Comeback (33 page)

“But he’s Ned’s bastard. That makes him a Stark.”

“I don’t think he’s really Ned’s.”

That made me sit upright again. “Whose bastard would he be if not Ned’s?”

“Lyanna and Robert.” She said it so matter-of-factly. Like it simply
was
.

“You realize you’ve just knocked my world off its axis.”

She laughed. “Maybe you should read the books more closely if you don’t see that one coming.”

“You haven’t answered yet,” I said, ignoring the jibe. “Stark or Targaryen?”

“Both. I agree with you on Jon Snow, but he’s going to hook up with Daenerys, and they’re going to save Westeros together. It
is
called
A Song of Ice and Fire
, you know. He’s the ice. She’s the fire with all her dragons and whatnot.”

“You’ve spent way too much time thinking about what’s going on in these books to have picked
Lord of the Rings
.”

“I can’t help it. Aragorn’s hot, and Tolkien didn’t kill him off. Every time I finally decide I like someone in
Game of Thrones
, they die.”

“But that’s what’s brilliant about
Game of Thrones
,” I said. “He kills all the characters we love, yet we keep reading. Or watching, in some cases.”

“Yes, we’re all masochists.” She laughed again. “Moving on. If you had your choice and it wasn’t dictated by other factors in your life—night owl or morning person?”

“Morning person. I’ve always been up with the sun and ready to go, even when we have a late game or travel or whatever.”

“Night owl for me. I’ve managed to train my body to adjust, but I can’t say I’m happy about it.”

“All right, then. Since you’re a night owl, when I come home in a couple of nights, how do you want me to greet you? Kisses or something more?”

“Something more,” she breathed. “But I wouldn’t say no to kisses, too. I’ll take all I can get.”

And I’d be happy to give her all she could take.

“
I DON’T
WANT
to go to the jobsite,” Hugo whined. “I want to play Minecraft.”

“You’ve been playing Minecraft all morning,” I said, helping Nils tie his shoes. “You can play it some more when we come back.”

“You could just leave me here,” Hugo said. “It’ll be all right. I can take care of myself for a little while. I’m just going to be playing my game.”

There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to leave him behind. He was only ten years old, and that was definitely not old enough in my mind to leave a child by himself. I didn’t even need to run something like that by Nicky. It just wasn’t going to happen.

“Please, can’t you drop me off at the mall?” Elin asked again, even though I thought I’d already nipped that idea in the bud twice today.

“No, I will not,” I repeated. “Your uncle said you couldn’t be alone with
É
tienne—”

“But we wouldn’t be alone!” she cut in. “All his friends are coming.”

“Friends that your uncle and I haven’t met yet.”

“But we wouldn’t be alone.”

“This isn’t up for debate. We don’t know those friends, so we don’t know if they’re people we can trust. It’s not happening.”

The familiar music of the Minecraft game started up, and it took every ounce of patience I could muster not to yell at Hugo. Yelling wouldn’t solve anything, and I had no intention of treating these kids the way my father had treated me and Darren when we were children. I took a moment before responding, reining in my temper before reacting in any way.

“Hugo,” I said as calmly as I could. “Turn off the game. We’re leaving in two minutes.”

“None of us want to go, though,” Elin complained.

“Do you think I’ll get to wear a hard hat again?” Nils asked, his eyes alight with excitement.

At least
he
was looking forward to it. I supposed one out of three wasn’t bad.

“Apparently Nils wants to go,” I said to his sister. “And I do. And, at least for right now, I’m the boss.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” she said. She pulled out her cell phone and stomped off down the hall, slamming the door to her bedroom.

She was almost a teenager, I reminded myself. Not only that, but she was dealing with the insanity of hormones that came with puberty and having her first menstrual cycle and her first boyfriend. And she was grieving. I was the adult here. I had to be the one to keep my cool and act rationally. The problem was that all rational thought seemed to be leaving me and not returning. I’d been living with Nicky and these kids for a couple of weeks now, but today was proving to be a huge test.

Once I’d finished helping Nils, I got up and shut off the TV and the game console.

Hugo glared up at me. “You messed up my game!”

“That’s right. I did.” I held out my hand for the controller. “I’ll put that away. Let’s get ready and go.”

Instead of handing the controller over to me, he threw it on the floor. The battery cover popped off and the batteries skittered across the floor, one of them rolling under the TV stand before clattering to a stop.

Nils started to pick everything up, but I stopped him. “Your brother made this mess. He can clean it up.” Then I turned around to go deal with Elin.

She beat me to the punch, though, coming down the hall with her cell phone held out. “Uncle Nicky wants to talk to you,” she said, sounding victorious.

She’d called her uncle. Good Lord. I didn’t know what he was in the middle of today, but chances were he didn’t need the distraction of dealing with a squabble between me and Elin. I pressed the fingers of one hand to my temples, wishing that would stop the throbbing, and took the phone with my other. “Hello?”

“Elin says you won’t let her go to the mall with
É
tienne and his friends, even though I said she could go if there was a group.”

I couldn’t get a gauge on what he felt about that from his tone. It was blank. No matter how he felt, though, I wasn’t going to lie to him, and I absolutely refused to sugarcoat anything about how his niece and nephews had been behaving today. “That’s right.”

“She also says Hugo wants to stay home alone and play video games instead of going with you. That he’s throwing a fit about it and you won’t give in.”

“Correct, again.” I didn’t care if he
did
tell me I could leave Hugo. That wasn’t going to happen. A ten-year-old boy was not mature enough to be home alone for hours.

“Are all three of the kids in the same room with you right now?”

“Yes, they are,” I said. I neglected to mention that because of those three children being in the same room with me, or more specifically, because of the way two of the three of them had been behaving all morning, I had a blistering headache building with no sign of it abating any time soon.

“Would you put me on speaker, please?”

I wished I could see him so I had some idea what to expect. His mood was always easier to read when I could see his eyes. I hit the button to turn on the speakerphone and held it out so everyone could hear. “You’re on speaker,” I said.

“Can you all hear me?” he asked.

“Yes,” Elin said, grinning. Her brothers made affirmative sounds.

“All right. So I told you before I left that I expected you to listen to Jessica while I was gone, and that you should behave for her and do what she asks of you. I meant it.”

Elin’s face immediately dropped. She clearly hadn’t expected this sort of response or else I doubt she would have called her uncle to begin with.

“That means that, Hugo, you need to apologize for the way you’re treating Jessica,” Nicky said. “And it means that, Elin, you need to listen to what she tells you and accept that she’s looking out for your best interests whether you like what she has to say or not. So, no, you won’t be going to the mall with
É
tienne and his friends today, and all three of you
will
be going with Jessica to do whatever she needs to do. I expect you all to treat her better than you have been. This is unacceptable. Do you understand me?”

All three of them mumbled something unintelligible.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Hugo said a little more loudly. His siblings followed suit, but none of them looked too happy about it.

I felt bad that Nils was getting this lecture, too, when he hadn’t really done anything to earn it. It was probably for the best for them all to hear it at once, though. Just because he hadn’t had any sort of a meltdown yet didn’t mean he wouldn’t have one later today, or tomorrow, or God only knew when.

Nicky told them that even though he was disappointed in them, he still loved them and would see them in a couple of days. Then we all said our good-byes and hung up. A minute later, I led one excited little boy and two sulking preteens out to the car, and I drove us over to the work site for the Thurstsons’ home.

I’d barely opened the door to get out of my car when one of Carter’s employees rushed over to me. “You’d better get over to Carter. There’s an issue.”

That could only mean there was a problem with one of my volunteers. My first guess was that someone had shown up to the work site either drunk or high after a relapse. This was not the sort of place where any sort of impairment would be acceptable or tolerated.

I steeled myself for whatever confrontation was in store. “Where is he?” I asked, heading toward the construction without waiting for an answer.

“In the house.”

“I’ll handle it,” I said. “Can you make sure the kids are given something to do where they’re out of the way?”

“Got it,” he said, and I sprinted ahead to the house without sparing another thought to the kids.

It wasn’t any of my volunteers with Carter when I got there, though. In fact, I didn’t recognize the man at all. That said, it didn’t take much for me to figure out who he was.

He was young, probably in his early twenties. And he was tall and lean, with dull brown hair and cheeks that sunk in, making him look gaunt. There were sores on all his exposed skin. They looked like they were healing, and from the slightly pink tone of his face, I guessed he wasn’t currently using meth. If my instincts were right, this was the man who accidentally burned down his own home—and the Thurstons’ home, as well.

“They said you could use my help in here, Carter?” I said as I ventured through the doorway.

Both men turned to face me, and Carter smiled. “I was just about to call you. I didn’t know you were coming by today.”

“I needed to get the kids out of the house before we all went insane.” I crossed over to them and held out my hand for the man I hadn’t met yet.

“Jessica, this is Tim. Jessica is the director of the Light the Lamp Foundation, the program I was just telling you about,” Carter said to the man whose hand I was shaking.

Tim smiled at me, careful to keep his mouth closed. I had no doubt it was in an effort to hide the damage done to his teeth. The physical effects of his meth use were still pronounced in other ways, but it was also clear that he was making an effort to turn things around.

“Nice to meet you, Tim,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said.

Carter shifted his weight, crossing his arms in front of him. “He showed up here today hoping he could help out. He said he wants to try to make up for all the mistakes he’s made. I told him you’d be a good person to talk to about that.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Is there somewhere Tim and I can go sit down to talk where we’ll be out of your way?”

Carter led us to a table and bench outside under a tree and left us there. Construction sounds filled the air around us, banging and sawing and drilling. I had gotten used to the noise, but Tim kept jumping every now and then when an unfamiliar sound joined the chorus.

“First things first,” I said. “You’re clean? Because that’s a requirement for participating in any event with Light the Lamp.”

“I’m clean. My lawyer got me into a program while I’m waiting for the trial and all.”

Tim and I sat there talking for fifteen minutes or more. He admitted he was the one who’d burned the Thurstons’ home down, outlined his plan for staying clean, and explained why he wanted to give back—and specifically why he wanted to be part of building this home—at least as long as he could. He was potentially facing some time in prison, but his lawyer was hoping to get the prosecutors to agree to a plea bargain. He might get away with probation and community service, particularly since he’d already been in a treatment program and was trying to turn his life around.

“I can’t make any promises about what will happen with all of that,” I told him. “But I can tell you this: the judge will take everything into consideration, and that includes what you are doing with your life in the here and now. I think you’re making a brave choice.”

“Doesn’t feel very brave to help out the people whose lives I ruined.”

“I’m not talking about helping them. I’m talking about helping yourself.” I smiled at him. “It’s not easy to make the kinds of changes you’re trying to make. It takes a lot of courage and even more strength. But you
can
do it. You can turn your life around. You can make something of yourself if you really want to, and if you really try.”

He turned his head away, and I was pretty sure he wiped a tear from his cheek. He cleared his throat. “No one’s ever believed in me. Did you know that? My dad always told me I was never going to amount to anything. My teachers gave up on me, saying I was a lost cause. No one’s ever thought I could do anything.”