Michael, hadn’t had a clue. He’d gone on, blithely loving Phillip and trusting him in total oblivion to what was happening right under his nose.
He’d been so, well … blind.
Heidi tugged Michael to the left, veering off the road and taking him with her.
“What are you doing, girl? Straight.” He tried to correct their course, but the dog insisted and continued pulling him left.
“She’s taking you up the driveway,” Guy called. It sounded like he was standing across the street.
Michael turned his head in that direction. “Why?”
“Because it’s your driveway.” Guy crossed to them. “She found the house. Looks like she already figured out where she lives.”
“Really? Wow!” He turned to his dog and gave her a rub on those silky ears. But it didn’t seem like enough. He crouched down and hugged her. “You’re the best, Heids.”
Michael stood and once more took hold of the harness. It looked like he really was going to get his independence back thanks to Guy. And a black Lab named Heidi.
✧ ✦ ✧
“So this is Heidi? Isn’t she adorable?” Jane crouched down.
“Ah, aren’t you— Oh, Michael, I’m sorry. Am I allowed to pet her? Because I read somewhere that you aren’t supposed to pet them.”
“Right now you can since she’s not in her harness.” Michael smiled as he hung Jane’s coat on the coat tree. Having gotten the go-ahead, she was kneeling on the floor talking baby-talk to his guide dog. Not that he hadn’t done the very same thing once Guy had left for the day and he was alone with Heidi. Still, it struck him funny the way perfectly mature people turned into babbling idiots when animals and babies were around.
“Okay, pretty, that’s enough now. Let Auntie Jane up now so too soon FoR Love
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I can help daddy with the mail.”
“Daddy?” Michael asked, not quite able to suppress his grin.
“Well? Dogs are sort of like kids. God, she would lick you to death, wouldn’t she?”
“She is a licker.” Michael heard Jane getting to her feet, heard her brushing at her pants.
“And a shedder too. Geez. These pants used to be beige.”
After offering to make tea and setting the kettle on to boil, Michael settled in the study with Jane and the pile of mail that was rapidly becoming a mountain since he’d booted Alan out of his life.
“Shall I start with the bills?” Jane asked once she’d weeded out the junk mail and Michael had carried the stack into the kitchen and dumped it into the recycling container.
“Sure, that works.” He heard her opening envelopes, shuffling papers and restrained himself from asking what she was looking at. When Alan read the mail, he told Michael what he was doing as he did it so Michael never felt out of the loop.
Obviously, Jane didn’t work like that. But beggars couldn’t be choosy, or bossy, and Michael held his tongue.
Finally, she said, “It looks like you’re missing some of your bills. Do you have more somewhere else?”
“Some of them are coming online.” The kettle began to shrill and Michael stood. “I got some stuff started with banking on the computer, but not all. Maybe we could work on getting the rest entered into the system.”
“We can do that. Want me to come and pour the water for the tea?”
“I can manage,” Michael told her. He had just dropped teabags into two mugs when he heard her footsteps in the hallway. Not wanting to have to turn down her help a second time, he grabbed the kettle and began to pour.
“Michael?” Jane paused in the kitchen doorway. “Maybe it’s
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none of my business—tell me if it’s not—but what happened between you and Alan. I mean, he was reading for you, wasn’t he?”
“You know he was.” Michael returned the kettle to the stove. “We just had kind of a falling out. He wasn’t completely forthcoming with me and it sort of just …”
“You don’t have to tell me.” She walked to the counter and he heard her pick up one of the spoons he’d set out.
Funny enough, he did want to tell her. He wanted to spill all of it, the stuff about Phillip’s affair, about Robby and his visit, about the letter and about how much he missed Alan. He had no one he could talk to about any of it and he knew on a gut level that he could trust her, that she loved him like a brother and that she would keep his confidence.
“Janey, can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
She was adding sugar to her tea. The spoon clinked against the stoneware mug.
“You might not like some of it. In fact, I’m pretty sure you won’t.”
Something inside him wanted her to say no, while something equally strong seemed to be pushing the words out. He felt them bubbling up like acid indigestion.
She touched his arm. “Michael, what is it? You look so serious.
Did Alan do something? Because if he did—”
Michael laughed. Suddenly she sounded so fierce and protective of him.
“You going to kick his ass for me, Janey?”
“I will if he hurt you. Nobody messes with my brother and gets away with it.”
“I love you,” Michael said. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her hard.
“I love you too.” She hugged him back then, letting go, took too soon FoR Love
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his hand. “Let’s sit and you can tell me whatever it is.”
He did tell her, everything, or almost everything. He omitted the part about how he’d slept with Alan. She didn’t need to know that. But the rest of it, about Phillip and Robby and the letter all came pouring out.
“And I was so stupid,” Michael said. “I never even suspected anything. You know how he used to travel, going to conferences, teaching seminars. I feel like I should go back and verify that there really were conferences and seminars during all that time because now—” Michael’s voice broke. He swallowed hard and blinked back the tears that wanted to come.
“Now you don’t know what to believe,” Jane finished for him.
He nodded and dashed at his eyes with the back of one hand.
“I feel like a total moron. Like he took advantage of me, hid things from me, you know? And I hate that. I hate that I made it so easy for him.”
“You’re not a moron. You loved him and trusted him. Why wouldn’t you?” Jane scraped her chair back and stood. “I’m having more tea. Do you want?”
“Yeah, sure.” His cup was still mostly full, but so what?
Her heels clicked on the tile as she crossed to the sink and refilled the kettle.
Michael heard the tick, tick, tick of the electronic ignition as she lit the burner under the kettle then the whoosh of the flame then silence.
After a few minutes Jane said, “Ross is having an affair. It’s not the first time either.”
Michael’s head snapped around. His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed before he managed to say, “What makes you think that?”
“I don’t think it, I know it. I know who she is too. Her name’s Jessica. I think I’ve even seen her once or twice. So I do know what I’m talking about when I say that you’re not a moron for trusting the man you loved. Because if you are then I’m one too.”
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“I’m sorry, Janey.”
“For what? He hasn’t been banging you all those nights he was supposed to be working late.”
She laughed and it was a sad, bitter sound that held zero humor. It hurt Michael’s heart to hear it.
“So what are you going to do? Will you leave him, do you think?”
“Do you think I should?”
“I can’t say.”
“Of course you can say.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I won’t. Leave him, I mean. Breaking up would be too complicated and the kids would miss him. He’s not the greatest father, but they love him so…”
The kettle began to whistle.
Sitting at the table, Michael recalled their recent conversation about Jane’s son Justin and how she couldn’t tell her husband about her fears regarding their son’s orientation. What did she think she was preserving anyway? But he said nothing, just listened to her as she prepared the tea.
Jane brought their cups to the table and sat down.
“Would you have left Phillip? If you’d found out before he died, I mean.”
He’d never thought about it. But still it was shocking to realize it so long after the fact.
Michael lifted his cup and sipped to give himself time to consider his answer.
“I guess that depends.”
“On?”
“On whether he would have stopped seeing him. On whether it was still going on when I found out. On whether I could be sure. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter now.”
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“Of course it does. It changes the way you remember him.”
She sipped her tea and set the cup down. “Hell, it changes the way I remember him. Are you sure? I mean, what if it’s not true, or not exactly the way it seems. What did Robby say when you confronted him?”
“We didn’t really have a long heart to heart over it. I just sort of kicked him out.”
Michael thought of the journal which almost certainly held the answers. Should he tell Janey about it? Because if he did, she would want to see it. He was sure she would read it to him if he wanted her to, but did he?
“Look, Janey, I’m sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have told you.”
“It’s all right. Phillip was my brother and I loved him. I still love him. But you’re like my brother too, and I hate that he hurt you like that.”
“It’s all sort of after the fact now. Irrelevant.”
“No, it’s not.” She laid her hand over his where it lay on the table. “I mean, I’m sure you’re still going to grieve regardless.
But now maybe you don’t have to grieve so hard. Maybe you could…”
“What?” He turned his hand over and gripped hers.
“Forget it. It sounds too trite, like Hollywood dialogue.”
“No, say it.”
“I was going to say, maybe you could get on with your life, find someone new.”
“And that would be okay with you?”
“Phillip’s gone, Michael. You deserve to be with somebody who loves you.”
Like Alan
, Michael thought, but didn’t say. He wondered if he had completely burned that bridge or if maybe he could find a way to make amends. But first there was something he had to do.
“Wait. Stop.” Tommy’s voice drifted down the stairs.
Alan peered over the end of the couch the two of them were attempting to muscle up a far-too-narrow stairway and into Tommy’s new condo. Nothing like moving furniture to emphasize the fact he’d not been keeping up with his workouts.
“What do you mean wait? This piece of shit is heavy, man.”
Alan blinked sweat out of his eyes. His back and shoulders screamed with the effort of supporting the couch. How the hell had he ended up with the bottom end anyway?
“Okay, then, put it down, because we’re totally stuck on this end.”
Put it down? Was he kidding?
“Tom.”
“It’s not going up this way, man. We’re going to have to back her down and turn her so we can try a different angle.”
Alan heard the impatience in his twin’s tone. Tommy’s voice had taken on that if-I-say-it-louder-and-slower-you-might-get-it thing that irritated Alan to no end.
“Okay, I’m putting it down.”
He just hoped it wouldn’t go sliding down the stairs taking him along for the ride, or worse just run him over.
It didn’t. Tommy’s couch rested on the stairs, cozily nestled—
not wedged, he refused to even think wedged—between the wall on one side and the railing on the other.
“Dude, you should have hired movers.”
“I know.” Tommy armed sweat from his face. “Where were you with that piece of sterling advice when I first brought up moving?” His twin took on what he thought of as his Alan persona. “No sweat, man. We can move your stuff. Just rent the truck and we’ll do it in an afternoon.”
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The brothers grinned at each other over the top of the couch.
“I thought you said Patrick was coming to help. What good’s a boyfriend if he can’t help hump furniture up and down stairs?”
“He’s good at humping other stuff.” Tommy grinned.”He’ll be here. He had some kind of emergency at the clinic, somebody’s dog got hit by a car or something. C’mon, let’s grab a beer before we try moving this sonofabitch again.”
“You’re just gonna leave it here? On the stairs?”
“It’s not going anywhere.” Tommy climbed over the couch and joined Alan at the foot of the stairs. “Besides, the apartment on the top floor isn’t sold yet, so nobody’s likely to try and go up there.”
In the driveway Tommy pulled two beers from a cooler stashed in the back of the moving truck. Cracking one open, he passed it to Alan.
Alan took the icy can and drank deeply. It was barely noon but they’d been at it since eight that morning, first loading the truck with Tommy’s furniture from the storage unit, then driving it to the new place and unloading it, just the two of them.
Alan leaned against the open door of the truck and set his beer on the floor. He’d removed his denim shirt an hour ago and now he shivered as the breeze picked up and dried his sweat-damp t-shirt. “So how much is left once we get this load unpacked?”
“There’s the boxes at the storage unit and the rest of my stuff that’s still at your place.” Tommy glanced up at the sky. “It kind of looks like rain, too.”
Alan looked up too. Thick gray clouds shrouded the sun and the breeze held that chilly note that usually presaged rain this time of year. “We can always move the boxes and the stuff from my place tomorrow.”
“I thought you’d be working tomorrow. You on second shift?”
Damn. He hadn’t meant to tell Tommy about his sudden change in employment status.
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looking at his brother, downed what remained in the can.
“You off?”
“Yeah. So it’s no problem for me to help. We just need to keep the truck another day.”
“How come you’re off tomorrow? Did you take a vacation day?”
Geez, let it go already.
“No, I sort of got laid off. But I’m sure they’ll call me back.”