The Perfect Match (Blue Heron #2)(115)

“No,” he snapped.

“Then stop acting like one.” Huh. Hadn’t planned on saying that.

“What do you know about anything?” He kicked his shoe in the sand.

“A lot more than you, apparently. Tom has spent three years trying to stay in your life.”

“I never asked him—”

“Shush. Now I know it must be incredibly hard to have had your mom die. My mom died when I was young, too.”

“My mom didn’t just die,” he said. “She...left.”

Honor softened. “I know, honey.”

“And what if she wasn’t coming back?”

“I bet she was.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t know that.”

What was it about teenagers, that they loved thinking of themselves as the single most tormented individual on the face of God’s earth? “From what I’ve heard, she loved you, and even if she went away for the weekend, I imagine she was coming back.” Charlie said nothing, and Honor sighed. “Mothers do die sometimes, and it does suck, and you never quite get over it. I’m sorry it happened to you.”

“Wow. Thanks, lady.”

Oh, the attitude. “And I’m sorry your father is such a shit.”

“He’s not! He’s not at all!” Spike barked again. “My dad is great.”

“You want to be treated like an adult? Then you need to grow up. Open your eyes, Charlie. Your father breezes in and out of your life when he feels like it, then dumps you off at your grandparents’ when he’s got other plans.”

“It’s not like that.”

“It’s exactly like that, and pretending it’s otherwise doesn’t help you one bit.”

Charlie opened his mouth to protest, then shut it, his eyes filling. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, looked at the ground. A tear fell on his black jeans. She put her arm around his skinny shoulders. “I hate you,” he said.

“I’m sure you do. But, Charlie, Tom...Tom loves you. His whole life has been about you since the day you first met, and he was willing to marry a stranger just to stay near you.”

Oops. Maybe shouldn’t have mentioned that. Charlie gave her a sidelong glance. “What are you talking about?”

She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. “Wickham College wasn’t going to renew his work visa, and to stay in this country—to stay near you, Charlie—he had to find someone to marry to get a green card. Me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Fine. You don’t have to. You can spend your time being bitter and hateful because your mother went away and died and your father is an ass, or you can acknowledge that there’s a person who’s loved you since the day he met you and moved heaven and earth and was willing to risk being sent to jail for fraud to be near you. Your choice.”

He didn’t answer.

She’d tried. Maybe she shouldn’t have said what she did, but it was a little late for that.

Taking Spike’s leash, she stood up to leave, then paused. “Do you need a ride home? I rode my bike here, but I can call my dad.”

Charlie didn’t look at her. “I’ll walk home.”

“I’ll call your grandmother in an hour and make sure you got there.”

He rolled his eyes. But he didn’t protest, either, and after another beat, Honor left.





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

WHEN JANICE KELLOGG called, telling him in a whisper that Mitchell Kellogg had returned Charlie, Tom’s fist clenched so hard around his coffee mug that it broke, and the red haze colored his vision.

“Can you take him for a few hours? He’s killing us,” Janice said. “Honestly, how did we get into this?”

“Of course,” Tom said.

“We’ll drop him off in ten minutes.”

“Brilliant.”

Tom’s heart was roaring in his ears. A shard of coffee mug was sticking out of his palm, and without feeling it, he pulled it out.

That f**king Mitchell. Did he have really so little heart that he’d return his son, his boy, back to the Kelloggs like a dog who hadn’t quite worked out being brought back to the pound? No, that wasn’t fair. The pound had standards. They wouldn’t let a person like Mitchell DeLuca take a vicious pit bull, let alone a lovely boy like Charlie. He’d been lovely once, at any rate. He was probably ruined now. How much could a child take, after all?

He cleaned up the broken mug and spilled coffee and bandaged his hand. Then the front door opened, and Charlie walked in.

“Hello, mate,” Tom said as gently as he knew how.

The kid didn’t even pause, just shuffled past, his horrible jeans dragging on the floor, the chain from his belt clinking, and went upstairs, ninety pounds of hate and misery. After a second, Tom followed.

Charlie stood in his room, looking around as if he’d never seen it before.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” Tom said.

The boy turned and looked at him, his expression incredulous. Then he turned to the bureau, where the Stearman PT-17 waited, still unfinished, seized it in both hands and hurled it to the floor. It exploded, pieces flying everywhere, and Charlie picked up his foot and stomped on it, again and again and again, obliterating it, the crunching sound sickening, his screaming far worse. Then he ripped down the Manchester United poster, then flew to the nighttable, to the photo of Charlie and Melissa, and hurled it against the wall.