Chapter 11
ELEVEN
It’s not that Will sprints through the next week; that would imply he has some amount of say in the matter. It’s rather more accurate to say that the week sprints at Will , bent at the waist as though intending to piledrive him, and then sends him flying through it like a sack of flour.
That he’ll stay at the house until he can make it back to the hotel is implied, but never said; Casey clears his throat a couple of times on the drive back like maybe he’s going to offer, but it always seems to die somewhere in the process.
It’s just as well, Will thinks—it’s too awkward, the whole thing.
What would Will say if he did offer? “Thanks so much for letting me stay in my childhood home, which I technically own, that’s really generous of you? ” A nightmare, no matter the approach.
But he does thank Casey, when Casey shows him the guest bedroom on the second floor, passing Bill’s door—closed now, Will notices—with his head bowed.
It’s a nice guest room, far too modern and tasteful to have been June’s or Bill’s work, and Casey confirms it, looking pleased, when Will asks if he’s the one who refinished what Will remembers as his mother’s quilting room.
But when Will says, confused, that he figured Casey himself would be staying in the guest bedroom, Casey shakes his head, looking suddenly uncomfortable.
“Nah,” he says, glancing away with an awkward little half shrug. “Used to, but—a few years ago, I finished the attic, made it into a separate suite, you know? The back stairs in and out are nice, and, anyway, it was just easier. Nicer, too, ultimately.”
“Sure,” Will says. Then, because it’s been a long, unpleasant day and he’s still more than a little damp and his brain-to-mouth filtering system is, for all intents and purposes, still bailing out an afternoon of rainwater, his mouth carries on without him and adds: “Although actually, I say that, but the last time I was up there, I was supposed to be cleaning it out as a summer punishment, and I think I was maybe seven, and my cousins had convinced me it was haunted, so. You know. I may not have the best memories of it.”
Casey laughs, but then his brow furrows, and he opens his mouth like he wants to ask a question before closing it again, shaking his head.
Instead of whatever it was, he says: “Look, there are some spare clothes in the dresser in there, just old work shirts and jeans, sweats from past merch runs in the market. Nothing fancy, and there’s also obviously everything in, uh…
” Casey drops his eyes to the ground, his throat visibly working as he swallows.
“In your dad’s closet. It’s—I do know it’s yours.
” He gives Will a brief up-and-down glance and then, flushing for some reason, mutters, “A lot of it would probably fit you, honestly. The vintage stuff, anyway.”
“You can say ‘Bill,’” Will offers, not entirely sure which one of them he’s trying to be kind to. “I mean, he was my dad, but it was…complicated. Anyway, I’ll probably stick to the sweats, if it’s all the same to you; I was always scrawny for a Robertson, and I’d rather not…uh… Anyway. Thanks.”
Casey cocks his head, his expression again tipping into curiosity, but then he shrugs, and stiffens, and says he’s going back to the market to deal with things, and Will knows where to find him if he needs anything.
Will can tell that the offer is begrudging, a little—that part of him desperately resents Will’s presence in this house, in this town, in this family—but he appreciates Casey making it, anyway.
After all, there have been plenty of people before Casey who resented Will’s place in the Robertson family, and they, by and large, hadn’t even bothered to try to be decent about it.
Once Casey’s gone, Will pulls out his phone, wincingly ignores several missed messages from Selma, and calls Bartholomew, his overly enthusiastic second-in-command at the lab.
Bartholomew is, in a word, thrilled to hear that Will has been caught in a natural disaster.
Twice, when Will says something about expecting to be stuck here a week at least, Bartholomew asks hopefully if it might take longer.
He also explains, at great length, that Will has never taken a real vacation, or even long weekend , in the four and a half years they’ve worked together, and so he, Bartholomew, has never truly enjoyed the sweet taste of ultimate power, except that one time Will got the flu.
He actually says the words “the sweet taste of ultimate power,” which concerns Will very deeply vis-à-vis what’s going to happen to his work while he’s gone, but when he points this out, Bartholomew assures him everything will be fine and that he’ll email regular status reports and hangs up at once, so.
Nothing there except to wait and see, Will supposes, given that he is completely and utterly trapped in Ohio.
It’s at this point that Will realizes he could, if he wanted to, take a bit of a vacation.
That life has, in a real way, offered one up to him on a plate.
He could pick up one of the books off the shelves downstairs, or buy one on his phone, or turn on the television, and just…
sit. Do nothing. Luxuriate in the odd sensation, possibly common to orphans the world over or possibly unique to Will’s specific cocktail of dysfunctions, of having no one left alive to impress.
Not that he was trying to impress his parents these last sixteen years, exactly, just—well— there’d always been that little flame burning, hadn’t there?
In the center of his chest? The thought that maybe he’d encounter them again one day, Bill or June or both of them, and that more than anything, what he wanted to be in that moment, should it ever come, was: good.
Doing just fine, thanks. Someone who could not possibly have been affected by what happened; someone who had never needed any help from them at all.
Too late for all that, now. He could let the little flame flicker and die; he could let his shoulders drop, let his guard go out on a quick smoke break.
He could rest on his laurels, and take a beat, and let himself experience the sort of blissful, lazy abandon he’s heard so much about from friends, colleagues, and television shows.
Will considers it for the time it takes to change into dry clothes. Then, his mind made up, he goes down to the market, to help Casey clear the tree out of the road.
This takes two days. In the middle of the first one, Mere shows up with a basket of food and a huge hug for both of them.
She thanks them, and tells them they’re both invited for dinner whenever they want it for life and, laughing only slightly tearfully, says if either of them ever needs a kidney, they’re welcome to one of Todd’s.
Will’s very glad to have been able to help, but he expects that to be that.
Mere surprises him, though—surprises them both, at least if the expression on Casey’s face is anything to go by—and she asks to stay and run something past them.
It turns out that she and a few of the other members of the local business council have cobbled together a rough census of who is trapped in Glenriver, and one of those members is of the town population stuck on the other side.
“I have a very good information source on that one,” Mere adds, rolling her eyes, as she explains this. “Since Sandy’s basically got everyone who can’t get into town camped in the field off Main, on the other side of where the bridge used to be. He told me he’s buying a drone , you guys. A drone .”
“I mean,” Casey says, a speculative look in his eyes. “It might be practical? Hauling things back and forth across the river—medicines, supplies, food?—”
“That,” Mere says with a little stab of her finger, cutting him off, “is exactly what I came here to talk to you about. Because he also said, and I need you to know that I know my husband, and he’ll do this, that he’s thinking about building a trebuchet .
To throw food to us . And I just, you know what?
I really, really need to find a way to make that unnecessary before he makes it possible . ”
Sandy’s trebuchet plans aside, it turns out that between them, Meredith and Casey have most of the food in this town.
Sure, Mike has some stuff in stock at the diner, and individual households have their pantries, but between the apples, produce, and frozen farm meat available at the Robertson Family Farms market, and the wide selection of household staples at Gunderson’s, Mere and Casey are sitting on the bulk of the pile.
Or, well, technically it’s Mere and Will who are doing that, since, technically, this is Will’s farm now.
Will gets the sense that everyone is tactfully avoiding mentioning this; he knows he is.
But he and Casey are agreed, regardless, on Meredith’s idea to pool resources, set up a generous rationing system that will make sure everyone in town has enough for at least a week or two, sort out the financials later.
However, they both seem to think everyone in town will be fine getting the same selection of items, so long as that selection covers the basic necessities.
Will, who lived nearly twenty years with Bill, many of them while working directly with the public from behind one of the market’s counters, is sure his shock at this shows on his face; Casey seems to bristle at it, but Mere just waves a hand at him.
“It’s okay, Will—people will be flexible, you’ll see.
You wouldn’t have learned this from Bill, probably, but my parents always taught us that folks band together in a crisis, let go of the little things.
Most folks, anyway.” She chews her lip, adding, with slightly less confidence, “Although, now that you mention it, there are some people in town who can be—let’s call it ‘particular’—about their groceries?—”