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“I’ll tell you when we get there,” he said, and she huffed impatiently. Three minutes later they turned in to the woods just outside Riversend, and shortly after that, Spencer slid the truck to a stop outside a dilapidated old house. It was in the middle of a fairly large clearing in the woods, but the clearing was overgrown with weeds and long grass. The picket fence was rotted and falling apart, resembling crooked, broken, and yellowed teeth. The front yard was scattered with random debris: tractor tires, a rusty old mattress frame, a stack of rusted hubcaps piled in a heap. She could see glints of broken glass strewn all over. There was an old, rotten, and moldy sofa in the middle of the path leading up to the rickety porch.
Spencer stood at the crooked iron gate and simply stared at the house for a long moment before removing his sunglasses and meeting her questioning eyes.
“It’s in worse shape than I imagined,” he said, his voice wobbly and his eyes haunted.
“This is where you grew up, isn’t it?” she asked softly, and he swallowed a couple of times before nodding.
“I haven’t been back here in years. Not since I left for college.” Not for sixteen years, then. He stepped through the gate and stopped. His reluctance to proceed was palpable.
“I left him here to fend for himself,” he said, his voice virtually breaking.
“Who?”
“Mason. I left him alone in this fucking pit.” He sounded disgusted with himself, and Daff very carefully—as if handling a wild animal—took his hand in hers.
“It couldn’t have been this bad sixteen years ago, Spencer.”
“It was a cesspool. Most of the broken glass in this yard came from Dad’s rum bottles or Mom’s crack pipes. Malcolm, Anita”—his parents—“and their friends did so enjoy their creature comforts. Malcolm and his cronies would sit on that sofa all day, just drinking and shooting the breeze. All things considered, they were okay parents. Didn’t ever hit us or allow their friends to get handsy with us. Malcolm stuck around long enough after our mother died to give us a fighting chance at life. Left the day I turned eighteen. Happy fucking birthday to me, right?”
He ran his free hand roughly over his face and shuddered. Daff’s hand clenched around his, and she just ached for the boy he’d been. The kid who suddenly found himself sole guardian to his underage brother, who worked several jobs just to get by. The boy she—Daff—had treated like dirt just because his scrupulously clean clothes had been threadbare, his shoes had been scuffed, with worn-down soles, and his hair had never been touched by a barber’s scissors. While this was his home life, she’d made his school life hell of a different kind, and he’d never once had a bad word to say about her.
Her eyes flooded with tears, and she strove not to let him see them, knowing it would demolish his pride. He would misinterpret them as pity when all she felt was regret and shame.
“I’m sorry, this isn’t why I brought you here,” he said, his hand tightening around hers. “I wanted to see if the place was salvageable or if we’d be better off razing it to the ground.”
“Why?” she asked hoarsely.
“I’m considering donating the land and everything on it to the town, on the condition that it’s used to build a youth center. The main aim of the center should be to provide a safe haven for at-risk kids to come and play sports, learn skills, new hobbies. I was imagining a library, a gym, a sports field, tennis court, maybe a swimming pool and a cafeteria . . .”
“It’s ambitious,” she ventured cautiously.
“Unrealistic?”
“No, I just wonder where the funding would come from. Not just to build the place but to maintain it afterward.”
“I spoke with Mase last night—before the drinking started—since he co-owns the house. Both he and I are willing to donate enough to kick-start the project. But we agree that the community should chip in as well, as this is to the town’s benefit.”
“That’s where you’re going to run into obstacles—a lot of the townspeople would be happy to help, but there are always a few who will be vocal about using the town’s money to build something so expensive for kids from the poorer areas.”
“Assholes, you mean?”
“Yes, but some of those assholes are pretty powerful,” she reminded him, and he grimaced, acknowledging her point.
“This benefits everybody—if we make these kids feel valuable, give them something to do, keep them off the streets, there’ll be less petty crime. And petty crime can lead to much worse.”
“Did you ever . . .” Her voice trailed off; it wasn’t her business.
“Yes,” he said in answer to her incomplete question, and her throat went dry at the thought. Whatever he’d done was for survival, but she shuddered at the thought of what would have happened if he’d been caught. “After our mother died, our dad stuck around and sometimes threw money our way for food. Other times he used it for alcohol. At first we hung out behind MJ’s a lot. Like hungry dogs. Occasionally, Janice Cooper . . . remember her? Played the piano a lot and then married that dentist and moved to Durban? Anyway, she used to sneak a few bread rolls and leftovers out to us. But she was terrified of getting caught and losing her job. I didn’t want to put her in that position, she was nice. So I started shoplifting. I tried to keep Mase from figuring out where the food was coming from—I knew he’d follow my lead and I didn’t want him to get caught. But of course he worked it out and took it upon himself to ‘help’ me. We only took food, nothing else. We knew people already thought we were troublemakers, and if we were caught stealing—” He shook his head, no need to elaborate. “So, yeah, I know what I’m talking about. I know what desperation can drive a kid to and how lethal boredom can be as well.”
