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But it didn’t. It felt like not enough.
And that scared the shit out of me.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said to Alden. “I need to focus on Brew Fest.”
“You need to get your dick sucked is what you need. And I find I quite like the idea of you using a Wellbridge for just that purpose.” He threw back the last sip of his drink and grabbed my full cup to replace it. “At least they’re good for something.”
He wandered away, and I frowned after him until McLean nudged me aside to grab himself an organic ginger ale, and I turned my attention to my taciturn middle brother. “Wow. Three family dinners in a row. You must be feeling sociable these days.”
He shrugged. “Not really. But it’ll be quiet after they leave.” He glanced at Willow and Huck.
“When do they fly out exactly?”
Before he could answer, JT approached and handed something to McLean. “Hey, Moose. I meant to give this to you the other night when I came by.”
McLean inspected the little leather pouch before unsnapping it and pulling out what was inside. It looked like a nice pocketknife with wood inlay on the handle. My brother whittled in his spare time, but he already had a pocketknife.
I opened my mouth to say so when McLean gasped.
“It’s a carving jack,” he said in wonder. “Holy cow.”
JT looked beyond pleased at the awe in McLean’s reaction. “I saw it in a specialty shop in the city, and it made me think of you. The blades are high-carbon steel. The shop didn’t have the left-handed one, so I special-ordered it online, and it arrived last week. I was gonna send it to you, but, well…” He shrugged. “Here I am.”
Yes, here he was.But not for long.
“He’s not left-handed,” I said, more sharply than I intended.
McLean looked up at me, a soft rebuke in his gaze. “No, but I carve away from me, which means I use left-handed whittling tools.” He looked back at JT. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t. But the guy in the store mentioned it mattered which hand you used and which way you carved. I remembered you carving at one of the Scout campouts when we were younger and hitting PJ with the chips because you carved away from yourself instead of toward yourself.” He grinned. “The guy at the store said that meant you needed the left-handed jack. I took a chance. Glad I was right.”
McLean let out a soft laugh. “Grandpa Horace said I was too young to carve toward me. He was afraid I’d cut myself. By the time he trusted me to change, it was too late.” He looked back up at JT. “Thank you so much for this. I’ll… I’ll make you something with it.”
JT nodded seriously. “I’d like that. It would be nice to have a touch of Honeybridge on my desk at work.”
McLean smiled shyly and wandered off to inspect his new tool on his own, away from prying eyes.
“That was nice of you,” I admitted grudgingly, my eyes on the lake. “Thinking of Mac.”
“I’m a nice guy, Flynn.” JT’s eyes begged me to believe him. “Or I try to be, anyway.”
I made a noncommittal noise. There were many more examples of not-niceness on the tip of my tongue, just waiting for me to call them forward the way I had every other time JT and I talked. Dozens of hurts and misunderstandings I could have used to reinforce my own anger. But I was tired of fighting the pull of JT.
I was tired of being so damn scared.
I really wished Alden hadn’t stolen my drink. At least then I’d have something to focus on besides the man beside me. Seeing him here, interacting with my family, being kind and generous to my beloved brother, was doing things to me.
Dangerousthings.
I stuck my hands in the back pockets of my shorts and tilted my chin toward the lake path that ran past the artists’ cottages, asking a silent question.Come with me?JT nodded eagerly and fell into step at my side.
For a moment, we walked the path in silence as my family’s voices faded behind us. The silence wasn’t tense, but it wasn’t easy either. Years’ worth of things we’d never talked about seemed to walk alongside us.
“It’s funny, you know?” he said as we passed into the tree line at the edge of the clearing. “I would’ve told you that I didn’t think about Honeybridge much when I wasn’t here, but I guess I did. I mean, I texted Pop pictures from the Andy Warhol exhibit at the MoMA last month, ’cause I knew he’d like ’em. And when I was out west last spring, I sent your mom some seeds so she could grow—”
“California poppies,” I finished, turning to stare at him. “That was you?”
He nodded. “They’re supposed to be good for sleep tinctures. And then last month I wandered into this hobby store one day. I sometimes feel like all I do is work, and maybe I need a hobby. And I thought of McLean and how whittling was comforting to him.”
