Between the Sheets (33 page)

Friday after school, Casey had gone with Ty to the Turners’ house to pick up a load, but Ty had been so crabby that as soon as he rolled to a stop in their driveway the kid was gone. Ty couldn’t blame him.

He didn’t even want to hang out with himself.

His silent phone felt like a lead weight in his pocket and he stupidly kept checking, as if he’d missed the bing of a message coming in. The house across the street was
both too close and impossibly far away. And he couldn’t stop staring at it, hoping to catch a glimpse of Shelby coming and going from her car or the Art Barn, which was totally making him feel like a stalker.

I’m going to have to move,
he thought,
just so I can get on with my damn life
.

Once all the parts were inside the garage, he fought the urge to take a hammer to both his phone and his own head and decided instead to get to work selling the clutches.

Inside he looked around for his laptop so he could email Tom Kavanaugh, who would buy some of the parts. But again, the laptop wasn’t in the living room. Or the kitchen. Or the non-office office.

“Casey!” he bellowed. “Where is the damn laptop?”

He headed upstairs to Casey’s room, which was empty, and the usually tidy desk was covered in a science project he was working on for school. Ty, still looking for his computer, dug through the papers and the papier-mâché planets that were supposed to turn into a solar system.

“Casey!” He opened the top drawer of the dresser, but there were only pens and papers and a broken iPod.

He opened the second and third; still no computer.

The last drawer was heavy. He yanked it out too hard and the drawer fell out on the floor.

“Ty!” Casey cried, coming into the doorway. “Don’t open that!”

But it was too late. The drawer was open and Ty was looking down at … what, he wasn’t sure.

Junk. Well, not all of it. There was a pack of cigarettes. A magazine with a mailing label from the doctor’s office where Ty got Casey’s school physical done. A coffee mug from Cora’s. A bunch of … art stuff. A ton of art stuff, really. A crystal from Shelby’s chandelier, a clay figurine. One of the tissue-paper flowers from the
flower wall in the Art Barn. A shitload of art supplies. Little stuffed animals, batteries still in packages. Candy wrappers. A handful of pens that said “Welcome to Bishop.”

“What is this stuff?”

“Nothing. Junk.”

Casey rushed in as if to grab the stuff but Ty picked up a crystal tumbler;
The Peabody
was etched on the bottom of it, and Casey stopped in his tracks.

“This isn’t junk.” He picked up a ball cap that said
The Pour House
on it.

As much as he didn’t want to believe the story this stuff was telling him, he couldn’t ignore it when it stared him right in the face.

His skin buzzed with some strange version of panic.
This can’t be happening. It can’t
.

Where did you get this?
was a useless question.

“Are you stealing this stuff?”

Casey stood in the doorway, breathing hard. Every muscle coiled to bolt. His silence more than enough answer.

“Why?”

Casey shrugged and Ty felt his temper, restrained by shock, flare.

“Really, you’re just going to stand there and shrug?” he demanded, pulling out the stuff from the Art Barn and dumping it on the floor. It was a giant pile. He picked the stupid flower up in his hands and stepped toward Casey.

“Why would you steal from Ms. Monroe?” Ty demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s bullshit, Casey!” Ty yelled, and Casey flinched backward in the doorway. His arm lifted to block the punch he must have thought Ty was going to throw.

Oh. Oh God
. Ty reared back, tripped over the drawer, and fell back against the desk.

Slowly, Casey lowered his arm, but he didn’t look at Ty.

Their breathing sawed through the silence of the room.

“Sit down,” Ty said.

Casey shook his head and irritation spiked through Ty hard, making him clench his jaw against a thousand ill-advised words.

Handle this like Pop,
he thought.
Not like your asshole father
.

“I swear to God, I’m not going to hit you, buddy—”

“Don’t call me buddy!” Casey yelled, red-faced and small, from nearly behind the door.

Ty blinked, stunned. “What?”

“I hate it when you call me buddy. All the cops and the social workers and foster parents, they called me buddy because they couldn’t remember my name. You should know my name.”

Tears were flooding Casey’s eyes and Ty was flatfooted and empty with shock. Too much was happening and he couldn’t keep up.

“I do. Of course I know your name. I … I didn’t know it bothered you. If I’d known, I never would have said it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Casey shook his head and a heavy damp silence settled in the room, extinguishing Ty’s temper.
It’s only been five months
, he reminded himself.

“We have to talk about this drawer, Casey,” he said.

“It’s nothing. Junk I found.” Everything about his son was boarded up hard against him and Ty could not for the life of him see his way in. Between Shelby and now Casey, he’d never felt more alone. More ill-equipped.

Ty closed his eyes for a moment. He sat down on the edge of the desk, unsure if he was ever going to get back up again.

How do I get this kid to let me in? Before he gets thrown in jail. Or expelled from school
.

“It makes it better,” Casey whispered.

Ty lifted his head. Opened his eyes. “Makes what better?”

“When things are bad.” Casey shook his head, watching Ty from the corner of his eyes like a wary animal. “Can we just forget it? I’ll take all the stuff back and apologize but can we just forget it? I haven’t taken anything for a long time.”

“No. No, Casey, I’m not going to forget it. I’m not supposed to.” When Ty stepped forward, Casey stepped back. So Ty sat down on the edge of the bed, making sure he kept that space Casey liked around himself.

He’d sort of thought they’d gotten their groove. Things weren’t perfect, but they were better, and finding this pile of stolen junk in his kid’s room was sort of like opening up a floor and finding all the support beams had been destroyed by rot. He wasn’t angry anymore but he was worried. And impossibly sad.

Casey stood still in the doorway, staring at that spot three feet in front of him.

Ah, fuck it
. Ty stood, got right in that spot, and forced his son to look at him. He didn’t touch him, but by standing there, he forced Casey to look him right in the eye.

Casey looked up at him, as if surprised to see him.

That’s right, Casey, no more running
.

“Okay, listen. You’ve got a meeting with that art therapist that Shelby recommended. It’s a month away and you can tell me now and we can talk about it. Or you can tell her. But I really wish you’d tell me. I thought we were doing better. I thought … I don’t know, Casey, I thought you were happier.”

“That’s why I take the stuff,” Casey said. “Because I was happy and it felt so weird at first and taking things made it feel better. Normal. You know?”

You know? God. No. I don’t know. How am I supposed to know that?

But it started to make sense. What kind of practice did Casey have for being happy? What kind of framework to understand it? To understand that it wasn’t going to go away.

His normal was being worried and scared, and stealing stuff probably made him feel that way.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “I guess I do know. How long since you’ve stolen anything?”

“The first day of being suspended.”

“That’s not that long ago.”

Casey shrugged.

“Why’d you stop?”

“I don’t know,” Casey said to Ty’s knees. “I guess I just got used to being happy.”

Oh, Christ would this kid ever stop wrecking him?

“I’m glad you’re happy,” Ty said. “Really glad.”

“Are you?” Casey wrapped his fist in the hem of his shirt. “Happy, I mean?”

Ty blinked. “Of course.”

Casey shot him a wholly adult cut-the-crap look.

“Look, Casey, with you. With us—I’m totally happy. I really am. I won’t lie. Being a dad so suddenly like that, it was weird at first and I wasn’t sure I could do it, but lately … lately it’s been great.” It wasn’t a lie. No part of this was a lie and it felt so good to tell him.

“Then why have you been so grumpy? Is it Ms. Monroe?” he asked. “I mean, she’s been kind of crabby, too, lately. At school and stuff.”

“She’s got a lot going on, Casey. Her mom isn’t well and she needs someone with her a lot of the time.”

“We could help her though,” Casey said, and Ty just felt the ground open up under him and he grabbed onto his son for support. His shoulder and then the back of his
head and then, though the kid was stiff and awkward, Ty pulled him into his arms. Held him as tight as he could.

“You’re such a good kid, Casey,” Ty whispered into his red hair. “I’m so proud to be your dad.”

Casey let Ty hug him. It wasn’t a reciprocal thing at all and after Ty realized that his son wasn’t going to hug him back or even relax into it, he let him go. It was better than that first hug, months ago, but they had some work to do.

“Now,” Ty said, forcing himself to be cheery. Forcing himself not to cry for the bittersweet pain of love and parenthood. “What are we going to do about this stuff?”

“Forget about it?” Casey asked hopefully.

“Fat chance.”

He and Casey gathered up the stolen things. They threw away the junk, separated the stuff that needed to be returned, and got out in the truck to return the stolen items to the various businesses and people Casey had stolen them from.

“This is going to be terrible,” Casey said.

“Yep,” Ty agreed, pulling to a stop in front of Cora’s.

“Do I really—”

“Yep.”

Casey sighed and popped open the door, and Ty couldn’t hold it in anymore. “I love you.”

Casey didn’t say anything. He just wrapped his hands around the plastic handles of the bag full of Cora’s dish-ware and started to hop out of the truck.

Did you hear me?
Ty wanted to ask, feeling like somehow saying those words had cleared out part of him. Created a hole that needed if not filling, then at least acknowledgment. But he knew Casey had heard him.

Maybe saying that had been too fast. Kind of like his big ultimatum to Shelby two weeks ago—he’d ruined
everything by rushing in. Forcing things that didn’t need to be forced.

And maybe it was unfair to expect more from Casey than what the kid could give.

God
, he thought, feeling small.
I suck at this
.

Casey jumped out of the truck and when he turned to shut the door, Ty saw that he was smiling.

Smiling wasn’t actually the right word. The kid beamed at super-high wattage. His freckles glowed, his eyes gleamed. He was a diamond polished to a high shine.

I did that
, thought Ty, astounded by the transformation. This version of his son without the weight of his past, without fear or doubt, secure for just a few moments that he was safe and he was loved—he was beautiful.

Casey went inside the café and Ty imagined what Shelby would be like without being checked by her past. Shrouded in her fear, encased in her doubt.

How bright she would shine if she would just let herself be loved.

Shelby’s house had changed. All the plates with the chips, the rose curtains, the blue carpet with the holes where she’d dropped the candle during Hurricane Katrina when the power had gone out, they were the same.

But the house was different.

Having Melody, the nurse, here every day changed … everything.

It wasn’t just a weight off her back; it was as if she could lift her head, look around, and breathe for the first time in at least a year.

But all she saw when she looked around was how far she had let herself and her mother slip.

The boxes in the hallways. The living room overrun with photographs and albums. Mom’s bedroom was a
mess of clothing and shoes and discarded jewelry. Yes, things were in stacks, but she had to walk around the stacks to get to the bathroom. The laundry room. Mom’s bed.

Her own room, which she’d kept notoriously tidy since she was a girl, now had stacks of homework and Art Barn projects that would normally be in the barn, but because of the last week with Mom, she’d been doing them in the house.

Saturday morning, as she walked out of the bathroom the hem of her robe caught the edge of one of the stacked boxes, and three boxes and a bag balanced on top fell to the floor, yarn, knitting needles, and pattern books spilling across the blue carpet.

That’s it
, she thought, and she decided to take the boxes to the Art Barn and maybe start a knitting class in partnership with Ashley’s senior citizen programs.

But behind the boxes were more boxes. Inexplicably two of Mom’s nightgowns, the hems covered in mud and leaves. Beneath that, old files from the church.

Shelby stepped into the kitchen, where Melody, in her no-nonsense scrubs, was standing at the counter. She had thought this would be awful, having a person in their house. But Melody was so … needed. Shelby’s gratitude for her presence diminished any awkwardness and when she reached for the coffeepot, she gave the woman a warm smile.

“You getting any sleep?” Melody asked, putting Mom’s pills into the pill case on the counter.

“Ah, she finally settled down around two a.m. last night,” Shelby said.

“Are you staying up that late every night?”

Shelby took a deep breath, about to lie, but then decided there was no point. “I didn’t use to. But with the routine being changed, I’ve been worried that she might wander.”

“Has she?”

“I lock the doors at night.”

“You know she can work a lock,” Melody said with a smile.

“She doesn’t leave the house,” Shelby said with confidence that she didn’t totally feel. “I’m going to clear out some of the stuff in the hallways.”