The Favour
The Favour
Megan Hart
Janelle Decker has happy childhood memories of her grandma’s house, and even lived there through high school. Now she’s back with her twelve-year-old son to look after her ailing Nan, and hardly anything seems to have changed, not even the Tierney boys next door.Gabriel Tierney, local bad-boy.The twins, Michael and Andrew.After everything that happened between the four of them, Janelle is shocked that Gabe still lives in St. Mary’s. And he isn’t trying very hard to convince Janelle he’s changed from the moody teenage boy she once knew. If anything, he seems bent on making sure she has no intentions of rekindling their past.To this day, though there might’ve been a lot of speculation about her relationship with Gabe, nobody else knows she was there in the woods that day… the day a devastating accident tore the Tierney brothers apart and drove Janelle away.But there are things that even Janelle doesn’t know, and as she and Gabe revisit their interrupted romance, she begins to uncover the truth denied to her when she ran away all those years ago.
With characteristic compassion and searing honesty, MEGAN HART weaves a shattering small-town story about what can turn brother against brother, and the kinds of secrets that cannot remain untold.
Janelle Decker has happy childhood memories of her grandma’s house, and even lived there through high school. Now she’s back with her twelve-year-old son to look after her ailing Nan, and hardly anything seems to have changed, not even the Tierney boys next door.
Gabriel Tierney, local bad-boy. The twins, Michael and Andrew. After everything that happened between the four of them, Janelle is shocked that Gabe still lives in St. Mary’s. And he isn’t trying very hard to convince Janelle he’s changed from the moody teenage boy she once knew. If anything, he seems bent on making sure she has no intentions of rekindling their past.
To this day, though there might’ve been a lot of speculation about her relationship with Gabe, nobody else knows she was there in the woods that day…the day a devastating accident tore the Tierney brothers apart and drove Janelle away. But there are things that even Janelle doesn’t know, and as she and Gabe revisit their interrupted romance, she begins to uncover the truth denied to her when she ran away all those years ago.
The Favour
Megan Hart
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
This book is dedicated to my grandmother, Eileen Garner,
who taught me how to cook a turkey.
I love you and miss you, Gramma.
Contents
Chapter 1 (#u095ea54d-a141-565a-9d16-f919c85e3f66)
Chapter 2 (#u7e49779d-92c3-53ab-ad19-37b96019a12d)
Chapter 3 (#ued7784ed-4943-50cb-9f4a-5418408d4e91)
Chapter 4 (#u06d3cb38-96a2-5693-9f47-cc93d235bb81)
Chapter 5 (#u389e85d9-eb1f-5f92-9429-176ba8699e6e)
Chapter 6 (#u11540118-4bc0-57c3-98ee-f419cfb35a52)
Chapter 7 (#u30f1e335-6401-573e-8969-3b19b26296ea)
Chapter 8 (#uf344a8ba-b52d-5fd3-a17d-9708b1ce06f4)
Chapter 9 (#u9a65ae33-d9d1-5bd9-aa50-686c984afbf1)
Chapter 10 (#ue7b116be-d13e-53ca-87fb-6dec89282a55)
Chapter 11 (#u7c1242b9-f4e6-5f98-a6ae-01037f126dff)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)
ONE
HOME ISN’T ALWAYS the place you go because they have to take you in.
Sometimes, Janelle Decker thought as she crested the hill and took that final slope toward the town she hadn’t seen in nearly twenty years, home was the place you couldn’t escape no matter how far or fast you ran. Her battered Volkswagen Rabbit pickup, which had seen better days, but so far, thank God, not many worse, drifted to a stop at the traffic light. She didn’t remember the fast-food restaurant to her right or, just a bit farther, the pair of hotels on the hill to her left, but she remembered the small white building beside them. Decker’s Chapel, one of the tiniest churches in the country.
“Look, Bennett. Over there.” Janelle craned her neck to stare into the backseat, where her son was bent over his new toy, the iPad her mother had bought him for his birthday. In seconds the light would turn green, and it had somehow become imperative she show him this sight. “Bennett. Hey. Hello!”
The boy looked up through a shock of red-blond bangs that fell over bright green eyes. His dad’s eyes, though Connor’s gaze had never, in Janelle’s recollection, been as bright and clear and curious as her son’s. Bennett looked out the window to where she pointed.
“See that little church?”
“Yeah.”
Janelle eased her foot off the brake and pressed the cranky clutch, hoping for the sake of the half dozen cars lined up behind her that the truck wouldn’t stall. “One of my great-great-grand-relatives built that church.”
“Really? Cool.” Bennett sounded underwhelmed. “Are we almost there?”
“Another five minutes, buddy. That’s all.” On impulse, instead of continuing on along the incongruously named Million Dollar Highway into town toward her grandmother’s house, the end point of this seemingly endless trip, Janelle put on her left turn signal.
If there’d been traffic heading toward her she might not have bothered, but the only traffic on the road was heading into town, not away from it. That seemed somehow meaningful, but she didn’t let herself dwell on that. Instead, she turned into the gravel-gritty drive that serviced the two hotels as well as the chapel. She parked and stared through the windshield.
Her arms ache from where he grabbed her, the bruises still so fresh they’ve barely darkened, though they will. She’ll wear them for weeks. Her hands on the wheel, gripping so tight her fingers hurt from it. Foot on the gas, foot on the clutch, the Rabbit truck bucks and sputters as she guides it to the side of the road. The parking lot of this tiny church is empty, thank God. There’s nobody to see her press her face against her hands, nobody to watch her break apart.
Nobody to watch her leaving.
“I thought we were going to Nan’s house.”
“In a few minutes.”
Bennett, her get-along-guy, her complacent child, let out a long, stuttering sigh of irritation. Janelle didn’t blame him. They’d been driving for hours with no more than a quick pit stop. Before that, other than the week they’d spent at her mom’s, they’d been on the road for what felt like forever.
“I want to go into this church, okay? Really fast.” Janelle looked into the rearview mirror. “Want to come in with me? Let me rephrase that. Come in with me.”
Her son looked a lot like his absent father, and that she understood. Genetics and all that. But sometimes the kid acted just like his dad, too, and that always floored her, since she and Connor O’Hara had been finished before he even knew the night the condom broke hadn’t turned out to be, as he’d so valiantly and foolishly promised her, “okay.”
“It’ll be cool,” she told Bennett. “Really. And if it’s not, you can add it to the list of things I’ve done to permanently scar you.”
This earned a small smile. “Okay. But I have to pee real bad.”
“Hold it just a little longer. Can you?”
“I guess so.” Bennett made a face that said he wasn’t convinced.
She’d never actually been inside the chapel. Built of white clapboard with a miniature bell tower and a single door in the front with a wooden ramp leading up to it, the chapel really was tiny. It had been built in the 1800s; she remembered that much.
Janelle got out of the truck, snagging her keys from the ignition, but not bothering to actually lock the vehicle. They were in St. Marys, after all. Secluded, isolated, ninety-nine percent Catholic of the “attend Mass daily” variety. And they were going inside for just a minute or two, the way she’d promised. She couldn’t tell if her heart raced because of daring to leave her vehicle unlocked with all her worldly belongings inside, or for a slew of other reasons that had been plaguing her for the past few months, since she’d made the decision to come back.
The chapel was unheated. Bennett danced from foot to foot, having, of course, forgone his brand-new, heavy winter coat. Janelle herself blew a plume of frost on her fingers and rubbed her hands together to warm them as she walked slowly around the wooden kneelers, an altar and a votive display at the back, no candles burning. She thought about dropping a dollar in the slot and lighting one, if only for the brief flare of warmth it would offer, but she hadn’t brought her purse inside and her pockets were lamentably empty.
“Do people get married here?”
“I don’t know. I guess they could.” Janelle looked at the map on the wall and the framed documents telling the Decker’s Chapel history.
“Would you?”
She laughed. “Um...no.”
“How come? If you think it’s so cool and all that.” Bennett ran a finger along one of the half-size kneelers and gave her an innocent look that didn’t fool her for a second, because she’d seen it in her own reflection more than once.
Janelle rolled her eyes. “C’mon. Let’s go. I’m freezing.”
Back in the car, buckled up tight, she once again looked at her son in the rearview mirror. He’d already bent over his iPad again, thumbing the screen in some complicated game, his headphones firmly settled in the tangles of his too-long hair. This was her boy. Her life for the past twelve years. She hadn’t messed him up too badly so far.
But there was still time.
“Whoa, look at the size of that Pepsi cap!” Bennett sounded way more excited about that landmark than he had about the chapel. He added a chortle that cracked her up. As if the kid had never seen a giant Pepsi cap on the side of a building before. Come to think of it, he never had.
It took a few more than five minutes to get to Nan’s house. There was a lot more traffic than Janelle remembered, for one thing, and some of the roads had changed. The Diamond, as the locals called it, ran in one direction only, and though she knew she had to get off on the first street, somehow she ended up going all the way around the circle of traffic again before she could.
“Big Ben,” she murmured as they passed the town’s snow-covered Nativity scene, still holding pride of place in the square, though it was already the day after New Year’s. “Parliament.”
Bennett, familiar with the joke, though not the movie she was quoting, didn’t even look up. Janelle concentrated on getting off the Diamond and onto one of the side streets. G.C. Murphy’s, location of many a summer afternoon’s dawdling, was long gone. Janelle felt a sudden pang of nostalgia for Lee Press On Nails and Dep hair gel. Her car bump-bumped over the railroad tracks as she headed up Lafayette Street, pausing at the intersection to point out the elk heads, antlers alight with bulbs, adorning the building on the corner.
“This place has a lot of weird things,” Bennett said matter-of-factly. “Maybe they’re in your app, Mom. We should check them off.”
He meant the application on her phone that listed the odd and offbeat attractions littering the American countryside. Biggest balls of twine, and mystery spots, that sort of thing. They’d spent a good portion of their trip from California to Pennsylvania taking back roads to catch a glimpse of some forgotten storybook forest or an abandoned “Fountain of Youth” that turned out to be an algae-infested and crumbling well alive with frogs. In the past couple days, though, busy with the holidays at her mom’s house and then the final portion of this journey, they hadn’t even checked to see what weird delights might await.
They’d already passed a dozen landmarks that had always marked off the distance between her mom’s and this town like hash marks on a ruler. The Mount Nittany Inn, with its spectacular view. The child’s sneaker-shaped scooter attached for no good reason to a high fence, which she could remember looking for during every trip to visit Nan. Janelle had thought about rallying Bennett to scream out “Weed!” as they passed through the tiny town of Weedville, the way she and her dad always had, but knew he wouldn’t understand the joke—nor did she want to explain to him the old comedy skit about a pair of stoners incapable of keeping their stash a secret when visited by the cops.
Now she spotted another landmark Bennett wouldn’t really “get”—the Virgin Mary statue in the corner lot they were passing. Common enough in a town named for her, not so much in any place they’d lived. Janelle slowed a little as she passed to give the praying Virgin a silent nod.
Janelle hadn’t been inside a church for years, but she still wore the Blessed Virgin medallion she’d had since she was eighteen. It lay against the hollow of her throat, warmed by her flesh. She wore it constantly; it had become as much a part of her as the small but genuine diamond in her nose and the shooting star tattoo on the inside of her left wrist. She never took the necklace off unless she was getting dressed up to go somewhere fancy, and replaced it with her single strand of good pearls—and it had been a damn long time since she’d done that. She never thought much about it, in fact, unless she forgot to put it back on, and wasn’t that the way of things? You didn’t notice them until they weren’t where you expected them to be.
She traced the medallion with her fingertips, so familiar by touch, though honestly, if you’d asked her to identify it in a photo, she’d probably be unable. Mary’s features had become worn from the thousands of such touches over the years. The metal had tarnished. Janelle had replaced the chain twice that she could recall. It hardly looked like the same necklace that had been given to her so long ago.
Past Deprator’s Beverage, down one more street, one more turn. Her heart beat a little faster at the sight of the familiar green shingled house. She pulled into Nan’s driveway and let the truck idle for a minute or so before turning off the ignition.
Don’t be a stranger, Janelle. This will always be your home.
I know, Nan. I know.
Come back soon, Janelle. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.
I’ll come soon, Nan. I promise.
She’d had the heat going on the highest setting, but now the frigid air was finding its insidious way through the cracks and crevices. She told herself that’s why she shivered, why the hairs on the back of her neck rose, why her nipples pebbled beneath her multiple layers of clothes. She got out of the truck, one hand on the roof, one foot propped on the running board. Her sudden chill had little to do with the actual weather.
“We’re here,” Janelle said. “We’re home.”
TWO
Then
THERE’S A GIRL with red hair in the backyard of the house next door, and she’s blowing soap bubbles from a big plastic dish. She dips the wand in the liquid and holds it to her puckered lips, then laughs as the bubbles stream out, one after the other, like beads on a string. Like pearls, Gabe thinks. Like his mom’s pearls, the ones in the drawer in the back bedroom, in the box his dad doesn’t think Gabe knows about.
The girl with red hair glances up, sees him looking and frowns. Gabe stands on one of the cinder blocks that keep his yard from falling into hers. If he steps down he’ll be on her grass, so he stays where he is. His yard is higher, which is good because he thinks she’s taller than him, and that would be annoying.
“Hi,” she says. “You’re Gabe Tierney. My dad says you have twin baby brothers.”
He does. Michael and Andrew. Gabe doesn’t question how or why this girl’s dad would know that. Everyone knows about the Tierney boys. His bare toes curl over the edge of the cinder block, but he doesn’t step down.
The girl stands, her fist dripping with suds. “I have bubbles, look.”
“I have bubbles in a big jug. Had,” Gabe mutters. “I spilled ’em.”
It had been an accident, but he might as well have done it on purpose since he got in so much trouble for it. The soap had soaked into the rug in the front room, making a squishy patch he’d been unable to clean up no matter how much water he used. Mikey walked through it, then onto the linoleum floor in the kitchen, where he skidded and slipped, hitting his head on the table. Then Dad came through, yelling, and he slipped, too. Went down on his butt. It would’ve been funny, kind of like something on TV, except Dad didn’t laugh about it. He hadn’t spanked Gabe, but it might’ve been better if he had. He’d not only taken away the rest of the bubbles, but he’d sent Gabe to his room for a whole day. No lunch, no supper. Gabe’s belly had hurt from being empty.
“I’m Janelle.” She holds up the wand. “Do you want to blow some bubbles? You can use mine.”
Gabe does want to blow bubbles, but he stays put. “My dad says I’m not supposed to leave the yard.”
Janelle puts her fists on her hips. Her lower lip sticks out in what Gabe’s mama used to call a pouty. “Gaby’s putting a pouty on,” that’s what she used to say. Before.
Janelle shakes her head. “What are you, a baby?”
He’s not anything close to a baby. Heat floods him, not from the summer sun beating down but from someplace deep inside. It comes from the same place that gets hot whenever he overhears someone talking about “those Tierney boys.” Which is a lot. Without another thought, Gabe jumps down from the cinder block and into Mrs. Decker’s yard.
“Be careful. Your dad might yell.” Janelle looks toward Gabe’s house, which is taller than Mrs. Decker’s. Made of brick instead of painted wood. Gabe’s house has three stories and he’s pretty sure the third floor is haunted.
“He’s not home. He’s at work.” Mrs. Moser wouldn’t yell if she came out from inside the house and found him in the yard next door. She’d be happy to see him playing with a friend. She’d be happy for him to stay out of the house, out from under her feet like she said, though it is the twins who are always crawling around under her feet. Not Gabe.
“Oh.” Janelle grins and holds out the bubble wand again. “So come and blow bubbles! It’s really fun.”
“Bubbles are for babies,” Gabe tells her, knowing it will wipe the smile off her face.
That’s what Dad says. Wipe the smile off your face. But it’s never like wiping your face with a cloth or a napkin or the back of your hand. Smiles always melt like Popsicles in the sun. Drip, drip, drip.
Janelle does stop smiling. That line appears between her eyebrows again. She puts one hand on her hip, the other still holding out the wand. “I’m not a baby, and I like bubbles! But if you’re too much of a baby to come into my Nan’s yard...”
“I’m not a baby!”
“Nope,” Janelle says with a grin that melts something inside him that’s nothing like a smile, “you’re a jerk.”
* * *
Gabe Tierney was still a jerk. He knew it. Cultivated it, as a matter of fact, because it was easier that way. People gave you a wide berth if you were an asshole. They left you alone. Well, most people did. Some women didn’t. For them, a sneer was as good as a smile, maybe better. For them a kiss from a fist was better than nothing, but Gabe would never hit a woman, not even if she hit him first, and he’d had plenty of slaps to prove it. He’d deserved most of them, though if you asked him, any woman who went after a man who told her right up front he wasn’t ever going to be her boyfriend probably shouldn’t get bent out of shape when that turned out to be true.
There were lights on in the Deckers’ second-floor bedroom, which meant he could see right in. There hadn’t been a light on upstairs in months, maybe even over a year. Mrs. Decker never went upstairs anymore, and though she sometimes had visitors, she didn’t have overnight company. Gabe moved closer to his window, hands on the sill. His breath fogged the glass, but he didn’t wipe it clean. He just waited patiently for it to clear.
Earlier he’d seen the woman inside, moving back and forth, emptying boxes and arranging the furniture. Her hair was darker now than it had been in childhood, but still red. He bet she still had freckles across her nose, and that twisted sense of humor. Other things would’ve changed over time, they always did, but surely that would be the same.
Janelle Decker had come back.
The door to that other bedroom opened, and there she was again. In the dark, behind the shield of his curtain, Gabe watched, waiting to see if she’d look over. She didn’t. She straightened and slid an elastic band off her wrist, then used it to fasten her hair on top of her head. She stretched, rolling her neck and shoulders with a wince.
Gabe had once sworn he’d get the hell out of this place and never look back, but Janelle had been the one to actually do it. At least until now. What was she doing back here? Easy enough to guess—Mrs. Decker was getting older and more frail. She’d fallen not too long ago, and Gabe supposed she needed caretaking. That explained the boxes and stuff in the upstairs bedroom, instead of only a suitcase or two.
“So,” she says. “That’s it? It’s over?”
“Nothing’s over. For something to be over, it has to start.”
“I did it for you!” she cries. “You asked me for a favor, and I did it!”
Then she’s leaving and his hands are on her. Too hard. He doesn’t know how to tell her he doesn’t want her to go, and he can’t make himself ask her to stay.
And after that, everything fell apart.
THREE
IN WHAT BENNETT called the olden days, this big room, separated into four sections by a T-shaped half wall, had belonged to four of her uncles. The smaller bedroom across the hall had housed Janelle’s dad, the oldest of the five brothers, until he moved out and the next oldest took his place. Ricky, Marty, Bobby, Joey and John, the Decker brothers. Her dad had often joked that if the others had learned to play instruments the way he’d taken to the guitar, they could’ve had a band to rival the Oakridge Boys or maybe the Osmonds. All five had shared the bathroom off the hallway, and Janelle shuddered to think of what that must’ve been like—the stink alone must’ve been enough to kill a couple of elephants. And it wasn’t a big bathroom, she thought as she settled one more box of toiletries on the floor. It would be a hardship sharing it with one medium-size boy, much less an army of brothers.
Of the five brothers, four remained in contact, though none of them had stayed in St. Marys. John and his wife, Lisa, lived three hours away in Aliquippa, their three kids and spouses and grandkids close by. Bobby and Donna lived an hour and a half away in Milesburg, their four kids and their families scattered across the country. Marty and Kathy in Dubois, close to Joey and his wife, Deb, but that was still about an hour away. Marty and Kathy’s daughter, Betsy, lived with her family twenty minutes away in Kersey, but her brother, Bill, was unmarried and traveled the world as a journalist. Joey and Deb had one son, Peter, who lived at home in their basement and, to be honest, sort of creeped Janelle out and always had.
Janelle’s dad, on the other hand, had pretty much fallen off the face of the earth a few decades ago, and it was good riddance as far as she was concerned.
“We were wondering if you’d be able to come and stay with Mom,” Joey had said without preamble three months ago when he’d called her. “She had a fall recently, and she’s been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Inoperable.”
Janelle had barely had time to ask him how he and his family were before he’d leveled her with that bit of news. In retrospect, she appreciated the bluntness, but at the time it had sucked the wind from her lungs.
I promise I’ll come back soon, Nan.
It had been almost twenty years.
“The doctor says she could have anywhere from a few months to a few years,” Joey had said. “She wasn’t showing any symptoms. They only found out because she hit her head, and they did an MRI. She says she’s going to be eighty-four years old and doesn’t want chemo or any sort of treatment like that. But she needs someone with her, Janelle. We thought...you might be able to. Whether it’s a few months or a few years, she doesn’t have a lot of time left. Even if you can’t come to stay, you should at least come to visit.”
She’d never appreciated a guilt trip, especially not from an uncle she hadn’t spoken to since she was a teenager, but as it turned out, Joey wasn’t just asking her to come and take care of Nan in her last years. He, along with his brothers, were making her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
Janelle would have medical power of attorney, with limited power of attorney granting her access to Nan’s checking and savings accounts for the purposes of maintaining her grandmother’s lifestyle. There had been a lot of legal paperwork stating that she would be responsible for maintaining the house until Nan passed away. After that, Janelle would be in charge of selling it and splitting the income among Nan’s sons. Janelle would keep her dad’s share of the proceeds for herself.
Her uncles were buying her and making no real pretense otherwise. She respected that as much as Joey’s initial bluntness in telling her about Nan’s failing health. But Janelle could be blunt, too.
“Why me? You live close by. Betsy and Peter do, too, right? None of you can check in on her?”
“She needs someone there full-time,” Joey had said. “She won’t accept a nurse—we tried that. She won’t go into a home—we suggested that, too. And we all have houses and lives and families, Janelle. We can’t pick up and move in with her.”
Janelle could’ve protested that she couldn’t, either, but the fact was, it made sense. She wanted out of California. St. Marys was a four-hour drive away from her mom and step-father, Randall, and also her brother, Kenny, and his family. That was far better than a six-hour flight. And really, what else did she have in California but debts she couldn’t seem to get out from under no matter what she did? In for a penny, in for a pound was one of Nan’s favorite sayings. Janelle had listed her house and its upside-down mortgage with a rental management company, sold most of her stuff and packed up the rest. Here she was.
First things first. She’d unloaded most of her boxes from the truck. She should make the bed. Then create some order in the bathroom so she could convince her son to take a shower tonight before he went to bed. Bennett might not think he needed to face his first day in a new school with clean hair and clothes, but his mother did.
Before she could do any of that, a quavery voice came from the bottom of the stairs. “Janelle? Will you and Benny be ready for supper soon?”
Janelle went to the head of the steeply pitched staircase. “Yeah, Nan, I’ll be down in a couple minutes.”
“I have leftovers from New Year’s dinner. I’m making turkey soup with spaetzle.”
Janelle’s stomach rumbled, and she immediately headed down the stairs. “Nan. You shouldn’t be cooking anything. Let me get that.”
Her grandmother gripped the newel post with gnarled fingers. She’d always been short but pillowy. It hurt Janelle’s heart to see how frail she’d become. When Janelle impulsively bent to hug her, she could feel every one of the bones in Nan’s spine. She didn’t want to grip too hard, but found it almost impossible to let go.
Nan tutted and waved her hands. “It’s already made. I just need to warm up the rolls....”
“Nan, I’ll get it.”
For half a second, her grandmother’s shoulders slumped. Then, feisty as ever despite the weight she’d lost and the cancer nibbling away at her, she shook her head. “No, no. You go upstairs and work on putting your room together. The soup’s heating up, and I have the rolls all ready. You go. Go!”
Janelle had spent her entire life heeding Nan’s instructions. Even when she’d ignored Nan’s advice, even when she’d deliberately disobeyed her, Janelle had always at least made a show of listening. Old habits didn’t simply die hard, they rose like the undead and kept walking. Now she backed up the steep stairs, catching her heel on every one and keeping her eye on Nan, who took her time, centering herself with a hand on the newel post again before she was steady enough to move across the living room’s polished wooden floor.
As she turned and went up the stairs, Janelle heard Nan singing, the tune familiar though she couldn’t place it until she got into her room and recognized it as a particularly filthy pop song by an up-and-coming rapper. Laughing, she slotted the bed rails into the head- and footboards, then wrestled the box spring and mattress onto it. The bed itself she pushed kitty-corner under one of the dormers.
Then she looked out the window, hung with beige lace curtains, ugly and useless at blocking the light. Or the view. She could see right through them and into the second-floor bedroom of the house next door.
As she’d been able to do back then.
Just one minute. One nostalgic minute. That’s all she meant to take. The alley between the houses was so narrow that she could easily lean out her window and shake hands with someone doing the same on the other side. Close enough to string a tin-can telephone—and with the memory of that, she stood on her tiptoes to run her fingers along the top of the window frame. The piece of string was still there, stapled into the plaster, the end frayed where it had been cut years ago.
Hello. Hello. Vienna calling.
“Mom?”
Janelle turned, easing onto her heels, and wiped her dusty fingertips on her jeans. This room would take more work than setting up the furniture and making her bed. “Yeah, buddy.”
“I’m hungry. Is it time to eat yet?”
“Yeah. Nan made us soup. Let’s take a break. How’s your room coming along?”
Bennett shrugged. “It’s okay.”
Which could mean anything, from he’d completely unpacked or hadn’t slit the tape on a single box. Janelle poked her head in his doorway and found the room in a state someplace in between. Books and clothes covered his bed, but the small combo television and DVD player, hooked up to his game system, had been set up on top of his dresser the way it had been in California. Priorities, clearly.
“Bennett, c’mon. Get this stuff cleaned up and put away.”
“I’m getting to it.”
“No comics or video games until this room is clean,” Janelle said. “I mean it. And it’s early to bed tonight. School tomorrow.”
Downstairs, the good smell of homemade soup was overshadowed by the acrid odor of smoke. A baking sheet of crescent rolls rested on the stove, the tops golden-brown, the bottoms burned black. Nan had opened both windows over the sink as well as the door leading to the enclosed porch, but the smell lingered. She was in the family room, setting a handful of spoons on the table.
She turned a little when Janelle came in. “Where’s Benny?”
“I’m here, Nan.” Bennett ducked around Janelle. “Something stinks.”
“Bennett,” she warned.
Nan laughed. “Oh, I burned those rolls all right. Lost track of time. Should’ve kept my eye on ’em, but oh, well. We can just tear the tops off, right, Benny? Janelle, grab that bowl of mashed potatoes and bring it in here.”
“My mom burns them all the time,” Bennett said as he sidled around the table to sit in the chair closest to the wall. “Sometimes so bad we can’t even eat them. She catches the toaster on fire, too. And once she burned popcorn—”
“Bennett! Just because something’s true doesn’t mean we have to tell the whole world.” Janelle set the ceramic bowl of mashed potatoes in the middle of the table next to the platter of cold sliced filling. Nan made the best filling and mashed potatoes in the whole world. Nan made the best everything.
“Like this,” Nan said to Bennett when he put a spoonful of potatoes on the edge of his plate. She scooped some into her bowl, where the potatoes dissolved around the leftover turkey, corn and spaetzle to make the thin broth into something thick and creamy and delicious. “That’s how you do it. But first, let’s say grace.”
Bless us, Oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Janelle hadn’t said that or any prayer in years, but the words rose as easily to her lips as they once had. Bennett, brows raised, looked at her, and a sudden pang struck her. The blessing and the after-holiday turkey soup with mashed potatoes mixed into it had been a staple of her childhood visits to Nan’s house. But just like the prayers she’d never taught him, when had she ever made a turkey, much less kept the leftovers to make soup? Never. The traditions of Janelle’s childhood had split and splintered after her dad disappeared for good, and after leaving St. Marys that last time she’d carried forward only the ones from her mom’s side of the family.
“It’s good.” She plopped a hefty portion of potatoes into her own soup and stirred it into a thick stew, not reaching for the salt or pepper because Nan would have already seasoned it to perfection. Janelle blew on it and took a bite before it was cool enough, suddenly eager for the familiar flavors. She burned her tongue and didn’t care.
“It’s good,” Nan agreed. “Eat up, Benny. I have ice cream for dessert.”
Nan always had ice cream for dessert. Vanilla and chocolate and strawberry. Always in a bowl, never in a cone because you could fit more in a bowl. The bowls were the same. The spoons. The laughter was the same, too, Janelle thought as Nan listened to Bennett’s silly jokes and told a few of her own.
Nan was different, but Janelle supposed she was, too. That’s what happened with the passing of time. People got older. They got sick. They died.
But not yet, Janelle thought. Please, God. Not just yet.
FOUR
Then
THOSE MOTHERLESS TIERNEY boys. That’s what people always called them, with a mixture of pity and fond disapproval. When they show up in mismatched clothes, their hair a mess, chocolate milk on their upper lips. When they miss school altogether. Or church. Blaming the fact they don’t have a mom is an excuse, it makes people feel better, that’s what Gabe figures. If people can point at them, they don’t have to pay attention to themselves.
Andy and Mikey don’t remember Mom, not even from pictures, because their dad threw them all away. There used to be a big photo of her and Dad on the wall in the living room, but one day Gabe came downstairs and found only a bare spot where it had hung, the paint a little lighter than the rest. The frame was in the garbage, but the picture was gone. Gabe did have a picture of her holding him when he was a baby. He had it tucked away in his drawer, way at the back, but his dad didn’t know about that one. If he did, he’d probably throw it away, too.
Gabe remembers his mom, the way she smelled and the feeling of her hair on his face when she bent to pick him up, but that was from a long, long time ago. Sometimes he thinks he might just have imagined all of it. If it wasn’t for Gabe’s picture he could believe he came out from under a cabbage leaf, just like Mrs. Moser says.
Mrs. Moser gives them cookies while they’re doing their homework. The twins hardly have anything to do because they’re only in kindergarten, but Gabe’s in the fourth grade and he’s got so much schoolwork he can hardly get through it some nights. Right now he’s struggling with some social studies maps he’s supposed to color, but all the crayons are broken or worn down to nubs. Dad said he’d bring home another box, but he’s not home from work yet. Maybe he won’t be home until it’s too late, when Gabe will be asleep. And this is due tomorrow.
“Finish up your work so you can watch some cartoons while I finish dinner.” Mrs. Moser talks in a thick German accent. She’s kind of fat and has grayish hair, and her arms are flabby, but she makes great cookies. If she was around all the time, Gabe thinks, nobody would ever have any reason to look at them with pity, because they’d always be clean and their clothes would match.
But Mrs. Moser comes in to do for his dad only a couple days a week. Sometimes she doesn’t show up for weeks in a row, because she has a bad back and has to take a break. Or because his dad hollers about something she didn’t do right, like buying the wrong kind of shampoo or getting the lunch meat sliced too thin. Ralph Tierney likes things the way he likes them, that’s what he always says.
Gabe knows for sure his dad doesn’t like him. When he looks at Gabe, his face wrinkles up as if he smelled something bad. He loves the twins, though. They sit on his lap while he reads them books. They get away with everything Gabe never could. They cry and stamp their feet and throw tantrums to get their way, and Gabe’s not even allowed to say a word. If they hit him, he can’t hit them back. If they take his stuff and break it, he’s not allowed to complain. If he does, there’s a good chance Dad will blame him for whatever happened, anyway, so he says nothing. But if he can get in a punch when nobody’s looking...
“Gabriel. Are you finished with your work?”
Gabe shows Mrs. Moser the unfinished map. “I need crayons.”
“What happened to yours?”
Andy broke them all up and mixed the pieces together, then put them in the oven to melt into a “supercrayon.” Gabe shrugs, the truth not worth saying. Mrs. Moser clucks her tongue.
“You should be more careful with your things, Gabriel. Your father—” she says it like fazza “—he works hard.”
Gabe feels his entire face wrinkle like a raisin. “I need them for school! It’s not my fault Andy broke them! I’m tired of everyone blaming me for stuff that’s not my fault! I hate it!”
Crash goes the chair. Bang goes the table when he slams it. Slap go the papers when he shoves them to the floor. Mikey looks all goggle-eyed, his upper lip pink from the punch Mrs. Moser let him have with his snack, because milk gives him a bellyache. Andy looks scared.
Gabe is a dragon, he’s a bear, he’s a dinosaur. His fingers hook into claws. He roars and stamps, and it feels good, letting all this out. Making noise. It feels good to watch his brothers cry and squirm away from him. It even feels good to run away from Mrs. Moser, because she’s too old and fat to catch him.
He’s still running around the table when Dad shows up in the doorway. Gabe runs right into him. Dad’s solid, like a mountain. Gabe hits and bounces off, lands on his butt so hard tears fill his eyes from the pain.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What’s going on in here?”
Andy and Mikey start up with the wailing while Gabe struggles to get to his feet. Mrs. Moser tries to explain, but Dad reaches down to grab the front of Gabe’s shirt and haul him upright. Dad smells like sweat and dirt and cigarettes. He shakes Gabe, hard.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I was just playing.”
“Playing like an idiot. Jesus Christ.” Dad wipes his face with one big hand. His eyebrows are big and bushy. His breath stinks like the peppermint candies he’s always sucking. He shifts one now from side to side, clicking it against his teeth.
When Dad lets him go, Gabe stumbles. His butt still hurts, bad. His back, too. It will hurt for almost a week, and when he twists to look in the mirror later, a huge bunch of bruises will have blossomed there.
“I don’t understand you, Gabe. I swear to God, I don’t.” Dad shakes his head. “Go to your room.”
“He hasn’t finished his homework,” Mrs. Moser says.
Dad looks at her. “Well. That’s his own damn fault, isn’t it? Go to your room. Where’s my goddamned dinner?”
Gabe goes to his room. He’s not tired, but he gets into bed, anyway. There’s nothing else to do. His teacher will be mad if he doesn’t do his work, but he can’t make himself care. He can’t finish the project without crayons, so what difference does it make?
He sleeps, finally. Wakes a little when Mrs. Moser brings the little boys up and oversees them getting into their pajamas, brushing their teeth, tucking them into their matching twin beds in the room across the hall from Gabe’s. He keeps his eyes shut tight, his face to the wall, so she doesn’t know he’s awake. He drifts back to sleep amid the whistling snores of his brothers, who both have colds.
He wakes again when the stairs creak, and once more keeps his eyes shut tight, his face turned to the wall. Maybe tonight those footsteps will move past his doorway and not come inside. Maybe not.
The floor also creaks. It makes music. It’s like the school chorus Gabe didn’t try out for, but had to participate in, anyway, for the Christmas show. Every voice blends together to make a whole song. Each step on this creaking, squeaking floor has a different voice, but most every night it sings the same song.
Tonight the footsteps don’t stop across the hall. They keep moving toward Gabe’s bed. His eyes squinch tighter, tighter, his fists clutching at the sheets. He doesn’t dare move or breathe or shift or so much as let his eyelids twitch.
A big hand brushes over his hair. Gabe braces himself, but the hand retreats. The floor creaks, the song changes. When at last he dares to open his eyes and look to make sure the bogeyman has indeed retreated, he sees something on the dresser that wasn’t there before. He has to sit up in bed to make sure. The light in the room is dim, so he also has to touch it. But when he does, he takes the offering into bed with him, lifting the lid and breathing in the best smell in the whole world, over and over.
A box of brand-new crayons.
* * *
Gabe thought of those crayons, that fresh and brand-new box of crayons, when he saw what the old man had left him on the kitchen table. He poked it with a fingertip, his lip slightly curled. Couple packs of cigarettes, his brand.
“What’s this for?” he asked from the living room doorway.
The old man didn’t even look up from the TV. “Had Andy bring ’em home for you. What, you don’t want ’em?”
It wasn’t that Gabe didn’t want the cigarettes. Smokes weren’t cheap, and if his father wanted to gift him with a couple packs, he wasn’t going to complain. But the old man’s gifts never came without a price, and Gabe wanted to know what it would be before he accepted.
“What do you want?” he asked evenly.
His dad still didn’t look at him, another sign he was working up to something. “Nothing. Why do I always have to want something?”
“Because you always do.” Gabe came into the room to look him over. “Shit, old man. You stink. Why don’t you take a shower once in a while?”
“Why don’t you shut your pie hole,” the old man muttered, shifting in his recliner. The flickering light of the television reflected in his eyes for another few seconds before he finally looked at his son. “I need you to take me to the doctor tomorrow.”
Gabe didn’t say anything for a long minute, during which his father shifted uncomfortably.
“What time?”
“I have an appointment at four.”
“Jesus.” Gabe sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “You couldn’t have asked me this a week ago? A couple of days, even? How long have you known about it?”
“Language,” the old man reprimanded. “I knew you’d say no, that’s why.”
Gabe rubbed his tongue against the back of his teeth until it ached. “I didn’t say no. What’s the appointment for?”
His father gave him a shifty glance. “It’s private. I just need to go. Can you take me or not?”
“I have two jobs going on tomorrow. I can maybe juggle the second one, yeah. But you know, you have to ask me this stuff ahead of time so I can make it work. I can’t just be at your beck and call.” Gabe paused, eyeing him. “You sick?”
“No.”
“So what’s wrong with you, then?”
“I got piles, okay?” The old man scowled. “Hurting something fierce. Is that what you want to hear? Fine, I’ll tell you!”
Gabe laughed. “If you got off your ass once in a while, maybe you wouldn’t have that problem.”
His dad raised a trembling finger, his lower lip pooched out. “You can just shut your mouth. Disrespectful son of a bitch.”
It was an old insult, one that no longer stung. Gabe shrugged. “I’ll take you. Thanks for the cigarettes.”
He pocketed both packs and went out back to smoke. Light spilled from the Decker house next door, golden and somehow warm even in the frigid January chill. From this angle he couldn’t see inside, but shadows moved in the square of light from the kitchen window. Janelle, he imagined. Washing the dishes, maybe. Standing at the sink, looking out into the snow-covered backyard.
The light upstairs went on, snaring his gaze. From here he couldn’t see inside any more than he could into the kitchen, but more shadows shifted up there. He imagined her pacing. Unpacking a box, making the bed.
Dancing.
“When I dance,” she says, “I feel like I can do anything.”
A shudder rippled along his spine that had nothing to do with the cold outside. Gabe drew again on the cigarette, but it made him cough unexpectedly, burning his throat and the inside of his nose with smoke and frigid air. Above him, a figure appeared in the window. Staring down at him? Maybe, if only at the cherry tip of his cigarette. Surely she couldn’t see the rest of him, tucked away in the shadows. Still, he dropped the butt into the coffee can of sand on the porch railing and stepped back from the edge, making sure there was no way she could even glimpse him.
The swing of lights in the street alerted him to Andy’s return. His brother laughed as he got out of the car that had brought him home, and he was still laughing when Gabe met up with him inside the house. Andy waved a fistful of lottery tickets in Gabe’s face.
“Got the winner this time, I know it.” He pinned them up on the corkboard next to the fridge, where they kept the calendar and his work schedule and messages from Michael.
There were a few there now. He called every other day on the house phone to talk to their dad, though he couldn’t be bothered to visit more than a few times a year. Somehow, the only person this seemed to bother was Gabe.
“What would you do with that money if you did win, anyway?” Gabe asked.
Andy looked thoughtful, then shrugged. “Take you and Dad and Michael on a trip. He went on that cruise, remember? He said it was fun. Maybe I’d buy some new video games.”
“What if you won really big?” Gabe looked over the tickets. His brother spent hours analyzing the numbers, certain he could figure out the next big hit. “Wouldn’t you want to get out of here? Wouldn’t you want to leave?”
Andy had been rummaging in the fridge, but now turned. “Where would I go?”
“Nowhere,” Gabe said with a shake of his head. “Never mind.”
FIVE
JANELLE HAD NEVER wept when Bennett started school, not even kindergarten. And Bennett hadn’t been one for tears, not even as a baby. Today, with his breath puffing out in the frigid northwestern Pennsylvania mountain air, his cheeks red and lips already chapping, he looked as if he might break down, and that was enough to send Janelle’s heart surging into her throat.
“I’ll be okay, Mom.”
“Sure. It’s going to be a great school for you.” She nodded firmly. “I know it won’t be like the academy, but it’ll be great.”
“Don’t cry,” Bennett warned.
She’d always driven him to and from school. Montrose Academy had limited bus service, and Bennett’s after-school activities would’ve meant she needed to pick him up, anyway. Music lessons, sports and art classes, in addition to what the academy provided. No dance lessons; he’d never been interested in that. She’d spent hours ferrying him from one class to the next. Thousands of dollars, all to make sure he had every possible opportunity.
“And you get to ride the bus,” she told him. “That’ll be fun.”
His expression told her he didn’t believe her. The bus appeared at the end of the street and stopped at the intersection. For a moment it looked as if it would continue without turning onto Dippold Street. The first day of her senior year of high school, Janelle had had to run for the bus. She’d lost a ballet flat, had to go back. Everyone had been laughing at her when she got on the bus, red-faced and panting, the carefully tousled hairdo she’d spent an hour fixing a mess.
This time she’d called the school four times to make sure of the stop location so they’d be at the right place on this first day, but her heart still pounded uncomfortably until the bus made the lumbering turn and headed toward them. It screeched to a stop on the opposite side of the street with that distinctive braking noise. The lights flashed and the red sign flipped out to prevent the nonexistent traffic from passing. Bennett headed for the bus without a backward glance.
“Wait!” Janelle cried. “Do you have your...lunch money? Your gym clothes?”
She should’ve driven him to school, just this first day. Walked him to the office, made sure he had everything he needed. Switching from private to public school was a difficult enough transition without a cross-country move, including a climate change on top of it.
Bennett didn’t even look back. Janelle stared at the faces peering at her from the bus windows, and kept herself from running across the street after him. The bus driver waved. She waved back. The bus drove off.
That was it, then.
Her teeth were chattering and her fingers numb. The house would be warm, but before going inside she took the time to look up and down the street. Not much had changed.
Those Tierney boys, Janelle thought, turning to look at the big redbrick house next to Nan’s. It sat higher on the hill than hers. An intricately constructed railroad-tie wall had replaced the cinder blocks that used to keep the yards distinct. The same concrete walk led to the back porch door. It had once been lined with flowers, but now butted directly against the wooden ties.
And... Oh. Andy. He stood on the front porch, bundled in a bulky red coat, the fur-edged hood hanging down his back. He waved at her.
“Hi!”
Janelle tucked her hands into her pockets and quelled her chattering teeth long enough to cross to the edge of the Tierneys’ yard. The new winter boots her mom had given her for Christmas were too big, too heavy. In California, Janelle lived most of the time in flip-flops or sandals. Slow and unwieldy, she felt like she was walking on the moon, without the bonus of being able to leap and float.
“Hi, Andy.” Janelle waved.
He’d gotten older, of course, the way they all had. Yet she knew that face. The slope of his chin, his nose, the hollows of his eyes and cheeks. The silver glinting in his dark hair came from age, but the thicker stripe of white along the part hadn’t. That was from the bullet.
“You know me?” Andy rocked back and forth on his heels. In contrast to his heavy winter clothes, he wore bedroom slippers on bare feet. His ankles stuck out a few inches below the bottom of his flannel pajama pants.
“Yes. Do you remember me?”
Andy’s brow furrowed. “No.”
His lack of memory didn’t surprise her, but her disappointment did. Thick as thieves, that’s what they’d been once upon a time. Janelle and all three of those Tierney boys. She didn’t let even a toe prod the frosty grass of his yard.
“Janelle Decker. We—”
“Mrs. Decker lives next door.” Andy jerked a thumb at Nan’s house. “She makes the best cinnamon buns. But she hasn’t made them for a while.”
Nan did make the best cinnamon buns, that was true. Janelle smiled. “Yep. We used to go to school together?”
She let the statement lilt at the end, though it wasn’t a question. They’d done a lot more than go to school together, but their adventures had been of the sort you didn’t just quote casually on a January morning after half a lifetime. Andy cocked his head.
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember you.”
“That’s okay. It was a really long time ago. I’m Mrs. Decker’s granddaughter,” Janelle said, wondering if that would spur any sort of recognition.
No light appeared in Andrew’s eyes. No miraculous recovery. She ought to have known better, but was still disappointed.
Andy’s hand crept up to stroke along the white strip. His expression clouded. “I don’t... There are lots of things...”
“It’s okay, Andy. Really. You don’t have to remember.” Impulsively, she hopped over the invisible boundary between grass and cement and up the small hill to the porch. Her boots gave her plenty of traction so she didn’t slip. She put one on the bottom step and held out her hand. “Nice to meet you. Again.”
Andy took her hand gently. His fingers didn’t curl all the way around hers; his grip was well-intentioned but weak. “Meetcha. What are you doing next door?”
“I’m going to be staying with her.”
“For a visit?”
Janelle paused, then shook her head. “No. For a while.”
“You’re going to take care of her because she’s sick.” Andy nodded as though it all made sense, as if he’d just put together the pieces of a puzzle and could see that the picture matched the one on the box. “She has cancer in her brain.”
Janelle swallowed. “Yes. She does.”
“Will she die soon?” Andy said this so matter-of-factly, so calmly, that all Janelle could do was gape. He gave her that look again. “I almost died once. Did you know that?”
Her mouth was dry, but she managed to say, “Yes. I did.”
Andy’s mouth tipped on one side. He’d once had a brilliant smile, just like both his brothers—wide and bright and infectious. When Andrew Tierney grinned, he did it with his entire face. Or had, until things had gone bad. Now only one-half really moved.
“But you’re here now. You’ll take care of her.”
Janelle nodded. Her shivering had stopped with the uprush of emotion heating her from inside. Her cheeks felt flushed, her armpits sweaty.
“Good. I was worried about her. We used to play cards all the time, but not since she went to the hospital. I haven’t gone over since she got back, because Gabe says she probably doesn’t want to be bothered. I would help her, you know. But this—” he knocked a fist against the side of his head “—makes me stupid. I’m stupid now.”
Janelle wasn’t sure what to say. Nan had never mentioned playing cards with Andy. She hadn’t said a word about any of the Tierney boys in years, not since she’d called to tell her about the accident. Janelle suddenly felt dumb. Of course, Nan wouldn’t say anything about them to her, but that wouldn’t mean she didn’t see or talk to them. Or, apparently, play cards with them. They were her neighbors, after all, and in a town the size of St. Marys you didn’t ignore your neighbors unless you had some reason to feud. Nan would have no reason for anger.
And Janelle didn’t, either, did she? Everything that had happened was long past, and the man in front of her had paid a far greater price for it than Janelle ever had. There’d be no sense in holding any grudges, and it was obvious Andy wasn’t capable of it, anyway.
His brother, on the other hand, obviously was. Gabe glared, first from the window, then the front door. His gaze skidded over her, then went to his brother.
“Get inside here, Andy. You’re going to freeze your balls off.”
Andy let out a guffaw of laughter and charmingly ducked his head. It was hard to tell if he was blushing beneath the wind-chilled red of his cheeks, but Janelle thought he was. He shook his head.
“Gabe!”
“Get inside. Your breakfast is waiting. Jesus.” Gabe stepped aside so Andy could go in.
He did, but looked over his shoulder at Janelle. “This is my brother Gabe. Do you remember him, too?”
“She remembers me. Get inside.” Gabe waited until Andy had moved past him, then closed the door a little too hard. He stared at Janelle. He wasn’t dressed for the weather, but if the cold bit at his bared arms or feet, he didn’t show it.
Gabe also had silver in his hair, at the temples and dark stubble at the scruff of his neck. Maybe a glint or two in his bushy brows and most certainly in the tuft of hair curling up from the V-neck of his white T-shirt. Time had been good to him, and Janelle wasn’t surprised. Gabe Tierney had a face that could make angels weep and devils dance.
He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her. Daring her, but to do what?
“Hi, Gabe.”
“You’re moved in.”
Janelle glanced toward Nan’s house. She supposed she should start calling it home. She looked back at him. “Yep. Me and my son. Bennett. He just turned twelve.”
Gabe didn’t crack even half a grin. “It’s been a long time.”
She knew that well enough. “Seems like it hasn’t been so long. Not much has changed.”
Gabe put a hand behind him to twist the knob of the front door without turning. It stuck, so he pushed it with his foot, hard enough to force it open. He shook his head once, twice, slowly. “Nothing ever does.”
Then he went inside.
Janelle let out a breath that frosted in front of her face. As kids they’d held their fingers to their lips and exhaled, pretending to smoke. As teenagers, they’d actually lit up. Now she let the air in front of her face fog her vision for a second or two before she took her foot off the front step.
“Nice to see you, too.” More frost hung the words in the air, frozen. If she reached out, maybe she might’ve been able to knock them to the ground like something solid, but instead Janelle slipped down the icy hill toward the back door of Nan’s house.
On the enclosed porch, she stamped snow from her boots and slipped them off, dancing a little in the cold that seemed strangely deeper now that she’d come inside. Unzipping her coat, she went into the family room to find Nan at the table. There was no formal dining room in the house, just this overlarge space where they all gathered to eat every meal and watch TV or talk. Oh, and play cards, she thought. That was where they did that, too.
Nan had an array of bottles set out in front of her, carefully lined up on a small plastic tray, with the labels facing her. She also had a piece of lined notebook paper filled with looping, familiar handwriting. She pointed to one of the lines. “What’s this say? I don’t have my glasses on.”
“Let me see.” Janelle craned her neck to look at the paper, which listed different medications for high blood pressure, anemia, pain management. “This says you need to take your Ferradix in the morning with food.”
Janelle read a few of the other instructions, most stating the dosage for each pill or liquid, the time of day it needed to be taken, with food or without. It was complicated, the paper creased and the ink smudged in places. She’d have to see if she could rewrite it, maybe even type it up on her laptop and print it out in bigger letters so Nan could see it more easily. She watched Nan fumble with one of the pill bottles, the childproof cap giving her trouble. The bottle slipped, and her grandmother hissed in pain or irritation.
“Nan, let me get that for you.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Nan looked up at her with both eyebrows raised. “I can do it.”
“I’m going to make myself some breakfast. Can I get you something?” Janelle backed off, careful to tread the line between being solicitous and overbearing. It was a line she often missed with her son, but for the moment Nan seemed happy enough to accept the offer.
“English muffin with some peanut butter, honey, thank you. I made coffee. You can bring me a cup of that, too.” Nan sighed and looked at the bottles. One of them had a small cup tipped over the lid, like a shot glass, and she poured a dose of brown liquid into it and tossed it back with a grimace. “Oh, that’s nasty.”
The coffee turned out to be pitch-black and full of grounds. Janelle had yet to unpack her own sleek coffeemaker that not only ground the beans but also had different temperature settings and a milk frother, but seeing this mess she resolved to make finding it a priority. Nobody who liked coffee could drink that swill, and Janelle didn’t just like coffee, she considered it its own necessary food group. When she lifted the plastic top to peek inside at the filter, she found the basket overflowing with sodden grounds that looked as though they hadn’t been dumped in weeks. Digging a cautious finger into the mess, she unearthed a patch of mold.
“Nan,” she said in the doorway, careful to keep her voice neutral. “When’s the last time you made coffee?”
Nan looked up from a bottle she was trying to open. “Oh. I don’t drink it much, when it’s just me. Making a whole pot seems like such a waste. But now that you’re here, honey, you’ll drink it, won’t you? You like coffee.”
Janelle did indeed, but the stuff in the kitchen looked like a harbinger of the zombie apocalypse or something. A couple swigs and she’d become Patient Zero. Still, Nan had her pride.
“Something happened to it. I need to make a fresh pot, okay? It will be a few minutes. Unless you’d rather have tea?”
Nan looked thoughtful. “I wouldn’t mind a nice cup of Earl Grey, honey. Sure. But if you want coffee...”
“I’m fine.” She’d have to be, at least until she cleaned the coffeemaker or unpacked her own.
Janelle filled a teakettle and found the tea in the corner cupboard where it had always been kept, on the shelf above the candy jar. The candy inside, sour balls in multiple colors, had melted and stuck together into an inedible mess. Janelle put the jar in the sink and filled it with hot water, hoping to dissolve the candy enough to wash it. Behind the jar she found a couple bags of unopened candy, the same sour balls and starlight mints, along with an ancient package of gummy spearmint leaves. It was the candy she remembered from her childhood, and from the look of the packages might’ve been purchased that long ago.
“Nan...” Janelle, candy in one hand, went to the doorway. At the table, her grandmother had put her face in her hands. Candy forgotten, Janelle rushed to her. “Nan! Are you okay?”
She looked up, her forehead creased and her mouth thin. She looked unfocused for a second, then pinned Janelle with her gaze. Her eyes had once been the color of a summer sky fluffed with clouds, but they’d gone a duller, dimmer blue. Washed out, Janelle thought. Everything about Nan had faded.
Janelle took her hand and chafed it gently, mindful of the arthritis. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, I just got a little headache. My pressure might be up a bit too high, that’s all. I b’lieve I’d better lie down for a while.” She drew in a shuddering breath, but found a smile and patted Janelle’s hands. “It’s time for my nap, anyway.”
“Nan, it’s, like, eight-thirty in the morning.”
Her laugh, at least, hadn’t faded. “When you’re as old as I am, honey, your sleep gets all messed up. I was up at four this morning.”
At four this morning, Janelle had been tossing and turning, in the midst of a series of weird dreams in which she tried desperately to send text messages, but was unable to read them. She remembered peeking at the clock around that time. Maybe a noise from downstairs had woken her. Knowing Nan had been up and about without anyone else awake made her frown.
“You don’t want to eat your muffin first? How about your tea?”
Nan shook her head. “If I drink it now I’ll just have to pee, and I don’t want to have to worry about getting to the bathroom on time. I don’t always make it.”
Something twisted inside Janelle at Nan’s casual admission, but she didn’t let it show. “How about I help you to your bedroom and let you sleep, then.”
“I don’t need you to help me,” Nan said. “I’m fine.”
“Of course you are.”
Still, Janelle pushed back her chair and held Nan’s arm to help her up from the table. The chair legs caught on the thick orange shag Janelle remembered from her childhood. She’d get one of those plastic mats from the office supply store, Janelle thought as her grandmother grunted but finally shoved the chair back far enough to get up. Or better yet, replace the old carpet with something more up-to-date and salable.
“I’m fine,” Nan said in a steely voice.
Against her better judgment, Janelle let go of her arm. When her grandmother sounded like that it was better to do what she said. Janelle stepped out of the way so Nan could get around the table, her slippers shuffling on the carpet, then on the linoleum. She walked slowly, bent, but she seemed steady enough. From the kitchen, the kettle whistled, and Janelle followed Nan to take it off the heat.
“You’ll have plenty of time to get yourself situated.” Nan paused in the hallway, one hand on the basement door frame for support as she turned. “And honey, I’m so glad you’re here. So glad. You’ve been gone such a long time.”
I promise to visit soon, Nan. I promise.
But she never had. The years of phone calls, cards, letters, all the same. Reminding her she had a place here in Nan’s house, that she was always welcome. No matter how far she’d run—dancing as a chorus girl in Las Vegas or selling newlyweds their first town houses in California—Janelle had never been able to leave this place and that year behind. And yet she’d allowed herself to be kept away by what had happened.
“I’m glad, too, Nan.”
It was almost even true.
SIX
FIRST THINGS FIRST. That was the way to go about any set of tasks. One at a time, prioritize, get the work finished.
Or sit in the middle of the complete chaos that was your bedroom, with open packing boxes all over the place, and look at your old yearbook while you listened to records on a player that hadn’t seen the light of day since...well, since she’d left Nan’s house, probably.
Janelle had found the player and the milk crate of records tucked into one of the dormers. They’d belonged to her dad, though she’d made them her own during her year here. Lots of classic rock, punk like the Sex Pistols, some New Wave stuff including Siouxsie and the Banshees. He’d also had an entire shoe box of random 45s he’d bought from some discount store. None of the songs had ever hit the radio, at least not that Janelle had heard, but she’d listened to a few of them over and over back in the day.
“Don’t Get Fooled By The Pander Man,” by Brinkley & Parker. The black record with its orange label spun on the turntable as she flipped the pages of the yearbook she’d found in a box of books she thought she’d left in storage.
Oh, God. Her hair. Her natural color had darkened to a deep auburn over the years from the strawberry-red she’d hated as a kid, and she wore it just past her shoulders with a few layers around her face. Most of the time she pulled it back in a ponytail, low maintenance, wash-and-go. That’s who she’d become. Someone’s mom.
In this picture, she’d not only dyed it black but also cut it asymmetrically so that one side was shoulder length and the other cropped at chin level. She vividly remembered the mornings she’d spent with a curling iron, the barrel the girth of her pinky, and an industrial-size bottle of hair gel. All those hours she’d spent on her hair, her makeup, her clothes...
It seemed so ridiculous now.
The song ended and Janelle got up to take the needle off the record. She winced at the creak in her joints. If looking at the old photos hadn’t made her feel ancient, that crackity-crack of her neck sure did. She’d been at this since Bennett left for school, with only a few short breaks to check on Nan. He’d been home for about an hour, and from his room came the sound of much more modern music, some rap song she’d let him buy, but only the clean version. Ninety percent of the song was bleeps.
“Hey. I’m going to get a snack. You want something?”
Bennett looked up from his bed, where he was leafing through a stack of comics. The rest of his room looked as if a tornado had blasted through it. She opened her mouth to scold, but stopped herself. Pot, she thought, have you met kettle?
“Okay.”
“I’m going to check on Nan first. Why don’t you wash your hands. With soap,” Janelle added as Bennett hopped off the bed. He rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue.
Downstairs, Nan dozed on the couch in front of the TV. It was showing a religious program—at least there was a nun painting in watercolors, but she wasn’t talking about Jesus, so it was hard to tell. Janelle didn’t wake her grandmother. They’d have dinner in a couple hours, and by then Nan would probably be up.
“How about cookies and milk, buddy? I’ll make dinner in a little bit.” Janelle found the ceramic cookie jar tucked back in a corner by the paper towel holder. Nan always kept cookies there, a constant like the tides. Or political scandals.
The jar’s handle was a squirrel missing its tail. The paint had worn off its fur. Nostalgia swept Janelle again as she lifted the lid. How many times had she helped herself to cookies from this jar? Too many to count.
Inside were the homemade chocolate chip cookies she was hoping for. “Mmm. These are gonna be so good. Grab some glasses, bud. Get us some milk.”
“Should I take it to the table?” Bennett held up the two glasses he’d filled.
She thought of Nan, still napping. “No, let’s just eat them in here.”
Bennett looked around the small kitchen. “Standing up? What?”
Janelle laughed. “Um, yeah. Are your legs too weak to hold you, or what?”
“You always tell me not to hover around dropping crumbs,” he protested. “You always tell me to sit down at the table like a human being, not a cow at a feed trough.”
This was true, but Bennett’s prickly reaction was unusual. Janelle offered him a cookie. She wasn’t sure she could deal with a breakdown at the moment. Everything felt too close to the surface—the move, this house, the past rising up to bite her like a snake. Nan on the couch, so still and silent Janelle thought she ought to have checked to make sure she was breathing. If Bennett, who hardly ever gave in to an emotional display, started up, Janelle wouldn’t be able to help him through it. She’d dissolve right along with him, and probably worse.
“Cookie,” she said firmly, and handed him one. “Milk. It’s good, Bennett, just try it.”
The look of horror he gave her after he bit into the cookie he’d dunked in the milk seemed like a joke—until he bent, choking and spitting, over the sink. “Mom!”
“Oh, Bennett, c’mon. What?” The cookie she snagged was a little burned, but rock-hard. The milk would fix it.
Unless, of course, the milk was sour. Janelle spit her own mouthful into the sink, then ran the water to rinse her mouth. She looked at her laughing son. “You think that’s funny, huh?”
Bennett shook his head, but grinned. “Gross.”
Janelle checked the date on the milk. Sighed. It was expired by two weeks. “Was this open when you took it out?”
“Yes. But I didn’t do that to it!”
She laughed, loving him so much it hurt. “I know you didn’t.”
The carton was almost full, even taking into account the two glasses Bennett had filled. Which meant the milk had been opened but barely touched. Joey had told her that up until her fall, Nan had still been able to get around on her own. In the three months it took for Janelle to tie up her business in California and get out here, she’d assumed someone had been checking on Nan at least weekly—though seeing her now, it should’ve been daily. Janelle opened a pantry cupboard, studying the contents. Canned soups, dry cereal, plastic bins of pasta. The fridge was also crammed with plastic containers, but the first few she pulled out were expired, too. Clearly, she needed to take a good inventory.
“What are you doing?” Nan sounded hoarse, but her eyes were bright. “Oh, are you hungry? I can make some sandwiches....”
“Nan. No. That’s okay, I’ll make dinner in a little while.” If there was anything to make dinner with. “When’s the last time anyone brought you some groceries?”
“Oh.” Nan shuffled forward, paused with a fingertip to her lips, thinking. “That would be Deb and Joey. They came for New Year’s dinner. Donna and Bobby, too, along with the kids. And Joey a few days before that to bring me the turkey and my pills from the pharmacy.”
Janelle made a mental count. “So...a week or so? Did they bring you stuff for New Year’s, and other groceries, too?”
“They took me out to dinner.” Nan tugged at the fridge door, which at first didn’t want to give until she grunted and pulled harder. “I didn’t eat all of it—I brought some home with me. Where is it... Oh, there.”
She turned with a foil-wrapped container in her hands. “I had some spaghetti and garlic bread. I could heat that up for my supper, honey. You don’t have to make me anything.”
“Nan, you can’t eat that. If you want spaghetti, I can make some.”
She frowned. “It’s such a waste....”
Janelle took the foil package from her and peeked inside. “No, look. This is no good. You’d get sick eating it. And your milk was spoiled. I think I need to go to the grocery store. Like, tonight. Now.”
Nan looked briefly confused. “Okay, let me get my coat.”
“You can stay here.” Janelle tossed the leftovers in the can under the sink, now full, and pulled it out. Tying the bag shut, she bent to replace it with a trash bag from the normal spot. She looked beneath the sink, expecting to see bottles of dish detergent and other soaps, trash bags, a package of sponges. Nothing. “Shi—oot.”
“What? Mice? I had them come and put traps.”
Mice? “Good Lord, Nan, you have mice?”
“Well, no,” Nan said. “But I might get them someday, right?”
No argument there. Janelle checked for traps, just in case. She didn’t need one snapping on her fingers. The space beneath the sink didn’t have any. She took a deep breath.
First things first.
“Okay. I’m going to run to the store for some things, and tomorrow we’ll go through the house and make a list of everything we need, maybe take a trip out to the store together. How’s that sound?”
“Oh, yes, sure.” Nan nodded. “I can make a list.”
“But for now—” God, she hated talking to her grandma like she was a toddler “—I need you to just go back to the couch and relax. Bennett...”
She didn’t want to leave Nan alone, but leaving her with Bennett didn’t make Janelle feel much better. She’d only started feeling comfortable having him stay by himself, no longer than an hour or so. He’d been complaining about it for months.
“You have your cell phone. You call me if you need anything, okay? Go upstairs and clean your room. Don’t open the door for anyone. Nan, don’t you go upstairs, okay?”
Bennett apparently wasn’t going to wait around for her to change his mind. He took off at once.
Nan frowned, already shuffling back toward the living room. “Good heavens, Janelle. I haven’t been upstairs in months. Why would I go upstairs?”
Because Janelle wouldn’t be home and there to stop her, that was why. Because bad luck, especially of the falling-down-the-stairs-breaking-your-neck sort, didn’t just happen. It was almost always the result of bad choices.
Janelle grabbed her coat and keys and got in the truck, starting off without waiting for it to warm up. A block away, she let out a breath. Then another. Two deep, sobbing breaths that lifted a weight from her so devious it had disguised itself as maturity. Now she recognized it as relief, and it made her so giddy she almost ran a stop sign when her foot slammed the gas.
Three days, that’s all it had been.
Oh, God. How was she going to get through the rest of the week, much less a longer time than that?
California had never seemed so golden. So warm. So far away.
She parked along the curb in front of Pfaff’s, the small market closest to Nan’s house. She first checked her phone for the text or voice mail she just knew would’ve come in during the ten-minute trip. More relief swept her when she saw nothing. She dialed her uncle’s number. Deb answered.
Trying not to sound accusatory, Janelle explained the situation. Her aunt sighed. “She throws it away.”
“What?”
“The food,” Deb said. “Sometimes she throws it away, because she wants us to think she ate it. Or because she thinks mice have gotten into it. But sometimes she gets rid of the new stuff and keeps old food.... I don’t know what her rationale is, hon. She’s old and not well. And she doesn’t want us to worry about her, so if she hasn’t been eating—and you know she doesn’t eat right—then she tries to make sure we don’t find out. There were mice last winter, but Joey took care of them. I haven’t seen any signs since.”
Janelle pressed the pad of her thumb between her eyebrows. “Okay. Well...I’m here at the market, picking up a few things for dinner tonight. I’ll take her shopping tomorrow. Is there anything else I need to know?”
“You can use the debit card. There shouldn’t be any problems.”
Janelle loaded a basket with eggs, bread, milk, butter, flour and pancake syrup. Also a bag of frozen hash browns. They could have breakfast for dinner.
“You must be Mrs. Decker’s granddaughter,” the cashier said as she tucked Janelle’s purchases into a pair of plastic bags.
Too late, Janelle thought of the reusable tote bags she’d brought with her from California. She’d have to dig them out. “Yes. I’m Janelle. Could I have paper, please?”
The cashier looked surprised, but pulled a couple of paper bags from under the counter and started transferring the items. “I’m Terri Gilmore. Your grandma and my mom are in card club together. She told us all about how you were coming to do for her.”
Janelle smiled. “Yep.”
“And you have a son? Right?”
“Yes. He’s twelve.” Janelle took the bags. “Sixth grade.”
“You lived with her, didn’t you? When you were in high school.” The woman’s smile seemed a little wider now, but also a little less friendly. Kind of predatory, actually.
Janelle paused. “Yes. I did.”
“Next door to those Tierney boys.”
“They still live there.” Janelle kept her voice steady despite the stepped-up thump of her heart. “Well, not Michael, but...”
Terri nodded. “Of course not. But Andrew, God love him. And his brother, of course. And old Mr. Tierney, though I hear he’s not well. Not at all.”
“Oh. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.” Janelle hefted the bags and backed away. “Nice meeting you. I’ll tell Nan I met you.”
“Gabriel Tierney,” Terri called after her, the words as effective as a hand clutching the back of Janelle’s coat to stop her.
Janelle half turned. “What about him?”
“He was in your grade, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. He was.” They’d shared some classes. They’d ridden the bus together, though he’d sat in the back and she’d always preferred the middle. He’d always had cigarettes. Sometimes other stuff, harder stuff.
Terri shook her head, eyes wide, smile gone. “Shame about what happened, wasn’t it? Such a shame.”
The woman stared at her expectantly, as if Janelle was going to come back over and start to dish. Janelle shifted the bags again. She didn’t know if she should nod or shrug or what.
“Were you still here when it happened?”
Janelle had to clear her throat to answer. “Um...no. I was gone by then.”
“Oh.” Terri looked disappointed, then brightened slightly. “You know what happened, though, right?”
“Yes.” She knew.
“Such a shame. Such a sad, sad shame. To shoot your own brother like that.” Terri clucked and shook her head. “You give your grandma my best.”
“I will.” Janelle escaped.
At home she sat in the driveway for a minute or two longer than necessary. The little pickup had just heated enough to be tolerable, and she was unwilling to leave it for the cold. The family room lights in Nan’s house were on, but the Tierneys’ house next door was dark.
What had happened. Such a shame. Terri’s words echoed in Janelle’s head as she gripped the steering wheel and pressed her forehead against it.
Where you still here when it happened?
No, Janelle had said. But that was a lie.
SEVEN
GABE NEEDED A beer and bed, in that order. He’d scheduled several early appointments tomorrow, nothing strenuous or complicated, but 6:00 a.m. seemed to come earlier and earlier the older he got, even when he wasn’t out too late the night before. He’d have gone to bed an hour ago, but the old man had been wheezing and shouting at the TV, and showed no signs of wanting to turn it off and go to bed himself. Besides, Andy wasn’t home yet, and even though his brother didn’t need Gabe to wait up for him, he never felt right hitting the sack until the front porch lights were out and the doors locked.
Andy had called to tell him he was going to the movies with a couple of the girls he worked with, and that was fine with Gabe, because he could count on Tara to bring Andy home. She was a good kid. He’d worked with her dad at the Sylvania plant before starting the handyman business. It was the other two or three she hung around with that Gabe wasn’t too sure about. Giggly, giddy girls just out of high school, no college in their futures. They wore their skirts a little too short and their lipstick a little too red. They were the sort of girls Gabe would like in a few years when they started hitting the bars, but seeing them fawn and coo over his brother left a bad taste in his mouth.
Not because he didn’t think his brother should get laid now and again, so long as he was careful about it. Michael liked to lecture Andy on abstinence and chastity, but Gabe had made sure to hammer into their brother’s sad, broken brain the necessity of using a rubber, no matter if the girl told him she was on the pill or what. Gabe didn’t like how the girls treated Andy, as if he were stupid. They took advantage of his generosity, that’s what Gabe thought, and though he’d tried to explain to his brother that he didn’t always need to pick up the check, especially for girls who could easily afford their own popcorn, Andy didn’t listen.
As if on cue, the phone rang. Gabe checked the number—it was Michael. He’d have let it go to the answering machine, but the old man picked it up. The low murmur of conversation began from the living room.
Gabe cracked the top off a beer and sipped at it, savoring the cool sting. A cigarette would go best with the drink, but he didn’t smoke in the house, not with the old man’s oxygen tank ready to blow them all up with the flick of a spark. Besides, Gabe liked to smoke. He just didn’t like to eat and drink smoke, or sleep with it on his pillow or wake up with it. So for now, he drank slowly at the kitchen table and read from a battered paperback copy of The Books of Blood. He’d lost track of how many times he’d read it, but he’d had it since he was a teenager, back before the days of the internet where you could find anything you wanted with a well-typed search. Back then he’d had to special-order it from the bookstore at the mall in Dubois and wait weeks for it to arrive.
Janelle Decker had turned him on to Clive Barker’s books. Gabe had seen that Hellraiser movie, but she was the one who told him it had been based on a novella, and that there were other stories, too. She’d brought a box of paperbacks with her from home when she moved into her grandma’s house. Lots of horror, lots of historical romance, a few classics. He wondered if she still read the same kinds of books.
He wondered if she still loved to dance.
The light in the hall came on, and moments later the old man shuffled out in his bare feet, his hair corkscrewed into spikes. Without a word he dragged his oxygen tank toward the fridge and dug around inside, found a coconut cream pie Andy had brought home from work and plopped it on the table. He brought out two plates and two forks. He took his seat with a heavy sigh and sat there for a moment with his head hanging before he looked up, his expression strangely defiant.
“It’s hell getting old, you know that?”
Gabe wasn’t yet forty, but his joints creaked and his hair was starting to silver. When he looked in the mirror he had to suck in his gut a little more than he used to. He could only imagine what it was like for his father, who’d been an old man already by the time he was Gabe’s age, and had done nothing but become ancient since.
“So die,” Gabe said. “Save yourself any more trouble, and us, too.”
The old man snorted and dug his fork into the pie. He licked the tines and pointed it toward Gabe. “Maybe you should fill your mouth with pie. You won’t feel the need to talk so nasty.”
“I don’t like coconut cream.”
The old man grinned. “I know.”
“So who’s the second plate for, then?”
“For your brother, dummy.” The old man pointed the fork at him again. “He’ll be home soon, won’t he? Andy likes coconut cream. He’ll sit here and eat a piece with me. Keep me comp’ny.”
“What do you need company for?”
The old man paused with the fork halfway to his mouth. “Why not?”
When Gabe was younger, his father had spent time with his buddies in a bar or at hunting camp. Sometimes he went to play poker at Al Hedge’s house, though Al had died about ten years ago and nobody had taken up the game after him. And sometimes, when Gabe was much, much younger, his dad had left them overnight and gone to who-knew-where, but it must’ve been someplace nice because he always spruced himself up a lot before he went. Other than that, his dad had never been what Gabe might’ve considered the sociable sort, and time hadn’t improved that.
Gabe shrugged. “I just figured you liked sitting in front of the TV by yourself all day long. Why else would you do it?”
The old man said nothing for a few minutes while he decimated his pie. When he’d finished a hefty slice, he dropped the fork onto the plate with a clatter and pushed back from the table. “What do you know about me, anyway?”
The truth was, Gabe knew more about his father than he ever wanted to. More than he ever should have. “I know you spend all your time on your ass in that recliner, cultivating your piles. If you want company, why don’t you go out somewhere?”
“Where would I go?”
“Wherever you want. Go visit some of your buddies, go to the VFW. Hell, go to church.”
The old man hadn’t been to church in so long Gabe couldn’t remember the last time. Maybe when Michael had been consecrated. Of course, that was the last time Gabe had been in a church himself.
“Church.” The old man snorted, then coughed. The cough turned into a choke, which became a wheeze.
Gabe watched impassively, wondering if he’d need to jump across the table in a minute to resuscitate him. Wondering, if push came to shove, if he’d bother. The old man’s choking tapered off, and he gave Gabe a glare.
“Wipe that smile off your face.”
“Didn’t know I was smiling,” Gabe said. “Sorry.”
His father wiped his mouth with a paper napkin from the basket in the middle of the table. His hands were shaking. When he looked at Gabe, his eyes were red-rimmed and watering.
“You think I hate you, but I don’t.”
Gabe got up to pour his unfinished beer into the sink. “I’m going out for a smoke.”
“But you hate me.”
Without looking at him, Gabe pushed open the back door and stepped onto the porch. A light swung into the alley from a vehicle in the Deckers’ driveway. A few minutes later he heard the crunch of boots on the ice and salt. Janelle, arms full of brown paper grocery bags, made her careful and slightly unsteady way down the alley toward the back door. Her movements lit the motion-activated spotlight at the back of the house.
He watched her struggle for a minute before she looked up to see him standing there. “Hey.”
“Hi,” Janelle said quietly. She shifted both bags to one arm so she could open the door with the other. “You’re going to freeze.”
“Hot-blooded,” Gabe said without thinking, forgetting for a minute she was the one who’d first called him that.
She laughed, and it was just how he remembered it. Full-on, no holding back. She shook her head a little and pulled open the screen door, one foot on the bottom step. She looked back at him from just inside the back porch.
“Good night.”
She didn’t wait for him to answer. And Gabe, hot-blooded though he might be, was suddenly aware of the cold. He went back inside the kitchen, expecting to find his father gone to bed, or if not that, back in his usual spot in front of the TV.
The old man hadn’t moved from the table. He hadn’t eaten more pie, and hadn’t bothered to put it back in the fridge or take his plate to the sink. Neither was a surprise.
“I don’t hate you,” the old man repeated in a low, rough voice that didn’t sound like his own at all. “You always thought I did. But I never did. Maybe one day you’ll stop hating me?”
It was a question, but Gabe had no answer.
“I’m going to bed.” He didn’t point out all the hundreds of ways over the years Ralph Tierney had expressed his feelings for his sons.
Hate or love, either way, it was too late for whatever it had been to become anything else.
EIGHT
NAN HAD HAD a few bad days, but she was having a good one now. By the time Bennett went off to school, she had already baked a pan of cinnamon rolls from scratch and done half a book of number puzzles. She sat at the kitchen table in her favorite fuzzy blue housecoat, her hair covered by a matching bandanna tied at a jaunty angle.
“Helen will be over later to do my rollers for me.” White icing clung to the corners of Nan’s mouth. “We have card club tomorrow, you know.”
Card club consisted of ten or so women Nan had known since grammar school. She’d confided to Janelle that it had been months since she’d hosted her turn or even attended a meeting, but with Janelle here it made everything so much easier. And if it made Nan happy, that’s what counted, Janelle thought as she slid into her seat with a cinnamon roll in her hand.
Delicious didn’t do the roll justice. Gorgeous. Awesome. Amazing. “Awesomazing,” Janelle murmured, licking sweet icing from her fingers. “Nan, you’re such a good cook.”
“I should teach you how to make them before I go.”
“To card club?” Janelle asked.
Stupid.
Nan didn’t answer, just smiled and tapped her book with her pen, peering over the top of her reading glasses when Janelle licked her fingers clean. “Your daddy used to do that same thing. Lick his fingers instead of using a napkin. Didn’t matter how many times I told him.”
Janelle paused, then grabbed a napkin from the holder on the table. The question came out before she could stop it. “Do you...miss him?”
Nan took off her glasses and set them carefully on the table, then rubbed the small red marks they’d left on the sides of her nose. She tapped her pen on the puzzle book again. “He was my oldest boy, Janelle. Of course I miss your dad.”
“Do you ever hear from him?”
“No.” Nan frowned. “And maybe it’s better that way. When someone breaks your heart over and over again, sometimes it’s better to just let them go.”
Janelle had let her dad go a long time ago for that very reason. Until now she hadn’t ever thought about how it must’ve made Nan feel to have lost touch with her son. Until she was a mom herself, Janelle wasn’t sure she’d have understood. She couldn’t imagine letting Bennett go, not like that. She reached across the table to squeeze Nan’s hand.
“How about something to drink?”
“Nothing for me, honey,” Nan said, her eyes bright, but without so much as a sniffle. “I’m going to finish my puzzle.”
Ice-cold milk would be perfect with the cinnamon roll. Even better than the coffee Janelle hadn’t made yet because she was still looking for her coffeemaker. She pulled the carton from the refrigerator and poured a glass, noticing too late that the one she’d pulled from the back of the cupboard was etched and striped with dirt. So was the next she pulled out. She held it to the light, twisting it.
Filthy.
Bennett was in charge of loading and unloading the dishwasher here, the way he’d been in California, and for a brief, irritated moment, Janelle wondered if he’d been too lazy to make sure the dishes were clean, or if he’d been too inattentive to notice. Or a twelve-year-old’s winning combination of both.
She checked the dishes in the cupboard quickly. The ones closer to the top of the stack, ones they’d been using regularly, seemed clean enough, but some beneath were crusted with bits of dried-on food. Just a few here and there, but enough to make her stomach turn. The flatware in the drawer was much the same. Some of the pieces looked fine, but there were a lot of dirty spoons, and forks with bits of food clinging to the tines.
Everything would need to be rewashed. She loaded dishes in the dishwasher. Added the soap. Turned the dial—because wow, was this machine old. An hour later she checked it and found it full of wet dishes that were still pretty dirty.
“Nan? Is there something wrong with your dishwasher?”
Her grandmother shuffled into the kitchen doorway. “I don’t think so.”
Janelle checked the dial settings, thinking she must have chosen some Light or Delicate option. Nope, she’d turned the dial to Normal Wash. She opened the dishwasher. Closed it again. “I think it’s broken. When’s the last time you used it?”
“Oh...” Nan looked apologetic. “I just wash the dishes by hand.”
“But you had people over for New Year’s dinner!” That meant not only dishes, but pots and pans and serving platters and extra silverware. “Nan, you didn’t wash everything by hand, did you?”
“No, no. Everyone helped do most of it.” She nodded firmly. “And when they left, I just did the rest.”
“Oh. Nan.” Janelle sighed and opened the dishwasher again. “I think you’re going to need a new one.”
“They’re expensive.” Nan sounded worried.
“You don’t need to worry about that.” Though of course, she would. And it would require some discussion with her uncles, since this was an expense that fell under improving the house, and Janelle was only approved to handle the daily household needs.
“Maybe we can just get it fixed,” Nan offered hopefully.
Before they could say anything else, the back door opened. Nan didn’t seem surprised, but Janelle was still in the California mind-set—nobody left their doors unlocked, and anyone who came in uninvited and unannounced might as well have a target painted on their chest.
It was Andy. Today he wore a striped, long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, his feet in socks, not slippers. He’d probably kicked his shoes off on the back porch. He looked totally put-together, and if you ignored the thick white stripe in his slicked-back hair, hardly different than he had as a teen. He gave her that grin.
“Janelle! Hi!” He remembered her name this time, at least.
“Hi, Andy.” She gave him a cautious smile. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, he came over to play cards with me. Get me warmed up for the club.” Nan gestured. “Come on in, honey. Janelle, bring those cinnamon rolls in here to the table.”
“Your Nan makes them the best,” Andy confided. “I missed ’em.”
“You could’ve come over anytime, honey, you know that,” Nan said.
He hesitated, looking a little guilty. “Gabe said not to bother you. I sent flowers, though, when you were in the hospital. Did you get them?”
“They were lovely. And you’re never a bother. Sit down, honey. Sit.”
“Andy, do you come over to play cards a lot?” They’d spent hours, back in the day, playing poker for M&M’s or pennies. Andy had had an amazing poker face. They’d played other games, too. Bullshit had been a favorite. Blackjack. She smiled, remembering.
“Sure, whenever I can. When Dad’s napping and Gabe’s at work, and if I don’t have to work.” He opened the corner cabinet and pulled out the worn box filled with multiple decks of cards that had been around since Janelle’s childhood. “You wanna play?”
“No, thanks. I need to figure out what to do with the dishwasher.” She eyed him. “Where do you work?”
He named the town’s bigger grocery store. “I work in the stockroom. Or I help bring the carts in. They don’t really like me to bag the groceries because of my bum hand. I drop too many jars.”
She’d assumed he couldn’t work. Somehow knowing he had a job made Janelle feel better. Like you have the right to feel good about anything that happened, she thought. “Oh, that’s good.”
Andy’s laugh had always been as sweet as his smile. “It’s okay. Gabe says I should try for something else, maybe. But I like what I do.”
“Something else?”
Andy dealt out the cards, solicitously moving the pile close enough to Nan so she didn’t have to stretch for it. “Yeah. Like school or something. Maybe. But it’s okay. Mikey went to college. I don’t need to go.”
Janelle leaned in the doorway. If she was thirty-eight, Andrew would be thirty-four, or close to it. “Gabe thinks you should go to school now?”
Andrew shrugged. “He thought I should go before. But now, I don’t know. I can’t drive because of the seizures. Can’t remember stuff. School seems like a waste of time.”
Janelle kept her voice neutral. Gabe had always talked about leaving St. Marys. Becoming something.
“I’m getting out of here,” he says as the smoke curls out of his mouth. “Never coming back.”
She’s feeling lazy and hazy and has no idea what she’s going to do when school’s over, when she has to enter the real world. “What do you want to do with your life?”
“Just get out of here.” He’s dead serious. “Get away.”
“Did he go to college? Gabe, I mean.”
“Nope. He worked at the plant.”
Nan sorted her cards. “Their daddy retired from there, but Gabe wasn’t there for very long, was he? He started his own business a while ago. He’s a handyman, isn’t he, Andy? How long’s he been doing that?”
“Nope. Since...” Andrew frowned. “Since... I’m sorry, I don’t remember lots of stuff. It sucks sometimes.”
A handyman. That made sense. He’d always been good at fixing things. Breaking them, too.
“It’s okay. You and Nan play the game. I’m going to figure out what to do with this dishwasher.” Which first meant unloading it and washing the dishes by hand.
All of them.
There was actually a kind of contentment in it. Filling half the double sink with hot water and soap, setting up the drain rack. Taking the stuff from the dishwasher, biggest to smallest, and making sure each piece was cleaned and rinsed. Scrubbing at the dried-on dirt. It was the pleasure of a job done carefully and well, but there was something more to it, as well.
“C’mon, Janelle. Let’s go!” Andy pokes his head in the back door, grinning. “Gabe says he won’t wait anymore.”
They’re supposed to go out to the cabin in the woods to shoot guns. Snow day. Nan’s at work, and Janelle has chores.
“I have to finish the dishes first.”
Gabe wouldn’t put a foot inside this house, but Andy doesn’t hesitate. “I’ll help. It’ll go faster that way.”
And it does, even with the suds going all over the place, especially when Mikey’s sent inside to see what’s taking them so long. They pull him into the suds fight and the three of them make a mess and clean it up while they laugh and Gabe waits, stewing in the truck. He’s so mad he won’t talk to any of them until they get to the cabin.
She was nearly finished when Andy came into the kitchen. Without a word, he went to the drying rack and started putting things away, being sure to wipe the wet ones with a towel he pulled from the drawer. Janelle handed him a few forks she’d just rinsed, watching as he held everything carefully against his body so he didn’t drop it.
“How was the game?”
“Good. She won.” He grinned. “She’s napping on the couch.”
Andy’s phone rang from his pocket. He didn’t reach for it, though it chirped at him several times. At Janelle’s curious look he said, “It’s my brother.”
“Won’t he worry if you don’t answer it?”
Andy looked exactly the way Bennett did when she asked him if a teacher wouldn’t scold him for not turning in his homework. “I left a note on the counter. It’s not like I ran off without telling him.”
A moment later, the phone rang again. Andy dried his hands and pulled the cell from his pocket, flipping it open. “Gabe, I told you, I’m over at Mrs. Decker’s. Playing cards. Yeah. Well, yeah. Tomorrow at three, Candace said she’d give me a ride. Yes, I took them. No.” Andy sighed. “Fine, all right! I’ll get to it, I told you! Fine. Hey. Hey, Gabe?”
But apparently Gabe had already disconnected, because Andy shoved the phone back into his pocket. “I was going to ask him if he could come and take a look at the dishwasher.”
“Oh, that’s okay.”
“No, really.” Andy sounded eager, which also reminded her of Bennett and how he could be when he wanted something for some reason he didn’t feel like he could be up-front with her about. “He fixes all kinds of stuff. He’s supergood with his hands.”
She laughed at that, though she had no suspicions Andy was talking in innuendo. “Oh, I’ll bet he is.”
“He can fix a lot of things,” Andy said wistfully. His gaze went unfocused for a few seconds as he stared past her with such intent Janelle turned to see what he was looking at. Then his gaze snapped back to her face. “Not everything, though.”
“Nobody can fix everything, Andy.”
“Too bad, huh?” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Too bad.”
NINE
Then
“EVENTUALLY, I’M GOING to get a generator out here. Propane tank. Maybe some solar panels—I read in Popular Mechanics how it’s the wave of the future. Self-sufficient houses.” Gabe flips the light switch up and down. Nothing happens, of course, since the wires in the walls, which still aren’t covered with drywall, don’t connect to anything.
Janelle shivers. Her breath puffs out in front of her in a silver plume. “I can’t believe you built all this yourself. How long have you been working on it?”
“A long time. Years. My dad used to take me hunting with some buddies, but they stopped going when I was about twelve. And I missed it. So...” He shrugs, pretending it doesn’t mean very much. Anyone else would’ve made him feel stupid about all this, but Janelle never does.
“Is that a loft?” She’s already put her foot on the ladder and is halfway up before Gabe can think to warn her off. Janelle peeks over the edge of the railing, then twists to look down at him. Her giggle sends heat all through him, welcome in the unheated room.
“Nice,” she says. “Porn-o-rama.”
It’s just a collection of old skin mags and a beat-up mattress with a sleeping bag. A camping lantern. He’s slept out here only a few times. Eventually, he’ll make the loft into a full second floor, maybe with a couple bedrooms.
“Do you bring other girls out here?” She disappears over the edge of the loft.
He can hear her shuffling around up there, and goes to the ladder. “No.”
Janelle peers over the edge. “No? Really?”
“Really.”
She dangles her feet. He could grab her ankle if he wanted, she’s that close, but Gabe only climbs the ladder halfway.
“How come?” Janelle sounds serious, not smug.
He wonders if she’d have been jealous if he’d said yes. Sometimes a few buddies, sometimes his brothers. But no other girls. “There isn’t any girl I’d want to bring out here.”
“Seems like a great place for a party,” she says. “I can think of loads of girls who’d like to come out here with you.”
“I don’t have parties.”
“I know you don’t, Gabe.” Janelle rolls her eyes. “But if you did, you could have them here. Who owns the land?”
It’s a practical question, and he shouldn’t be surprised she asked it. She’s a practical kind of girl. “My dad. He started this place. It was really just a storage shed where he kept some hunting supplies. He always said he was going to turn it into a real camp, but he didn’t. So I did.”
“What does he think?”
Gabe climbs the rest of the ladder to sit next to her with his feet hanging over the edge. Below them is the square room without dividers, a space blocked out for a kitchen. He’s planned on a small camp stove, a propane-powered fridge. There may never be indoor plumbing—that’s beyond what he thinks he can do—but there is an outhouse in the back and he’s done some research into composting toilets. The work’s been haphazard, piecemeal, and cobbled together from scrap lumber and scrounged materials. It’s garbage, most of it, but he’s done his best and it’s not too shabby a job.
“He doesn’t know.”
She twists toward him. “What do you mean, he doesn’t know?”
Gabe shrugs. “There’s a lot the old man doesn’t know.”
“He doesn’t come out here anymore?”
“Not really. If he does, he’s never said anything. And he would, if he knew about it.” Gabe’s sure about that.
Janelle pulls up her feet and scoots backward. She stands, her hands on the railing, to look over it. From this angle, she looks so tall, but he knows she’s not. She’d fit just under his chin, if he ever hugged her.
She takes a few steps back to the mattress and sits. She flicks through one of the ancient magazines and pushes it aside. “I’m cold. You’re always so warm. Hot-blooded, Gabe. That’s you. Come here.”
The sleeping bag’s not really big enough for two, but they manage to squeeze into it, anyway. Janelle pulls the flap up over their faces like a tent. Other girls smell like perfume. Janelle smells of cigarette smoke and hair spray and fresh air.
“Why’d you bring me here?” She turns on her side, her butt against his groin, and takes his arm to put around her.
It’s easy to answer her when he doesn’t have to see her face. “Because...I thought you’d get it. You’d understand.”
She doesn’t say anything for a long time, so long Gabe starts to doze. If this was another girl, she’d expect him to kiss her now. With another girl he wouldn’t be able to sleep like this. His heat has warmed the air inside the sleeping bag, enough that a trickle of sweat tickles down his spine. She’s linked their fingers and put his hand flat against her belly, inside her coat, under her shirt.
“Understand what?” She sounds as sleepy as he is, and somehow this also makes it easy to answer.
“How it feels to need a place that’s only yours, so you never have to...”
Janelle takes a snuffling breath. “Never have to what?”
“Rely on anyone for anything. You know what it’s like to want a place of your own so that when everyone else leaves, you still have a place to go.”
She’s quiet for another long few minutes, so long he starts dreaming. When she shifts and rolls toward him, her head does fit right under his chin. His arms go around her. Her knee nudges between his. They fit together like puzzle pieces.
He’s wide-awake now, embarrassed to be wrong. His heart pounds. He tries to push away from her, but the sleeping bag’s too small, and Janelle’s got her arms around him, too tight.
He’s said too much.
Janelle doesn’t tell him he’s right.
But she doesn’t tell him he’s wrong.
TEN
AT THE KNOCK on the door, the old man shouted, “Tell them we don’t want any!”
Gabe, who’d been reading on the couch, ignored him. At this time of evening it wouldn’t be a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness, but that didn’t mean whoever was on the other side would be any more welcome. He answered it, anyway, surprised to find Janelle.
She wore a heavy coat, a knit cap squashed down over her hair, a long striped scarf wound around her throat. She smiled brightly. “Hey.”
Gabe didn’t open the door wide enough to let her in, and he didn’t glance over his shoulder to look at the old man, who shouted out, “Who’s there? Who is it?”
“Hey, Mr. Tierney,” Janelle called, peeking around Gabe. “It’s Janelle Decker from next door.”
“Jesus, don’t keep her standing in the cold. Let her in.”
Gabe didn’t move to do that. He stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind him. “What’s up? Andy’s not here.”
“What makes you think I’m here for him?”
“Because he’s been over there a lot since you moved in.” Gabe’s breath became smoke, and he wished it was from a cigarette. “Just figured you’d want to talk to him. But he’s at work until ten.”
“I know. I came to talk to you.” She bounced on the soles of her feet, still grinning. “You’re not going to let me come in?”
She’d never, in all the times he could remember, ever come in the front door. Always through the bedroom window. Once or twice through the back. Never through the front, and tonight wasn’t going to be the first time.
He hadn’t said a word, but her smile faded. “Umm...okay, well...I just came over because Andy said you could fix our dishwasher.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t wash the dishes. I guess if I knew more than that, I could fix it myself, huh?” She eyed him. “I could call a service center. I just thought I’d ask you instead.”
“Save yourself some money.”
Janelle’s smile tipped a little wider. “No. I’ll pay you. It’s not that, Gabe.”
He didn’t ask her what else it was, but she told him, anyway.
“It’s good to see you again. I thought maybe...” She trailed off, sounding uncertain in a way he could never remember her being.
He didn’t want to hear any more. “Yeah. I’ll come. Let me grab my tools. Now?”
“Sure. Or another time, if you want, that’s fine. I mean, sooner rather than later, obviously.” She bounced again, rubbing her mittened hands together and blowing out a steamy breath. “God. So cold.”
“I guess it would be, when you’re used to California.”
Janelle paused, tilting her head just a little. “You know about that?”
He’d said too much. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
He shut the door in her face. The old man looked at him expectantly. “Was that the Decker girl? What did she want? Why’d you make her stay outside? Ashamed of your old man, that’s what you are.”
Ashamed wasn’t the right word. Gabe ignored him and got his tools from their place in the kitchen closet. He thought about going out the back door without a word, but the old man would wonder, and it would be worse when he came back.
“I’m going next door to the Deckers’ to see if I can fix the dishwasher.”
“Oh, she crooks her finger and you go running?”
“Dad, please. Shut up,” Gabe said. “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, okay?”
The old man laughed heartily and pointed. “Maybe if I had a set of titties you’d be more interested in fixing things around this shit hole.”
Gabe’s jaw went tight, but he knew better than to rise to the old man’s jabs. Ralph Tierney wanted to be discontent and grouchy, and he’d always find a way to do it. Gabe lifted his tools in farewell instead, and left his father alone.
Next door, he entered a world of warmth and the good smells of something baking, and laughter. A boy, Janelle’s kid, slapped down an Uno card on the table and tossed back his head, his hair too long. He crowed with glee as Mrs. Decker, sitting across from him, fanned out her cards and shook her head.
They both looked up when he came in the door. Mrs. Decker appeared surprised, the kid only curious. Janelle poked her head around the kitchen doorway.
“Hey!”
“Gabe Tierney,” Nan said. “What on earth?”
“I asked him to come over and fix the dishwasher,” Janelle explained. “Come on in. Bennett, this is Mr. Tierney.”
“Gabe. Mr. Tierney’s my old man.”
“You’re Andy’s brother,” Bennett said. “He said you were good at fixing stuff.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” Gabe lifted the tools, uncomfortable under Mrs. Decker’s scrutiny.
She gave him a steady, solid look that made him feel like that seventeen-year-old punk again, the one defiling her granddaughter. He’d lived next door to Maureen Decker his entire life. She’d never been unkind to him, but she’d never been overly sweet to him, either, the way some adults had been while he was growing up. If “those Tierney boys” had ever curled Mrs. Decker’s lip or moved her to pity, she hadn’t shown it. She’d given him Popsicles and chased him out of her apple tree and put candy in his trick-or-treat bag. She’d hollered at him more than once, when she thought he needed it. She’d treated him like she treated all the other neighborhood kids, and Gabe had never forgotten that.
Janelle showed him the dishwasher. “It’s ancient. I’m not sure you can do anything for it, really.”
“I’ll take a look.” Gabe got on one knee and hunted for a screwdriver to open up the bottom panel. It came away easily enough, and what was inside wasn’t anything he’d never seen before. If anything, these older models were easier to fix because they didn’t rely on all the electronic bells and whistles the new ones did.
He was aware of Janelle watching him. Too aware. Her heavy winter clothes had been hiding a pair of black leggings and an oversize T-shirt cut at the neck so it hung off one shoulder. She wore thick, bunched socks and stood with one hip against the counter and her foot propped against the inside of her calf. It was strange seeing her as a redhead, even though that was how he’d always thought of her even when she’d been dying her hair black.
“Do you think you can fix it?”
“Yes. It’ll need a couple new parts, but you can get them at the hardware store. I’ll write a list.”
Janelle sighed. “Will they be expensive?”
Gabe looked up at her. From the living room came a burst of laughter that gave him pause before he answered. “Cheaper than a new dishwasher.”
“Yeah. Of course.” She laughed. “And better than washing all the dishes by hand, I guess.”
They didn’t have a dishwasher, working or broken, at the Tierney house. The old man had probably never washed a dish in his life. He’d firmly believed chores like that belonged to women and children...even grown children who still lived at home.
She was still watching him, her gaze a tickle on the back of his neck. Gabe carefully replaced the screws on the front panel and got to his feet. “Do you have some paper and a pen? I’ll write down what you need.”
“Yeah, sure. In the drawer.” She leaned past him to reach it.
She smelled good.
Gabe backed up a step. She noticed, of course. She was sharp like that. She pulled open the drawer, the contents rattling, and sighed.
“Huh, not here. I’ll have to get some from upstairs. Be right back.” She looked into his eyes when she moved past him, holding his gaze for several long seconds.
She’d been gone for only a minute when Bennett came into the kitchen. “Hi.”
“Hey.” Gabe looked up from the tool bag he was putting back in order. “Bennett, right?”
The kid nodded and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “I came to get a drink.”
Gabe got out of the way, shoving his bag with a foot so it slid across the linoleum. The kid took a glass from the cupboard, then opened the fridge to pull out a gallon of milk. “You want some?”
“Uh...no, thanks.”
“You want a soda? Or my mom has a few beers in there.” The kid gave him that same curious head tilt his mother had.
Gabe shook his head. “No, thanks.”
Bennett sipped some milk and licked at the mustache it left behind. “Did you fix it?”
“Not yet.”
“But you will,” the kid said.
“I hope so. If I can get the right parts. It’s pretty old,” Gabe said. “But...I’ll do what I can.”
The kid beamed. “Good. Loading and unloading it is my chore, but if it’s broken, guess what my chore is.”
“Taking out the trash?”
“That, too,” Bennett said. “But also washing the dishes. It freaking sucks.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Gabe’s mouth, though he did his best to keep it straight. “Hey, language.”
Bennett looked surprised. “You think freaking’s a bad word?”
He didn’t, exactly, and it wasn’t even his place to have said anything to begin with. It had just slipped out automatically. To his horror, it was the sort of thing his old man would’ve said. Gabe grimaced.
Bennett frowned. “Don’t tell my mom, okay? She’ll be mad.”
In high school, Janelle had had a vast and colorful vocabulary. It had included a lot of creative curses that went well beyond the normal four-letter words. Freaking wouldn’t even have registered on her radar.
“You knew my mom when she was little, huh?”
It was weird the way he’d echoed Gabe’s thoughts from just a few moments ago, and Gabe stuttered a little bit on his answer. “Um, yeah. I did.”
Bennett nodded. “Nan said you did. She said you’ve lived next to her since you were born. How long is that?”
“A long time.”
“So you knew my mom when she lived here, with Nan?”
Gabe looked at the ceiling again, wondering if he could just write down the parts he needed at home and give them to Andy to bring over. Hell, he could just go to the hardware store himself and buy them. He didn’t want to stand here talking to Janelle’s son about knowing her, but the kid was clearly waiting for an answer.
“Yeah, I knew her.”
“You went to school together?”
“Yeah.”
“Same grade?”
“Yes,” Gabe said, irritated now. “Jesus, kid. What’s with the interrogation?”
Bennett frowned for a second. “Sorry. My mom says the only way to ever find anything out is if you ask questions. I just wanted to know what she was like when she was younger.”
“So why don’t you ask her?”
Bennett shrugged. “Duh, you think the stories she tells me are the ones I’d think were more interesting to hear? Or just the sorts of things a parent tells a kid.”
“What kinds of things would you want to hear?” Gabe nudged his tool bag with a toe, getting ready to pick it up and make his exit.
“You know, the good stuff. Maybe you don’t know any good stuff.”
Gabe looked at the kid seriously. “If I did, you think I’d tell you?”
“Maybe.” Bennett shrugged again. “Andy knew my mom in high school, too—she says he did. But he doesn’t remember her at all. So I figured you must remember. Especially if you were good friends.”
“Did she...tell you that?” Gabe bent for the tool bag, hefting its weight so the contents jingled. “She talked about me?”
“Nope. Not really. But you knew each other. You lived next door. Went to school together.” The kid gave Gabe another of those curious head tilts; it made his hair fall in front of his face until he shook it out. “She talks a lot about her other friends. Mom says the friends you make in school are the ones you remember best, and if you’re lucky they stay with you.”
“Sometimes if you’re unlucky,” Gabe muttered.
“The kids here are dickweeds.”
Gabe shouldn’t have laughed; the kid was clearly serious. But he looked so much like his mother. It reminded Gabe of too much that had happened, and he couldn’t do anything but stare. Bennett’s smile, so much like Janelle’s, slid off his face.
“I’ve moved four times since I was born. Including this time, that’s five times.” Bennett ticked them off on his fingers. “We moved when I was a baby, two times. I don’t remember it. Then when I was in first grade. Third grade. Now here. I had friends in my old school, but I haven’t made any here yet.”
“You will.”
Bennett scowled. “I liked California better, but Mom says Pennsylvania’s nicer in the summer. And no earthquakes.”
The kid paused expectantly, waiting for Gabe to answer. Again, he had nothing to say. The kid was chatty. Weren’t kids supposed to be shyer than that? Most kids around here gave Gabe a wide berth.
“Bennett! I thought you were bringing me something to drink!” Mrs. Decker called from the other room. “Did you fall in the sink and go down the drain?”
“Just a minute, Nan.” Bennett filled a second glass with milk and put the jug back in the fridge. “Sure you don’t want anything, Mr. Tierney?”
“Call me Gabe.”
Bennett shrugged. “Okay, Gabe.”
That’s when Janelle finally came back into the kitchen, carrying a legal pad and a pen. Gabe saw what had taken her so long upstairs—she’d pulled her hair on top of her head into a soft bun that he knew from past experience looked casual and messy on purpose, but had really taken effort. She’d swiped on some gloss, maybe powder or something on her nose and cheeks to fade her freckles a little. Nothing major, nothing he was supposed to notice she’d done...but he did.
“Sorry it took so long. I have a lot of stuff still shoved in boxes.” Janelle smiled as she held out the paper and pen. “Here.”
In order to take it, Gabe had to set down the tools again. He did so quickly, ignoring the kid still standing there with the two glasses of milk, along with his mother and her makeup and her familiar smile. Gabe wrote the list, three items, scrawling the last so fast it was illegible.
“Your handwriting hasn’t changed much,” she noted.
“It says it’s a hose,” Gabe snapped. “Just look closer.”
Bennett took that as a cue to leave. Janelle looked at Gabe with her mouth slightly parted as though she meant to speak, but didn’t. After a second, her brow furrowed and her mouth thinned. She was pissed.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll get these things tomorrow. Maybe you can...”
“I’ll be busy tomorrow.” Gabe lifted the tool bag and moved past her into the living room, where Mrs. Decker was busy passing out cards.
Janelle followed him onto the back porch and beyond, catching him just outside the back door. “Gabe, wait.”
He didn’t turn at first, then did, slowly. “I have to go.”
“Just let me know when you can do it. I can pick up these things tomorrow and you can let me know. Okay?” She gave him a half-watt smile.
“I have a lot of jobs scheduled.”
“You can come anytime. I’ll be here....”
“I’ll be working. Or sleeping.” Gabe shifted the weight of the tool bag to his other hand. “Look, maybe you should call a service center. I’m not a dishwasher repairman. You should get a professional.”
“And here I thought you were a professional. What with your own business and all.” Janelle’s voice dipped the way it always had when she was doing her best to get her way. He hadn’t known back then when he was a stupid kid what she’d been up to, but a couple decades of experience with women had taught Gabe a lot.
He didn’t stop or turn again, but that didn’t keep Janelle from calling after him even as he hopped over the retaining wall and climbed the steps to his own back porch.
“I said I’d pay you, Gabe. It’s not like I’m asking you to do me a favor.”
There it was at last, the accusation he’d been waiting for, and could he blame her for sounding so pissed off about it?
“I only did it because you wanted me to,” she says. “Because you asked. I did it because you asked me to, Gabe! How can you blame me for that, when you asked me to do it?”
“Gabe!”
“Hire someone else,” was all he said as he went inside his own house. “You’ll be better off.”
ELEVEN
THEY’D MADE IT through the first couple weeks of the new school and new routines. Bennett was testing out of some of his classes but woefully behind in others. Apparently the academy had been great with providing plenty of alternative and arts education, but not so helpful when it came to standardized tests. Sure, her kid could identify a Van Gogh, a Dali and a Warhol, but he couldn’t figure out a word problem.
Nan had been in good spirits and perky, for the most part, but she insisted on doing so much for herself that Janelle felt run more ragged than if her grandma simply stayed on the couch and allowed herself to be waited on. If she wasn’t trying to cook something, setting off the smoke alarm, she was up at all hours of the night trying to run the washing machine or watching television with the volume set too loud. She’d lived alone too long, was Nan’s explanation, and she was used to doing for herself. At least as long as she could, anyway.
It would take some time to fully settle in. Janelle had expected that. She hadn’t imagined how exhausting it would be just trying to get into a routine that worked for all of them.
Tonight, Bennett’s own weariness showed in the faint circles below his eyes and the way he picked at his dinner. She’d ordered pizza, along with hot wings and garlic sticks and a two-liter bottle of soda. Friday night had always been pizza night at Nan’s house.
“How was school?”
He shrugged, silent.
It wasn’t an answer, but Janelle was too tired to push. She folded her slice in half to keep all the good grease from dripping out. “Nan, is anyone coming over?”
Nan had taken only a bread stick to start. She looked faintly surprised. “Who’d come over?”
“Betsy and the kids? Uncle Joey and Aunt Deb?” Janelle licked orange grease from the heel of her hand and gave a little moan of appreciation. Pizza in California was just not the same. On the other hand, she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to find any decent sushi in St. Marys.
“Why would they come over?”
“To visit?” Everyone had always gone to Nan’s house on Friday nights to play cards, eat pizza. Later, to watch rented movies on the VCR. The kids would play while the adults talked and drank beer. When Janelle was older, Friday night had still been pizza night, only the Tierney boys had usually come over for cards and late-night TV.
“Oh, honey, they’re all busy.”
“Too busy to visit you?” Janelle frowned.
Nan shrugged. “They have families of their own. It’s really too far to drive in just for the evening.”
Of course, Janelle had known that, but she’d forgotten what that really meant. St. Marys was at least an hour’s drive from Dubois, more on snowy, icy roads. But Betsy lived in Kersey. That wasn’t so far.
Nan picked apart the bread stick with shaky hands and put the pieces on her plate. She dabbed some marinara sauce next to them, but didn’t eat anything. She took a slice of pizza and began dissecting it the same way.
Janelle watched this carefully. She’d had a friend in high school who’d practiced the same sort of deception to hide an eating disorder. “Nan, if you don’t want pizza, I can make you something else.”
Nan frowned. “Don’t be silly. I love pizza.”
“Not enough to eat it,” Janelle pointed out.
Bennett, God love him, rallied and reached for another slice. “It’s good, Nan. This is the best pizza I ever ate.”
Both women looked at him. Bennett, unselfconscious, bit into the slice and tore the cheese from it in a huge, gloppy string that splashed sauce all over his shirt. He chewed, making snuffling sounds Janelle reprimanded with a look.
“Nan, let me make you some toast or something. I could heat up some soup. I have chicken noodle or tomato.”
Her grandmother shook her head, then covered her eyes with her hand, leaving her trembling mouth to show she fought tears. “I don’t want anything, honey, I just need to go to bed.”
Janelle’s stomach tightened. “Don’t you feel good?”
Stupid question—the woman was eighty-three years old, suffering from high blood pressure, anemia and a brain tumor. Chances were she never felt good. Nan shrugged without taking her hand away from her eyes.
Janelle got up and put a hand on her shoulder. “Let me help you to bed. I can bring you something in a little while, if you want. Bennett, finish up and then clear the table.”
Nan didn’t protest when Janelle hooked a hand under her elbow to help her up, proof of how bad she really felt. Janelle guided her grandma through the kitchen and to the hall, though Nan paused at the bathroom.
“I need to go.”
“Okay. I can help you.”
Nan made a noise, but didn’t argue, just let Janelle help her to the toilet. Janelle lifted her nightgown, helped her pull down her incontinence pants. The toilet had been fitted with a high seat and bars, but Nan was still a little unsteady as she sat.
There was no good way to do this, no way to make it anything but awkward. Janelle had changed her son’s diapers and nursed him through a variety of childhood stomach bugs, but that was completely different than standing in the bathroom doorway as her beloved grandmother groaned with cramps. Nan gripped the railing and turned her face.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Janelle forced herself not to cover her mouth and nose with her hand, but after only a few seconds, she had to step outside the bathroom. She closed her eyes and put her face to the door frame, but only for a second because Bennett spoke up from the kitchen.
“Mama?”
Janelle donned a smile, turning toward him. “Yeah, buddy.”
“Can I go play my game?”
“Is your homework finished?”
“It’s Friday,” Bennett began, then sighed. “After I’m done?”
“If you do it now,” she pointed out, “you won’t have to worry about it for the rest of the weekend.”
The toilet flushed, and Janelle peeked inside the bathroom. Nan was still looking away from her, frail shoulders slumped. “I have to help Nan now. Go do what I asked you to do, please. And we’ll watch a movie or something after I get her to bed.”
In the bathroom, Janelle stood for a moment, uncertain of how to help. Nan looked at her, and though her face was wan, there was a bit of a twinkle in her eyes. She gestured at the built-in wall cabinet.
“Baby wipes are in there, honey. We can use those.” The twinkle faded as her mouth turned down. “I’m sorry to even ask you...”
Janelle opened the cupboard, found the wipes. Shook her head. “Shh, Nan. Don’t.”
Nan gripped her arm as she moved to help clean her up. “Thank you, Janelle. For coming here.”
Janelle looked into her grandmother’s eyes. “I’m happy to do it. Let’s get you into bed.”
It still took much longer to get Nan ready for bed than Janelle had anticipated. First the meds, a plethora of pills from a small plastic case with sections for each day of the week, entirely different from the ones she took in the daytime. Then she had to brush her teeth, which she could still do on her own, but took twice as long as seemed normal. She had to put on her face lotion, not for wrinkles, she said, but to keep her skin from being too dry. Also a simple task that took so much time Janelle found herself itching to take over and just do it for her, rather than watching. She didn’t.
At last, Nan was in a soft flannel gown and tucked into the double bed that had been her wedding furniture, propped on her pillows, the lamp on and giving her enough light to read by. She held the thick hardcover in shaking hands for a moment before she sighed and let it sink onto the blankets covering her belly. She needed a lap desk, Janelle thought, but a pillow would have to do. She folded one in half and propped the book against it.
Nan smiled. “Oh, that’s so much better, honey. Thank you. I’m only going to read for a while, then go to sleep. What are you and Benny going to do?”
“Watch a movie or something.” There was laundry waiting, the kitchen to clean. But Nan didn’t need to know that. “I’m pretty tired, too. I’ll probably turn in early myself.”
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Megan Hart
Janelle Decker has happy childhood memories of her grandma’s house, and even lived there through high school. Now she’s back with her twelve-year-old son to look after her ailing Nan, and hardly anything seems to have changed, not even the Tierney boys next door.Gabriel Tierney, local bad-boy.The twins, Michael and Andrew.After everything that happened between the four of them, Janelle is shocked that Gabe still lives in St. Mary’s. And he isn’t trying very hard to convince Janelle he’s changed from the moody teenage boy she once knew. If anything, he seems bent on making sure she has no intentions of rekindling their past.To this day, though there might’ve been a lot of speculation about her relationship with Gabe, nobody else knows she was there in the woods that day… the day a devastating accident tore the Tierney brothers apart and drove Janelle away.But there are things that even Janelle doesn’t know, and as she and Gabe revisit their interrupted romance, she begins to uncover the truth denied to her when she ran away all those years ago.
With characteristic compassion and searing honesty, MEGAN HART weaves a shattering small-town story about what can turn brother against brother, and the kinds of secrets that cannot remain untold.
Janelle Decker has happy childhood memories of her grandma’s house, and even lived there through high school. Now she’s back with her twelve-year-old son to look after her ailing Nan, and hardly anything seems to have changed, not even the Tierney boys next door.
Gabriel Tierney, local bad-boy. The twins, Michael and Andrew. After everything that happened between the four of them, Janelle is shocked that Gabe still lives in St. Mary’s. And he isn’t trying very hard to convince Janelle he’s changed from the moody teenage boy she once knew. If anything, he seems bent on making sure she has no intentions of rekindling their past.
To this day, though there might’ve been a lot of speculation about her relationship with Gabe, nobody else knows she was there in the woods that day…the day a devastating accident tore the Tierney brothers apart and drove Janelle away. But there are things that even Janelle doesn’t know, and as she and Gabe revisit their interrupted romance, she begins to uncover the truth denied to her when she ran away all those years ago.
The Favour
Megan Hart
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
This book is dedicated to my grandmother, Eileen Garner,
who taught me how to cook a turkey.
I love you and miss you, Gramma.
Contents
Chapter 1 (#u095ea54d-a141-565a-9d16-f919c85e3f66)
Chapter 2 (#u7e49779d-92c3-53ab-ad19-37b96019a12d)
Chapter 3 (#ued7784ed-4943-50cb-9f4a-5418408d4e91)
Chapter 4 (#u06d3cb38-96a2-5693-9f47-cc93d235bb81)
Chapter 5 (#u389e85d9-eb1f-5f92-9429-176ba8699e6e)
Chapter 6 (#u11540118-4bc0-57c3-98ee-f419cfb35a52)
Chapter 7 (#u30f1e335-6401-573e-8969-3b19b26296ea)
Chapter 8 (#uf344a8ba-b52d-5fd3-a17d-9708b1ce06f4)
Chapter 9 (#u9a65ae33-d9d1-5bd9-aa50-686c984afbf1)
Chapter 10 (#ue7b116be-d13e-53ca-87fb-6dec89282a55)
Chapter 11 (#u7c1242b9-f4e6-5f98-a6ae-01037f126dff)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)
ONE
HOME ISN’T ALWAYS the place you go because they have to take you in.
Sometimes, Janelle Decker thought as she crested the hill and took that final slope toward the town she hadn’t seen in nearly twenty years, home was the place you couldn’t escape no matter how far or fast you ran. Her battered Volkswagen Rabbit pickup, which had seen better days, but so far, thank God, not many worse, drifted to a stop at the traffic light. She didn’t remember the fast-food restaurant to her right or, just a bit farther, the pair of hotels on the hill to her left, but she remembered the small white building beside them. Decker’s Chapel, one of the tiniest churches in the country.
“Look, Bennett. Over there.” Janelle craned her neck to stare into the backseat, where her son was bent over his new toy, the iPad her mother had bought him for his birthday. In seconds the light would turn green, and it had somehow become imperative she show him this sight. “Bennett. Hey. Hello!”
The boy looked up through a shock of red-blond bangs that fell over bright green eyes. His dad’s eyes, though Connor’s gaze had never, in Janelle’s recollection, been as bright and clear and curious as her son’s. Bennett looked out the window to where she pointed.
“See that little church?”
“Yeah.”
Janelle eased her foot off the brake and pressed the cranky clutch, hoping for the sake of the half dozen cars lined up behind her that the truck wouldn’t stall. “One of my great-great-grand-relatives built that church.”
“Really? Cool.” Bennett sounded underwhelmed. “Are we almost there?”
“Another five minutes, buddy. That’s all.” On impulse, instead of continuing on along the incongruously named Million Dollar Highway into town toward her grandmother’s house, the end point of this seemingly endless trip, Janelle put on her left turn signal.
If there’d been traffic heading toward her she might not have bothered, but the only traffic on the road was heading into town, not away from it. That seemed somehow meaningful, but she didn’t let herself dwell on that. Instead, she turned into the gravel-gritty drive that serviced the two hotels as well as the chapel. She parked and stared through the windshield.
Her arms ache from where he grabbed her, the bruises still so fresh they’ve barely darkened, though they will. She’ll wear them for weeks. Her hands on the wheel, gripping so tight her fingers hurt from it. Foot on the gas, foot on the clutch, the Rabbit truck bucks and sputters as she guides it to the side of the road. The parking lot of this tiny church is empty, thank God. There’s nobody to see her press her face against her hands, nobody to watch her break apart.
Nobody to watch her leaving.
“I thought we were going to Nan’s house.”
“In a few minutes.”
Bennett, her get-along-guy, her complacent child, let out a long, stuttering sigh of irritation. Janelle didn’t blame him. They’d been driving for hours with no more than a quick pit stop. Before that, other than the week they’d spent at her mom’s, they’d been on the road for what felt like forever.
“I want to go into this church, okay? Really fast.” Janelle looked into the rearview mirror. “Want to come in with me? Let me rephrase that. Come in with me.”
Her son looked a lot like his absent father, and that she understood. Genetics and all that. But sometimes the kid acted just like his dad, too, and that always floored her, since she and Connor O’Hara had been finished before he even knew the night the condom broke hadn’t turned out to be, as he’d so valiantly and foolishly promised her, “okay.”
“It’ll be cool,” she told Bennett. “Really. And if it’s not, you can add it to the list of things I’ve done to permanently scar you.”
This earned a small smile. “Okay. But I have to pee real bad.”
“Hold it just a little longer. Can you?”
“I guess so.” Bennett made a face that said he wasn’t convinced.
She’d never actually been inside the chapel. Built of white clapboard with a miniature bell tower and a single door in the front with a wooden ramp leading up to it, the chapel really was tiny. It had been built in the 1800s; she remembered that much.
Janelle got out of the truck, snagging her keys from the ignition, but not bothering to actually lock the vehicle. They were in St. Marys, after all. Secluded, isolated, ninety-nine percent Catholic of the “attend Mass daily” variety. And they were going inside for just a minute or two, the way she’d promised. She couldn’t tell if her heart raced because of daring to leave her vehicle unlocked with all her worldly belongings inside, or for a slew of other reasons that had been plaguing her for the past few months, since she’d made the decision to come back.
The chapel was unheated. Bennett danced from foot to foot, having, of course, forgone his brand-new, heavy winter coat. Janelle herself blew a plume of frost on her fingers and rubbed her hands together to warm them as she walked slowly around the wooden kneelers, an altar and a votive display at the back, no candles burning. She thought about dropping a dollar in the slot and lighting one, if only for the brief flare of warmth it would offer, but she hadn’t brought her purse inside and her pockets were lamentably empty.
“Do people get married here?”
“I don’t know. I guess they could.” Janelle looked at the map on the wall and the framed documents telling the Decker’s Chapel history.
“Would you?”
She laughed. “Um...no.”
“How come? If you think it’s so cool and all that.” Bennett ran a finger along one of the half-size kneelers and gave her an innocent look that didn’t fool her for a second, because she’d seen it in her own reflection more than once.
Janelle rolled her eyes. “C’mon. Let’s go. I’m freezing.”
Back in the car, buckled up tight, she once again looked at her son in the rearview mirror. He’d already bent over his iPad again, thumbing the screen in some complicated game, his headphones firmly settled in the tangles of his too-long hair. This was her boy. Her life for the past twelve years. She hadn’t messed him up too badly so far.
But there was still time.
“Whoa, look at the size of that Pepsi cap!” Bennett sounded way more excited about that landmark than he had about the chapel. He added a chortle that cracked her up. As if the kid had never seen a giant Pepsi cap on the side of a building before. Come to think of it, he never had.
It took a few more than five minutes to get to Nan’s house. There was a lot more traffic than Janelle remembered, for one thing, and some of the roads had changed. The Diamond, as the locals called it, ran in one direction only, and though she knew she had to get off on the first street, somehow she ended up going all the way around the circle of traffic again before she could.
“Big Ben,” she murmured as they passed the town’s snow-covered Nativity scene, still holding pride of place in the square, though it was already the day after New Year’s. “Parliament.”
Bennett, familiar with the joke, though not the movie she was quoting, didn’t even look up. Janelle concentrated on getting off the Diamond and onto one of the side streets. G.C. Murphy’s, location of many a summer afternoon’s dawdling, was long gone. Janelle felt a sudden pang of nostalgia for Lee Press On Nails and Dep hair gel. Her car bump-bumped over the railroad tracks as she headed up Lafayette Street, pausing at the intersection to point out the elk heads, antlers alight with bulbs, adorning the building on the corner.
“This place has a lot of weird things,” Bennett said matter-of-factly. “Maybe they’re in your app, Mom. We should check them off.”
He meant the application on her phone that listed the odd and offbeat attractions littering the American countryside. Biggest balls of twine, and mystery spots, that sort of thing. They’d spent a good portion of their trip from California to Pennsylvania taking back roads to catch a glimpse of some forgotten storybook forest or an abandoned “Fountain of Youth” that turned out to be an algae-infested and crumbling well alive with frogs. In the past couple days, though, busy with the holidays at her mom’s house and then the final portion of this journey, they hadn’t even checked to see what weird delights might await.
They’d already passed a dozen landmarks that had always marked off the distance between her mom’s and this town like hash marks on a ruler. The Mount Nittany Inn, with its spectacular view. The child’s sneaker-shaped scooter attached for no good reason to a high fence, which she could remember looking for during every trip to visit Nan. Janelle had thought about rallying Bennett to scream out “Weed!” as they passed through the tiny town of Weedville, the way she and her dad always had, but knew he wouldn’t understand the joke—nor did she want to explain to him the old comedy skit about a pair of stoners incapable of keeping their stash a secret when visited by the cops.
Now she spotted another landmark Bennett wouldn’t really “get”—the Virgin Mary statue in the corner lot they were passing. Common enough in a town named for her, not so much in any place they’d lived. Janelle slowed a little as she passed to give the praying Virgin a silent nod.
Janelle hadn’t been inside a church for years, but she still wore the Blessed Virgin medallion she’d had since she was eighteen. It lay against the hollow of her throat, warmed by her flesh. She wore it constantly; it had become as much a part of her as the small but genuine diamond in her nose and the shooting star tattoo on the inside of her left wrist. She never took the necklace off unless she was getting dressed up to go somewhere fancy, and replaced it with her single strand of good pearls—and it had been a damn long time since she’d done that. She never thought much about it, in fact, unless she forgot to put it back on, and wasn’t that the way of things? You didn’t notice them until they weren’t where you expected them to be.
She traced the medallion with her fingertips, so familiar by touch, though honestly, if you’d asked her to identify it in a photo, she’d probably be unable. Mary’s features had become worn from the thousands of such touches over the years. The metal had tarnished. Janelle had replaced the chain twice that she could recall. It hardly looked like the same necklace that had been given to her so long ago.
Past Deprator’s Beverage, down one more street, one more turn. Her heart beat a little faster at the sight of the familiar green shingled house. She pulled into Nan’s driveway and let the truck idle for a minute or so before turning off the ignition.
Don’t be a stranger, Janelle. This will always be your home.
I know, Nan. I know.
Come back soon, Janelle. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.
I’ll come soon, Nan. I promise.
She’d had the heat going on the highest setting, but now the frigid air was finding its insidious way through the cracks and crevices. She told herself that’s why she shivered, why the hairs on the back of her neck rose, why her nipples pebbled beneath her multiple layers of clothes. She got out of the truck, one hand on the roof, one foot propped on the running board. Her sudden chill had little to do with the actual weather.
“We’re here,” Janelle said. “We’re home.”
TWO
Then
THERE’S A GIRL with red hair in the backyard of the house next door, and she’s blowing soap bubbles from a big plastic dish. She dips the wand in the liquid and holds it to her puckered lips, then laughs as the bubbles stream out, one after the other, like beads on a string. Like pearls, Gabe thinks. Like his mom’s pearls, the ones in the drawer in the back bedroom, in the box his dad doesn’t think Gabe knows about.
The girl with red hair glances up, sees him looking and frowns. Gabe stands on one of the cinder blocks that keep his yard from falling into hers. If he steps down he’ll be on her grass, so he stays where he is. His yard is higher, which is good because he thinks she’s taller than him, and that would be annoying.
“Hi,” she says. “You’re Gabe Tierney. My dad says you have twin baby brothers.”
He does. Michael and Andrew. Gabe doesn’t question how or why this girl’s dad would know that. Everyone knows about the Tierney boys. His bare toes curl over the edge of the cinder block, but he doesn’t step down.
The girl stands, her fist dripping with suds. “I have bubbles, look.”
“I have bubbles in a big jug. Had,” Gabe mutters. “I spilled ’em.”
It had been an accident, but he might as well have done it on purpose since he got in so much trouble for it. The soap had soaked into the rug in the front room, making a squishy patch he’d been unable to clean up no matter how much water he used. Mikey walked through it, then onto the linoleum floor in the kitchen, where he skidded and slipped, hitting his head on the table. Then Dad came through, yelling, and he slipped, too. Went down on his butt. It would’ve been funny, kind of like something on TV, except Dad didn’t laugh about it. He hadn’t spanked Gabe, but it might’ve been better if he had. He’d not only taken away the rest of the bubbles, but he’d sent Gabe to his room for a whole day. No lunch, no supper. Gabe’s belly had hurt from being empty.
“I’m Janelle.” She holds up the wand. “Do you want to blow some bubbles? You can use mine.”
Gabe does want to blow bubbles, but he stays put. “My dad says I’m not supposed to leave the yard.”
Janelle puts her fists on her hips. Her lower lip sticks out in what Gabe’s mama used to call a pouty. “Gaby’s putting a pouty on,” that’s what she used to say. Before.
Janelle shakes her head. “What are you, a baby?”
He’s not anything close to a baby. Heat floods him, not from the summer sun beating down but from someplace deep inside. It comes from the same place that gets hot whenever he overhears someone talking about “those Tierney boys.” Which is a lot. Without another thought, Gabe jumps down from the cinder block and into Mrs. Decker’s yard.
“Be careful. Your dad might yell.” Janelle looks toward Gabe’s house, which is taller than Mrs. Decker’s. Made of brick instead of painted wood. Gabe’s house has three stories and he’s pretty sure the third floor is haunted.
“He’s not home. He’s at work.” Mrs. Moser wouldn’t yell if she came out from inside the house and found him in the yard next door. She’d be happy to see him playing with a friend. She’d be happy for him to stay out of the house, out from under her feet like she said, though it is the twins who are always crawling around under her feet. Not Gabe.
“Oh.” Janelle grins and holds out the bubble wand again. “So come and blow bubbles! It’s really fun.”
“Bubbles are for babies,” Gabe tells her, knowing it will wipe the smile off her face.
That’s what Dad says. Wipe the smile off your face. But it’s never like wiping your face with a cloth or a napkin or the back of your hand. Smiles always melt like Popsicles in the sun. Drip, drip, drip.
Janelle does stop smiling. That line appears between her eyebrows again. She puts one hand on her hip, the other still holding out the wand. “I’m not a baby, and I like bubbles! But if you’re too much of a baby to come into my Nan’s yard...”
“I’m not a baby!”
“Nope,” Janelle says with a grin that melts something inside him that’s nothing like a smile, “you’re a jerk.”
* * *
Gabe Tierney was still a jerk. He knew it. Cultivated it, as a matter of fact, because it was easier that way. People gave you a wide berth if you were an asshole. They left you alone. Well, most people did. Some women didn’t. For them, a sneer was as good as a smile, maybe better. For them a kiss from a fist was better than nothing, but Gabe would never hit a woman, not even if she hit him first, and he’d had plenty of slaps to prove it. He’d deserved most of them, though if you asked him, any woman who went after a man who told her right up front he wasn’t ever going to be her boyfriend probably shouldn’t get bent out of shape when that turned out to be true.
There were lights on in the Deckers’ second-floor bedroom, which meant he could see right in. There hadn’t been a light on upstairs in months, maybe even over a year. Mrs. Decker never went upstairs anymore, and though she sometimes had visitors, she didn’t have overnight company. Gabe moved closer to his window, hands on the sill. His breath fogged the glass, but he didn’t wipe it clean. He just waited patiently for it to clear.
Earlier he’d seen the woman inside, moving back and forth, emptying boxes and arranging the furniture. Her hair was darker now than it had been in childhood, but still red. He bet she still had freckles across her nose, and that twisted sense of humor. Other things would’ve changed over time, they always did, but surely that would be the same.
Janelle Decker had come back.
The door to that other bedroom opened, and there she was again. In the dark, behind the shield of his curtain, Gabe watched, waiting to see if she’d look over. She didn’t. She straightened and slid an elastic band off her wrist, then used it to fasten her hair on top of her head. She stretched, rolling her neck and shoulders with a wince.
Gabe had once sworn he’d get the hell out of this place and never look back, but Janelle had been the one to actually do it. At least until now. What was she doing back here? Easy enough to guess—Mrs. Decker was getting older and more frail. She’d fallen not too long ago, and Gabe supposed she needed caretaking. That explained the boxes and stuff in the upstairs bedroom, instead of only a suitcase or two.
“So,” she says. “That’s it? It’s over?”
“Nothing’s over. For something to be over, it has to start.”
“I did it for you!” she cries. “You asked me for a favor, and I did it!”
Then she’s leaving and his hands are on her. Too hard. He doesn’t know how to tell her he doesn’t want her to go, and he can’t make himself ask her to stay.
And after that, everything fell apart.
THREE
IN WHAT BENNETT called the olden days, this big room, separated into four sections by a T-shaped half wall, had belonged to four of her uncles. The smaller bedroom across the hall had housed Janelle’s dad, the oldest of the five brothers, until he moved out and the next oldest took his place. Ricky, Marty, Bobby, Joey and John, the Decker brothers. Her dad had often joked that if the others had learned to play instruments the way he’d taken to the guitar, they could’ve had a band to rival the Oakridge Boys or maybe the Osmonds. All five had shared the bathroom off the hallway, and Janelle shuddered to think of what that must’ve been like—the stink alone must’ve been enough to kill a couple of elephants. And it wasn’t a big bathroom, she thought as she settled one more box of toiletries on the floor. It would be a hardship sharing it with one medium-size boy, much less an army of brothers.
Of the five brothers, four remained in contact, though none of them had stayed in St. Marys. John and his wife, Lisa, lived three hours away in Aliquippa, their three kids and spouses and grandkids close by. Bobby and Donna lived an hour and a half away in Milesburg, their four kids and their families scattered across the country. Marty and Kathy in Dubois, close to Joey and his wife, Deb, but that was still about an hour away. Marty and Kathy’s daughter, Betsy, lived with her family twenty minutes away in Kersey, but her brother, Bill, was unmarried and traveled the world as a journalist. Joey and Deb had one son, Peter, who lived at home in their basement and, to be honest, sort of creeped Janelle out and always had.
Janelle’s dad, on the other hand, had pretty much fallen off the face of the earth a few decades ago, and it was good riddance as far as she was concerned.
“We were wondering if you’d be able to come and stay with Mom,” Joey had said without preamble three months ago when he’d called her. “She had a fall recently, and she’s been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Inoperable.”
Janelle had barely had time to ask him how he and his family were before he’d leveled her with that bit of news. In retrospect, she appreciated the bluntness, but at the time it had sucked the wind from her lungs.
I promise I’ll come back soon, Nan.
It had been almost twenty years.
“The doctor says she could have anywhere from a few months to a few years,” Joey had said. “She wasn’t showing any symptoms. They only found out because she hit her head, and they did an MRI. She says she’s going to be eighty-four years old and doesn’t want chemo or any sort of treatment like that. But she needs someone with her, Janelle. We thought...you might be able to. Whether it’s a few months or a few years, she doesn’t have a lot of time left. Even if you can’t come to stay, you should at least come to visit.”
She’d never appreciated a guilt trip, especially not from an uncle she hadn’t spoken to since she was a teenager, but as it turned out, Joey wasn’t just asking her to come and take care of Nan in her last years. He, along with his brothers, were making her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
Janelle would have medical power of attorney, with limited power of attorney granting her access to Nan’s checking and savings accounts for the purposes of maintaining her grandmother’s lifestyle. There had been a lot of legal paperwork stating that she would be responsible for maintaining the house until Nan passed away. After that, Janelle would be in charge of selling it and splitting the income among Nan’s sons. Janelle would keep her dad’s share of the proceeds for herself.
Her uncles were buying her and making no real pretense otherwise. She respected that as much as Joey’s initial bluntness in telling her about Nan’s failing health. But Janelle could be blunt, too.
“Why me? You live close by. Betsy and Peter do, too, right? None of you can check in on her?”
“She needs someone there full-time,” Joey had said. “She won’t accept a nurse—we tried that. She won’t go into a home—we suggested that, too. And we all have houses and lives and families, Janelle. We can’t pick up and move in with her.”
Janelle could’ve protested that she couldn’t, either, but the fact was, it made sense. She wanted out of California. St. Marys was a four-hour drive away from her mom and step-father, Randall, and also her brother, Kenny, and his family. That was far better than a six-hour flight. And really, what else did she have in California but debts she couldn’t seem to get out from under no matter what she did? In for a penny, in for a pound was one of Nan’s favorite sayings. Janelle had listed her house and its upside-down mortgage with a rental management company, sold most of her stuff and packed up the rest. Here she was.
First things first. She’d unloaded most of her boxes from the truck. She should make the bed. Then create some order in the bathroom so she could convince her son to take a shower tonight before he went to bed. Bennett might not think he needed to face his first day in a new school with clean hair and clothes, but his mother did.
Before she could do any of that, a quavery voice came from the bottom of the stairs. “Janelle? Will you and Benny be ready for supper soon?”
Janelle went to the head of the steeply pitched staircase. “Yeah, Nan, I’ll be down in a couple minutes.”
“I have leftovers from New Year’s dinner. I’m making turkey soup with spaetzle.”
Janelle’s stomach rumbled, and she immediately headed down the stairs. “Nan. You shouldn’t be cooking anything. Let me get that.”
Her grandmother gripped the newel post with gnarled fingers. She’d always been short but pillowy. It hurt Janelle’s heart to see how frail she’d become. When Janelle impulsively bent to hug her, she could feel every one of the bones in Nan’s spine. She didn’t want to grip too hard, but found it almost impossible to let go.
Nan tutted and waved her hands. “It’s already made. I just need to warm up the rolls....”
“Nan, I’ll get it.”
For half a second, her grandmother’s shoulders slumped. Then, feisty as ever despite the weight she’d lost and the cancer nibbling away at her, she shook her head. “No, no. You go upstairs and work on putting your room together. The soup’s heating up, and I have the rolls all ready. You go. Go!”
Janelle had spent her entire life heeding Nan’s instructions. Even when she’d ignored Nan’s advice, even when she’d deliberately disobeyed her, Janelle had always at least made a show of listening. Old habits didn’t simply die hard, they rose like the undead and kept walking. Now she backed up the steep stairs, catching her heel on every one and keeping her eye on Nan, who took her time, centering herself with a hand on the newel post again before she was steady enough to move across the living room’s polished wooden floor.
As she turned and went up the stairs, Janelle heard Nan singing, the tune familiar though she couldn’t place it until she got into her room and recognized it as a particularly filthy pop song by an up-and-coming rapper. Laughing, she slotted the bed rails into the head- and footboards, then wrestled the box spring and mattress onto it. The bed itself she pushed kitty-corner under one of the dormers.
Then she looked out the window, hung with beige lace curtains, ugly and useless at blocking the light. Or the view. She could see right through them and into the second-floor bedroom of the house next door.
As she’d been able to do back then.
Just one minute. One nostalgic minute. That’s all she meant to take. The alley between the houses was so narrow that she could easily lean out her window and shake hands with someone doing the same on the other side. Close enough to string a tin-can telephone—and with the memory of that, she stood on her tiptoes to run her fingers along the top of the window frame. The piece of string was still there, stapled into the plaster, the end frayed where it had been cut years ago.
Hello. Hello. Vienna calling.
“Mom?”
Janelle turned, easing onto her heels, and wiped her dusty fingertips on her jeans. This room would take more work than setting up the furniture and making her bed. “Yeah, buddy.”
“I’m hungry. Is it time to eat yet?”
“Yeah. Nan made us soup. Let’s take a break. How’s your room coming along?”
Bennett shrugged. “It’s okay.”
Which could mean anything, from he’d completely unpacked or hadn’t slit the tape on a single box. Janelle poked her head in his doorway and found the room in a state someplace in between. Books and clothes covered his bed, but the small combo television and DVD player, hooked up to his game system, had been set up on top of his dresser the way it had been in California. Priorities, clearly.
“Bennett, c’mon. Get this stuff cleaned up and put away.”
“I’m getting to it.”
“No comics or video games until this room is clean,” Janelle said. “I mean it. And it’s early to bed tonight. School tomorrow.”
Downstairs, the good smell of homemade soup was overshadowed by the acrid odor of smoke. A baking sheet of crescent rolls rested on the stove, the tops golden-brown, the bottoms burned black. Nan had opened both windows over the sink as well as the door leading to the enclosed porch, but the smell lingered. She was in the family room, setting a handful of spoons on the table.
She turned a little when Janelle came in. “Where’s Benny?”
“I’m here, Nan.” Bennett ducked around Janelle. “Something stinks.”
“Bennett,” she warned.
Nan laughed. “Oh, I burned those rolls all right. Lost track of time. Should’ve kept my eye on ’em, but oh, well. We can just tear the tops off, right, Benny? Janelle, grab that bowl of mashed potatoes and bring it in here.”
“My mom burns them all the time,” Bennett said as he sidled around the table to sit in the chair closest to the wall. “Sometimes so bad we can’t even eat them. She catches the toaster on fire, too. And once she burned popcorn—”
“Bennett! Just because something’s true doesn’t mean we have to tell the whole world.” Janelle set the ceramic bowl of mashed potatoes in the middle of the table next to the platter of cold sliced filling. Nan made the best filling and mashed potatoes in the whole world. Nan made the best everything.
“Like this,” Nan said to Bennett when he put a spoonful of potatoes on the edge of his plate. She scooped some into her bowl, where the potatoes dissolved around the leftover turkey, corn and spaetzle to make the thin broth into something thick and creamy and delicious. “That’s how you do it. But first, let’s say grace.”
Bless us, Oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Janelle hadn’t said that or any prayer in years, but the words rose as easily to her lips as they once had. Bennett, brows raised, looked at her, and a sudden pang struck her. The blessing and the after-holiday turkey soup with mashed potatoes mixed into it had been a staple of her childhood visits to Nan’s house. But just like the prayers she’d never taught him, when had she ever made a turkey, much less kept the leftovers to make soup? Never. The traditions of Janelle’s childhood had split and splintered after her dad disappeared for good, and after leaving St. Marys that last time she’d carried forward only the ones from her mom’s side of the family.
“It’s good.” She plopped a hefty portion of potatoes into her own soup and stirred it into a thick stew, not reaching for the salt or pepper because Nan would have already seasoned it to perfection. Janelle blew on it and took a bite before it was cool enough, suddenly eager for the familiar flavors. She burned her tongue and didn’t care.
“It’s good,” Nan agreed. “Eat up, Benny. I have ice cream for dessert.”
Nan always had ice cream for dessert. Vanilla and chocolate and strawberry. Always in a bowl, never in a cone because you could fit more in a bowl. The bowls were the same. The spoons. The laughter was the same, too, Janelle thought as Nan listened to Bennett’s silly jokes and told a few of her own.
Nan was different, but Janelle supposed she was, too. That’s what happened with the passing of time. People got older. They got sick. They died.
But not yet, Janelle thought. Please, God. Not just yet.
FOUR
Then
THOSE MOTHERLESS TIERNEY boys. That’s what people always called them, with a mixture of pity and fond disapproval. When they show up in mismatched clothes, their hair a mess, chocolate milk on their upper lips. When they miss school altogether. Or church. Blaming the fact they don’t have a mom is an excuse, it makes people feel better, that’s what Gabe figures. If people can point at them, they don’t have to pay attention to themselves.
Andy and Mikey don’t remember Mom, not even from pictures, because their dad threw them all away. There used to be a big photo of her and Dad on the wall in the living room, but one day Gabe came downstairs and found only a bare spot where it had hung, the paint a little lighter than the rest. The frame was in the garbage, but the picture was gone. Gabe did have a picture of her holding him when he was a baby. He had it tucked away in his drawer, way at the back, but his dad didn’t know about that one. If he did, he’d probably throw it away, too.
Gabe remembers his mom, the way she smelled and the feeling of her hair on his face when she bent to pick him up, but that was from a long, long time ago. Sometimes he thinks he might just have imagined all of it. If it wasn’t for Gabe’s picture he could believe he came out from under a cabbage leaf, just like Mrs. Moser says.
Mrs. Moser gives them cookies while they’re doing their homework. The twins hardly have anything to do because they’re only in kindergarten, but Gabe’s in the fourth grade and he’s got so much schoolwork he can hardly get through it some nights. Right now he’s struggling with some social studies maps he’s supposed to color, but all the crayons are broken or worn down to nubs. Dad said he’d bring home another box, but he’s not home from work yet. Maybe he won’t be home until it’s too late, when Gabe will be asleep. And this is due tomorrow.
“Finish up your work so you can watch some cartoons while I finish dinner.” Mrs. Moser talks in a thick German accent. She’s kind of fat and has grayish hair, and her arms are flabby, but she makes great cookies. If she was around all the time, Gabe thinks, nobody would ever have any reason to look at them with pity, because they’d always be clean and their clothes would match.
But Mrs. Moser comes in to do for his dad only a couple days a week. Sometimes she doesn’t show up for weeks in a row, because she has a bad back and has to take a break. Or because his dad hollers about something she didn’t do right, like buying the wrong kind of shampoo or getting the lunch meat sliced too thin. Ralph Tierney likes things the way he likes them, that’s what he always says.
Gabe knows for sure his dad doesn’t like him. When he looks at Gabe, his face wrinkles up as if he smelled something bad. He loves the twins, though. They sit on his lap while he reads them books. They get away with everything Gabe never could. They cry and stamp their feet and throw tantrums to get their way, and Gabe’s not even allowed to say a word. If they hit him, he can’t hit them back. If they take his stuff and break it, he’s not allowed to complain. If he does, there’s a good chance Dad will blame him for whatever happened, anyway, so he says nothing. But if he can get in a punch when nobody’s looking...
“Gabriel. Are you finished with your work?”
Gabe shows Mrs. Moser the unfinished map. “I need crayons.”
“What happened to yours?”
Andy broke them all up and mixed the pieces together, then put them in the oven to melt into a “supercrayon.” Gabe shrugs, the truth not worth saying. Mrs. Moser clucks her tongue.
“You should be more careful with your things, Gabriel. Your father—” she says it like fazza “—he works hard.”
Gabe feels his entire face wrinkle like a raisin. “I need them for school! It’s not my fault Andy broke them! I’m tired of everyone blaming me for stuff that’s not my fault! I hate it!”
Crash goes the chair. Bang goes the table when he slams it. Slap go the papers when he shoves them to the floor. Mikey looks all goggle-eyed, his upper lip pink from the punch Mrs. Moser let him have with his snack, because milk gives him a bellyache. Andy looks scared.
Gabe is a dragon, he’s a bear, he’s a dinosaur. His fingers hook into claws. He roars and stamps, and it feels good, letting all this out. Making noise. It feels good to watch his brothers cry and squirm away from him. It even feels good to run away from Mrs. Moser, because she’s too old and fat to catch him.
He’s still running around the table when Dad shows up in the doorway. Gabe runs right into him. Dad’s solid, like a mountain. Gabe hits and bounces off, lands on his butt so hard tears fill his eyes from the pain.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What’s going on in here?”
Andy and Mikey start up with the wailing while Gabe struggles to get to his feet. Mrs. Moser tries to explain, but Dad reaches down to grab the front of Gabe’s shirt and haul him upright. Dad smells like sweat and dirt and cigarettes. He shakes Gabe, hard.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I was just playing.”
“Playing like an idiot. Jesus Christ.” Dad wipes his face with one big hand. His eyebrows are big and bushy. His breath stinks like the peppermint candies he’s always sucking. He shifts one now from side to side, clicking it against his teeth.
When Dad lets him go, Gabe stumbles. His butt still hurts, bad. His back, too. It will hurt for almost a week, and when he twists to look in the mirror later, a huge bunch of bruises will have blossomed there.
“I don’t understand you, Gabe. I swear to God, I don’t.” Dad shakes his head. “Go to your room.”
“He hasn’t finished his homework,” Mrs. Moser says.
Dad looks at her. “Well. That’s his own damn fault, isn’t it? Go to your room. Where’s my goddamned dinner?”
Gabe goes to his room. He’s not tired, but he gets into bed, anyway. There’s nothing else to do. His teacher will be mad if he doesn’t do his work, but he can’t make himself care. He can’t finish the project without crayons, so what difference does it make?
He sleeps, finally. Wakes a little when Mrs. Moser brings the little boys up and oversees them getting into their pajamas, brushing their teeth, tucking them into their matching twin beds in the room across the hall from Gabe’s. He keeps his eyes shut tight, his face to the wall, so she doesn’t know he’s awake. He drifts back to sleep amid the whistling snores of his brothers, who both have colds.
He wakes again when the stairs creak, and once more keeps his eyes shut tight, his face turned to the wall. Maybe tonight those footsteps will move past his doorway and not come inside. Maybe not.
The floor also creaks. It makes music. It’s like the school chorus Gabe didn’t try out for, but had to participate in, anyway, for the Christmas show. Every voice blends together to make a whole song. Each step on this creaking, squeaking floor has a different voice, but most every night it sings the same song.
Tonight the footsteps don’t stop across the hall. They keep moving toward Gabe’s bed. His eyes squinch tighter, tighter, his fists clutching at the sheets. He doesn’t dare move or breathe or shift or so much as let his eyelids twitch.
A big hand brushes over his hair. Gabe braces himself, but the hand retreats. The floor creaks, the song changes. When at last he dares to open his eyes and look to make sure the bogeyman has indeed retreated, he sees something on the dresser that wasn’t there before. He has to sit up in bed to make sure. The light in the room is dim, so he also has to touch it. But when he does, he takes the offering into bed with him, lifting the lid and breathing in the best smell in the whole world, over and over.
A box of brand-new crayons.
* * *
Gabe thought of those crayons, that fresh and brand-new box of crayons, when he saw what the old man had left him on the kitchen table. He poked it with a fingertip, his lip slightly curled. Couple packs of cigarettes, his brand.
“What’s this for?” he asked from the living room doorway.
The old man didn’t even look up from the TV. “Had Andy bring ’em home for you. What, you don’t want ’em?”
It wasn’t that Gabe didn’t want the cigarettes. Smokes weren’t cheap, and if his father wanted to gift him with a couple packs, he wasn’t going to complain. But the old man’s gifts never came without a price, and Gabe wanted to know what it would be before he accepted.
“What do you want?” he asked evenly.
His dad still didn’t look at him, another sign he was working up to something. “Nothing. Why do I always have to want something?”
“Because you always do.” Gabe came into the room to look him over. “Shit, old man. You stink. Why don’t you take a shower once in a while?”
“Why don’t you shut your pie hole,” the old man muttered, shifting in his recliner. The flickering light of the television reflected in his eyes for another few seconds before he finally looked at his son. “I need you to take me to the doctor tomorrow.”
Gabe didn’t say anything for a long minute, during which his father shifted uncomfortably.
“What time?”
“I have an appointment at four.”
“Jesus.” Gabe sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “You couldn’t have asked me this a week ago? A couple of days, even? How long have you known about it?”
“Language,” the old man reprimanded. “I knew you’d say no, that’s why.”
Gabe rubbed his tongue against the back of his teeth until it ached. “I didn’t say no. What’s the appointment for?”
His father gave him a shifty glance. “It’s private. I just need to go. Can you take me or not?”
“I have two jobs going on tomorrow. I can maybe juggle the second one, yeah. But you know, you have to ask me this stuff ahead of time so I can make it work. I can’t just be at your beck and call.” Gabe paused, eyeing him. “You sick?”
“No.”
“So what’s wrong with you, then?”
“I got piles, okay?” The old man scowled. “Hurting something fierce. Is that what you want to hear? Fine, I’ll tell you!”
Gabe laughed. “If you got off your ass once in a while, maybe you wouldn’t have that problem.”
His dad raised a trembling finger, his lower lip pooched out. “You can just shut your mouth. Disrespectful son of a bitch.”
It was an old insult, one that no longer stung. Gabe shrugged. “I’ll take you. Thanks for the cigarettes.”
He pocketed both packs and went out back to smoke. Light spilled from the Decker house next door, golden and somehow warm even in the frigid January chill. From this angle he couldn’t see inside, but shadows moved in the square of light from the kitchen window. Janelle, he imagined. Washing the dishes, maybe. Standing at the sink, looking out into the snow-covered backyard.
The light upstairs went on, snaring his gaze. From here he couldn’t see inside any more than he could into the kitchen, but more shadows shifted up there. He imagined her pacing. Unpacking a box, making the bed.
Dancing.
“When I dance,” she says, “I feel like I can do anything.”
A shudder rippled along his spine that had nothing to do with the cold outside. Gabe drew again on the cigarette, but it made him cough unexpectedly, burning his throat and the inside of his nose with smoke and frigid air. Above him, a figure appeared in the window. Staring down at him? Maybe, if only at the cherry tip of his cigarette. Surely she couldn’t see the rest of him, tucked away in the shadows. Still, he dropped the butt into the coffee can of sand on the porch railing and stepped back from the edge, making sure there was no way she could even glimpse him.
The swing of lights in the street alerted him to Andy’s return. His brother laughed as he got out of the car that had brought him home, and he was still laughing when Gabe met up with him inside the house. Andy waved a fistful of lottery tickets in Gabe’s face.
“Got the winner this time, I know it.” He pinned them up on the corkboard next to the fridge, where they kept the calendar and his work schedule and messages from Michael.
There were a few there now. He called every other day on the house phone to talk to their dad, though he couldn’t be bothered to visit more than a few times a year. Somehow, the only person this seemed to bother was Gabe.
“What would you do with that money if you did win, anyway?” Gabe asked.
Andy looked thoughtful, then shrugged. “Take you and Dad and Michael on a trip. He went on that cruise, remember? He said it was fun. Maybe I’d buy some new video games.”
“What if you won really big?” Gabe looked over the tickets. His brother spent hours analyzing the numbers, certain he could figure out the next big hit. “Wouldn’t you want to get out of here? Wouldn’t you want to leave?”
Andy had been rummaging in the fridge, but now turned. “Where would I go?”
“Nowhere,” Gabe said with a shake of his head. “Never mind.”
FIVE
JANELLE HAD NEVER wept when Bennett started school, not even kindergarten. And Bennett hadn’t been one for tears, not even as a baby. Today, with his breath puffing out in the frigid northwestern Pennsylvania mountain air, his cheeks red and lips already chapping, he looked as if he might break down, and that was enough to send Janelle’s heart surging into her throat.
“I’ll be okay, Mom.”
“Sure. It’s going to be a great school for you.” She nodded firmly. “I know it won’t be like the academy, but it’ll be great.”
“Don’t cry,” Bennett warned.
She’d always driven him to and from school. Montrose Academy had limited bus service, and Bennett’s after-school activities would’ve meant she needed to pick him up, anyway. Music lessons, sports and art classes, in addition to what the academy provided. No dance lessons; he’d never been interested in that. She’d spent hours ferrying him from one class to the next. Thousands of dollars, all to make sure he had every possible opportunity.
“And you get to ride the bus,” she told him. “That’ll be fun.”
His expression told her he didn’t believe her. The bus appeared at the end of the street and stopped at the intersection. For a moment it looked as if it would continue without turning onto Dippold Street. The first day of her senior year of high school, Janelle had had to run for the bus. She’d lost a ballet flat, had to go back. Everyone had been laughing at her when she got on the bus, red-faced and panting, the carefully tousled hairdo she’d spent an hour fixing a mess.
This time she’d called the school four times to make sure of the stop location so they’d be at the right place on this first day, but her heart still pounded uncomfortably until the bus made the lumbering turn and headed toward them. It screeched to a stop on the opposite side of the street with that distinctive braking noise. The lights flashed and the red sign flipped out to prevent the nonexistent traffic from passing. Bennett headed for the bus without a backward glance.
“Wait!” Janelle cried. “Do you have your...lunch money? Your gym clothes?”
She should’ve driven him to school, just this first day. Walked him to the office, made sure he had everything he needed. Switching from private to public school was a difficult enough transition without a cross-country move, including a climate change on top of it.
Bennett didn’t even look back. Janelle stared at the faces peering at her from the bus windows, and kept herself from running across the street after him. The bus driver waved. She waved back. The bus drove off.
That was it, then.
Her teeth were chattering and her fingers numb. The house would be warm, but before going inside she took the time to look up and down the street. Not much had changed.
Those Tierney boys, Janelle thought, turning to look at the big redbrick house next to Nan’s. It sat higher on the hill than hers. An intricately constructed railroad-tie wall had replaced the cinder blocks that used to keep the yards distinct. The same concrete walk led to the back porch door. It had once been lined with flowers, but now butted directly against the wooden ties.
And... Oh. Andy. He stood on the front porch, bundled in a bulky red coat, the fur-edged hood hanging down his back. He waved at her.
“Hi!”
Janelle tucked her hands into her pockets and quelled her chattering teeth long enough to cross to the edge of the Tierneys’ yard. The new winter boots her mom had given her for Christmas were too big, too heavy. In California, Janelle lived most of the time in flip-flops or sandals. Slow and unwieldy, she felt like she was walking on the moon, without the bonus of being able to leap and float.
“Hi, Andy.” Janelle waved.
He’d gotten older, of course, the way they all had. Yet she knew that face. The slope of his chin, his nose, the hollows of his eyes and cheeks. The silver glinting in his dark hair came from age, but the thicker stripe of white along the part hadn’t. That was from the bullet.
“You know me?” Andy rocked back and forth on his heels. In contrast to his heavy winter clothes, he wore bedroom slippers on bare feet. His ankles stuck out a few inches below the bottom of his flannel pajama pants.
“Yes. Do you remember me?”
Andy’s brow furrowed. “No.”
His lack of memory didn’t surprise her, but her disappointment did. Thick as thieves, that’s what they’d been once upon a time. Janelle and all three of those Tierney boys. She didn’t let even a toe prod the frosty grass of his yard.
“Janelle Decker. We—”
“Mrs. Decker lives next door.” Andy jerked a thumb at Nan’s house. “She makes the best cinnamon buns. But she hasn’t made them for a while.”
Nan did make the best cinnamon buns, that was true. Janelle smiled. “Yep. We used to go to school together?”
She let the statement lilt at the end, though it wasn’t a question. They’d done a lot more than go to school together, but their adventures had been of the sort you didn’t just quote casually on a January morning after half a lifetime. Andy cocked his head.
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember you.”
“That’s okay. It was a really long time ago. I’m Mrs. Decker’s granddaughter,” Janelle said, wondering if that would spur any sort of recognition.
No light appeared in Andrew’s eyes. No miraculous recovery. She ought to have known better, but was still disappointed.
Andy’s hand crept up to stroke along the white strip. His expression clouded. “I don’t... There are lots of things...”
“It’s okay, Andy. Really. You don’t have to remember.” Impulsively, she hopped over the invisible boundary between grass and cement and up the small hill to the porch. Her boots gave her plenty of traction so she didn’t slip. She put one on the bottom step and held out her hand. “Nice to meet you. Again.”
Andy took her hand gently. His fingers didn’t curl all the way around hers; his grip was well-intentioned but weak. “Meetcha. What are you doing next door?”
“I’m going to be staying with her.”
“For a visit?”
Janelle paused, then shook her head. “No. For a while.”
“You’re going to take care of her because she’s sick.” Andy nodded as though it all made sense, as if he’d just put together the pieces of a puzzle and could see that the picture matched the one on the box. “She has cancer in her brain.”
Janelle swallowed. “Yes. She does.”
“Will she die soon?” Andy said this so matter-of-factly, so calmly, that all Janelle could do was gape. He gave her that look again. “I almost died once. Did you know that?”
Her mouth was dry, but she managed to say, “Yes. I did.”
Andy’s mouth tipped on one side. He’d once had a brilliant smile, just like both his brothers—wide and bright and infectious. When Andrew Tierney grinned, he did it with his entire face. Or had, until things had gone bad. Now only one-half really moved.
“But you’re here now. You’ll take care of her.”
Janelle nodded. Her shivering had stopped with the uprush of emotion heating her from inside. Her cheeks felt flushed, her armpits sweaty.
“Good. I was worried about her. We used to play cards all the time, but not since she went to the hospital. I haven’t gone over since she got back, because Gabe says she probably doesn’t want to be bothered. I would help her, you know. But this—” he knocked a fist against the side of his head “—makes me stupid. I’m stupid now.”
Janelle wasn’t sure what to say. Nan had never mentioned playing cards with Andy. She hadn’t said a word about any of the Tierney boys in years, not since she’d called to tell her about the accident. Janelle suddenly felt dumb. Of course, Nan wouldn’t say anything about them to her, but that wouldn’t mean she didn’t see or talk to them. Or, apparently, play cards with them. They were her neighbors, after all, and in a town the size of St. Marys you didn’t ignore your neighbors unless you had some reason to feud. Nan would have no reason for anger.
And Janelle didn’t, either, did she? Everything that had happened was long past, and the man in front of her had paid a far greater price for it than Janelle ever had. There’d be no sense in holding any grudges, and it was obvious Andy wasn’t capable of it, anyway.
His brother, on the other hand, obviously was. Gabe glared, first from the window, then the front door. His gaze skidded over her, then went to his brother.
“Get inside here, Andy. You’re going to freeze your balls off.”
Andy let out a guffaw of laughter and charmingly ducked his head. It was hard to tell if he was blushing beneath the wind-chilled red of his cheeks, but Janelle thought he was. He shook his head.
“Gabe!”
“Get inside. Your breakfast is waiting. Jesus.” Gabe stepped aside so Andy could go in.
He did, but looked over his shoulder at Janelle. “This is my brother Gabe. Do you remember him, too?”
“She remembers me. Get inside.” Gabe waited until Andy had moved past him, then closed the door a little too hard. He stared at Janelle. He wasn’t dressed for the weather, but if the cold bit at his bared arms or feet, he didn’t show it.
Gabe also had silver in his hair, at the temples and dark stubble at the scruff of his neck. Maybe a glint or two in his bushy brows and most certainly in the tuft of hair curling up from the V-neck of his white T-shirt. Time had been good to him, and Janelle wasn’t surprised. Gabe Tierney had a face that could make angels weep and devils dance.
He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her. Daring her, but to do what?
“Hi, Gabe.”
“You’re moved in.”
Janelle glanced toward Nan’s house. She supposed she should start calling it home. She looked back at him. “Yep. Me and my son. Bennett. He just turned twelve.”
Gabe didn’t crack even half a grin. “It’s been a long time.”
She knew that well enough. “Seems like it hasn’t been so long. Not much has changed.”
Gabe put a hand behind him to twist the knob of the front door without turning. It stuck, so he pushed it with his foot, hard enough to force it open. He shook his head once, twice, slowly. “Nothing ever does.”
Then he went inside.
Janelle let out a breath that frosted in front of her face. As kids they’d held their fingers to their lips and exhaled, pretending to smoke. As teenagers, they’d actually lit up. Now she let the air in front of her face fog her vision for a second or two before she took her foot off the front step.
“Nice to see you, too.” More frost hung the words in the air, frozen. If she reached out, maybe she might’ve been able to knock them to the ground like something solid, but instead Janelle slipped down the icy hill toward the back door of Nan’s house.
On the enclosed porch, she stamped snow from her boots and slipped them off, dancing a little in the cold that seemed strangely deeper now that she’d come inside. Unzipping her coat, she went into the family room to find Nan at the table. There was no formal dining room in the house, just this overlarge space where they all gathered to eat every meal and watch TV or talk. Oh, and play cards, she thought. That was where they did that, too.
Nan had an array of bottles set out in front of her, carefully lined up on a small plastic tray, with the labels facing her. She also had a piece of lined notebook paper filled with looping, familiar handwriting. She pointed to one of the lines. “What’s this say? I don’t have my glasses on.”
“Let me see.” Janelle craned her neck to look at the paper, which listed different medications for high blood pressure, anemia, pain management. “This says you need to take your Ferradix in the morning with food.”
Janelle read a few of the other instructions, most stating the dosage for each pill or liquid, the time of day it needed to be taken, with food or without. It was complicated, the paper creased and the ink smudged in places. She’d have to see if she could rewrite it, maybe even type it up on her laptop and print it out in bigger letters so Nan could see it more easily. She watched Nan fumble with one of the pill bottles, the childproof cap giving her trouble. The bottle slipped, and her grandmother hissed in pain or irritation.
“Nan, let me get that for you.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Nan looked up at her with both eyebrows raised. “I can do it.”
“I’m going to make myself some breakfast. Can I get you something?” Janelle backed off, careful to tread the line between being solicitous and overbearing. It was a line she often missed with her son, but for the moment Nan seemed happy enough to accept the offer.
“English muffin with some peanut butter, honey, thank you. I made coffee. You can bring me a cup of that, too.” Nan sighed and looked at the bottles. One of them had a small cup tipped over the lid, like a shot glass, and she poured a dose of brown liquid into it and tossed it back with a grimace. “Oh, that’s nasty.”
The coffee turned out to be pitch-black and full of grounds. Janelle had yet to unpack her own sleek coffeemaker that not only ground the beans but also had different temperature settings and a milk frother, but seeing this mess she resolved to make finding it a priority. Nobody who liked coffee could drink that swill, and Janelle didn’t just like coffee, she considered it its own necessary food group. When she lifted the plastic top to peek inside at the filter, she found the basket overflowing with sodden grounds that looked as though they hadn’t been dumped in weeks. Digging a cautious finger into the mess, she unearthed a patch of mold.
“Nan,” she said in the doorway, careful to keep her voice neutral. “When’s the last time you made coffee?”
Nan looked up from a bottle she was trying to open. “Oh. I don’t drink it much, when it’s just me. Making a whole pot seems like such a waste. But now that you’re here, honey, you’ll drink it, won’t you? You like coffee.”
Janelle did indeed, but the stuff in the kitchen looked like a harbinger of the zombie apocalypse or something. A couple swigs and she’d become Patient Zero. Still, Nan had her pride.
“Something happened to it. I need to make a fresh pot, okay? It will be a few minutes. Unless you’d rather have tea?”
Nan looked thoughtful. “I wouldn’t mind a nice cup of Earl Grey, honey. Sure. But if you want coffee...”
“I’m fine.” She’d have to be, at least until she cleaned the coffeemaker or unpacked her own.
Janelle filled a teakettle and found the tea in the corner cupboard where it had always been kept, on the shelf above the candy jar. The candy inside, sour balls in multiple colors, had melted and stuck together into an inedible mess. Janelle put the jar in the sink and filled it with hot water, hoping to dissolve the candy enough to wash it. Behind the jar she found a couple bags of unopened candy, the same sour balls and starlight mints, along with an ancient package of gummy spearmint leaves. It was the candy she remembered from her childhood, and from the look of the packages might’ve been purchased that long ago.
“Nan...” Janelle, candy in one hand, went to the doorway. At the table, her grandmother had put her face in her hands. Candy forgotten, Janelle rushed to her. “Nan! Are you okay?”
She looked up, her forehead creased and her mouth thin. She looked unfocused for a second, then pinned Janelle with her gaze. Her eyes had once been the color of a summer sky fluffed with clouds, but they’d gone a duller, dimmer blue. Washed out, Janelle thought. Everything about Nan had faded.
Janelle took her hand and chafed it gently, mindful of the arthritis. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, I just got a little headache. My pressure might be up a bit too high, that’s all. I b’lieve I’d better lie down for a while.” She drew in a shuddering breath, but found a smile and patted Janelle’s hands. “It’s time for my nap, anyway.”
“Nan, it’s, like, eight-thirty in the morning.”
Her laugh, at least, hadn’t faded. “When you’re as old as I am, honey, your sleep gets all messed up. I was up at four this morning.”
At four this morning, Janelle had been tossing and turning, in the midst of a series of weird dreams in which she tried desperately to send text messages, but was unable to read them. She remembered peeking at the clock around that time. Maybe a noise from downstairs had woken her. Knowing Nan had been up and about without anyone else awake made her frown.
“You don’t want to eat your muffin first? How about your tea?”
Nan shook her head. “If I drink it now I’ll just have to pee, and I don’t want to have to worry about getting to the bathroom on time. I don’t always make it.”
Something twisted inside Janelle at Nan’s casual admission, but she didn’t let it show. “How about I help you to your bedroom and let you sleep, then.”
“I don’t need you to help me,” Nan said. “I’m fine.”
“Of course you are.”
Still, Janelle pushed back her chair and held Nan’s arm to help her up from the table. The chair legs caught on the thick orange shag Janelle remembered from her childhood. She’d get one of those plastic mats from the office supply store, Janelle thought as her grandmother grunted but finally shoved the chair back far enough to get up. Or better yet, replace the old carpet with something more up-to-date and salable.
“I’m fine,” Nan said in a steely voice.
Against her better judgment, Janelle let go of her arm. When her grandmother sounded like that it was better to do what she said. Janelle stepped out of the way so Nan could get around the table, her slippers shuffling on the carpet, then on the linoleum. She walked slowly, bent, but she seemed steady enough. From the kitchen, the kettle whistled, and Janelle followed Nan to take it off the heat.
“You’ll have plenty of time to get yourself situated.” Nan paused in the hallway, one hand on the basement door frame for support as she turned. “And honey, I’m so glad you’re here. So glad. You’ve been gone such a long time.”
I promise to visit soon, Nan. I promise.
But she never had. The years of phone calls, cards, letters, all the same. Reminding her she had a place here in Nan’s house, that she was always welcome. No matter how far she’d run—dancing as a chorus girl in Las Vegas or selling newlyweds their first town houses in California—Janelle had never been able to leave this place and that year behind. And yet she’d allowed herself to be kept away by what had happened.
“I’m glad, too, Nan.”
It was almost even true.
SIX
FIRST THINGS FIRST. That was the way to go about any set of tasks. One at a time, prioritize, get the work finished.
Or sit in the middle of the complete chaos that was your bedroom, with open packing boxes all over the place, and look at your old yearbook while you listened to records on a player that hadn’t seen the light of day since...well, since she’d left Nan’s house, probably.
Janelle had found the player and the milk crate of records tucked into one of the dormers. They’d belonged to her dad, though she’d made them her own during her year here. Lots of classic rock, punk like the Sex Pistols, some New Wave stuff including Siouxsie and the Banshees. He’d also had an entire shoe box of random 45s he’d bought from some discount store. None of the songs had ever hit the radio, at least not that Janelle had heard, but she’d listened to a few of them over and over back in the day.
“Don’t Get Fooled By The Pander Man,” by Brinkley & Parker. The black record with its orange label spun on the turntable as she flipped the pages of the yearbook she’d found in a box of books she thought she’d left in storage.
Oh, God. Her hair. Her natural color had darkened to a deep auburn over the years from the strawberry-red she’d hated as a kid, and she wore it just past her shoulders with a few layers around her face. Most of the time she pulled it back in a ponytail, low maintenance, wash-and-go. That’s who she’d become. Someone’s mom.
In this picture, she’d not only dyed it black but also cut it asymmetrically so that one side was shoulder length and the other cropped at chin level. She vividly remembered the mornings she’d spent with a curling iron, the barrel the girth of her pinky, and an industrial-size bottle of hair gel. All those hours she’d spent on her hair, her makeup, her clothes...
It seemed so ridiculous now.
The song ended and Janelle got up to take the needle off the record. She winced at the creak in her joints. If looking at the old photos hadn’t made her feel ancient, that crackity-crack of her neck sure did. She’d been at this since Bennett left for school, with only a few short breaks to check on Nan. He’d been home for about an hour, and from his room came the sound of much more modern music, some rap song she’d let him buy, but only the clean version. Ninety percent of the song was bleeps.
“Hey. I’m going to get a snack. You want something?”
Bennett looked up from his bed, where he was leafing through a stack of comics. The rest of his room looked as if a tornado had blasted through it. She opened her mouth to scold, but stopped herself. Pot, she thought, have you met kettle?
“Okay.”
“I’m going to check on Nan first. Why don’t you wash your hands. With soap,” Janelle added as Bennett hopped off the bed. He rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue.
Downstairs, Nan dozed on the couch in front of the TV. It was showing a religious program—at least there was a nun painting in watercolors, but she wasn’t talking about Jesus, so it was hard to tell. Janelle didn’t wake her grandmother. They’d have dinner in a couple hours, and by then Nan would probably be up.
“How about cookies and milk, buddy? I’ll make dinner in a little bit.” Janelle found the ceramic cookie jar tucked back in a corner by the paper towel holder. Nan always kept cookies there, a constant like the tides. Or political scandals.
The jar’s handle was a squirrel missing its tail. The paint had worn off its fur. Nostalgia swept Janelle again as she lifted the lid. How many times had she helped herself to cookies from this jar? Too many to count.
Inside were the homemade chocolate chip cookies she was hoping for. “Mmm. These are gonna be so good. Grab some glasses, bud. Get us some milk.”
“Should I take it to the table?” Bennett held up the two glasses he’d filled.
She thought of Nan, still napping. “No, let’s just eat them in here.”
Bennett looked around the small kitchen. “Standing up? What?”
Janelle laughed. “Um, yeah. Are your legs too weak to hold you, or what?”
“You always tell me not to hover around dropping crumbs,” he protested. “You always tell me to sit down at the table like a human being, not a cow at a feed trough.”
This was true, but Bennett’s prickly reaction was unusual. Janelle offered him a cookie. She wasn’t sure she could deal with a breakdown at the moment. Everything felt too close to the surface—the move, this house, the past rising up to bite her like a snake. Nan on the couch, so still and silent Janelle thought she ought to have checked to make sure she was breathing. If Bennett, who hardly ever gave in to an emotional display, started up, Janelle wouldn’t be able to help him through it. She’d dissolve right along with him, and probably worse.
“Cookie,” she said firmly, and handed him one. “Milk. It’s good, Bennett, just try it.”
The look of horror he gave her after he bit into the cookie he’d dunked in the milk seemed like a joke—until he bent, choking and spitting, over the sink. “Mom!”
“Oh, Bennett, c’mon. What?” The cookie she snagged was a little burned, but rock-hard. The milk would fix it.
Unless, of course, the milk was sour. Janelle spit her own mouthful into the sink, then ran the water to rinse her mouth. She looked at her laughing son. “You think that’s funny, huh?”
Bennett shook his head, but grinned. “Gross.”
Janelle checked the date on the milk. Sighed. It was expired by two weeks. “Was this open when you took it out?”
“Yes. But I didn’t do that to it!”
She laughed, loving him so much it hurt. “I know you didn’t.”
The carton was almost full, even taking into account the two glasses Bennett had filled. Which meant the milk had been opened but barely touched. Joey had told her that up until her fall, Nan had still been able to get around on her own. In the three months it took for Janelle to tie up her business in California and get out here, she’d assumed someone had been checking on Nan at least weekly—though seeing her now, it should’ve been daily. Janelle opened a pantry cupboard, studying the contents. Canned soups, dry cereal, plastic bins of pasta. The fridge was also crammed with plastic containers, but the first few she pulled out were expired, too. Clearly, she needed to take a good inventory.
“What are you doing?” Nan sounded hoarse, but her eyes were bright. “Oh, are you hungry? I can make some sandwiches....”
“Nan. No. That’s okay, I’ll make dinner in a little while.” If there was anything to make dinner with. “When’s the last time anyone brought you some groceries?”
“Oh.” Nan shuffled forward, paused with a fingertip to her lips, thinking. “That would be Deb and Joey. They came for New Year’s dinner. Donna and Bobby, too, along with the kids. And Joey a few days before that to bring me the turkey and my pills from the pharmacy.”
Janelle made a mental count. “So...a week or so? Did they bring you stuff for New Year’s, and other groceries, too?”
“They took me out to dinner.” Nan tugged at the fridge door, which at first didn’t want to give until she grunted and pulled harder. “I didn’t eat all of it—I brought some home with me. Where is it... Oh, there.”
She turned with a foil-wrapped container in her hands. “I had some spaghetti and garlic bread. I could heat that up for my supper, honey. You don’t have to make me anything.”
“Nan, you can’t eat that. If you want spaghetti, I can make some.”
She frowned. “It’s such a waste....”
Janelle took the foil package from her and peeked inside. “No, look. This is no good. You’d get sick eating it. And your milk was spoiled. I think I need to go to the grocery store. Like, tonight. Now.”
Nan looked briefly confused. “Okay, let me get my coat.”
“You can stay here.” Janelle tossed the leftovers in the can under the sink, now full, and pulled it out. Tying the bag shut, she bent to replace it with a trash bag from the normal spot. She looked beneath the sink, expecting to see bottles of dish detergent and other soaps, trash bags, a package of sponges. Nothing. “Shi—oot.”
“What? Mice? I had them come and put traps.”
Mice? “Good Lord, Nan, you have mice?”
“Well, no,” Nan said. “But I might get them someday, right?”
No argument there. Janelle checked for traps, just in case. She didn’t need one snapping on her fingers. The space beneath the sink didn’t have any. She took a deep breath.
First things first.
“Okay. I’m going to run to the store for some things, and tomorrow we’ll go through the house and make a list of everything we need, maybe take a trip out to the store together. How’s that sound?”
“Oh, yes, sure.” Nan nodded. “I can make a list.”
“But for now—” God, she hated talking to her grandma like she was a toddler “—I need you to just go back to the couch and relax. Bennett...”
She didn’t want to leave Nan alone, but leaving her with Bennett didn’t make Janelle feel much better. She’d only started feeling comfortable having him stay by himself, no longer than an hour or so. He’d been complaining about it for months.
“You have your cell phone. You call me if you need anything, okay? Go upstairs and clean your room. Don’t open the door for anyone. Nan, don’t you go upstairs, okay?”
Bennett apparently wasn’t going to wait around for her to change his mind. He took off at once.
Nan frowned, already shuffling back toward the living room. “Good heavens, Janelle. I haven’t been upstairs in months. Why would I go upstairs?”
Because Janelle wouldn’t be home and there to stop her, that was why. Because bad luck, especially of the falling-down-the-stairs-breaking-your-neck sort, didn’t just happen. It was almost always the result of bad choices.
Janelle grabbed her coat and keys and got in the truck, starting off without waiting for it to warm up. A block away, she let out a breath. Then another. Two deep, sobbing breaths that lifted a weight from her so devious it had disguised itself as maturity. Now she recognized it as relief, and it made her so giddy she almost ran a stop sign when her foot slammed the gas.
Three days, that’s all it had been.
Oh, God. How was she going to get through the rest of the week, much less a longer time than that?
California had never seemed so golden. So warm. So far away.
She parked along the curb in front of Pfaff’s, the small market closest to Nan’s house. She first checked her phone for the text or voice mail she just knew would’ve come in during the ten-minute trip. More relief swept her when she saw nothing. She dialed her uncle’s number. Deb answered.
Trying not to sound accusatory, Janelle explained the situation. Her aunt sighed. “She throws it away.”
“What?”
“The food,” Deb said. “Sometimes she throws it away, because she wants us to think she ate it. Or because she thinks mice have gotten into it. But sometimes she gets rid of the new stuff and keeps old food.... I don’t know what her rationale is, hon. She’s old and not well. And she doesn’t want us to worry about her, so if she hasn’t been eating—and you know she doesn’t eat right—then she tries to make sure we don’t find out. There were mice last winter, but Joey took care of them. I haven’t seen any signs since.”
Janelle pressed the pad of her thumb between her eyebrows. “Okay. Well...I’m here at the market, picking up a few things for dinner tonight. I’ll take her shopping tomorrow. Is there anything else I need to know?”
“You can use the debit card. There shouldn’t be any problems.”
Janelle loaded a basket with eggs, bread, milk, butter, flour and pancake syrup. Also a bag of frozen hash browns. They could have breakfast for dinner.
“You must be Mrs. Decker’s granddaughter,” the cashier said as she tucked Janelle’s purchases into a pair of plastic bags.
Too late, Janelle thought of the reusable tote bags she’d brought with her from California. She’d have to dig them out. “Yes. I’m Janelle. Could I have paper, please?”
The cashier looked surprised, but pulled a couple of paper bags from under the counter and started transferring the items. “I’m Terri Gilmore. Your grandma and my mom are in card club together. She told us all about how you were coming to do for her.”
Janelle smiled. “Yep.”
“And you have a son? Right?”
“Yes. He’s twelve.” Janelle took the bags. “Sixth grade.”
“You lived with her, didn’t you? When you were in high school.” The woman’s smile seemed a little wider now, but also a little less friendly. Kind of predatory, actually.
Janelle paused. “Yes. I did.”
“Next door to those Tierney boys.”
“They still live there.” Janelle kept her voice steady despite the stepped-up thump of her heart. “Well, not Michael, but...”
Terri nodded. “Of course not. But Andrew, God love him. And his brother, of course. And old Mr. Tierney, though I hear he’s not well. Not at all.”
“Oh. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.” Janelle hefted the bags and backed away. “Nice meeting you. I’ll tell Nan I met you.”
“Gabriel Tierney,” Terri called after her, the words as effective as a hand clutching the back of Janelle’s coat to stop her.
Janelle half turned. “What about him?”
“He was in your grade, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. He was.” They’d shared some classes. They’d ridden the bus together, though he’d sat in the back and she’d always preferred the middle. He’d always had cigarettes. Sometimes other stuff, harder stuff.
Terri shook her head, eyes wide, smile gone. “Shame about what happened, wasn’t it? Such a shame.”
The woman stared at her expectantly, as if Janelle was going to come back over and start to dish. Janelle shifted the bags again. She didn’t know if she should nod or shrug or what.
“Were you still here when it happened?”
Janelle had to clear her throat to answer. “Um...no. I was gone by then.”
“Oh.” Terri looked disappointed, then brightened slightly. “You know what happened, though, right?”
“Yes.” She knew.
“Such a shame. Such a sad, sad shame. To shoot your own brother like that.” Terri clucked and shook her head. “You give your grandma my best.”
“I will.” Janelle escaped.
At home she sat in the driveway for a minute or two longer than necessary. The little pickup had just heated enough to be tolerable, and she was unwilling to leave it for the cold. The family room lights in Nan’s house were on, but the Tierneys’ house next door was dark.
What had happened. Such a shame. Terri’s words echoed in Janelle’s head as she gripped the steering wheel and pressed her forehead against it.
Where you still here when it happened?
No, Janelle had said. But that was a lie.
SEVEN
GABE NEEDED A beer and bed, in that order. He’d scheduled several early appointments tomorrow, nothing strenuous or complicated, but 6:00 a.m. seemed to come earlier and earlier the older he got, even when he wasn’t out too late the night before. He’d have gone to bed an hour ago, but the old man had been wheezing and shouting at the TV, and showed no signs of wanting to turn it off and go to bed himself. Besides, Andy wasn’t home yet, and even though his brother didn’t need Gabe to wait up for him, he never felt right hitting the sack until the front porch lights were out and the doors locked.
Andy had called to tell him he was going to the movies with a couple of the girls he worked with, and that was fine with Gabe, because he could count on Tara to bring Andy home. She was a good kid. He’d worked with her dad at the Sylvania plant before starting the handyman business. It was the other two or three she hung around with that Gabe wasn’t too sure about. Giggly, giddy girls just out of high school, no college in their futures. They wore their skirts a little too short and their lipstick a little too red. They were the sort of girls Gabe would like in a few years when they started hitting the bars, but seeing them fawn and coo over his brother left a bad taste in his mouth.
Not because he didn’t think his brother should get laid now and again, so long as he was careful about it. Michael liked to lecture Andy on abstinence and chastity, but Gabe had made sure to hammer into their brother’s sad, broken brain the necessity of using a rubber, no matter if the girl told him she was on the pill or what. Gabe didn’t like how the girls treated Andy, as if he were stupid. They took advantage of his generosity, that’s what Gabe thought, and though he’d tried to explain to his brother that he didn’t always need to pick up the check, especially for girls who could easily afford their own popcorn, Andy didn’t listen.
As if on cue, the phone rang. Gabe checked the number—it was Michael. He’d have let it go to the answering machine, but the old man picked it up. The low murmur of conversation began from the living room.
Gabe cracked the top off a beer and sipped at it, savoring the cool sting. A cigarette would go best with the drink, but he didn’t smoke in the house, not with the old man’s oxygen tank ready to blow them all up with the flick of a spark. Besides, Gabe liked to smoke. He just didn’t like to eat and drink smoke, or sleep with it on his pillow or wake up with it. So for now, he drank slowly at the kitchen table and read from a battered paperback copy of The Books of Blood. He’d lost track of how many times he’d read it, but he’d had it since he was a teenager, back before the days of the internet where you could find anything you wanted with a well-typed search. Back then he’d had to special-order it from the bookstore at the mall in Dubois and wait weeks for it to arrive.
Janelle Decker had turned him on to Clive Barker’s books. Gabe had seen that Hellraiser movie, but she was the one who told him it had been based on a novella, and that there were other stories, too. She’d brought a box of paperbacks with her from home when she moved into her grandma’s house. Lots of horror, lots of historical romance, a few classics. He wondered if she still read the same kinds of books.
He wondered if she still loved to dance.
The light in the hall came on, and moments later the old man shuffled out in his bare feet, his hair corkscrewed into spikes. Without a word he dragged his oxygen tank toward the fridge and dug around inside, found a coconut cream pie Andy had brought home from work and plopped it on the table. He brought out two plates and two forks. He took his seat with a heavy sigh and sat there for a moment with his head hanging before he looked up, his expression strangely defiant.
“It’s hell getting old, you know that?”
Gabe wasn’t yet forty, but his joints creaked and his hair was starting to silver. When he looked in the mirror he had to suck in his gut a little more than he used to. He could only imagine what it was like for his father, who’d been an old man already by the time he was Gabe’s age, and had done nothing but become ancient since.
“So die,” Gabe said. “Save yourself any more trouble, and us, too.”
The old man snorted and dug his fork into the pie. He licked the tines and pointed it toward Gabe. “Maybe you should fill your mouth with pie. You won’t feel the need to talk so nasty.”
“I don’t like coconut cream.”
The old man grinned. “I know.”
“So who’s the second plate for, then?”
“For your brother, dummy.” The old man pointed the fork at him again. “He’ll be home soon, won’t he? Andy likes coconut cream. He’ll sit here and eat a piece with me. Keep me comp’ny.”
“What do you need company for?”
The old man paused with the fork halfway to his mouth. “Why not?”
When Gabe was younger, his father had spent time with his buddies in a bar or at hunting camp. Sometimes he went to play poker at Al Hedge’s house, though Al had died about ten years ago and nobody had taken up the game after him. And sometimes, when Gabe was much, much younger, his dad had left them overnight and gone to who-knew-where, but it must’ve been someplace nice because he always spruced himself up a lot before he went. Other than that, his dad had never been what Gabe might’ve considered the sociable sort, and time hadn’t improved that.
Gabe shrugged. “I just figured you liked sitting in front of the TV by yourself all day long. Why else would you do it?”
The old man said nothing for a few minutes while he decimated his pie. When he’d finished a hefty slice, he dropped the fork onto the plate with a clatter and pushed back from the table. “What do you know about me, anyway?”
The truth was, Gabe knew more about his father than he ever wanted to. More than he ever should have. “I know you spend all your time on your ass in that recliner, cultivating your piles. If you want company, why don’t you go out somewhere?”
“Where would I go?”
“Wherever you want. Go visit some of your buddies, go to the VFW. Hell, go to church.”
The old man hadn’t been to church in so long Gabe couldn’t remember the last time. Maybe when Michael had been consecrated. Of course, that was the last time Gabe had been in a church himself.
“Church.” The old man snorted, then coughed. The cough turned into a choke, which became a wheeze.
Gabe watched impassively, wondering if he’d need to jump across the table in a minute to resuscitate him. Wondering, if push came to shove, if he’d bother. The old man’s choking tapered off, and he gave Gabe a glare.
“Wipe that smile off your face.”
“Didn’t know I was smiling,” Gabe said. “Sorry.”
His father wiped his mouth with a paper napkin from the basket in the middle of the table. His hands were shaking. When he looked at Gabe, his eyes were red-rimmed and watering.
“You think I hate you, but I don’t.”
Gabe got up to pour his unfinished beer into the sink. “I’m going out for a smoke.”
“But you hate me.”
Without looking at him, Gabe pushed open the back door and stepped onto the porch. A light swung into the alley from a vehicle in the Deckers’ driveway. A few minutes later he heard the crunch of boots on the ice and salt. Janelle, arms full of brown paper grocery bags, made her careful and slightly unsteady way down the alley toward the back door. Her movements lit the motion-activated spotlight at the back of the house.
He watched her struggle for a minute before she looked up to see him standing there. “Hey.”
“Hi,” Janelle said quietly. She shifted both bags to one arm so she could open the door with the other. “You’re going to freeze.”
“Hot-blooded,” Gabe said without thinking, forgetting for a minute she was the one who’d first called him that.
She laughed, and it was just how he remembered it. Full-on, no holding back. She shook her head a little and pulled open the screen door, one foot on the bottom step. She looked back at him from just inside the back porch.
“Good night.”
She didn’t wait for him to answer. And Gabe, hot-blooded though he might be, was suddenly aware of the cold. He went back inside the kitchen, expecting to find his father gone to bed, or if not that, back in his usual spot in front of the TV.
The old man hadn’t moved from the table. He hadn’t eaten more pie, and hadn’t bothered to put it back in the fridge or take his plate to the sink. Neither was a surprise.
“I don’t hate you,” the old man repeated in a low, rough voice that didn’t sound like his own at all. “You always thought I did. But I never did. Maybe one day you’ll stop hating me?”
It was a question, but Gabe had no answer.
“I’m going to bed.” He didn’t point out all the hundreds of ways over the years Ralph Tierney had expressed his feelings for his sons.
Hate or love, either way, it was too late for whatever it had been to become anything else.
EIGHT
NAN HAD HAD a few bad days, but she was having a good one now. By the time Bennett went off to school, she had already baked a pan of cinnamon rolls from scratch and done half a book of number puzzles. She sat at the kitchen table in her favorite fuzzy blue housecoat, her hair covered by a matching bandanna tied at a jaunty angle.
“Helen will be over later to do my rollers for me.” White icing clung to the corners of Nan’s mouth. “We have card club tomorrow, you know.”
Card club consisted of ten or so women Nan had known since grammar school. She’d confided to Janelle that it had been months since she’d hosted her turn or even attended a meeting, but with Janelle here it made everything so much easier. And if it made Nan happy, that’s what counted, Janelle thought as she slid into her seat with a cinnamon roll in her hand.
Delicious didn’t do the roll justice. Gorgeous. Awesome. Amazing. “Awesomazing,” Janelle murmured, licking sweet icing from her fingers. “Nan, you’re such a good cook.”
“I should teach you how to make them before I go.”
“To card club?” Janelle asked.
Stupid.
Nan didn’t answer, just smiled and tapped her book with her pen, peering over the top of her reading glasses when Janelle licked her fingers clean. “Your daddy used to do that same thing. Lick his fingers instead of using a napkin. Didn’t matter how many times I told him.”
Janelle paused, then grabbed a napkin from the holder on the table. The question came out before she could stop it. “Do you...miss him?”
Nan took off her glasses and set them carefully on the table, then rubbed the small red marks they’d left on the sides of her nose. She tapped her pen on the puzzle book again. “He was my oldest boy, Janelle. Of course I miss your dad.”
“Do you ever hear from him?”
“No.” Nan frowned. “And maybe it’s better that way. When someone breaks your heart over and over again, sometimes it’s better to just let them go.”
Janelle had let her dad go a long time ago for that very reason. Until now she hadn’t ever thought about how it must’ve made Nan feel to have lost touch with her son. Until she was a mom herself, Janelle wasn’t sure she’d have understood. She couldn’t imagine letting Bennett go, not like that. She reached across the table to squeeze Nan’s hand.
“How about something to drink?”
“Nothing for me, honey,” Nan said, her eyes bright, but without so much as a sniffle. “I’m going to finish my puzzle.”
Ice-cold milk would be perfect with the cinnamon roll. Even better than the coffee Janelle hadn’t made yet because she was still looking for her coffeemaker. She pulled the carton from the refrigerator and poured a glass, noticing too late that the one she’d pulled from the back of the cupboard was etched and striped with dirt. So was the next she pulled out. She held it to the light, twisting it.
Filthy.
Bennett was in charge of loading and unloading the dishwasher here, the way he’d been in California, and for a brief, irritated moment, Janelle wondered if he’d been too lazy to make sure the dishes were clean, or if he’d been too inattentive to notice. Or a twelve-year-old’s winning combination of both.
She checked the dishes in the cupboard quickly. The ones closer to the top of the stack, ones they’d been using regularly, seemed clean enough, but some beneath were crusted with bits of dried-on food. Just a few here and there, but enough to make her stomach turn. The flatware in the drawer was much the same. Some of the pieces looked fine, but there were a lot of dirty spoons, and forks with bits of food clinging to the tines.
Everything would need to be rewashed. She loaded dishes in the dishwasher. Added the soap. Turned the dial—because wow, was this machine old. An hour later she checked it and found it full of wet dishes that were still pretty dirty.
“Nan? Is there something wrong with your dishwasher?”
Her grandmother shuffled into the kitchen doorway. “I don’t think so.”
Janelle checked the dial settings, thinking she must have chosen some Light or Delicate option. Nope, she’d turned the dial to Normal Wash. She opened the dishwasher. Closed it again. “I think it’s broken. When’s the last time you used it?”
“Oh...” Nan looked apologetic. “I just wash the dishes by hand.”
“But you had people over for New Year’s dinner!” That meant not only dishes, but pots and pans and serving platters and extra silverware. “Nan, you didn’t wash everything by hand, did you?”
“No, no. Everyone helped do most of it.” She nodded firmly. “And when they left, I just did the rest.”
“Oh. Nan.” Janelle sighed and opened the dishwasher again. “I think you’re going to need a new one.”
“They’re expensive.” Nan sounded worried.
“You don’t need to worry about that.” Though of course, she would. And it would require some discussion with her uncles, since this was an expense that fell under improving the house, and Janelle was only approved to handle the daily household needs.
“Maybe we can just get it fixed,” Nan offered hopefully.
Before they could say anything else, the back door opened. Nan didn’t seem surprised, but Janelle was still in the California mind-set—nobody left their doors unlocked, and anyone who came in uninvited and unannounced might as well have a target painted on their chest.
It was Andy. Today he wore a striped, long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, his feet in socks, not slippers. He’d probably kicked his shoes off on the back porch. He looked totally put-together, and if you ignored the thick white stripe in his slicked-back hair, hardly different than he had as a teen. He gave her that grin.
“Janelle! Hi!” He remembered her name this time, at least.
“Hi, Andy.” She gave him a cautious smile. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, he came over to play cards with me. Get me warmed up for the club.” Nan gestured. “Come on in, honey. Janelle, bring those cinnamon rolls in here to the table.”
“Your Nan makes them the best,” Andy confided. “I missed ’em.”
“You could’ve come over anytime, honey, you know that,” Nan said.
He hesitated, looking a little guilty. “Gabe said not to bother you. I sent flowers, though, when you were in the hospital. Did you get them?”
“They were lovely. And you’re never a bother. Sit down, honey. Sit.”
“Andy, do you come over to play cards a lot?” They’d spent hours, back in the day, playing poker for M&M’s or pennies. Andy had had an amazing poker face. They’d played other games, too. Bullshit had been a favorite. Blackjack. She smiled, remembering.
“Sure, whenever I can. When Dad’s napping and Gabe’s at work, and if I don’t have to work.” He opened the corner cabinet and pulled out the worn box filled with multiple decks of cards that had been around since Janelle’s childhood. “You wanna play?”
“No, thanks. I need to figure out what to do with the dishwasher.” She eyed him. “Where do you work?”
He named the town’s bigger grocery store. “I work in the stockroom. Or I help bring the carts in. They don’t really like me to bag the groceries because of my bum hand. I drop too many jars.”
She’d assumed he couldn’t work. Somehow knowing he had a job made Janelle feel better. Like you have the right to feel good about anything that happened, she thought. “Oh, that’s good.”
Andy’s laugh had always been as sweet as his smile. “It’s okay. Gabe says I should try for something else, maybe. But I like what I do.”
“Something else?”
Andy dealt out the cards, solicitously moving the pile close enough to Nan so she didn’t have to stretch for it. “Yeah. Like school or something. Maybe. But it’s okay. Mikey went to college. I don’t need to go.”
Janelle leaned in the doorway. If she was thirty-eight, Andrew would be thirty-four, or close to it. “Gabe thinks you should go to school now?”
Andrew shrugged. “He thought I should go before. But now, I don’t know. I can’t drive because of the seizures. Can’t remember stuff. School seems like a waste of time.”
Janelle kept her voice neutral. Gabe had always talked about leaving St. Marys. Becoming something.
“I’m getting out of here,” he says as the smoke curls out of his mouth. “Never coming back.”
She’s feeling lazy and hazy and has no idea what she’s going to do when school’s over, when she has to enter the real world. “What do you want to do with your life?”
“Just get out of here.” He’s dead serious. “Get away.”
“Did he go to college? Gabe, I mean.”
“Nope. He worked at the plant.”
Nan sorted her cards. “Their daddy retired from there, but Gabe wasn’t there for very long, was he? He started his own business a while ago. He’s a handyman, isn’t he, Andy? How long’s he been doing that?”
“Nope. Since...” Andrew frowned. “Since... I’m sorry, I don’t remember lots of stuff. It sucks sometimes.”
A handyman. That made sense. He’d always been good at fixing things. Breaking them, too.
“It’s okay. You and Nan play the game. I’m going to figure out what to do with this dishwasher.” Which first meant unloading it and washing the dishes by hand.
All of them.
There was actually a kind of contentment in it. Filling half the double sink with hot water and soap, setting up the drain rack. Taking the stuff from the dishwasher, biggest to smallest, and making sure each piece was cleaned and rinsed. Scrubbing at the dried-on dirt. It was the pleasure of a job done carefully and well, but there was something more to it, as well.
“C’mon, Janelle. Let’s go!” Andy pokes his head in the back door, grinning. “Gabe says he won’t wait anymore.”
They’re supposed to go out to the cabin in the woods to shoot guns. Snow day. Nan’s at work, and Janelle has chores.
“I have to finish the dishes first.”
Gabe wouldn’t put a foot inside this house, but Andy doesn’t hesitate. “I’ll help. It’ll go faster that way.”
And it does, even with the suds going all over the place, especially when Mikey’s sent inside to see what’s taking them so long. They pull him into the suds fight and the three of them make a mess and clean it up while they laugh and Gabe waits, stewing in the truck. He’s so mad he won’t talk to any of them until they get to the cabin.
She was nearly finished when Andy came into the kitchen. Without a word, he went to the drying rack and started putting things away, being sure to wipe the wet ones with a towel he pulled from the drawer. Janelle handed him a few forks she’d just rinsed, watching as he held everything carefully against his body so he didn’t drop it.
“How was the game?”
“Good. She won.” He grinned. “She’s napping on the couch.”
Andy’s phone rang from his pocket. He didn’t reach for it, though it chirped at him several times. At Janelle’s curious look he said, “It’s my brother.”
“Won’t he worry if you don’t answer it?”
Andy looked exactly the way Bennett did when she asked him if a teacher wouldn’t scold him for not turning in his homework. “I left a note on the counter. It’s not like I ran off without telling him.”
A moment later, the phone rang again. Andy dried his hands and pulled the cell from his pocket, flipping it open. “Gabe, I told you, I’m over at Mrs. Decker’s. Playing cards. Yeah. Well, yeah. Tomorrow at three, Candace said she’d give me a ride. Yes, I took them. No.” Andy sighed. “Fine, all right! I’ll get to it, I told you! Fine. Hey. Hey, Gabe?”
But apparently Gabe had already disconnected, because Andy shoved the phone back into his pocket. “I was going to ask him if he could come and take a look at the dishwasher.”
“Oh, that’s okay.”
“No, really.” Andy sounded eager, which also reminded her of Bennett and how he could be when he wanted something for some reason he didn’t feel like he could be up-front with her about. “He fixes all kinds of stuff. He’s supergood with his hands.”
She laughed at that, though she had no suspicions Andy was talking in innuendo. “Oh, I’ll bet he is.”
“He can fix a lot of things,” Andy said wistfully. His gaze went unfocused for a few seconds as he stared past her with such intent Janelle turned to see what he was looking at. Then his gaze snapped back to her face. “Not everything, though.”
“Nobody can fix everything, Andy.”
“Too bad, huh?” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Too bad.”
NINE
Then
“EVENTUALLY, I’M GOING to get a generator out here. Propane tank. Maybe some solar panels—I read in Popular Mechanics how it’s the wave of the future. Self-sufficient houses.” Gabe flips the light switch up and down. Nothing happens, of course, since the wires in the walls, which still aren’t covered with drywall, don’t connect to anything.
Janelle shivers. Her breath puffs out in front of her in a silver plume. “I can’t believe you built all this yourself. How long have you been working on it?”
“A long time. Years. My dad used to take me hunting with some buddies, but they stopped going when I was about twelve. And I missed it. So...” He shrugs, pretending it doesn’t mean very much. Anyone else would’ve made him feel stupid about all this, but Janelle never does.
“Is that a loft?” She’s already put her foot on the ladder and is halfway up before Gabe can think to warn her off. Janelle peeks over the edge of the railing, then twists to look down at him. Her giggle sends heat all through him, welcome in the unheated room.
“Nice,” she says. “Porn-o-rama.”
It’s just a collection of old skin mags and a beat-up mattress with a sleeping bag. A camping lantern. He’s slept out here only a few times. Eventually, he’ll make the loft into a full second floor, maybe with a couple bedrooms.
“Do you bring other girls out here?” She disappears over the edge of the loft.
He can hear her shuffling around up there, and goes to the ladder. “No.”
Janelle peers over the edge. “No? Really?”
“Really.”
She dangles her feet. He could grab her ankle if he wanted, she’s that close, but Gabe only climbs the ladder halfway.
“How come?” Janelle sounds serious, not smug.
He wonders if she’d have been jealous if he’d said yes. Sometimes a few buddies, sometimes his brothers. But no other girls. “There isn’t any girl I’d want to bring out here.”
“Seems like a great place for a party,” she says. “I can think of loads of girls who’d like to come out here with you.”
“I don’t have parties.”
“I know you don’t, Gabe.” Janelle rolls her eyes. “But if you did, you could have them here. Who owns the land?”
It’s a practical question, and he shouldn’t be surprised she asked it. She’s a practical kind of girl. “My dad. He started this place. It was really just a storage shed where he kept some hunting supplies. He always said he was going to turn it into a real camp, but he didn’t. So I did.”
“What does he think?”
Gabe climbs the rest of the ladder to sit next to her with his feet hanging over the edge. Below them is the square room without dividers, a space blocked out for a kitchen. He’s planned on a small camp stove, a propane-powered fridge. There may never be indoor plumbing—that’s beyond what he thinks he can do—but there is an outhouse in the back and he’s done some research into composting toilets. The work’s been haphazard, piecemeal, and cobbled together from scrap lumber and scrounged materials. It’s garbage, most of it, but he’s done his best and it’s not too shabby a job.
“He doesn’t know.”
She twists toward him. “What do you mean, he doesn’t know?”
Gabe shrugs. “There’s a lot the old man doesn’t know.”
“He doesn’t come out here anymore?”
“Not really. If he does, he’s never said anything. And he would, if he knew about it.” Gabe’s sure about that.
Janelle pulls up her feet and scoots backward. She stands, her hands on the railing, to look over it. From this angle, she looks so tall, but he knows she’s not. She’d fit just under his chin, if he ever hugged her.
She takes a few steps back to the mattress and sits. She flicks through one of the ancient magazines and pushes it aside. “I’m cold. You’re always so warm. Hot-blooded, Gabe. That’s you. Come here.”
The sleeping bag’s not really big enough for two, but they manage to squeeze into it, anyway. Janelle pulls the flap up over their faces like a tent. Other girls smell like perfume. Janelle smells of cigarette smoke and hair spray and fresh air.
“Why’d you bring me here?” She turns on her side, her butt against his groin, and takes his arm to put around her.
It’s easy to answer her when he doesn’t have to see her face. “Because...I thought you’d get it. You’d understand.”
She doesn’t say anything for a long time, so long Gabe starts to doze. If this was another girl, she’d expect him to kiss her now. With another girl he wouldn’t be able to sleep like this. His heat has warmed the air inside the sleeping bag, enough that a trickle of sweat tickles down his spine. She’s linked their fingers and put his hand flat against her belly, inside her coat, under her shirt.
“Understand what?” She sounds as sleepy as he is, and somehow this also makes it easy to answer.
“How it feels to need a place that’s only yours, so you never have to...”
Janelle takes a snuffling breath. “Never have to what?”
“Rely on anyone for anything. You know what it’s like to want a place of your own so that when everyone else leaves, you still have a place to go.”
She’s quiet for another long few minutes, so long he starts dreaming. When she shifts and rolls toward him, her head does fit right under his chin. His arms go around her. Her knee nudges between his. They fit together like puzzle pieces.
He’s wide-awake now, embarrassed to be wrong. His heart pounds. He tries to push away from her, but the sleeping bag’s too small, and Janelle’s got her arms around him, too tight.
He’s said too much.
Janelle doesn’t tell him he’s right.
But she doesn’t tell him he’s wrong.
TEN
AT THE KNOCK on the door, the old man shouted, “Tell them we don’t want any!”
Gabe, who’d been reading on the couch, ignored him. At this time of evening it wouldn’t be a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness, but that didn’t mean whoever was on the other side would be any more welcome. He answered it, anyway, surprised to find Janelle.
She wore a heavy coat, a knit cap squashed down over her hair, a long striped scarf wound around her throat. She smiled brightly. “Hey.”
Gabe didn’t open the door wide enough to let her in, and he didn’t glance over his shoulder to look at the old man, who shouted out, “Who’s there? Who is it?”
“Hey, Mr. Tierney,” Janelle called, peeking around Gabe. “It’s Janelle Decker from next door.”
“Jesus, don’t keep her standing in the cold. Let her in.”
Gabe didn’t move to do that. He stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind him. “What’s up? Andy’s not here.”
“What makes you think I’m here for him?”
“Because he’s been over there a lot since you moved in.” Gabe’s breath became smoke, and he wished it was from a cigarette. “Just figured you’d want to talk to him. But he’s at work until ten.”
“I know. I came to talk to you.” She bounced on the soles of her feet, still grinning. “You’re not going to let me come in?”
She’d never, in all the times he could remember, ever come in the front door. Always through the bedroom window. Once or twice through the back. Never through the front, and tonight wasn’t going to be the first time.
He hadn’t said a word, but her smile faded. “Umm...okay, well...I just came over because Andy said you could fix our dishwasher.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t wash the dishes. I guess if I knew more than that, I could fix it myself, huh?” She eyed him. “I could call a service center. I just thought I’d ask you instead.”
“Save yourself some money.”
Janelle’s smile tipped a little wider. “No. I’ll pay you. It’s not that, Gabe.”
He didn’t ask her what else it was, but she told him, anyway.
“It’s good to see you again. I thought maybe...” She trailed off, sounding uncertain in a way he could never remember her being.
He didn’t want to hear any more. “Yeah. I’ll come. Let me grab my tools. Now?”
“Sure. Or another time, if you want, that’s fine. I mean, sooner rather than later, obviously.” She bounced again, rubbing her mittened hands together and blowing out a steamy breath. “God. So cold.”
“I guess it would be, when you’re used to California.”
Janelle paused, tilting her head just a little. “You know about that?”
He’d said too much. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
He shut the door in her face. The old man looked at him expectantly. “Was that the Decker girl? What did she want? Why’d you make her stay outside? Ashamed of your old man, that’s what you are.”
Ashamed wasn’t the right word. Gabe ignored him and got his tools from their place in the kitchen closet. He thought about going out the back door without a word, but the old man would wonder, and it would be worse when he came back.
“I’m going next door to the Deckers’ to see if I can fix the dishwasher.”
“Oh, she crooks her finger and you go running?”
“Dad, please. Shut up,” Gabe said. “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, okay?”
The old man laughed heartily and pointed. “Maybe if I had a set of titties you’d be more interested in fixing things around this shit hole.”
Gabe’s jaw went tight, but he knew better than to rise to the old man’s jabs. Ralph Tierney wanted to be discontent and grouchy, and he’d always find a way to do it. Gabe lifted his tools in farewell instead, and left his father alone.
Next door, he entered a world of warmth and the good smells of something baking, and laughter. A boy, Janelle’s kid, slapped down an Uno card on the table and tossed back his head, his hair too long. He crowed with glee as Mrs. Decker, sitting across from him, fanned out her cards and shook her head.
They both looked up when he came in the door. Mrs. Decker appeared surprised, the kid only curious. Janelle poked her head around the kitchen doorway.
“Hey!”
“Gabe Tierney,” Nan said. “What on earth?”
“I asked him to come over and fix the dishwasher,” Janelle explained. “Come on in. Bennett, this is Mr. Tierney.”
“Gabe. Mr. Tierney’s my old man.”
“You’re Andy’s brother,” Bennett said. “He said you were good at fixing stuff.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” Gabe lifted the tools, uncomfortable under Mrs. Decker’s scrutiny.
She gave him a steady, solid look that made him feel like that seventeen-year-old punk again, the one defiling her granddaughter. He’d lived next door to Maureen Decker his entire life. She’d never been unkind to him, but she’d never been overly sweet to him, either, the way some adults had been while he was growing up. If “those Tierney boys” had ever curled Mrs. Decker’s lip or moved her to pity, she hadn’t shown it. She’d given him Popsicles and chased him out of her apple tree and put candy in his trick-or-treat bag. She’d hollered at him more than once, when she thought he needed it. She’d treated him like she treated all the other neighborhood kids, and Gabe had never forgotten that.
Janelle showed him the dishwasher. “It’s ancient. I’m not sure you can do anything for it, really.”
“I’ll take a look.” Gabe got on one knee and hunted for a screwdriver to open up the bottom panel. It came away easily enough, and what was inside wasn’t anything he’d never seen before. If anything, these older models were easier to fix because they didn’t rely on all the electronic bells and whistles the new ones did.
He was aware of Janelle watching him. Too aware. Her heavy winter clothes had been hiding a pair of black leggings and an oversize T-shirt cut at the neck so it hung off one shoulder. She wore thick, bunched socks and stood with one hip against the counter and her foot propped against the inside of her calf. It was strange seeing her as a redhead, even though that was how he’d always thought of her even when she’d been dying her hair black.
“Do you think you can fix it?”
“Yes. It’ll need a couple new parts, but you can get them at the hardware store. I’ll write a list.”
Janelle sighed. “Will they be expensive?”
Gabe looked up at her. From the living room came a burst of laughter that gave him pause before he answered. “Cheaper than a new dishwasher.”
“Yeah. Of course.” She laughed. “And better than washing all the dishes by hand, I guess.”
They didn’t have a dishwasher, working or broken, at the Tierney house. The old man had probably never washed a dish in his life. He’d firmly believed chores like that belonged to women and children...even grown children who still lived at home.
She was still watching him, her gaze a tickle on the back of his neck. Gabe carefully replaced the screws on the front panel and got to his feet. “Do you have some paper and a pen? I’ll write down what you need.”
“Yeah, sure. In the drawer.” She leaned past him to reach it.
She smelled good.
Gabe backed up a step. She noticed, of course. She was sharp like that. She pulled open the drawer, the contents rattling, and sighed.
“Huh, not here. I’ll have to get some from upstairs. Be right back.” She looked into his eyes when she moved past him, holding his gaze for several long seconds.
She’d been gone for only a minute when Bennett came into the kitchen. “Hi.”
“Hey.” Gabe looked up from the tool bag he was putting back in order. “Bennett, right?”
The kid nodded and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “I came to get a drink.”
Gabe got out of the way, shoving his bag with a foot so it slid across the linoleum. The kid took a glass from the cupboard, then opened the fridge to pull out a gallon of milk. “You want some?”
“Uh...no, thanks.”
“You want a soda? Or my mom has a few beers in there.” The kid gave him that same curious head tilt his mother had.
Gabe shook his head. “No, thanks.”
Bennett sipped some milk and licked at the mustache it left behind. “Did you fix it?”
“Not yet.”
“But you will,” the kid said.
“I hope so. If I can get the right parts. It’s pretty old,” Gabe said. “But...I’ll do what I can.”
The kid beamed. “Good. Loading and unloading it is my chore, but if it’s broken, guess what my chore is.”
“Taking out the trash?”
“That, too,” Bennett said. “But also washing the dishes. It freaking sucks.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Gabe’s mouth, though he did his best to keep it straight. “Hey, language.”
Bennett looked surprised. “You think freaking’s a bad word?”
He didn’t, exactly, and it wasn’t even his place to have said anything to begin with. It had just slipped out automatically. To his horror, it was the sort of thing his old man would’ve said. Gabe grimaced.
Bennett frowned. “Don’t tell my mom, okay? She’ll be mad.”
In high school, Janelle had had a vast and colorful vocabulary. It had included a lot of creative curses that went well beyond the normal four-letter words. Freaking wouldn’t even have registered on her radar.
“You knew my mom when she was little, huh?”
It was weird the way he’d echoed Gabe’s thoughts from just a few moments ago, and Gabe stuttered a little bit on his answer. “Um, yeah. I did.”
Bennett nodded. “Nan said you did. She said you’ve lived next to her since you were born. How long is that?”
“A long time.”
“So you knew my mom when she lived here, with Nan?”
Gabe looked at the ceiling again, wondering if he could just write down the parts he needed at home and give them to Andy to bring over. Hell, he could just go to the hardware store himself and buy them. He didn’t want to stand here talking to Janelle’s son about knowing her, but the kid was clearly waiting for an answer.
“Yeah, I knew her.”
“You went to school together?”
“Yeah.”
“Same grade?”
“Yes,” Gabe said, irritated now. “Jesus, kid. What’s with the interrogation?”
Bennett frowned for a second. “Sorry. My mom says the only way to ever find anything out is if you ask questions. I just wanted to know what she was like when she was younger.”
“So why don’t you ask her?”
Bennett shrugged. “Duh, you think the stories she tells me are the ones I’d think were more interesting to hear? Or just the sorts of things a parent tells a kid.”
“What kinds of things would you want to hear?” Gabe nudged his tool bag with a toe, getting ready to pick it up and make his exit.
“You know, the good stuff. Maybe you don’t know any good stuff.”
Gabe looked at the kid seriously. “If I did, you think I’d tell you?”
“Maybe.” Bennett shrugged again. “Andy knew my mom in high school, too—she says he did. But he doesn’t remember her at all. So I figured you must remember. Especially if you were good friends.”
“Did she...tell you that?” Gabe bent for the tool bag, hefting its weight so the contents jingled. “She talked about me?”
“Nope. Not really. But you knew each other. You lived next door. Went to school together.” The kid gave Gabe another of those curious head tilts; it made his hair fall in front of his face until he shook it out. “She talks a lot about her other friends. Mom says the friends you make in school are the ones you remember best, and if you’re lucky they stay with you.”
“Sometimes if you’re unlucky,” Gabe muttered.
“The kids here are dickweeds.”
Gabe shouldn’t have laughed; the kid was clearly serious. But he looked so much like his mother. It reminded Gabe of too much that had happened, and he couldn’t do anything but stare. Bennett’s smile, so much like Janelle’s, slid off his face.
“I’ve moved four times since I was born. Including this time, that’s five times.” Bennett ticked them off on his fingers. “We moved when I was a baby, two times. I don’t remember it. Then when I was in first grade. Third grade. Now here. I had friends in my old school, but I haven’t made any here yet.”
“You will.”
Bennett scowled. “I liked California better, but Mom says Pennsylvania’s nicer in the summer. And no earthquakes.”
The kid paused expectantly, waiting for Gabe to answer. Again, he had nothing to say. The kid was chatty. Weren’t kids supposed to be shyer than that? Most kids around here gave Gabe a wide berth.
“Bennett! I thought you were bringing me something to drink!” Mrs. Decker called from the other room. “Did you fall in the sink and go down the drain?”
“Just a minute, Nan.” Bennett filled a second glass with milk and put the jug back in the fridge. “Sure you don’t want anything, Mr. Tierney?”
“Call me Gabe.”
Bennett shrugged. “Okay, Gabe.”
That’s when Janelle finally came back into the kitchen, carrying a legal pad and a pen. Gabe saw what had taken her so long upstairs—she’d pulled her hair on top of her head into a soft bun that he knew from past experience looked casual and messy on purpose, but had really taken effort. She’d swiped on some gloss, maybe powder or something on her nose and cheeks to fade her freckles a little. Nothing major, nothing he was supposed to notice she’d done...but he did.
“Sorry it took so long. I have a lot of stuff still shoved in boxes.” Janelle smiled as she held out the paper and pen. “Here.”
In order to take it, Gabe had to set down the tools again. He did so quickly, ignoring the kid still standing there with the two glasses of milk, along with his mother and her makeup and her familiar smile. Gabe wrote the list, three items, scrawling the last so fast it was illegible.
“Your handwriting hasn’t changed much,” she noted.
“It says it’s a hose,” Gabe snapped. “Just look closer.”
Bennett took that as a cue to leave. Janelle looked at Gabe with her mouth slightly parted as though she meant to speak, but didn’t. After a second, her brow furrowed and her mouth thinned. She was pissed.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll get these things tomorrow. Maybe you can...”
“I’ll be busy tomorrow.” Gabe lifted the tool bag and moved past her into the living room, where Mrs. Decker was busy passing out cards.
Janelle followed him onto the back porch and beyond, catching him just outside the back door. “Gabe, wait.”
He didn’t turn at first, then did, slowly. “I have to go.”
“Just let me know when you can do it. I can pick up these things tomorrow and you can let me know. Okay?” She gave him a half-watt smile.
“I have a lot of jobs scheduled.”
“You can come anytime. I’ll be here....”
“I’ll be working. Or sleeping.” Gabe shifted the weight of the tool bag to his other hand. “Look, maybe you should call a service center. I’m not a dishwasher repairman. You should get a professional.”
“And here I thought you were a professional. What with your own business and all.” Janelle’s voice dipped the way it always had when she was doing her best to get her way. He hadn’t known back then when he was a stupid kid what she’d been up to, but a couple decades of experience with women had taught Gabe a lot.
He didn’t stop or turn again, but that didn’t keep Janelle from calling after him even as he hopped over the retaining wall and climbed the steps to his own back porch.
“I said I’d pay you, Gabe. It’s not like I’m asking you to do me a favor.”
There it was at last, the accusation he’d been waiting for, and could he blame her for sounding so pissed off about it?
“I only did it because you wanted me to,” she says. “Because you asked. I did it because you asked me to, Gabe! How can you blame me for that, when you asked me to do it?”
“Gabe!”
“Hire someone else,” was all he said as he went inside his own house. “You’ll be better off.”
ELEVEN
THEY’D MADE IT through the first couple weeks of the new school and new routines. Bennett was testing out of some of his classes but woefully behind in others. Apparently the academy had been great with providing plenty of alternative and arts education, but not so helpful when it came to standardized tests. Sure, her kid could identify a Van Gogh, a Dali and a Warhol, but he couldn’t figure out a word problem.
Nan had been in good spirits and perky, for the most part, but she insisted on doing so much for herself that Janelle felt run more ragged than if her grandma simply stayed on the couch and allowed herself to be waited on. If she wasn’t trying to cook something, setting off the smoke alarm, she was up at all hours of the night trying to run the washing machine or watching television with the volume set too loud. She’d lived alone too long, was Nan’s explanation, and she was used to doing for herself. At least as long as she could, anyway.
It would take some time to fully settle in. Janelle had expected that. She hadn’t imagined how exhausting it would be just trying to get into a routine that worked for all of them.
Tonight, Bennett’s own weariness showed in the faint circles below his eyes and the way he picked at his dinner. She’d ordered pizza, along with hot wings and garlic sticks and a two-liter bottle of soda. Friday night had always been pizza night at Nan’s house.
“How was school?”
He shrugged, silent.
It wasn’t an answer, but Janelle was too tired to push. She folded her slice in half to keep all the good grease from dripping out. “Nan, is anyone coming over?”
Nan had taken only a bread stick to start. She looked faintly surprised. “Who’d come over?”
“Betsy and the kids? Uncle Joey and Aunt Deb?” Janelle licked orange grease from the heel of her hand and gave a little moan of appreciation. Pizza in California was just not the same. On the other hand, she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to find any decent sushi in St. Marys.
“Why would they come over?”
“To visit?” Everyone had always gone to Nan’s house on Friday nights to play cards, eat pizza. Later, to watch rented movies on the VCR. The kids would play while the adults talked and drank beer. When Janelle was older, Friday night had still been pizza night, only the Tierney boys had usually come over for cards and late-night TV.
“Oh, honey, they’re all busy.”
“Too busy to visit you?” Janelle frowned.
Nan shrugged. “They have families of their own. It’s really too far to drive in just for the evening.”
Of course, Janelle had known that, but she’d forgotten what that really meant. St. Marys was at least an hour’s drive from Dubois, more on snowy, icy roads. But Betsy lived in Kersey. That wasn’t so far.
Nan picked apart the bread stick with shaky hands and put the pieces on her plate. She dabbed some marinara sauce next to them, but didn’t eat anything. She took a slice of pizza and began dissecting it the same way.
Janelle watched this carefully. She’d had a friend in high school who’d practiced the same sort of deception to hide an eating disorder. “Nan, if you don’t want pizza, I can make you something else.”
Nan frowned. “Don’t be silly. I love pizza.”
“Not enough to eat it,” Janelle pointed out.
Bennett, God love him, rallied and reached for another slice. “It’s good, Nan. This is the best pizza I ever ate.”
Both women looked at him. Bennett, unselfconscious, bit into the slice and tore the cheese from it in a huge, gloppy string that splashed sauce all over his shirt. He chewed, making snuffling sounds Janelle reprimanded with a look.
“Nan, let me make you some toast or something. I could heat up some soup. I have chicken noodle or tomato.”
Her grandmother shook her head, then covered her eyes with her hand, leaving her trembling mouth to show she fought tears. “I don’t want anything, honey, I just need to go to bed.”
Janelle’s stomach tightened. “Don’t you feel good?”
Stupid question—the woman was eighty-three years old, suffering from high blood pressure, anemia and a brain tumor. Chances were she never felt good. Nan shrugged without taking her hand away from her eyes.
Janelle got up and put a hand on her shoulder. “Let me help you to bed. I can bring you something in a little while, if you want. Bennett, finish up and then clear the table.”
Nan didn’t protest when Janelle hooked a hand under her elbow to help her up, proof of how bad she really felt. Janelle guided her grandma through the kitchen and to the hall, though Nan paused at the bathroom.
“I need to go.”
“Okay. I can help you.”
Nan made a noise, but didn’t argue, just let Janelle help her to the toilet. Janelle lifted her nightgown, helped her pull down her incontinence pants. The toilet had been fitted with a high seat and bars, but Nan was still a little unsteady as she sat.
There was no good way to do this, no way to make it anything but awkward. Janelle had changed her son’s diapers and nursed him through a variety of childhood stomach bugs, but that was completely different than standing in the bathroom doorway as her beloved grandmother groaned with cramps. Nan gripped the railing and turned her face.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Janelle forced herself not to cover her mouth and nose with her hand, but after only a few seconds, she had to step outside the bathroom. She closed her eyes and put her face to the door frame, but only for a second because Bennett spoke up from the kitchen.
“Mama?”
Janelle donned a smile, turning toward him. “Yeah, buddy.”
“Can I go play my game?”
“Is your homework finished?”
“It’s Friday,” Bennett began, then sighed. “After I’m done?”
“If you do it now,” she pointed out, “you won’t have to worry about it for the rest of the weekend.”
The toilet flushed, and Janelle peeked inside the bathroom. Nan was still looking away from her, frail shoulders slumped. “I have to help Nan now. Go do what I asked you to do, please. And we’ll watch a movie or something after I get her to bed.”
In the bathroom, Janelle stood for a moment, uncertain of how to help. Nan looked at her, and though her face was wan, there was a bit of a twinkle in her eyes. She gestured at the built-in wall cabinet.
“Baby wipes are in there, honey. We can use those.” The twinkle faded as her mouth turned down. “I’m sorry to even ask you...”
Janelle opened the cupboard, found the wipes. Shook her head. “Shh, Nan. Don’t.”
Nan gripped her arm as she moved to help clean her up. “Thank you, Janelle. For coming here.”
Janelle looked into her grandmother’s eyes. “I’m happy to do it. Let’s get you into bed.”
It still took much longer to get Nan ready for bed than Janelle had anticipated. First the meds, a plethora of pills from a small plastic case with sections for each day of the week, entirely different from the ones she took in the daytime. Then she had to brush her teeth, which she could still do on her own, but took twice as long as seemed normal. She had to put on her face lotion, not for wrinkles, she said, but to keep her skin from being too dry. Also a simple task that took so much time Janelle found herself itching to take over and just do it for her, rather than watching. She didn’t.
At last, Nan was in a soft flannel gown and tucked into the double bed that had been her wedding furniture, propped on her pillows, the lamp on and giving her enough light to read by. She held the thick hardcover in shaking hands for a moment before she sighed and let it sink onto the blankets covering her belly. She needed a lap desk, Janelle thought, but a pillow would have to do. She folded one in half and propped the book against it.
Nan smiled. “Oh, that’s so much better, honey. Thank you. I’m only going to read for a while, then go to sleep. What are you and Benny going to do?”
“Watch a movie or something.” There was laundry waiting, the kitchen to clean. But Nan didn’t need to know that. “I’m pretty tired, too. I’ll probably turn in early myself.”
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Megan Hart
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Janelle Decker has happy childhood memories of her grandma’s house, and even lived there through high school. Now she’s back with her twelve-year-old son to look after her ailing Nan, and hardly anything seems to have changed, not even the Tierney boys next door.Gabriel Tierney, local bad-boy.The twins, Michael and Andrew.After everything that happened between the four of them, Janelle is shocked that Gabe still lives in St. Mary’s. And he isn’t trying very hard to convince Janelle he’s changed from the moody teenage boy she once knew. If anything, he seems bent on making sure she has no intentions of rekindling their past.To this day, though there might’ve been a lot of speculation about her relationship with Gabe, nobody else knows she was there in the woods that day… the day a devastating accident tore the Tierney brothers apart and drove Janelle away.But there are things that even Janelle doesn’t know, and as she and Gabe revisit their interrupted romance, she begins to uncover the truth denied to her when she ran away all those years ago.