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“It’s not my fault,” Chris said, choking as he said it. The kid needed to go into acting. He could summon tears at the drop of a hat and he had the wounded victim expression down pat. “He attacked me, and I didn’t do nothing.”
“Yeah. Sure you didn’t,” Michael said, straightening the shirt bunched up around his skinny torso. Hair flopped into his eyes and a bruise looked to be forming on his cheekbone.
“Hush, Chris,” Lucas said before looking over at her. “Thanks for coming to break this up.”
“I didn’t do much good. They’re nearly as big as me.”
She should go back home, but she didn’t. Though she’d never before interfered in the lives of her neighbors, she felt she was needed here. Strike that. She knew she was needed here.
“Okay, Michael, what’s going on?”
The thirteen-year-old gave his uncle a withering look, turned, then stomped toward the front of the house effectively telling them all to go to hell without even opening his mouth.
Lucas locked his mouth into a tight line, his eyes betraying disbelief over the lack of respect. He released Chris and started toward the front of the house.
“Lucas,” Addy said.
He turned.
“Let me go. You take care of Chris.”
“Hell, no, I’ve have enough of his disrespect. He’s acted like a turd since the moment I arrived, and I’m done with him.”
“Look, let me try first. Okay?”
The man stood for a moment, shoulders tense, before finally taking a deep breath. “Okay.”
Addy walked to the front of the house and found Michael sitting on the porch steps. Obviously, the shady location was the go-to spot for calming down. Except Michael didn’t look calm. With his forearms propped on his knees and his jaw firmly set against the emotion he obviously battled, he looked anything but calm. He looked more like a kid about to lose it.
“Hey,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t bolt… or turn his anger on her.
“Hey,” he ground out, not looking at her, staring out into the last fingers of sunlight stretching toward the darkening sky.
“I’m guessing you’re not okay?”
“That obvious?”
Addy climbed the steps and sat down beside him. “I know you don’t know me. Sometimes it just helps to talk to someone who you don’t know so well. If that makes sense.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re not going to fix the shit storm Chris just caused on my snapchat story. And you can’t call my mom and tell her to stop treating me like a baby. I don’t know. Can you heal my father and bring him home? Or maybe you have the power to turn back time so everything is like it was months ago?”
Yeah, she probably couldn’t help with any of that. “No. I can’t do that. But I can listen.”
Michael grunted and stared out toward the streetlights.
“You know about your father?” she asked.
“Do I look totally stupid? You think I don’t know this has something to do with his getting injured overseas? I heard my mom talk to my dad weeks ago. She wanted to fly into Germany, and he wouldn’t let her. He wanted her to stay with us. So what happened to make her leave?”
“I don’t know.”
He shook his head. “My mother’s bullshit gag order on everyone means it’s pretty bad. She left us with an uncle we’ve never met before. I get As in math so I’m pretty sure I can add all that up.”
Addy could add, too, though minutes before reconciling her bank statement might have proven differently. “Lucas hasn’t said anything to me about your father.”
“Par for the course.”
“I’m sorry.”
