AllFreeNovel
Share Us
of his pocket and paid. When he had the pizza boxes in hand, he turned and walked out the door.
Married. His baby sister.
He didn’t know why it should make a difference. She’d lived up north with Levi for almost a decade, first in a ramshackle apartment with cinder-block bookcases, later in a ramshackle house that Katie had done her best to turn into a home. He’d visited them up there, had even learned how to fly fish from Levi. He’d liked the guy all right, accepting him as Katie’s choice. Levi was a little flaky, a happy-go-lucky type. Good with the customers he guided on raft trips and taught how to kayak.
Caleb had liked him.
She followed him up the hill, across the campus toward Ellen’s house, walking a step or two behind him. He wanted to tell her she didn’t have to trail after him like that, but he was too worked up to talk.
Married him. She’d married Levi. The word was stuck in his head, and he couldn’t get past it, even though it was probably the least important thing she’d told him.
Married him, and he’d used her, cleaned her out, and left her.
At the top of a steep, grassy hill, Caleb stopped abruptly. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“What? When?”
“When he left! Christ, Katie, you got married, you put him through college, ran a business with him, and then he stole all your money and went to Tibet? And you didn’t fucking think it might be a good idea to call?” His voice slipped the track and rose to a shout on the last word.
She flinched, and he sucked in a deep breath. He was too amped up, yelling at his sister as if she were the one who’d done something wrong.
“You were in Iraq,” she said cautiously.
Caleb dropped the pizzas and turned away from her expression. He walked ten feet away from her, twenty, and found a tree to kick as hard as he could.
“That fucking low-life scumbag son of a bitch,” he said. He managed not to shout it. The words came out more of a tortured mutter. “What an asshole.”
Katie followed him. He heard her shoes shushing over the grass as she came up behind him.
“If you’d called me when he left, I’d have found him, and I’d have fucking killed him,” he said to her feet.
“Well, that’s one reason I didn’t tell you.”
When he turned around and looked at her, really looked, he saw that her eyes were big and round and wet-looking, her mouth flat and trembling. She looked like a PFC about to engage the enemy for the first time. Scared shitless, but holding up.
How had he let himself become the enemy in this scenario? Yelling at his sister for telling him what had happened to her—what the hell was wrong with him?
“Jesus,” Caleb said, pulling her into a rough hug and smoothing her hair with one hand the way he’d done when she was thirteen years old and she’d sobbed herself hoarse at the thought of him going away to get shot at. “You should’ve called,” he said into the top of her head. “I know I couldn’t have come right away, but I would have come as soon as I could. I would’ve helped you.”
She gave him a minute to hold her before she pulled away, patting his chest. Her eyes were dry. “I know,” she said. “Thanks. I did okay on my own.” Bending down, she picked up the half-crushed pizza boxes and said, “Come on.”
They walked the rest of the way to Burgess in silence. Caleb handed off a pizza to each of the security teams and got an update on the situation, which hadn’t changed.
When they reached the porch they found Ellen’s door standing open, the screen door closed but unlocked. No one answered when Caleb rapped on the jamb. He tried not to let that get him all riled up again, but his body didn’t cooperate particularly well.
Katie handed Caleb a slice of pepperoni from one of the remaining boxes. They sat on the steps together.
“So I think I need a divorce,” she said.
“Think he’s got any money to pay alimony? He owes you.”
“I doubt it. Even if he does, I don’t want it.”
“But you might need it some day.”
“I won’t. I’ve got you.”
Caleb turned to look at her, surprised.
