by K. Webster
I pick it up and revel in the fact that it’s hot to the touch.
“Thanks, Torin.”
I’m not sure if he’s nearby, but I voice the words anyway.
“What’s this?” I demand as Tyler pushes a folded piece of paper across the table toward me after dinner. With his headache long gone, he’s back to his normal chipper self. Torin remains at the table long after we’ve eaten for the first time since I’ve been here. I want to keep stealing glances at the mystery guy, but I’m concerned about the paper in front of me.
“It’s a list.” Tyler lifts a brow. “Open it.”
I open the flap and stare. Ingredients. So many ingredients. “Ummm, okay.”
“Casey-Casey,” Torin utters and slaps the table hard.
Jolting at the sound, I jerk my attention his way. He snatches the paper out of my hand.
“Turkeycranberrystuffinggreenbeancasserolecornrollspumpkinpiemashedpotatoesgravypecanpiemacaroniandcheese,” Torin rattles out all in one word before slapping the paper back down on the table.
“Exactly,” Tyler says, grinning. “We’re making a list for Thanksgiving. It’s coming up and I want to make sure we get everyone’s favorites.”
I frown because Thanksgiving isn’t exactly my favorite holiday. Tyler looks downright excited about it. I fidget in my chair as I think about my past Thanksgivings. Cold turkey. Lumpy potatoes. Not enough to go around and be satisfied.
“Great.” I flash Tyler what I hope is a believable smile.
Of course he sees straight through me somehow because now his brows are knitting together as though he’s sad. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t have to eat it all. We can make some of your favorites too,” Tyler offers.
“DEVILLED EGGS!” Torin hollers.
I wince at his yelled words, my attention back on him. The normally stoic and troubled Torin seems excited. His brown eyes glitter with an emotion I haven’t seen from him so far. He may be all sharp features and frowns, but his eyes are smiling. It makes my heart seize up in my chest.
“One time, one of my foster parents’ neighbors brought over a sweet potato dessert. It was better than what I’d had before because they topped it with brown sugar and pecans rather than marshmallows. Maybe we could have that?” I offer, desperately wanting to make both of them happy.
“Sweet potatoes,” Torin whispers, his brown eyes snapping to mine and locking there. His hood is pulled up over his head, but he’s no longer hiding.
I blink at him, a deer caught in a pair of headlights. Having his intense stare on me is paralyzing. I’m so curious about him, but I’m also slightly uneasy because he’s so unpredictable. Regardless, I know more goes on inside that head of his than he lets on.
Grinning at Torin, I nod. “It sounds lovely.”
His lips twitch and then he slaps the table before bolting in true Torin fashion. Simply here one moment and gone the next. When I look over at Tyler, his features are haggard. Heavy tears sit on his lids, sucking the breath right from me. I’ve never seen him so upset.
“W-What is it?” I choke out, my own emotion threatening to pull me under.
He blinks away the moisture and glances my way. “He responds to you.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “It’s magical, Casey.”
I’m about to speak when he changes the subject, his happy face back on. While he rattles on about his mother’s cookbook, I study Tyler. He wears masks. He wears them for Torin and now me. For a moment, it slipped. Come to think of it, I’ve seen it slip a few times. Now that I know he’s wearing one, I’m ultra-aware.
Why are you hiding the real you, Tyler Kline?
“…and we’ll cook the meal—”
“Wait. Hold the phone. Did you just say we’ll cook the meal?” I blurt out. “Isn’t that what Ethel is for?”
Tyler throws his head back laughing and it does wonders to lift my mood. “Of course we’ll cook it, silly. That’s what Thanksgiving is all about. Ethel will want to have Thanksgiving with her own family, as will Ronnie. It’ll just be you and me and Torin.” His eyes land on mine. “My family.”
A softness settles in my heart. I’ve gone nearly eighteen years simply getting by. Floating along from “family” to “family,” never really settling on one. For once, I’ve fallen into a family that seems as though they want me here with them. Tyler claims it’s for the company. Maybe it is. Maybe he saw a lonely soul and wanted me to haunt this big, creepy house along with them. Torin and Tyler are strange brothers, no doubt. But I’m a strange girl.
We fit.
Truly, we do.
And I’m happy.
Doubt and depression and disappointment are no longer on the forefront of my mind. I don’t count seconds until my birthday. I’m enjoying life with these two.
“I’m probably a terrible cook,” I say with a laugh, loving the way my blood rushes through my veins on a natural high.
“Torin’s the worst, but that’s what makes it so fun.” He beams at me. “Will you ruin Thanksgiving dinner with us?”
I scrunch my nose. “You’re serious.”
“Deadly.”
“We’re not ruining Thanksgiving dinner,” I tell him haughtily. “Not if I’m actually going to be a part of this.”
Tyler leans back in his chair and his brown eyes twinkle with delight. “You know how to cook?”
I arch a brow. “Nope, but I’m a quick learner.”
“Good girl. Meet me in my office. We’ll look up recipes there.”
He rises and strides from the dining room with a pep in his step.
I’m making these people happy. Me. Cocaine Casey. The baby girl left in the snow because her mother was too cracked out to care for her. Foster kid with an annoying habit of making obnoxious sounds and saying inappropriate things.
Perhaps my future isn’t on the other side of eighteen, on the other side of the country.
Perhaps my future is right here on this side of eighteen and inside this house.
I push the chair back and skip along the dark hallways, picking up pennies along the way.
Thank you, Torin.
I have a family Thanksgiving dinner to plan.
Today is a great day to start.
From across my desk, Casey sits in the chair, scribbling words down on her notebook. She’s taking this whole Thanksgiving dinner seriously. Ever since I mentioned it a couple of days ago, she’s downloaded recipes and started making a grocery list. For someone who suffers from ADHD, she can certainly focus when it interests her. It reminds me so much of Torin, I can’t help but smile at her.
“You’ve been here a week now. We should celebrate,” I tell her.
She looks up from her notebook and regards me with a curious expression. “Celebrate how?”
“Order pizza and watch movies later?” I suggest.
Her lips quirk on one side. “As long as we watch something super scary, I’m game. Also, if you put bell peppers on my pizza, you die.”
I chuckle. “Noted, princess. Any other requests?”
She lifts her chin and chews on the end of her pencil. Today, she’s cute as can be in an oversized pink hoodie and messy blond hair. It was, at one point, pulled into a bun, but now the hairs have fallen from their place and frame her face. Sometimes, like a damn creeper, I find myself lost in staring at her. I have such hope when I look at her. I see a future. A wife, children, a successful woman. My heart, broken and hollowed out most days, throbs back to life. The kindness that shines in her eyes is addictive. I want to drink straight from the source.
“Yo, creeper, you’re doing that weird staring thing again,” she says, her tone filled with amusement.
I blink away my daze. “Yeah, sorry. We’ll order pizza later. I actually wanted to show you something today.”
She perks up, her undivided attention on me.
“Roll your chair over here so you can see my computer,” I instruct.
Curious, s
he drags the chair until she’s beside me. “Now what?”
“This is a map of the property we’re buying in Oklahoma.” I point out three locations. “We’ll drill here, here, and here.”
“Your fortune,” she says, remembering our conversation a few days ago.
“Exactly.”
“Cool, man. Do you like pecan pie with chocolate chips in it? I saw a recipe for it and it looks to die for. Not gonna lie.” Her attention is back on her notebook, clearly bored already.
“Sure. Now look at this.”
Frowning, she glances at me in confusion before looking at the screen. I flit through mountains of documentation. Spreadsheets with geological and historical data on it. Land records from previous owners. Seismic activity graphs.
“It’s overwhelming, I know,” I tell her. “But I wanted to let you know Torin compiled this for me.”
She drops her pencil on the table. “What?” Now I have her attention.
“Torin and I are business partners.”
“But…he…”
“Doesn’t seem intelligent?” I quip. I’m not faulting her. It’s a common misconception. No different than the people who assume she’s disrespectful white trash because of the way she dresses or acts. People don’t know what goes on inside their heads. They are complicated individuals.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” she mutters. “He just…I honestly don’t know what to think about him.”
I reach for her hand and clutch it. “It’s fine. He’s a hard nut to crack. I get it. I just wanted you to know he’s smart. A helluva lot smarter than I am.”
Popping open my email, I find an unopened one from Torin. It’s one of the few things that keeps me sane—me being able to correspond with him in this way.
Ty—I read over the appraisal. Aside from an easement issue that might cause an annoyance later down the road for aesthetic purposes if they choose to plant down some powerlines, I’d say it looks fine. Land value is well over asking price and it’s not in a flood zone. I’m glad you found it before anyone else did. I’ve run the numbers. We’ll make a fuck-ton of money once we start drilling.—Torin
“Torin wrote that?” she asks, her voice small and unsure.
“He just doesn’t verbalize himself well.”
“I know you evaded the question before,” she says slowly, carefully considering her words. “Is he diagnosed with anything?”
I grit my teeth and nod. “He’s considered a high-functioning autistic individual. Torin could live out on his own if he wished. He can work and take care of himself. But he doesn’t have to because he has me.” I scrub at my face with my palm before regarding her with a sad stare. Those aren’t the only reasons I selfishly keep him here with me. “Certain therapies work better than others. It’s all about trial and error. Torin goes through spells. Sometimes, he’s rather talkative and seems in control. I can almost read his emotions on his features then. Other times, his body traps his mind. Like he’s a prisoner and can’t escape. When he was a kid, he was difficult to understand and handle. Dad bounced around from doctor to doctor after Mom died, trying to help my brother. Over the years, Torin got better when we started seeing Dr. McCarthy. His doctor retired, though, right around the time Dad passed away. We’ve been with Dr. Cohen ever since, but he’s progressively gone downhill.”
“Dr. Cohen is an idiot,” she tells me, her voice clipped. “Just saying.”
I let out a sigh. “I’ve been looking into others. I’ll make it my utmost priority, though. Maybe once you turn eighteen, if you don’t like her, you could switch also.”
She starts tapping her pencil on the desk. Taptaptaptaptaptaptap. “Nope. When I turn eighteen, I’m out of here.”
I stiffen at her words. “Out of where?”
Her eyes flicker to mine. Guilt dances in her blues. “Forget it.”
I want to beg her to promise me she’ll stay, but I don’t. Ignoring the tension creeping up the back of my neck and snaking its tentacles around my skull, I respond to my brother.
Thanks for the info. Send me any new details. Now that the Oklahoma property is rolling, I think I’m going to look at the North Dakota land again. The contract who beat out our bid fell through. What do you think?
He responds quickly.
I’ll run new numbers. Keep your finger off the trigger. I didn’t feel good about it before and I’m not overly excited about it now.
I reply back.
I’ll await your analysis. We’re having pizza and watching movies tonight. Casey wants to watch something scary.
Immediately, he responds.
The Boy. Annabel. IT. The Conjuring. Sinister. It Follows. Saw. The Ring. Poltergeist. 28 Days Later. Those will scare the shit out of her.
She giggles. “This is so weird.”
“It’s how I talk to my brother.”
“Can I talk to him too?”
My chest is on the verge of exploding. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“I see,” I mutter into the line. The private investigator I’d hired—a longtime friend of my father’s—is doing his job well. I paid a lot of money for him to look into certain things. He’s not just looking into them, he’s dissecting them piece by piece. I don’t like the pieces, but I need them. He handed over an old file the day we ran into Casey—the day Torin truly looked at her. I’d been shocked about her poor life, but it just solidified how much we need her. How much she needed us.
Protect her. Protect her. You must protect her.
“What do you want me to do now?” he asks with a grunt.
“Keep watching.”
“I’m pretty expensive to pay to just sit around.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m not paying you to sit around. I’m paying you to keep watching.”
He chuckles, his voice raspy from years of smoking. “Too bad my other clients aren’t this easy.”
“I want every single dirty piece of information. I want it all.”
“What will you do with this information?”
I scrub at my jaw with my hand. “I’ll save it for a rainy day.”
I programmed Torin’s number into Casey’s phone, but she still hasn’t messaged him. We’d gone on to discuss Thanksgiving in great detail until I had to lie down to get rid of the migraine I was dealing with. Now, after a handful of pain pills and pizza in my belly, all is right again in my world. A horror flick plays on the screen. Casey watches with wide eyes under a blanket on the end of the couch, and Torin stares at her.
I stare at Torin.
His hood—or armor as I like to tease—is in place. He grits his teeth and his nostrils flare. Unusual for my brother, he’s completely still. No moving or twitching or fussing.
Just staring.
“Gross,” Casey groans as she pops another Skittle in her mouth. “That’s nasty.”
I smirk, giving the movie, Saw, three seconds of my attention before regarding my brother again. His features have softened almost imperceptibly, but of course I notice. I can tell by the way he darts his gaze all over her that he’s trying to understand her.
“Want some?” she questions as she pours some into her hand and offers them to me.
“I’m good. Torin might want some.” A little push, just to see.
She rises from the couch and waltzes over to Torin, her attention still on the screen. When he seizes her wrist, lightning quick, she cries out in surprise. Her entire body is tense as though she wants to bolt from his grasp. But instead of pulling away, she allows him to turn her wrist to pour the Tropical Skittles into his palm.
“Yellow and blue.”
She nods and plucks the other colors from his palm, leaving only the colors he requested. Torin doesn’t even like Skittles. I wonder what his play is. It’s times like these I wish I could understand his brain. She walks back over to the couch and settles before pulling the blanket back into her lap. Torin watches her like a hawk, his palm still held out with the blue and yellow candies in it. I pick up my phone
and text him.
Me: Blue and yellow? I thought you were a Fireball fan, not Skittles.
Upon realizing his phone is buzzing, he pockets the candy before looking at his phone. His expression remains the same. Cool. Emotionless. Empty.
Torin: Blue like her eyes. Yellow like her hair. Fireball is still my favorite candy.
I arch a brow at him, but he never looks my way. His eyes are on his screen as if he’s desperately awaiting my response.
Me: She’s pretty.
Torin: I wouldn’t say that.
Disappointment surges through me before I realize just because I describe her one way it doesn’t mean he would describe her the same.
Me: What WOULD you say then, brother?
She laughs at the movie. “Oh my God, she seriously did not just fall.”
Torin: I’d say her laugh is soft like a feather fluttering along a porch floor. You want to pick it up and touch it, but you don’t want to ruin its journey. It’s perfect as it moves along, undisturbed. The sound is one that can’t be described. It just is. A sound that finds its way down into the very marrow of your bones. Roots inside and lives there. Quivers and quakes—a constant reminder that it’s there.
My chest squeezes at his words.
Me: And still, you avoid the question. Do you think she’s pretty?
When I look up, he’s staring at her once more. His hand is fisted and the muscles in his neck flex. Finally, he turns his attention to his phone to reply.
Torin: Pretty is one word and she is many. Beautiful. Alluring. Appealing. Charming. Cute. Dazzling. Delicate. Delightful. Elegant. Exquisite. Fascinating. Fine. Gorgeous. Graceful. Lovely. Magnificent. Marvelous. Pleasing. Splendid. Stunning. Wonderful. Superb. Angelic. Bewitching. Classy. Divine. Excellent. Enticing. Foxy. Fair. Pulchritudinous. Radiant. Ravishing. Resplendent. Shapely. Beautiful.