THIRTY FOUR
THIN NOVEMBER SUNSHINE washed over Mr. Horton, warming his shoulders and winking off his head. He wrapped his arms a little tighter around his midsection and scooted his butt over an inch on the bleachers overlooking the soccer field. He was sitting on a screw or something. Horton sighed a puff of steam and wondered if Jeremy was warm enough out there in just his soccer togs. Just then Jeremy shot down the field, a blur of green and gold (his new school colors), running to meet an advancing opponent. Horton laughed at himself. Stupid to worry about the boy. Look at him, already a head taller than last year and the fastest sprinter on the team. The kid was invincible.
Jeremy took the ball away from the other boy with a graceful slash and stop. Without hesitating, he nailed it over to a teammate in better position to move the ball back down the field. Jeremy jogged back into position and coiled for another attack.
“That your boy?”
Horton craned his neck back at the woman seated a couple of feet away and one riser up. She was wrapped in a puffy green coat. A bundle of yarn and a couple of knitting needles sprouted from her lap. Blonde curls slipped like vines from beneath her watch cap. Her nose was red and her eyes bright in the clean sun. “That one,” she said, flipping a nod at the field, “number seven? He your son?”
“What makes you think he’s mine?” Horton asked. “See a resemblance?”
She laughed. “Nope. But whenever he gets near the ball you look like you’re trying to keep from doing the wave.”
Horton chuckled. “He’s good, isn’t he? I’m not his father, though. Well, not yet anyway.”
One of her eyebrows raised. “Oh, going after his mother are you?”
Horton felt his head blushing. Chick was pushy. He liked her. “Nothing like that,” he said. “I’m trying to adopt him.” And before she could ask another question, “Which one’s yours?”
“Guess.”
Horton took a second to record the soccer mom’s features then looked back at the field. He was just in time to catch Jeremy bolting down the field with the ball, making straight for the other team’s goal. Horton clenched his fists and felt the urge to shout welling up behind his teeth. Jeremy dodged around a final defender and gave the ball a vicious kick. It slammed through the air and into the waiting arms of the goalie. Jeremy snapped his fingers and winced. He turned his back and trotted back down the field. Horton checked the goalie. She had a blonde pony tail and coltish legs. Quick as a gecko, she stuck her tongue out at Jeremy’s back.
Horton turned back to the soccer mom. “The goalie.”
She smiled down into her knitting. “That’s my Sally, the next Mia Hamm.” She looked up from her lap and squinted down at her daughter. “Better keep her damn shirt on, though.”
“Brandy Chastaine’s the one you’re thinking of.” Horton laughed and shook his head. “I’ll never get used to these co-ed teams.”
“Oh, you think girls aren’t good enough to go up against boys?”
“Not after the catch your daughter just made. Naw, I’m just old fashioned a little I guess. Speaking of which,” he stood and extended a hand back and up to her. “I’m Terry Horton.”
She barked a laugh. “That’s funny,” taking his hand and giving a good squeeze. Not the kind of over-hard clamp that said she was worried he might think she was weak, but strong and natural. “Teri’s my name, too.”
Horton’s pate blushed a little deeper. It was the only part of being bald he disliked, the emotional billboard of his scalp. “Most people just call me Horton.”
“You ever hear a ‘Who’?”
“Hey clever,” he smirked, voice flat. “Never heard that one before.”
“C’mon up here and sit with me, Horton. You won’t have to break your neck to talk. I could use the distraction. I love my Sal, but it gets boring as hell between saves.”
Horton settled down next to her. “Your knitting doesn’t keep you busy?”
She gazed into the tangle of yarn and steel in her lap. “Suppose it would, but I’m really bad at it. I used to have one of those Rubix Cubes—you remember those?—but I could never get more than a couple of sides and it drove me nuts.” She put the knitting aside. “Sally can do it though. It’s crazy. She can just pick it up and have it back to you in about ten minutes, all perfect and solved.”
Horton stared across the field, sized up the girl. He tried to put himself in the mind of an eleven or twelve-year-old boy. Yeah, she was cute. He glanced over and caught Jeremy staring at her. “She smart? She must be with the cube and all.”
Teri straightened. “Brilliant actually. I had her tested over the summer and she’s got this thing with pattern recognition. Sometimes she’s so smart it’s a little scary.”
I get that.” Horton nodded. “Jeremy’s like that too, you know? He, uh,” Horton contemplated a passing cloud, “he knows stuff that kids probably shouldn’t be able to figure out. I’m pretty sure he’s a genius, like an Einstein or that Hawkins guy.”
“Hawking.”
“Hawking, yeah.” Horton shook his head. “Jeremy reads that stuff, but I can’t get my head around it really.”
“Me neither,” she said. “Sally’s father was brilliant, too.” She broke off and laughed ruefully. “Except for emotional intelligence, that’s for damn sure.” She watched Jeremy sprint over with the rest of the kids to huddle by the coach, a jumbled pile of color and bruised shins, power. “Where’re his parents?”
“Dead,” Horton said. A memory of collecting Mason’s teeth—as many as he could find—and setting up the body in the driver’s seat of the BMW. Calvin had spent a few minutes under the car and then they had aimed it at a tree. The explosion had been volcanic. “His mom drowned when he was just a baby and his father died last year in a car accident.”
Teri was quiet a moment, looking at the boy and wondering. Someone in the huddle told a joke and the music of Jeremy’s laugh blew across the field to them. She let out a breath. “He’s doing okay.”
“For the most part. He has dreams sometimes.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sal had nightmares after the divorce. Still does. But you’re in the adoption process now for him, or what? You an uncle, or…?”
“I worked for his dad for a long time and me an’ Jeremy got pretty close. I don’t know if it’s ever going to feel like he’s really my son, or anything. It’s just that…”
“What?”
Horton smiled at his sentimentality. He had become a big old softy and it never ceased to amaze him. “I guess I think of it like this: if I could choose what my kid would be like, I would choose Jeremy.”
The soccer stars were walking back toward the bleachers to collect their parents. Horton and Teri each raised a hand to their respective kid at the same time and laughed. Jeremy and Sally caught their respective adults and threw sidelong glances at one another. Teri turned in her seat and put out her hand. Horton took it and she held on for a second.
“Be my bleacher buddy at next practice, Horton?”
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “Sounds real nice. Maybe talking to you will keep my from doing the wave and embarrassing this guy.”
Jeremy and Sally came up, she eyeing Horton, he eyeing Teri. “Hi,” they said in unison and turned equal shades of scarlet.
HORTON COULDN’T HOLD on for more than a block out of the parking lot before saying something. “That goalie’s pretty good.”
Jeremy looked out the car window. “Whatever.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Horton watched the road. “She, uh, she’s cute too, huh?”
“I guess.”
“You guess.”
“Saw you talkin’ to her mom.”
Horton’s scalp went off. “Yeah, she’s a nice woman. Funny.”
“She, uh, she’s cute, too, huh?”
“Okay, okay, Mr. Cool.” Hort
on patted Jeremy’s knee. “You got me, but I have a question for you.”
Jeremy tensed, a shaky smile quivering his lips. “No! Quit it, Horton. C’mon, man!” He laughed and grabbed Horton’s wrist but his hand was like a piece of steel.
Horton grinned, evil and gleeful, “How’s a crow sit on a fence?” he asked and squeezed, sending the boy into a storm of tickle doom.
A few minutes and miles later—talk of goalies and their mothers out of the way for the time being—they pulled up in the parking lot of a squat brick building with tinted windows, the kind of business rental space that shared several offices. Linowes & Monroe Attorney’s at Law gleamed from a brass sign on the corner. Horton threw the transmission in park and turned toward Jeremy.
“You ready for this, kid? You still want to do it? I mean, I don’t want to force you into anything that don’t feel right to you. If this is too weird, you just let me know and we don’t have—”
Jeremy nodded gravely through most of Horton’s nervous deluge then started smiling. Horton always cracked him up when he was trying to be all sensitive. It was like watching a tiger play with a ball of string or something. “It’s cool, Horton,” Jeremy said. “But before we do this I have to make sure of something.”
“What’s that, kid?”
“I have to ask you something.”
Horton steeled himself. Jeremy knew a lot about what his father had been up to and where their money came from. After all, the kid had inherited enough to buy a small country. But Horton could go his whole life without giving Jeremy the details of the darker stuff. With the help of the lawyers and some of his own contacts from his days on the force, Horton had severed ties with the criminal elements of Mason’s empire. They had been all too happy to get out from under Mason’s control, but still feared the man’s shadow enough never to come calling. The future was open before them now, clean and bright, but if Jeremy needed some piece of knowledge about the past, Horton had made up his mind a long time ago to give it to him. It was truth or nothing.
He took a quick breath. “Okay, kid. What do you want to know?”
“Just this,” Jeremy said and clamped his hand around Horton’s knee. “How’s a crow sit on a fence?”