I was the woman whose brother had put his body around mine in a doorway when he was fifteen and I was twelve. He'd heard the door break. He'd grabbed me. He'd thrown himself around me before either of us had a word for what was happening. Still, he couldn’t stop me from hearing every sound my parents made on the way to not being my parents anymore.
I'd heard all of it; the door, the shots, and the horrible, silent seconds before the rest of the world arrived.
He had carried that for eighteen years. I had never corrected him, never had the courage to.
We had slept that night in the Wilsons' basement. Aunt Lou had come down the basement stairs at six-fifteen in the morning, saying my name before her feet hit the bottom step. She wasn't blood. She had been my mother's best friend—sister not by blood but by choice, family because they had decided to be. Their children grew up together, running in and out of one another's lives like cousins long before any of us knew how much that would matter.
She'd been Aunt Lou my whole life, and she was Aunt Lou now, and every time I said her name my mother was in the room with me.
A brother who'd done that for me did not, ever, have to apologize for running a plate.
And I was not a woman who got turned inside out by a man she'd known for all of three minutes.
But four nights ago it had developed a problem.
The dawn had come properly up while I'd been sitting there. The bruise-blue behind the houses had turned pale. The streetlamp at the head of the block had cut out on its timer. The world had entered the part of itself that wakes.
And that’s when I caught myself thinking about his hands for the third time in an hour. I hadn’t thought about a man like this since…actually, I don’t think I hadeverthought about a man like this.
I opened the door of Doris and got out. The morning air was cool on the back of my neck where the color was finally letting up. I shut the car door without slamming it, the way you don't slam a car door in a quiet block at that hour.
I took the path to my porch. My hand went into my bag for the keys.
Across the road, at the edge of my eye, was the SOLD sticker.
It was new, recently slapped across the FOR SALE board on the front lawn of the big two-story on the south side of the cul-de-sac that Murph had complained about every Sunday at the diner because the agent kept parking across his mailbox that had been on the market for six months. SOLD in four thick red letters at a slight angle, as if whoever had stuck it on had been in a hurry.
I had a brief, exhausted thought about what kind of person bought a house on Sycamore Row and whether they would be a quiet kind of neighbor or a leaf-blower-at-seven-in-the-morning-on-a-Saturday kind of neighbor, but that was all the attention I had for the thought at the moment.
I’d find out later, I told myself. I went and put the kettle on.
2
Caleb
Three weeks ago, I’d signed for a house I hadn’t gone shopping for. This morning, at half past seven, I rolled up Sycamore Row with five Harleys behind me and my father in the passenger seat of the truck.
Curtains moved in two windows on the way in. The man at the corner with the flagpole — Stars and Stripes one halyard, Lone Star the other, both taut on their halyards, squared off without a half-inch of slack in either line — was on his porch with a mug before we got to the second mailbox. He didn’t wave, but he didn’t go inside either. He just drank his coffee and watched a U-Haul and five Harleys ease into my drive.
My drive. The phrase still didn’t quite fit the mouth.
The two-story sat at the south end of the loop. Big front porch, two-car garage off to the right, deep backyard behind a privacy fence. Pale brick under fresh white trim. I made a note to take down the SOLD board before the realtor came to collect it. I cut the engine.
Tuck was off his bike first. Six-three, beard halfway down his chest now, big stupid grin. He drew up next to my window.
“Right, Mad Dog. Where’s the kitchen.”
“Through the front, hang left.”
“And the bedroom. For the redhead from Tulsa.”
“Fuck off, Tuck.”
“What. Got to know whether to put your sheets on now or after the housewarming.”
“There’s no housewarming.”
“There’s a housewarming. Your dad already said he’s bringing the smoker.”
