Page 22
As I waited for him to race across the yard, at least half the size of a football field in order to house a creature Mickey’s size, a noise from the back deck caught my attention. I looked over my shoulder, expecting Ryan, but seeing a newcomer stepping out of the house instead.
Nash, Maggie’s youngest brother. They’d told me he earlier he would be stopping by to pick up something from her to take back to the city, where he lived. Maggie and Ryan had moved out here once it had become apparent that Mickey would break down their entire apartment building if they tried to stay.
Nash stopped at the top of the wooden steps, caught my eye, and gave me a single, slow nod. I returned it, and that was it. Honestly, it was as much as we’d ever spoken in recent years, but as far as I was concerned, it was the perfect exchange.
Clearly, both of us understood the sacred value of silence as opposed to meaningless small talk. Plus, if nothing else, the Pembroke boys were cool with us Thayers. They didn’t treat us like social dynamite, unlike the rest of the old-money families suffocating the Eastern Seaboard.
Most of those people checked to see if their wallets and reputations were still intact after just passing us on the street, but Nash kind of looked like he wanted to go home and take a nap. I got that.
A minute later, the deck creaked again, and when I glanced at the place where Nash had been standing, Ryan was there this time. He dropped into a chair overlooking the yard, kicked his feet up on the little table in front of him, and extended one of the two bottles he was holding toward me.
“Fresh beer,” he announced. “I thought you might be able to use it.”
“Thanks.” I strode backward and reached up between the wooden slats of the banister to take it from him, my tongue recoiling like a gun at the first taste of whatever the hell that was, but it wasn’t beer. “Shit, that’s disgusting. It tastes like a pine tree and a grapefruit had a bad breakup after a terrible relationship.”
He sighed like I’d just offended our grandmother—maternal, not paternal. “It’s an artisanal, small-batch double IPA from upstate. Expand your palate, little brother. You’re not an undergrad anymore.”
“My palate prefers liquids that don’t double as paint thinner,” I grumbled, but I took another sip anyway because, frankly, I needed the alcohol. “Why, are those hints of despair under the rotten citrus?”
Ryan laughed and turned his gaze toward Mickey, who was barreling back toward us with the biologically weaponized tennis ball clamped in his jaw. “So, do you really have to fly back out tomorrow? It’s only Saturday night. Maggie was planning on making some ungodly fall soup tomorrow afternoon.”
“What’s a fall soup?”
“I have no idea, but I’d prefer backup when she serves it.”
“Sorry, bro. Duty calls. I have a class I can’t miss at nine on Monday, and on top of that, Alex is firmly up my ass right now. He’s sent three texts today alone.”
“Did he use emojis?”
“No.”
“Fuck, that’s means he’s in full-blown bulldozer mode.” Ryan’s easy-going expression sharpened into Boardroom Ryan face. “He’s pushing the terms of the inheritance on you, then?”
“You know about that?”
He shrugged, staring out over the darkening yard. “You know how it goes in our family, man. We don’t have secrets. Just delayed press releases.”
“Yeah, that’s fair.”
“Look,” he said after pausing for a beat. “I know what must be going through your head right now, but the inheritance thing is legit and the Westwoods are definitely onto something with how they structure these things.”
I barked out a dry laugh. “Says the guy who doesn’t have to comply.”
“Sure, but Alex has this bizarre, completely legal way of moving money without causing a fuss with the IRS, or, you know, resorting to the black market. You should trust him.”
I took another sip of my terrible craft beer. “This isn’t about trust. Of course, I trust him. He’s Alex.”
“And yet, whenever his name comes up nowadays, you look like you swallowed a lemon,” he said. “So what’s really going on, Holden? You guys used to be so close.”
Mickey’s rumbling whine rang out at that exact moment and he crouched with his lower body closer to the grass, panting as he dropped the slimy ball directly in front of my sneaker. Saved by the dog.
Recognizing that he’d just given me an opportunity, I seized it with both hands, scooping up the disgusting, wet tennis ball and tossing it at Ryan. “What’s going on is that I’m exhausted, so you can run your own dog ragged. I’m going to bed. Enjoy your grapefruit and despair.”
“You asshole!” Ryan yelled as I walked away, frantically brushing the drool-soaked ball off his shorts.
I laughed, quickly sliding the glass door shut behind me just to delay him if he should be thinking about trying to catch up. After waving goodnight at Maggie, I went upstairs to their guest room, kicked off my shoes, and collapsed onto the mattress.
At least ten throw pillows separated my back from the headboard and a framed print of a bulldog wearing a monocle hung on the wall, but I still felt more comfortable in their house than I did most other places. It was rare for a Thayer to find a space where we could really just be, but to me, this was one of them.
