black lashes swept his cheek as he looked down at his feet. He laid the remainder of his sandwich down on the plate. A small crescent was left.
“No,” Mickey said quietly. “I’m okay.”
The hell he was, Blaine thought. But all he could do was be here for him.
And love him, he thought.
Blaine reached across the table and squeezed his son’s hand. Mickey looked up, a faint, sad smile on his lips. There was love in the boy’s eyes, love granted without reservation, without qualifications.
God, he hoped he was up to this. He’d never had a responsibility before that even came close to equaling this.
“Hey, buddy,” the shorter of the two moving men called to Blaine from the hall. His biceps bulged as they strained to keep up his end of the bureau. As he stopped, he tilted it so that it was leaning into him. The burly man nodded at the piece of furniture, which appeared to be cradled against him like a sleeping child on his mother’s bosom. “You want this in the same place as the other piece?”
Blaine nodded vaguely. “Yes, put it in the master bedroom.” His mind wasn’t on his furniture. It was on his son.
They’d made this arrangement, he and Jack, because they both thought it best for Mickey. Jack, a retired police officer, was going to remain with them for at least a month to help out. But Jack had been more than willing to take the boy to his house if a transition period was needed. Mickey, when consulted, had opted to remain here. Little boys were known to change their minds, though.
Blaine leaned toward Mickey, creating an air of confidentiality. “Are you sure you didn’t want to stay with Grandpa for a while?”
Mickey wrapped his hands around the glass of milk before him, but he made no move to drink.
“You.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “I want to stay with you.” He swallowed before raising his eyes to his father’s face. Hope and fear chose their battleground there. “Unless you don’t want me.”
Blaine’s mug met the table surface with a thud as he rose from the chair. He circumvented the table to Mickey’s side. Leaning against the table, he placed his hands on the small shoulders.
“Don’t you ever, ever think that.”
His tone was far harsher than he believed himself capable of with Mickey. Harsh and choked with emotion. What sort of trash had Diane filled his son’s head with? he wondered angrily. Had she told the little boy his father didn’t care in order to make him choose sides? He might have refrained from making references about Diane in the boy’s presence, but Blaine knew that the arrangement had not been reciprocated by the small things the boy would occasionally let drop.
“I want you.” His eyes held his son’s. “I have always wanted you. I will always want you.” His voice softened. “Understand?”
Mickey blinked, then, slowly, the solemn expression on his face faded in intensity as he nodded. “Yes, I understand.”
Blaine released his son’s shoulders, aware that he might have been holding him a little too tightly.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Blaine said after a moment.
Easy? God, it was going to be downright hard, he thought, but he could manage it. He’d already taken the first major step. He’d moved back into the house. A house full of memories, not only for Mickey, but for him. It was here where he and Diane had begun their marriage. And here where it had died that awful, rainy Thursday night, when he had walked out for the last time.
She’d kept the house after the divorce for the same reason she had kept him away from Mickey as much as possible. To spite him because he had cared about it.
“But we’re going to manage,” Blaine promised Mickey now, with a great deal more certainty than he felt. “He—ck.” At the last moment, he switched the word that had naturally sprung to his lips. He was going to have to curb his language now, he thought. Another change. But Mickey was worth it. The boy was worth everything. “With Grandpa here to help out,” Blaine continued, “we’ll be just like the family on ‘My Three Sons.’” He laughed and amended, “Minus a couple of sons, of course.”
“Huh?” Mickey’s expression told Blaine that he had lost his way.
It took Blaine a moment to remember that Diane hadn’t allowed the boy to watch television. She’d called it a waste of time. Mickey had never had the opportunity to catch the classic sixties program in reruns.
“Never mind, that’ll be part of your education,” he promised. Between classic cartoons in syndication and selected other programs Blaine had already mentally earmarked for Mickey, the boy had a lot of catching up to do.
He cupped the boy’s cheek, the wonder of his new situation not fully registering, yet. He had a son depending on him now. Full time. It still took his breath away when he thought about it.
Blaine dropped his hand and straightened. As he took Mickey’s dish and his own drained coffee mug to the sink, he heard an unsettling thud coming from the general direction of the master bedroom. He winced and wondered if wood glue could rectify whatever had just happened.
He looked down at Mickey, who was shadowing his every step. “So, you’re sure you don’t want to talk about, uh, anything?”
“Sure,” Mickey echoed. He underlined his statement with a nod of his head.
Blaine wasn’t convinced. Mickey couldn’t be as calm as he appeared. Could he?
Having rinsed the plate without looking, Blaine placed it on the rack. “Well, I’m here for you if you do decide that you want to talk or—something.”
Blaine shoved his hands into his pockets as he went out to see how the movers were faring. God, he was going to make a mess of it, he thought with a wave of anxiety. He just knew it.
But Blaine knew that all he could do was place one foot in front of the other and pray that he didn’t step on anything.
She hated funerals, absolutely hated them.
Bridgette Rafanelli knew that it had been cowardly of her. But she hadn’t been able to make herself attend the funeral, even though Diane had been a friend.
No, Bridgette amended fiercely, because Diane had been a friend. There was something altogether spirit-shredding about listening to final words being said about a person who had been alive and vibrant only a few days ago.
She couldn’t go.
Funerals reminded her of when she had lost her mother. Then she had been forced to stand between her father and Nonna, listening to a white-haired priest saying words about someone she would never see again. Nonna had held on to her hand tightly, silently offering her a wealth of comfort. It hadn’t been enough. Bridgette remembered the church growing smaller and then disappearing. She had woken up on a cold, cracked leather sofa in the rectory, with her grandmother hovering over her.
Bridgette let out a long breath as she guided her car into a residential development. She might be short on courage when it came to standing and listening to eulogies, but she was long on compassion and love. Right
