Flipping Fates

by A. C. Williams

  In only moments, Prisha and Nathan arrive too, each carrying their own sacks of food. Nathan has a box of cookies he’d picked up from one of the local bakeries. Prisha has a full container of spicy rice and yogurt sauce. Biryani, I believe, is what she calls it. She’d brought it to a group get-together ages back, and we ask for it every time now.

  There is so much food.

  If anyone ever doubted that we were Baptists, all they’d have to do is check out this spread.

  Laurel settles next to me. “How are you feeling?”

  I waggle my newly un-bandaged fingers at her. “Much better now that I don’t have to wrap up my hands like a mummy.”

  “Ribs?” Laurel indicates my chest.

  “Yes, they’re still there.”

  “Trisha.”

  “Fine.” I take her hand. “I’m honestly doing much better.”

  Aaron peeps over my shoulder. “Make her define much better.”

  I glare at him and poke him in the nose.

  My doctor had required me to stay a night at the hospital. Again. That had been a week ago. Really, I’d been fortunate. I’d only sustained minor scrapes and bruises from my altercation with Grant. The concussion had been the biggest concern, and that worry had faded with time.

  The most traumatic part of the situation had been telling Mom and Dad what happened. Surprisingly, my strongest defender turned out to be Gran, who had set her mind to making sure every person in the world knew that her granddaughter had duct taped a drug dealer to an RV floor so thoroughly that the SWAT team needed utility knives to cut him loose.

  And I’ll admit: The fact that there’s no exaggeration in that statement really gives me the warm fuzzies.

  Who needs to shoot anybody? Just attack them with duct tape. The hair will never grow back.

  Aaron unloads the picnic basket Mom sent with us. Bread and crackers and fruit in chunks. My mouth waters at the thought of some fresh apples, but my jaw is still too sore to chew most solid foods. Fortunately Mom included some chicken and wild rice soup, which is about the perfect consistency for me right now.

  Nathan and Prisha and Laurel fall into conversation about the house and what their favorite part of not having to work on it anymore is. I think somebody mentions the pickles, and I won’t lie, not ever having to smell that again is certainly a highlight.

  Apparently the anatomically correct wooden voodoo dolls Nathan had found under the kitchen sink fetched a high price at the Union Rescue Mission’s estate sale. I’m not sure if I am comforted by this fact or massively disturbed.

  A car door slams.

  I glance toward the street, and it feels like sunshine breaks over my heart.

  At the end of the driveway, Cecily approaches us with a canvas bag slung over her shoulder. Keith walks beside her with his hand in hers.

  Cecily is still dressed in dark colors, but her hair is down. And she looks happier than I have ever seen her. She’s practically glowing.

  “Keith!” Aaron jumps to his feet and reaches the slender figure, folding him into a big hug.

  Keith laughs and hugs him back.

  As Detective Maxwell had thought, Keith had been released from the county lock up shortly after Grant’s arrest and subsequent testimony. All charges had been dropped, and Keith returned to his position with the Union Rescue Mission.

  He settles on the blanket across from me. “How are you feeling?” His eyes look worried.

  “I’m okay.” I say. “How about you?”

  He shakes his head. “Trisha, I haven’t seen you since I got out. Did Grant do all that?” He gestures to the still-healing bruises on my face and arms.

  “Mostly.” I shrug. “But it’s really not as bad as it looks.”

  “Keep telling yourself that.” Aaron sits next to me and plants a kiss on my head. “Hey, we’re all here. Let’s dig in.”

  Cecily sits beside Keith and pulls some bottles of pop out of the canvas bag, along with plastic cups.

  I point to the sign. “So it sold?”

  Keith beams. “It sure did. For way more than we expected.” His eyes tear up. “The profit will help so much with expanding the Eagle Wing project.” He laughs softly. “And actually, some of the excitement helped spread the word a bit more than we planned.”

  “Really?” I grin. “So drug dealing squatters who pack porcelain dolls full of cocaine was a draw?”

  “It certainly was.”

  “Go figure.” Aaron snorts and hands me the thermos of soup.

  “People are weird.”

  I watch Keith as he makes himself a sandwich and says something quiet to Cecily that makes her laugh. He catches my gaze before I can look away and smiles at me.

  “I’m sorry.” I say it before I can stop myself.

  He blinks.

  “I don’t think I ever gave you a fair shake.” I glance down. “I kind of assumed the worst.”

  His smile is gentle. “It’s not uncommon.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  Now he’s grinning. “Life rarely is. But I accept your apology, Trisha.”

  “I’m glad we can be friends.” I sit up and unscrew the thermos. “I have a feeling you’ll be around a bit more.”

  He’s still grinning as he elbows Cecily, and she blushes.

  “You might be right.” Keith laughs.

  “So.” Nathan breaks in as he reaches for a handful of carrots. “Can I ask you something, man?”

  Keith lifts his eyebrows. “Sure, Nathan.”

  “What—I mean, what would you have done?”

  Keith tilts his head, and his brown hair flops over his face. “What would I have done?”

  “You were innocent, man.” Nathan shrugs and nods at the house. “You knew it. Almost everybody knew it. But if Grant hadn’t told the truth or if the whole thing had broken down, you could have lost your job. You could have gone to jail.”

  “But he didn’t.” Cecily says sharply.

  Keith pats her knee. “I could have. It’s true.”

  “So what would you have done?” Nathan crunches on a carrot.

  Keith thinks for a moment, his eyes distant as he looks over the face of the house.

  “I would have done—what I could,” he says finally. “I would have kept on being me.”

  I smile. “No fate.”

  He glances at me with his eyebrows lifted.

  Aaron scowls. “No fate?”

  Suddenly, Keith grins, and it warms me up from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.

  “No fate,” he says back to me. “Only choice.”

  I nod and lift my plastic cup of pop. “I’ll drink to that.”

  He taps his plastic cup against mine, and we both laugh.

  By the time we’re all done eating, I’ve laughed so hard that my ribs are aching again. Between stories from cleaning the house and cleaning the RV as well as the stories about selling all the dubious treasures we’d discovered, there was enough laughter that the neighbors probably suspect we’re drunk.

  “So get this.” Aaron wipes the tears out of his eyes. “The RV actually had a huge nest of mice inside its air conditioning system, and they’d been storing all that dog food inside the vents.”

  “No.” Laurel claps her hand over her mouth.

  “Yes.” I groan. “And whenever someone turned the air conditioning on—”

  “It spit dog food like a Tommy gun!” Aaron barks with laughter.

  “Poor Grant didn’t know what hit him.” I shake my head. “I think that’s what happened to old Wilfred too. He tried to start it up, and he got bombarded with kibble.”

  Keith laughs. “Speaking of Wilfred.”

  I turn to him. “Oh, no. What did he do?”

  Keith holds up a hand. “We actually connected with him after the police let him go. We were just trying to figure out what we actually wanted and if the house was really what he was after.”

  “Was it?”

  “Well, partly.” Keith shrugs. “But it
turns out there was a photo album that he really wanted as well, so we let him dig through some of what we’d salvaged from the house. He took away a bunch of things, and I think he was as satisfied as we could make him legally.”

  “Gosh, at least he didn’t want one of the dolls.” I shudder.

  “Right?” Laurel groans. “Those things were horrible.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  Nathan launches us into another story about the stamp collection he’d uncovered, and I finish my soup with a satisfied slurp. As the laughter dies down, Laurel and Prisha start packing away the remnants of our lunch.

  My knees are cramping, and I move to stand up. Aaron helps me with another kiss to my head before he and Nathan dive into a conversation about concrete.

  I stretch out my sore arms and shoulders and smile up at the house. When I’d first seen it, I felt like it was leering at me. Now? Well, with the sun shining brightly on its new siding, I could almost swear it was smiling.

  Not that houses smile.

  That would be creepy.

  Cecily comes to stand next to me as we regard the house in silence.

  “I have determined something,” Cecily says quietly.

  I turn to her. “Yeah?’

  She looks at me, her eyes livelier than I’ve ever seen them. “Being friends with you is an adventure.”

  I laugh. “That work for you?”

  Cecily turns halfway away and tilts her head up to smile at me. A real, genuine smile. “I would not have it any other way, Trisha.”

  I grin at her back as she returns to Keith and helps pack up the picnic remnants.

  Looking back at the house again, I fold my arms around myself until Aaron appears at my back, wrapping his arms around me.

  “You all right?” he asks.

  “I’m great.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was just thinking,” I say.

  “About?”

  I kiss his cheek and smile. “This house? It’s nice.”

  He sets his chin on my shoulder and chuckles deep in his chest. I fold my hands on top of his, and we stand there in the sun.

  Cecily had been right after all. The creepy orange house really did have good bones.

  Come to think of it, Cecily had been right about a lot of things.

  Herb Has a Secret

  One last gasp is all summer has left, and I’ve never been happier to welcome it. Of course, with the approach of fall, that means Mom is going to be all excited about her Halloween decorations. At our house, Halloween begins in September.

  No, the irony isn’t lost on me.

  My mother is the only pastor’s wife in the contiguous forty-eight states who loves Halloween enough to pack every room in our house full of spiders, skeletons, headstones, and witch hats. And she insists on full-size candy bars for trick-or-treaters. Otherwise, what’s the point?

  But before the great Halloween party begins, we’ve got one more family cookout.

  I slip through the back door and grin at the sight of my buddy Herb, chilling on the wing chair in the corner. Poor guy got lonely in my backseat, and after his death-defying sidekickery when Aaron came to my rescue, I figured he needed a change of scenery.

  Mom was actually thrilled. She already has a place picked out for him to be put on display in all his ghastly glory.

  I freeze.

  “Uh-oh.”

  Herb isn’t alone.

  My nephew Benji is on the chair with him, perched precariously between the skeleton’s legs. Benji recently figured out how to climb and has been giving his mother fits.

  “Well, what are you doing, pal?” I slid the grocery sack over my arm and hurry to snatch up my roly-poly nephew before he takes a tumble.

  He babbles at me, shaking his closed fist.

  “I totally hear you.” I say. “Old Herb is a troublemaker.”

  I set Benji’s feet on the ground next to his walker and stop again. There, sitting sideways in the basket of Benji’s walker, is one of the horrible ugly porcelain dolls. It grins up at me with its glassy eyes and painted teeth.

  “Oh no.” I step back. “Oh, what—why is that here?”

  Benji babbles again and grabs the doll by the hair. Its head comes off neatly and he shakes it at me.

  “If possible, I’m more disturbed now than I was.”

  “Trisha?”

  I look up as Lizzie comes in.

  “Liz, why does he have one of those horrible dolls?” I point to it.

  Lizzie laughs. “Oh, Trisha.”

  “It’s terrifying.”

  She shrugs. “He loves her. Takes her everywhere he goes.”

  “Of course he does.”

  Benji loves everyone. Even, apparently, horrifyingly demonic porcelain dolls.

  “Did you get the mustard?” Lizzie reaches for my grocery sack.

  I hand it to her. “Yeah. How are we on timing?”

  “Almost done.” Lizzie beckons me into the kitchen.

  I glance back at Benji and watch him shoving the doll’s head back on her shoulders. I can’t help but feel like this is the highest and best use for that ugly lump of porcelain.

  I join Ruth at the counter and jump in to help chop vegetables while Mom and Clara bustle back and forth between the kitchen and dining room setting the table. Lizzie resumes her gathering of condiments.

  The back door slides open with a wash of hot air and the smell of cooked meat. Dan and Bill appear in the kitchen with platters stacked full of burgers.

  Interesting that Dad and Aaron didn’t come in with them.

  My brothers-in-law carry the meat into the dining room, both of them laughing about something.

  “Yeehaw!” Gwen yodels as she gallops into the kitchen on her pretend horse.

  She’s still wearing the sequined cowboy hat, but she has traded her pull-up diaper for shiny pink cowboy boots.

  “Butt-naked cowgirl at twelve o’clock!” I shout over my shoulder.

  “Gwen!” Roger is calling from the front of the house.

  Clara doesn’t even acknowledge her. “One day, I’ll get the girl to keep her clothes on.”

  “Just tell her that cowgirls have to wear clothes.” Lizzie takes a pepper apart with prejudice.

  “Mommy, I’mma pony!” Gwen gallops around the kitchen island.

  “Oh, we’re past cowgirl now.” Clara rolls her eyes. “Now we just want to be a pony, and ponies don’t wear clothes.”

  Roger walks into the kitchen, looking hassled and harried as ever. “Gwen, come here, baby. We need to put your diaper back on.”

  “Pony!” Gwen shrieks, followed by a close approximating of a horse’s whinny.

  I say close.

  It’s probably a sound closer to a pig squeal. But, hey, the kid’s trying.

  “You should get her some coconut shells,” I say.

  Ruth groans in disgust. “If you start making Monty Python references, Trisha, I’m leaving.”

  I smirk. “Do you promise?”

  “Who’s talking about Monty Python?” Gran ambles into the room with her shiny new walker gleaming in the overhead lights. “That’s the dumbest show I’ve ever seen.”

  “Gran, you should be sitting down.” Lizzie comes over to her and takes her arm.

  “Nobody is in the dining room yet. I’m bored.”

  “Talk to Freeman,” I snort. “I thought you liked his jokes.”

  Gran pats her new walker with affection. “You watch your tone, Patricia Leigh.”

  “Oh, Gran’s pulling out the middle name now.” Ruth snickers. “Red alert.”

  Mom waves her hands as she steps over a very naked Gwen-pony and throws an irritated look at Roger, who is still trying to catch her.

  “Okay, everybody in the dining room.” She flaps her hand. “Trisha, go get your father and Aaron, and we’ll eat.”

  I wash my hands off and turn to walk into the den.

  “Oh.” I say, spotting Dad and Aaron already there. “Hey, I was coming
to get you guys.”

  Dad and Aaron are standing on either side of Herb as he lounges in the wing chair.

  Something isn’t quite right, but I can’t tell what’s wrong. Dad is red-faced like he always gets after he’s been hovering over the grill, but he also looks like he’s on the verge of bursting into laughter. His eyes are alive, and he’s grinning like a maniac.

  Aaron—well, something is off with Aaron too. But not like Dad. Aaron looks—worried?

  Gosh, why are men so weird?

  I shake it off. “Lunch is about ready.” I jerk my head toward the dining room.

  Dad pats Aaron on the shoulder. “Thanks, sweetie.” He kisses my head as he walks past me.

  I start to go back into the kitchen and glance back. Aaron hasn’t moved. He’s still standing next to Herb with a distraught look on his face.

  He shakes himself out of his reverie and rolls his eyes.

  “What is it?” I turn back to him.

  Aaron’s expression turns into something I don’t know how to interpret. It’s disappointed but happy, terrified and eager, and now he’s holding his hand out to me? I don’t understand him.

  He wraps his fingers around mine and pulls me closer.

  “You are never going to make this easy,” he says with a smirk. “And you don’t even have anything to do with it.”

  I scowl. “What?”

  He laughs again and folds my hand between his.

  “See,” he starts, “I had Herb holding something for me. It was pretty important, but old Herb isn’t the most reliable of skeletons.”

  “Oh, he lost it?” I chuckle. “Don’t worry. I’m sure it’ll turn up.”

  “Maybe.” He shakes his head. “But—I can’t wait anymore.”

  “Aaron, what—?”

  He drops my hands and cups my face in his fingers, moving close enough to me that I can only smell him.

  “You know,” he says softly, “when we were kids, I thought you could do anything.” He presses his forehead to mine. “I thought you were the craziest, bravest girl in the world. Know what I’ve learned since then?”

  I can’t speak. My throat is shut.

  “I learned I was right,” Aaron whispers.

  He sets a gentle kiss on the tip of my nose, and suddenly he’s not standing. Suddenly, he’s on one knee, clutching my hands in his again, gazing up at me with eyes that shine with tears.