Stalking Throckmorton

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5Throckmorton pulled into the parking lot beside the Rockburg elementary school. Ben waved from the steps at the school entrance and walked to the car. His hair had grown back, but he still wore a stocking cap whenever he was outside. Anyone who’d gone through rigorous chemotherapy was exquisitely susceptible to infections.

Nine-year-old Ben took his time, frequently turning back to watch mothers picking up their children. Throckmorton cringed; he was lonely himself and felt helpless to fill the hole in Ben’s life. The more the mothers hugged their kids, the more depressed Ben seemed. Jen had walked out on them three years ago. She’d texted Throckmorton to tell him to pick Ben up at school, and she was gone when they got home. A note she left made it clear their marriage was over and she was filing for divorce. It took a while to internalize the note, but after reading it, Throckmorton felt more relief than jealousy or betrayal.

The first years of their marriage hadn’t been bad. Jen criticized him about small things, but she’d lightened the critiques with humor. Her appraisals took on a sharp edge after Ben was born. She lit into Throckmorton once about the way he’d opened a plastic sack from a grocery store. He suspected undiagnosed depression magnified their problems, but she refused to talk to a professional. Her criticisms of him had become more pointed, more frequent, and more sarcastic. He found himself editing everything he said to avoid her remarks. And their s*x life? That never recovered from Ben’s birth. By the time she walked out, they resembled roommates who barely tolerated each other. Hell, after she filed for divorce, she’d insisted he communicate with her only through her lawyer. He didn’t even know if she knew about Ben’s leukemia.

Ben climbed into the passenger seat, and Throckmorton checked to make sure he was strapped in. He noticed the seat belt was a little tight. Good. Ben had gained weight. “How’d your day go, kiddo?” It took all Throckmorton’s strength to shove the doctor’s report out of his mind and avoid crying.

“Okay,” Ben said, not taking his eyes off the other kids and their mothers.

Throckmorton pulled into traffic and eased past a line of cars loading kids. “Did your teacher comment on your project?”

“No.”

“Did you get tired today? Still able to handle a whole day of school?”

“Dad, I’m okay. I’m keeping up with the work, and Mrs. Jones said everybody’s had their vaccinations, so you don’t need to worry about that either.”

Throckmorton adjusted the rearview mirror to watch Ben. He knows my questions before I ask them. He saw Ben crane his head toward the waiting cars, his attention glued to his classmates and their parents. Ben was usually chatty after school, but today his lower lip trembled. Something must have happened in school.

“How was the math test you studied for last night?”

“Okay.”

He tried again. “Did the tutor help?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anything happen in class?”

“No.”

Throckmorton gave up trying to start a conversation and the car remained quiet for most of their drive. A block from home, Ben murmured, “I wish I had a mother. A brother would be nice too.”

Throckmorton took a slow breath before answering. He’d do anything for Ben, but how could he explain the intricacies of marriage to a kid? He’d tried, repeatedly, but he always came back to some variation of “it’s complex.” The comment had become routine since the divorce. Sometimes Ben would suggest a woman, any age, married or single, as a possible new mother. He wasn’t sure whether Ben missed Jen or missed a mother figure. She’d been a hands-off mother. Whatever her problems, it was he and Ben that had to make a go of his family.

“Things like that take time,” he said. He felt more sympathy than optimism. The last years of his marriage had left him with little self-confidence with women, not that he’d had a surplus before. In high school, he was a thin, gangly nerd in a school that exalted jocks. In college, he studied physics and math, then switched to business and accounting. Not many coeds in those majors. It was only in the required humanities courses that he’d met many women. They thought him so clueless about fashion and color coordination that one of his dates assumed he was color-blind—a discussion he preferred to forget. His forays into small talk had been awkward. He tried too hard to impress, and his lack of confidence had been crippling. Worse, according to his roommates, he hadn’t recognized it when girls had shown an interest in him.

Dinner of ham, baked potatoes, and green beans was quiet. Ben did his homework while Throckmorton cleaned up in the kitchen. He read to Ben before bedtime, a habit they’d gotten into when Ben was hospitalized. Tonight he read for longer than usual. Whatever happened at school that day had brought fresh urgency to the hole in Ben’s heart. Throckmorton wished he knew how to deal with that, but until he figured it out, cuddling and closeness were all he could provide.

When Ben dropped off to sleep, Throckmorton carefully eased off the bed and tiptoed out of the room. A few minutes later he buried himself in work until The Late Show. Work helped keep loneliness at bay.

He thought of Otto’s letter again. Even with health insurance, Ben had racked up eighty-five thousand in medical bills. That had taken every cent Throckmorton could lay hold of. The new treatment was out of reach unless Otto or Al came through for him. It could take a month to turn whatever was in the safe into cash. He’d better be in the safe by mid-November. That gave him two months to get around Mayor Earl’s control of the lot, find the tunnel, and excavate to the office. He couldn’t afford to give up his accounting practice. Any work he did on Otto’s letter would have to be in his spare time, and he’d have to do it before Wilbur bought the lot.

Thinking about a medical system that balanced Ben’s life against how much money he could raise often made him so furious he couldn’t think, but he couldn’t afford that. He had to stay clear-eyed and calculating, even scheming, to save Ben’s life. On his way to bed, he snuck into Ben’s room. Ben was sound asleep. Throckmorton watched him for a moment before tucking him in and kissing his forehead.