Anything for Her(78)

“You didn’t see her this weekend, did you?”

“I don’t always tell you when I get together with her.” Nolan checked the steaks he was broiling, decided they were done and grabbed a plate. He was glad to have his back to Sean. “Will you get me a beer?” he asked.

Silence. Reluctantly he turned to find his foster son hadn’t gone back to the refrigerator. He was staring at Nolan.

“What?”

“You hardly ever drink.”

“You know I like an occasional beer.”

“You can tell me it’s none of my business, you know.”

Nolan groaned. “Can we sit down and eat?”

As ordered, Sean got their drinks and joined him at the table. They ate in silence for a good five minutes. Nolan finally broke.

“I’ve had a lot on my mind, that’s all.”

“It has something to do with her saying she lived one place and her mom a difference place, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Nolan admitted. “Like I told you early on, I’ve got a thing about lies.”

“You think she lied.”

The kid was a persistent little bugger, Nolan had to give him that. “It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “I think it was her mother who lied. But there’s something going on that Allie doesn’t want to tell me. I can’t do a relationship where the trust isn’t there.”

Sean pondered that while inhaling baked potato heaped with sour cream. “Allie doesn’t seem like someone who would lie. You know?”

Nolan grimaced. “I know.”

“So maybe...”

“Maybe what?”

The boy’s shoulders moved awkwardly. “I don’t know. Maybe she has to keep quiet for someone else. Or what if she’s scared or something?”

Scared, like her father was? “Scared of what?” The question was really for himself.

“Have you asked her?”

“No. I was hoping she’d come to me.”

“Maybe she doesn’t know you’ve guessed something is off,” Sean suggested.

Nolan felt certain Allie was well aware of his doubts and questions. The tension had been there all along; even on their first date, she wasn’t eager to talk about her history.

“You weren’t all that high on me dating her,” Nolan reminded the boy. “What’s with the grilling?”

Some color touched his cheeks and he ducked his head. “She’s cool. It was me, not her. She treats me like a person, not a kid. If she was my girlfriend, I wouldn’t want to screw it up.”

Nolan didn’t want to screw it up, either. Was that what he was doing? In his obsession with honesty, had he blown it with the first and only woman he’d ever thought of the word love in connection with?

“I was your age when I found out my mother had been sleeping around,” he heard himself say abruptly. “The man I’d called ‘Dad’ my whole life isn’t my biological father.”

Sean gaped. “No shit?”

“No shit,” Nolan said grimly. “My brother, Jed, is his kid. My sister, Anna, isn’t.” He hesitated. “We think we have two different fathers.”

“You don’t know?”

“My mother won’t talk about it.”

“So you quit talking to her,” Sean said slowly.

Nolan raised his eyebrows. “How do you know that?”

Sean looked at him as if he was stupid. “I hear you on the phone with your sister and brother, but never either of your parents.” He flushed. “I mean, your mom and...”

“I still call him Dad.” Nolan grimaced. “I got snotty for a while back then and called him by his name.” A reluctant smile tipped his mouth. “He didn’t like it. He persuaded me that he was, by God, my father in every way that mattered.”

“So...” Puzzlement tugged the boy’s eyebrows together. “Why are you so mad at him?”

“Because he knew. All those years, he knew. We all lived a lie.”

After a minute Sean nodded and then applied himself to eating. Nolan looked down and realized his food was probably getting cold. He picked up his knife and fork, too.

“Allie might be different,” Sean said at last, tentatively. “I mean, you don’t know why she doesn’t want to talk about...whatever.”