise….” Patrick shrugged. “He’s out of luck.” If Jay needed to get in touch with him for any of the usual teenage emergencies, he’d have to sort things out for himself.

“911 isn’t going to give me a ride home if I miss the bus,” Jay grumbled.

Patrick finished shutting down Jay’s cell service, then returned his own cell phone to his pocket. “I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not very good at this,” he whispered, staring anywhere but at the hot probation officer sitting next to him. “For most of Jay’s life, I wasn’t really involved in, you know, raising him. I went to work and my old lady took care of him. I rubbed his head before I went to sleep each morning, hugged him before I left for work. That was it. I know I’ve got to find something else to keep him in line, and I really am working on it. But a lot of it’s been one big trial-and-error joke.”

Ken nodded slowly. “All right. First, where am I going?”

“Oh,” Patrick glanced around at the street signs, trying to remember this part of the city from when he was last here as a teenager. “Take the Spokane Street Bridge. I was working over on Harbor Island last night.”

“Harbor Island. Got it.” Ken guided them into the line of traffic waiting to merge onto the bridge. “So, let’s see what we can do that might makes things turn out different this time, okay? I can’t take notes, obviously,” he said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “But since I’ve got quite a few questions to go over, would you mind if I use a voice recorder to keep track of everything?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Jay, are you okay with that?”

“Whatever,” Jay muttered.

“He’s fine with it,” Patrick translated.

“All right.” Ken reached for a small digital voice recorder sitting in the console cup holder and flipped it on. “Okay, Mr. Patrick Connelly, father of Jayden Connelly,” he began. “I need to get an accurate picture of Jay’s life, covering everything from how he’s doing at school to his home life. As you probably know from working with your son’s last probation officer, the role of a JPC is a bit different from an adult probation officer. The juvenile justice system takes a rehabilitative approach, so my job isn’t just to make sure your son complies with the terms of the court order in his case, but also to provide community supervision on a weekly basis, refer him to any services he’s qualified for, and to get him help for any substances issues he may have. That’s pretty much the whole spiel. Punishments and restrictions aren’t working, so I think providing more structure, and maybe some redirection, might be worth exploring. Any questions?”

“Is the community service already set? The way it worked before, he got a list of places he could volunteer at.”

“Vandalism comes with a few hours built in,” Ken smirked. “He’s got to clean up his mess or pay for someone else to do it if he can’t. We’ll get to that, though. Why don’t we start with Jayden’s home life? Who else lives in the home with you?”

“He just goes by Jay,” Patrick insisted. “He was supposed to be named Jeremy, but his mom wanted something more modern. And there’s no one else at home; it’s just us.”

“Just the two of you?”

Patrick pressed his lips together, trying to figure out how to answer. Jay’s PO in New York had gotten the whole story from the family services caseworker who kept up with Jay and from the hordes of attorneys involved. But they never let up on insisting Jay needed to talk about things, to be in therapy with his mom so they could try to rebuild their relationship. Being in the same room with his mom tended to turn Jay into a trembling, silent heap, so Patrick had stopped pushing the whole therapy thing. Every time Patrick brought up the past, all of the progress Jay’d made in the last three years evaporated for a few days. Seattle was supposed to be Jay’s fresh start.

“It’s just the two of us. Jay’s mom…. My old lady left us. She doesn’t want anything to do with me, or with him. She’s still in New York.”

“She’s staying there, then?”

“I sure as hell hope so.”

“Do you have a copy of your parenting plan?”

“The custody thing? I do have a copy. Somewhere.” Patrick tried to remember which box he’d dumped the contents of his filing cabinet into. “I don’t know where it is. I haven’t unpacked it yet.”

“Do you share custody with your ex-wife?”

“No. I have full custody.” Patrick saw Ken glance at him from the corner of his eye. He resisted the urge to turn and face him.

“Does she visit? Do you go see her for the holidays, Jay?”

In the backseat, Jay folded in on himself, not answering.

“No,” Patrick said. “She doesn’t visit. She’d be violating a protective order if she tried.”

“So your marriage didn’t end amicably?”

“You could say that.”

“What happened?”

Patrick stared at the man in the driver’s seat for a long moment. “I’m gay,” he admitted, trying to keep his voice as nonchalant as possible.

Even after three years of being able to say it out loud, he still had to force the words past his lips every single time. He waited for a moment, looking for any flinch or sign of disgust from Ken. There was just a flash of surprise.

“I’m gay,” he continued. “I cheated on her, and I lied to her. A lot. When she found out, she made it her mission in life to make sure I never saw Jay again. When the court didn’t rule the way she wanted, she… she washed her hands of both us,” he lied. “If she wants to reconnect with Jay when he’s an adult, on his terms, that’ll have to be his decision. But for now, she’s out of the picture.”