Drew in Blue Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  About the Author

  www.lazydaypub.com

  Drew In Blue

  Digital ISBN- 9781612580098

  Print ISBN- 1612580092

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Copyright © 2011 J.M. Kelley

  Cover art by Bret Poinier

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, any events or locales is purely coincidental. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission from the publisher LazyDay, with the exception of quotes used in reviews and critical articles.

  Dedication

  For Kirsteen, a true best friend who ties my shoelaces for me when I am incapable of doing it myself.

  Drew In Blue

  by

  J.M. Kelley

  Chapter One

  Abandoned by his mother and delivered into the arms of the father who deserted him first – the world carried an awfully big grudge against such a little guy.

  “Kid, you’ve got rotten luck,” I said. I squatted next to the car seat he occupied, my knees cracking on the way down like trampled twigs. The baby’s cries intensified when I reached out my hand to tentatively stroke one of the clenched fists shaking with the force of his fury.

  Tears fought their way past eyelids he’d squeezed shut. They snaked down his sallow cheeks, pausing at the corners of his open mouth before continuing on and disappearing beneath his quivering chin.

  I glanced over my shoulder when I heard a screen door slap against its wooden frame. My next-door neighbor stepped out onto his porch and placed his hands on his hips before turning in my direction. It was late, and the residents of my street, mostly retirees, expected quiet nights. His face was obscured by shadows, but it didn’t matter. Nobody else was around to earn the annoyance his posture projected. Instead of acknowledging his presence and my obvious role in disturbing the peace, I turned back to the caterwauling baby before me.

  This was my son. Nicholas Embry Doyle. Illegitimate offspring of me, Drew Doyle, and Allison Embry – the woman who’d, just moments before, dumped him on me before speeding off in a car driven by a man with so many tattoos and piercings that my initial theory of her running off to join the circus carried some serious merit.

  “I don’t want it,” she said when she thrust the handle of the car seat into my hands and dropped a bag of the baby’s belongings to the porch steps. “I can’t deal with it. I don’t want it. Take it.” As if he was a thing. An object. Not her own child.

  There on the porch she’d stood rigid and trembling, like a caged animal. Shadows slashed across her face and her dilated pupils, black voids obscuring any hint of the usual pale blue, amplified her feral appearance. I’d suspected she’d been smoking pot or something more potent. She’d never taken drugs in front of me, but I’d taken note of the sweet, pungent odor of marijuana clinging to the furniture in her apartment in the few instances I’d been there. I didn’t question her about it.

  It’s not like what she did ever mattered to me, anyway. We weren’t exactly close. I met her in a bar over in Finchesburg. The town is about a half hour’s drive due east from my hometown of River’s View, Pennsylvania, a veritable wasteland of German heritage and backwoods Appalachian dimwittedness.

  Allison and I did the deed a few times and moved on. When she called me two months later, I didn’t recognize her voice. When she told me she’d taken a pregnancy test and the results were positive, I’d wished I’d never met her.

  It turns out the ninety-eight percent efficiency rate on the back of the condom box isn’t the number you need to be paying attention to. It’s that two percent failure rate that bites you in the ass when you least expect it.

  “You look like hell,” I said to Nicholas, fumbling with the complicated latch holding him in his seat.

  At the age of maybe four months old, I thought he’d be a little bigger. I pictured babies with round, apple-red cheeks and pot bellies. Nicholas may as well have been constructed of toothpicks. After a brief struggle to extricate him from the car seat, I was caught off guard by his slight, scrawny frame. I’d lifted heavier bags of marshmallows in my life.

  A brief visit at the hospital when he was born was all the contact I’d had with the boy before now. He was gaunt then, too. Allison had handed the swaddled bundle of wrinkled, purplish-colored infant to me, and I stared at him while he screamed and writhed. His head wobbled when I tried to position him in my arms, and I nearly dropped him to the floor. Something about that egregious error had made it okay to write out a check right before I walked out of their lives.

  He deserved better than me. She was supposed to have given him better.

  I rested the baby on my shoulder and offered him an awkward pat on the back. Beneath his dirty t-shirt, the bony protrusions I encountered when I strummed my fingers down his torso elicited a shudder.

  “Shit.” I collapsed to the porch, my shaking knees too weak to support my own weight any longer. The gravity of the situation finally hit me, like a bullet between the eyes. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. His cries diminished and he whimpered into my neck, exhaustion gaining the upper hand.

  This was the kid I’d left behind. The kid I didn’t want to complicate my life. And I’d left him in the care of a woman I barely knew, assuming she’d do the work in my place.

  She didn’t. One glance at the kid was all the proof I needed.

  My stomach gurgled. Nicholas lifted his teetering head and stared at me, confused by the wet, menacing growls coming from within me. He either lost interest or used up too much energy and collapsed against my shoulder. I barely had time to deposit him back in the car seat before I had to scramble to the porch railing and empty the contents of my stomach into the bushes below.

  Chapter Two

  “I’m not sure what you expect me to do with him.” My best friend, practically my only friend, Kristina Moser, stared at Nicholas and twirled a curl of blonde hair around her index finger while she contemplated my predicament.

  Once I’d recovered from the projectile vomiting and regained some strength in my legs, I carried Nicholas inside and placed the baby carrier on the coffee table in the middle of
my living room. I grabbed my cell phone and considered calling the police, but the foolishness of dialing 911 to report I’d been forced to take in my own flesh and blood stopped me in my tracks. My only other option was Kris. I figured she’d tell me what to do. She had boobs, after all, meaning she had to possess some inherent nurturing skills I’d never been given.

  She arrived ten minutes after my panicked phone call and plea for help. Now she hovered next to the coffee table, peering down at Nicholas. I sat on the couch, chewing on my thumb nail, breathlessly awaiting the debut of her motherly intuition.

  “Seriously,” she said, turning to face me. “What am I supposed to do here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I ran my fingers through my hair and resisted the urge to pull in frustration. “Can’t you tell him to stop crying?” For such a small kid, he sure had huge lungs, and he put them to extreme use. My ears were ringing like the bells of Notre Dame from the never-ending auditory assault.

  “God,” she whispered then pivoted back to the coffee table. She crouched down and placed her hands on her knees. “Hey, Nicholas. Hi. Stop crying.”

  Nicholas paused long enough to consider her request but launched into an even louder tirade than before. “Okay, that didn’t work,” Kris said. She straightened up and frowned. “Is he hungry?” She raised her voice to be heard over the din. “Is his diaper dirty? I think I smell poop.”

  “How am I supposed to know?”

  “What are you, twelve?” she asked, disgusted.

  “I wouldn’t know how to tell if his diaper was dirty when I was twelve,” I said. “And I sure as hell don’t know how to do it now.”

  “Come here, Nicholas.” She gently pulled the baby out of the car seat and cradled him close to her chest. “Let’s check your diaper. Otherwise your dumbass father will let you wallow in your own filth all night.”

  “Thanks for the support,” I said, sliding over to give her room to lay Nicholas down on the couch.

  I handed her the diaper bag Allison left behind, and Kris pawed through the contents, unearthing a changing pad, a diaper, and a container of pre-moistened wipes. A plush ring with a purple elephant head attached to it fell out of the bag and landed next to my foot, rattling on impact. I picked it up and began to shake it over Nicholas’ head to distract him while Kris toiled on the other end of the couch.

  “What are the odds Allison will change her mind?” she asked.

  I watched her struggle to change Nicholas’ diaper. Kris arched an eyebrow when I shook my head from side to side but focused most of her attention on Nicholas’ butt. She wiped him clean, slid a fresh diaper underneath him, and fastened the sticky tabs around his waist.

  I held my breath when she furrowed her brow and inspected his prominent ribs. “Maybe it’s for the best if she doesn’t come back,” she said. Her voice was low and controlled, but I sensed anger tainting her words. Looked like those motherly instincts were kicking in after all.

  “That might be true,” I conceded.

  Nicholas continued to cry and fuss, so Kris and I ceased to talk and concentrated on the task of soothing the boy. She paced the floor with him in her arms while I carried the lone bottle we’d found out to the kitchen. Luckily, I’d located a couple cans of formula in the depths of the diaper bag to tide us over if the kid got hungry again before I was able to buy more in the morning, which I assumed he would.

  After three ten-second bursts in the microwave, the formula seemed warm enough for the baby to drink. I tested the heat by sticking my finger into the open neck of the bottle. On the third try, I twisted the nipple back on. Maybe it should have been warmer, but I didn’t want to risk burning the kid’s throat, so I returned to the living room. “Soup’s on,” I announced, holding the bottle out toward Kris.

  “Huh uh. You’re feeding him, not me.” I opened my mouth to protest but the flash of irritation in her expression made me shut it quickly. “You made him,” she said and jerked her chin toward the couch, signaling me to sit. I obeyed. “You take care of him.”

  That’s Kris for you. No sympathy for the devil.

  At least she took enough pity on me to offer assistance when she realized I was the epitome of parental incompetence. She coached me through the feeding process, telling me when I’d positioned the baby’s head wrong or needed to hold the bottle higher. I attempted to burp him when the formula sank to the halfway point, thumping him squarely on his back. I tried not to gag at the violent stream of puke that gushed from his mouth after my efforts produced a juicy belch.

  “You’re doing good, Tiger.” Kris reached over and patted my knee when I handed her the empty bottle and fumbled through another burping. At last, Nicholas began to drift off to sleep in my arms and I willed myself to relax along with him.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when his eyes fluttered shut and didn’t open again. “I can’t do this,” I whispered, not looking up. “I’m not a father. I’m no good for him.”

  “You have to. You have no choice.”

  I clenched my jaw, grinding my teeth together until it hurt. “Give me some other options.”

  Kris cleared her throat. “Well, there’s always Child Welfare Services. I suppose you can…”

  “No.” The words erupted from within, cold and bitter. “No way. Not happening. I’m not turning him over to those people.”

  “Oh, Drew.” She smiled and brushed a lock of damp hair from my temple. “That alone might actually prove we can make a father out of you yet. Lord knows you need a little redemption.”

  “For what?” Not that I really needed to ask. What Kris said next didn’t exactly surprise me. She’d said it plenty since I first told her Allison was pregnant.

  “You were an idiot for walking away from him when he was born. Now you can make it up to him.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Learn how. It’s time for you to be his Daddy now,” she said. She yawned loudly and slumped down in her seat. “It’s long overdue, in my humble estimation.”

  “Humble my ass,” I muttered. My stomach knotted up when I glanced down at the sleeping boy. He looked peaceful and defenseless. He’d done nothing to deserve such lousy parents. “I don’t like the name Nicholas.”

  Kris nodded, content, as always to ride along with my random thought processes as one derailed and another one pulled out of the station. “What do we call him then? Waldo? Donald?”

  “Jeez.” I closed my eyes and let my head loll back against the cushion behind me. “I think Nick will do.”

  “Nick.” She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the bare sole of his foot. “I like the sound of it. Welcome to the neighborhood, Nick.”

  Chapter Three

  I awakened to find my face buried in a soft cloud of honeysuckle. When I drew in a deep breath of air to get a better whiff of the sweet scent, I inhaled a clump of hair into my nostril and I remembered I’d fallen asleep on the couch with Kris. Before succumbing to exhaustion, I’d spooned up behind her to optimize our limited space. Climbing the stairs to my much roomier bed hadn’t occurred to either of us.

  There was nothing shocking about our close proximity. I’d slept with Kris before. The first occasion was during her ninth birthday party after a long day of hot dogs, cake, and hard play at the lake.

  We’d shed our pajamas during the night, to the horror of Kris’ mother when she found us curled together in the same sleeping bag the next morning. Granted, we’d only done so because it was a warm night and being cocooned in the nylon and polyester enclosure stifled us, but parents have a tendency to think the worst in out-of-the-ordinary situations.

  I was banished from Kris’ house for months. Word of our potentially illicit nighttime antics spread throughout town, gushing forth like water escaping a burst dam. The local townsfolk were so dedicated to sharing baseless accusations with one another that they never bothered to consider an innocent explanation. No kid in our class was allowed to have co-ed parties ever again.

  What rea
lly happened? After everyone else at the party was unconscious, Kris had grabbed a flashlight and invited me into her Holly Hobby sleeping bag to read from “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” under cover of darkness. So much for scandal.