Chapter 2

Bellingham, Washington

Friday, February 14, 2020

I removed Sarah’s leash and let her loose in the house. Then I took off my jacket and hung it up. When I turned back toward

Kyle, I found he had walked through both the kitchen and dining room and was standing in front of the west-facing windows,

staring out at Bellingham Bay. Cloud cover was rolling in, and the water had gone from bright blue to gray.

“What is it, Kyle?” I asked, following him into the living room and taking a seat. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” he said, suddenly bursting into tears. “I want to come live with you and Grandma Mel, please.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa! In those few words, he delivered way too much information accompanied by zero useful context.

“Why?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

He shuddered and sank down onto the sofa. “Mom and Dad are getting a divorce,” he managed after a long pause.

Floored, I took a seat, too. Twenty years ago when I’d helped plan and oversee Jeremy and Kelly’s quickie wedding, I’d had

serious doubts about their potential for long-term marital bliss, but in the two decades since, I’d seen no signs of discord.

When Mel and I were around them, everything seemed fine. There had been none of the usual sniping and bickering that often

surfaces when a marriage is coming apart at the seams.

A thousand questions raced through my head, but I stifled them. Years of conducting interviews with witnesses and suspects

in homicide cases has taught me the finer points about when to ask questions and when to keep quiet. This was one of the latter.

I allowed the silence to linger for the better part of a minute before I finally spoke again.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

Kyle looked up at me with eyes filled with anguish. “Dad’s got a girlfriend,” he managed. “Another girlfriend, that is, only

this one’s pregnant. Her name is Caroline Richards. When everything blew up, Mom quit her job with the Shakespeare Festival

in Ashland and moved to Eugene. She’s got a new job with the alumni association at the University of Oregon. She and Kayla

have an apartment together. I was supposed to stay on with Dad in Ashland to finish out my senior year, but I don’t want to,

not with Caroline living there. If I can’t stay here with you and Grandma Mel, I’ll go live in a homeless camp somewhere.

I saw plenty of those on the drive up.”

Whoa again! Needing a moment to take it all in, I stood up. “I think I’ll fix myself a cup of coffee. Care for one?”

“I’d rather have a Coke.”

“Coming right up,” I said.

The coffee machine had turned itself off while Sarah and I had been out walking. I put it through the warmup cycle, brought

Kyle a Coke, and then went back to the kitchen counter to wait for my coffee to brew, mentally picking apart the bombshell

that had just landed in my lap.

With regard to Jeremy’s girlfriend, the word another was the most important. That meant the affair with Caroline wasn’t his first extramarital offense. And I was all too aware

that this wasn’t his first out-of-wedlock pregnancy, either. I vividly remembered his and Kelly’s hastily arranged shotgun

wedding because I was the one who did most of the arranging. But if this current crisis had been going on long enough for

Kelly to find a new job and move out of the house and into an apartment with Kyle’s sister, why the hell hadn’t Mel and I

heard even so much as a peep about it?

And maybe this was nothing but history repeating itself. After all, at age seventeen Kelly had dropped out of high school,

run away, and gotten knocked up by her boyfriend. Karen and I had divorced years earlier, but bottom line, our divorce had

been the ultimate reason Kelly had left home. And now, with Kyle’s life in shambles, he seemed to be doing the same thing—running

away. Hopefully he hadn’t left behind some girl who was also in a family way.

Mel and I had seen Kyle off and on over the years, but those were always holiday group events with everyone present and accounted

for. The number of times the two of us had ever had a heart-to-heart about anything of substance was exactly zero. Discussing

who won the latest Husky/Duck matchup counts as so much empty BS. It’s verbal camouflage pretending to be a meaningful conversation.

In other words, Kyle and I weren’t total strangers, but we certainly weren’t close.

As for taking in a grandchild on a permanent basis? Are you kidding? Mel and I had established a very comfortable, uncomplicated existence with just the two of us. Adding an eighteen-year-old male into the mix of our placid way of life was likely to upend everything. Why would we want to do that? Why would anybody? But then I remembered a guy named Alan Dale.

Back in my rowdier drinking days, I’d indulged in more than a few one-night stands, one of which had resulted in an unexpected

pregnancy. The woman involved, Jasmine Day, never let on about the baby she named Naomi. Jasmine and Alan Dale, her future

boyfriend and eventual husband, had raised the child together without my being any the wiser. As far as Alan was concerned,

Naomi was his daughter. After Jasmine’s death, Naomi had found her way to Seattle, but if she’d even known about me, she’d

made no effort to find me. Instead, she hooked up with a guy her age and got pregnant. Somewhere during the pregnancy the

boyfriend disappeared, leaving Naomi to believe she’d been abandoned. When the baby was born, Naomi did the same thing—she

abandoned Athena, her drug-addicted newborn, in the neonatal nursery of the hospital.

Once Alan Dale got wind of what was going on, he had come riding to Athena’s rescue by putting himself on the first available

commercial flight to Seattle. It was Alan, not Naomi, who spent night after night in the nursery, rocking Athena through the

agonies of drug withdrawal. Once she was finally released from the hospital, he was the one who took her home with him, while

he began navigating the tangle of legal hurdles required to keep Athena from falling into the quagmire of foster care. He

had come to me for help with that.

Unsurprisingly, sorting it out had taken longer than either of us anticipated. Eventually, however, we made it work, and Alan was able to take Athena back home to Jasper, Texas. In the meantime, my first wolfie, Lucy, had fallen in love with Athena, which is how I ended up losing her. Once Lucy met Athena, it was love at first sight. When Athena went home to Texas, so did Lucy.

If Alan Dale was man enough to tackle raising a newborn on his own, couldn’t Mel and I tough it out with a high school senior?

At least Kyle wasn’t in diapers. According to the latest report from Alan, Athena was currently navigating the intricacies

of potty training. We wouldn’t be dealing with that, either. Besides, by the time fall came around, Kyle would most likely

be heading off to college. Having given myself a stern talking-to and making certain mental adjustments, I headed back into

the living room with my coffee in hand.

“Obviously I’ll need to talk this over with Mel,” I told him as I took a seat.

Kyle nodded. “I understand,” he said.

“I doubt very much that you’ll end up living in a homeless camp,” I continued, “but if you want to stay here, you’re going

to have to clue me in about what’s been going on at home. Do your folks even know where you are? Did you tell them where you

were going? Did you leave them a note?”

Kyle shook his head. “I didn’t tell them anything. I just left.”

“You have to call them and let them know where you are.”

“But they’ll want me to come home,” he objected.

“Which you clearly don’t want to do,” I replied. “I understand that, but I believe you had a birthday a few weeks ago. Didn’t

you?”

He nodded.

“So you’re eighteen now. In Washington State, that means you’re old enough to call the shots as far as where you choose to live. The fact that you came here and asked to stay with us tells me that you’re smart enough to realize you’re not quite ready to be entirely on your own. By now I’m sure your folks are worried sick. You should text them at least and let them know where you are.”

“But what if they tell me I have to come home?”

“Then you explain that you’re not ready—that you have some things you need to sort through first.”

“You won’t make me leave?”

“I’m not prepared to make you do anything. For right now, you’re welcome to stay. As for being here on a permanent basis?

As I said, Mel and I will have to talk that over before I can say yay or nay. Fair enough?”

Kyle nodded, then he pulled out his phone and began to type. I can text when it’s absolutely necessary, but I’m no Quick Draw

McGraw. I’m sometimes reduced to doing voice-to-text. Kyle, on the other hand, was able to text lightning fast by using both

thumbs.

“There,” he said, once he finished. “I told them both. Now they know where I am.”

Within seconds, his phone began to buzz. He glanced at it. “That’s my mom,” he said. “Do I have to answer?”

“That’s up to you,” I told him.

He let the call go unanswered. As soon as his phone quit ringing, mine chimed in. “Mom?” Kyle asked.

I nodded.

“Are you going to answer?”

I nodded again.

“She’ll be really mad,” Kyle warned.

“I’m a big boy,” I told him. “I think I can handle it.”

Once I punched the button to answer, Kelly didn’t wait around long enough for me to say hello.

“What the hell is going on up there?” she demanded.

“I could ask the same of you,” I replied mildly. “What’s going on at your end?”

“Put Kyle on the phone.”

“He doesn’t want to speak to you at the moment. I think he needs some space.”

“Some space?” she echoed. “How much space does he need? For Pete’s sake, he took off and drove four hundred fifty miles without

a word to either his father or to me! He has some serious explaining to do, and you need to stay out of it.”

“I’ll let him know,” I said.

“Dad—” she began.

“Look, Kelly,” I interrupted. “I’m glad he told you where he is so you don’t have to worry about him, but from what Kyle’s

been saying, it seems to me as though your whole family has been going through a bit of a rough patch. At the moment all the

upheaval appears to have gotten the best of him. Maybe what he needs is some time to sort through everything that’s been going

on, so for right now, why don’t you just let him be?”

“But, Dad—” Kelly objected.

“I hear you have a new job,” I interjected, abruptly changing the subject. “How’s that going, to say nothing of how’s your

new apartment? It sounds to me as though Kyle isn’t the only one who needs some space.”

She hung up on me then, which was a good thing because by then my phone was buzzing with a second incoming call, this one

from Jeremy. I switched over to that one.

“Hello, Jeremy,” I said cheerfully. “How’s it going?”

“What do you mean how’s it going? I want to talk to Kyle. He just now texted me and said he was there. Why didn’t he take

my call? I don’t need to talk to you. Put my son on the line.”

“I believe it’s safe to say that Kyle’s uncomfortable with having a new woman in the house,” I said pointedly. “Under the circumstances, I can’t say that I blame him. By the way, in case you’re interested, I’m not eager to talk to you, either, so we’re even on that score.”

“I take it he told you about Caroline?”

“And about the approaching arrival of your new bundle of joy.”

Jeremy paused for a moment before he replied. “If that’s what this is all about, it’s none of your business.”

“Actually, it is my business, because Kyle showed up on my doorstep to talk to me about it,” I responded. “From my point of

view, he has good reason to be upset, so he’s staying here for the weekend at least, and maybe longer. That has yet to be

decided.”

“Wait a minute,” Jeremy began. “Where the hell do you get off?”

“I have to go now, Jeremy,” I interrupted. “Talk to you later.” With that, I ended the call.

“You hung up on him?” Kyle asked wonderingly.

“I did,” I answered, putting the phone down on the side table. “Before I say anything more to anyone, I want to know more

about what’s really going on down there, and since you’re the one who’s here, I’d prefer to hear your version of the story

before I hear either one of theirs. So tell me.”

It wasn’t pretty. Without Mel’s or my knowledge, Jeremy had been carrying on with other women for years, while Kelly had been covering for him as far as our knowing about it was concerned. The fling before this one had involved a fellow teacher from school. One of Kyle’s friends had seen the lovebirds together and had spilled the beans. I couldn’t imagine anything much more humiliating than having your friends let you know that your father is screwing around on your mother. That affair had ended when the woman involved had left Ashland at the end of the previous school year to go somewhere else. As far as Kyle knew, no one had reported the situation to the school district and no official action had been taken against either of the two teachers.

Given that, it was easy to see why Kyle might be distrustful of the adults in his life. His father was a liar and a cheat

and his mother had covered for him until Caroline’s pregnancy made further covering impossible. In a world where all the grown-ups

seemed to have lost their bearings, Kyle appeared to be the only one attempting to behave sensibly.

“Well,” he said once finished with his sad tale. “What do you think?”

“What I think is that your parents have put you in a pretty tough situation,” I replied. “For now you should probably unload

your car and bring your stuff inside before it gets dark. You’ll be staying in the guest room. While you’re doing that, I’ll

try to figure out what we’re having for dinner.”

With Kyle busying himself with dragging his gear into the house, I called Dirty Dan’s and managed to up our Valentine’s dinner

reservation from a two-top to a three. The fact that we’re regular customers went a long way toward making that possible.

Then I called Mel.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“It’s about dinner,” I told her. “Dinner for two just became dinner for three, and I think our lives have become a lot more

complicated.”

“Why?” she wanted to know. “What’s going on?”

So I told her. “Wow,” she said when I finished. “That’s a lot to take in. What did you tell him?”

“That we’d have to talk it over.”

“I guess we will,” she agreed. “But I wonder what’s really going on. What he’s told you so far doesn’t sound like the whole story. It takes a hell of a lot to make a high school kid decide to change schools in the middle of the second semester of his senior year. When Dad got transferred my senior year, my parents left town, but I finished the year by staying with a friend.”

Hours later during our not-so-romantic but very expensive Valentine’s dinner for three, Kyle recovered his appetite, making

short work of his own eight-ounce prime rib and a good chunk of mine as well. In the meantime, Mel managed to elicit some

useful information concerning the family dynamics down in Ashland. Jeremy’s previous gal pal left town at the beginning of

the summer. By December he had moved on to Caroline Richards, whom he had met through an online dating site—Alone in Jackson.

That’s where Ashland is located—in Jackson County.

At the time Caroline appeared on the scene, she was newly divorced and working as a waitress in a coffee shop in Medford.

She had since moved to Ashland where she had settled into a similar job, one she had quit shortly after moving in with Jeremy.

“I get the feeling she thinks Dad is rich,” Kyle admitted. “I’ll bet that’s what he told her. The thing is, the money from

Texas belongs to Mom, not Dad.”

That “money from Texas,” as Kyle called it, is actually money from my father’s long-lost family in Beaumont. They had been in the oil business for generations. Once my cousin tracked me down here in Washington, her mother—my late father’s sister—made sure my kids received their fair share of the family fortune. Kelly had told me early on that she had used part of that initial influx of cash to pay off the mortgage on their home, but what Kyle said made it seem as though she had managed to keep some of it in her own name.

Good for her , I thought to myself during dinner when Kyle passed along that information. Kelly may have been covering up for her jackass husband’s serial infidelities, but she’s been smart enough to keep her money

separate from his.

“Dad claims he’s not the only one who’s been fooling around,” Kyle continued. “I don’t know if that’s true or not. I mean,

since he lies about everything else, he’s probably lying about that, too.”

Wait, Jeremy’s not the only one who’s been unfaithful?

That was what was going through my head. Although I didn’t say it aloud, I’m pretty sure Mel got the message because she changed

the subject. “Let’s talk about school for a moment.”

“What about it?”

“It’s your senior year,” Mel said. “Are you sure you want to do this? Don’t you want to graduate with your friends?”

“They all have families,” he replied morosely. “I don’t have a family anymore because mine’s been blown apart. As for school?

Once Covid hits, there probably won’t be any school. They’re talking about switching over to remote learning and doing everything

online.”

“If that happens, maybe we could arrange for you to do your remote Ashland classes from here in Bellingham,” Mel suggested.

“That way you could still graduate with your class.”

“Why, so my parents could show up and pretend we’re still one big happy family?” Kyle responded bitterly. “Thanks, but no

thanks.”

“If you stay with us, there will be rules,” Mel warned him, “rules and expectations.”

“That’s all right,” Kyle answered. “Rules and expectations sound like just what I need.”

That may have been the most surprising moment of the whole evening—the one when I realized that maybe my grandson had more common sense than both his parents put together. It was also when I understood that, although I had yet to make up my mind on the whole issue, seemingly Mel Soames had already made up hers. In other words, she and I were about to become parents together for the very first time.

“We’ll call your folks and talk things over in the morning,” she said.

“Thanks,” Kyle replied. “Maybe they’ll listen to you. They sure as hell don’t listen to me.”

Later, once Mel and I were home and in bed, she turned to me and said, “That was unexpected.”

Given the ground-shattering changes going on around us, the word unexpected barely covered it.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“We have to take him in,” she said.

That was pretty unexpected, too. “Really?” I asked.

“What choice do we have?” she replied. “Where else is he going to go? He feels betrayed by both his parents. Initially he

was fine with staying on in Ashland to finish the school year with his dad and Caroline, but now he’s not. I wonder what changed?”

“Me, too,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Tomorrow’s another day. We’ll get all this sorted.”