Leave it to Max (Lori's Classic Love Stories Volume 1) (17 page)

“I could grow it long like Mr. Stark.”

Livy shook her head. Even if he had succeeded
in getting her mind off his truancy, the first words out of his
mouth would only have brought everything right back. Which showed
Livy how enthralled by Garrett Max was already.

She drew her fingertip down his nose. “We’re
going to talk tonight; there’s no getting out of it.”

He sighed and gave her sad eyes.

Her heart twisted and turned. Max
did
have his father’s eyes. She’d always known they shared a color. But
she’d never realized genetics could be found in a single shade of
expression as Max waited for the ax to fall. His father had looked
at her like that a lot since he’d come back to Savannah.

Livy rubbed her forehead some more, uncertain
what to do or say. Small gentle hands pulled hers away from her
face. Max leaned so close she could see flecks of black in the dark
brown of his eyes. Then he climbed into her lap and tucked his head
beneath her chin. “Sorry, Mom.”

His words, his tone, his dear sweet face
tempted Livy to let the entire incident go, because she found her
throat so choked with love she didn’t know if she
could
scold him. But she coughed and forced herself to do what had to be
done.

“What were you thinking to walk away from
school?”

“Everyone was being mean to me.”

Anger surged at his words. Max didn’t have
many friends. Since she didn’t have many herself, Livy wasn’t sure
what to tell him. Kids picked on anyone smaller and younger.
Survival of the fittest began in elementary school.

“Kids are mean, baby.”

“Don’t call me baby. It’s embarrassing.”

“Sorry.”

How long would it be before he told her not
to kiss him good-night, not to walk him to school the first day,
not to be seen anywhere near him? Sooner than she was ready for, no
doubt.

“Even Sammy was mean today.”

“That’s too bad.”

Livy tried to make her voice sympathetic but
firm. Max couldn’t think that just because kids were being kids
that meant he could walk off school grounds and wander at will. He
was going to have to learn to deal with mean kids, or at least
learn not to care what they said.

But it was difficult to sound unconcerned
when what she wanted to do was march down to school, grab every
mean kid by his mean ear and twist until he was crying on the
outside the way her son was crying on the inside.

She’d end up in jail, but she’d be smiling.
Maybe that was why Rosie so often laughed when behind bars. She’d
stood up for what she believed in—no matter how silly what she
believed in might be—but whatever happened, Rosie could face it
laughing because she’d done the right thing.

Livy cradled her son and slowly rocked him as
she always had when he was a baby and upset. Once a mother, always
a mother. Give any mommy a baby and every single one did the baby
sway. Even with a baby who did not want to be called a baby
anymore.

Livy kissed Max’s hair. How was she supposed
to know what was right for him or what was wrong? She didn’t even
know that for herself. What if she made a mistake and ended up
hurting him worse than any bump or bruise ever had?

“You’re going to have to get used to mean
kids. They’re all over the place. And when they grow up, they only
get meaner.”

“Mr. Stark isn’t.”

A matter of opinion
. Livy had been
been hurt more by Mr. Stark than anyone.

‘‘He told me things, Mom.”

Livy stilled. She was going to be in jail
with Mama soon, because she just might kill Garrett if he’d told
Max—

“He told me how not to be afraid.”

Her breath came out in a rush. One hurdle
avoided, another right in her path. “What are you so afraid of? I
don’t understand.”

“But he did.”

Silence filled the room. She could hear Max
breathing, loud, through his mouth as he always did when he was
nervous.

He extricated himself from her lap, her arms,
her protection, and Livy tried not to cling, but she did. How could
a stranger walk into her son’s life and understand him when she
could not? Even if the stranger wasn’t really a stranger, to Max he
was.

Her son sat on the bed, no longer touching
her. He was as tired as she, his dark eyes huge in his pale little
face. She should tuck him in and let the mystery go unsolved, but
she couldn’t.

“What did he understand?”

“Every time I try to tell you what scares me,
I can see by your face you have no clue what I mean. If I say
there’s a closet monster, you say, ‘No, there isn’t,’ like that’s
supposed to make it go away. When I told Mr. Stark about the dark
and the night and the mist, he got it.”

‘‘He would,” she muttered.

‘‘I know.” His voice excited, Max’s face was
filled with wonder, and Livy was glad he’d missed her sarcasm. “He
knew exactly what I meant about things that aren’t really there.
You can tell me all you want that if I can’t see something it isn’t
real, but it’s real to me. Just because you say it can’t be, Mom,
doesn’t mean that it isn’t.”

From the moment he could speak, Max had
questioned everything. Annoying as that could be sometimes, maybe
it wasn’t the worst thing. Livy had always hoped the first time
anyone offered him a joint, or the latest equivalent, Max would
sneer ‘ ‘No way!” with the same enthusiasm he’d always said it to
her.

“What exactly did Mr. Stark tell you about
your fears?”

“That I need to own them.”

“How much does it cost?”

Max laughed. “Not own like that. I take my
shadows and I make them real in a story. Then I crush them, and
they aren’t so scary anymore. Because I won.”

“I still don’t get it.”

Max grabbed a piece of paper from his
nightstand. “Here.” He shoved the paper into her hands. “At Mrs.
Hammond’s while I was waiting for you, I tried it, and I do feel
better.”

Livy glanced at the story. Max had written
“The Closet Monster” at the top of the page. At the bottom he’d
drawn a gaping black hole of a closet, so large it loomed over the
tiny bed and tinier blond boy who cowered beneath it. In between
the title and the drawing was a story.

“Go ahead. You can read it.” Max patted her
knee as if she were a sad, pathetic dweeb. “Maybe then you’ll
understand.”

There was a boy named Max and he had a
closet monster. Every time his mom closed the door the monster grew
bigger. Max tried to keep the door open, because what you can see
is better than what you can’t, but his mom always shoved all the
doors shut whenever his back was turned.

So the monster grew and grew.

Which explained the constant open state of
the closet door, if nothing else.

Max spent a lot of nights sleeping under his
bed.

“Max, you don’t sleep under the bed, do
you?”

He ducked his head. “Only sometimes. Keep
readin’.”

But one night he got tired of the floor,
and he decided that it was his room and he was going to take it
back, and the closet, too. So instead of hiding under the covers or
under the bed, he marched across the floor and punched that monster
right in his nose. And
poof,
the closet monster became a big
black raincoat. Max slammed the door and slept on the bed forever
and ever more.

“Well?” Max’s eyes were bright with newfound
knowledge, as well as a confidence Livy had never seen there
before.

“It’s a wonderful story. But I still don’t
see how it helps. There’s no such thing as a closet monster, and
there never was.”

Max groaned. “Mom. You have to admit it’s
there before you can make it go away. Like ghosts. Rosie says the
people who make peace with the ghosts in their house, the ones who
talk to them and invite them to stay as long as they behave, are
the people who can live with them without any trouble.”

Livy didn’t know what to say to logic like
that, which was no logic at all. What she’d been telling Max since
he was old enough to understand hadn’t done a bit of good. He still
believed in vampires and zombies and all sorts of dark, creepy
imaginings as much as her mother believed in the ghosts of
Savannah.

Why not face the monster and own it? Why not
invite a ghost to stay? Livy would never have thought to suggest
anything of the kind, yet Garrett had known immediately what his
son had needed to feel safe.

Jealousy reared its ugly head. She’d raised
this child, been everything to him and he to her, yet one week in
town and his undead dad had become his new best friend.

Livy lifted the covers. Max dove beneath and
snuggled against the pillow with a tired, contented sigh. “It’ll be
nice not to see that silver-toothed closet monster anymore.”

Livy kissed him on the forehead. “I bet it
will.” Her jealousy dissolved at the sight of his peaceful, sleepy
smile. She couldn’t stay angry over something that made Max so
happy and kept him from sleeping beneath the bed.

“Tomorrow I’m going to write about the
goblins in the bathroom mirror.”

“Excellent choice.” Livy snapped off the
light. “’Night, Max. Love you always.”

“’Night, Mom. Love you, too.”

“Max?”

“Mmm?”

He was almost out, but she had to make one
final point. Even if she was a clueless moron, she was still his
mother. “Stay in school.”

He mumbled something that sounded like “Do my
best,” and turned over.

Livy frowned into the darkness. He must have
said, “Yes, yes, yes,” though she doubted it.

For a moment she watched him sleep, a small
lumpy figure in a big old bed. Once asleep, a hurricane couldn’t
wake him, but many nights it took some time for Max to find
dreamland. Now that the closet monster was gone, sleep seemed to
come more easily.

If only she could conquer her fears as
well.

The old house creaked and moaned. Ghosts, if
you were of a mind to believe that. For Livy, the creaks were made
by old wood and the moans came from the wind through the attic.
Still, the sounds were lonely, and she didn’t like them. Tonight
she could use some comfort, but for her there was no comfort to be
had.

She backed out of Max’s room and headed for
her own, just as the phone began to shrill.

* * *

Garrett had waited as long as he could. He’d
wandered his house, peering into each room as if through Livy’s
eyes. He had to say, this kind of behavior didn’t look good. He
must appear a terminal bachelor who couldn’t stay in one place for
more than a minute. Which was exactly what he was.

After eating corn chips and salsa for dinner,
Garrett had walked into his office, then walked right back out when
his computer laughed at him.

Although he might have an astounding
imagination, he knew his computer hadn’t literally laughed. Still,
Garrett had heard it just the same. So he’d taken his beer and his
cell phone onto the porch, where the laughter only echoed in his
mind.

Max had made the panic recede for most of the
day. Now it was back, pulsing in Garrett’s belly. He might not be
able to write the book he so desperately needed to; he could very
well blow the chance he’d been working toward all of his life.

Then he’d be a failure
and
a loser. No
big surprise there. All authors waited for the day when the world
at large would suddenly figure out they were a fraud, that they
couldn’t
really
write. That day might come for Garrett
sooner than he’d ever believed.

He took a swig of his beer and stared into
the night. Here and there he heard the rattle of an idea, like old
bones shaking about in the giant empty of his brain. But when he
tried to focus, to get something exact, that idea would be gone
quicker than time.

Maybe a cemetery walk would help. Garrett had
yet to stroll through Bonaventure Cemetery, located outside
Savannah proper. From what he’d heard and read, if he couldn’t find
a spooky idea while wandering out there, he’d never find one.

A grand old forest graveyard, Bonaventure had
once been a great plantation during the colonial era. It was most
famous more recently for its statue of the bird girl that became an
icon of Savannah after gracing the cover of the book
Midnight in
the Garden of Good and Evil.
The statue had been removed and
placed in a nearby museum to protect her from vandals and thieves.
The new world once again ruining the ancient and fair.

Despite the encroachment, Bonaventure still
possessed more character than most cemeteries. At night the azalea
bushes did not shine with bright spots of color, but rather
shivered beneath the stately oak trees draped with silver-gray
moss.

It was said that on certain evenings a
ghostly dinner party ensued atop the ruins of the former mansion.
If you listened hard enough and you believed, you would hear music,
laughter and the whip of the flames that had burned the mansion to
the ground while the revelers continued their party on the lawn.
When the roof crashed in, the guests had thrown their empty
wineglasses against one of those oak tees. The shatter of crystal
still echoed through time.

Garrett
had
to see the place. He
finished his beer, set the bottle on the porch next to his chair,
then cradled his cell phone in one hand, as he tried to talk
himself out of calling Livy.

For the sake of the book that wasn’t, he
needed to get in his car, drive out to Bonaventure and wander the
ruins for as long as it took to get a really good idea. That might
be days, but too bad. The situation was becoming desperate.
Bonaventure meant “good fortune” in Spanish, and Garrett could
really use some right now.

But until he knew what had happened with his
son and his son’s mother, he couldn’t concentrate, so Garrett
punched in the phone number he hadn’t called in nine years but had
never forgotten.