Along Came Trouble(91)
“What a mess,” his mother said. “Can’t you do something about all these people?”
“What do you think I ought to do about them, Mom?” He didn’t succeed in keeping the annoyance out of his voice. He didn’t even try particularly hard.
She gestured vaguely with one hand, her gold bracelet winking in the sun. “I don’t know. Send them back wherever they came from.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”
“No need to get snippy with me. It’s just so unseemly. This is not the sort of thing that happens in Camelot.”
His mother delivered most of her condemnations between the lines. What she really wanted him to know was that this media circus was spoiling her pretty little town, and she considered him a failure for not managing to prevent it or clean it up. Never mind that people had a right to assemble wherever they wanted. Never mind that he couldn’t kick the gawkers out of Camelot any more than he could control the weather. This was all his fault.
He’d stopped waiting for Janet Clark to pat him on the back a long time ago, but at least when he’d been in the army, she’d pretended to support the cause. These days, she went back and forth between acting as though the family didn’t need his help and worrying his business would go under and he’d fail to rescue them. Now she’d come up with a new variation—this was the first time she’d seen him at work, and it meant she could also tell him he was bad at his job.
“I’m sure it’ll be over soon enough,” he said.
“I should hope so. I’d like to think you have more important things to do than babysit celebrities.”
Ah. He was bad at his silly job.
Enough. He set the sandwich down and got out of her car, bracing his arms over the door frame and leaning in. “This is happening in Camelot, Ma, unseemly or not. Things happen in life that are unseemly. You don’t have to like them, but bitching about them and wishing they’d go away is counterproductive.”
He wished he were only talking about the job, but both of them knew that wasn’t the case. He was talking about Dad. His volume had risen as he spoke, and an internal warning system told him he was in danger of losing it and chewing out his own mother.
“Don’t use that tone with me, young man. I raised you. I deserve your respect.” She crossed her arms, her eyes flashing.
“You raised me, and you did a good job. How about you quit treating me like a useless kid?”
“I don’t—”
“You do, and I’m done. I don’t need to be handled. I need you to help me take care of you and the rest of this family. Dad can’t do it anymore. I can.”
A bystander in a red T-shirt broke free of the barricade just then and streaked up the driveway, camera in hand. Caleb walked around the front of the car, caught the guy by the upper arm, and yanked it back hard, catching his opposite wrist. Red Shirt obviously couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. Within a few seconds, Caleb had the guy’s arms behind his back, high enough to let him know how much it would hurt if he was unwise enough to struggle. Red Shirt sank to his knees, then to the asphalt, where he turned his face to one side and submitted meekly to the pressure of Caleb’s hand pressing his head to the ground.
It felt way too good.
Bryce extended a pair of handcuffs. The sun glinted off the metal, but Caleb didn’t move to take them. Red Shirt had become a prisoner, but Caleb was in the wrong mood to play jailer. He didn’t want to find out what he was capable of on this little sleep and this much frustration.
“You cuff him,” he told Bryce. After they’d exchanged roles, Caleb returned to the car.
His mother was clutching the steering wheel when he opened her door. “Is that—I didn’t know you did that sort of thing. It was . . .”
“It was necessary. And that’s about one-hundredth of what I do. You’d know that if you paid any attention, if you even asked me what I did all day long. I don’t think you want to know. I think you want me to fail.”
“That’s not true. I . . .” She sniffed and raised her face to his, and he saw her eyes were full of tears. He’d made his mother cry. Fucking fantastic.
Caleb forced himself to take a deep breath and exhale. His mom smelled like baby powder and incense from the church. She was difficult, but he loved her. “Thanks for lunch, Ma. I’m sorry I’m being an *. I’m not having a very good day. I love you, but I need you to go home now so I can stop worrying about you and get back to work.”