Chapter 9
9
Gabe
“Now Blake Petrovic, he and his brother have been breeding pit bulls for time out of mind, and no one’s made a fuss, though of course they haven’t registered the dogs with the city or any nonsense like that. You know their property, Gabe—it backs right up to the fishing pond, and all that water has rotted away their fence, see?—and one day Russ Hurley goes fishing with his cocker spaniel bitch, and the thing is in heat , can you believe it, Gabe? Well, of course Blake’s sire Max busts out of the fence, and one thing leads to another—you know what I mean, Gabe?—and now we’ve got an animal nuisance case on our hands, but if you want to know what I think?—”
The morning after my evening at Kayla’s house, I’m back at the office at the courthouse, sorting through some building permits while Mark natters on. Though it’s only my second day on the job, I’ve learned that I can safely tune out his rambles, which allows me to go over the events of the previous evening in my mind.
For one thing, Kayla looked amazing. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair was tousled—she must have had to rush home from work to meet me. I know some guys prefer women to be more made-up, but I find a natural look a thousand times sexier. Or maybe it’s just that Kayla’s so beautiful, it doesn’t matter what she wears. It took all the strength I had to avoid staring at her.
With Gretchen, nothing was as it seemed. I’m not sure that I ever even saw her without make-up. She always seemed to be playing a role, even in our most intimate moments. And then, towards the end, she was outright lying to me. But in high school at least, Kayla had never been anything less than brutally honest. And open. She may have something against me now, but I know that she isn’t pretending to be something that she’s not.
Still, I wish I could understand her wariness around me. I want her to know that she can trust me—though she must, at least a little, if she let me into her home and showed me her records. She never invited me inside in high school. It had felt oddly moving—intimate, even—to catch that glimpse of her everyday life.
“—of course Russ Hurley never has liked Blake Petrovic since that unpleasantness about Russ’s stepdaughter, but now they’ll practically be in-laws, you know what I mean, Gabe?”
I tune back into Mark and manage to put last night and everything associated with it out of my mind until lunchtime. Nancy, the receptionist, comes in to drop off some paperwork related to a code violation. She cuts across Mark’s monologue with a question of her own.
“Your folks busy getting ready for Hungry Hearts, then?” she asks with a smile.
“My sister-in-law, Lucy, is the chair of the organizing committee this year, so yeah, it’s pretty much taken over family life. I mostly try to ignore it,” I admit.
“Is your mom expecting you to go?” I know this is a roundabout way of bringing up my split from Gretchen and the obvious fact that I don’t have a date. I’m sure Nancy knows I’m no longer engaged—there are no secrets in Kentwood—but she probably doesn’t know why and is dying to find out. She’s good people, though, and seems to resist the urge to pry.
“Probably,” I sigh. “I’m trying to ignore that, too.”
Mark wraps up his theories about the pit bull/cocker spaniel affair. “I’m going over to Meg’s for lunch,” he says, hitching his belt up over his round belly. “Anyone want to come with me?”
“Where?” I ask.
“The Kentwood Café,” Nancy clarifies. “Have you been in there yet? Meg McAllister bought it a while back and fixed it up real cute. But don’t worry, they still have burgers!”
The Kentwood Café. Kayla. I have no idea if my presence there will be welcome or not. But I’m stopping by her house tonight, and I don’t want to risk pissing her off beforehand.
“No, I think I’ll stay here,” I reply. “I’ve got some stuff to work on.”
“Not applications for another job, I hope,” Mark chuckles. “Nancy and I have an evil plan to keep you in Kentwood.” He gives Nancy a conspiratorial wink.
“No, no, nothing like that,” I say, forcing a guilty laugh. They must know this job is just temporary, right? “See you later. Enjoy your lunch!”
With the two of them gone, I take a minute to enjoy the silence, gazing absently at the stack of old building permits I had been working on before. I halfheartedly visit a few bar exam preparation websites, but quickly lose interest. In truth, Mark and Nancy have nothing to worry about: passing the bar and finding another job seem like completely insurmountable challenges. If nothing else, helping Kayla resolve her mortgage issue is a welcome distraction. I open a blank document and begin drafting a letter on her behalf.
“He shoots, he scores! Another slam dunk for Hadyn Wilson, greatest center of all time!” My three-year-old nephew squeals in delight as I hold him up high next to the basketball hoop in Adam’s driveway. His wife Lucy pressured him to lower it to kid-height, but it’s still just out of reach even for their oldest, Tyler, who’s seven.
“Me next, me next!” My niece, a scruffy six-year-old with a jack-o’-lantern smile, yanks on my elbow.
“Then there’s Maddie Wilson—don’t let her size fool you, folks, she’s easily the best power forward this state has ever seen—look at that! Nothing but net!” I hoist up a wiggling Maddie so she can easily swish the ball through the basket.
Tyler snags the ball as it bounces to the ground and dribbles over to his dad. Adam steals it from him—there’s no way he’d just let that kid win—and hurls it towards the basket. It ricochets off the backboard and rolls into the front yard.
“What were you talking to Kayla Johnson about yesterday?” Adam confronts me as the kids scamper off into the grass.
“I think the bank might have made a mistake in her case and told her so.”
“Little bro, that’s none of your business.”
“No, but it’s in the bank’s best interest to uphold its policies, and she ought to be able to explore any option that would keep her in her house.”
“She has no other option if she has no money.”
“She does?—”
“No!” Adam cuts me off. “Look, Dad was upset yesterday. He thought you were going behind his back, undermining his expertise. He just didn’t want to say anything because he knows you’re in a bad place. But people like Kayla Johnson need to learn to take responsibility.”
“This is a woman who is putting her own life on hold to help her mother, and you’re talking about responsibility?”
“Look, I have a job, you have a job, sort of, we pay our bills?—”
I ignore the dig. How can Adam be so insensitive to the plight of people we’ve grown up around? I should know better than to argue with him, but his smugness is infuriating.
“But can’t you see that we had an easier start in life than people like the Johnsons?” I gesture to his huge McMansion.
“Hey, little bro, I’ve earned what I have.” He starts getting up in my face, obviously done being challenged by his kid brother. The actual kids, by this point, have lost interest in basketball. Hadyn and Maddie are trying to hatch the ball like an egg, and Tyler is loping back up towards the house, likely in search of his Switch. I stand my ground, and when he gets within a few inches of me, he hisses, “I know what this is about.”
I’d been bracing for a punch, but now my muscles clench even tighter. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I bluff.
“Like hell,” he whispers. “You’ve been after that girl since high school. It’s pathetic. You think you’re going to get in her pants now by coming to her rescue? She’s just playing you.”
“She’s not,” I snap. Adam may or may not think Kayla is a con artist, but I know that what really irks him is that Kayla has never liked him. When he’d come home from college during our senior year and spotted me hanging around her at the diner, he’d tried to insinuate himself between us. He’d turned on the charm, just to see if he could get her to react. I know he’d never cheat on Lucy, but he needs to be liked, and more importantly, he needs to be liked more than me. He’d been the same way with Gretchen.
Kayla had been polite, but never rose to the bait. Then once, at the rare high school basketball game she’d attended, I’d broken away from my friends to flirt with her. I was jokingly/not jokingly trying to get her to sneak under the bleachers with me, using all my worst math jokes to win her over.
“Hey, baby, want to squeeze my theorem while I poly your nomial?” I’d said while nuzzling her ear, arms wrapped around her waist. She’d giggled and pretended to push me away.
“These jokes are deriving me crazy,” she quipped. But just as I was trying to come up with a witty retort, Adam sauntered over.
“You get yourself a treat at the concession stand, little bro? Why don’t you share some with me?” And he grabbed Kayla’s wrist and pulled her roughly towards him.
“Hey—” I shouted, charging at him, but before I could reach him she slapped his cheek with her free hand. Not hard, but hard enough to make her point. He waited a beat before releasing her. His rude grin froze on his face and his eyes glittered dangerously.
Kayla returned to my side and I slipped a protective arm around her. I glared at Adam, preparing myself for a fight, but all he said was, “Good luck with that, little bro,” and walked away.
“I’m so sorry about that,” I said to Kayla immediately. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes,” she assured me, but I could tell she was shaken.
“Do you want to get out of here?” I asked. She nodded, so I laced my fingers gently though hers and led her out of the crowded, noisy gym into the deserted hallways of the school. I was angrier with my brother than I ever had been, but most of my attention was focused on the girl at my side. I was unspeakably grateful to her for not abandoning me because of my brother’s atrocious behavior. It made me realize, for the first time, maybe, that I was my own person and not just part of the larger Wilson clan.
We sat down across from each other in the darkened band room, behind a jumble of music stands. I was still holding her hand, and now I reached up to trace the lines on her palm with the other.
“I wish I could say that Adam never acts like that,” I said. “But that wouldn’t really be true.”
She laughed ruefully. “It’s not your fault,” she replied. “You’re not like that.”
“No,” I agreed. “My dad is really hard on both of us—he has very high expectations—and has always kind of pitted us against each other to try to get us to achieve more. I respond mostly by refusing to participate, and Adam responds by going after me .”
She reached up and brushed a lock of hair off my forehead, a gesture that sent a shiver down my spine. “I barely remember my dad,” she confessed. “He left us when I was little. He was never a very affectionate guy, but he did like to read to me. He read all the classics— Chronicles of Narnia , Lord of the Rings , the Wrinkle in Time series, everything.”
“Is that why you like to read so much?” I looked up from her palm, trying to read her face in the dark.
She shrugged with a small smile. “Maybe. I read to myself after he was gone.” I smiled back at her, not because what she’d said was at all funny, but because it felt so nice to talk to her. I could have stayed there forever, slowly unraveling our family histories for each other, opening our hearts for the other’s inspection. For the moment, though, we let silence settle in around us. I was still holding her gaze, running my thumb over the crease in her wrist, when I heard the hallway behind me fill with talking and laughter.
“I guess the game is over,” she said finally. “We’d better go.” I helped her to her feet and we walked, slowly, as if in a dream, against the current of the crowd to retrieve our coats from the gym. She let me take her to her car and I remember, as if it were yesterday, that I pressed my lips to her knuckles once before she drove away.
Adam never mentioned that night to me again, but I doubt very much that he’s forgotten. As we face off in his driveway, I wonder, in a burst of paranoia, if he somehow had a hand in her current predicament. Could he have discouraged the Loan Servicing department from offering to help her refinance?
“Everything all right out here, guys?” Lucy, no doubt sensing trouble, joins us in the driveway, the winter sun reflecting dully off her stick-straight, dyed-blonde hair. She’s a head shorter than Adam, but her black eyes fix him with such a critical glare that he relaxes his aggressive stance immediately, obviously cowed.
“Fine,” Adam grumbles, a muscle still twitching in his jaw.
“Gabe.” Lucy turns to me with a wide smile. “Do you have a date for Hungry Hearts yet?”
I sigh. “Is it really so important that I go? I’d be happy to stay here with the kids and save you the trouble of finding a babysitter.”
Lucy’s smile fades. “Yes, it is important. Everyone knows you’re back in town, and it’ll be weird if you’re not there. You can’t mope about Gretchen forever.”
“I’m not—” I start to object.
“Emma Snyder is away at college, but she might be persuaded to come back for a weekend. I think she’s single right now. Otherwise there’s Sage Mitchell—she’s a senior in high school, but maybe if you just went as friends?—”
“Christ, Lucy, there are women outside the fifteen families.” She furrows her brow slightly, as if I’ve said something absurd. Adam chuckles knowingly.
“Gabe’s got a thing for Kayla Johnson.”
“Kayla Johnson ?” Lucy actually wrinkles her nose. “Really? I know she was a hotshot in high school, but have you seen her lately? She’s really let herself go. No, she’d stick out like a sore thumb at Hungry Hearts. I’ll text Emma’s mom, see what we can do. C’mon, kids, let’s get you a snack.” And she and the two younger kids disappear into the house.