Two
Andrew
I rolled over onto my side, opened my eyes, and looked at the clock on the bedside table. Nearly eight. Jesus. I almost never slept that late. There was some momentary panic as I thought about being late to an appointment with a potential client, then realized that not only was it Saturday, but that my appointment was on Friday and had already happened.
I turned back over again to see whether Jayne was awake and found her staring at me with one eye, half her head buried into the pillow, her brown hair splayed across it. She flashed half a smile at me.
“Morning, Andrew,” she said with mock formality.
“It’s almost eight,” I said. “How long you been awake?”
“Five minutes, maybe,” she said. “I was watching you. Woke you up with my mind.”
I grinned and slipped one arm around her under the covers and pulled her closer to me. “You have great powers.”
“Indeed,” she said, and gave me a kiss so light it was as if she’d brushed a feather across my lips. “I can read minds, too.”
“Okay,” I said. “What am I thinking?”
I guess she rolled both her eyes, but I only saw one. “Too easy. Give me something hard.”
I smiled. “Amazing. Got it on the first guess.”
It took her a second, and then she grinned. “I was actually going to guess French toast. Your usual Saturday morning demand.”
“Okay, maybe that, too. In a bit.”
Jayne shifted in closer to me, pressing her body up against mine. I caught a glimpse of the open bedroom door.
“Might want to close that,” I said.
She whirled around, saw the door, threw back the covers, and got out of bed. Her oversized T hung down almost to her knees. As she padded toward the door, she stopped halfway, turned, and said, “Did you hear him come in last night?”
I tried to recollect. “No,” I said. The truth was, I didn’t really listen for Tyler Keeling the way she did. He was her brother, after all, not mine, and while that didn’t mean I didn’t care about his welfare, he was biologically more her worry.
“I don’t think I did, either,” Jayne said.
Tyler had texted around ten-thirty, promising his sister he’d be home before eleven, or soon after, that he was just about to leave his friend’s place. Jayne had offered to go pick him up, wherever he was, but he’d said no problem, one of his other buddies, who was old enough to drive and had his mom’s Hyundai, would drop him off. He’d left his bike at home, not wanting to take it out at night in case someone swiped it when he left it outside his friend’s house. Locks weren’t much of a deterrent when the thief was determined enough.
Jayne had texted, OK, and felt she could go to bed, confident that he’d be home soon after she was asleep.
But now, as she stood between the bed and the door, I could see doubt cross her face.
“I’m just gonna check,” she said, and slipped out of the room and down the hall. I sat up in bed and waited. She was back in under ten seconds.
“His bed hasn’t been slept in,” she said.
“Maybe he’s already up.” But even as I said it, I knew how unlikely that was. It was Saturday morning. Tyler would not be up early, and even if he were an early riser, he wasn’t one to make his bed without being reminded.
“I don’t think so,” Jayne said.
“Shit,” I said, and threw back the covers. I was in a pair of boxers, decent enough to mount a search of the house.
I slipped past Jayne in the hallway and shot a look into Tyler’s room myself. The bed was made.
“You don’t believe me?” Jayne said.
I went down the stairs and into the kitchen. No sign of him there, either. No bowl in the sink, no half-eaten banana left on the table. Jayne had her phone in her hand and was getting ready to text him or maybe phone him, when I happened to look out the kitchen’s sliding glass doors that opened on the backyard deck.
“Jayne,” I said.
She was already tapping. “What?”
“Outside.”
She came up alongside me and took in the view. Tyler was sprawled out on one of the recliners, arms circled around himself to keep warm, the blue hoodie not quite up to the job. I noticed what appeared to be a smudge of vomit on his sleeve, an observation that was confirmed by the puddle of puke on the deck about four feet away.
“Jesus,” Jayne said, unlocking the door and sliding it back on its track. She stepped out onto the deck, and I was one step behind her, the planking cold under my feet and damp with dew the morning sun had yet to burn off. I let Jayne take the lead here.
“Tyler,” she said, standing over him. Then, more sharply, “Tyler!”
He stirred slightly and opened one eye. “Oh,” he said. “Hey.”
“When did you come home?” his sister asked.
“Um, not exactly sure,” he said, struggling to sit up.
“Go in and clean yourself up,” she said, waiting as he managed to get to his feet.
As he passed me, I could smell the booze, and the vomit, on him. I held him back gently by the arm and pointed to the mess he’d left on the deck. “Hose is over there, pal.”
“I’m not your pal,” he muttered without looking me in the eye.
To his credit, he did clean up his mess before coming into the house, but rather than coil the hose back up again and hang it by the tap, he left it in a mess on the grass. He trudged past us as we stood in the kitchen, but not before Jayne reminded him that his shift at Whistler’s Market, one of west end Milford’s independent grocery stores, started at noon.
Jayne and I went back upstairs, took turns in the shower, and met back in the kitchen about half an hour later, neither of us saying anything. I knew Jayne was embarrassed by her brother’s behavior, and maybe waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t want to wade into it, at least not yet.
I got the coffee going, and Jayne still made French toast, but didn’t bother setting a place for Tyler, who we knew wouldn’t surface until the last possible moment. He didn’t have a driver’s license yet, but he could ride that ten-speed like nobody’s business, so the chances of him getting to work late were remote. One thing about Tyler: he didn’t seem to give a shit about a lot, but he got to work on time. He liked his money, and it about killed him to pass over twenty bucks a week to his sister in a token gesture of contributing to the household. It wasn’t me who asked for the money. It was all Jayne.
When we sat down opposite each other, Jayne picked at her toast, then finally said, “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. I was seventeen once, and—”
“Sixteen,” she reminded me. “He’ll be seventeen in another month.”
“Okay, sixteen. Lots of kids get drunk earlier than that. Doesn’t make him an alcoholic. He’ll feel like shit today. Maybe it’ll teach him a lesson.”
“I don’t know.”
“When I was his age, I’d done far worse,” I said. “It’s a rough period, and he’s been through a lot. He’ll be a handful for a while.”
“He shouldn’t have to be your handful, Andy,” she said.
We’d been over this before. No matter how many times I told her I did not mind having her brother live with us, she could not be persuaded.
Tyler had been here nearly two months. He had been living with his dad, Bertrand Keeling, at the family home in Providence. Jayne and Tyler’s mom, Alice, had died about five years earlier. Jayne, now twenty-nine, hadn’t lived at home since Tyler was ten. He’d been one of those “surprise babies.” Jayne’s parents figured they were done with kids — Bertrand had always said Jayne was enough of a handful all on her own — but then Alice found herself pregnant when she was forty. The thirteen-year age difference might as well have been a century. Hard to be a “big sister,” and all that that entails, when you’re already in high school and your brother’s in diapers.