Page 3 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

Myles clenched his jaw and forced himself not to look again at the trail of dark dirt across the pale ceramic. He gave a curt, silent nod.

“What’s wrong?” Pat closed the closet door, broom still in hand.

“Yeah, no. Nothing. I’m good.”

“Also a terrible liar.”

“I just…” He pulled in a deep breath and took the broom from her to sweep the garden from the living room, then moved on to Shelly’s sandy prints in the kitchen.

“Would you—” She tried to reclaim it, but he evaded her grab.

“Let me. I’ll feel better.”

She made a face but backed off and let him sweep up the soil.

“It’s not unhealthy for me to clean up a mess that actually exists,” he told her.

“It’s not unhealthy to have a few specks of good, clean garden soil on the floor,” she countered.

“Leave me alone.”

She bent and held the dustpan for him to sweep the dirt onto. “You know I’ll never do that.”

“I do.” She’d been there for him when they were twelve and he’d realized he was gay and didn’t know how to tell his conservative pig-farming father, and she was here for him now, ready to house-sit while he ran away from the crushing sorrow of his sister’s death. He sighed, silent as he watched her empty the pan into the kitchen garbage.

“This trip is going to be good for you,” she said on her way back to him. “For all of you.” She took the broom, snapped the pan back onto its handle, and put it away in the closet, which didn’t attack her as it had him.

“Jet wants nothing to do with it.”

Gently, she closed the closet door, and it snicked shut with a whisper. “Jet’s sixteen. He’s not going to want anything to do with anything that wasn’t his idea first.”

“Valid.”

“Myles, you need to learn to trust your instincts, here.”

He noted she used his given name and not Micky, as she and everyone else had back when he’d been deployed. He was Myles now, and most of him wasn’t sad about that.

“I’m not their father,” he reminded her.

“No, you’re not. But you are all they have in this world.”

As they were the only family he had left. “Summer break has hardly started and I’m taking them away from all their friends for what? So I can feel less isolated?”

“First off, I’ve met Jet’s friends. You don’t want him rattling around Calgary all summer with those hoodlums.”

“Harsh.”

“But true. Some of them are truly bad news.”

He didn’t think she was wrong, but there was no way he was going to try to point that out to Jet. As she’d already pointed out, nothing Myles said would be taken at all seriously. In fact, Jet would probably go out of his way to do the exact opposite of anything Myles suggested.

The best way to remove the negative influence of bad characters was to remove Jet from the temptation of hanging out with them and hope a few weeks away would diminish their influence. At least, that was the theory Myles was going with.

“So what was the second thing?” he asked.

She frowned at him.

“You said ‘first off.’ So what’s second?”