Replacing Gentry (7 page)

Chapter Eight

H
ey, are you insane!” the boys chorused, throwing their hands up in the air.

A rhetorical question I knew, but the appropriateness of it had me answering anyway. “Probably, but that’s not really the point, is it?” I waved the remote I’d just used to shut off the TV in both their faces.

The boys occupied their usual spot in the family room, or whatever they called this room. Daniel’s house had many spaces I couldn’t specifically identify. This one was sizeable and opened out to a stone-columned veranda. With abundant light, dark wood furniture, and throws draped here and there, the feel should have been warm but wasn’t. I closed my eyes for an instant. The room fell away, and I was left standing in an empty shell.

Bridger gestured toward the fifty-inch flat screen. “We were one dead hobgoblin away from a level we’ve never been to before. So if you’d kindly get to the point and let us get back to the game that’d be much appreciated,” he said in a sarcastic, disrespecting tone I didn’t appreciate in the least.

Still, I recoiled, unsure whether or not I had the right to assert my authority—
if
I even
had
any authority. Ignoring his tone, I sat down on the coffee table so I’d be eye level with the boys. They had that awkward adolescent look about them—noses a little too big for faces that were stuck somewhere between childhood and adulthood, dotted by a random blemish here and there. Though Bridger favored his father while Bodie favored Gentry, they were both destined to be heartbreakers.

“I have an idea, something the three of us can do together,” I said.

In unison, the boys heaved a
here-we-go-again
sigh. Then Bodie leaned forward and slid his eyes down the front of my sweater to the low neckline of the tank I wore underneath.

“Whatcha have in mind?” He assumed that heavy-lidded look he was so good at. “Or, are you open for suggestions?” he added with a wag of his brows.

Now it was my turn to wear a
not-again
look. Since we’d first met, Bodie had either been ignoring me completely or eyeballing my figure salaciously, I assumed in hopes of the same outcome—to get me to leave him and Bridger alone. But we were family now and I knew the longer I waited to actively engage them, the harder it would be for us to build a relationship. And since Daniel hadn’t been here much to help break the ice, I decided it was about time I stopped tiptoeing around the boys and took matters into my own hands.

I leveled him a cool stare. “Why do I always get the feeling you’re coming on to me?”

Bodie ran his tongue over his bottom lip. “Is that what you think?”

Bridger’s cheeks reddened as he suppressed a snicker.

Holding firm to my authoritative voice, I said, “What do
I
think? I think your behavior is inappropriate, and quite frankly, getting tiresome. Plus, I
don’t
think your father would approve.”

The coyness in Bodie’s voice hardened as did his eyes. “I have no idea what my father thinks and what he doesn’t. And since you haven’t known him that long, from where I’m sittin’,” he took another exaggerated look down the front of my tank, “I can see there’s only one reason he could have for marryin’ you.”

That did it. I wasn’t about to sit here and allow anyone, adolescent or otherwise, to grope me with his eyes. Bodie might be good at playing this passive aggressive game, but I was better.

“Really? That’s the best you can come up with? Let me guess, next you’ll be calling me a gold-digger.” I gave each of them a bored look. “I would think two young men with fancy private school educations could come up with something a little more imaginative.”

A tense silence exhumed from the boys as we stared each other down, waiting, as it seemed, for the other to give up first. My pulse was racing but I held strong to the upper hand. From what little experience I had working with teens, I knew they possessed a keen smell for adult fear.

Bridger broke the silence with a somber tone. “Then why did you marry our father?”

My first answers,
Because I’m crazy about him
, or
I always wanted a family
, seemed overly trite. And I knew that saying Daniel’s money had nothing to do with it, while true, might not sound genuine.

“Because this is where I feel I need to be,” I said, siting the only other explanation I had left. “And like it or not, I’m going to be the closest thing you have to a parent whenever your dad’s not around so you’d better drop the attitude, and fast. I’ve spent the last ten years working with ex-cons who are a whole lot scarier than the likes of you two. But if you want to do this the hard way, take your best shot.” I gave them that
you-don’t-scare-me
look I’d honed to perfection over the last decade. “So, what’s it gonna be?”

The boys exchanged a sidelong look before turning their staid eyes back on me. We sat again in an unnerving silence. As a therapist, I’d learned over the years the value of holding back, of allowing a client, or in this case, my stepsons, sufficient time to work out a productive response. Only today, as the seconds wore on, the stillness nagged at me like it never had before. Today, I had more at stake. This was personal.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take the quiet any longer and was about to throw out something else, Bridger piped up. “Fine by us if you want to hang out. What do you want to do,
play
with us?” he challenged.

I released a faint breath of relief just as that little voice of guilt inside my head advised me against stating my original plan. Was I doing this for the boys or to satisfy some obsessive curiosity of mine? Why the two had to be mutually exclusive, I couldn’t be sure.

Maybe it would be better to just play their violent video game and slash a few throats. Only the words came faster than my thoughts—an unfortunate condition I had yet to overcome—and I heard myself saying, “Well, I was thinking about your mom and how it’s—”

“Time to take her portrait down?” Bridger interrupted.

His response took me by surprise. “No, it
was
going to come down. I told them to leave it up,” I said, measuring every word.

Bridger eyed me with accusation. “You’re lying.”

“See for yourself.” I motioned toward the living room.

They hesitated for a moment but then got up and made for the front of the house. I trailed a few paces back to provide them some space. Standing under the stone fireplace, their eyes locked on the portrait of their mother, the hush that settled over the room felt like the few brief moments after the close of a prayer.

My foot found a loose floorboard as I joined them. The creak broke the reverence, and they turned toward me. I took courage in the gratitude, the sadness, and the need I saw looking back at me and gave them a gentle smile.

“Like I was saying, since it is your mother’s birthday today, and your dad isn’t here, and your aunt is bossing . . . I mean, preoccupied with something, I thought I could take you guys over to the cemetery to put some flowers on her grave.”

“You would do that?” Bridger asked. I nodded. “Why?”

“Look, just because your dad got married again doesn’t mean that everyone has to start pretending like your mother never existed. I’m not trying to replace her—I wouldn’t even know how,” I said, my voice cracking with unexpected emotion. “I can’t begin to know what it feels like to lose a mother and then have another adult—a total stranger—try to step into her place. I can imagine it wouldn’t be easy. I’m struggling to figure all this out the same as you two, and I was just kinda hoping we could help each other.”

The boys exchanged looks again—a silent communication I knew was common between twins—then gave me a shrug.

“We can,” Bridger said, “see how it goes.”

Though I knew this small step forward with Daniel’s boys could just as easily turn out to be my first mistake, relief grabbed hold of the nugget of hope they’d thrown me and I held tight.

“Great! Just let me get my purse,” I said and turned for the stairs before a huge oversight had my momentum skidding to a stop. “Oh, wait. Your dad took my car to the dealer yesterday to get the remote hatch-opener fixed.”

“He brought it back last night,” Bodie offered with a grin. “I saw him backin’ it into the garage.”

“He did?” That was news to me. “Oh, well, he didn’t give me back the keys.”

Bodie took off across the entry. “I know where he keeps the extras,” he called over his shoulder.

Bridger rolled his eyes before following his brother into the study, me trailing behind. With the exception of the two doorways and a tall window hung with heavy drapes, the study held a lifetime worth of reading material lined up neatly on bookshelves from floor to ceiling. By the time Bridger and I caught up, Bodie was already rounding the back of his father’s desk.

“Not even
you
know the combination to the safe,” Bridger said, pointing toward a painting of an officer in grey Civil War attire.

The portrait’s eyes, the color of steel, struck with a gaze so real—so human—he looked as if he were about to draw his sword and, with one well-executed swipe, rid trespassers forever from his presence. I shrank back from his warning.

As it turned out, Bodie wasn’t interested in the safe behind the war officer. He was digging his fingertips into the tight folds between two of the buttons on his father’s leather desk chair.

“You’re right, I don’t, so it’s a good thing we don’t need it,” he said, his face scrunched with effort as he pressed a little deeper. A few seconds later, a look of triumph lit his face. His fingers paused. Then, withdrawing his hand, he held up a small gold key.

Bridger’s jaw dropped. “How did you know that was in there?”

With a sly grin, Bodie had the desk drawer open. Shifting what looked like a loaded magazine for a nine-millimeter pistol to the side, he lifted out a set of car keys, the dealer’s plastic information tag still looped to them.

“The same way I know you have a
Girls Gone Wild
DVD hidden in your Wolverine action figure box, that Marlie’s been creepin’ on our momma, and that our father keeps condoms in the Bible next to his bed at the condo downtown.”

This time my jaw dropped, making it hard for me to properly formulate the reproach I was sure, as a parent, I was required to issue.

“Um . . . well . . . First of all, my laptop is private and off limits to you
and
it’s none of your business who I ‘creep’ on and who I don’t,” I started, trying to recover from the frankness of his admissions. “And second, if you think, even for a moment, about getting into your dad’s condoms
we
are going to have a talk I don’t think you want to be having with me.”

I turned to Bridger. “I’ll be confiscating that DVD.”

Bridger glared at me then his brother. “Thanks a lot, dirt-bag.”

Looking rather pleased with himself, Bodie didn’t appear the least bit affected by my censure (evidently, my reprimanding skills needed considerable work) as he held the keys out to me. “Let’s get outta here before Aunt Cooper finds out what we’re doin’,” he said.

I reached out for the keys, then pulled my hand back. “Why would your aunt care if I took you guys to the cemetery?” I asked, eyeing the boys.

They exchanged another look and then turned to me with a mutual shrug. “You’re right, she probably wouldn’t,” Bodie said, offering the keys to me again.

My car keys swung from his finger like a pendulum ticking down to an event I’d soon come to regret. Hesitating, I fought a losing battle between disappointing the boys as well as impeding my quest for answers, and heeding the forewarning beating against my chest. As usual, curiosity trumped trepidation.

Cautiously, I lifted the key ring from his finger. “Meet me outside in five.”

Careful to stay out of Cooper’s eyeshot, I made my way to the garages. The charcoaled clouds darkening the sky and moistening the air forecast stormy weather. I cinched my purse straps a little higher on my shoulder and looked around the driveway for the boys. To my right, four doors lined up along a garage that was separated from the house by a sweeping driveway. Out in the open, Cooper’s Land Rover sat unattended—vulnerable. A devious smile pulled across my lips. I walked over to it, and in the apparent absence of another human being, scrawled my finger through the thin sheet of dirt covering her rear window—

“Oh, Aunt Cooper’s gonna be mad!” A voice had me pulling my hand back.

Startled, I turned to see Bodie with a fist full of hydrangeas in one hand, the other pointing a finger toward the words I’d doodled.

“It’s just a joke,” I minimized with a lift of my shoulder. Inside, I scolded myself. I should be more concerned with being a good example than having a little fun at my tyrannical sister-in-law’s expense.

Bridger appeared at his brother’s side. He too had a mushrooming bouquet of flowers.
“
‘I wish my husband was this dirty,
’
” he repeated aloud the words I’d written. “Aunt Cooper’ll blame this on you,” he said to Bodie.

Bodie slapped me between the shoulder blades. “I like you’re style, Marlie. I think we’re gonna get on just fine.”

I huffed out an uncomfortable laugh.
So now I have the maturity of a teenage boy? Great!

“What’s with the flowers?” I asked.

“Our momma’s favorite,” Bridger explained.

I glanced around the yard, noticing that many of the flowerbeds were bursting with blue, pink, and white-orbed blooms. I guess that explained why I couldn’t use hydrangeas at our wedding.

Bridger punched a few buttons on a keypad and we all stood back waiting as one of the garage doors began a slow crawl to the top. The Lexus RX Hybrid Daniel had bought me as a wedding gift came into view.

“I can’t believe you kept this color,” said Bodie.

I glided my fingertips over the golden-brown iridescent paint. I wouldn’t say that brown was my favorite color, but the color Daniel had picked conveyed warmth, comfort, and elegance. “Because this color is perfect,” I said.

Bridger headed off to the far side of the garage. “I best put these clippers back before Herbert knows we borrowed them. You know how insane he is about his tools.”

As he went, he cautiously sidled around the chic blue Aston Martin Daniel drove only on special occasions. Most days he elected to travel back and forth from downtown in a hired car as to not waste one minute of valuable time driving when he could be working.