The Favor (37 page)

“Is it loaded?” Gabe asks, knowing that’s a stupid question, but needing to be sure.

Andy nods. He looks at the gun in his hand. He sets it down gently on the dresser. Then he sinks onto the bed that hasn’t been upended. He puts his face in his hands and his shoulders heave, but if he weeps he does it in silence.

Gabe’s not sure what to do or say. He wants to sit by his brother, maybe put an arm around his shoulders. Maybe even cry with him, a little. But he can’t. Michael pushes past him to take that role. He hugs Andy, who buries his face against his twin’s neck. Watching them like that, Gabe envies them, and not for the first time. They’ve always had something he’s never been able to share.

His shoulder hurts from hitting the door with it. His face aches from the pounding Michael gave it. Everything else hurts, too. There’s a pain in his chest as if someone ran him through with a spike, and when he staggers to the bathroom to run the shower—hot for him, not cold like his brother—all Gabe can think is that dying would feel better than this.

FORTY-NINE

A QUIET HOUSE was bliss. Janelle’s fingers moved over the keys of her laptop as she switched between her email and her accounting program, with a few stops here and there to check her Connex page or several of the funny blogs she followed. Upstairs, Bennett was supposed to be doing his homework, but was probably engrossed in the games on his iPad. So long as that’s all it was, she thought. She wasn’t ready for the end of her son’s innocence, though she knew it had to happen sooner or later.

“Later,” she murmured. “Please, God. Later.”

A girl might’ve been easier. They could’ve talked about boys and periods and hairstyles and nail polish. Those were things Janelle could handle. Boy stuff seemed foreign and awkward and weird...not that she’d have any choice about it. Maybe she’d have to get him a book....

Nan had gone to bed an hour ago, complaining again of a headache and upset stomach. She’d refused to take her meds or even brush her teeth, and Janelle hadn’t pushed. The woman was eighty-four years old and dying of cancer. If she didn’t want to brush her teeth before she went to bed, did it really matter?

From someplace in the house came a low, restless thumping. Janelle’s fingers paused on the keyboard as she listened, uncertain if the noise was coming from Bennett’s room upstairs or from Nan’s. The noise stopped. Then started again. She got up, went through the kitchen to the hall, still listening. As she passed the arched entrance to the living room, the noise got louder, steadier. Definitely coming from Nan’s room.

By the time she got to the end of the hall, Janelle was running. She pushed open the door, prepared to find her grandmother knocking on the headboard for help, or possibly fallen out of bed. What greeted her instead was Nan writhing, her back arched and foam frothing at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes had rolled back. The covers had torn from their carefully tucked place at the foot of the bed.

“Nan!” Janelle ran to put her hands on her grandmother’s shoulders. Frail as she’d become, Nan’s bucking was strong enough to toss off Janelle’s grip. Her arms flung out, hitting the side of the bed and the headboard, but it was the fierceness of the seizure causing the bed to thump on the floor.

No phone in Nan’s room, her cell not in her pocket. Janelle screamed for Bennett, even as she searched for something, anything, to stop Nan from convulsing. Something to put between her teeth—wasn’t that what they did when people had seizures? So she didn’t bite or swallow her tongue? Janelle had nothing...no idea what to do.

Bennett had still not arrived when the seizure passed. Nan blinked. Her mouth hung lax and her body softened against the mattress. The acrid stink of urine made Janelle cough.

“Dick?”

“No, Nan. It’s me. Janelle,” she added in a shaky voice, when it was obvious her grandma didn’t recognize her.

Nan blinked, struggling to sit, but couldn’t. The foam at the corners of her mouth dripped over her chin and onto the front of her nightgown. Janelle didn’t know if she should help her up or force her to lie back. She screamed for Bennett again, rewarded in a minute by the thump of his feet on the stairs and coming down the hall. He cried out in the doorway, and she turned, determined to keep calm.

“Bring my phone.”

“What’s the matter with Nan?”

“Now, Bennett!”

On the bed, Nan let out a shuddering sigh. Her shoulders tensed and she blinked rapidly. Her hands swam in the air as she fought against Janelle’s grip.

“Shh, Nan. Shh.” Janelle blinked away her own tears, trying to remember to breathe, though the smell in the room threatened to choke her. “It’s going to be okay.”

Nan quieted. “Janelle?”

“Yes, Nan.” Bennett handed over the phone and Janelle turned to him as she dialed 911. “Nan’s sick, honey. I’m calling an ambulance.”

“I don’t need an ambulance!”

Janelle ignored Nan, who started struggling again. “Bennett, I’m going to have to go with her to the hospital. Can you call Andy on your cell phone, see if he’ll be able to come stay with you?”

She thought her son might argue that he was old enough to be here by himself, but he must’ve been scared, because he nodded and ran upstairs. As the dispatcher answered the call, Nan let out series of low, hooting groans and started to convulse again. Somehow, Janelle managed to keep her grandmother from writhing off the bed as she gave the dispatcher the information he needed. By the time she hung up, the seizure had started to ease and Bennett was back in the doorway.

“Is she going to be okay?” His eyes welled with tears and his face had gone pale beneath the freckles.

Janelle had spent her life trying to protect her son, but now she could only say, “I don’t know, honey. I hope so.”

“Janelle. Bring me my coat, I want to check the teapot. It’s been crying.”

“Andy’s not home, he’s at work. But he said I could go next door and wait for him. He’ll be home as soon as he can get a ride.” Bennett stared at his great-grandma, who’d fallen back, panting softly. “Nan, you’ll be okay.”

Nan’s head turned toward him. Incredibly, she managed a smile. She held out her hand, and Bennett, God love him, took it. Janelle had never been prouder of her boy than at that moment, when he gently squeezed Nan’s fingers despite the mess and smell. He stayed with her until the ambulance came ten minutes later.

“You stay at the Tierneys’ until Gabe or Andy gets home, okay?” Janelle said from the back of the ambulance as the EMTs pushed Nan, strapped to the gurney, inside. “You call me when Andy gets there. No. Just text me, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing. And I’ll call or text you—”

“Ma’am, we have to go.” The EMT said it respectfully, but without much patience.

“Go,” Janelle said, and the ambulance doors closed off the sight of her son.

FIFTY

Then

AFTER THE SCUFFLE in the twins’ room, the old man goes out and doesn’t come back for two days. Andy locks himself in his room and doesn’t go to work. Mike calls in for him, says he’s sick. Gabe doesn’t miss work—it’s a shitty job but it’s all he has until he can get out of this place. He knocks on the door the third morning and opens it even when Andy doesn’t tell him to come in.

His brother sits at the window, still cracked but not broken, and stares outside. He doesn’t even turn to look around when Gabe comes in. His shoulders rise and fall with every breath, but other than that, he might as well be a statue.

“You going to work today?”

Andy says nothing.

Gabe tries again, moving closer. He even puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder, but it’s like touching wood or stone or metal. Unmovable.

“C’mon, Andy. You have to...you should go to work.”

Andy says nothing.

Gabe sighs and tries again. Mike got a job in the church office for the summer, but Andy’s working at the plant, same as Gabe. Same as their dad. “They’ll fire you.”

His brother looks at him then, blue eyes shuttered, mouth closed tight against whatever words might be trying to make their escape. Andy’s always been a jokester, the silly one, a cut-up. Class clown. Just now it looks as if he’s never smiled in his life.

“I couldn’t do it,” Andy says. “I tried. I wanted to. But I just couldn’t do it.”

Gabe’s fingers squeeze. He thinks of Janelle and what she was willing to do for him, and he wants to punch a hole in the wall. She’s gone, and it’s too late to make things better. “It’s okay. Lots of guys have trouble the first time.”

Andy blinks. Then again. And finally, brilliantly, he smiles.

“No,” he says. “Not that. I wanted to kill the old man, and I couldn’t do it. When it came right down to it, I just couldn’t.”

FIFTY-ONE

IT WAS CLOSE to the end, and there was nothing to do but wait. It shouldn’t even have come as a surprise, but apparently things like this always did. That was what the doctor said, anyway. A young guy, he looked tired. He told Janelle they’d done everything they could for her grandmother, but with the cancer and her age...

“I know,” Janelle said. She felt somehow as though she needed to reassure him, instead of the other way around.

Nan had stabilized. They’d given her a cocktail of medications—some for the nausea and pain, some to prevent more seizures. Her blood pressure was completely out of control.

“They doped me up,” Nan said in a wavery voice, her hand searching for Janelle’s.

“I know, Nan. Just to keep you comfortable.”

Nan nodded after a second or so, and closed her eyes. She kept them shut for so long that Janelle thought she’d fallen asleep; the rise and fall of her chest, however slight, told her she was still alive. She opened them when Janelle started to pull her hand free.

“I expect you’ve made the phone calls.”

Janelle nodded. Bobby and Donna were on the road, but wouldn’t get here for another few hours. Same with John and Lisa. “Yes. Joey and Deb will be here pretty soon. Marty and Kathy, too.”

“Oh, you don’t have to tell them to come,” Nan protested, but weakly. Then she changed her mind and gave Janelle a trembling smile. “Well. I guess they should come, shouldn’t they? Will they let the children in, do you think?”

“I’m not sure.” It was long past visiting hours, but this close to the end, and surely it was the end, wouldn’t someone have compassion?

Nan closed her eyes again. “I b’lieve I’ll sleep for a little while. Would you... Will you bring Bennett?”

“Yes. I think that would be a good idea.” Janelle waited another minute, but Nan’s soft, even breathing didn’t catch or stop. She didn’t open her eyes, either.

In the hall, Janelle scrubbed at her face and waited to dissolve into tears, but found herself dry-eyed. Her stomach churned, and the idea of even sipping at a mug of gross hospital coffee made her throat sting with bile. She took her phone into the lobby to call Bennett, who didn’t answer. Nor did Andy when she tried his number.

Janelle tried Bennett again. Then Andy. Again, neither picked up. She rang Nan’s house phone, thinking maybe they’d pick up, but there was no answer there, either. Worried now, she tapped her fingers against the phone and thought about what to do. She didn’t want to leave the hospital, she wanted to get her son, but without a way to get in touch with him...

She dialed the only other number she could think of. When he answered, he sounded both so wary and so hopeful, it broke her heart. “Gabe,” she said. “I need you.”

FIFTY-TWO

Then

THE KITCHEN STINKS of sour milk. Garbage overflows the pail. Gabe remembers the days when Mrs. Moser would be there waiting with fresh cookies and milk when he got home from school, but of course, it’s been years since she came to take care of them.

It’s not time for him to be home yet, but he told the plant nurse he’d puked. When she left him with the thermometer, he pulled the old trick of holding it to the lamp to mimic a fever. He’s pretty sure she knows he was faking, but she sends him home, anyway.

The kitchen is disgusting. If the old man comes home and sees it this way, there will be hell to pay. Gabe doesn’t care so much about that, nor about the fact that his father hasn’t been back in three days. If they’re really lucky, he thinks, maybe the old man won’t ever come home.

He knew, Gabe thinks. The old man knew how close he’d come to pushing Andy over the edge. Maybe it scared him, just enough.

Gabe thinks about washing the dishes and taking out the trash, but first he wants to check on his brothers. He climbs the stairs and pushes open his brothers’ bedroom door, prepared for a hundred different things except an empty room.

The beds are perfectly made. Their identical desks are both cleared off, which isn’t strange for Mike’s, but is definitely out of character for Andy. A piece of lined paper on the dresser flutters when Gabe passes it; the breeze picks it up and carries it under the bed, where he’ll have to get on his hands and knees to pull it out.

He almost doesn’t.

But something tells him this piece of paper is important, and that even though he doesn’t want to know what it says, he’d better find out. He snags it with his fingertips and pulls it toward him. He knows Mike’s handwriting, which slants slightly to the left and is sloppy, considering how neat and tidy Mike is about everything else. The writing is Mike’s, but the words are Andy’s.

If it can’t end one way, it has to another.

Gabe crumples the note. Shoves it in his pocket. He looks in the closet for the guns, but already knows they aren’t there.

And then he runs for his truck.

The drive takes too long and at the end of it, he runs along the curving path strewn so thick with pine needles the thud of his sneakers barely registers. He can’t breathe. He chokes. He would spit if his mouth wasn’t so dry. He would scream his brothers’ names if he had any air. But he doesn’t and he can’t, so he runs until his legs burn, and the woods get thicker and trip him.

He hits the clearing with a clatter and crash of snapping twigs, which tear both his clothes and his skin. His heart pounds so fast he can’t see anything but a blooming, shifting kaleidoscope of red and black and gray. He puts his hands on his knees and bends forward, thinking he might puke for real, but holds it back. He swallows again and again. Sweat stings in his eyes. He manages to say just one word.