Reno set the drill down and Dillon sat back on his heels.They both gazed off toward the sliver of lake glittering beyond the end of the street.Neither made eye contact with Hank, which was how the brothers usually said important and true things to each other.
Dillon nodded slowly.“I wasn’t sure we’d get to see that this soon.”
Reno asked, “Has she stopped carrying her backpack everywhere with her?”
And just like that, Hank was back in the courtroom, remembering how Madison had kept the backpack between her feet in the courtroom and reached down now and then to touch it as if reassuring herself it was still there.
He never did find out what all she had inside it.He assumed it was clothes and toiletry items for a short trip.Maybe a few of her most prized possessions.But she’d never told him what it held, and he respected her privacy enough not to look.
The smell of the Bozeman courthouse came back to him.Of floor wax and old radiators.Lorraine had worn a soft blue sweater and matching skirt that made her look demure and motherly, particularly when she sat with her hands folded and her chin tipped at a sorrowful, forgiving angle.
She’d kept up the act magnificently for the better part of an hour.A mother who had stumbled and gotten well.A mother who wanted only what was best for her beloved child.She’d looked like the girl he’d married, and for a few minutes in that courtroom, he’d actually wondered if the threat of losing Madison had finally been dire enough to get her to straighten herself out for real.
And then, under Reno’s questioning, he’d watched the mask come off his ex-wife in real time.It had been terrible to watch.A microcosm of their whole, decade-long marriage playing out in just a few minutes.
Was that what their marriage had done to her?What he’d done to her?Had he really ruined her?Although it was hard for him to remember her the way she was in the beginning, seeing her composed and calm for a little while had been a stark reminder to him of who she’d once been.
Or had he ever really known her at all?Had that other ugly, self-destructive side of her been there all along?Had she just managed to hide it from him until the stress of her life with him became too much for her to maintain the façade any longer?
What had been too much for her?A husband who left her alone at home a lot while he worked long hours?The expectation by everyone around her, including him, that she would grow up and settle into adult responsibilities?Or was it the demands of parenthood that became too much for her?
Those were the three things she usually brought up when she screamed at him.
Lately though, he’d begun to wonder if there hadn’t been something else at the root of all her tirades and self-destructive behavior.He’d been reading up on addiction, and often the causes ran much deeper and much older than present-day stresses.
Still.The seven words she’d hissed at him after the hearing had seared their way into him and were branded on his heart, black and smoking, still painful every single day.You ruined my life.You ruined me.
“Hank.”Reno said even and low.“You’re a thousand miles off.”
He blinked and was back on the porch with the smell of fresh-cut pine and the saw cooling.His brothers were watching him in careful concern.The lake was still out there, though, flat and bright and entirely unconcerned.
“I was thinking about how things went sideways with Lorraine,” he admitted.
Dillon said with quiet conviction, “I’m just glad you got Madison away from her and have some time to do damage control before she’s all grown up.”
All three of them nodded soberly at that.
Reno picked the drill up, which was a mercy.“Anyway,” he said, lighter.“I’m glad to hear she unpacked.”
Through the front window, in his converted doctor’s office, Hank saw Sunny at the desk.She had the town’s ledgers stacked at her elbow, a pencil behind her ear, and another in her hand, and she was scowling at a column of figures as if she meant to make them tell the truth or die in the attempt.
She was so different from Lorraine.He didn’t know exactly what had happened to land Sunny as a single parent raising for young children and putting herself through an accounting degree while doing so, but she’d made the best of it and tried to build a good life for herself and her kids.
Lorraine had everything she could’ve asked for.A husband with a good job who supported her in fine style, a child, a husband who, although busy, doted on her.She’d thrown it all away and set out to make herself and everyone around her as miserable as possible.
The contrast flowed through him sharp and clean like cold water.He turned back to the porch floor quickly before either of his brothers could catch him doing the jaw thing again.
His brothers left at dusk with the porch repaired and ready to be re-stained.Hank had carried the aluminum chair back himself and set it down with a finality that had Reno laughing the whole way to his truck.
Sunny’s brood had gone home to Natalie’s bungalow, fed and damp and lightly sunburned from an afternoon in the sprinkler, and Madison had gone up to her room with a book and the tiredness of a girl who’d stopped pretending she was too old to have fun.
The house went quiet.Not the dead quiet it used to hold, but the settled, end-of-day quiet of a place that had been full and noisy and would be so again soon.
Hank found Sunny still at the desk, the town ledgers on one side of her and the photographs of the house’s original blueprints on the other, working back-and-forth between the two.
He set a cup of hot tea at her elbow, black, where she could reach it without looking, and she said thank you without looking.It was a small comfortable thing between them now, worn smooth by several weeks of repetition.
“You should go to bed,” she said.“You’ve been working on that porch since dawn.”
