He seemed to be trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince me.
“Did your neighbor — what’s his name?”
“Max.”
“This Max, did he see any camera crews around or anything?”
“Camera crews?”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s one of those crime reenactment shows. You know. ‘Whatever happened to...’ kind of thing. Or some type of stunt.” His face lit up and he snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it.”
“What?”
“So this guy, the one who built that new house on your lot? It’s a nice house, right?”
“Yeah. Very.”
“Yeah, I drove by one day. Very sharp. So, someone out there wants to buy that house. But first they need to freak him out. Like, make him think a spirit that used to live on the property is coming back to haunt him and his family.”
“That’s beyond nuts.”
“They scare the guy into unloading the place at below market value.”
I sighed. “You’re insane.”
He smiled smugly. “Okay, I’m sure your explanation makes more sense.”
“I should go,” I said.
“Let me ask you something, and don’t take offense, okay?” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“What’s got you worried the most? That this lady making an appearance, it’ll get your hopes up and then they’ll get dashed, because it was a trick or a stunt? Or...”
“Or what?”
“Or... that it really is Brie? And if she’s back, it’s gonna turn your world upside down?”
Ten
Jayne was starting to wonder whether Andrew had run into a problem. A trip to Home Depot shouldn’t take this long. It wasn’t like him not to check in with her if he’d been delayed.
Maybe he’d run into someone he knew, she thought. Or maybe he couldn’t find what he was looking for at the Home Depot and decided to try another store. Although it struck her as unlikely that Home Depot would be out of weed and feed.
Jayne considered phoning him, but didn’t want him to feel hounded, like she was checking up on him, expecting a full accounting of his activities. She trusted him, didn’t need to keep him under surveillance. He’d been so good to her and her brother that she didn’t want him questioning whether he’d made the wrong decision, bringing the two of them into his home.
Jayne loved this man. He wasn’t perfect. She knew that. Maybe, one of these days, they’d even get married, but marriage was definitely a topic Andrew tended to steer away from. The worst was when he went into a deep, emotional funk, like something invisible was weighing him down. She worried about these moods and tried to draw him out, to get him to talk about what was on his mind, but he always told her it was nothing. He’d been forthcoming about his teenage years, after both his parents had died, and that horrible period when he was bounced from foster home to foster home.
Andrew had even told her he’d been married for a while, but it hadn’t worked out, and she didn’t press him on that subject when he declined to provide details. There were emotional wounds from that relationship that hadn’t healed, she supposed. And the last five or six years of Andrew’s life remained something of a mystery. A trauma of some kind. One of these days, she figured, he’d tell her.
When the phone finally rang at one point, she thought it would be him, but it turned out to be Tyler’s phone, which he had left sitting on the kitchen counter. Jayne looked at the screen, saw that it was Mr. Whistler, from the grocery store.
She answered. Tyler, Mr. Whistler said, could take the day off if he wanted because they were well staffed, but could he work Sunday instead?
“Hang on,” Jayne said, and took the phone with her up to Tyler’s room, where she found him sound asleep, stripped down to his boxers, facedown on top of the covers. If it weren’t for the gentle rising and falling of his back, someone might have taken him for dead.
Holding her finger over the speaker, she said, “Wake up. It’s Mr. Whistler.”
Tyler stirred, rolled onto his side. “What?”
Jayne handed him the phone. “You sort it out.”
Tyler said, “Hello?” Then: “Okay, sure, that’s good. Okay, see you tomorrow.”
He put the phone onto the bedside table, dropped his head back onto the pillow, and closed his eyes. Sensing that his sister was still in the room, he opened one eye and saw her standing there by the door, arms folded across her chest.
“What?” he said.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“I’ll be down in a while,” he said, closing his eye.
Jayne, not about to be dismissed, sat on the edge of the bed and put a hand on his shoulder. “Not in a while,” she said. “Now.”
Tyler rolled onto his back, opened both eyes this time, and said, “Okay, I’m sorry, I fucked up. Sorry about barfing on Andy’s precious deck. I sprayed it off.”
“What happened last night?”
He sighed. “I was at Cam’s. We kinda had some vodka, I guess. I might’ve had a couple shots too many.”
“Where’d this happen?”
“At his place. His parents were out.”
“That’s the only place you were. Just between Cam’s place and here?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Tyler said.
“When we talked you said you were on your way home.”
Tyler managed a shrug while on his back. “You’re not my mom, you know. Or my dad. Never much of a sister, either.”
That might have cut deeper if it had been the first time he’d said it. She’d made her apologies, and excuses, before. It wasn’t her fault their parents had two kids thirteen years apart.
“I know,” Jayne said. “But let me lay it out for you. You’re right. I’m not your mom, and Andy’s not your dad. So maybe you’re thinking, you don’t owe us anything. But that works both ways. We don’t owe you anything. Andy sure doesn’t. But we’ve made a choice. We’ve stepped up. You’re my brother and I may not have been there for you in the past but I want to be there for you now. And Andy knows a lot about what it’s like not to have a home. He wants to make one for you here.”
Tyler moved his legs around Jayne so he could sit on the edge of the bed next to her. His head hung low. “I guess,” he said.
“It didn’t work out with Aunt Clara,” Jayne said. “She tried, gave it her best shot, but after what you—”
“It was an accident. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“If it had been anyone else, you probably would have been charged. But she wouldn’t do that, because she loves you and understands you’ve been through a lot.”
“I didn’t know the glass would break like that. I kind of lost it for one second. Jesus, no one’s ever going to let me forget it.”
“I don’t want to debate that all over again now, Tyler. But you blew it with Aunt Clara. Andy letting you live here, this is your second chance.”
“You haven’t told him,” he said.
“No,” Jayne said. “And as long as you keep on the straight and narrow, there really isn’t any need to. But we’ve both got your best interests at heart. And there’s another thing.”
She paused, took a breath, let it out slowly. Tyler waited.
“I love him,” Jayne said. “I love this man, and I want to make it work. There’s things going on I haven’t even told you, or Andy, but it’s really crucial that we all have some, you know, structure in our lives right now. It’s important.”
“What haven’t you told me?” Tyler asked.
Jayne bit her lip, making a decision. She leaned in, put her lips close to his ear.
“You don’t have to whisper,” he said. “There’s nobody here.”