Hosts

"I'd heard."

"He's on his third wife now. Saw him briefly over Christmas. I didn't see it when you were younger, but you and he look amazingly alike. Put on ten years and twenty pounds, add a little gray to your hair, and you could be twins."

"My big brother," Jack said, frowning as he shook his head. "Of all things, a judge."

Wondering at Jack's tone of chagrin, she raised her glass for another sip but found only ice cubes.

"Time for another," Jack said, taking it from her.

Before she could protest he was up and moving away from the table.

Moves like a cat, she thought as she watched him go.

Time to change the subject. So far the conversation had been pretty much a one-way street. Now it was his turn.

"So," she said as he set the second drink before her. "Enough about me. I need some answers from you. Most of all, I want to know why you simply disappeared from our lives. Was it what happened to Mom?"

Jack nodded. "Indirectly."

I knew it! Kate thought. Knew it, knew it, knew it!

"We were all devastated, Jack, but why—?"

"You weren't there in the car when that cinderblock came through the windshield, Kate. You didn't see the life seep out of her, see the light fade from her eyes."

"Okay. I wasn't there. Neither was Tom. But Dad was and he—"

"Dad didn't do anything about it. I did."

"I don't understand," she said, baffled. "Did what?"

He stared at her a long moment, as if weighing an important decision. Finally he spoke.

"I found him," he said softly. "Took me a while, but I found the guy who did it."

"Who did what?"

"Who threw the cinderblock off the overpass."

The words jolted her. Jackie had gone out looking… hunting… by himself?

"How come you never said anything? Did you tell the police?"

He shook his head. "No. I took care of it myself."

"What… what did you…?"

Suddenly it was as if a mask had dropped from Jack's face. She looked into his eyes now and for an instant, the span of a single agonized heartbeat, she felt as if she were peering into an abyss.

His voice remained low, flat, as cold as that abyss. "I fixed it."

And then the mask was back in place and an old memory flashed though Kate's brain… a newspaper article about a dead man, battered beyond recognition, found hanging upside down from a Turnpike overpass not too long after Mom's death, and she remembered wondering if it might be the same overpass, and if so it should be torn down because it must be cursed.

Could that have been the "guy" Jack said he'd tracked down? Was that why the body had been hung from that particular overpass?

No… not Jackie… not her little brother. He'd never… he couldn't kill. It had been someone else hanging from the overpass. And this man he'd mentioned… Jack had simply beaten him up.

Kate wanted very much to believe that. She turned her mind from the other possibility, but it lingered like a shadow across the table.

"Did… what you did solve anything? Did it make you feel better?"

"No," he said. "I'd thought it would, I was so sure it would, but it didn't do a damn thing for me. And after I… afterward nothing seemed to make much sense. College seemed particularly pointless. I had to get away before I exploded. I dropped out, Kate—way out. Spent years in- a blind rage, and by the time I'd blown off some of it and locked up the rest, I'd burned too many bridges to go back."

"Maybe you told yourself that. Maybe that made it easier for you, but it wasn't true."

"It was. And is. My life and your life… they're different worlds. No way you'd understand."

"Understand what? This repair business of yours? Just what is it you fix?"

"Hard to say. Situations, I guess."

"I don't get it."

"Sometimes people have problems or get themselves into situations where the legal and judicial system can't help, or they're involved in something they can't bring to the system. They pay me to fix it for them."

An appalling thought struck her. "You're not some kind of… of hitman, are you?"

He laughed—a real laugh, the kind you can't fake—and that reassured her. A little.

"No. Nothing so melodramatic as that."

"Do you pay people off?"

"No, I just sort of… it's hard to explain. And not the sort of thing I can advertise on a billboard."

"Is it legal?"

A shrug. "Sometimes yes, sometimes no."

Kate leaned back and stared. Who was this man across from her? He'd said he lived on a different world, one she'd never understand, and she was begi

First Jeanette, now Jack… her own world, never a comfortable place these past few years, now seemed to be crumbling. She felt unmoored from her life. Wasn't there anything left she could rely on?

Jack said, "Now can you see why I thought it best for all concerned that I keep to myself?"

"I don't know." Earlier tonight Kate would have said no—nothing you could have done would have changed the way we felt about you. She wasn't so sure anymore. "Maybe."

"I think Dad has scoped that I'm hiding something. Know what he asked me last time we talked?" Jack gri

Kate gasped. She couldn't help it. She felt as if someone had just dashed a bucket of cold water in her face.

"It's not all that bad," Jack said, seeing Kate's shocked look.

He wondered at that. As a pediatrician she must have run into her share of teenagers who thought or knew or feared they might be gay. Maybe that was still a big deal in Kate's white-collar, middle-class-citizen world. Around here it was no deal at all.

"He flat-out asked you?" she said, her eyes still wide. "Just like that? When?"

"Couple of months ago. It was when he was pla

"What did he say? Exactly."

Jack wondered at her sudden intensity.

"He said something about how he realized there might be aspects of my life I didn't want him to know about—which was dead-on right—and then he said that if I was gay…" Jack had to smile here. "He could barely get the word out. Actually he said if I was gay 'or something like that'—he never got into what the 'something like that' might be—it was okay."

"He said it was okay?" Kate couldn't seem to believe it. "We're talking about our father, the Reagan Republican, the Rush Limbaugh fan. Dad said it was okay?"

"Yeah. He told me, 'I can accept it. You're still my son.' Isn't that a killer?"

Not that it changed a thing. His father might be able to accept a gay son, but he'd never accept how Jack made his living.

He saw tears in his sister's eyes and asked, "Something wrong?"

She quickly wiped them away. "Strange how some people can surprise the hell out of you." Eyes dry again, she looked at him. "Well, are you:

"What?"

"Gay?"

"No. Strictly hetero."

"But you never married?"

"No. I kicked around a lot when I was younger, but I'm pretty much settled with one woman now."

"Pretty much?"

"Well, I'm settled, but let's just say she's got some issues about my work. How about you? I'll bet a lot of guys came around after the divorce. Seeing anyone?"

"Yes." A little nod, a little smile, but very warm. "Someone special."

"Are we going to hear wedding bells again?"

And now a sad look. "No."

Strange answer. Not at all tentative. Unless she was seeing a married guy. That didn't fit with the straitlaced Kate he remembered, but as she'd just said: people can surprise the hell out of you.