Chapter 23

Goody Two-Shoes (Part IV)

A mother's intuition has Frank investigating things a little more closely as he goes upstairs to rake some information out of his youngest son, but it's a pair of older brothers who break the case open first and have Jamie poised to confess.


"Frank, I'm worried about Jamison," Mary fretted later that evening as the pair sat in the kitchen alone together after he had finally managed to get home after a long day and all the hoopla had died down regarding the dented car, the kids had all settled down in various rooms around the house and she assumed that her late-working husband was now resolved just as she was to work it out with a call to the insurance company on Monday and move on. "He barely ate any lunch and didn't come down at all for dinner. Joey said he's been crying up in his room that his tummy is hurting him on and off all afternoon, but whenever I ask he says he's fine. I've never seen him like this before."

"Did he say anything at all when he came home? You said he was okay when he left in the morning… that he was excited to go with his new shoes and all," Frank wondered as he thoughtfully stroked his mustache and pondered his youngest's actions. Something wasn't sitting right with this tale of the mysterious baseball dent, but he had nothing solid to base his suspicions on. Still it involved his daughter and after what he saw a few days prior he wouldn't put much past her at this point, and it left him just a bit ruffled that she had been allowed to leave the house against his orders as it were but decided to let that slide given his wife's current state. "Maybe it is just a stomach ache."

"He told me that his coach said he did good at practice and that he might even start the next game and everything… he should be happy, but he didn't even mention that to you or Joey when you got home and he knows how proud you would be of him for that. Frank…" she began slowly, not even wanting to even bring this possibility to light given her husband's occupation, and it caused his eyebrows to pop up with disbelief at the next bit of information she unveiled. "Frank, I didn't think anything of it at the time, but he came home and scrubbed himself nearly raw in the bathtub right after… You don't think… I mean I wasn't there. What if… what if something bad happened to him?" she asked as her eyes teared up at the thought and he knew immediately what she was insinuating. "There were bigger boys teams at the school and Erin might have been too busy reading her magazines to notice... I shouldn't have left him go alone," she added with a hurt look on her face at the thought.

"Now, Mary… let's not get ahead of ourselves," he tried to assure although he was not a man to believe in coincidences. Something had happened in all of this, his gut was sure of it, but he did not want to alarm his wife and he failed to see how he could connect the two events. "This could just be a simple case of that new breakfast cereal not agreeing with him."

"Frank, he's had simple tummy aches before. This is not that. He doesn't hide those from me."

"Alright," he sighed as he got up and went over to the cabinet to pull out a glass to fill with water, dropping a few tablets of sodium bicarbonate in to fizz for help with the stomach issue if it was just that. "I'm going up there to see what this is about now," he huffed and made his way up the steps to Jamie's room where he walked in unannounced, startling the little boy who was laying curled up on his side on the bed in the darkened room with his back to the door.

"Da-daddy," Jamie stuttered as he sat up and blinked when Frank frowned and turned on the bright desk light next to the bed. Something was definitely wrong with his youngest who was normally in perpetual motion unless he was asleep, constantly bouncing around and bubbling with enthusiasm over this and that. "Wh-what are you doing up here?" he asked nervously and swallowed hard when he eyed the glass of water that Frank sat on the corner of the nightstand… just out of his reach. What was it that Danny said? It was what Daddy and Grandpa did to sweat a perp… sometimes they would shine a bright light in their eyes in a dark room while they asked questions… that would make the guy thirsty and then they would keep a glass of water just out of his reach.

That must mean he was the perp.

Jamie gulped again and was suddenly very thirsty.

"Son, your mother said you weren't feeling well… I came up to see what was wrong. Joey told us that he thinks you have a tummy ache. Do you?"

"Sometimes," Jamie answered truthfully although he still remained a bit evasive in his father's opinion. "But it doesn't hurt right now," he added and laid back down on the bed clutching the spare pillow to keep his father from seeing that his heart was beating nearly outside his chest.

"You told your mother you were fine," he chided and Jamie's eyes went wide. Caught in an unintentional lie that fast; he hadn't even realized that's what he had done. His father was the very best at his job and it was only the vision of what Erin might do that kept him from spilling out the truth right then and there.

"You didn't come down for dinner. They had baked macaroni and cheese… your favorite."

"Oh," Jamie replied sadly, that was his very most favorite meal. "I wasn't hungry." Again, not a lie and he probably didn't deserve to have it, anyway. His mother's macaroni and cheese was so yummy it should be reserved only for good kids, but then again Erin most likely went down and ate it. His nose wrinkled a little at that thought and he wondered how his sister was able to keep her deceit hidden so well. Jamie knew he could never do that, so it was best for now if he listened to her and stayed away from everyone no matter how hard his stomach was rumbling now with the thought of missing that cheesy delight.

"Well, it must be pretty bad to keep you away from that," Frank added with renewed concern as he ran the back of two fingers lightly over his son's cheek and found it warm but still damp although he assumed it was from illness and not the fact that he was unintentionally sweating his own perfectly healthy child in the box at that very moment as it were.

"Jamie, your mother and I are worried that maybe something bad happened to you at the school today," he continued as he watched his son's reaction carefully and he clearly read a shameful look that caused his own heart to beat all out of sorts. God, what if Mary was right about what she feared? All of their children had been drilled on stranger danger and what to do if in fact those advances came from someone familiar who perhaps made threats in some way to keep the secret hidden, but he knew all too well that a small, impressionable child could be turned out of fear or guilt, and he saw the latter in Jamie's eyes at the moment. "Son, I think you have something you need to tell me, don't you? Did someone put their hands on you?" he prodded even as he dreaded the answer.

Jamie's mind raced to come up with a truthful and plausible explanation to that question. "A bigger boy pushed me down and yelled at me," he finally admitted while omitting most of the particulars, although he knew he needed to add at least one fact to explain why that happened and he had to get something off his chest. "He didn't like my new shoes," he disclosed and an enormous crocodile tear rolled down his cheek at the renewed grief over the loss of his most precious Bobby Bonilla cleat which was still hanging all alone by itself up in that tree in the dark where any type of woodland creature might claim it as its own. Like a big fat spider. Jamie shuddered.

"That's all? You're sure? He didn't hurt you or touch you somewhere he shouldn't, did he?" Frank asked as relief washed over him at that admittance with a negative shake of the head at the last question, and one the little boy was unlikely to deny pointedly. "Do you want to tell me who it was that did that?" Of all his boys, Jamie was the most sensitive and something like this could very well be the cause of all the tummy strife.

"I'd rather not," came the denial and frowny face his father expected. While he would love to lay his own hands on whoever hurt his child, he also respected the fact that he couldn't be omnipresent in any of their lives and they needed to know how fight their own battles, particularly when it appeared to be a minor issue like this now did. Jamie was small for his age and playing up on a team with some older boys so having his big cop father step in unnecessarily might make him a target for more abuse, not to mention the fact that his youngest was constantly looking up to his two more confident brothers Danny and Joey and wanting to be more like them. It was a delicate line to toe, but there was no real harm done, apparently. Not even a bruise from what Mary saw. Still, a few more facts were required before he was prepared to let this pass.

"Is this something he's done to you before?"

"No, sir."

Frank pursed his lips and expelled a deep breath. "Jamie, you know you can always come to me or your mother with anything… no matter what it might be, big or small. We're your dad and mom first over everything. You sure there nothing else you want to tell us?"

"No, Daddy. I don't want to tell you anything else," Jamie finished regretfully and his father departed feeling better after a few more minutes of trying to entice his youngest to drink the fizzy water and come downstairs for some warmed up mac and cheese while it left a little boy worse off than ever.

###

"Uncle Jamie, you really thought Grandpa was sweating you like a perp by shining a light in your eyes and everything?" Jack smirked as the entire family remained at the dinner table. "I would never have fallen for that. Not even at eight. C'mon!"

"I don't know about that; Francis is so good he can get you even if he's not trying," Henry warned.

"You wait, John Patrick Reagan," Linda chided. "Next time I want some info about whatever went down between you and your brother, I'm gonna send you over here and let your two Grandpas work their magic. If you think your father is bad…"

"I was a little kid, Jack," Jamie admitted with a smile as he remembered. "And it's true when you feel guilty about something you're susceptible to all kinds of interrogation techniques. The next one was sleep deprivation, and that I gave myself because I felt so bad about everything that I tossed and turned all night. Mom and I even stayed home from church the next morning because by that point they were convinced I must be sick and she still couldn't walk."

"So Grandma got the truth out of you?" Sean asked.

"Not quite," Jamie laughed. "She went at me pretty hard too, but Dad laid into Erin on the way home from services about not watching me better until she turned on the waterworks and he let her off the hook for that."

"I did not," Frank gruffed indignantly.

"Oh, yeah you did, Pop," Danny interjected. "A few big tears along with one of her Oscar-winning performances and you were ready to let the whole thing go. Daddy's little girl," he snuffed. "Mom was the one who could always call Erin out."

"She and I could go at it," Erin agreed as she remembered those trying teenaged angst-filled years fondly now. "Sorry, Dad. This time I was more afraid of her than you. Jamie was her little baby and when she found out what happened that night after Sunday dinner…"

"You showed up on our doorstep in your jammies without so much as a toothbrush," Henry recalled with a smile. "Mary was so hot she made your Grandma look like a double-dipped ice cream cone with sprinkles on top. Erin figured she was better off with us. Stayed there two whole days to let things cool down, and no one even came looking for her. Not even you, Francis," he tutted.

"I had my orders," Frank admitted with a nod and raised eyebrows as he recalled his wife's reaction. "I sure wasn't going against Mary that time."

"So who finally got to you?" Eddie pried as she looked at her husband. "And what made you crack? I need to remember this in case you ever try to pull a fast one on me in the future," she huffed.

"Never happen, lambchop," Jamie smiled. "I couldn't pull the wool over your beautiful eyes," he snickered, as did the rest of the table with the exception of his oldest sibling.

"Oh, boy… he made a funny," Danny rolled his own eyes. "It was me and Joe that broke him," he added proudly as he pounded on his puffed out chest. "We heard what Dad said to Erin in the car about some older boy pushing Jamie down, so we decided he needed to be toughened up a little, plus we wanted the name of the jack… ahh, little duckie," he added in deference to Kaylin who stirred for a second before laying her head back down against Eddie. "You know, the guy that would dare mess with our kid brother like that over a pair of shoes."

"So they went all good cop, bad cop on me and dragged me out into the backyard before dinner for "batting practice" in the empty lot behind the house to get me ready for that game," Jamie emphasized with air quotes. "Joe kinda knew something was up as soon as I came outside with my old cleats on, but he didn't say anything right away, and you can probably guess who the bad cop was," he frowned contentiously as he looked across the table. "As if that weekend hadn't been crappy enough."

"That was me," Danny added proudly as if no one would have known that to be a fact. "I softened him up for Joe."

"By making me cry again. Gee, thanks, big brother," Jamie added with a sigh.

"Hey, I was just doing my job," Danny defended. "That's what the bad cop is supposed to do, genius… we set the stage for the good cop to sweep in and clean up the mess so you trust him and feel comfortable spilling your guts. It worked, didn't it? All I said was…"

###

"Christ, kid! You're such a little wimpy runt! No wonder it's so easy to kick your ass!" Danny roared after pegging Jamie in the back with a high inside half-speed fastball while trying to back him off the plate. Joey gave his older brother a contentious frown and stood up from his catcher's position to go retrieve the ball. This little intervention had been all Danny's idea, so he went along with it, but it pissed him off to no end to see anybody hurt Jamie, even if that somebody shared the same DNA as the rest of them.

"Ow! That was on purpose!" Jamie cried as he threw his bat and helmet down to the ground. "You're mean! I don't wanna play with you anymore!"

"Oh, I'm mean! You don't want to play!" Danny mocked. "What's the matter baby? You gonna tell mommy and daddy on me? Is that what that other boy said when he hurt you? Did you even fight back at all? Sometimes I'm ashamed to admit you're a Reagan!"

"He wasn't hurting me! And I hit… NEVER MIND!" Jamie trailed off and walked away in a huff to go sulk and sit on the low stone wall surrounding his mother's garden.

"Give it a rest, Danny; he's eight," Joey grumbled as he waved his older brother away back to the house and took off his catcher's mitt to sit down next to Jamie who was fighting off the tears once more. "Hey…" he started as he wrapped a protective arm over his shoulders.

"Don't, Joey," the precocious little boy warned. "I know what you're doing. Danny made me mad so I would spill out all my guts to you. You're the good cop. He said he likes being the bad one."

"That he does," Joey agreed with a small wry smile at the fact they had been found out so easily proving Jamie did have the Reagan blue blood in him after all. "But something's wrong, isn't it? You gotta tell someone. You're not eating and making yourself sick. What happened with the shoes?" he asked pointedly. "C'mon, you were so excited to get the new cleats and you brought your old ratty ones out to wear today."

"Can't," Jamie frowned as he held his head in his hands and stared sadly at his stupid old dirty pair while the wind kicked up a little as a few storm clouds appeared over the horizon. "I'd be snitching."

"Well, what if I swear on my life not to tell anyone else? You trust me, right? I promise just to help you figure this out, but I can't do that if I don't know what happened."

"Does God ever punish people for not lying?" Jamie asked suddenly.

"Well, I don't think so," Joey frowned. "How's that gonna work? Are you telling me you're this upset and you haven't lied about anything?"

"No, I didn't really lie, but I didn't say all the truth to Daddy or Mommy either," Jamie admitted.

"Well," Joey thought about that for a second. "I think not telling the whole truth is like lying too."

"It is?"

"Yup. Whenever you see a lawyer show on tv, they say you have to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth… they make you swear on a bible so God must not like it if you don't." If there was one thing Joey knew, it was the ins and outs of those Law and Order type shows; he watched them constantly and practically had them all memorized.

"Oh," came the soft, sad reply and a long pause as that bit of information was processed. "If I tell all the truth to one person, will that make God happy?" Jamie asked earnestly.

"Sometimes… I mean we confess things to a priest and he takes the bad away," Joey reasoned. "But you're not old enough to do that yet. The church won't let you until you're ready to get Communion too."

"That stinks," Jamie lamented before continuing when he saw he didn't have a choice since he didn't think he could survive if he carried this forward until the next spring when he was supposed to make his First Holy Communion. "Do you double dare swear not to tell anyone else, not Grandpa, Grandma, Danny, Erin or Mommy and Daddy?" he asked with a glance over.

"I double dare swear. Now spill, kid," Joey encouraged as he saw an opening. "It probably seems a whole lot worse to you than it really is."

"No, it's bad! He threw one of my new cleats all the way in top of a tree by where we were parked," Jamie cried as he opened up to his middle brother and best friend. Joey always had his back, no matter what and if he said he wouldn't tell… well then he wouldn't. "We won't never ever get it down, it's stuck all the way at the top!"

"HE WHAT? HE WHO?!" Joey's Irish temper bubbled as he thought of someone picking on his little kid brother like that, until a final question revealed that Jamie wasn't as helpless as the rest of the family made him out to be. "Why?"

"I hit him in the nose with it after he pushed me down. It was bleeding a little, and it made him more mad."

"More mad? Why was he mad enough to push you down in the first place?" Joey demanded, but the long pause that followed told him the next part wasn't going to be easy to pry out until something else clicked in his own blue-blooded brain. Danny might have his elders' nose for chutzpah, but Joey had a mind like a steel trap for details in puzzles and an end piece just clicked into place. "You said by where we were parked," he growled. "Where was Erin when this happened? You wouldn't have been in the parking lot alone without her. Jamie…"

"He was hurting her!" his little brother confessed and raised his eyes so that Joey could see the cold Reagan anger simmering in them at the injustice of it for the first time. "He grabbed her wrist hard and was pulling her over to his car! I didn't know what else to do! He's bigger than me!"

"WHO?! Jamie! Who did this and why hasn't Erin... said... anything…" he trailed off as another piece dropped, and then another. "TYLER?! Tyler Bonshak did this, didn't he? WHAT THE HELL WAS HE DOING THERE?" Although he was mad, Joey gave silent thanks that Danny wasn't in on this part of the conversation or he was fairly sure that Erin's boyfriend would have been vaporized and cease to exist about ten minutes afterwards.

"I don't know," Jamie confessed although he was surprised his brother got the name out of him so quickly. There was no going back now it seemed. "I didn't see him until after practice when Erin got out of his car, and then he said he wasn't there, but he was and he pushed me down and grabbed her. She was crying! Then after he threw my shoe in the tree, she pulled me into the car to come home and get away from him. But she drove fine," he insisted, still obediently sticking to the provided script.

"How did Mom's car get dented then?" Joey asked as he looked to fill in the final gap. Like his father, he didn't believe in coincidences. "Did you throw the other shoe too?" he asked, figuring that maybe Jamie was carrying some sort of guilt for his actions in this whole scenario. For his part, Joey thought the kid deserved a medal for sticking up for his sister considering the size of that lump head Bonshak.

"No, he kicked it when she backed up hard and bumped him a teeny tiny bit," Jamie revealed, still careful to repeat his sister's phrasing although he had a feeling the cat would be out of the bag, anyway.

"HOLY CRAP!" Joey exclaimed as he slapped his hand over his face. "And Erin's trying to get you to cover this up, so she doesn't get in more trouble, right?" he asked. "Dad's gonna kill them both!"

"But you can't say!" Jamie gasped. "You double dare sweared!"

"Oh right, yes... I guess I did," Joey admitted as he heaved a deep breath. He knew he couldn't go back on that promise now, not without breaking the kid's trust in him forever. "So you're gonna have to do it yourself," he added firmly.

"ME?! BUT…!"

"You have to," Joey advised as the ever-present voice of Reagan sibling reason. "It's not right that Mom's taking the blame and tomorrow she's gonna call it into the insurance company, and then it gets all official with papers and stuff and she could get in bigger trouble if they think she made up the story about the baseball."

"But she didn't! Erin did!"

"Exactly. That's why you have to do the right thing, kid."

"Joey, Mommy and Daddy are gonna be really mad at me, too," Jamie sniffed. "It was bad what I did, wasn't it? I hit him and didn't say what happened when Momma looked so sad last night, but I don't want to be a snitch that winds up in a ditch," he added with a fearful shudder.

"Erin told you that?" Joey griped as he promised himself some private words with his older sister about her gangsta threats when this was over. "Well the not telling the whole truth thing right away wasn't great, but she was threatening a witness… that's called coercion and a big no-no in court too. Plus, yours was self-defense and anyway they pardon little kids for stuff like this all the time… so will Mom and Dad, but you gotta come clean and work out a plea deal before Erin gets one."

"Work out a what? Joey!" Jamie cried. "I don't know what you're talking about now!"

"They always go softer on the first one that confesses, and like I said you're little. If they don't give you immunity, you'll probably only get probation or community service," he replied confidently before explaining in simpler terms. "You'll wind up losing tv privileges, or have'ta sweep out the garage or something easy like that to make up for it."

"Oh, that's it? You're for sure?" While it wasn't ideal, Jamie would have traded this guilt for either of those two things in a heartbeat right now.

"Pretty sure. Shouldn't be any worse, but like I said you gotta do it soon before it gets all over-complicated and Erin goes to them first, okay?"

"Can I wait until Grandpa Henry and Grandma Betty leave after dinner today?" Jamie asked sadly. He loved and worshiped his grandparents, and considering his grandfather was the current Commissioner, the last thing he wanted was a bigger police audience to hear all about his terrible sins at this point. It was going to be hard enough just facing his parents without crying like a little kid.

"Yeah, I think that would be fine," Joey agreed. "And I'll sit right next to you if you need me to be there," he added with another little hug of his brother's shoulders.

"No, I should do it by myself," Jamie decided even as his lip quivered and his heart started thumping again. "I'm big now too."

"Alright, but I'm always gonna be here if you need me," his brother assured.

###

"Well, God bless Joe," Linda offered with a sniff for that memory of the two younger brothers sitting on the wall working things out together before she reached over to smack her husband. "And how could you hit a scared little kid on purpose with a baseball to make him cry? You are mean!"

"Hey, easy Lin!" Danny griped as he fended off a second blow. "We got him to talk, didn't we? He would have wound up with an ulcer or something eating right through his stomach otherwise the way he was taking it."

"My older brother, the healer," Jamie complained. "Had a mark on my back for a week from that ball. You could have taken a little bit more off of it."

"So you finally came to your senses and told your parents after dinner," Eddie prodded as her arms were starting to cramp up and fall asleep from holding Kaylin, and she was grateful when her husband relieved her by picking up the little girl and putting her down in the sunroom for a further nap. "Stop right there, I have to pee," she proclaimed as those early pregnancy hormones were kicking in once more and Jamie dutifully waited for her return before he started again.

"Yeah, Uncle Jamie... did you snitch on Aunt Erin?" Sean wondered with great interest.

"Mom and Dad found out after dinner, but it wasn't exactly how I planned and I didn't really snitch either..." he revealed and took up the final part of the story.


Yes, God bless Joe as his good common sense advice wins the day. Next, Part V will conclude this longest Snapshot yet as the kitty comes out of the bag sort of involuntarily after Jamie's conscience and lack of food and sleep provokes him into a nightmare of epic Reagan family proportions.

For my guest reviewers requesting more of the younger Reagans, thanks for the suggestions! There will be a good bit more of Joe featured in a few upcoming Snapshots and I have been considering doing a story of Frank and Mary's early years, but I also like to relate them to the characters now and that seems easier to do with flashbacks in these sort of short stories. There are some pregnancy/baby plots playing out in the next installment, so I'll keep that in mind and try to work it in. I know another one people are waiting for is Kaylin finding out she's going to be a big sister, but that actually wound up being part of one of the early chapters of "Resurgence" since her reaction will be a little unexpected after further events complicate matters for the now three-year-old who will show a bit more temper in this one as she gets older. Can't be a total sweetie pie all the time at that age, right?