“What if something goes wrong with the baby? What if it needs special care or something?”
“If that happens, we’ll deal with it. But you’re still not giving me anything concrete or immediate.”
“Well, I’m not sure I accept your criteria for things I should be allowed to panic about.”
“No, of course you can panic about anything you want. You just can’t expect me to take it seriously.”
“I’m panicking because there’s a new person on the way, a person I’m going to have to take care of, and I’m really not sure I’m ready for that. I’m—well, I’m still essentially a child myself. Aren’t I? I’m too young for all this responsibility.”
Ben leaned back in his chair and lifted his feet back up to the railing. “And how old are you, exactly? I know, we’re the same age, but—”
“Seventeen,” Seth said firmly. “I’m not sure about chronological age—I refuse to be limited by some arbitrary system of dates and measures. My mental age, though? Seventeen.”
“You are a horribly boring seventeen-year-old. When you were chronologically seventeen, if you’d looked at this current version of yourself, you’d have been very, very disappointed.”
“No Ferrari,” Seth agreed morosely.
“Minimal exposure to random hot chicks. I mean, Dinah’s lovely, but there’s only one of her.”
“Job’s not bad. I should be spending more time working on race cars, less time changing the oil on family SUVs, but… seventeen-year-old me wouldn’t hate my job.”
“Leisure time’s a bit lame,” Ben declared. “No clubbing, no wild adventures on ATVs or speedboats. Just hanging out with—well. With someone you hung out with when you were seventeen. So that’s got to be all right, surely.”
“Nah. When I was—when we were—seventeen, we didn’t expect you to stick around. Seventeen-year-old me would be pissed that you hadn’t gone off on your travel adventures.”
“I travel!” Ben protested.
“Going to the Czech Republic for a couple weeks four years ago does not count as having travel adventures. And neither does driving down to Florida every other Christmas.”
“I’m not sure I accept your criteria for what I can count toward my travel adventures.”
“When we were seventeen you were going to live abroad. You were going to teach in different countries or be a travel writer or—”
Ben didn’t want to play this game anymore. “You’re a good dad now, with one kid. You’ll be a good dad when you have two kids.”
But of course that shift was too sudden, and it combined with the unexpectedly kind words to let Seth know Ben wanted the topic changed immediately. But Seth couldn’t just let it go. “When we were seventeen,” he said slowly, “you were going to live in all different countries and so was Liam. He was going to be an architect and take on international projects, and you were going to travel with him and be versatile and make your career work around his.”
“And, freed of that restraint, I’ve been able to settle down like the routine-loving freak I am.”
“It’s not too late, you know.” Seth looked thoughtful. “Your pathological inability to commit to a long-term relationship has the useful side effect of you not being tied down. Might be time to grab hold of that silver lining and let the cloud—lift you up? Is that at all possible?”
“No. Clouds are collections of water vapor. They are not balloons. And they have no actual linings.”
“Pretty crappy metaphor, then, isn’t it?”
“To be fair,” Ben said, “I think you were stretching it much further than any metaphor deserves to be stretched.”
“A bit of stretching is good for things. Push them out of their comfort zone… no, crap, I can’t make that work either. I’m just not that great at metaphors.”
“Possibly no figurative language is needed. We could just say it straight out. You’re dissatisfied with how I’m living my life. My decisions don’t meet your expectations. You’d like me to be bolder, more adventurous.”
Seth nodded. “It’s kind of hard to live vicariously through you when you’re not doing anything interesting.”
“But it’s probably important that I live my life the way that’s best for me, rather than the way that’s best for you. Wouldn’t you say?”
“No, I wouldn’t go that far.”
They took a little break then, both of them finishing their beers, starting new ones, and watching as the baseball game across the street deteriorated into chaos and mild violence.
Finally Seth said, “If this is the life you chose, and the life you want, then I’m happy for you and I’ll do my best to shut up. But if it’s the life you just kind of fell into because you were afraid to make different decisions? That’s no good.”
“My life is the same today as it was the day before yesterday. So why am I getting the big speech now?”
“You know why.”
“Because of Liam. But… what about him? Had you actually forgotten he existed or something? You saw him and it just twigged for you? Like, ‘Oh, yeah, this guy used to be one of my best friends, and he and my other best friend used to be together, but they broke up. Huh. That puts a whole new spin on things.’ Was that what happened?”
“No.” Seth picked at the label on his beer bottle for a little, then said, “I miss him. Seeing him—I guess that’s what it reminded me of. It made me sad to think how close we all used to be. I mean, the two of us here is good. It’s fine. But it used to be the three of us.”
“The three of us used to hang out on this porch? Back when the Corrigans lived here? I don’t remember that.”
“You know what I mean. The three of us used to be friends.”
“You and I thought so, at least.” But Ben caught himself. “Or—fine, yeah, we were friends. He just didn’t—” Didn’t love me. Didn’t care enough to be faithful, or at least honest. He pushed himself to his feet. “Okay. This has been a fun little visit, but I’ve got dinner to make, marking to do, lessons to plan. And I think you might have some sort of responsibility elsewhere? Some sort of guilt-inducing, soul-crushing burden of love and pain that you need to get back to?”
Seth finished his beer. “Okay. Good talk. I feel like we really resolved a lot, here. We’ve got a positive action plan, moving forward with focus and determination. Excellent.”
“I’m focused and determined to make dinner, do some grading, and plan lessons.”
“Uncle Calvin’s going to want to talk to you.”
“Yeah, thanks for that. Sure is a good thing you didn’t keep your damn mouth shut.”
“He’s Uncle Calvin,” Seth said as if he actually thought it was a useful observation.
He left after that, setting off for the short walk to his own house two blocks away, and Ben went inside to his small, functional kitchen. Inside his small, functional house and his small, functional life. He had dreamed of a larger world, back when he’d been a kid. He’d craved adventure and excitement.
Now? He was making a chicken breast and brown rice for one, wondering whether he should get crazy and add half a can of mushroom soup to the pot. Ooh, a casserole.
And the biggest excitement in the last… year? More than that, probably. The biggest excitement since Tamara had been born was that his ex-boyfriend had made a brief appearance in town.
And cried.
Liam had cried.
What the hell had that been about? Ben had seen tears in the man’s eyes only once before, in their final confrontation. And now more tears?
Ben impatiently pushed himself away from the counter. He wasn’t going to fall into the trap. Hell no. He’d done his time, torn himself apart trying to figure out what was going on in Liam’s head, and he’d gotten nowhere. That was all in the past.
Liam was in the past. He’d popped in and popped out and now he was gone again.
It was a sign of something deeply wrong with Ben that he was actually feeling disappointed with that reality.
Chapter Five
LIAM KNEW he should be making plans. Either finding his own office space and staff or setting up meetings with other firms that would be interested in hiring him. He definitely needed to get in touch with old clients and give them his spin on the situation. He should be attending to business.
Instead, he got his car back from the shop and started driving again. North again, and then west. Again.
How many times had he made this trip over the years? All the way to the Welcome to North Falls sign, then loop around and drive home, because the sign was a lie and he wasn’t “welcome” in North Falls, not by a long shot.
But this time he drove straight past the sign. Down the south hill and over the bridge, and he pulled over for a moment to look down at the park where he and—where all of them used to hang out before they were old enough to have friends with driver’s licenses who could take them out to the lake. Wading in the mud by the riverside, dodging goose shit to find places to lie in the grass and gaze up at the sky. Talking without looking at each other and later, finally, touching, just hands or feet or other safe parts, still without looking at each other.
Some real Mayberry shit. Except a couple years later, they’d started coming back to the park after dark. All their friends were at the lake, but this thing between them wasn’t for public consumption, not yet. Instead, they’d come to the park and found the shadows and they’d touched each other everywhere, hungry and confident. They’d gasped into each other’s mouths, strained into each other as if trying to meld their entire bodies together. Ben’s face, pale and perfect in the moonlight, his eyes, so deep and trusting—
Yeah, trusting. You asshole. Don’t even think about him. You don’t deserve to.
Liam put the car back into gear and continued into town. The familiar stores, the bank, the church, the post office. How the hell did he manage to have memories of Ben from every single building? Sure, it was just the post office steps they’d spent time on, that summer after seventh grade when they’d all been into skateboarding and the three of them had spent endless hours trying to grind their ways down the metal handrail.
That had ended when Seth broke his collarbone and his and Liam’s parents outlawed any sort of stunting. Ben still could have practiced—he’d been living with Uncle Calvin by then, and Calvin, while generally loving, departed from contemporary parenting wisdom in many ways. He’d been almost gleefully willing to let Ben learn by trying things and making mistakes. But it wouldn’t have been any fun for Ben to skateboard alone.
And there it was again. Liam was thinking about Ben. Seth too, but Ben, mostly.
He made it through town and up the north hill, turned left, and drove to the end of the dead-end street. A cul-de-sac, his mother had always called it, but Liam really wasn’t sure it qualified. Regardless of the precise designation, it had been a quiet street, except for when the big yellow house at the end of it hosted one of its frequent parties.
He pulled up on the shoulder and looked at the house. Did the same people own it, the ones who’d bought it from his parents? They’d been the new medical team, two doctors to take over the clinic and the town GP practice.
Almost twenty years ago now—his parents had stayed in town until he finished high school, then headed off to semiretirement in South Carolina. During college he’d gone to visit them occasionally, always dragging Ben and usually Seth along with him, but for most breaks he’d returned to North Falls and stayed with Ben at Uncle Calvin’s, two of them crammed into Ben’s old single bed.
Yeah, Ben. Ben, Ben, Ben.
Was there an inch of this town not drenched in memories of Ben?
Maybe for some people, but not for Liam.
He did a quick U-turn and headed back into town.
See them as buildings, he told himself. Be an architect. Analyze the structure.
But there was nothing architecturally significant about the buildings, nothing interesting, even. His career had been dedicated to clean, modern design that made a statement. There was none of that here in North Falls.
He should go back to the city. That was where he belonged.
But he pulled over, as he’d known he would, outside the small-engine-repair shop. A two-story building with rented apartments on the second floor and a glass-fronted shop on the first. Lawn mowers and chainsaws and log-splitters on display in the front window, the inside of the building too dark to be visible from outdoors.
Liam sat for a moment and wrestled with his better judgment. Nothing he’d done so far was irreversible. Nobody had seen him; he had plausible deniability. His ignition had betrayed him the other day, but he had no such excuse now.
He got out of the car anyway. It felt as if he wasn’t really making any decisions, just being swept along in a current of… fate? No, nothing so purposeful. Momentum, maybe. He’d set something in motion, and it was inclined to stay in motion. Shit, was that momentum, or inertia? Momentum had a better sound to it, but maybe inertia was more accurate, and somehow more fitting considering that he was in North Falls.
And what “something” was he thinking of, anyway, that he’d set in motion?
He pushed the door open, heard the bell chime, and smelled the familiar motor oil, the scent that had been carried home on Calvin’s clothes to perfume the little house where he and his nephew had lived. And not much else seemed to have changed either. The same displays of parts and tools, the same battered leather stools, and the same grizzled head poking up from behind the counter. Maybe a little less hair and a few more wrinkles, but the eyes were just as sharp. Just as perceptive.
And they showed absolutely no surprise.
“Liam.” Calvin gave him a cordial nod of greeting. “You got a haircut.”
Liam felt numb but fought to sound coherent. “I’ve had quite a few, I guess. But, yeah, my hair is shorter now. In general.” There, now that they had that taken care of, he could go back to the city and get on with his life.
“I heard you have a nice car.”
It wasn’t like Liam’s family had ever been short of money, but they’d been a bit less—a bit less ostentatious?—a bit less interested in high-performance vehicles. “It’s not a Ferrari or anything.”
“Still, German engineering. I fought in Germany during the war, you know.”
Liam frowned. It was the first he’d heard of any military service, and he really wasn’t sure the years matched up. “What war?”
“Vietnam.”
“I—wasn’t aware there was a lot of fighting in Germany during the Vietnam War.”
“Sure. Bar fights never really go out of style.”
Liam sighed. What the hell was he doing in North Falls? “Were you even in Germany during the Vietnam War, or did you make that up just for the joke?”
“I was there. I did the standard backpack-around-Europe thing when I was a kid. Saw some pretty nice cars.”
Okay, they were back to—well, no, talking about cars hadn’t really been the point of the conversation. But it wasn’t as if Liam had any idea what the point of the conversation had been. Maybe it was time he got a little more direct. “It’s good to see you. You look well.”
“Thanks. You too. Where are you staying while you’re here?”
Staying? Oh, no. No, that wasn’t what Liam was doing. Not at all.
But then Calvin said, “This isn’t the best place for a real talk. I know, it’s not Grand Central Station, but I do have customers coming in and out. We should have a few drinks tonight and get caught up.”
And suddenly it sounded like the best possible way to spend an evening. Was it warm enough for a fire in Calvin’s fire pit? Probably, if they wore jackets. He and Calvin could sit back there with a bottle of scotch and a couple glasses, staring into the flames, talking when the mood struck them. Maybe Liam would even share the situation at work; Calvin had no patience with mindless authority and lots of respect for people who did their jobs well and without drama, so he’d be outraged on Liam’s beh
alf. That would be nice.
“I guess I could stay. But I don’t know where. There’s still no hotel, I assume?”
“Connie and Dale Ingram have a bed-and-breakfast. I’ve never stayed there, obviously, but they’re good people. They’d do a good job.”
Liam recognized the names, but—a B&B? Possibly his worst nightmare. And he was less than three hours from the city. He could just hang out with Uncle Calvin for a couple hours and drive home afterward.
Drunk.
Shit.
“Do you have their number?”
“Nope. I don’t have much patience with those newfangled devices.”
“Telephones?”
“Blabber-boxes, if you ask me.”
“I’ve talked on the phone with you lots of times. Not lately, but there isn’t much ‘newfangled’ about—” Liam caught himself. He wasn’t going to be dragged into another one of Calvin’s nonsensical conversations, at least not until he had a glass of scotch in his hand. “Okay. How can I get in touch with them?”
“Just drive over. River Road, west of Main Street. It’s a purple house.”
“Purple?”
Calvin shrugged. “It’s a nice purple. Almost blue.”
“And they’re legitimately running a B&B. You’re not sending me over to some stranger’s house to embarrass myself with weird questions about wanting to sleep in their spare bedroom.”
“Damn. That would have been excellent—why didn’t you suggest it before I sent you to the right place?”
It should have been reassuring, but Uncle Calvin was absolutely devious enough to pull that sort of double-cross, especially if he resented Liam for what had happened with Ben. Which surely he did. “Is there a sign or anything? Something that will tell me I’m in the right place?”
“When you see a purple house, you’ll know you’ve arrived.”
“And we can have a drink later? Maybe a fire at your place?”
“Are you coming on to me, Liam? I’m flattered, but….”
Liam was suddenly tired of games. “I’m only staying over because of you. Because I like the idea of talking to you. So if that’s not going to happen, there’s no point in going through all the rest of it, and I’d appreciate it if you could just tell me that now and save me the trouble of—” He stopped. Calvin was Ben’s uncle, his only real family. If Calvin wanted to make Liam jump through some pointless hoops, Liam needed to just shut up and take it. “Sorry. Okay. I’ll go see the Ingrams. And if you have some time later—”
All That Glitters Page 4