Cherish & Blessed (13 page)

T
HE
HOUSE
had finally fallen quiet. They’d survived a tumultuous Thanksgiving, and even though a laundry list of potential potholes was already manifesting on the family calendar, Evan Cerelli let himself relax.

Briefly.

Matt Haight—boyfriend, coparent, chief household negotiator and peacekeeper—snored peacefully beside him as Evan stared up at the ceiling fan. Another wall scaled, another storm weathered. They were doing really well at this negotiating life together thing.

Miranda had a serious boyfriend, Kent, and only a few months left before graduation from NYU. She’d agreed to work on their relationship and her own lingering issues from her mother’s death.

Katie thrived at college, a fabulous social butterfly, living life like a campus brochure in Boston. But, Evan reminded himself, she was still a kid who needed, wanted, and deserved attention.

Danny, the only boy and the quietest of all his children—sometimes Evan worried about what was going on behind those serious eyes. Trouble? Anger? Sadness?

And Elizabeth, his youngest by all of ten minutes, wired into the family’s emotional heartbeat and empathetic to everyone’s moods. If he looked at Danny and worried about his walls, he spent his time looking at Elizabeth concerned that she had none at all.

The captain’s exam was coming up in a few months.

And Matt—his rock, his lover, his partner in every sense of the word. Could they keep this balance? Could they always right themselves so easily in the face of problems?

Evan knew he was obsessive.

Knew he overthought everything, with a negative spin, of course.

He knew he wanted to do his best for his kids and for Matt, and for the people who depended on him at the station. There were expectations about him being a captain. Suddenly he had a visibility he had never experienced. An accountability to represent not only himself honorably but all the members of GOAL—fellow officers wanting to be respected and accepted by the department regardless of their sexual orientation.

For a man who long resisted labels, the mantle held a weight beyond public opinion.

Snick snick snick
.

The ceiling fan taught him one thing at least: no matter what your mind is prone to do, no matter what hoops it forced you to jump through, you couldn’t stop the world from turning. It was going to, whether you were ready or not.

F
OR
C
HRISTMAS
,
they went to the Caymans, thanks to the deep pockets of Bennett and Daisy Ames, a lonely vacation house in need of occupants, and a need to escape the cold. Six glorious days at a beach house that looked like it fell out of a movie, and not a snowflake in sight.

Matt had never been so happy.

Nothing seemed to put a dent in his good mood, except when Evan disappeared from the family fun to take three phones calls during the trip as his late wife’s mother complained about the decision.

A stroke had claimed his father-in-law the year before; Matt didn’t go to the funeral because he wasn’t invited, very pointedly not included when Josie called Evan with news of the arrangements. No one felt like being an asshole during a funeral, and neither Evan nor Matt would do that to the kids. In the end, Evan went to support his children and his former sister-in-law, Elena, whose boyfriend hadn’t been invited either.

The entire thing was fucked-up in a way that even Matt, with a family tree choked by rot, just shook his head and laughed at. Matt and Walt drank at a nearby bar as their significant others buried Phil MacGregor—drunk, racist, homophobic, and just generally an unhappy human being, who had somehow produced two really lovely daughters.

“Should we toast to him?” Walt had asked, perched on the stool beside Matt and looking entirely out of place in this Long Island neighborhood bar, and not just because he could have been Morgan Freeman’s bespectacled younger brother. “Isn’t that a thing at Irish wakes?”

Matt sipped at his Guinness, shrugging as he stared at their reflection in the mirrored wall behind the bar. It was quiet; most folks in this suburb were still at work on a Tuesday at four in the afternoon, so they had their place to themselves. “If this were my family, we’d have been invited then ignored and insulted until someone threw a punch.”

Walt’s eyes got big behind his glasses, and Matt laughed.

“I take it that’s not how your family does it?”

“No, not at all. Passive-aggressive silence, maybe, but no punches thrown.”

Matt considered his half-f glass. He touched on all the nasty phone calls he watched Evan manage over the years since they met, the many times he came back from picking up the kids with a look of fury in his eyes.

“We should have gone,” he said finally. When they got the call, Evan didn’t have much to say, but Katie and the twins were sad. Even with all the drama their grandparents put them through after their mother’s death, he was still their only grandfather, and they grieved.

Maybe that he was dead. And maybe because he stopped being a positive force in their lives for the past few years—and that would never be resolved.

“That might have just caused more problems,” Walt said with a sigh. “Josie blames you and I for ruining the family.”

“It’s a shame one of us isn’t Jewish. We’d have the bigot’s worst nightmare trifecta.”

Walt laughed, folding up a bar napkin into an accordion shape. “Sorry—Presbyterian.”

“Hell, I’m an Irish Catholic. You have a fancy degree. We’re damned impressive catches.”

“Hmmm….” Walt played with the little fan shape. “My black isn’t going anywhere.”

“And neither is my gay.” He air quoted appropriately, then finished off his draft, savoring every delicious sip. “We really were his worst nightmare.”

“Maybe that’s what we should toast to,” Walt said dryly.

Matt signaled the bartender for another round so they could do just that.

Later, Walt took Elena home and Matt wrapped his arms around Katie and Elizabeth as the family met up at a diner parking lot halfway between the funeral home and the bar.

And with Phil gone, that meant Josie MacGregor had nothing else to live for but guilting and shaming Elena into breaking up with her boyfriend, and forcing Evan to let her spend more time with the children.

Evan was willing to let her have a relationship with her only grandchildren, but it was clear whatever he offered would never be enough. Josie was never going to forgive him for Sherri’s car accident or dating Matt or making him the twins’ guardian. Everything Evan did was an affront to his marriage to Sherri and therefore a slap in her mother’s face.

So they went to the Caymans for Christmas.

Miranda had gone home with Kent instead, which just a few weeks before might have caused hurt feelings, but in this case, she didn’t do it to be a brat. She did it to be considerate of Kent and his parents’ feelings, as she owed all of them a debt of gratitude for still speaking to her after Thanksgiving. She and Evan had a mature discussion over the phone and arranged a family celebration a few days before they left for their vacation.

She even gave Matt a scarf for Christmas, and it wasn’t covered in rat poison or dog poo.

It was a new and exciting world.

T
HEY
GOT
home the day before New Year’s Eve, disappointed that the perfect sunshine and crystal blue skies hadn’t followed them back to Brooklyn. As they were dumping suitcases of sandy clothing onto the laundry room floor, the doorbell rang.

Helena Abbot, Evan’s partner, and Shane Lowry, her newly minted fiancé, stood on the doorstep.

“We’re getting married!” she said brightly, stomping snow off her feet in the foyer.

“I knew that,” Evan said cautiously, shutting the door behind them. He also knew his fellow cop, and the big eyes and overly wide smile were hard to miss. And a cause for concern.

“Two days after New Year’s! So Thursday! Woo!” Helena spread her arms out.

Shane ducked just in time so as not to get smacked by her flailing arm. “She’s had a lot of coffee,” he murmured as Evan nodded.

“Her and her mom have been….”

“Oh yes.” Shane fake coughed. “It’s been….”

“We’re getting married Thursday! Because Mom wants to be there!” Helena chirped as if Evan and Shane weren’t talking. “Woo!”

“Take her into the living room. I’ll get some tea,” Evan said, soothing and soft.

Helena gave him a nasty side eye.

“Tea” became beers and frozen pizza (everything they had in the fridge), and the whole story poured out.

Helena’s parents—her mother, Serena, and stepfather, Vic—were visiting for Christmas, and the celebration over their Thanksgiving engagement had given way to wedding planning. Wedding planning at a level that sent Helena into fits.

Hence their visit and the decision for a city hall wedding as soon as humanly possible.

“You have to help me,” Helena whimpered from under Shane’s arm. “You remember her wedding?”

Everyone shivered a little, even Shane, and he hadn’t been around for Serena and Vic’s nuptials.

“We’ll help you out, promise,” Evan said, giving her hand a squeeze. He pretended not to notice Matt staring a hole into the side of his head.

“I’
M
SO
glad we offered our house to host the rehearsal dinner!” Matt said with all the false enthusiasm of a man carrying other people’s suitcases up a flight of stairs. He was on his third trip, and January’s Happy New Year gift of a shit-ton of ice wasn’t making his life any easier. “And having people sleep here instead of hotels so we can all go to city hall together? That was a stroke of genius.”

Evan pretended he couldn’t hear the complaining. He hid in the kitchen, unpacking the food Serena Abbot Wolkowski had sent ahead.

Because after feeding four children successfully for several years, he was clearly incapable of handling dinner for twelve. (And even if she was concerned about his ability, Matt was here too.)

Wasn’t eloping supposed to cut down on the wedding drama?

Helena wandered in, her expression reflecting a similar question.

“My mother,” she started, red-faced from the cold and wrapped in a man’s black overcoat and two scarves, lips trembling.

Evan put another casserole dish of scalloped potatoes in the refrigerator, which was rapidly running out of space. “Your mother continues to cook like she works in a prison,” he noted, returning to the bags cluttering his entire kitchen.

“My mother has been here for two weeks,” Helena sniffed, pulling off her pom-pom hat and then one of the scarves. “They’ve been here for two weeks, and I swear to God—”

He didn’t let her finish, holding up one hand to stop her tirade, because he could hear the front door opening again and a chorus of happy voices. Vic, Serena’s husband, and Shane, the groom to be—getting along swimmingly—had entered, along with the mother-of-the-bride in question.

“Small wedding. I said small wedding,” Helena whispered, clutching Evan’s arm.

“It’s small,” he soothed, lying as he began untangling the second scarf from around her neck. When he unbuttoned her coat (or Shane’s coat, he suspected), he found his usually well-put-together partner in an oversized NYPD sweatshirt and ripped jeans. “Just you guys, and us and the kids, and your mom and stepfather, and Bennett and Daisy….”

Helena’s wild violet eyes didn’t convey a sense of agreement. “Small,” she whispered again.

Evan pulled her into a hug, patting her back awkwardly. They had an hour before dinner—clearly the wine needed to come out now.

Serena swept in a second later, smelling like roses and motherly efficiency, and kicked Evan out of his own kitchen.

And boy, was he grateful.

After that, Evan relied on his own parenting skill set.

He sent Helena upstairs, in the company of Katie and Elizabeth, for some “girl time”—Katie carried a full wineglass of chardonnay while Elizabeth chirped excitedly about her duties tomorrow as junior bridesmaid.

Check.

Danny got Matt a beer after the last of the luggage was deposited upstairs, and turned on the Knicks game while Evan herded Vic and Shane into the living room and settled them down. Then Evan got another beer for himself.

Check. Check.

It was a little sexist in its division of girl versus boy activities, but everyone needed to get through the next twenty-four hours by whatever means necessary.

Evan tried to unhitch his spine as he sat on the sofa next to Matt, but it was hard to relax when Matt was vibrating like a battery-powered toy. He wasn’t a big fan of houseguests (not after their Thanksgiving Festival of Stress) and didn’t understand Evan’s point of view for allowing this circus sideshow in through the front door.

How could Evan fully explain that his long-standing friendship with Helena outranked all logic when she showed up a few days ago, pushed to the limits of her daughterly patience and calm, and the city of New York was apparently no longer big enough to house both her and her mother? She’d had his back so many times—he had to have hers.