The Meridians(51)

He realized a moment after seeing the boy what it was - he was the same age as Chad had been. And not only the same age, but eerily similar in appearance. Though he got the impression from speaking to Lynette that appearance was where the similarities began and ended - that Kevin was a special child, perhaps mentally disabled, certainly operating under special needs that Chad had not been burdened with.

And then there was the fact of his name. Scott had very nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the boy's name, and had been hard-pressed to recover from his amazement in such a way as to avoid freaking Lynette out to the point that she would have taken her son inside the new home, locked the door, and gone looking to see if the previous owners had by any chance left some deadly weapon - like a firearm or a thermonuclear warhead - behind.

Then there was the matter of how he had dealt with helping Lynette. It was true that Meridian was without doubt one of the friendliest places in the known universe, but even for the inhabitants of this friendly place, knocking on someone's door at one-thirty and asking for moving help was pushing it. In fact, if it hadn't been Gil next door to her, Scott might not have gotten away with it. The fact that Gil was a man whose heart was as big as his bearlike body was the only saving grace that kept the moving party, well, moving.

But still, the whole time that Scott had been setting up help for Lynette, he had felt strange. Like he was a cock in the hen coop, strutting and preening and generally showing off his plumage. He was showing off Meridian, it was true, but he was aware that he was also showing Lynette that he was someone that could get stuff done. And then he had insisted she wait in the truck, that she rest with her son, like he was not only a guardian angel but a knight-errant from another age, a man of such deep chivalry that the very thought of a woman picking up a moving box was deeply anathema to him. Not that he thought her incapable of moving anything - indeed, the fact that she had arrived alone at one thirty in the morning spoke highly of the fact that she was self-confident enough to pull off the move solo. But he wanted her to know that he was ready, willing, and able to help out in any way necessary.

He was, quite simply, showing off. And that fact made him uncomfortable as did anything else in that strange night, because he had not shown off in years. And doing so made him feel more than a little guilty, as though he were cheating on Amy in his mind.

Only the resounding rebuke of the old man that had stung him so strongly that the wound still lay open in his mind had kept him from turning around and avoiding the whole night, avoiding Lynette, avoiding...Kevin.

The words of the note that Scott had found in his deserted apartment in Los Angeles over seven years ago kept playing over and over in his mind. "I'm still here, and I'm coming for you and Kevin."

In the intervening years, Scott had not only not encountered anyone named Kevin, but had actually been able to convince himself that the note itself was a figment of his then-overwrought imagination. After all, it had come in the middle of his last days at the LAPD, a time immediately following the deaths of his wife and child and his own hospitalization and subsequent painful recuperation.

So who could tell if the entire episode when he found the note had really happened. Even the note was gone, having been thrown away by Scott immediately after being found by him.

And so he was able to relegate the missive and its threatening words to a mostly-unused portion of his memory, like a locked room in the house of his heart, a room that he rarely acknowledged and never visited.

Until tonight. When he had heard the name of the boy in the van, a thrill had gone through him, as though he had just put his finger in a light socket. The feeling was electric, exciting, and accompanied by a single, frightening thought:

I've found him.

And so now here he was, carrying boxes inside the house with a group of other men who had been roused by Gil and his brother and shanghaied into coming in the middle of the night to unload the moving truck of a stranger.

The boxes under his arm said "K Bedroom," which Scott almost used as an excuse to wake Lynette up, since none of the boxes thus far had said anything like that. They had all been clearly labeled things like "Bathroom" or "Living room" or "Kitchen" in large, easy to understand letters. But none had been yet found labeled "K Bedroom."

But even so, even though a part of him wanted desperately to wake Lynette and hear her voice again, he knew that it would be pure selfishness on his part, so didn't do it. "K Bedroom" clearly meant "Kevin's Bedroom," and since he already knew which bedroom belonged to Lynette, it was an easy bet that the sole other bedroom in the house belonged to Kevin.

Besides, there would be time enough to wake Lynette when they got down to the actual furniture and needed her to advise them as to where to put it all.

So Scott marched into the house, a box under each arm, and headed to the still-empty bedroom that would soon serve as Kevin's bedroom.

The door was mostly shut, but a crack around its edges told Scott that it was not latched or locked, so he nudged it open with his foot and marched in.

As soon as he entered the room, the hairs on the back of his neck and on his arms all stood up on end. They stood at attention, prying goosebumps loose from his flesh as they stood straight and tall.

Scott felt as he had only felt a few times before in his life, and each and every time had brought danger.

He immediately put down the boxes and kicked the door shut behind him. Not that he didn't think he could use some help from any of the burly men currently swarming in and around Lynette's house, but he did not want to put any of them in danger, if danger there was to be had in this place.