20. Safe In His Arms

20

SAFE IN HIS ARMS

" I didn't know Barry had it in him to be such a dick like that," Kelsey said later that night frowning.

"I wasn't happy," Van said.

"How many have you opened?" she asked. She'd felt bad that it'd taken him so long to consider opening the envelope and then to find out there were more sealed pieces of information to go.

"Two," he said. "The first one was pictures of me. The second were pictures of my mother."

She saw the sadness in his eyes. "Can I see them? Or would you rather not?"

"I don't care," he said, handing over one pile. They were at his house tonight. He was ordering dinner out. They did try to take turns at each other's houses, but they spent the night at hers.

Tonight she was staying here with Frankie. It was the first her dog had been in Van's house and the puppy was a little skittish about leaving the same room his mother was in.

Kelsey figured that was better than him taking off exploring and leaving puddles or piles in places.

She reached her hand for the pictures. Van on the top. "Ohhhh, you were a chubby kid."

"Thanks," he said drily.

She moved over and bumped into him as she slid the pictures around in her hand. "Damn. Do you still have that uniform? Does it fit? Hubba hubba. You look skinnier there."

"I've got it," he said. "No, it doesn't fit. I put about forty pounds on after I graduated from the academy. I lost about ten pounds there running my ass off. So I put that back on plus another thirty."

Her eyes were looking him over. "You don't look forty pounds heavier to me now."

He looked just about right. Not lean, but not bulky. The right amount of solid muscle kept her safe in his arms.

"I lost about fifteen of it after I was stabbed. Lying in bed and not doing much didn't help me want to eat."

"I would have gained weight," she said. "Because Duke would have been feeding me."

"I didn't have that," he said. "I recovered on my own."

"I'm sorry," she said. "Sorry that you had to go through that and had no one. Your father didn't help?"

"No," he said. "I didn't want him there."

"Did he want to see you?" she asked. She wished she knew more of what went on between the two of them.

"He was there when I woke up," he said. "I was told he came in when I was unconscious too, but I have no memory of it. The first thing he said when we talked was to insult my mother for encouraging me to go into law enforcement and that he always knew I couldn't get out of my own way. I told him to get the fuck out. That was the last time we talked. Thankfully I had some close friends and their wives checked in on me and brought food."

She lifted her eyebrow. "They came to your house alone with food?"

"There is that jealousy again," he said.

"Damn straight. I'm a big enough person to admit it."

He grunted. "No. They didn't come alone. They came with their husband or sent the food with their husband. I was fine. They had a nurse stopping at my place for a week to change out the wound and check it out and then I was on my own."

She handed the pictures of Van back to him. "Can I see your mother?"

He picked up the other pile. She could tell there were more here. "She's very pretty," she said. "You look like her. I can see it in some pictures."

"The jaw and the eyes," he said. "I know."

"Tell me about her," she said.

The pictures covered at least twenty years, she could tell. From maybe before Van was born to right before she might have passed. She'd flipped the oldest over and saw the date two years prior.

She wondered how Barry got those pictures.

"She was funny," he said. "When she wanted to be. Not as funny or as cheerful as you, but she could bust on me."

"We all need someone to lift us up in life," she said. "I'm glad you had that."

"She was always in my corner. My father didn't want me to go into the police academy. He wanted me to work where he was. Said he could have gotten me a job to work my way up like him. You know, being a middle-level manager bossing people around."

She handed those pictures back and asked, "Did he boss you and your mother around?"

"Me?" he asked. "All the time. My father thought I was going into law enforcement so that I'd be a big man to stand up to him. I didn't need a badge to do it. I did it enough at the end. What I hated was the shit he did to my mother."

She moved over and ran her hand up and down his back. "Was he abusive?"

"Physically, no," he said. "But he wasn't the nicest guy to her that I could remember. He was controlling. He made more money than her and held it over her head for everything."

"What did your mother do?" he asked.

"She worked for the local city as a clerk. Got good benefits and stuff but not salary."

She found that odd considering Barry's worth. Yet she also knew there was no relationship between the two and didn't know why.

She'd asked her father and he'd said that it wasn't his place to tell her. If Van wanted to know, he would share it with him and then it'd be up to Van to share with her.

Sometimes it annoyed the crap out of her that her father was so loyal that way.

"Do you think you had a good childhood?" she asked.

"I'd say average. I was quiet. I played sports. I had friends. I went to college but didn't want to. Just community college and then state college. I didn't want a lot of loans and it's not like my father was helping out. It was cheaper to commute than live on campus."

Again, she found this odd since Barry could have paid for it.

"No reason to ask if you still have loans. You have the resources to pay them off."

"I had them paid off before I moved here. I lived a pretty simple life."

She turned and looked around the gorgeous house he had now. "No one could say that now."

"Which stands to reason that if Barry knew so much about me as he is hinting, why would he leave me a place like this? One that is brand new inside. We know it."

"Good question," she said. "My father might be able to help you with that if you want to ask. The same as how Barry came about these pictures. Do you think he was there around you and no one knew?"

"I have no idea. It could be as simple as him paying someone to look into us."

"Which you would have hated," she said.

"Yep," he said.

She figured it wasn't the time to address that. "So the issue with your father is the way he treated your mother?"

"That was one of the many things," he said. He got up and walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge from where she could see him. He got a beer out and held up a bottle of wine. She nodded her head and he filled a glass.

"Thanks," she said. "Did you pick this out to go with the dinner we are ordering?"

"No," he said. "I don't know that crap. I just went down and grabbed a bottle of a kind I've seen you drink before."

She smiled. "I find that sweet."

"That I pay attention to what types of wine that you drink?" he asked.

"Yep. Not a lot of people do that. Do you want to order food now and then keep talking?"

"Sure," he said. "What do you want? I've got menus for just about every place close by."

"I'm sure you do," she said.

He moved over and pulled open a drawer and reached his hand in, coming out with a bunch of sheets of paper. "You pick."

She closed her eyes and reached for one at random and pulled it out. "Guess we are having subs."

"Are you okay with that?" he asked.

"If I'm not cooking, I'm okay with anything."

They placed their order for delivery. "My father did two things I'll never forgive him for. One I know of. The other I'm suspecting."

"What's that?" she asked.

Though she knew in her mind where he was going with at least one of them.

"He cheated on her. Probably did it more than once, but he was doing it while she was dying. He was taking care of her. Showing the world what a loving husband he was like he always did. Outside the house he wasn't a dick to her."

"I'm sorry, Van."

"Nothing for you to be sorry about. He probably would have gotten away with it if the woman he was screwing didn't show up at the funeral."

"That's nasty," she said.

"She wasn't there for the services. She was there to support my father. I went outside to get some air and saw him talking to her, then saw him hug and kiss her."

Her jaw dropped. "Before the services and then you had to go back in and pretend it didn't happen?"

"Yep. I saw it and went to return inside and my father noticed me. There was no time to talk about it. When everyone was gone I told him we were talking about it at home. He told me we weren't."

"I'm sure you didn't like hearing that."

"No," he said. "But I came home and wouldn't leave until he showed up. He knew I meant business. We said a bunch more words. He tried to make excuses that I didn't know what it was like. And my mother wasn't a wife for months and he needed a break."

"That is pissing me off for you."

Kelsey couldn't imagine her father ever doing anything like that. He wouldn't leave her mother's side for more than it took for necessary things.

"I had him up by the shirt front, told him what a piece of shit he was. He threw a bunch of words in my face about being a Mama's boy and a wuss."

"I'd hardly say that," she said.

"You don't know me like you think you do," he said.

She angled her head. "I think you loved your mother very much. I think she loved you and the two of you were a team. You probably were a Mama's boy, but it didn't make you a wuss."

"I won't argue that. My father hated how close my mother and I were. I wonder if my grandfather knew we were close."

"It's possible," she said. "If Barry thought you were a dick like your father he might not have left anything to you. Not the man I know."

"See, you know more about him than me," he said.

"Not as much as I wish. But he didn't suffer fools lightly. Or maybe he was a fool for what he did and hated it and wanted to make it right."

"Do you know what he did?" he asked. "Why he and my mother never talked again?"

"No," she said. "I don't. Again, I'm sure my father does. Or maybe it's in all those envelopes."

"Maybe," he said.

"What's the other thing that you think your father did that you aren't sure about?" she asked.

"My grandfather didn't go to the funeral," he said.

"You told me this. That you felt he did that on purpose, but I know Barry didn't know she died for a long time after."

"Yeah," he said. "I think my father didn't do the one thing my mother asked him on her deathbed. And it kills me that she put that request in his hands and not mine."

Kelsey put her wine down and moved over to hug him. "Don't think that," she said. "You don't have all the answers. You don't know why things happened the way they did. Maybe your mother didn't think you were the right person to do it? Maybe your mother wasn't thinking straight toward the end."

"It's probably a combination of those things," he said. "I try to tell myself that. But my mother's friend said she offered to do it and my mother was insistent that my father do it. I just don't know why."

"And you may never find out," she said. "What you have to do is try to learn to live with what you do know. Do you think you can do that?"

"I don't know that either," he said, hugging her tight for a moment and then releasing her and walking away to get Frankie who had started to sniff around other rooms.

Guess they were done talking about this.