Chapter 2
Two years later
DAVID had the cab drop him off at the east gate of the compound, the private gate. The arch still displayed the twisting initials GK, belonging to the cattle baron who’d originally built the house and outbuildings back in the early twenties. The stone structure beside the road, though, had been put in about ten years ago to shelter the remote access to the computer that now managed the big, wrought-iron gates. David ducked into the shelter and keyed in his security password.
“Hello, David,” the tinny voice said from the speakers on the panel.
“Hey, Andrew,” David replied. “How they hanging?”
“They aren’t hanging at all,” the computer replied. “I possess no sexual organs, as you well know. It’s been a long time since you’ve been home.”
“It sure has,” David sighed. “Just the foot gate, Andy.”
The computer didn’t answer; it had acquired sufficient voice recognition patterns to activate David’s security access, and the smaller gate inset into the larger one swung open.
“Thanks, Andy,” David said.
“You’re welcome, David. Welcome home.”
It was all preprogrammed text; even the comment about sex organs. David had programmed it into his access codes years ago, in his smart-assed teenage years. But even preprogrammed badinage made David feel like he had been welcomed back. Too bad he wasn’t as sure of his welcome by the flesh-and-blood residents of the Tyler compound. He picked up the duffel he’d dropped on the ground and went through the small gate, giving it a push to set it back on a close trajectory. Then it was just a quarter-mile hike up the asphalt road to his destination, the two-story stone gatehouse.
Before he went in, though, he paused and looked out over the panorama, a sight that had been as familiar to him as his own face once upon a time. It had been more than three years since he’d set foot on the land where he’d grown up—he might have only been the housekeeper’s son, but the Tyler family was part of his own, and this the only home he’d known. Now he wasn’t really sure what it was, except for the place where his mother lived and worked. It looked the same, though. A half mile to the south sprawled the low buildings of Tyler Technologies, with their wood and adobe walls and tile roofs showing red through the surrounding aspens; a half mile north and west of there was the main house, a hacienda-style mansion with extensive gardens, a swimming pool, tennis courts and stables, all the amenities of the fabulously wealthy, amenities David had always been welcome to share. Before. Further north and west were the woods and in the distance, the mountains where he and Zach, and sometimes Richard and Jane, had hiked and explored and skied in the winters. He had to admit it had been pretty damn idyllic.
He hadn’t done any of that after Zach had disappeared. If he hiked or skied, he did it somewhere else. Every inch of Tyler land echoed with Zach’s laughter, every bit of shade sheltered his ghost. It was too damn lonely here without Zach. He’d lived here and worked for Richard until he’d scraped up enough money to go off to college, and then only came back occasionally, when he felt tough enough to last a few days. Every moment he was here he felt like there was something missing, something vital. And there was.
He’d had relationships in college, and since, but none of them ever lasted, not even this last one, the one he’d thought was It. His partners, to a man, accused him of being “emotionally unavailable,” whatever the hell that meant. But none of them had ever been able to fill the hole that Zach had left. Zach, with whom he’d shared exactly one kiss, instigated by the inexperienced fifteen-year-old boy. Who’d vanished a week later, right out of a crowded airport.
David turned his back on the grandeur that was the Tyler compound and the Rocky Mountains, and went up the steps to the porch of the gatehouse and let himself in. He dropped his duffel and set his laptop case down more carefully on the polished wood floor of the entry, and called, “Hello? Mom? You home?”
Silence greeted him. Not unexpected—it was the middle of the afternoon and she was probably at work. He went into the kitchen, got himself a drink of water, and called her cell phone from the kitchen extension.
She picked up on the second ring, her voice puzzled. “Hello?”
“Hey, lady,” David said.
“Davey!” she cried in delight. “Are you at home? I was wondering who’d be calling from there.”
“Yeah, just got here.”
“You should have told me you were coming to visit! I’d have taken the day off.”
“It’s not really a visit, Mom. I—well, I sort of got a job here. At the community college. Teaching art.”
There was a moment of confused silence, then Annie said, “But I thought you loved New York. You were so into the art scene there, and that internship at the Museum of Modern Art—I thought you were going to stay there…. Not that I’m not happy you’re home, oh, Davey, that’s wonderful, you’ll be home….”
“Actually, I’m just looking to stay here a couple of days, just ’til I can find an apartment in town—either Wesley or the Springs. I think it’s better that way.”
“But….”
“Mom. Really, it’s better. I’ll be closer to work and everything. Maggie’s selling me her old car, so I’ll have wheels, and I can come up and visit anytime, but I think it’s best if I’m not all that close, you know?”
“Yes, honey,” Annie said quietly. “I know.”
He swallowed. “You’d better tell Rich and Jane that I’m here. I’ll try to keep out of sight, but I don’t want them pissed at me. I’ll be out of here as quick as I can.”
“Davey, they don’t blame you one bit, you know that. They’re so grateful….”
“I don’t want their”—he almost said “fucking” but remembered whom he was talking to—“gratitude. I know they’re not mad or anything, but it’s hard, Mom.” He swallowed again and closed his free hand into a fist. “Nobody’s mad, nobody’s blaming anybody, nobody hates anybody, but it’s the elephant in the kitchen, Mom. I can’t deal with that. That’s why I stayed away so long. I liked New York, sure, but I only ever really wanted to be here. I’m tired of being away from home. I’m tired of being alone. I want to come home, but this is as close as I can get, okay?”
“Yes, honey,” Annie said again. “Look, Richard and Jane are going out to dinner tonight, so I’ll be home early. How about some of my chicken fajitas for supper tonight?”
“I’ve been dreaming about your chicken fajitas, mamacita,” David said. “Hey, I’m tired. It was a long trip, and I’m ready for a nap. Can I have my old room?”
“Of course—it’s still the same. I rattle around in that big house. It’ll be nice to have you home, even if it’s only for a few days.”
“It’ll be nice to be home.” David hesitated, then said carefully, “How is he?”
Annie didn’t answer for a moment, then said, just as carefully, “He’s fine. We’ll talk more when I get home. See you then, love, and welcome home.”
He hung up the phone and stared at it a long moment, then went to get his duffel bag and his nap.
HE WOKE to the smell of onions and peppers frying and shook himself fully awake before stumbling sleepily into the kitchen. Annie stood in front of the stove, singing cheerfully. David joined in on the chorus of “La Bamba.” She turned around, and he caught her around the waist and danced her around the stone floor of the kitchen, singing and dripping olive oil.
Laughing, she tugged herself out of his arms, reaching for the paper towels. “Silly ass,” she scolded, “now the floor’s all slippery.”
He took the towels from her hand and pushed her gently in the direction of the stove. “You cook, I clean up, okay?” in a mock-foreign accent, like Gilda Radner on the old Saturday Night Live.
“You’d better,” she warned, grinning, “or you don’t get any fajitas.”
“You couldn’t be so cruel,” he said mournfully, and got down on his hands and knees to clean up the spilled oil.
She looked good, he thought, despite the fact that every time he’d seen her in the last three years her hair had been a different color. It was a bronzy-blonde this time, and it looked good. “I like the hair,” he said. “It wasn’t that color at Sandy’s last Mother’s Day.”
“It was Sandy’s idea, actually,” she said. “Your sister thought the brown was too mousy, so I went and had it foiled. I’m about due for a touchup.”
“Not yet, I don’t think,” he assured her, and tossed the greasy paper towels into the garbage can. Sliding up onto one of the barstools at the breakfast counter, he rested his chin on his hands and said, “So. How is he?”
She didn’t answer, concentrating on turning the peppers and onions and chicken onto a platter. She set the platter in front of him, then got a plate of tortillas out of the warmer. “Sour cream coming up,” she said, and got it out of the fridge, along with salsa and shredded cheese.
He let her putter, until she’d sat down across from him and started assembling her own fajita. “How is he, Mom?”
“He drinks too much and drives too fast, and if he kills himself it will destroy Jane and Richard,” Annie said savagely, and she started to cry.
He reached over and covered her hands with his. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She wiped her eyes with her napkin and said, “It’s not your fault, Davey. It’s just been so tense for so long. It’s not that he’s mean to us or anything. In fact, he’s too nice. He’s so polite and sweet, but it’s all a front, you can tell that. He smiles but it’s not real. And Jane and Richard smile, and they don’t mean it. And it’s gotten to the point that I don’t mean it, either.” Her fingers tightened on David’s. “He moved into the chauffeur’s old apartment over the garage two months ago, but it isn’t any easier. Richard hasn’t had a live-in chauffeur since Alan retired; he uses the firm’s drivers, so it’s not like he needs the space….”
“You’re babbling, Mom,” David said gently.
She took a breath. “Yeah, I am. Shit.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“I told Jane and Richard that you’d be staying with me until you got someplace else and they both looked so sad. Jane asked if you’d mind if they came to visit while you were here.”
“I wasn’t the one who shut them out,” David said bitterly.
“Well, honey, what would you have done if it had been you in their place? He was so fragile and he just freaked out when they asked if you could see him.”
“I know how it went,” David cut her off. “I heard him. I was there, remember?” He got up, appetite gone, and started to wrap up the rest of his fajitas. “I’ll finish this later, okay?”
“I’m sorry, love,” Annie said quietly.
“I’ve had two years to get used to it,” David replied, “you’d think I would have.”
“How did Jerry take your coming back here?”
“We broke up a few weeks ago, just before I got the job. Timing was pretty good, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, love, I’m sorry….”
“It wasn’t working out, anyway. I’m just shitty at relationships.” He put the plate into the refrigerator and closed the door, thumping his forehead against the cool white surface. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
“He and Jane and Richard have been in therapy since he got back,” Annie offered.
“What is that, ten months?”
“Nine, really. But they started even before that, while he was still in the rehab center.” She hesitated, then went on. “Richard asked if you wanted to come back to work. They’ve got a whole new graphic arts division….” She trailed off when she saw David shaking his head.
“No, too close. Besides, I like teaching. I put in my time at Tyler Tech—I don’t need to do it again. Community college doesn’t pay much, but I don’t need much. Besides, I’m still painting. I can make enough money to live on from that, even if I didn’t have the interest from the investments. I’m flush, Mom. I can do what I want. Not too many twenty-five-year-olds can say that, huh?”
“No, love.”
“And Maggie’s been talking about me doing a show at a gallery in Colorado Springs. Seems she’s friends with the owner, and showed him some jpegs of my stuff.”
“It’s nice you’re still friends with her.”
“Yeah, not a lot of girls would still hang out with a guy who dumped them the week after graduation because they were the wrong gender,” David said dryly. “She told me once that if I’d busted up with her over another girl, she’d have been pissed, but that I couldn’t help being gay. Then she tried to set me up with her cousin.”
Annie laughed. “That’s Maggie.”
“She’s apartment hunting for me. Since the college is here in Wesley, I’m trying to stay this side of the Springs, maybe one of the suburbs. I don’t want a long commute, and I want to stay near the mountains.” He turned and leaned back against the fridge. “I spent too long on the flats. I need me some hills.”
“You and Richard,” Annie said. She sighed wistfully. “I wish you would stay here, Davey. Jane and Richard wouldn’t mind, and it’s time….”
“Hell, no,” David said brusquely. “No way in hell am I going to stay here a minute longer than I have to. I love you, Mom, but I just can’t take the chance. He’ll go postal, and Dick and Jane will blame me.”
“Oh, don’t call them that,” Annie scolded. “It irritates the shit out of them.”
“Zach was the one who came up with it,” David said, then winced. “Shit.”
“Besides, I told you, they don’t blame you. It’s something Zach has to get through, not you or them.”
“Well, he’s not, now, is he? That’s assuming he even gives me a thought. For all I know, he doesn’t even care if I’m alive or not.”
“He asked me about you a few weeks ago,” Annie said quietly.
David looked up, his heart aching. “He did?”
“Oh Davey,” his mother sighed. “You still love him, don’t you?”
“Shit,” he said again. “I never stopped, Mom. But he’s not the same kid I knew before… before all this happened. I know that. You said I don’t have to get through this, but I kinda do. What did he say? God, I feel like I’m in high school again.”
“He just asked, sort of, I don’t know, quietly, if I ever heard from you. I said, ‘Of course I do, he calls me all the time,’ and he just said ‘Good’ and went back out to the patio. Never said another word. Of course, he doesn’t talk much to me. Just please and thank you. That was the first time he said more than that, and it was just six words.” She was quiet a moment, then said, “He doesn’t say any more than that to his parents, except in their therapy sessions, and for all I know, that’s all he says then too.”
“He was always a polite kid.”
She shook her head. “Polite, yes, but there’s something… missing now. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like he’s polite because he thinks that’s how he should be, not just naturally courteous the way he always was. It’s like he’s reading lines in a play he’s not terribly interested in acting.” Again, a head shake. “Well, I guess if he was normal he wouldn’t be in therapy seven days a week, now would he?”
“Does he do anything except therapy?”
“Well, physical therapy too. And he has a couple of cars he works on. But usually he just disappears until suppertime, and even then half the time he doesn’t eat with Di… Richard and Jane. He’s got a kitchenette in the apartment and he’ll cook something up there. I do his grocery shopping for him, and sometimes I clean up there, if he asks. He’s very tidy.”
“Quiet and tidy. Sounds like a serial killer.”
“David!”
“Well, you know, that’s how the neighbors always describe them. ‘He was quiet, always kept to himself, but, boy, his yard was tidy.’” David snorted. “Jeez, I hope the therapy works or they’ll be digging up Dick and Jane’s garden looking for bodies.”
“David Philip Evans, I’m going to smack you so hard….”
He laughed at her. “Still want me to move in here?”
She softened. “Oh, honey, I wish you would.”
He shook his head. “No, trust me, it’s better this way. I promise I’ll find someplace close, and we can visit all the time, okay?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“No, what I want is for things to go back the way they were seven years ago,” David said with a sigh. “But that ain’t likely, is it?”
“No, honey. It’s not.”