He knew they were on their way home because Cam had called from the
plane. Which was just about the coolest thing Seth could think of. He
couldn't wait to tell Danny and Will how he'd talked to Cam while Cam
had been flying over the Atlantic Ocean.
He'd already looked up Italy in the atlas and found Rome. Had traced his
finger back and forth, back and forth across that wide ocean from Rome
to the Chesapeake Bay, to the little smudge on Maryland's Eastern Shore
that was St. Christopher's.
For a little while he'd been afraid they wouldn't come back. He imagined
Cam calling and saying they'd decided to stay over there so he could
race again.
He knew Cam had lived all over the place, racing boats and cars and
motorcycles. Ray had told him all about it, and there was a thick
scrapbook in the den that was filled with all kinds of newspaper and
magazine pictures and articles about how many races Cam had won. And how
many women he'd fooled around with.
And he knew that Cam had won this big-deal race in his hydrofoil--which
Seth wished he could ride in just once--right before Ray had run into
the telephone pole and died.
Phillip had finally tracked him down in Monte Carlo. Seth had found that
place in the atlas, too, and it didn't look all that much bigger than
St. Chris. But they had a palace there and fancy casinos and even a
prince.
Cam had come home in time to see Ray die. Seth knew he hadn't planned to
stay very long. But he had stayed. After they'd had sort of a fight,
he'd told Seth he wasn't going anywhere. That they were stuck with each
other and he was staying put.
Still, that was before he'd gotten married and everything, before he'd
gone back to Italy. Before Seth had started to worry that both Cam and
Anna would forget about him and the promises they'd made.
But they hadn't. They were coming back.
He didn't want them to know he was waiting for them or that he was
excited that they would be home any minute. But he was. He couldn't
understand why he was all pumped up about it. They'd only been gone a
couple of weeks, and Cam was a pain in the ass most of the time anyway.
And once Anna was living there, everybody would say how he had to watch
his language because there was a woman in the house.
A part of him worried that Anna would change things. Even though she was
his caseworker, she might get tired of having a kid around. She had the
power to send him away. More power now, he thought, because she was
doing it with Cam all the time.
He reminded himself that she'd played it straight with him, from the
minute she'd pulled him out of class and sat down with him in the school
cafeteria to talk.
But working on a case and living in the same house with that case was
different, wasn't it?
And maybe, just maybe, she'd played straight with him, she'd been nice
to him, because she'd liked having Cam poke at her. She'd wanted to get
married to him. Now that she was, she wouldn't have to be nice anymore.
She could even write in one of her reports that he'd be better off