Page 62 of Like the Season
Chapter Eighteen
Boyd stepped out of the Albuquerque International Sunport a little after nine a.m. local time to a very sunny and dry sixty-six degrees. After locating his rental car, he plugged the address of his destination into his phone and set the GPS app to run.
Barring any unforeseen delays or issues, this was a turn-and-burn trip. He’d fly out at six that evening, back to Tampa, and then drive home from there.
He’d tell Caleb and Ella about it after the fact. Especially depending on how it went. While he hadn’t outright lied to Caleb about his day, he’d parsed it in such a way that Caleb assumed it was a daytrip for work, that he’d be home very late…and he hadn’t mentioned anything about flying.
As he drove, his left thumb constantly sought the wedding band on his fourth finger, stroking it, a self-soothing action. The boy was all his, completely and utterly. Life together, both vanilla and kinky, was a sweetly messy perfection. They could talk as equals when they needed it, but Caleb was always eager to dive back into the role of boy, or however Boyd needed him—husband or submissive or slave or boy or willing fuck-toy. Frequently more than one of the above at the same time.
The woman lived in an aging trailer park in the Alameda area northwest of town. It backed up against an industrial area, and many of the trailers, despite their originally intended color, bore a rust-tinted dusty patina. What little grass there was lay brown and crunchy, like it’d given up all pretenses of trying to live. When Boyd pulled his car to a stop outside the trailer, he almost considered leaving without speaking to her.
Knowing she’d ended up somewhere like this was nearly sweet enough.
Except heneededanswers and demanded to know.
There was an older Ford Taurus parked next to the trailer, in what he assumed was its assigned spot. He grabbed his phone and stiffened his spine before heading to the trailer’s front door and knocking.
The woman who answered looked like she was forty years older than the last time he’d seen her instead of just a hair over twenty. A cloud of stale cigarette smoke drifted out of the doorway as she warily eyed him. “Can I help you?”
“Lisa Stinton?”
“Who are you? If you’re one of those debt collectors, I told you people on the phone I don’t have any money, and—”
He held up his phone, displaying a picture of Helen with newborn Ella. “You don’t recognize me, do you?” Although it was clearly obvious to him that she didn’t.
Her gaze narrowed. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Boyd Nyberg.” He flipped his phone around, swiped to the next picture, of him, Caleb, Ella and Lily, a timed photo Boyd had taken of them the week before at his house during dinner. “I was Helen’s boyfriend in high school. I’m Ella’s father. Oh, FYI, Ella is the granddaughter you’ll never lay eyes on, and Lily is her daughter.”
Recognition dawned. “Helen!”
“Yeah. Helen. The daughter you assholes threw away—yourteenageddaughter. How thehellcould you do that?”
She rebounded fast, he gave her all due credit for that. “You shouldn’t have gotten her pregnant. Is that what you came here to yell at me about? Obviously she found you and—”
“No, she didn’t. My dad got sent to Germany. Helen didn’t know that was happening because I didn’t tell her. She never found me.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Helen showed up in Grand Forks just to discover that I was gone. She was unable to locate me. She had to figure out how to survive, on her own, an unwed teenaged mom who wasn’t even old enough to vote yet. She had Ella, and eventually ended up moving out to Oregon.” He went for the jugular. “Helen died in a car accident six years ago when Ella was only sixteen.”
He paused while that sank in.
“Helen’s…dead?”
“Yep.Dead. Leaving a teenaged daughter alone who had to figure out how to make her way, all because you assholes couldn’t be bothered to have the military locate my parents and tell me what was going on instead of throwing her out. Fortunately, Ella was really smart and was able to get emancipated minor status and make it through college. Ella’s a nurse now, by the way. She found me several months ago. Unlike you assholes, I wasn’t about to turn my back onmychild.
“Andfuckyou, by the way. Hopefully Charles is fucking rotting in hell somewhere for not contacting the military and having them track my dad down so I could have been there for both of them. I sincerely hope you’ll join him there when it’s your turn, which honestly can’t come soon enough for my tastes, you goddamned cunt.”
He spun on his heel and started back toward his car.
“Wait!” He turned. She’d made it as far down as the second rickety metal step at her front door. “I want to talk to her. See her.”
Boyd slowly smiled and flipped her a bird. “She wants nothing to do with you. You tossed her mother out like she was garbage. What thehellkind of parent does that?”
Anger contorted her face. “If you hadn’t fucking seduced our daughter, and—”
“I’mgay, lady. Helen was in love withme, andsheaskedmeto sleep with her because she thought she’d never see me again. Apparently the condom broke or leaked or something. We were both virgins. I was a stupid kid, yeah, I admit it. We both were. But had IknownI’d gotten her pregnant, I would have supported herandour baby. My parents would have helped us. She was the only woman I ever slept with.”
