“Okay. How was Burdette?”
“Great. I think Girt and Evan hit it off.”
“That’s good,” he mumbled, obviously distracted.
“I didn’t see you this morning before I left. Your truck was gone—”
“Yeah, I ran into a little trouble. Cole managed to get himself arrested.”
Robin caught her breath; a flash of untold horrors raced through her mind. “What happened?”
Jake’s sigh was heavy, full of emotion. “He and another kid cut class, went down to the levee and smoked a joint.”
“Oh man . . .” Her disappointment was, surprisingly, quite intense. She hadn’t realized she cared so much what the kid did. “Why? Did he say why?”
“No. He won’t talk about it. I . . . I was hoping maybe you could help me out here. At least he’ll talk to you.”
Robin was already standing. “Are you at home? I’ll come over.”
“Thank you, Robin,” Jake said, and she could hear the relief in his voice.
In truth, Jake was at his wit’s end. He had gone round and round with Mom on the subject of Cole—her insisting it was Jake’s fault for not paying more attention to the boy like he had promised, and he insisting she made matters worse in always trying to assess blame. That got them nowhere fast, and feeling the frustration of the situation, Mom next laid into Cole in that biting way of hers she had perfected through the years. The end result was a tight-lipped, surly Cole who refused to answer or do anything they asked of him. As a last resort, Jake had gathered up a few of his things, tossed them in an overnight bag, and ordered him to the truck. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about Cole sneaking out—the Heights were too far from anything Cole knew.
“I don’t want to go to your house! That’s like another state!” Cole had complained.
“No choice, bucko. You made that decision when you smoked pot.”
“You treat me like a kid. I’m almost fifteen!”
“That’s because you act like a kid. When you stop acting like it, I’ll stop treating you like one,” Jake had shot back. They had ridden in frosty silence across Houston; when they reached Jake’s house, Cole went to the room he used on occasion and slammed the door so hard that it almost came off its hinges.
When Robin arrived, she immediately asked where he was.
“In his room,” Jake said.
Robin looked at the closed door. “Do you have a quilt or a blanket?”
“Yeah,” Jake said, confused, “but what does that—”
“Humor me,” she said.
Jake fetched the quilt.
Robin smiled, gathered it against her chest, then lifted up on her toes and kissed him. “Go get a beer somewhere.”
“Are you kicking me out?”
“Yes. Go on. Come back in an hour or so.”
Jake looked at the closed door, shook his head. “I don’t know if that is a good idea.”
“Do you have a better one?”
Touché. “Okay, fine,” he said and grabbed a jacket and his helmet. “But I will be back in an hour—”
“and a half—”
“—and if he hasn’t straightened up by then, I’ll . . . Shit, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Robin gave him a patient smile, motioned toward the door. “Go on.”
“Fine,” Jake muttered irritably and stalked out the door, feeling completely helpless. At the local watering hole, he nursed a beer and brooded about the situation, coming to no conclusion, other than the fact that he and Cole might as well be speaking Chinese. They were that far apart, on opposite ends of the world. And he hated involving Robin in this ugly little family matter—he would just as soon she never know how truly dysfunctional they were. But for some reason, she was the only one Cole seemed able or willing to talk to. Nonetheless, he didn’t like the thought of her exposed to the surly little monster for too long, and left his beer unfinished, heading back home after one hour.
The house looked asleep when he parked his bike in the old detached garage. He walked around to the front door, paused there, listening for where the two of them might be. Silence. Robin’s car was in the drive, so they hadn’t gone anywhere. Jake wandered through the house, checking the various rooms and finding no one. Cole’s room was empty. So was his. In the kitchen, he scratched his head, tried to think of where they might be, and then noticed the back door was ajar.
He walked to the door and pulled it open, peering out the screen door to the darkened backyard, trying to see in the shadows.