by Kaje Harper
“Like that’s better?”
“He’s only a year and a half older. I seduced him. And I had to work for months to do it. And when the hell did my sex life become your business?”
“When you let that lying con man sleep in our store, with access to our stock and our cash.”
“Jesus.” I couldn’t catch my breath. “Donnie practically lived with us for years. He ate at our table. He slept on that breakroom couch, more than once. He worked with Dad in the nursery, and in here with Mom. Mom loved him.” My chest hurt. “How dare you talk about him like that?”
“Mom had a soft heart, just like you. Neither of you could see him for what he was.”
“And you know better?”
“Yeah. I do. You want to know how many times my friend Jack’s dad caught him shoplifting?”
“You want to tell me how old Donnie was when that happened?” I’d known he’d stolen stuff, especially back before his mom died and he went into foster care. Mostly food. Sometimes other things he needed. I didn’t like it. We fought about it, mostly because I wanted to buy him things and he wouldn’t take them from me. But I was pretty sure that by the time he was fifteen no one ever caught him again.
“Doesn’t matter. It shows his character. And he lies as slick as a used car salesman.”
“He never lies to me. I trust him with my life. And with the store and all my money.”
“My money, too. Dammit, Adam, he’s spent six years in prison. Whatever he was like before, he’s going to be worse now. You can see he’s broke. Does he even have a place to live?”
“So I should toss him out because he’s broke? What would Mom say if we did that?”
Nate slapped the counter. “Mom’s not here. You can’t hide behind her soft spot for him.”
“I don’t have to.” I pulled out my phone, hit Dad’s number, and headed back toward Donnie. Nate could follow me or not. “Hey, Dad,” I said when he answered. “You’ll never guess who just showed up. Donnie! But he needs a place to stay for a while. Can he bunk in the spare room?”
I flicked the phone to speaker in time for Nate and Donnie to hear Dad say, “Your mother would be so happy. Of course, he can stay.”
Nate gave me a sour look. I said, “Thanks, Dad. Oh, he has a dog. That’s not a problem, right?”
“Of course not. You know I love dogs. When’s he coming over?”
I glanced at Donnie. He ignored Nate, looking only at me. “I can work for my keep. Done it before.”
Nate’s glare said I still had to deal with him before we opened, and I didn’t want Donnie listening, if we got loud. I told Dad, “He’ll head over soon.”
“Then I can cook us up some lunch. I’ll have to see what’s in the fridge.” I hadn’t heard Dad so animated in a while.
“That would be great!” I winced at my overenthusiasm. “Thanks, Dad. See you later.” To Donnie, I said, “The mornings are slower in here, but it picks up around three, and I sure won’t object to getting a dinner break at some point. If you want to work.”
He ducked his head. “I can do that. Around three?”
“Right. Have a meal and a shower or whatever.”
“And wash your clothes,” Nate added.
I was surprised when Donnie just pressed his lips tight without snapping back some quick response. He’s different. It’ll take a while to get to know how.
“Dad’ll be glad to see you,” I said. “And the dog. He could use a distraction, I think.” Maybe everything really would be better with Donnie here.
“I can be distracting.”
Nate said, “Come on, let’s go, get out of here! We open in half an hour.” He waved toward the door.
Donnie hefted his pack higher on his shoulder and gave the dog’s leash a little tug. She lowered her belly to the ground, looking between him and Nate with her ears flat back. Donnie squatted to rub her chest. In a sing-song tone, he said to Nate, “Can you put a cap on the hostile voice for a bit, huh, maybe? Willow’s had a rough day.”
Nate looked a bit sheepish and softened his voice. “Sure. I’ll get the door.”
I waited as he ushered Donnie out, and stood at the door watching him cut across the parking lot toward the path back to the house. The line of Nate’s back showed a familiar tension. It was hard to remember when he’d been my easygoing older brother— the one who would give me and Donnie a lift somewhere, or toss a ball around with me. I’d lost that brother the day of the crash, and I’d never gotten him back, although he was softer with his wife and kid. I suddenly ached for those old days.
“It’ll be okay, Nate,” I murmured. “Dad’ll have something new to get interested in, and Donnie can help us out like he used to. It’ll be good.”
“I’ll be happy if it’s not a freaking disaster.” Nate sighed, still looking out the glass front door. “You never had any sense when it came to Donnie. Promise me one thing, though.”
“What?”
“Promise me you’ll make him go get tested, before you do anything together. You know what prisons are like.”
A nasty mix of anger and fear roiled inside me. “No!” I snapped. “I don’t and I’d bet you don’t either.”
“You know what I mean. HIV is a real risk. Don’t take chances.”
It burned me that he was right, but I wasn’t going to say so. “What we do or don’t do is none of your business.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “For Dad’s sake, then. Don’t put anything more on his shoulders.” He pushed open the door. “I’m going to check the lights along the fence. I think there’s a string gone out.”
I watched him cross the parking lot, his shoes slipping on the packed snow. He had to be shivering out there in his shirtsleeves. How did we get to the point that he would rather freeze his ass than look at me? But I knew the answer. Six years ago, I’d never once blamed Donnie for the crash or all that came afterward. Nate had, deeply and angrily. We’d buried that argument for years, but we couldn’t avoid it now.
Donnie is back. Despite everything, despite my brother’s hunched shoulders as he bent to check the Christmas lights, that thought still warmed me like the sun coming up.
Chapter 5
Donnie
It was the weirdest feeling, walking that path through the nursery down to Adam’s house. Like there were two views in front of me. One was summer-fall-whatever, with the path a little smoother and my body and soul eager to reach that house. The other was this cold ice and rutted dirt, with Willow walking so close to my knee I had to work not to trip over her, and an uncertain welcome ahead. And no Adam’s mom.
It hadn’t quite hit me yet, that she was gone. At the cemetery, the headstone had seemed a bit like a movie prop. I’d left her the roses, but it hadn’t felt like she was under there. Even in the store, where she’d been the queen through all those summer years and holiday days, she might’ve just gone out somewhere. But at the house, I’d know. My steps slowed more and more.
I stopped at the edge of the field of saplings, where the back lawn opened out around the path.
The house looked the same. Maybe a bit less bright white. She used to have us all out painting every summer— one year the house, the next the fence and all the sheds, the third the store. Maybe they’d missed a year. But the curtains in the kitchen window were the same cheery red. The bushes by the back door were still trimmed into neat shapes.
The sugar maple was bigger, though.
Willow leaned in and shivered hard enough to shake my leg, and I realized how long I’d been standing there.
Keep on going.
I debated for a second whether I should go around to the front and ring the bell. But I never had before. I climbed the three steps to the back porch with Willow behind me. Before I could knock the door swung open. Adam’s dad looked me up and down, then stepped back. “Donnie. Welcome home. Come on in.”
Home. I blinked and ducked my head as I moved past him. Willow whined and tugged backward on her leash. I t
urned and saw her crouching at the doorway, feet planted on the mat.
Adam’s dad crouched and held out his hand. “Hey, girlie. What’s the matter?”
She went belly-up at his words, tail quivering.
“She’s a bit nervous,” I said.
“I see that.” He murmured to her, tone more than words. Slowly she rolled on her side, lifting her head. Her tail thumped on the porch floor. He reached out carefully and scratched her chest.
He’d changed a lot in six years, too. Gained weight, for sure, and not healthy weight. He’d always been lean and fit. He wasn’t a big guy but quick on his feet. He could wrestle a burlapped tree with the best of us. Now, his gray hair had gone pure white, his jawline sagged, and he looked washed out. That belly hanging over his belt was new, and so was the bald spot on the back of his head. But when he glanced up at me, his gaze was shrewd as ever.
“What’s her name? How long have you had her?”
I made a show of looking at my bare wrist, where a watch would be. “Two hours? I call her Willow.” I crouched alongside him and patted my knee. “C’mon, Willow. You’re letting in the cold. Come.”
She tail-wagged tentatively but didn’t get up.
“Let me get her a treat.” He stood with a grunt and hurried down the hall.
I tugged lightly on the leash. “Come on, silly bitch. It’s warm in here. It’s a good place.”
She whined. I’d have picked her up and brought her in, but I’d learned at the vet that it freaked her the hell out to be lifted.
Adam’s dad came hurrying back. “Look, kiddo. Peanut butter.” He crouched behind me and held out his hand with a peanut-smeared bite of bread. “All yours. Yum, yum, yum.”
Her head tilted to one side. An ear cocked.
“Yummies.” He ate the bite with exaggerated chewing and moaning noises. “Mmm, so good.” He held out another. “Here, baby. Your bite.” When she didn’t come in, despite a little thread of spit dripping from her lips, he tossed it to her. Quick as anything, she rolled to a crouch and snarfed it up. He held out another. “Yeah. Come get this one.” You could practically see the smoke rising from her little spinning brain, until he tossed it just inside the doorway. “Come on.”
She stood. You could tell stepping over that door sill meant something bad to her by the way her ears went down and she clamped her tail to her butt. But she stepped inside with both front feet and ate the treat.
“Good girl.” Adam’s dad and I said it together. She looked back and forth between us. He set another little bit on the floor near his foot. “Last bite. Come on, it’s okay.” He kept up the soothing noises, and she finally crept up to his feet, and lipped the bread carefully off the floor. Then she licked where it had been, cleaning the peanut smear.
I closed the door softly behind her.
She leaped, turned, and peed a puddle on the floor.
“Ah—” I bit off a curse, because scaring her worse now might just make her take a shit, too.
“No worries. That floor’s seen everything, including puppies. It’ll clean.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll get some paper towel.”
As he headed to the kitchen again, I shrugged off my pack and eased down to sit against the wall. Willow glanced between me and the closed door, the wrinkles in her little face deeper and a rim of white around her eyes.
“What the fuck?” I asked her, keeping my voice sing-songy baby-calm. “You went into the store. Why so scared now? You think you’re locked in?” A cell door closing makes a metallic sound that’s like nothing else, like finality. I stuffed that box in my head shut and twisted the barbed wire an extra notch. “You’ll be back outside in no time if you keep pissing on the floor, silly.”
“No threats,” Adam’s dad said as he came back. “She didn’t know.” He knelt with the wad of towels.
“Oh, no, here, you don’t have to clean that, Mr. L.” I reached for them.
“I’m capable of wiping a floor,” he said with a surprisingly bitter edge. Then more gently, “You can call me Eric, you know. You’re not a kid anymore.” He scrubbed at the puddle, staring down at it.
I wish I was? He hadn’t always been my biggest fan back then, but he’d cut me some slack for being young and stupid. Can’t go back. “Thanks.”
He folded the towels in a wad, eyeing Willow. “She acts like she’s been abused.”
“I bought her off a guy that was kicking her.”
“Fucking bastard!”
I was shocked by his harsh tone. He’d always been the even-tempered guy, the one who kept his head when the irrigation system was leaking, hail was predicted, and a supplier had dropped off a whole pallet of the wrong thing. I don’t think I’d heard him swear before. Not like that. Willow cowered and dripped a bit more piss on the floor.
He rubbed his face, then reached out very slowly to wipe up after her. “Sorry, girlie, not your fault. Poor baby. You’re safe here.”
“I don’t know if she’s even house trained. Or ever been in a house.” It was too damned fucking cold here to keep a short-coat dog outside all winter, but I wouldn’t put it past Shenman.
“Well, she’s in one now.”
I pushed up the wall to my feet and grabbed my pack. Adam’s dad fetched more peanut butter bread. He lured Willow slowly with bite after bite, and she gradually lifted her belly off the ground and went with him. My knees felt weirdly unsteady as I followed them down the hallway. At the kitchen, I froze, leaning in the doorway while he hunted out a water dish for her and a big towel to lie on. He rummaged in a cupboard. “We’ll have to get dog food.”
“I have some. I must’ve left it in the store. I’ll get it later.”
He sat in a kitchen chair, and she leaned up to him, her head against his knee. Even the damned dog likes a Lindberg better. Mr. L eyed me. “Come on in, Donnie, have a seat. Take a load off.”
“I’m fine.” I couldn’t for the life of me say why I was as bad about this doorway as the dog was with the front door. All I knew was I didn’t want to go in. “I think I’ll go upstairs. Have a shower. I reek. If that’s okay? Can the dog stay down here?”
“Of course.” He rubbed her ears gently, and she closed her eyes. “But you could sit first. Have something to eat?”
“I’m good. I’ll just—” I hitched my shoulder upwards.
He looked at me steadily and I couldn’t quite meet his gaze. “Are you planning on rooming with Adam? Or across the hall?”
“No. It’s not like that! I’m— across the hall. If you’re okay with that.”
He nodded. “Adam missed you a lot.”
His tone was pretty flat, so I was probably reading the accusation into it. You ditched him. You almost killed him and then didn’t answer years’ worth of letters. Nothing in his face said that, but I felt it like a burn. Nothing I could do now, though. Water under the bridge. Had to be. “I’ll go take that shower.”
“I put some clean towels in the main bathroom, the blue ones. I can find clothes that might fit you till you can do laundry, if you need them.” He looked me over. “Might fit. You’ve grown. Changed.”
I’d put on some muscle, because there’s not much else to do inside, and stronger’s never a bad thing. Not grown, really. Changed? Hell, yeah. Though it wouldn’t show in how my clothes fit. Or how Nate’s would. Had to be Nate’s, because Adam and Mr. L were both smaller than me. I didn’t want to owe Nate anything. “I’m not broke. I’ve got clean stuff in my pack.”
“Ah. That’s okay, then.”
We eyed each other another moment. I probably should have said a shitload of stuff, but nothing came to me. So I ducked my head and backed out of the doorway. Willow didn’t even try to follow me.
Every piece of the house was just like the walk down here— familiar as my own hand, but with this overlay of different. The hallway, where the floor was less shiny than it used to be. The living room, off to the left, formal and almost never used, with dust dancing in a sunbe
am. The stairs, with six years of added pictures up the wall, but the same squeaky board second from the bottom.
At the top, a new picture drove the breath right out of my lungs. Adam’s mom, in some outdoors time I didn’t recognize. Her hair was way shorter than I ever saw it, but it was the same red. Her smile was just as warm and bright, till it crinkled the corners of her eyes. The photo was set in a red-brown frame matted in cream. No black. No black anywhere. Like she was still here.
Don’t be a sap. She’s gone.
I moved on past it down the hall. To the left was Adam’s room. The door was shut, and I resisted the temptation to look in. To the right was the guest room I’d never slept in. I’d bunked on an air mattress in Adam’s room a bunch of times when we were young. After I came out to his folks, I’d preferred bunking in the store to having Adam just across the hallway, with his parents one door down.
Beyond the guest room, the bathroom door stood ajar. I went in and locked it tight, ignoring the mirror. Shucked off my jeans that were all paw-marked, wet and sandy from that damned dog. I was chilled down to the bone. Warm water would be good.
I waited to get in until a billow of steam was rising. It was nearly hot enough to scald me, but I wanted that. I stood under the flow, closed my eyes and let it beat on my head, pour down over my face. Each breath I took was half spray, like I was breathing underwater. Like I was being born.
Wash it all away. I made believe this was a baptism, cleaning my sins. It would take fire and acid to do that. I forced those thoughts and memories into their boxes. I could do this, I would. Become a new guy for Adam. Maybe not a guy he could be with again, not with all my baggage. But someone who could give back for the scars and the way his shoulder moved stiff, and for the years of silence. Someone who could be a friend, for a while.
I ran the tank dry, washing off my old life. Then I dressed and went downstairs, walking into that kitchen like I still belonged there. The clock said it was only ten-thirty. Too early for lunch, but I wanted to do something. Adam’s dad was still petting Willow, like neither one had moved. “Want a cup of coffee?” I asked. “I remember how you like it.”