Page 166 of Beneath the Stain
But he couldn’t see Grant telling any of them—not his blonde helmet-coiffed mother, his good-ol’-boy father, or his bitter small-town bride—that he and Mackey had fucked away their high school years like too many kids to count.
“He must have,” Sam said, looking away. She was wearing a blue turtleneck and dark blue jeans. Besides fake plants and the playpen in the corner filled with toys, he couldn’t see any other color in the entire house. The living room was supposed to be arranged into a conversation pit. The effect was ruined by the giant hospital bed placed under the window. The window itself was in a vaulted turret, and it shined down into the room. The light made the bones of the place easy to see. Trav’s gaze lingered on that bed in the sunshine, and he swallowed.
“Mr. Reeves, can I see those papers again?”
He took the sheaf and looked through them, looking for Katy’s birth date, and his eyes widened. “She was born on the first of June?” he said, to make sure.
“Says so on the papers,” Mr. Reeves confirmed. “Why?”
“Because Outbreak Monkey signed with Tailpipe Productions at the end of August.”
“I’m sorry?” Reeves looked puzzled, but as Trav looked around the room, Sam glared at him and walked toward the window, folding her arms and turning her back on them all.
Grant’s mother, Loretta, didn’t meet his eyes.
“Right,” Trav muttered, shaking his head in disgust.
“Right what? What sort of judgments are you passing, faggot?” Casper Adams, Grant’s father, was a real prize. Trav raked him over, top to bottom, leather cowboy hat, matching shiny boots, and all.
“Nothing you would understand,” he said after a moment. “And to answer your question, yes. Yes, I can and I will insist that you honor Grant’s last will and testament. I’ll get Mackey and the boys to sign that they accept.”
“You can’t do that!” Loretta said, fidgeting. Trav could smell the old smoke in the living room, and her fingers were nicotine stained. A smoker—not reformed, maybe, but perhaps forced to smoke outside the house. She was dressed elegantly in a daytime outfit of a burnt-orange pantsuit and pearls that would give any woman in Beverly Hills a run for her money—and Trav knew enough executives, male and female, to know this was fact. She’d used enough hairspray to lock a semi into place on the tarmac, and her boobs, butt, and face had all been done with the same X-Acto knife.
Trav’s mom was probably the same age. She’d had her eyes done, and she dyed her hair brown like it had been in her youth, but the brittle quality, the so-perfect-it-can-snap thing—that was missing in comfortable, kind Linda Ford, who had always wanted to hug Trav as he was growing up and too old for such things.
“I can,” Trav said, looking at the paperwork. “I mean, Grant’s wife can withhold Katy from us, but that would mean that the royalty percentage Grant gets from the band would no longer be going to support Samantha but would, in fact, be divided between Katy’s college fund and an LGBTQ homeless shelter. Now, you two could take them both into your home and Sam wouldn’t have to work to support the baby, and that would be your choice, but you’d never see a penny of that money for support. And Katy can only claim the college money by coming to visit the members of the band. That’s a proviso. One way or another, your daughter is going to know the Sanders kids. You can do it this way, let their gifts into your home, let their mother come visit, let them take her for a few weeks a year, or you can spring them on her all at once, when she’s eighteen and you don’t have a say in her life. It isallup to you.”
“I can’t believe he did this to me,” Sam muttered, still not looking at any of them.
“After what you did to him?” Trav snapped, trying to control the aching in his chest. June. The baby had been born in June. He knew the story: Grant couldn’t come with the band because he’d knocked his girlfriend up. But the band signed in August. And he knew Grant had instilled the condom habit in Mackey pretty darned securely—probably because he’d been practicing it himself with Sam.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Casper Adams asked, glaring at him. Well, he’d been glaring at Trav and Mr. Reeves the entire visit. Trav was starting to think of it like a sunlamp. He could close his eyes and tan his skin in the joules from that faggot-hating glare.
“That means you should ask your wife,” Trav said shortly, and then bathed himself in the glacier that was Loretta Adams.
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” she said and fixed heavily mascaraed eyes on his face, daring him to contradict her.
“Of course you don’t,” he sneered. “But even if you did, it wouldn’t change that my guys are going to be this baby’s godparents—”
“This isbullshit!” Oh, oh yeah. Casper was going to try to intimidate him. He stumped forward—he was shorter than Trav by about five inches—and thrust out his chest. “Those Sanders boys are nothing but trash, just like their whoring mother, and if you think we’re letting my boy’s baby into the hands of drug-addicted, cock-sucking faggots, you got another thing coming!”
“You can do what you wish,” Trav said, looking down at him. Of course he’d take the money. Ofcoursehe’d take the money. “You can keep her here and kiss most of her royalties good-bye to a LGBTQ cause, or you can let her see fresh air and sunlight and honor your son’s last request. It iscompletelyup to you.”
“That money is my boy’s!” Casper snarled.
Trav let his temper show. “That money is his because the Sanders kids are generous asfuck,” Trav hissed. “Their manager and producer both tried to talk them out of that royalty cut, but they said Grant had been there for the beginning—he should see that money too. So this? This is Grant standing up for himself. This is the one thing Grant Adams has ever asked from any of you, and you can either honor it or shit on it, but whatever you choose, it doesn’t have a damned thing to do with my boys. They aregoodboys. They are kind and generous and smart. They’ve been getting their degrees online as we’ve toured, and adopting causes, and generally improving the hell out of a world that didn’t give a fuck about them one way or another—andyourboy never had a chance to do that himself. And every person in this room is to blame. So you do what you think is right, but you ask yourself: When this is over and they put that kid in the ground, who are they going to be burying? The kid you tried to lock away in this fucking house, or the kid my boys love? ’Cause I'm saying, I’ve listened to their CDs for the last year, in and out, and I can tell you which boy is going to live forever in music.”
That stopped Grant’s dad. His mouth opened and closed and his tongue appeared, wetting his thick lips. He closed his eyes and breathed hard.
“I don’t listen to rock music,” he said after a moment.
“You should,” Trav said, relenting a little. “It’s as close to your son as you may ever get.” He sighed, tired of this place, and he’d only been in there for twenty minutes. “Mr. Reeves, do you have anything to add?”
The lawyer nodded. “Yes, sir, but if I may talk to you privately?”
“God, yeah,” Trav said, looking around the living room at the three adults who couldn’t meet each other’s eyes. “You people deserve each other. I hope it’s true what they say—that when you die, you move on to a better place. Because your son deserves a better place than this.” They all turned to him, surprised, and Samantha’s face twisted. She might be the only person here who would cry for Grant Adams, and she was crying from anger, not from love.
For a scant second, Trav hoped Grant and Mackey were making out, mouths open, tongues down each other’s throats, groin to groin. Mackey was usually ferocious, but he could be gentle too. Trav hoped Mackey was giving Grant a gentle blow job, lots of little breaths, lots of reverence.
