by Jenn Bennett
It feels like the first.
And when we get off his bike and remove our helmets, he doesn’t seem to be anxious or showing signs that he’s been going through the same mental gymnastics I’ve been experiencing on the ride over here. He’s not even looking at my face. It’s like night and day from the smiling guy who met me in the alley.
I try to forget about it and focus on my surroundings. I can already see across the sidewalk between the house and the garage that the fenced-in backyard is packed with people.
“Come on,” he says, urging me forward with a hand guiding me behind my back—behind, but not quite touching me. “Remember the drill? Nothing much has changed. It’s a serve-yourself kind of deal. People come and go. It’s casual. It’s not usually this many people, so don’t freak out.”
“I’m not freaked out.”
“No?”
I glance at his tight eyes, and I remember what he’s said about me being a terrible liar. No point, really. Plus, it’s a relief not to pretend around him. “I’m terrified. Sunday dinners were some of my favorite times of the week when we were young. I love your family. I’ve missed them. But everything has changed, and I’m afraid they won’t accept me anymore. I’m afraid … What if they’ve seen my mom’s photo?”
His face softens. “They haven’t. You think my working-class aunts and uncles move in the same circles as the Goldens across town? They couldn’t care less about anything a dink like Adrian Summers has to say.”
I laugh a little, still mildly nervous but improving.
He knocks his shoulder gently against mine. “Don’t worry. They accept you, because I do. Nothing’s changed.”
That’s not entirely true. The first minute in the backyard is a blur: white fairy lights strung across the top of a wooden pergola; the scent of smoke, grilled meat, and garlic, and my stomach growling with hunger despite my rattled nerves; people joyfully shouting “Yiamas!” while toasting with plastic wine glasses; kids running underfoot. And between all this is Lucky’s name being called out repeatedly as he puts his hand lightly on the small of my back and weaves us between several picnic tables and too many patio chairs to count. He waves at people, nods his chin, laughs at a joke, but keeps leading me past pair after pair of curious eyes until we get to the boss.
Kat Karras.
Sitting at a table, she lifts her head to him the same way he does, a tiny nod of the chin. “Finally. What, you aren’t answering texts anymore? Was afraid you might skip out.”
“I don’t text while I’m driving. And I said it would be after seven.”
“Fair enough. You did.” She smiles and reaches up to pat his chest. “And you brought Miss Josie. Thank you for coming, koukla,” she says to me.
“Thank you … uh, for inviting me.”
“Things may change, but you’re always welcome here,” she says, sounding as if she means it. “Over the last couple of years, Diedre’s been eating with us on Sundays every once in a while.”
She has? Wow. Usually my grandmother will only allow herself time enough to microwave takeout and eat at the kitchen counter. The surprises never end.
“You’ll have to tell her you came next time you email her,” Kat says.
Hate to break the news to her, but Grandma and I don’t enjoy an email-friendly kind of rapport. Or a communication-friendly rapport of any kind, really. She hates texting. I only see her every year or so, and we barely hug. I guess Grandma and Mom’s relationship issues are like the flu, and they’ve infected me with it too; now we’re all sick.
“Where’s Dad?” Lucky asks.
“Minding the grill,” she says, pointing. “Hope you’re hungry, Josie. Drinks are over there. A million side dishes. Save room for ice cream. Oh, and steer clear of the blue casserole dish. Aunt Helen’s been cooking with her cats,” she whispers, making a face.
“Oh shit,” he says. “Thanks for the warning.”
She pokes him the stomach, making him grunt. “No swearing in front of family.”
“She’s not family, Mama.”
“Of course she is.”
I’m caught off guard by her words. She probably doesn’t mean anything by it—just something that rolls off the tongue. But it makes me long for something I don’t have, and now I’m more emotional than I want to be.
She waves a hand to her son. “Go. Say hello to your grandparents. Find your father. And Lucky?”
“Yep?”
“Love you.”
“Mmm.”
“My son, the poet,” she says, winking and grinning at him with obvious affection.
Over by the biggest grill I’ve ever seen, standing in smoke rising from hardwood and ash, we locate the shoulder-length, curly hair and bushy eyebrows of Lucky’s dad, who pauses grilling long enough to hug my neck but is too busy chasing flames with a water bottle to chat. Then it takes us a while to wind our way through the boisterous crowd to the food. I’m reintroduced to Kat’s sister. One set of grandparents. Three of Lucky’s male cousins. An uncle on his father’s side. His neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Wong, from across the street. Two kids flying paper airplanes. And the tiny black dog that I saw running around the boatyard office that day I walked by their window …
“This is Bean the Magic Pup,” Lucky tells me as he crouches near the small ball of fluff and scratches him behind one ear.
“Why is he magic?”
“We found him roaming around the boatyard, and no one claimed him, and my mom kept feeding him.… Go on—pet him. He doesn’t bite, but he is super gassy. That’s his magic power.”
“Ah, pass,” I say, holding up my hands and chuckling.
“Still scared of dogs?”
“Not scared.”
“Ever since that Doberman, when we were nine. The one by the school.”
“I hated that dog,” I admit. “It’s not that. I don’t know … I’ve just never been around any. Not up close and personal.”
His nose crinkles. “I don’t remember that. Are you sure? Never?”
“A few cats at some of the small bookstores that my mom’s managed, but no dogs. I’ve never really had a pet. Never been anywhere long enough, I guess.”
“Well, if you ever want to practice dog ownership, Bean is happy to oblige. And the good thing is, he’s got a short attention span,” he says as the dog scampers off, tongue lolling as he chases a paper airplane. “Come on. Let’s eat before someone else corners us.”
We pile plates with food—a mishmash of everything from spanakopita and moussaka, to pork egg rolls from Mr. and Mrs. Wong, and not one, but three kinds of potato salad—and find an unoccupied table. It’s a little awkward between us while we eat. We don’t have much to say, and it’s so noisy … so much going on in the small backyard. Conversations. Laughter. And it continues like this until one of his uncles—George, who is a little tipsy—trips over a water sprinkler. Thank God, because it attracts everyone’s attention, and Lucky finally breaks the awkward silence between us, reminding me of funny stories about Uncle George embarrassing himself at other Sunday dinners.
“You hate this,” Lucky suddenly says, toying with the tab on top of a can of grape soda. “Being here. You were worried about being here today, and I said it would be okay, but now you’re not talking, so I’m pretty sure you hate it.”
I think for a moment. “You know what? I actually don’t. It’s just that I forgot what it’s like. I’ve been used to just me and Mom. It’s been weird since we’ve moved back here for Evie to be added into the mix. Not bad-weird. Just …”
“An adjustment.”
“Yeah.”
“This is my normal,” he says, gesturing toward the yard. “Always loud, always people coming and going. At home. At the boatyard … You may remember that my dad also has two sisters and a brother, and they all moved into town two years ago, so I have a million cousins. Someone’s always needing something. Money. Help. Attention. Sleeping on our couch. Dinners. Errands. Favors. Drama. Babysitting … I get so tired
of all the chaos. I would kill to have the kind of refuge you have there. That’s my dream—living above the Nook? That seems amazing.”
“Seriously?”
“Hell yeah. Why do you think I love coming in there? One of the few places I can enjoy some peace and quiet and get away from my family.”
“You haven’t recently, you know. Been in the bookshop. Not since …”
“Well,” he says, shrugging as he pushes his plate away. “Been a little busy, chartering boats and whatnot.”
“And whatnot,” I say, smiling. I’m just happy that we’re talking, and it’s not awkward like it was when we first sat down to eat.
He glances over his shoulder, then says, “Hey. Wanna see something?”
“Are you going to show me where the bodies are buried?”
“I’d be surprised if there weren’t at least one.” He gestures with his head, and I silently follow him around the edge of the yard, through a pair of tall bushes, and into a side door that leads into the detached garage, where he flicks on an overhead light that takes a second to illuminate the dark space.
I look around while he closes the door behind us, shutting out the din of the backyard. It’s a one-car garage with no car parked inside, same as it always was when we came in here to play games on rainy days. But that’s all that’s the same. Next to the door is a beat-up couch and a tiny dorm-sized fridge being used as a side table, a stack of books and a lamp on top. But that’s not the bulk of what’s taking up the room in here.
Salvaged metal parts.
Everywhere.
Spokes. Wheels. Bars. Fenders. Pipes. Sheets. The walls are lined with industrial shelves that are packed with metal parts of all shapes and sizes. Metal hangs from the rafters. It’s stacked in the corner next to a large rotary machine that looks like it cuts or grinds—both, maybe. A large table in the center room stands near welding equipment; I recognize the small orange machine and nearby mask from seeing a similar one in use at the boatyard.
At the end of the garage, opposite the door, Lucky flips on a lamp over a workbench. Hammers and saws and a variety of strange tools hang from a pegboard. Rows of tiny drawers.
I look around in amazement, feeling his eyes on me. He doesn’t say a single word. Which is kind of weird. That’s when it hits me.
“This is your thing,” I say. “This is your photography.”
He nods.
“Metalwork.”
“Yep.” He pulls out the steel stool from under his workbench. “I made this.”
It’s not fancy. Simple, clean lines. And I can see where it was welded together at the joints. But it’s beautiful. And it doesn’t squeak like the stool behind the counter at the Nook.
Before I can open my mouth to say anything, he points to other things and explains what each is for and how they came to be: A basket-shaped dome around a light fixture that was once a tin can. A cage he salvaged from a crab trap that holds more scrap parts. A set of drawers from a 1950s paint shop that he cut up and reassembled. He melts down metal. Cuts it up. Joins it. Makes it into something new.
“You’re an artist,” I finally say, stunned. “Like me.”
“Craftsperson,” he corrects. “Small difference. I need things I make to have a practical purpose.”
“For the coming apocalypse,” I say, remembering our talk on the Quarterdeck.
He chuckles. “Hey, I like art, too. A lot. But this … is my thing. It’s just a personal choice. Like your photographs of signs. This is what speaks to me, I guess.”
“Hey, I get that.” I look around. “You rebuilt your motorcycle here.”
“Yep.”
“You weld.”
“I do,” he says, nodding.
I blink up at all the scraps of metal hanging from the rafters. There’s something else up there too. A sword. “What about that?”
“That,” he says, taking it down to unsheathe a rustic black blade, “is what I’m learning. The forge.”
“Wow,” I say, touching the pommel. “So cool. You can fight off zombie hordes.”
“Maybe slice off an arm or two before it goes dull,” he says with a shy smile. “Not that great at forging yet. It’s hard work. But really cool. You can hammer iron into anything you want, if you’re patient. Not sure I am, but I’ve got a good teacher. I just haven’t had time to take lessons from him lately, what with everything going on.”
Iron. Hammer. Forge. Anvil.
Blacksmith.
“Your shirt—the one you were wearing when you took me out on the boat …”
He nods and looks at me a little funny. Like maybe he’s surprised I remembered it?
“The blacksmith,” I say. “There’s a blacksmith on Lamplighter Lane with a wrought-iron wolf hanging above the shop. That’s what was on your shirt. That’s your teacher?”
“Mr. Sideris,” he says, nodding slowly. Squinting at me.
Why is he looking at me so strangely?
He’s making me nervous, so I scratch my arm and yammer. “My mom has this weird hang-up about Lamplighter Lane. Like, I sort of remember her mentioning it once or twice when I was kid, but she definitely freaks about it now. Anywho, she thinks there’s a black cloud over that street, or a portal to hell. It’s haunted? Something, I don’t know. She hasn’t stepped foot there since we came back.”
“Really?” he says, making a face and chuckling.
“You know how superstitious we Saint-Martins are. The whole romance curse and all.”
He sheaths the sword and hangs it back up on its hooks. “I’ll definitely have to tell Mr. Sideris about Lamplighter Lane. He’ll get a kick out of that. Maybe he unwittingly opened up the portal inside his forge. Hot enough, that’s for sure.”
Hot enough to burn someone. I glance at the burn scars on his forehead. “There’s actual fire in the forge, right? I mean, I don’t know anything about how it works, but it seems intense after what you’ve been through with the fire at the lake house that you’d …”
“Want to stick my face over a screaming hot inferno again?”
I laugh a little nervously. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“For a long time after the lake house, I wouldn’t go near an open flame. Totally petrified of my dad’s grill out in the backyard. Old Man Leary, who owns the store at the end of the block and always smokes those stinky cigars out on the corner? I nearly had a heart attack one day when I was walking past while he flicked a lighter.”
“Oh God,” I mumble.
“Yeah. Anyway, I was seeing a counselor at the children’s hospital in Providence a couple times a month, and she suggested I confront my fears head-on. What could be scarier than a red-hot forge that heats up to two thousand five hundred degrees? Surprisingly, it worked. Took a couple of tries, and I may have sobbed like a baby the first time. Don’t tell anyone.”
Little tree, big shadow.
“Your secret is safe with me,” I say, smiling softly. Then I glance at his scars. “I’m sure you get tired of people staring. They were all bandaged up when I left. It’s weird to see them now.” I scratch my arm and look at the floor. “I worried about you for a long time after we left town. Everyone kept telling us it wasn’t that serious, but I knew they were lying.”
He’s silent for a moment, then says in a quiet voice, “I’m okay now. They’re just scars.”
I doubt that’s true. I don’t want him to have to think about it again, so I shake my head. “I didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories or anything.”
But I realize as soon as I say it that they’re already there for him—he doesn’t have to dredge them up. It’s me who’s inconvenienced by the uncomfortable emotion of it all. It’s me who feels guilty that I wasn’t here for him to lean on when he needed a friend most.
I wasn’t the one who was on a lake vacation in Massachusetts with my family—who was supposed to be watching my younger cousin Chloe while my parents drove to the store. Who, when all the cousins wanted to go swimming in the lake, said it was
okay that she stay in the little lake house …
Who couldn’t swim fast enough, when there was a gas leak in the stove and an explosion.
He thought she was still inside. She wasn’t—she was fine, safe outside. But when he finally got to the other side of the lake, he rushed inside anyway … and he found nothing but a frightened, trapped black cat.
The same black cat that now lives in the boatyard.
The tattoo on his hand.
Lucky was traumatized. I think he couldn’t decide if what he’d done had been completely pointless or if the black cat was the most important thing in the world. Maybe both. He was confused and in a lot of pain. But I was a kid, and I didn’t know what to do or say to make it better.
And then came the Big Fight between Mom and Grandma.
Then we were gone. And Lucky and I were ripped apart. And I was alone.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. I know that’s not nearly enough, but it’s all I have right now.
Unsure, I reach for him and catch his forearm. Maybe that’s too intimate for former childhood friends? How we touched on the boat seems a thousand lifetimes ago, and perhaps all the meaning I attached to it was in my head.
I start to let go of him, but as my hand falls away, he catches the tips of my fingers with his and oh-so-gently holds on to them. I don’t stop him. Not when he runs his thumb over my knuckle, sending shivers over my skin so intense, I have to shut my eyes for a moment. And not when he dips his head lower, and I can feel warm breath tickling the hair near my temple, and it makes my own breath come faster.
I don’t stop him.
He’s the one who lets go.
And when he does … when he drops my hand and turns away from me, I feel an awful, hollow ache inside. But now he’s shut down completely, as if he’s pressed a button and erected some kind of electric barrier between us that I can’t cross. He’s turning off the light on his workbench, putting everything as it was, tidying up.…
“Better get back out there,” he says in a husky voice that sounds lost and cold. A voice that thinks he’s made a terrible mistake and is now overcompensating to correct it.
No! I open my mouth to be teeth-gratingly honest, but one of his little cousins bursts through the garage door, bringing with him the noise of the backyard and the little black dog … and all my honest words stay stuck inside my head.