Scratch the Surface

Until he’d cracked the door open wide enough to let me in.

My life had always been neat and tidy, uncluttered, very few attachments because I wasn’t great with people, and it was easier to distance myself. I’d always been careful, insular, but I was drawn to him like nothing I’d ever experienced before. The wonder of it was that I’d asked him to stay and he’d said yes. It was a mystery as to why, but neither one of us wanted it to end. I wasn’t about to question it.

“The point is he’s not a hustler, he’s not ready to take over your shelter yet, and him working at a restaurant won’t give him school credits or look good on his résumé. He’s done with Barrett Crossing, apart from The Mission, but even that probably won’t last beyond another year. He’ll need to get a position at a youth facility in Sac until he becomes a full-time social worker.”

He nodded.

“This is all to say that he’s not the boy he was when you knew him, and he doesn’t need you to fix him or save him. You can stop now. You need to let go of the guilt you’re carrying around, Mr. Barrett––”

“Merrell, please.” He huffed a long, steady breath.

“Merrell,” I repeated. “It’s fine, cut it loose. You were both kids, and he’s more than smart enough to understand that.”

He nodded.

I realized then what a relief this conversation was. I’d read his contrition as interest, as him carrying a torch for Jeremiah, when that wasn’t the case at all. Merrell Barrett was trying to right what he perceived as a wrong. Now, hopefully, he could find relief as well.

“I was so scared to see him, to face him.” His tone was a bit wistful, his smile bittersweet. “I should have known when I saw him at the restaurant for the first time and he treated me like everybody else that I’d had no effect on his life, good or bad.”

That had to be hard for a man like him. He’d always been beloved, in school, by his family and friends, and now by his constituency. He’d been worshipped all his life, but Jeremiah didn’t care, never had, and it was beyond Merrell’s understanding. Of course his leaving must have hurt Jeremiah, it had to have, but it all boiled down to Merrell’s ego feeding his guilt.

“Everybody has a reaction to me, but from him I get nothing at all.”

I nodded. “Did you love him?”

“Maybe, I don’t know, but as you said, we were young, and he certainly never loved me. I can’t imagine him loving anyone, to be honest. When I look at him, I still see the same closed-off, cold person he always was. I even asked McCauley about it, and he agreed. Both of us have grown and changed, but Jeremiah’s exactly the same. I suppose that’s what happens when you grow up the way he did; you get stuck in the place where your life fell apart.”

His conversation with the ADA must have happened before McCauley walked in on Jeremiah and me kissing at the hospital.

“Anyway, I appreciate you talking to me,” he went on, holding my gaze. “I have designs for my future, for what I want it to be, and I was trying to find a place within those plans to sort of wedge in a fix for Jeremiah. To help him in a way that, admittedly, would benefit me as well.”

“It’s quite honest of you to say so.”

He shrugged and offered me a half-hearted smile. “I am a politician, after all.”

My personal phone chirped, and checking the text messages, I saw it was Jeremiah, telling me he was waiting for me on the steps of the police station. “I have to go, but I’m glad we talked.”

“I look forward to hearing from your client.”

“Well, I’ll warn you again, don’t expect a windfall.” I texted Jeremiah back before meeting Merrell’s gaze. “Because you’re not my client.”

“I understand. I’ll still appreciate the call.”

“Good.” I stood and offered him my hand.

He stood as well, and we shook; then I turned and headed back toward the police station. When I got there, Jeremiah met me at the bottom of the steps.

“Where were you?”

“Merrell Barrett overheard me talking on the phone, deduced who I was, and introduced himself. We walked a bit and chatted about my client buying Kingman’s. I told him I was going to make sure they lowballed him.”

He snorted. “At least you prepared him.”

“Everything go all right with Creese?”

“Yeah.” He looked a little worse for the wear, so I took his hand in mine because he needed the comfort. “He told the truth, and I was right there beside him for every word of it. It was good. He was worried about me being banged up, but I told him I’d be fine by next Monday for our regular appointment.”