Bodily Harm Read Online Free PDF Page B

things and couldn’t get to it. Do you understand the difference?”
    Jake nodded. “Sure, that’s why you couldn’t help me with my algebra.”
    Tina had to turn her head and bite her lip to keep from laughing out loud. Sloane decided to retreat. “Now, the next thing we need to talk about, as a family, is that issue about my adopting you. Have you given that some consideration?”
    Jake nodded. “I made a pro and con table like you told me.” He rushed into Sloane’s office, emerged with a pad of paper, and set it on his chair. “Okay,” he said, drawing their attention like a lawyer before a jury. “Let’s start with the cons.” He flipped the sheet of paper. Sloane’s heart sank. Jake had listed eight reasons not to change his name. “To begin with, this could become very confusing for my friends. I mean they know me as Jake Carter, and changing my name to Sloane will be hard for them to remember. It will also be difficult for my teachers, although that might not be such a bad thing for Mr. Jackson,” he said, referring to his math instructor.
    Sloane couldn’t help but chuckle.
    “Continuing on . . .” Jake went through each of the eight listed reasons, each a valid point against changing his name, each another blow to Sloane’s hopes.
    “Now,” Jake said, “let’s look at the pros.” He paused.
    Sloane felt as nervous as waiting for a jury verdict.
    Jake flipped the chart. On the page behind it he had drawn ahuge smiley face. “Because I would be stoked!”
    Sloane thrust a fist in the air. “Yes!” He gave Jake a hug. “And I’ll be stoked too. I promise you, Jake, I’ll be there for you. We’ll be a family, just as close as if we were blood related.”
    “Closer even.”
    “Closer than blood?”
    “Sure. I mean, normally you can’t pick your family, right? You’re stuck with them. But we’re actually choosing to be a family. That makes us even closer.”
    Sloane turned to Tina. “I think Jake has displayed some real maturity tonight. The kind of maturity that should be rewarded, don’t you agree?”
    Jake’s eyes bugged. “I can get a puppy?”
    “We were thinking about something else,” Tina said. “Something better than a puppy.”
    Jake looked genuinely perplexed. “Better than a puppy?”
    Tina smiled. “How about a baby brother or sister?”
    AFTER JAKE WENT upstairs to read in his room, Sloane and Tina pulled on light fleece jackets and stepped outside to enjoy the sunset over the Olympic Mountain Range, a dazzling display of color and beauty. Hand in hand they stepped over the logs to the sand-and-gravel beach, their shoes crunching as they strolled. A chorus of crickets and the occasional deep bass croak of a bullfrog interrupted the rhythmic lapping of waves. Fishing boats tethered to white buoys bobbed just offshore. August and September had become Sloane’s favorite months in the Pacific Northwest. The sun rose early and set late, allowing him to spend more time with Tina and Jake after work.
    “So, Mr. Sloane,” Tina said. “Are you prepared for this?”
    “Walking? Oh sure. I’ve been walking since I was one.”
    She punched his arm. “I meant the baby.”
    Sloane joked, but he knew he had not hidden his apprehension well when Tina gave him the news and she had clearly picked up on it. “I guess I better be,” he said. They walked on. “Have you told your parents?”
    Tina shook her head. Her smile faded. Her mother and stepfather, Terri and Bill Larsen, had never accepted Sloane, and there was no shortage of reasons for their rejection. The Larsens had raised their daughter in an upscale San Francisco neighborhood and sent her to a private school near Presidio Heights where San Francisco’s blue-blooded families maintained mansions. They had been elated when Tina married Frank Carter, the son of one of those families, which helped them gain access into that community, and then devastated that she would divorce him, regardless that Frank had