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40
RHETT
Axel and I sit on our parents’ back deck drinking beer to celebrate Friday even though only Dad had to work it.
Midsummer in Colorado is never as brutal as it can be in Florida. As hot as the days can get in the mountains, the nights are cool and breezy. It’s not like Miami, where it feels like a sauna even after dark.
We’re all in shorts and light flannel shirts, which seem to be the uniform for evening here. A huge sectional wicker sofa topped with thick cushions gives the four of us plenty of room to spread out.
My parents moved to Boulder after I graduated, although the two youngest, Axel and Nadia, finished school here. It’s never been home to me, but I like it. The house and woods might be different from what I knew growing up, but the furniture is the same, and Mom cooks our favorites. It’s good. It takes me back, like a visit with family will do.
I have no idea what I’m doing, really. I have to go back sometimes, or else relinquish the company. And then what? Work my way up somewhere else? Reject the gift Uncle Sherman gave me?
It’s a mess.
But here is good. Here is a reprieve.
We watch headlights make a meandering path through the trees. The deck overlooks the back and right side of the property, which is where the private drive from the highway approaches the house.
“You invite somebody else to the party?” Dad asks.
“Nope,” Axel says, setting his beer on the pine coffee table.
Dad heaves his boots off the wicker ottoman and sets his beer down. “I’ll see who it is.”
I’m unconcerned until I see Mom’s foot wiggling ninety to nothing. That’s her tell that she’s anxious about what she’s done.
I listen. The woods are quiet and deep beyond the deck, and sound echoes easily off the mountainside. We hear the crunch of the car approaching, then the slam of the doors. Dad’s deep voice greets them.
Soon, I figure out why Mom is so antsy. I recognize my uncle’s voice.
“Mom?” I say.
“He called this morning,” she said. “You haven’t been answering your phone.”
“And you told him I was here.” I work hard to stuff down my annoyance. She isn’t part of this. She wouldn’t have lied about my whereabouts if her brother-in-law asked.
“Go talk to him,” she says.
Axel’s gaze is on me as I haul myself up from the sofa. It’s like all the times I got busted staying out late and he and Nadia watched in silence while I got bawled out by Dad.
Mom reaches out to touch my arm. “And you all come back out here once you’ve settled things.”
“Sure.” I set my beer down with the others. Looks like the drinking is over for the moment.
But when I step inside the house, another voice stops me in my tracks.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Armstrong.”
What is Bailey doing here?
I had assumed this was about my failure to follow up with Uncle Sherman.
But if she’s here…
“There he is,” Dad says, turning as I enter the expansive living room. “Alive and well.”
Bailey seems small next to my uncle, who could make a linebacker look average. She gives a little wave.
