Seeing Red (16 page)

“Well, you can keep that shit, man,” the trainer said, and he walked off toward the full wall of mirrors.

Seth watched him just long enough to see him turning and flexing muscles that would never have much more definition than a Jell-O mold. What was that saying? Those who can’t, train?

He showered and decided to drive up to The Triangle. Normally, he avoided the drive during the week, but maybe he’d call out of work for the rest of the week. Say he’d caught some bug or that he was going to work from home.

He made it as far as Raleigh without really knowing which friend he needed to see, and at the last minute, bypassed the exit that would have put him near Grant and went farther down 40 to Curt’s.

Erica stood in the screen door as he walked up the driveway and held it open as he climbed the brick steps.

“I know you didn’t drive all the way up here on a Wednesday night for my cooking, so what’s up?”

He kissed the cheek she offered and eased past her into the foyer of the two-story traditional. They’d been there for about six months, and every time Seth came, there was some new decorative item. Paint in some formerly boring room, or a framed photo on one of the end tables. Gradually, with Erica’s touch, the massive place was taking on a homey feel. It wasn’t just a house anymore. Not just a box with people and things inside, but also a place where people actually did some living.

“I need to speak privately with Curt. Is he here?”

“He’s in the office.” She shut the door, narrowing her dark eyes at him. “You do realize nothing you say to my husband is held in confidence, right?”

Seth had always suspected as much. “Just give me the illusion of privacy, just for a while,
da
?”

“
Da
.” She laughed. “That I can give you. You staying for dinner?”

He opened his mouth to give a quick “yes,” swayed by the scent of whatever that was bubbling in the kitchen, but his better judgment impelled him to refuse. Meg had seemed hurt the last time he’d dined with the Ryans, though he didn’t understand why. Could she have actually wanted him there? Didn’t seem plausible. All the same, he fished his phone out of his back pocket, and brought up the text-messaging screen as he walked down the hall. He typed,

I’m nearby. If you haven’t cooked, I’d love to buy you and Toby dinner.

He read the response as he crossed the threshold into Curt’s cluttered home office. Curt’s back was turned, and he was muttering at his desktop computer’s monitor. Typical for him.

tobytobytobyto

Toby had the phone, so Seth tried the old-fashioned tactic of making an actual phone call, wishing Meg had a landline.

She answered as Curt swung around in his rolling chair and raised a dark blond eyebrow at Seth.

“Toby! Stop taking my phone. You have an iPod,” Meg said. “Hello?”

“Uh, hi.”

Having a conversation with Curt giving him that cold blue stare was indescribably uncomfortable.

“Oh. Hi! Uh…what’s up?”

“I’m in Chapel Hill. Have you had dinner?”

“No. It’s chicken-nugget night here. Pop them into the oven at four twenty-five.”

“Sounds gourmet.”

“I shake them right out the bag, sweetie.” She giggled.

Had he ever heard her laugh at something so trifling? If he had, he couldn’t remember it. Her laugher was a beautiful sound, and he wanted to hear more of it.

“If you don’t mind the company, I could take you out, or bring you dinner. Whichever you’d like.”

The eyebrow Curt had pushed up fell down to its usual placement. That look he’d always worn, when they were roommates and some woman who had no romantic interest in Seth would ask for yet another favor, settled into Curt’s features. Seth probably deserved that, and for once didn’t bother refuting it. He just stared at his feet and did his best to ignore his friend’s glower.

Silence on Meg’s end, and he wondered if maybe Curt was justified yet again, but then she came back on the line.

“I’m so sorry. Earlobe hit the mute button. You probably didn’t hear anything I said.”

He exhaled. God, this woman was going to be the cause of his next stomach ulcer. “No, I didn’t.”

“I said there’s a new diner a couple of blocks from here I’ve been dying to try, but Toby is hard to take out when I’m alone. He bounces around so much, and…” She let her words trail off, but it was fine. He understood.

“Okay. We’ll put him on the inside of the booth.”

“Oh! Okay. Uh, I’ll shower. I’ve been working on this manual all day and lost track of time. When will you be here?”

“An hour, maybe.”

“Are you spending the night? Toby wants to know. He misses you.”

He’d need to thank the boy later for the in-route to his mother’s company. “Anything for Toby.”

“Good. See you in an hour.” She disconnected.

When Seth turned his gaze up to Curt, Curt’s expression had softened a little, but there was still some wariness in it.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Ah. Yes. I got served a very strange document at work today, and I don’t know what to do with it.”

Curt made a give-it-here gesture with his hand, so Seth pulled the tri-folded document out of his pocket and passed it across the desktop.

Curt scanned it, and his forehead furrowed more and more the longer he read.

Seth could tell exactly what he was reading and when, because he imagined his reaction must have been quite the same. He could even tell that Curt had to go back to the start and read it all over again.

He cleared his throat when he was done. “I thought Spike being Toby’s father was conclusively proven for the courts.”

“Doesn’t matter. We both know I’m not, even if he isn’t. And of course he is.”

“What judge in his right mind would sign off on this? And for what, just to get out of paying that little bit of child support? Doesn’t make sense.”

“You see why I came.”

“Uh, yeah, but fuck, guy. I know numbers, not the law, if the law even comes into play here. If it does, you need to call Stephen and let him dig you out of this shit.”

“If I just take the paternity test, don’t you think that’ll make it go away?”

Curt closed his eyes and gave his head a slow shake. “There’ll be something else. I wouldn’t be surprised if he served Meg an order to get Toby retested. She say anything about it?”

“No.” Not that she made a habit of telling him all her business, but wouldn’t she have hinted that there was trouble?

“What are you thinking?”

Seth shrugged. “I thought briefly of refusing the test and letting them think what they wanted. I wouldn’t be offended if people assume Toby is mine, although I can’t say the same for Megan.”

“I think that would raise even more problems—draw more attention you don’t want. If people think Meg was whoring around just as much as Spike was, Toby would never be able to shake that reputation. The names they’d call him…”

“I didn’t think of that.”

“No reason you would have. Hey, call Stephen, huh? He’s in the loop, so he’ll know how to handle this discreetly. He’ll figure out what Spike is up to.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that in the car on the way to Raleigh.”

“What’s going on between you and Meg, anyway? Sounds like you’re actually dating your wife.”

Seth leaned back in the wooden chair and watched the ceiling fan turn. “Wish I knew. I’ve never understood women. That hasn’t changed.”

“Just be careful.”

“Yeah.” He stood. They all had the same warning. Carla and Curt and the rest. “Be careful.” Maybe if he were truly smart, he’d start to heed it.

Chapter 14

With the smallest touch of Toby’s shoulder, or an idle rustle of his hair, Seth calmed and redirected the boy in a manner that seemed downright supernatural. He didn’t even need eye contact. When Toby had toyed with the sugar dispenser on their table, Seth hadn’t been distracted from their conversation even a moment. One little touch of Toby’s right shoulder, and Toby put the sugar back, sank onto his bottom, and resumed the artistic defacement of his placemat with the crayons the diner provided.

Seth’s eyebrows drew up, and she stared into his open face a moment before realizing he’d probably asked her something.

“I’m sorry. I’m a bit loopy today.” Wasn’t quite a lie. “Was in front of my computer too many hours trying to dumb down some phrasing. Having a hard time concentrating now.”

“Yes, I’ve been distracted this week as well.” He didn’t elaborate, just twisted the paper from his straw between his thumb and first two fingers.

Wasn’t he more of a talker than this? She could have sworn she remembered that about him. Where was that gregarious guy always telling bad jokes and relentlessly teasing his friends?

“Um. So, we went on a tour of the preschool today, me and Toby,” she said. That seemed a benign enough conversational topic. Toby was easy. There’d always be plenty to say about Toby.

Seth stopped twirling his paper and turned his head to the left, spreading an expression of feigned disappointment on his face. “Toby, you didn’t tell me. I thought we had no secrets, man.”

Toby put his hands up in exasperation. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”

That pretty much summed up Meg’s impression, too, but she kept quiet to see if Seth could draw some words out of Toby about it.

“Okay. You don’t have to talk about it. I’ll just talk to your mother about important things like coordinating your car’s tune-up. It’s loud.” He turned pointedly to Megan, wearing a half grin that made her smile. “Would you like me to take the car for you, or perhaps you could—”

Toby yanked on Seth’s left shirtsleeve. “They won’t let me wear Crocs there.”

“Crocs?”

“Yes.” Meg chuckled and leaned back as the waitress placed their meals on the table. “Those rubber sling-back sandals with the holes in them. He can’t tie shoelaces yet, so combined with Velcro, they’re a mommy’s dream come true.”

“They won’t let me wear them,” Toby reasserted. “Say kids trip and fall in them. I never trip. I’m good at running.”

“Oh, I see.” Seth nodded and unwound Toby’s utensil roll for him. “Is there anything you liked about the school?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

Toby pursed his lips and shook his head.
 

Meg couldn’t blame him for being unable to explain what it was he didn’t like about the place. She’d felt it, too, and her gut had transmitted all kinds of warning flags to her brain. The school and its progressive curriculum were highly touted, and one of the top private prekindergarten programs in the area. It damn well should have been with tuition that high.

The school should have been the perfect solution for a boy like Toby. They were used to sheltering the children of celebrities and politicians. Two of the governor’s grandchildren were enrolled for the fall.

But something during that tour had rubbed them both the wrong way. Maybe it was the noses held high in the air—which Meg was certainly no stranger to, given how she’d grown up. Being short, she knew most of those folks didn’t have clean noses in both the literal and figurative senses of the phrase. Or maybe it’d been all the structure. So much focus on the academic, on precise art and music creation, there was no room for exploration. For outside time.

“I think we’re going to keep looking,” Meg said. “I haven’t told them yet, but I think I’ll just forfeit the deposit. I’m sure the school is a great fit for a lot of people.” People who wanted their children to be little automatons who grew into the precise kind of person their parents wanted them to be and nothing beyond that. “Just not Toby. He needs more than fifteen minutes of recess time per day.”

“Yes, most little boys have grasshoppers in their pants.”

She groaned but didn’t bother correcting the idiomatic blooper. Close enough, especially given Toby’s energy level.

Seth gave Toby’s hair a ruffle that started the child into a cascade of giggles. “By the time I started school at six, I had just developed the self-control to sit down for five minutes straight. Even then, I was a handful. Drove the teachers insane with all the questions. I was just curious. Had interests they weren’t equipped to give me enrichment for.”

Meg straightened up. That was the exact thing she worried about with Toby. She didn’t know just yet where the boy’s interests lay and what path he’d pursue later in life, but she never wanted him to feel limited to what some curriculum said was possible. “When did you decide you wanted to study astrophysics and engineering?”

Seth looked down at Toby, who was staring at the contents of Seth’s plate and pushed his plate closer to the child’s chicken-nugget dinner. Toby promptly scraped all of Seth’s creamed corn onto his dish.

Meg cringed.

“It’s all right. I wouldn’t have offered if it wasn’t. To answer your question, I don’t know. I’m more of an engineer at heart. The astrophysics just gave me a focus. While my PhD is in astrophysics, my undergraduate degree and my master’s work were in engineering.”