Thanks to everyone who read and to Ghostwriter for reviewing. Real life is being a pain, but I'm still writing when I can.
"I mean, the clutch is kind of worn, but I can tighten the cable far enough to make it work," Alex heard Jamie say as he came around the back of the shed. "But we've still got to find the other stuff because even if you might get away with it, Alex'll ground me for the rest of my life if I go dirt-biking without safety gear."
"Maybe not all of it, but certainly the vast majority," Alex agreed, and four of the five boys looked up guiltily. Jamie looked up too, although his expression was more startled than concerned. Which, since his assessment of Alex's reaction to him doing any form of biking without the appropriate safety gear for the activity was entirely accurate, was reasonable.
"Alex? Is something wrong?"
"No, but Dad asked me to take a ride down into town with him to pick up a few things at the hardware store. You don't have to come along if you're having fun here, but I wanted to let you know where I'd be." The meet-and-greet with his siblings and their families had gone well enough last night that Alex was willing to leave him behind if he wanted to stay, or at least while Jamie had stuck pretty close to Alex when Pete and Cathy and their spouses had wanted to talk to him, he seemed reasonably comfortable with Mom and Dad and been happy enough to slip away for games with the kids. And Nate was one of the other boys in the circle today, although even if pressed Alex couldn't have put names or families on any of the others.
"Oh. Um, I think we're going to take the bikes up into the foothills for a couple hours, at least if we can get the last one fixed up well enough."
"Grandma said she'd make us sandwiches to take along," Nate volunteered. "Since we're getting started a lot later than we planned."
Alex nodded. "Okay. Well, ask her or your dad if you need anything, and that most definitely includes safety equipment." He included all of the boys in that look, even if Jamie was the only one that he had any real say over. "And Jaim, make sure you ask Mom before you leave what time you need to be back for dinner."
Jamie nodded. "I will."
"Good." Alex ruffled his hair before it occurred to him that sixteen was probably too old for him to be doing that sort of thing in front of other kids. Jamie didn't seem to mind, though, so Alex just nodded as he stepped away. "Be careful, and I'll see you later."
"They'll be fine," Dad said when Alex rejoined him, shaking his head. "You worry too much, they're good boys."
"I'm sure they are." But they were also teenagers, and his teenager wasn't familiar with the area. If it wasn't for Jamie's experience on dirt bikes Alex might have vetoed the idea entirely, but this was supposed to be a vacation for Jamie too, and he'd seemed more animated these past few days than he had in the past few weeks back home. The last thing Alex wanted to do was put a damper on that. "So what was it that you needed again? I think Pete was going on about a tractor last night?"
As it turned out tractor parts were not included, mostly because Pete still hadn't figured out what the root cause of the problem was, but several buildings needed roof repairs which meant shingles and nails and tar paper, and as Alex was well aware, that list would probably grow once they were actually inside the store. He checked that the bundle of tie downs was tucked under his seat and then buckled himself in.
Neither he nor Dad had ever felt the need to fill the silence the way that Mom did, but they did talk, and Alex wasn't too surprised when Dad shot a quick glance in his direction as they turned out onto the highway. "So how does everything work with Jamie? Your mother wasn't very clear, but somehow he's yours without you adopting him? Is it a time-limited thing? I mean, he seems like a great kid, but as I recall you were never very interested in children." A quick smile. "Even when you were one."
A statement that was both true and yet another thing that had made him stand out in a community where everyone's focus upon graduation—and that meant high school graduation, even an Associates degree was more than most of the people on the compound bothered with—shifted immediately to marriage prospects and starting a family, and he shrugged. "I can't say that I ever was. Or that I was even expecting to keep Jamie, for that matter. But to make a long story short, he's been in foster care since he was eleven or so, and towards the end of November of last year he was between homes and ended up stuck at the station unexpectedly."
"Wait, how can a child be between homes?" Dad interrupted.
Alex shook his head. "As I understand it, he'd just been moved out of the foster home he'd been in and was staying with friends while his social worker looked for another, but to be honest it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. And unfortunately the friend that he'd been staying with...he didn't give me a lot of details, but it wasn't an option that night, and the lack of any other alternatives meant that I didn't have much of a choice except to take him home with me. He ended up stuck through the long weekend courtesy of an ugly storm, and then the other friend he'd planned on staying with wasn't back yet, and I can't say that I expected him to be with me very long when I offered my spare room until his social worker officially found a new placement, but at the time it seemed like the best of a bad set of options." Probably from Jamie's perspective as well, not that Alex had asked.
This time Dad was the one who shook his head, and Alex couldn't say that he disagreed.
"Anyway, that supposedly-temporary situation ended up lasting through the end of the year, and when his social worker still hadn't found him somewhere by the time that they were starting up the next set of foster parent classes it just didn't make sense for me to keep him for two more months only to send him away. Especially since we were pretty used to each other by then, had our routines down, that kind of thing." Generally speaking, anyway, and what they'd still been figuring out...they'd made it work. Dad wasn't wrong that he'd never been much of a kid person, but it was hard to imagine a life without Jamie around these days. "It is a foster placement, I gather adoption really isn't a thing for kids Jamie's age for whatever reason, but I expect to have him until he's at least eighteen. And I wouldn't be surprised if he stays around for a year or two longer than that just while he figures out what he wants to do, but he's also not even seventeen yet, so there's plenty of time."
"Are you likely to end up with other children? Does he have any siblings?"
"No. I was very clear when I signed up for the foster parent class that I was doing it for Jamie, and the only sibling he has is an older brother who's never even bothered to visit."
Dad hm'd quietly, and Alex was just as glad that he didn't ask the obvious next question about Jamie's parents. Then again he was probably assuming that they'd passed away, and given the sensitivity of the subject, Alex wasn't about to correct him.
"He's one of your EMTs, I think you said?" Dad asked. "Is that what he'd like to do? Or medicine in general?"
"You mean when he gets older?" Alex smiled. "I can't say that I've ever asked directly, but while he's been a great addition to the squad," much to his own surprise, "and I'll be happy to have him as long as he'd like to stay, I don't get the impression that it's anything that he's interested in professionally. No, actually from what we have talked about, he does the occasional job at an auto shop in town that belongs to some relative of a friend of his, and he did more last summer to the point where he had the money to get his own motorcycle up and running. So I suspect he'll lean more towards something like that, but like I said, there's plenty of time." Although now that he was thinking about it, he should encourage Jamie to visit whatever shop he'd worked at last summer when they got home. Not that Jamie needed a paycheck, but it would be a productive way to occupy some of his free time and keep his mind off what had happened.
"Mechanic, that's a good, solid job," Dad said with an approving nod. "Your brother took some auto shop classes in high school, and it's served us in good stead."
Alex had very carefully avoided both auto shop and the vocational building as a whole and only nodded. "How many kids are there around the compound these days, anyway? There were half dozen boys in the shed with Jamie, and Nate was the only one I recognized."
The rain that had started at about the same time they'd finally left the hardware store—the one half an hour south of the Wyoming border, because apparently there had been a lot of roof damage in the area this spring and the local place was still waiting to be resupplied—became an actual storm as Dad pulled up in front of the house, but between the tarp across the back of the truck and the fact that the bed only held tar paper and shingles, Alex wasn't too worried. And he definitely wasn't going to offer to help unload tonight. He should have taken the hint when his back had started complaining while they were loading, but since he hadn't, he was going to send Jamie up for a couple of Tylenol as soon as they were inside and then spend as much of the rest of the evening as he could in a recliner. That, or maybe he'd just go to bed early because lying flat sounded really good right about now.
Dad seemed to agree with his assessment of the danger to their supplies, at least, because he didn't go further than the old carport, shutting the truck off and pulling the brake as thunder rolled overhead. "We'll deal with the supplies tomorrow, let's get inside before the hill gets any muddier."
Alex nodded, glad of his sneakers as he followed Dad up the trail. They weren't his usual choice in footwear, but he had a feeling that anything else short of boots would have landed him in a puddle on short order. And as it was he still skidded more than enough that he'd decided to not only go to bed early but also beg off helping unload entirely and volunteer Jamie in his place by the time they reached the door. He couldn't help an audible groan as he sank down on the bench to pull them off.
"J—oh, John, Alex, it's you," Mom said, opening the inner door a moment later. "How on Earth did picking up supplies take so long? I expected you home a couple hours ago."
Dad shook his head. "We had to go all the way down into Colorado to find everything we needed. And I hope we bought enough, because their supplies were starting to look a little thin too."
"Well, I can't argue with your timing. The chicken's nearly ready, and Jamie must be on his way back by now too."
"He isn't here?" Alex demanded. He'd assumed that Jamie and the other boys would have come back to the compound as soon as the rain started.
"Oh, I told him five-thirty for dinner, and it's only quarter of six," Mom said, waving it off. "The boys probably found something else to do after they were done biking and just lost track of time."
He blew out a breath. "Okay, so they are somewhere around here and not caught up in the foothills in that storm." Not that he was thrilled that Jamie was already fifteen minutes late, but he was well aware how most of his family handled the concept of deadlines and curfews, and even without that he could see how trekking any amount of distance across the compound in the rain and mud could take more time than expected. Witness his own hike up the hill.
"Well, I haven't seen them, but they did say that they were only planning on biking for a couple hours, so I assume so."