Uncovered (Dev and Lee Book 4) (12 page)

“Not worried about her scheming? I mean, hello. Coyote.”

He laughs and points to himself. “And I’m a fox. Nah, my biggest worry is that she might want a family one day. Then I might be visitin’ some of those adoption centers.”

“Maybe by that time we’ll be figuring it out together.” The thought intrigues me. Maybe having a cub to take care of would give me something to do. Like Gena, like Angela. I’m sure with Dev’s money, we could get an adoption pretty quickly. If I wanted to commit to that career.

Hal laughs, echoing my thoughts. “I sure think you’d shake up the PTA meetings.”

“Yeah.” I grin. “Maybe I’ll spare the other moms that trauma for now.”

I wish him luck with his coyote girlfriend as we head off, and tell him that next time I want details, and that if we have to go stand by the water cooler in the lobby of the bank, we can do that. He snorts and suggests a coffee shop instead. “Why do you even want details?”

I pat his shoulder. “I’m interested in your well-being.”

“Jesus Dog. Just go research that trial. That oughta give you somethin’ to worry about besides my sex life.”

“Yeah. Lawyers. Much more titillating.”

He snorts. “Thought you didn’t care about tits.”

I point at him. “You’re better than that pun, Mister Journalist.”

He laughs. “Want a ride home?”

On the way back to Dev’s, he gives me a few tips about researching the proceedings of a trial. When I get home, I open up the laptop and go through a little more of Dev’s e-mail. The high schoolers wrote back with interview questions, so I write out answers for Dev and then file them away to read to him on the phone that night.

Hal’s tips for researching the trial involve a lot of phone calling and identifying myself as a freelance journalist. He suggested not mentioning any affiliation with Equality Now, because lawyers tend to be less forthcoming when dealing with political organizations. Not that they can say much about their cases to journalists, but what little they can talk about, they’d keep to themselves if they think it’s going to get a political spin.

Unless they’re taking a
cause celebre
or something. Which this might be, or might turn into, depending on the prosecuting attorney. I find the case number easily enough, but to get records from the court I have to actually go there in person. So I call up the prosecuting attorney’s office and talk to the secretary there, who stalls for a bit and finally puts me through to the attorney, a lady who sounds cervine over the phone. She tells me very politely that the family is not interested in having a great deal of media coverage over this case.

I don’t have any illusions about deer being pushovers, and I don’t approach her that way, but I try the best arguments I can think of: “What about the chances that it might save another young teen’s life? What about putting pressure on them with public opinion?” She does say that she’ll talk to the family and will give them my contact information in case they want to talk about their son, but she also says that this will likely not happen until the case is over.

So I thank her for her time and hang up. I wonder if there’s anyone I know in that general area whom I could convince to go down to the courthouse for me. I wonder if it’s healthy for me to get caught up in this again, when I was just about to let it go. There’s no hope that this is actually going to end up like the final scene of a bad movie, with a judge in the courtroom decreeing that Families United is evil and forcing them to disband, but that makes for an entertaining daydream.

I’m still musing over that when Dev calls. “Practice today, practice tonight,” he says. “Boliat’s cold. Still looks the same as the last time we were here.”

“I’m not staying in that flea-ridden motel this weekend.”

He laughs. “I got you a room at the Intercontinental. You’ll like it. It’s three blocks from our hotel. Everything’s really walkable downtown here. We could probably walk to the stadium.”

“How’s the town look?”

“Crazy. Boxers signs all over, blue and white flags flying out of cars. Strike painted himself all red for the flight.”

“He’s got a dye person in every city, huh?”

“Must be.” He breathes into the phone. “Miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“What’ve you been up to?”

I recap my day, briefly. Then I take a breath. “And just looking into this lawsuit over Vince King.”

He pauses, but doesn’t otherwise react to the name. “For Hal, or for you?”

“For me. But he’s going to help with the article if I get enough info to write it.” He doesn’t say anything. I feel a prickling of worry. I thought I could talk about Vince King in this neutral context, that he wouldn’t have that anger flare up again. It’s not like I’m asking him to do anything, after all. But in his silence, I feel the tension rising, and I change the subject, like a skater avoiding the middle of a suspect lake in early winter. “In return, I might be helping him with adoption if he keeps scoring with his coyote gal.”

That shakes him free of his silence. “Adoption? What do you know—have you been—wait, do you want a cub?”

He sounds strangled. I consider teasing him a bit more, then remember it’s a playoff week. “Not for a while. But he figures it wouldn’t hurt for us to know. If we ever did.”

“If we had a cub, I’d want to be living in Lake Handerson so my folks could take care of it.”

“Oh, you think we’d have a tiger cub, do you?”

“Not necessarily, but they wouldn’t care. They’d love a fox or a tiger grandson.”

I’m not so sure about that, but again, this isn’t the time to argue. “Well, we can see in a couple years, I guess. How’s practice?”

“Intense. Hard. Feels good, though.”

“Good. What are you working on?”

He tells me about the plays and it all sounds good to me, but I haven’t watched film of the Boliat team, so I don’t know their tendencies beyond what I can read in the columns this week. So I make approving noises, and remind him to keep his footwork and timing crisp.

“Want me to book your ticket for Friday?” he asks, when the conversation lulls.

“I have your credit card,” I say. “I can book it.”

“Okay. Can’t wait to see you. You going to get a Boxers shirt?”

“Of course.” I grin, rub my paws down the Firebirds t-shirt I’m wearing. “It’ll be a nice change to wear clothes. Right now I’m not wearing anything. Just lying here.”

“Send a pic,” he says. “You’ve got that new phone. Use it.”

“Ooh. Okay, I will. You going to send me one back?”

He taps his claws on something. “Maybe. Depends if Charm goes out tonight.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

So when I hang up, I do strip off my shirt and pants, work myself up nice and hard, and then spend ten minutes on the bed figuring out how to make the phone take a picture of me, by which time any arousal I had is long gone. But I get the picture, and then I have to take two more ’til I get one that looks good. Then it takes me another ten minutes to figure out how to send it to him.

I wrap an apron around my middle and make another quick dinner of chicken with lemons and capers, thinking about the day and how else I might get to the King lawsuit. Because it feels kind of daring and naughty, I leave just the apron on, sitting my bare butt on the chair to eat.

There is another way I might be able to get some info on the lawsuit, I realize, only my fur prickles when I think of it, and my ears flatten, and I have to put my fork down. It takes a moment for me to recover from the memory of the visit to Mother’s place again, not because I’m having a nervous breakdown or anything, but because I keep running through all the things I wanted to say, all the brilliant, sharp, cutting remarks that would make her feel terrible for what she did. I press my fingers to my eyes and shake my head until I manage to sidetrack my thoughts.

I could call Mrs. Hedley, the otter, I guess. Pretend to be someone else—maybe a friend of one of her kids? She mentioned sons. But no, that’s probably a bad idea, too. No, there’s really only one person I can call, and so I put some pants on and call my father.

“This is becoming interestingly regular,” he says when he picks up. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“If you wanted to ask Mother a question about Families United,” I say, and he interrupts.

“What you mean is that you want me to ask her something.”

I fidget, curl my tail around my free paw. “I want to know what’s in the case.”

“Why, Wiley? What possible good will that do?”

“Do I really have to tell you about bringing things to light?”

“Do I need to remind you what happened last time?”

My left thumb, buried in my tail fur, twitches. “I got what I wanted.”

“Eventually. Probably not the easiest way possible.”

“All right, then.” I settle back into the couch. “Tell me a better way to go about it. Should I just let this happen, let them go out and tell gay kids how broken they are, that their only chance in life is to give up part of what they are?”

His sigh comes from a long way away. “Maybe you should focus on the parts of the world that directly affect you and your life. If you’re going to call your mother, you should call her to work out your differences, not use her to push your political agenda.”

“I
am
trying to work out our differences. By showing her the things those friends of hers won’t tell her.” He starts to object, and I say, “What good is being an activist if I can’t even convince my own family?”

“Is being right more important than being at peace with your mother?”

It takes me a while to sort that one out. I can’t separate the two, is the thing. I went through years downplaying my sexuality, hiding it from my workplace, not discussing it with my family, and now that it’s out, it’s inconceivable that I could shove it back into its closet.

The thought occurs to me that that is exactly what Brian would tell me, and I squirm on the couch while I remind myself that people who support gay rights can also be assholes. “I can’t choose between them,” I say, because Father’s still waiting on the line. “It was hard enough not sharing part of my life, but if she’s actively working against it…”

“I understand that,” Father says patiently. “But she’s joined that organization for support. If she saw that she didn’t need that support, if she thought you would talk reasonably to her and address her concerns…”

“Oh, what concerns?” I sit up and glare out the window. “That she’s going to get gay fleas from my pride jacket, so she’d better burn it?”

“She has a lot to explain to you, too,” he says. I am really amazed at his patience. I would’ve hung up on me by now.

“Maybe she can explain it to you and you can translate.” I do bite back “from crazy bitch,” which was sort of on the tip of my tongue, but also was giving me a real bad feeling while it was there, because I didn’t want to say that. I swallow it down and it sits uneasily on top of my dinner, making my stomach churn and my chest tighten.

“I don’t expect the two of you to talk right away,” he says. “God knows that day was hard on all of us. At least you didn’t call me in tears later.”

“She called you in tears?” I think that should make me feel better than it does, that she regretted something that happened.

“Angry tears, I suppose you might say, but yes, after our visit she was quite upset.”

“Good. So was I.”

“Wiley, she does still love you.”

“She loves who I used to be. Who she thought I used to be.”

“Well, yes. But that’s still you. So the other thing I would do is try to remember the cub you used to be and remind her that that’s still you, that you haven’t changed all that much just because of whom you want to date.”

“That’s an important part of me,” I snap, but I’m thinking about it as I say it. There is more to me than just my boyfriend, although over the last few months, that’s really dominated my life. When he started for the Firebirds, when he came out, when I was outed, when I tussled with his family…all of that was about our relationship. And maybe what’s happening now, now that all of that has settled down, is that I am finding these other parts of myself that were neglected. That I like being useful, helping toward a goal, that I like the sport of football and miss it terribly now when I’m away from it, that I like having friends like Hal with whom I can have normal conversations.

“It is an important part,” Father says, “and eventually that is something she’s going to have to come to accept. I’ve talked to her a little bit about Christmas and what a warm and accepting community you’ve surrounded yourself with, how you are building a life that looks in many ways like the life we always wanted for you. The fact that you are building it with a male tiger rather than a female fox has remarkably little effect on how happy you are.”

If I say anything, it’ll be along the lines of “then why can’t she see that?” and we’ll just go round and round and I am tired of that. I might actually end up in angry tears if I do that many more times. So I switch topics. “I had a discussion with Hal about adopting cubs,” I say. “He’s dating a coyote.”

“Seriously?”

“Is he dating seriously, or did I seriously have that discussion?”

He chuckles, and I feel the relief in his voice to be away from the topic of family as well. “Yes.”

“The dating isn’t all that serious as far as I know. But we did have the discussion. I’m not really looking to adopt any cubs yet, but it made me think. You know, Angela and Gena kept themselves occupied during their husbands’ football years by taking care of a family. I’d bet Vonni and Daria are pregnant within a year, too. Seems to be one of the things football wives do.”

“Feeling bored? How’s the Yerba job look?”

I tell him briefly about the Firebirds job and my conversation with Emmanuel. “So there are things I can do. Just not right now. But Hal’s helping me with—um, researching the…”

“The court thing. What have you found out?”

“The court docket just says ‘negligent homicide and aggravated assault.’”

“Because the kid killed himself?”

“Yeah.” I curl my tail back around my hips.

“Doesn’t seem like much of a case.”