“It’s hell getting old, you know that?”
Gabe wasn’t yet forty, but his joints creaked and his hair was starting to silver. When he looked in the mirror he had to suck in his gut a little more than he used to. He could only imagine what it was like for his father, who’d been an old man already by the time he was Gabe’s age, and had done nothing but become ancient since.
“So die,” Gabe said. “Save yourself any more trouble, and us, too.”
The old man snorted and dug his fork into the pie. He licked the tines and pointed it toward Gabe. “Maybe you should fill your mouth with pie. You won’t feel the need to talk so nasty.”
“I don’t like coconut cream.”
The old man grinned. “I know.”
“So who’s the second plate for, then?”
“For your brother, dummy.” The old man pointed the fork at him again. “He’ll be home soon, won’t he? Andy likes coconut cream. He’ll sit here and eat a piece with me. Keep me comp’ny.”
“What do you need company for?”
The old man paused with the fork halfway to his mouth. “Why not?”
When Gabe was younger, his father had spent time with his buddies in a bar or at hunting camp. Sometimes he went to play poker at Al Hedge’s house, though Al had died about ten years ago and nobody had taken up the game after him. And sometimes, when Gabe was much, much younger, his dad had left them overnight and gone to who-knew-where, but it must’ve been someplace nice because he always spruced himself up a lot before he went. Other than that, his dad had never been what Gabe might’ve considered the sociable sort, and time hadn’t improved that.
Gabe shrugged. “I just figured you liked sitting in front of the TV by yourself all day long. Why else would you do it?”
The old man said nothing for a few minutes while he decimated his pie. When he’d finished a hefty slice, he dropped the fork onto the plate with a clatter and pushed back from the table. “What do you know about me, anyway?”
The truth was, Gabe knew more about his father than he ever wanted to. More than he ever should have. “I know you spend all your time on your ass in that recliner, cultivating your piles. If you want company, why don’t you go out somewhere?”
“Where would I go?”
“Wherever you want. Go visit some of your buddies, go to the VFW. Hell, go to church.”
The old man hadn’t been to church in so long Gabe couldn’t remember the last time. Maybe when Michael had been consecrated. Of course, that was the last time Gabe had been in a church himself.
“Church.” The old man snorted, then coughed. The cough turned into a choke, which became a wheeze.
Gabe watched impassively, wondering if he’d need to jump across the table in a minute to resuscitate him. Wondering, if push came to shove, if he’d bother. The old man’s choking tapered off, and he gave Gabe a glare.
“Wipe that smile off your face.”
“Didn’t know I was smiling,” Gabe said. “Sorry.”
His father wiped his mouth with a paper napkin from the basket in the middle of the table. His hands were shaking. When he looked at Gabe, his eyes were red-rimmed and watering.
“You think I hate you, but I don’t.”
Gabe got up to pour his unfinished beer into the sink. “I’m going out for a smoke.”
“But
you
hate
me.
”
Without looking at him, Gabe pushed open the back door and stepped onto the porch. A light swung into the alley from a vehicle in the Deckers’ driveway. A few minutes later he heard the crunch of boots on the ice and salt. Janelle, arms full of brown paper grocery bags, made her careful and slightly unsteady way down the alley toward the back door. Her movements lit the motion-activated spotlight at the back of the house.
He watched her struggle for a minute before she looked up to see him standing there. “Hey.”
“Hi,” Janelle said quietly. She shifted both bags to one arm so she could open the door with the other. “You’re going to freeze.”
“Hot-blooded,” Gabe said without thinking, forgetting for a minute she was the one who’d first called him that.
She laughed, and it was just how he remembered it. Full-on, no holding back. She shook her head a little and pulled open the screen door, one foot on the bottom step. She looked back at him from just inside the back porch.
“Good night.”
She didn’t wait for him to answer. And Gabe, hot-blooded though he might be, was suddenly aware of the cold. He went back inside the kitchen, expecting to find his father gone to bed, or if not that, back in his usual spot in front of the TV.
The old man hadn’t moved from the table. He hadn’t eaten more pie, and hadn’t bothered to put it back in the fridge or take his plate to the sink. Neither was a surprise.
“I don’t hate you,” the old man repeated in a low, rough voice that didn’t sound like his own at all. “You always thought I did. But I never did. Maybe one day you’ll stop hating me?”
It was a question, but Gabe had no answer.
“I’m going to bed.” He didn’t point out all the hundreds of ways over the years Ralph Tierney had expressed his feelings for his sons.
Hate or love, either way, it was too late for whatever it had been to become anything else.
EIGHT
NAN HAD HAD a few bad days, but she was having a good one now. By the time Bennett went off to school, she had already baked a pan of cinnamon rolls from scratch and done half a book of number puzzles. She sat at the kitchen table in her favorite fuzzy blue housecoat, her hair covered by a matching bandanna tied at a jaunty angle.
“Helen will be over later to do my rollers for me.” White icing clung to the corners of Nan’s mouth. “We have card club tomorrow, you know.”
Card club consisted of ten or so women Nan had known since grammar school. She’d confided to Janelle that it had been months since she’d hosted her turn or even attended a meeting, but with Janelle here it made everything so much easier. And if it made Nan happy, that’s what counted, Janelle thought as she slid into her seat with a cinnamon roll in her hand.
Delicious didn’t do the roll justice. Gorgeous. Awesome. Amazing. “Awesomazing,” Janelle murmured, licking sweet icing from her fingers. “Nan, you’re such a good cook.”
“I should teach you how to make them before I go.”
“To card club?” Janelle asked.
Stupid.
Nan didn’t answer, just smiled and tapped her book with her pen, peering over the top of her reading glasses when Janelle licked her fingers clean. “Your daddy used to do that same thing. Lick his fingers instead of using a napkin. Didn’t matter how many times I told him.”
Janelle paused, then grabbed a napkin from the holder on the table. The question came out before she could stop it. “Do you...miss him?”
Nan took off her glasses and set them carefully on the table, then rubbed the small red marks they’d left on the sides of her nose. She tapped her pen on the puzzle book again. “He was my oldest boy, Janelle. Of course I miss your dad.”
“Do you ever hear from him?”
“No.” Nan frowned. “And maybe it’s better that way. When someone breaks your heart over and over again, sometimes it’s better to just let them go.”
Janelle had let her dad go a long time ago for that very reason. Until now she hadn’t ever thought about how it must’ve made Nan feel to have lost touch with her son. Until she was a mom herself, Janelle wasn’t sure she’d have understood. She couldn’t imagine letting Bennett go, not like that. She reached across the table to squeeze Nan’s hand.
“How about something to drink?”
“Nothing for me, honey,” Nan said, her eyes bright, but without so much as a sniffle. “I’m going to finish my puzzle.”
Ice-cold milk would be perfect with the cinnamon roll. Even better than the coffee Janelle hadn’t made yet because she was still looking for her coffeemaker. She pulled the carton from the refrigerator and poured a glass, noticing too late that the one she’d pulled from the back of the cupboard was etched and striped with dirt. So was the next she pulled out. She held it to the light, twisting it.
Filthy.
Bennett was in charge of loading and unloading the dishwasher here, the way he’d been in California, and for a brief, irritated moment, Janelle wondered if he’d been too lazy to make sure the dishes were clean, or if he’d been too inattentive to notice. Or a twelve-year-old’s winning combination of both.
She checked the dishes in the cupboard quickly. The ones closer to the top of the stack, ones they’d been using regularly, seemed clean enough, but some beneath were crusted with bits of dried-on food. Just a few here and there, but enough to make her stomach turn. The flatware in the drawer was much the same. Some of the pieces looked fine, but there were a lot of dirty spoons, and forks with bits of food clinging to the tines.
Everything would need to be rewashed. She loaded dishes in the dishwasher. Added the soap. Turned the dial—because wow, was this machine old. An hour later she checked it and found it full of wet dishes that were still pretty dirty.
“Nan? Is there something wrong with your dishwasher?”
Her grandmother shuffled into the kitchen doorway. “I don’t think so.”
Janelle checked the dial settings, thinking she must have chosen some Light or Delicate option. Nope, she’d turned the dial to Normal Wash. She opened the dishwasher. Closed it again. “I think it’s broken. When’s the last time you used it?”
“Oh...” Nan looked apologetic. “I just wash the dishes by hand.”
“But you had people over for New Year’s dinner!” That meant not only dishes, but pots and pans and serving platters and extra silverware. “Nan, you didn’t wash everything by hand, did you?”
“No, no. Everyone helped do most of it.” She nodded firmly. “And when they left, I just did the rest.”
“Oh. Nan.” Janelle sighed and opened the dishwasher again. “I think you’re going to need a new one.”
“They’re expensive.” Nan sounded worried.
“You don’t need to worry about that.” Though of course, she would. And it would require some discussion with her uncles, since this was an expense that fell under improving the house, and Janelle was only approved to handle the daily household needs.
“Maybe we can just get it fixed,” Nan offered hopefully.
Before they could say anything else, the back door opened. Nan didn’t seem surprised, but Janelle was still in the California mind-set—nobody left their doors unlocked, and anyone who came in uninvited and unannounced might as well have a target painted on their chest.
It was Andy. Today he wore a striped, long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, his feet in socks, not slippers. He’d probably kicked his shoes off on the back porch. He looked totally put-together, and if you ignored the thick white stripe in his slicked-back hair, hardly different than he had as a teen. He gave her that grin.
“Janelle! Hi!” He remembered her name this time, at least.
“Hi, Andy.” She gave him a cautious smile. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, he came over to play cards with me. Get me warmed up for the club.” Nan gestured. “Come on in, honey. Janelle, bring those cinnamon rolls in here to the table.”
“Your Nan makes them the best,” Andy confided. “I missed ’em.”
“You could’ve come over anytime, honey, you know that,” Nan said.
He hesitated, looking a little guilty. “Gabe said not to bother you. I sent flowers, though, when you were in the hospital. Did you get them?”
“They were lovely. And you’re never a bother. Sit down, honey. Sit.”
“Andy, do you come over to play cards a lot?” They’d spent hours, back in the day, playing poker for M&M’s or pennies. Andy had had an amazing poker face. They’d played other games, too. Bullshit had been a favorite. Blackjack. She smiled, remembering.
“Sure, whenever I can. When Dad’s napping and Gabe’s at work, and if I don’t have to work.” He opened the corner cabinet and pulled out the worn box filled with multiple decks of cards that had been around since Janelle’s childhood. “You wanna play?”
“No, thanks. I need to figure out what to do with the dishwasher.” She eyed him. “Where do you work?”
He named the town’s bigger grocery store. “I work in the stockroom. Or I help bring the carts in. They don’t really like me to bag the groceries because of my bum hand. I drop too many jars.”
She’d assumed he couldn’t work. Somehow knowing he had a job made Janelle feel better.
Like you have the right to feel good about anything that happened,
she thought. “Oh, that’s good.”
Andy’s laugh had always been as sweet as his smile. “It’s okay. Gabe says I should try for something else, maybe. But I like what I do.”
“Something else?”
Andy dealt out the cards, solicitously moving the pile close enough to Nan so she didn’t have to stretch for it. “Yeah. Like school or something. Maybe. But it’s okay. Mikey went to college. I don’t need to go.”
Janelle leaned in the doorway. If she was thirty-eight, Andrew would be thirty-four, or close to it. “Gabe thinks you should go to school now?”
Andrew shrugged. “He thought I should go before. But now, I don’t know. I can’t drive because of the seizures. Can’t remember stuff. School seems like a waste of time.”
Janelle kept her voice neutral. Gabe had always talked about leaving St. Marys. Becoming something.
“I’m getting out of here,” he says as the smoke curls out of his mouth. “Never coming back.”
She’s feeling lazy and hazy and has no idea what she’s going to do when school’s over, when she has to enter the real world. “What do you want to do with your life?”
“Just get out of here.” He’s dead serious. “Get away.”
“Did he go to college? Gabe, I mean.”
“Nope. He worked at the plant.”
Nan sorted her cards. “Their daddy retired from there, but Gabe wasn’t there for very long, was he? He started his own business a while ago. He’s a handyman, isn’t he, Andy? How long’s he been doing that?”
“Nope. Since...” Andrew frowned. “Since... I’m sorry, I don’t remember lots of stuff. It sucks sometimes.”
A handyman. That made sense. He’d always been good at fixing things. Breaking them, too.
“It’s okay. You and Nan play the game. I’m going to figure out what to do with this dishwasher.” Which first meant unloading it and washing the dishes by hand.