Chapter 19 Nathan
NATHAN
Stacie opens the front door when I knock.
There’s laughter coming from the living room. It sounds like Evan and his mom.
I follow Stacie inside. They’re on the rug in the living room, photographs spread out in front of them. They both look up and smile when they see me come in.
“Hey what’s going on?”
Theresa keeps sorting through the photographs while she answers. “We’re looking for pictures for a frame I got, you know those collage ones? Come help us, Nate.”
I take a seat next to Evan and kiss his cheek. Stacie giggles and Theresa grins.
The photographs spread out on the floor look like they span decades. Some of them are a bit faded and raggedy around the edges.
“I’m trying to sort them, but these two keep messing them up,” Evan complains.
Stacie and Theresa share a conspiratorial giggle and Evan rolls his eyes.
“Hey, Nate, here’s one of you.” Stacie shoves a picture under my nose and I take it from her.
“There’s loads of you, Nate. I sorted some into a pile there for you to look at.”
I thank her and start looking at the pictures.
The huge stack shows me at various stages of life, between the ages of around three and twelve. Always with Evan. Usually grinning, like we’ve just got up to mischief, or are about to.
“Look at you two in this one,” Theresa says, handing me a more recent one, where we must be about fourteen.
“You’re looking at Evan like he hung the moon.”
“Not much has changed there.”
Evan groans. “Will you two stop?”
I laugh. Theresa’s looking at me like I hung the moon.
“Here, Ma, this is a good one.” Evan slides her a picture of us all outside the house.
Evan and I are around ten years old. Evan’s bike with the shiny Mickey Mouse bell is leaning against the garage door and Evan's dad's work van is parked up on the driveway. Evan’s dad looks healthy. He’s smiling, so is Theresa.
Stacie is a toddler in a stroller. For once, she isn’t crying.
“Yeah, that is a good one,” Theresa says, looking at it like she’s back in the moment, living it.
We help her put the chosen pictures in her collage frame and hang it on the living room wall with some tools from Evan’s dad’s toolbox.
Evan and I finish sorting the photographs, laughing about our hairstyles or clothes or the poses we pulled, thinking we were cool. I leave Evan to put them in the right albums and go out to help Theresa with the dishes.
She smiles when she sees me, looking less tired than the last time I saw her.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she says, running a hand through my hair.
“Me, too.”
She starts washing the dishes and I pick the towel up and stand beside her while she hands me the clean plates to dry.
“Thank you,” she says.
“No problem.”
“I don’t mean for this. I mean for what you’ve done for him.”
I swallow. “Theresa, there’s something you should know.”
“What is it?”
“It was my fault, back then. The car thing. Evan was just trying to help me, he didn’t steal that car.”
Her hands pause in the soapy water and my blood runs cold while I imagine her throwing me out. Was I wrong to tell her? I’ve told Evan so many times I want to, but he wouldn’t let me.
“I didn’t say anything, but my stepdad and the lawyer were trying to protect me. I swear, if I could go back and change it I….”
She takes her hands out of the water and dries them on a dish towel before putting them on my face. “You were a kid. He protected you. Did you see how many of those family photos you were in? You’re a part of this family, too. Just don’t go getting into any more trouble, do you hear?”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Yes, Ma.”
She ruffles my hair before turning back to the dishes. “Anyway, you’ve more than made up for it now. Getting him away from those losers. You know I saw a few of them picking litter up on the sidewalk the other day. Community service I guess.”
I snort. When I glance sideways at her, she looks years younger than she did when I first saw her again at the funeral.
When we head back into the living room, Evan and Stacie are laughing at a picture of her dressed in a Santa Claus outfit their dad took from the dancing Santa doll they used to display in the window.
“This is child abuse!” she wails.
Evan looks up with a smile and catches my eye. “Hey Stace, let me steal Nate for a minute, k?” She sighs dramatically, like she’s bothered, but she goes back to sorting the pictures.
He takes me upstairs by the hand, closing the door behind us.
“You know we can’t have sex with your mom and Stacie downstairs.”
“Such a dirty mind,” he tuts, shaking his head. “I wanted to show you something.”
He reaches to the back of the old bookcase and takes a couple of DVD cases out, opening one.
When he gets closer, I see that it’s the case for GTA: Vice City.
I thought maybe he’d lost this one, because every time I come over, we play San Andreas.
Or I play NHL 09 with Stacie and laugh at the terrible graphics while getting my ass handed to me by a thirteen-year old.
“Oh cool, you found it.”
“Smell it.”
He sticks it under my nose and I wince. “Gah, that stinks of weed.”
“This is where I kept my stash.”
“Okay?”
“It’s empty. I’m not doing that shit anymore.”
He puts the case down on the table beside the bed and takes a seat next to me.
“That financial plan your friend Ben worked out is gonna help us pay off our debts in the next five years, if I’m sensible, which I will be.
It means I can stay away from all that shit that got me into trouble, that got you hurt. ”
“Evan, how many times do I have to tell you it wasn’t your fault? And those dicks are being punished for it. I just wish they could be punished for what they did to you, too.”
He drops his gaze, like this wasn’t the reaction he expected and I realize he’s showing me this empty weed stash so I can be happy for him. Or so I can see that he’s changed. But I already knew that. I take his hand.
“I’m proud of you.”
“Psht, I don’t need you to say that.”
“Yeah, but you want me to.”
He laughs, shaking his head.
I lean in to kiss him when the door swings open.
“Jesus, don’t you knock?” Evan throws a pillow at the door, but Stacie blocks with her incredible reflexes.
“Ma said you two better hadn’t be doing anything she wouldn’t do up here.”
Evan snorts. “What does that even mean? Get out of my room.”
“Hey, don’t talk to her like that.”
Stacie puffs her chest out when I defend her. It’s our little thing.
“You don’t understand what it’s like to be siblings. This is our love language, isn’t it Stace?”
“No, you’re just a dick.” She slams the door with a big grin on her face before another pillow comes flying at her.
“That was childish.”
“Yeah well, you’re in love with me, so what does that say about you?”
I push him back on the bed. But like she’s got x-ray eyes or something, Stacie shouts through the door, “I mean it! No hanky panky in there!”
“Oh great, I don’t think my dick’s ever gonna get hard again.”
I pretend to smother him with a pillow while I grind against him.
“Um, so what’s that?”
His voice comes out muffled. “Shut up.”