HIDING - every scar has a story

40. Mercy.

{Cary}

Cary wiped his hands on his shirt before he touched the White's back door. His blood was caked under his fingernails and sticky between his fingers. He just needed to get across the kitchen and down the hall without being seen. The bathroom door was closed and Jon's voice came through it, low and angry:

"He's not like a dog you can just take back to the shelter because he's too much work."

He turned into Jon's room, shutting the door quickly before he could hear any more. He dropped his head against the door with a 'thump.' He did not in a million years deserve a friend like Jon. He went to the bed and grabbed his bag, wrenching it open to make sure all his stuff was there before he left. He had closed the last zipper when his phone rang.

He startled, digging it out of his pocket with cold fingers. It was his mother's cell number. He picked up: "Yeah?"

"Ciaran, get your things." It was his father's voice, the one you never argued with.

Cary froze, his mouth open, staring blankly at the wall of Jon's room.

"Are you there boy?"

He snapped his mouth shut. "Yes," Cary said.

"The car is outside. Whatever you told those people, you are my son and you belong with your mother and me. We will fix this. Get your things and leave. I'm waiting." His father hung up.

The impulse to obey his father was so strong that Cary picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder, steadying himself against Jon's desk. His hands were sweating. Conall could do it. His father was strong-willed enough to pull them all back from the brink, make Child Protection believe his call had been a mistake, and put the pieces of their family back together again. Just like it had been before.

Cary threw the phone onto the bed like it was red-hot and shed the backpack to burrow into the back corner of Jon's closet. The phone rang again, over and over. He curled with his face in his knees, shaking.

The doorbell rang. Jon's house was so small that Cary could hear everything that happened in the hall from the bedrooms, even from the back of a closet.

The front door opened. "Mr. Douglas," Pete said. "We weren't expecting you."

"I'm looking for my son." His father's voice was more pleasant than it had been on the phone. "Perhaps he didn't tell you that he ran away from us some days ago. His mother has been sick with worry, trying to find him."

Cary barely breathed, sweat trickling down his ribs as he waited for Pete to come in here, drag him out, and throw him back.

There was a pause. "He's here," Pete said. "The boys had a sleepover last night and made plans for the day."

"This is terribly awkward, but I need him home," Conall said.

Pete's voice was cool. "I think he'll be staying with us a little longer."

There was a beat of silence. "I respect you, Peter, so I'm going to be honest. I don't feel comfortable leaving Ciaran here with your family. Whatever he's told you, you should know that Ciaran is a practiced liar. He can also be extremely violent. I can't count the number of times I've been called away from work or woken up in the middle of the night to retrieve him from the scene of some violent altercation, which he almost invariably started."

Cary put his fists against his mouth for silence. He saw Pete's face from the shelter last night, shadowed with anger, looking down on him. He saw Jon's cheek spattered with blood. That blood was still on his hands. He couldn't squeeze himself small enough to disappear.