“No, seriously,” he said. “You’re right. Let’s chill. I’ll text my friends, tell them I’m bailing. I even have a couple of ideas.”
She waited, still not convinced.
“Let’s do a Family Guy marathon,” he said, suddenly excited. “At least till lunch, and if we’re sick of them by then, we’ll watch a movie or something. All the DVDs are in a box in the garage.”
Katie had always liked the animated series, particularly Stewie, the evil genius baby, and Brian, the talking dog who wants to be a bestselling novelist.
Slowly, she said, “Maybe. But can’t we just get them off Netflix or something?”
Archie shook his head. “We’ve got the DVDs so we might as well use them. You go find them, and I’ll get the Coke and the Pringles and meet you in the basement in five.”
Neither of them raised the issue that maybe it was a little early in the day for soft drinks and chips. But then again, was it ever too early for junk?
“Okay,” Katie said warily. “You’re not messin’ with me, are you?”
Archie shrugged. “I’m cool if you don’t want to do it. We could work on that massive Lego Batmobile I’ve had in the box for two years.”
Katie hated Lego. She waited a beat, then said, “Okay. I’ll get the DVDs.”
She opened the sliding glass doors that led from the kitchen to a back patio. She crossed the yard to the separate garage building out back of the house. She entered by a regular side door and flipped up the nearby light switch.
The garage was more storage unit than a place to park a car. Not even a tiny Arrival would fit in here, not with all the piled-up cardboard boxes and bits and pieces of unwanted furniture. When Sandra had emptied out her father’s place in Braintree after he’d died six years ago, she’d saved his bedroom set, a kitchen table and chairs, even an old stereo console with an honest-to-god record player in it. She’d told Katie and Archie that one day, when they moved out and had a place of their own, they might not have money for furniture, and would be grateful for this stuff.
To which Katie had thought, she would rather live in a Frigidaire shipping carton than have this old shit in her apartment. But she had kept the thought to herself. She knew she had at least a couple of years before she might head off to college, and was hoping this furniture would become so mouse-infested by then that her mother would have it taken to the dump.
God, where was the box of DVDs?
Since most of the stuff they watched was online, they hadn’t had much use for DVDs and Blu-rays in recent years. But back before streaming became a thing, they’d acquired hundreds of discs, and rather than try to sell them, they’d boxed them and tucked them away, despite some objections from Archie. “It’ll give us more shelf space,” his mother had said.
To which Archie had replied, with more than a little trepidation, “And put what in their place. Books?”
The Garrett Blockbuster had been one of the last video rental stores to hang in, but even it had gone under five years ago.
Katie knew that her mother, despite the chaos the garage suggested, was fairly organized, so whatever box those discs went into, there’d be a Magic Marker dvds scribbled on the outside. But as she shuffled boxes around, one caught her attention that was not labeled dvds.
Written on the outside was dad stuff.
The top of the box was not crisscrossed with duct tape, so Katie, after a moment’s hesitation, dug her fingers under the folded cardboard flaps and pulled them up. She reached in and pulled out the first thing she saw: a small plaque that read ADAM MONTROSE MVP. It didn’t say for what sport.
She set the plaque aside and dug in further. A diecast model of a Corvette, an old paperback copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an actual Harley-Davidson motorcycle manual, a Red Sox baseball cap, an envelope stuffed with canceled checks and old tax papers.
And then, a faded newspaper clipping: Man Killed in Crash Fell Asleep at Wheel, Police Say.
She crumpled it up and looked deeper into the box. There was a three-by-five snapshot, slid into a Plexiglas stand, of Adam Montrose holding a small girl in his arms. In the background, a beach and the ocean beyond. The girl looked to be about two years old, but it was easy to tell, all these years later, who that little girl had grown up to be.
Katie sniffed, and wondered how this picture ended up here. It should be on the dresser in her room. She had no memory of the picture being taken, but guessed this was the Cape Cod beach her parents used to go to, before Archie was born.
Why, she wondered, was her dad’s stuff jammed into a box and dumped in the garage? Some of it — okay, maybe not the canceled checks and old business papers — deserved a place in the home. It should be seen. Her mom still kept a picture of Katie’s dad next to her own bed, but what other memories were there of him in the house?
Had these mementos been moved out here lately? Had it just been since her mother had started seeing Joe?
Oh, her mom didn’t know that she knew. But Katie had a pretty good idea what was going on. More than once she’d seen her mom’s boyfriend slipping out of the house any time between midnight and four in the morning.
And just how was she able to spot him? Well, it helped if you weren’t in the house yourself. If you happened to be trying to sneak back in around the same time that Joe was trying to sneak out.
She folded the box back up without returning the beach photo. And then, right behind it, she spotted the box marked dvds.
“Bingo,” she said to herself. She dragged the box closer, opened it, rummaged around. There were Star Wars and Star Trek movies, a couple of seasons of the Star Trek spinoff Deep Space Nine. Sandra was the science-fiction fan, and these were hers.
There were a couple of season box sets of The Simpsons. Then, below them, pay dirt. Seasons four and six of Family Guy.
Katie managed to hold the DVDs and the photo in one hand, allowing her to turn off the lights and open the garage door with the other. She scooted across the yard, slipped back into the kitchen through the sliding glass doors, and dropped the DVDs onto the counter.
“Found them!” she shouted at the door to the basement. “Just give me a sec!”
She bolted up the stairs and placed on her bedroom dresser the picture of her with her father. She descended the stairs as quickly as she’d climbed them, grabbed the DVDs from the counter, and charged down into the basement.
The first thing that struck her as odd was that the lights had not been turned on. She hit the switch and looked immediately at the couch and the coffee table in front of the flat-screen TV.
There were no Pringles and no Cokes there. No brother, either.
“Archie!” she cried.
She waited two seconds, then said under her breath, “The little weasel.”
Katie charged back upstairs, calling out his name two more times. When she again failed to get a response, she charged out the front door.
There was an Arrival in the driveway, but it wasn’t Gracie. This one was lime green, and in it were two boys Katie recognized.
Nick Loveland and Rory Glidden. Both twelve and both, Katie believed, pains in the ass. Kind of, well, like her brother. Nick was sitting up front, and Rory was in the back.
The door had retracted and Archie was dropping into the seat next to Rory.
“Archie!” Katie said. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Someplace you’re not!” he shouted.
“Pamela!” Nick shouted. “Close the door!”
Jesus, Katie thought. You don’t even need a grown-up in the car to get one of these things to take you around.