Top Shelf (Seacroft Stories Book 1)

by Allison Temple

  But then she was there, or rather, they were there: Seb, with Martin’s hand tucked securely in his. His family clustered in the front entranceway: his siblings, his parents, his nieces and nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins he barely recognized. There was a lot of cooing and hugging, and Seb hovered at the edge of it all, waiting nervously for a glimpse of her. The noise of so many people talking echoed off the high ceiling above them, and it felt like it was pressing him out of the room.

  And then the sea parted. There she was, like he remembered her. She walked with a cane now, but she was impeccably dressed in a peach-colored suit and her favorite pearl necklace. Her hair was a shade whiter than the last time he’d seen her, but in his eyes, she was every inch as perfect as he remembered.

  He couldn’t help the stupid smile on his face as he bent to kiss her.

  “Seb.” Her grip on his shoulders was firm. “You’ve been gone too long.”

  And then she was being trotted away by doting family.

  Seb hadn’t expected the tightness in his throat, but he was grateful when Martin came up behind him and linked their arms together.

  “That was her?” he said in Seb’s ear.

  Seb sniffed and smiled. “That was my Nana.”

  19

  Getting a chance to actually speak to with his grandmother was nearly impossible. Parker pulled out all the stops, which included inviting close to a hundred people. On top of that were almost a dozen hired staff for the day: people to pass around finger sandwiches and glasses of wine, and then different people to carry all the empty dishes and spent paper napkins away again when the guests were done.

  “How many of the people here are you related to?” Martin asked.

  “Just the natural blonds.”

  Around two o’clock, Seb finally found his grandmother, seated by herself in one corner of the living room. He took the chance and tugged Martin along.

  She greeted him with a smile. Her hands on his cheeks were cool. “You are the nicest surprise we’ve had at this party,” she said. He couldn’t help but smile back. “Who’s your friend?” she asked.

  Seb pulled Martin up and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Martin Lindsey, meet my grandmother, Alice Stevenson.”

  “You can call me Dinah.” She held out a long-fingered hand, decked out in the large emerald ring she’d always worn.

  “Dinah?” Martin frowned at Seb.

  “All the eldest daughters in her family are called Alice,” he said. Using her real first name had seemed safest. It was more formal, and she’d like that. “After a great-great-grandmother or something. Too many Alices means my Nana is a Dinah.”

  “I never met the woman. I hear she was a heartbreaker, though. Four husbands, fifteen children. That’s why there are so many of us Alices now.” She gave them a conspiratorial wink. Her voice was gravelly, the way it had been when Seb was small and she would take him to museums or leave him in peace to work on whatever new masterpiece his grade-school heart could dream of.

  “It’s very nice to meet you,” Martin said. “Seb’s told me a lot about you.”

  “He’s told me nothing about you. He’s been negligent.” She still held on to Martin’s hand, but turned and gave Seb’s arm a reassuring pat to say she didn’t really mean it. He appreciated that, but they both knew it was true. Without Martin as a buffer, she’d be bending his ear.

  “Seb.” Her eyes were the same color as his. “My glass is empty, and your young man is looking thirsty too.”

  Seb raised an eyebrow at Martin, who was blushing furiously. Thirsty. One way to phrase it.

  “I’ll be right back.” He bent and kissed his grandmother’s cheek, then kissed Martin too for good measure.

  There was a line at the bar set up in the dining room. Parker lurked nearby, looking pinched.

  “Nana wants a G&T,” he said. She barely glanced at him, continuing to hover. He could see her mental wheels turning as she counted and recounted the people in line. “Is that okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “How would I know? Is she on medication? Something that can’t mix with alcohol?”

  “She’s got pills for her arthritis. Nothing else.”

  “They didn’t give her anything in the hospital?”

  Parker’s attention snapped toward him like a laser. “When was Nana in the hospital?”

  “Oliver told me she was sick.”

  “When?”

  “Ten days ago? He called me and—”

  “She wasn’t in the hospital.”

  Seb opened his mouth to argue and then clacked it shut again. He narrowed his eyes, but Parker stared back at him, the same bored stare she’d given him when he was eleven and she was seventeen and he’d asked if he could go to her “grown up” high school parties with her.

  Stewing, he shuffled his way up the line. He chewed on his lip, broke apart the puzzle in his head, and reassembled it until it made sense. The picture was so much clearer now, the seams between the pieces so much snugger.

  He found Martin and his grandmother right where he’d left them. He handed them their drinks, then watched his grandmother for a minute, trying to see anything to contradict what he was pretty sure he knew now.

  “Everything okay?” Martin asked.

  “Fine.” The word was a tight syllable on his lips. He knelt next to his grandmother. “How are you doing?”

  She smiled at him. “Lovely. Your sister has put together a great day. And Martin here was telling me about the young woman you’ve been helping. It’s so good to see you doing that. I wish you’d had someone when you were making those decisions.”

  She wanted to talk about his dad. She couldn’t help herself. Philip was her only son, and the distance between him and Seb had always been a difficult spot for her.

  He wouldn’t let her distract him. “Oliver said you were sick.”

  “When?”

  “A couple weeks ago. A respiratory infection, he said?”

  “Oh that. It was just a sniffle. I don’t know what everyone was so worked up about. They wanted to take me to the doctor’s, but I said some tea and a little gin and I’d be fine. And I was! I knew you were coming. Oliver told me. I had to be in fighting shape to see you!” She patted his cheek and then sipped her drink.

  Seb gave her hand another squeeze, then stood. “I didn’t get a drink for myself.” He slipped away before Martin could ask questions that would slow Seb on his new mission.

  Oliver was out on the back patio under one of the propane heaters, laughing with a couple of their cousins.

  Without bothering with niceties, he slung an arm around Oliver’s shoulders. “I need to talk to you.”

  To his brother’s credit, he gave no resistance. Oliver didn’t ask what this was about. He let Seb march them across the yard to the old shed in the far back corner, behind the pond.

  “They’ll find my body sooner or later,” he said as Seb pulled the moldy old door open.

  “Shut up and get inside.”

  Oliver didn’t look overly worried. “If you’re going to punch me, you’re better to do it out here. The shed’s cramped. You won’t be able to wind up so well.”

  Seb shoved him through the open door. He flicked on the light switch, and the one bare bulb in the ceiling flooded the small space with ugly yellow light.

  They stared at each other: Seb scowling, Oliver trying to maintain a serious facade, but mouth trembling as he fought down the grin.

  “She’s dying, Seb.” Seb dropped his voice to sound more like Oliver’s, wobbling dramatically and pressing the back of his hand to his forehead.

  “I never said she was dying.” Oliver’s grin escaped its confines.

  “She keeps asking for you, Seb.”

  “She did. You’ve been her favorite since you learned to hold a crayon the right way down.”

  “Crayons work from both ends.” He shook his head. “Don’t distract me! You told me she was sick.”

  “She
was sick.”

  “You said she was in the hospital.”

  “She should have been.”

  “She said it was just a sniffle.”

  “She also weighs ninety pounds and thinks three gin and tonics is an appetizer. You can’t believe everything she says!”

  No one had ever needed punching as much as Oliver did in that moment. “You lied to me.”

  “I used selected truths.” Oliver rocked on his heels and grinned.

  “Selected truths. Fucking lawyers.” Seb paced in the tiny area of the shed. “You could have told me! Said she wanted me to come. I would have.”

  Oliver snorted. “I did tell you. You hung up on me.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific. I’ve been hanging up on you for years.”

  “You threw a laptop across the room rather than listen to me!”

  “Don’t be dramatic. I knocked you off the table.”

  “See!” Oliver shoved a finger at him, the edges of his cocky self-assurance crumbling. “That. That right there is why I had to lie.”

  “What?”

  “You! You, asshole. You’re so fucking stubborn, you’d argue with me even if you knew I was right!”

  “No, I—” Seb snapped his mouth shut.

  “She did ask about you. Every time I talked to her, she asked if I knew if you were coming. It would have broken her heart if you weren’t here Seb. And you, you stubborn, selfish asshole, you wouldn’t even let me speak long enough for me to tell you that.”

  “But I said, last time I was here, after Dad—”

  “Dad? Do you know why you hate him so much? Why you two fight whenever you get within shouting distance of each other?”

  “Because he’s a controlling asshole?”

  “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?”

  “Don’t compare me to him.”

  “Oh my god! You’re exactly the same, the two of you. So stubborn and you refuse to see it! I could be pissing on both of you, and you’d swear it was raining to prove you were right.”

  “That is a truly disturbing mental image, Ollie.”

  “Would you shut up and thank me already?” Oliver’s voice cracked on the last word.

  “Thank you?”

  “I did this. Me.” He thumped his chest. “The first thing she asked me when she walked in the door this afternoon was if you were here. And I got to say yes. That is the best gift I could have given her.” He was out of breath as he smoothed his hand over his hair. “I did it. I got you here, so you could be the center of attention, just like you’ve always wanted. And instead, you’re arguing with me in a fucking garden shed in October. It is fifty-five degrees out, and this suit is not made for that. Can you please punch me so we can go back inside?”

  The shed fell into damp silence. Oliver huffed and put his hands on his hips, fanning out the back of his jacket. Seb tried a few times to say something. Argue. Snap back with a witty retort.

  In the end, he held his arms out wide.

  “What are you doing?” Oliver said.

  “Come here.”

  Oliver hesitated.

  “Don’t look at me like that. Come here and hug it out.” Seb came forward and wrapped Oliver in a hug.

  “You’re an asshole.” Oliver squeezed him so hard something in Seb’s spine went pop.

  “It’s genetic apparently.”

  “I love you.”

  “Love you too, man. But I’ll love you less if you break a rib.”

  Seb got waylaid on the way back into the party by his Aunt Karen, who cornered him and wouldn’t let him go until she’d thanked him no less than a dozen times for giving up his room at the Bluewater Inn. Then she insisted on reintroducing him to his cousin Jeanine, who might have been twenty but looked way too young to be shacking up in a hotel room with the giant on her arm. The guy said he played defensive tackle on their college football team, and Seb believed him.

  By the time he wiggled his way through the crowd, speeches were underway. Philip was telling a story about a family road trip when he was a child. Seb had heard it before. It ended in a tent with a leak so big they were floating by the time Dinah finally announced the vacation was over.

  A hand on his hip was the only warning he got before Martin slid up against his side. “Where’d you go?” His smile was loose, and there was a glass of wine in his hand.

  “I had to go bury a body in the backyard.” Seb pulled Martin close to him and nuzzled against his neck. Martin laughed and pressed a kiss to his hair. Being this close to Martin was warm and safe, and it seemed impossible that they had waited so long to get here when they fit so well together.

  His father’s speech ended. Gillian took her turn. Then Parker. Oliver stood up, the golden son. What would it be like a year from now, when his custom suits were replaced with hemp? Oliver’s speech included the time he and Seb had run away from home when then were eight and ten. They’d gone about two blocks before realizing their plan involved leaving the house, but not a destination. They went to their grandparents’, where Dinah fed them grilled cheese and chocolate milk until their mother came to get them. Ollie left out the part of the story where Philip had been so furious he’d thrown out all the toys they’d taken with them and refused to replace them. Dinah’s face shone as she listened to Oliver recount the whole adventure. This wasn’t the moment to dwell on old hurts.

  “And now I’d like to introduce my brother.”

  It took Seb a minute to realize that Oliver meant for him to make a speech.

  * * *

  When Seb’s hand slipped out of his, Martin almost didn’t understand what was happening. But then Seb was crossing the open space, cutting through the crowd gathered around to share stories and well wishes. Instinctively, without Seb’s solid presence to bolster him, Martin slipped back between the people, or else they moved forward, and he stayed where he was. There seemed to be a lot of collective breath holding as Seb bent to kiss his grandmother’s cheek.

  “Well, this is embarrassing,” Seb said as he turned. “Because Oliver totally took my story. Except he implied that we were brothers in arms on that little escapade, and I want to make it very clear, for the record, that Ollie was the mastermind, and I was just following orders.”

  Quiet laughter rippled over the group, while Oliver called they would have to agree to disagree.

  “My grandmother.” Seb’s smile was warm as she took his hand in hers and patted it. “My grandmother took me to see my first play when I was nine. We went just the two of us. Do you remember?”

  Dinah beamed up at him. “Alice in Wonderland.”

  “Alice in Wonderland. It seemed like a really big deal, because usually we went to see you and Grampie as a family, all six of us, but here was this time where I got to spend the whole day with just you. I thought it was going to be boring, though. Because I was nine and Alice in Wonderland is about a girl, and those things together mean it’s going to be boring. But then it wasn’t. It was . . . ” He tensed as he stared out over the crowd, his defenses starting to come up, warding off the invisible judgement radiating off his extended family.

  It was unfair that Seb couldn’t even let himself have this moment.

  Martin’s hands trembled. The last time he had been this uncomfortable in this suit, he’d been the one standing at the front of a crowd of people, trying to make himself heard. He had been so nervous until he had seen the bright shape of Seb in the back of the room. Then he talked to Seb like he was the only person there.

  He shifted, finding an open spot where he had a clear line of sight. The movement must have caught Seb’s attention because he turned, and his blue eyes locked on Martin’s. His head tilted, and the tension in the straight line of his shoulders started to relax.

  “It was magic. There were puppets. Everything in Wonderland was puppets. After the play, we went backstage, and you could see them. They were papier-mâché, and they had been made from the pages of old books. Do you remember?” He l
ooked down at his grandmother, who nodded.

  “I wasn’t much of a reader. I wasn’t very good in school at all. But that day . . . I thought, here is something I can do. Here is the way I can find magic in those books.” His eyes were shining as he turned back to Martin. Seb chewed on his lip and ran a hand along the back of his head, like the next part made him nervous.

  “When I heard there was a party, I wasn’t sure if this was the kind of shindig that involved gifts. But the other thing my grandmother taught me was to never come to a party empty handed. So I brought you something.”

  Behind the chair where Dinah sat was a small end table, probably meant to sit next to the chair, but moved out of the way to make more room for the afternoon. Seb pulled it out and set it in front of her. He turned, and Oliver started forward, but Seb spoke directly to Martin. “Can you help me?”

  The box, the one they’d hauled in from the rental car, sat on another table by the door. It was just as heavy as the day before, but now Martin had an idea what was inside, and it felt even more precious.

  They set it on the little table, barely big enough to hold it. Oliver joined them and helped Dinah to stand and pull the bright wrapping paper off the package. Inside was a heavy pressboard container, which explained a lot of the weight. Seb released a latch on the bottom with a snap. He gestured to Martin again, and together they lifted the top off, leaving the contents on the base.

  A gasp sounded in the room, and Martin had a moment of disappointment that he couldn’t see whatever was inside at the same time as everyone else. He was setting the box down, but when he stood, it didn’t matter because everyone around him was enchanted, and there was lots of time to catch up.

  On the little table was a square case with glass panels on all four sides. A small peaked top was finished with a wooden knob, and the same warm wood made up the base. The first thing he noticed was the little frowning man standing at the corner, back to the glass. He looked like a beach ball in a jockey’s cap, and the frown made Martin recognize Tweedledee.

  Inside the glass, a black and white illustrated Alice looked up at the Cheshire Cat in his tree. Seb had split the image out, so the cat was set deeper into the case than Alice. Enhancing the depth was a forest of cut-out trees, each one made from faded yellow pages of text. It was a diorama, but under Seb’s skillful blade, it had life.