Child by Chance

CHAPTER SIX

SHERMAN DIDN’T MAKE Kent go to bed early. He’d told his son on his tenth birthday that he could stay up until ten from then on if he wanted to. But the boy still held to his nine o’clock bedtime anytime that they were home.

He got himself up at six in the morning, too. Brooke used to wake him every day. Sherman had taken over for her right after the accident, but every morning Kent had already been on his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth and comb his hair before getting dressed for school. But he still presented himself at his son’s bedroom door every day. To say good-morning.

On Saturday at 6:05, Kent was still asleep. With his heart in his throat, Sherman stood frozen until he saw the soft rise and fall of his son’s chest. And realized that he was falling back into the debilitating habit that had practically suffocated him—and his son, too—after Brooke’s death. He’d attended a grief counseling group, but it had been Dr. Jordon, Kent’s counselor, who helped him see that he was in a state of almost-constant panic—fearing that he was going to lose Kent, too.

Kent was healthy. Robust. Perfectly fine. He wasn’t going to lose him. What he was going to do was take advantage of his boy’s sleeping in and get some work done on the computer.

Noncampaign work.

For two years he’d been surfing the internet for any mention of anyone who’d gone missing around the time of Brooke’s death. Or of anyone spotted around the neighborhood where the car her killer had been driving had been stolen. He was active on social networks. Trolled Facebook pages of anyone who said they were from that area. Same for Twitter. YouTube and Tumblr, too, in case someone posted a video or photo he might recognize from the crash scene.

The police had done what they could. They’d retrieved the surveillance cameras from a convenience store in the stolen car’s neighborhood. They’d talked to folks who lived within a half-mile radius of the crime scene. The guy had been driving the wrong way down the freeway on a very deserted stretch of California highway.

Law enforcement was convinced that the crash had been the result of drunk driving, period.

Sherman wasn’t so sure. More paranoia? Maybe. But the stretch of road Brooke had been on had been long and straight—the crash happening in the middle of the stretch where someone could have seen cars for a long distance in both directions. Even if he’d been drunk surely she’d have seen him in enough time to at least swerve. But she hadn’t done so.

The man she’d been meeting in the city that night—Alan Klasky—had said Brooke had only had one glass of wine and had ordered coffee to go for the ride home. Investigators had determined that she’d been holding the half-empty cup when she’d been hit head-on. Something about the splatter of the coffee on the air bag—her right wrist and her face had been a clear indication that the cup had been upright. She hadn’t fallen asleep. Couldn’t have or the cup would have fallen out of her grasp. Or tipped, at the very least.

He ran over the details in his mind. Arranging and rearranging had become a habit for him, too. Always looking for another angle, for anything they missed. He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t let it go.

Brooke had been killed in a car accident by a drunk driver who’d stolen a car. His wife was gone. Kent’s mother was gone. The only thing left was making whoever had done this pay for what they’d done.

Important, yes. But enough to hang the rest of his life on? Or to occupy so much of his time and brain power?

He’d probably be better served using that energy to figure out his son. But then, he struggled with everything he knew about Kent, and about grief and kids going through grief, and kids who lost their mothers, and boys’ relationships with their mothers, and ten-year-olds in fourth grade on an almost hourly basis, too.

Wonder was that he got anything else done.

Must be like Brooke had always said— laughingly in the beginning and then, later, not—he was the master of multitasking. He worked on a campaign and his mind also germinated other issues at the same time.

He slept and seemed to work out solutions to problems, she’d once said to him. She’d begun to take offense at the way he always seemed to have plans for them, to know what they should do in any given situation. She’d begun to feel as if she was losing herself little by little to him.

Shaking his head, Sherman moved from one social networking site to another and swore when his computer froze up on him.

His time on the case was limited by the fact that he didn’t ever work on it when Kent was awake. Brooke’s death had changed their son. Clearly, he wasn’t recovering as well as they’d all hoped. Wasn’t adjusting at all as Dr. Jordon had first predicted he would. Sherman wasn’t going to make matters worse by bringing up evidence in the case for his precocious son to grind in that busy mind of his.

While the cursor turned over and over on his screen as the web page loaded, he moved to the computer on the next wall in the office he and Brooke used to share and he and Kent now shared. Using his mom’s computer had been important to the boy.

Signing on, he opened the internet browser, typed what he wanted and, while he waited for the screen to open, perused the list of recently accessed folders that had flashed on the screen when he’d put his cursor in the search bar. He’d pulled off all of Brooke’s files, storing them on an external hard drive in his room, before he’d turned the computer over to Kent.

Mostly it was school stuff. Kent regularly showed Sherman his computer work. Making everything accessible to his dad had been one of the prerequisites of his son’s having his own computer. There were dangers out there that Kent might not be aware of. And he’d readily agreed to Sherman’s rules.

Sherman didn’t exercise his right to search very often. It wasn’t as if Kent had a lot of time at the computer without Sherman present in the room. But when he saw a folder he didn’t recognize— triq3tra—he investigated. The folder was three-deep in last year’s math folder. He’d never have found it if it hadn’t been in the recently used list. Heart beating uncomfortably, he clicked on it, hoping to God he and Kent didn’t have worse problems than he thought.

The file was password protected.

No matter what he tried, Sherman couldn’t open it.

* * *

TALIA WAS IN the shower Saturday morning, trying not to worry about the fact that she hadn’t even started her homework for the coming week and was working eight-hour shifts at the mall in Beverly Hills both Saturday and Sunday. She’d always been a night owl, even before her previous profession. And she had no social life—completely her choice. She knew she’d get the work done.

She just preferred to keep to her schedule.

“Tal?”

At first she thought she’d imagined the voice. Her inner self calling her to task, no doubt.

“Talia?”

“Oh!” Through the glass door of the master bathroom shower, Talia saw Tatum round the corner. She turned her back and instinctively covered herself, then realized what an idiotic thing that was to do.

“Sorry,” Tatum said, sitting on the stool in the separate room across from the shower. “But it’s not like I haven’t seen it all before,” she said.

When Tatum was small, more often than not she’d showered with Talia. Someone had to help the little girl bathe, make sure that she got the soap out of her hair.

“I’m not used to have someone walking around my house while I’m showering,” Talia said.

She didn’t want her sister to see the body that had rocked the stage more nights than she could count. She knew she’d get over it in time—time took care of everything, didn’t it?—but right now, her naked body shamed her. Illogical though that was.

“Sorry,” Tatum said again. “You’re usually heading out the door by eight. It’s five to, and when I saw your car but you didn’t answer my knock, I got worried.”

And Tatum, like Sedona and Tanner, had a key to the place. At Talia’s insistence, not theirs. She wanted her little sister to have a place to hang out, or hide out, at any time for any reason. “I was up late last night,” she said, finishing her shower and reaching for a towel at the same time she shut off the water.

“Doing homework?” Her sister’s voice came through the open door. Talia could see her denim-clad knees bobbing up and down.

Tatum knew her schedule.

“No.”

“You spent the night with his collage, didn’t you?”

An adult might have been too polite to ask. Tanner would have been too cautious around her to push.

“Yep.”

As Talia wrapped a towel around her body and another one around her head, Tatum left her perch on the stool and followed her to the bedroom. “And?”

All of Talia’s underwear was still pretty much the unmentionable kind. She just couldn’t afford to replace them and had no intention of anyone seeing them.

“Pick me out something to wear, would you?” she asked, pointing to the walk-in closet opposite the regular closet on the far side of the room. Her stuff would have fit easily in her regular closet, but she’d never had a walk-in before. She liked getting dressed in it. It was like a private dressing room.

At the moment, it gave her the privacy to grab a thong and a scrap of lace with underwire and get them on before pulling on a robe and heading back into the bathroom to semidry her hair. Just enough to get it up in a twist. Any more than that would dry it out.

“How often do you wash your hair?” Tatum asked, coming in to sit on the counter and watch as Talia expertly flipped the long blond strands up and around her hand. Hooker’s hair, she thought, knowing full well that it had made her a lot of money over the years. She should cut it. Dye it.

But she’d always loved her hair. Even as a little kid.

“Three times a week,” she said.

“I only do two.” Tatum picked up her can of hairspray, read the label. “Otherwise, it gets too dry.”

“Have you been using the hydrating conditioner I gave you?”

“Yeah. And the detangler, too.”

“It’s only been a couple of months. Give it time. Your hair will be soft as a baby’s by summer.”

She liked to dress before applying her makeup—so as not to smear anything on her clothes. But Tatum was sitting there. Watching her.

“I wish I could do that as quickly as you,” she said, watching at Talia applied a coat of face cream to her skin, topped it with foundation and then began applying three shades of eye shadow, liner and mascara to her eyes. All to have the end result look as if she wasn’t wearing much makeup at all.

And she didn’t want Tatum to ever be as quick as she was at the artifice. Going from lap dance back to the stage in five minutes hadn’t left her with much time for touching up her makeup. Leaving a bedroom where she’d just been slapped in the face by her husband, to go out and meet his guests, hadn’t left much time for covering up, either.

But she’d managed.

“How about getting me some coffee?” she asked as she added a bit of blush to finish.

“Sure, mocha or dark roast?” She and Tatum had shopped together for the little cups of coffee that went with Sedona’s one-cup machine. She’d said she didn’t need it at Tanner’s house as they’d never just drink one cup of coffee there.

“Dark roast.”

As soon as Tatum slid off the counter, Talia threw on the light purple blouse and beige silk-lined pants her sister had chosen for her. Before she was in the wedged sandals Tatum had also chosen, her sister was back, placing a cup of coffee on the bathroom counter.

“Wear this,” she said, pulling her favorite pendant out of Talia’s jewelry box. It was an inch-long hand, decorated with colorful little stones, and on a fairly short gold chain. Tatum found the matching earrings and laid them out, as well.

The sisters had ordered the ensemble off a home shopping television network to commemorate the first time Tatum spent the night with her in the beach house. Tatum had picked a piece, too. Talia was still paying them both off.

“You never told me why you’re here,” Talia said as she gave herself one last glance in the mirror.

“I just wanted to see you,” Tatum said. Then added, “I’m on my way to the Stand for a session and...I’d hoped you’d stop by last night...”

Oh, God, she was failing her little sister again. “You should have called,” she said, not bothering to hide the sorrow on her face as she faced the beautiful young woman Tatum had become. “I’d have been there in a heartbeat if I’d known you needed me.”

“Chill, big sis,” Tatum said, touching Talia’s wrist lightly. “It wasn’t me I was concerned about. It’s you. And I didn’t call because I didn’t want to bother you, but I worried about you all night. Yesterday was your last day with Kent.”

“Yeah, but you don’t need to worry. I’m fine.”

“That’s why you spent the night with his collage?”

Talia meant to brush past her sister, down the hall and out the door. She was going to be late for work if she didn’t get a move on. Instead, she stood there helplessly, her eyes filling with tears.

“He’s...” She shook her head. “No, never mind. I’m fine.”

“You can see him again, Tal,” Tatum said, following her through the house and out the door, double-checking that Talia had locked it.

“No.”

“It was in your adoption agreement. You can contact his father and at least ask if—”

“No.” Talia was okay now, her purse in hand on her way to work. Where expensive clothes and good jewelry were the only things she’d have to worry about. That and trying to help women whose bodies weren’t perfect look good.

“Just...think about it, okay?” Tatum asked, standing in between Talia and the driver’s-side car door.

“It would be a selfish thing to do.” She said out loud what she’d been telling herself all night long.

She had to contact someone, though. The more she’d studied Kent’s finished product, without the boy there to distract her, the more things she’d seen that concerned her.

He hadn’t been overt, of course. He was too smart for that. But somehow those bad words had made it from the trash to his poster. Not the exact letters, of course. These were much smaller. And partially hidden. He’d used letters as borders on a number of pictures and she’d thought him creative. Until she’d seen the ones she’d prohibited earlier in the week. He must have pieced them together from magazines at home and slipped them onto the collage without her noticing.

“Not if you’re doing it for me,” Tatum said. “And him. Did you ever think that maybe he’d like to know he has an aunt? Or maybe I could be a friend to him now that his mom’s gone? Kind of like a big sister.”

There were things she should say. A right way to handle this. Talia stood silently.

“Well, anyway, just think about it,” Tatum said, stepping back from the door.

Talia nodded. Tatum backed up a few more steps.

“I love you, Tal.” Her sweet voice carried across the driveway.

“I love you, too, Baby Tay.” She wanted more than anything to make things right with Tatum. Needed to do so if she was ever going to be right with her soul.

Tatum’s frown turned into a huge grin, and Talia figured she’d done okay. This time.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHERMAN PACED. BECAUSE what he wanted to do was haul his son out of bed, into the office and stand there while Kent opened the restricted file folder on his mother’s computer.

His computer.

Dr. Jordon had told him the key to reaching Kent was patience. If he came on strong, the boy was just going to clam up, get defensive. Kent was pushing Sherman away. He needed to know that he was loved, no matter how much he acted out. He was testing Sherman, to see if he could make Sherman leave him, too.

Or some such thing.

It made sense. Sherman got it, logically. And he was beside himself with worry, disappointment and a bit of anger, too, as he stood there locked out of a computer in his own home, and waited.

As it turned out, Kent slept until eight. In spite of the vacuuming Sherman had done. And in spite of the number of times he’d let the screen door slam shut behind him after spotting a weed in the juniper tree bed from the living-room window, or checking on the mail in case he’d missed it the night before, or making sure the hose was wound up.

Maybe he’d wanted to let the door slam a number of times to get his son up and out of bed. That was possible, too.

Sherman had a bowl of sugared cereal sitting on the counter, ready for milk, and pushed the button down on the toaster to cook the bread he’d had waiting there.

He poured milk over his own oat cereal and joined Kent at the table. He talked about their plans to go to the batting cages later that afternoon. About a game they were going to watch that night. He asked his son if hot dogs sounded good for dinner.

He made it until Kent came out of his room in jeans that were too pristine to belong to a little boy and a game-day jersey tucked into them before calling his son into the office.

“Log on for me,” he said, pointing to Kent’s computer.

Without hesitating, the boy did just that. And then plopped down into his chair.

“Show me what’s new,” Sherman said next.

Kent took him through a couple of new homework folders. Showed him a new level he’d reached on a downloaded video game. A cartoon game where he had to figure out increasingly difficult puzzles to move from one level to the next. Nothing to do with death, dying or killing. The boy was not allowed to do any online gaming at all. Sherman wasn’t chancing what he might come across or be asked to do during the game chats. But Kent didn’t seem to mind.

Leaning forward in his own chair, which he’d pulled over, Sherman followed Kent’s explanations, praising him where praise had been earned. And slowly started to crumble a bit inside.

Kent wasn’t going to show him the folder. He knew it as surely as he knew he was sitting there. The boy had just accessed the folder that week, though Sherman had been able to ascertain earlier by clicking on its properties that it had existed for almost a year.

“That’s it,” Kent finally said, dropping back in the chair that was too big for him. His head was resting against the back of the chair, which meant that his back nearly covered the seat of it.

“You sure?” Sherman asked. He’d have crossed his fingers behind his back if he’d been his son’s age.

“Yeah.”

“You haven’t done anything else on this computer this week.”

“Nope.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nope.”

Kent’s heel tapped on the floor, his expression placid.

“You know what happens if I find out you’re lying to me.” Just checking. Or reminding.

“I lose my right to my own computer. I have to do homework on the laptop that’s offline and empty of all games.”

“Right.” He waited. Giving Kent the chance to think on it and come clean.

The boy had to know he was going to bust him. He knew the folder was there. And he’d also know that Sherman knew something. He’d never grilled him before.

And maybe he should have.

Or...

Maybe he should leave Kent to his privacy. The idea was tempting. It couldn’t be a permanent condition. He was going to have to know what was going on. But maybe he should speak with Dr. Jordon first. Maybe he’d like a good, relaxing weekend with his son before they got up Monday morning and had to slay dragons again.

Yeah, maybe. He could keep an eye on Kent all weekend. Make sure that the boy didn’t access whatever was in the troubling folder.

Or maybe he should give Kent time alone in the office and wait for him to think it was safe to open the folder. Maybe he should bust him then, with the evidence on the screen...

Duplicity had never been his way. He wasn’t usually a coward, either.

And since when did he need a psychologist telling him how to discipline his son?

He amended that last thought. He’d needed it since Brooke’s death, of course. But no matter how much Kent was struggling...

“I can’t abide lying in this house, Kent,” he said aloud. There was no attack here. Nothing to push Kent into defensive mode. There was only impenetrable fact.

“I’m not lying.” His son looked him straight in the eye.

And left Sherman no choice but to lean forward, take the boy’s mouse and find the incriminating folder. Kent, still leaning back as though he hadn’t a care in the world, watched him. Sherman clicked to open the folder and got the password protection screen.

“Open it,” he told his son.

Sitting up, Kent did so, quickly enough that even though he was watching, Sherman didn’t catch the password. Clearly, it was one they’d never used before. He’d tried everything he could think of while his son slept in.

The folder opened, and Sherman blinked. “There’s nothing there.”

“I know.”

Could Kent have come across some elaborate program that allowed him to erase the contents of a folder upon opening it with some password keystroke?

There was no other way the boy could have emptied that folder. Unless he’d done it earlier that week and that was why he’d accessed it.

But then why leave it there at all, if he was going to empty it?

“What was in there?”

“Nothing.”

“The folder’s been there almost a year.”

“Yeah.”

If he wasn’t mistaken his son was hiding a grin. But not a fun one. No, his eyes took on almost a sly look. A knowing look. If a ten-year-old could manage such a thing.

“Did you create it?” Kent seemed willing to answer anything, so he was going to ask everything he could think of.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To see if you were really checking up on me like you said you were going to do. I created a password-protected folder just to see if you’d find it and ask me about it. It took you almost a year. Good going, Dad.”

Sherman sat back, his fingers on either side of his chin. He’d shaved in a hurry. Missed some spots. He ran a hand through his hair. He wore his longer than Kent’s now that Brooke was gone. She’d liked it short. He liked it more casual and...

“You were testing me,” he said to the boy, just to clarify.

“Yeah.”

“How’d I do?” Had Kent wanted him to find the folder? Or just the opposite? Had he needed to know his father trusted him enough not to look?

Kent shrugged. “Not bad,” he said. “Took you a while to find it, but you grilled me as soon as you did.”

As if that was a good thing?

“You did just find it this morning, right?” For the first time since the inquisition had begun, Kent showed a sign of...fear?

“Yes.” He sat there, taking it in, finding no concrete thoughts. “How often have you accessed it?”

“I dunno. Maybe eight times.”

“I guess I’ve been a little lax, huh?”

“Nah. You did fine, Dad. Can we go to the batting cages now?”

“What did we agree to at breakfast?”

“I’d clean my room and help with the bathroom first.”

“Right, and have we done that?”