AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We’re keeping the floors—that’s good, solid oak under all the dust and scratches,” the older woman chattered. “The kitchen’s this way,” she went on, like she was showing the house, and then laughed at herself and looked at him before adding, “but, of course, you know the layout.”
“It’s coming back to me,” he replied, still not sure how he felt about being there—or why Sinclair had felt the need to bring them here.
“Well…” Deanna peeked at her watch. “I’d better be on my way so I’m not late to an open house. I’m going to lock the front door behind me. The kitchen door can be locked from the inside, so if you could exit from there when you’re done exploring, and just be sure it’s shut tight, I’d really appreciate it.”
Sinclair spared him a glance, and a small smile, and then turned to Deanne. “Will do. Thanks, Deanne.”
“Oh, no problem, hon. I hope you’ll both come back and look around once we’ve remodeled.”
Shane listened with one ear as the ladies exchanged a final round of niceties, while his eyes took in the empty shell of a living room. His mind, however, saw back in time. A door closed, and a second later Sinclair stood beside him.
“This was the living room?”
“Yeah.” He sounded like he’d swallowed gravel. He cleared his throat and went on. “There was a long, brown sofa against this wall, and, over there”—he pointed to the right—“an oversize eyesore of a recliner my dad practically lived in. Over here”—he indicated the wall opposite the sofa—“we had the TV on a fancy cabinet my mom was so proud of because she’d won it at a church raffle and swore it was an antique. I’m pretty sure they still have that ugly old thing.” He laughed. “If it was an antique, it was wasted on us. Half the time, the living room floor looked as though that cabinet had puked PlayStation components all over it.”
“Oh, you were one of the lucky kids,” Sinclair said. “Savannah and I begged, but our parents refused to get us a PlayStation. Dad told us it would be too depressing for him to come home and see his girls glued to a screen, blowing up the planet.”
“Derek and I worked on our mom for the better part of a year before we talked her into buying it.”
“I’m betting she worked you, too.”
He inclined his head. “She tried, extracting promises from us to stop wailing on each other, and keep our rooms clean, and do our chores. We agreed to everything, naturally, and followed through on none of it, but I suspect she knew all along our promises weren’t worth the breath it had taken to utter them.”
Sinclair’s lips curved into a smile. “But she bought it for you anyway.”
“Probably to shut us up. We had fun with it, though. Kyle Grieger and Marc Waggoner from down the street would come over, and we’d all play Final Fantasy, or Grand Theft Auto, until Dad would get home and commandeer the TV.”
“God, Kyle Grieger. There’s a name I haven’t heard in eons. Whatever happened to him?”
Shane racked his brain and came up mostly empty. “I don’t know. He got busted in Atlanta with Derek—for grand theft auto, ironically—and I lost track after that. Marc was my year. He went to college, met a girl, got married, and now he’s an actuary in Philly.”
“Ever see him?”
He nodded. “We grab a beer whenever I’m in town.”
“That’s nice, keeping up a connection from your childhood.” She graced him with a cryptic smile and ambled through the archway leading to the kitchen. He followed.
She stood at the kitchen door. “Can you get to the backyard through here?”
“Uh-huh.” The warped frame protested when he pulled the door open. The wooden step down to the basic concrete slab of a back porch looked rickety. “Careful,” he said and held her elbow while she stepped down. The slat groaned under his weight when he followed, and rotted sections splintered. He gave his next move a moment’s consideration and then shifted his weight to one foot and brought the heel of his other foot down hard. The wood cracked.
Sinclair turned around, startled, and gave him a wide
-eyed look. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” He stepped down to the concrete, leaned over, and hand-pried the broken halves off the supports. After he stacked them against the wall, he crouched and brushed away leaves and debris that had accumulated under the step. And there they were. Two sets of handprints in the cement. One a little larger than the other, but both small.
Sinclair crouched beside him and used a finger to trace the right hand of the smaller set of handprints, lingering in the valley between the ring finger and little finger. “Are these yours?”
The same valley on his right hand tingled. “Yep.”
She placed her palm over the imprint and rested it there. “How old were you?”
“Five or six. The old slab had pulled away from the house, and after my folks complained enough, the landlord sent a crew over to break it up, haul it off, and pour a new one. Dad told us to stay away from the drying cement, but Derek and I didn’t want to hear that. The next morning, my dad spotted the handprints and was like, ‘What the hell is this?’”
“Busted?”
He laughed. “We gave him our best innocent looks and told him some kids must have come along in the middle of the night. He stuck our hands in the prints and said, ‘Yeah, right.’” Another reluctant laughed rumbled up from his chest. “We didn’t think it through.”
