Along Came Trouble (Camelot 2)

“I brought the whole six-pack. Don’t tell your mother.”

“My lips are sealed,” Caleb said, before tilting his head back and letting the cold beer slide down his throat. It went a long way toward slaking his thirst, but it didn’t do much for the rest of his problems.

The Breckenridge guy had finally showed at lunchtime on Monday, right as Caleb finished up at the hospital. After spending most of a bleary afternoon bringing the guy up to speed, he’d gone to bed at six o’clock and slept straight through to morning.

Yesterday, he’d headed back to the hospital, where dozens of photographers continued to jockey for position at the barricaded entrances, hoping to get a shot of Jamie and Carly and the baby to sell for a million bucks. Fat chance. He had the situation under control.

He hadn’t felt like showing his face on Burgess, so instead he’d played cards with Carly for most of the day. They let Callahan in on a few hands, but Carly was right—he couldn’t bluff. Everything he thought showed on his face. Just like his sister.

Caleb got to see the baby, but he turned down a chance to hold her. Her whole body would fit easily into one of his hands. He didn’t trust himself not to break her.

This morning, he’d intended to go to work but had ended up here instead. He couldn’t handle the thought of turning all of his responsibilities over to Breckenridge, but he couldn’t deal with seeing Ellen again either.

Or Henry. That night at the hospital, he’d told the kid stories about Ellen. He’d made up superpowers for her and spun yarns about how she’d used them for the good of mankind, rescuing kittens from trees, getting the president to an important meeting, that sort of thing. Henry had sat in his lap and soaked up every word with his huge blue eyes, asking one question after another until finally he started to have trouble holding up his head, and he’d laid it down on Caleb’s chest and gone to sleep, Caleb’s shirt clenched in his chubby fist.

It might as well have been Caleb’s heart.

He’d sat there like that for hours, watching people move in and out of the room as the sky grew darker outside and he finally drifted off to sleep. He hadn’t wanted to get up, because being there with Henry had felt like the only thing he’d done right in a long time.

“Here, give me your empty,” his dad said.

Caleb handed it over, and Derek exchanged it for another beer.

“Did you come up here to help me or get me drunk?”

“Little bit of both,” his father said. “Thought maybe you needed to unwind.”

“The screwdriver clue you in?”

“Nah. I just figured the way your mother’s been riding you, anybody would be tense.”

Caleb glanced sideways at him, surprised his dad had noticed Janet’s disapproval—and more surprised he cared. “She’s riding you a lot harder.”

“Yeah, but I’m used to it. You’ve been getting the hero treatment for years.”

“It wears a little thin.”

“No doubt.” His dad took a long pull on his beer. “Plus, there’s that whole circus you’re caught up in over on Burgess.”

“You’ been following that?”

“Saw a picture of you in the paper taking a swing at that poet fella who wears the leather vest.”

Caleb sighed. He wondered how long it would take before people stopped bringing it up. Given that this was Camelot, he was guessing fifty years would be cutting it close.

They had a great view of the village from the rooftop. It looked small and harmless from up here. Picturesque.

“Why do you let her do it?” Caleb asked. “Run you down all the time?”

The question didn’t come entirely out of the blue. It had been bothering him since he came home. His father seemed diminished by illness, and to watch Janet make him even smaller turned Caleb’s stomach.

Derek polished off his beer before he answered. “You probably don’t remember this, because you were just a kid when we moved here, but your mom was pissed off at me for two years straight for taking her away from her people and dragging her to this town. Two years, she didn’t have a kind word to say to me. Then she got over it.”

Caleb rubbed his hand over the back of his neck and stared down at the shingles. It wasn’t any kind of answer.

“She can hold a grudge, is all I’m saying. She doesn’t get mad easy, but when she’s mad, she stays that way for a while. It doesn’t help to try to talk her out of it. You just have to wait for it to blow over.”

“What’s she mad at you for now?”