by Elle Keaton
Once inside the cover, she checked to see if the book had been inscribed to or from anyone. Was there anything tucked in the pages: receipts, love notes, a phone number or address, photographs? Lastly, she smelled the book. Seth drew the line at that, but Marnie had sworn she could smell lingering cologne or perfume. She’d believed the scent of perfume meant the book was a gift of love.
This was a book of poetry, small enough to fit comfortably in one hand. The volume was battered, tattered, dog-eared in several places, and had been in a box hidden behind a wall for too long to open automatically to a favorite passage. Seth didn’t find any scraps of paper tucked inside, or photographs. It was a collection of poetry by W. H. Auden, not valuable given its condition, but clearly well loved.
Thoughts of what he and Sacha had done earlier and even the jarring banging and crashing noises from above couldn’t keep Seth from poking through the rest of the crate. A few more books of poetry, dime-store detective novels with lurid covers, a package of letters and postcards that he set aside to look at later, a silver call bell, and several ancient pens and pencils (one covered with bite marks), as well as a tiny pair of glasses wrapped in a scrap of velvet. Hummingbird hoard, his aunt would have said. Seth wished with all his heart that she were alive to see it.
Seth was so engrossed he didn’t realize the pounding had ceased until Sacha snuck up behind him.
Twelve
Sacha
At first, Sacha ignored the buzzing coming from his pocket. After years of reacting to every phone call, that had been the easiest thing to let go of when he left the Marshals. Unfortunately, the buzz persisted. Sighing, he put the sledgehammer down and tugged his phone out to see who wanted him now. Now that Seth, Joey, and Adam all had his number, he didn’t expect the buzzing to be a series of texts regarding Parker.
Why he was surprised was anyone’s guess; he needed more than ten fingers to count how much trouble he’d bailed Parker out of over the years. One of the reasons he’d distanced himself once he became a Marshal had been that Parker got in enough trouble on his own. He didn’t need to be around the kind of trouble Sacha found himself in on a regular basis.
The most recent text read, “He’s coming,” with an airline abbreviation and ETA. Sacha scrolled back to read the first texts. They were from Mae-Lin, of course, expletive-laden commentaries on both Sacha’s and Parker’s life choices. She was very tired of the nonsense. Ha. Sacha wondered who else had pissed her off recently. People always thought he was kidding when he told them he was the nice one.
The flight was late in the evening; there would be time to plan before his arrival. Parker wouldn’t wander around Skagit looking for him. Or, for fuck’s sake, show up unannounced at the Warrick, although how he could know about that, Sacha couldn’t fathom. Parker had an uncanny way of finding out things normal people and criminals preferred to be left hidden.
Realization hit him. Groaning, Sacha thumped his head against the door frame in frustration. In his post-orgasmic state he hadn’t put all the pieces together. Where the hell was he going to stash Parker? Not here amongst the construction debris and dust.
The Warrick felt quiet. Where had Seth had disappeared to? Maybe he would have an idea. It wasn’t like Sacha could go rent a house in an afternoon, and a hotel was out of the question since he had no idea how long Parker would be staying… or why he was coming.
Abandoning the sledgehammer, he headed to the ground floor. Seth sat cross-legged in a corner, sifting through the boxes Sacha’d found stashed in the walls. Sacha clomped down the stairs, but Seth was so engrossed he didn’t hear him approach. Sunlight struggled in through the filthy windows, soaking Seth’s sun-kissed skin, highlighting the curves and dips of his form.
It gave Sacha pause, watching Seth unawares. It was private. The too-large T-shirt hung from his lightly muscled body; the cargo shorts and practical hiking boots did not detract from his natural presence. Nothing about him was fancy or impractical, or soft—he was very much male, and he carried himself with an acceptance Sacha envied.
“What’s in the boxes?”
Seth startled, turning to glare at him. “Fuck, do you not make noise? You are practically a mountain!”
Smiling, he shrugged. He hadn’t intentionally snuck up on Seth. Not really, but he’d gotten caught up watching him. Not only was being light on your feet a good characteristic for US Marshals, it got truant, quasi-criminal kids away from the scene of the crime before the cops arrived. Most of the time.
“I walk like a normal person.”
“I beg to differ.” Seth waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. Check it out, this box is full of cool old books and stuff.”
Not wanting to loom, Sacha crouched down next to Seth and peered into the boxes. Two were stuffed with tools, unidentifiable pieces of metal, a couple tin cups, and other construction paraphernalia from the past. The third was currently empty, the books and other items Seth had pulled out of it in a pile on the floor.
“Why would anyone stash this behind a wall?” Seth wondered.
“Probably trying to clean up fast, didn’t feel like moving it.” Sacha picked up one of the battered books, flipping the cover open. The title page was inscribed:
To my dear Owen, may these words find you. TG
Sacha stared at the spidery words for a long while, wondering what TG meant, who TG was. A sister, brother, lover? Along with Seth, he was curious how such a well-loved little book ended up behind the walls of an old bank building.
Flipping to the copyright page, he noted the volume: Another Time, poetry by W. H. Auden, published in 1940. He placed it gently back in the box. Seth was scanning through a small stack of postcards and letters.
Sacha’s attention was captured by the late-afternoon light accentuating Seth’s profile. His features were sharp and intelligent, yet he was a gentle soul, curious, naturally happy. Things Sacha was not, but found himself drawn to.
The sun shifted, sliding closer to the horizon. Even with the open windows, there was no breeze, and the building was stifling after another day of unrelenting heat. Sacha suddenly needed to get out for a while.
He reached out to touch Seth’s shoulder, enjoying the feel of him through his T-shirt. “Any chance you’d let me treat for dinner tonight?” What was he doing? Inviting trouble was what he was doing. Changing a lifetime of hiding who he presented to the world was fucking exhausting.
“If by dinner you mean barbeque and a couple beers in my backyard, yes. I’m not going out anywhere. Can I bring this box?”
Sacha had a feeling his answer to Seth would always be “yes.” That however this whole thing played out, Sacha would be saying “yes,” and he looked forward to it.
Thirteen
Seth
Out on the sidewalk, Sacha grabbed Seth’s shoulder, stopping him from heading immediately to his car. Seth swung around, wondering what this was about. Hadn’t they decided to go to his house? If Seth had any luck at all, they would end up in his bed later.
“Um, so.” Sacha sounded unsure of himself, which was kind of endearing. “My foster sister texted me and apparently our foster brother, Parker, is arriving in Skagit late tonight. I’m picking him up at the airport. There’s some kind of emergency.” He said emergency like it was a bad word. Or perhaps overused.
“Where is he staying?”
“I was wondering if you had a suggestion. Obviously I can’t bring him back here.”
Seth had a terrible habit of finding strangers interesting and pursuing them. It was a tendency that had made his aunt bestow her most gentle smile on him, probably because for a short time after he went to live with her he could have gone either way. Trust in strangers had not been a strong point.
“You’re like a hummingbird, Seth,” she’d said. “People are your flowers. You flit from person to person collecting interesting tidbits and taking them back to your nest where you hoard them or share, whichever you choose.”
He’d been a quivering, spindly
nine-year-old, thirsty for anything to help him make sense of the world. “Marnie,” he’d said, because she’d told him to call her by her name, not a societal construct, which confused him, “hummingbirds don’t hoard. Dragons hoard.”
“How do you know hummingbirds don’t hoard?” she’d replied, her beautiful face glowing with laughter.
Her question stuck with him over the ensuing years, rolling around in his head, evolving into a personal touchstone—comforting and solid as river rock in the palm of your hand, still warm from sunshine. As a nine-year-old it had blown his mind, like the first time he’d looked into a kaleidoscope.
He didn’t even have to think about it.
“You know I am going to offer to have both of you stay at my house.”
Sacha looked skeptical. “Parker is a handful. Also,” now Sacha looked slightly guilty, “I, uh, haven’t seen him in years.”
The dominoes that would unlock the mystery of Sacha were beginning to topple. Seth could almost hear the snick of tiles clicking against each other as they cascaded.
“Stay at my place until you figure out what you and your brother are going to do. If it’s one day or a few weeks it’s fine. If you feel like a burden, you can help with rent and groceries.”
He could see the cogs turning as Sacha considered his offer. “You know this is a bad idea.”
“Why?” Seth leaned back against Sacha’s truck, ready to argue his point.
Sacha prowled close, hooking a finger through Seth’s belt loops. “Because I want to get to know you better, and if I am in your house all the time I am going to want to fuck you. And fucking you could get in the way of actually getting to know you.”
Seth swallowed. “I think we could do both. Maybe.” A frisson of anxiety snaked through his belly, but he ignored it for the time being. The lure of having Sacha nearby, to comfortably delve into his secrets, for the moment outweighed the lingering anxiety of letting someone, the first since Marnie died, get close.
Fourteen
Sacha
Seth insisted they stop at the grocery store on the way home. Sacha followed behind him in his truck again. Sacha paid, since they were getting food for three. They ended up with enough for a small army.
Today Sacha better appreciated Seth’s backyard. It was an oasis. Quiet, peaceful, and set away from the street, an abundance of flowering shrubs encouraged honeybees, butterflies, and birds. When he sat down, a flash of wings turned out to be a tiny brown hummingbird hovering over a blue cone-shaped blossom.
Seth puttered, insisting on cooking since Sacha had paid, getting the grill ready for the chicken they’d purchased and watering the shrubs and flowers that were desperately thirsty after the sweltering day. Sacha had offered to cook; he could, after all. But Seth insisted.
“You mind if I turn on some tunes?” Seth asked, startling him from his lazy observations.
“Sure?” Sacha didn’t really do music. Seth took his quasi-answer for a yes, racing inside for some kind of portable speaker. Soon enough there was music to go with their dinner.
“I’m pretty eclectic; there’s a little of everything on my playlist,” Seth commented.
It was unnervingly pleasant to sit in Seth’s backyard sipping a couple of beers and eating dinner off real plates, not paper or out of a bag. Both things Sacha had done with some regularity over the past two years, as well as before that. He cooked for family once in a while, for the occasional friend, but not much more than that.
“So, what do you think about that box of stuff? Pretty cool, huh?”
“Yeah.” He’d forgotten about the wooden crate of mementoes he’d nearly crushed into kindling. “What else was in there?”
Grabbing a napkin, Seth wiped his hands before getting out of his chair. Sacha saw the stack of photos or postcards sitting on the little metal side table.
Seth grinned at him. “You fell into my hastily laid trap.” Sacha found himself grinning back. That shit was infectious.
The collection consisted of nearly twenty postcards all addressed to Owen Penn, four badly faded handwritten letters, and a single photograph of two young men laughing, their arms around each other’s waists. The postcards were from parks and cities across the US. The farthest away was from Acadia Park in Maine; the closest had been postmarked at Marble Mount, which was about a hundred miles away in the North Cascades National Forest. The same spidery handwriting flowed across the four letters, much too faded to read in the dying light of Seth’s backyard, possibly too faded to read at all. Sacha turned the photograph over. On the back was written: Owen Penn, Theodore Garrison Lake Chelan. It was dated 1939.
He stared at the photo, hoping to divine its secret history. The young men—boys, really—looked happy, laughing over a secret or merely smiling for the camera. The picture was black-and-white, of course, but one of them had darker hair and was a little taller than the other. They were skinny in a way people weren’t anymore, wearing similar dark work pants and white button-up work shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Sacha wondered who had been on the other side of the camera. A friend? A passing stranger? What were the two of them doing at Lake Chelan in the late 1930s as the world was going mad?
Seeming to share, or understand, Sacha’s thoughts, Seth broke the silence that had fallen between them. “I wonder why these were hidden? Clearly, this Owen person saved everything.” Leaning over, he tugged the photo from Sacha’s limp grasp. “I wonder which one he is?” He stared at it for a few moments before tucking it back in with the postcards, gingerly, as if it were the most precious treasure.
Seth looked up, his gaze catching Sacha’s, and an intense spark crackled inside Sacha’s chest. He felt short of breath. Dropping his eyes, he found himself mesmerized by Seth’s lips. Seth bit his lower lip shyly before breaking into a broad smile and taking Sacha’s breath away again. The moment lasted forever, shattering time barriers, and was over far too quickly, leaving Sacha reeling. The feeling in his chest expanded, and he looked away, afraid of what unfamiliar emotion was showing on his face. He was used to sex, fucking, but had never allowed an emotional connection to form before. It almost hurt.
A gentle hand tugged his chin. The chairs were close together; there wasn’t much distance between the two of them.
“You wanna kiss?” Seth asked quietly, brown eyes looking directly into Sacha’s. Sacha nodded, mute. Yes, he wanted to kiss under the broad blue sky and the sun that never changed no matter where it shone. The same sun that shone over Kansas City, over Miami, Paris, or Sarajevo. He wanted to be absolved, to be clean, unsullied by life, the sun shining down on him free of judgment.
“Is that a ‘yes’?”
Heat flared across his cheeks. His expression must have encouraged Seth, though; he leaned forward, gently touching his lips to Sacha’s.
Sacha’s lips opened of their own volition, desiring more, but Seth merely pressed their mouths together, a barely there touch. A touch so strong it was close to sending Sacha into orbit. He breathed in, smelled the beer they’d had, felt Seth’s warm breath mingling with his own. Felt.
If Sacha knew one thing, it was that he was in trouble. A whole hell of a lot of trouble.
Together they straightened up the little house. Seth dug out some blankets and sheets for Parker; he would be sleeping on the couch. Not that Parker was going to need blankets, or even sheets, since it was still fucking hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk.
Together they moved the last of Seth’s moving boxes from the spare room to the living room, then they tackled the air mattress. A half hour later, Seth declared victory.
“Duct tape really is a miracle.”
“It won’t hold,” Sacha groused.
“Quitter.” Smiling, Seth led the way back out into the living room. “Besides, you know where my bed is if you find yourself sleeping on the floor.”
With both the front and back doors open to encourage a breeze, Sacha stared outside into the offending early evening sunshine. The neighbor’s pat
hetic wind sock didn’t even twitch, only hung limply from her porch.
What in the fucking hell was he going to do with Parker? Why was he coming to Skagit? Mae-Lin didn’t tell him anything. Claimed she didn’t know. Besides, she never involved herself in Parker’s drama any more than she had to. Sacha felt this was a copout, seeing as both he and Parker jumped to her assistance whenever she called.
Somebody in the neighborhood was hosting a BBQ or something. Street parking at Seth’s was a little dicey, seeing as there were no sidewalks, and residents parked wherever and however they felt like. As he stared out the front door, trying to make some sense of Parker’s arrival and what was possibly blooming between himself and Seth, he watched a shiny black late-model four-wheel-drive circle the block.
The driver deftly maneuvered the vehicle in between two other equally large and unwieldy ones about halfway down the street. He didn’t know if it was Parker’s imminent arrival that had him on alert or something else he wasn’t able to put his finger on, but he continued watching until a family spilled out to unload their vehicle, a multitude of screaming children, strollers, and bags of what looked to be drinks and to-go containers spewing from inside.
He wandered back into the kitchen and, apparently inevitably, Seth. “Is there anything I need to know?” Seth asked over his shoulder. “You know, a deathly seafood allergy, won’t step on cracks, do I need to put away the silver?”
Sacha snorted. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Seth stood from where he’d been putting the contents of the cooler back into the fridge. Seth’s hair was a mess. His T-shirt was, as usual, untucked, and his ratty shorts hung low on his hips, exposing a sliver of skin that Sacha longed to run his fingers across.
He couldn’t keep his hands off of him. Didn’t want to.
Stepping into Seth’s personal space, Sacha focused on Seth, letting his body do the talking. Placing his hands on Seth’s hips, he tugged him close, sliding his hands up under Seth’s rumpled shirt, feeling the soft bumps and curves of his torso, smooth beneath the tips of his fingers, and Seth shuddered.