13. Chapter 13
Ellie: Are you okay?
Graham: No. I’m so fucking lost.
From his perch in the driver’s seat, the door open and his feet on the pavement, sweat dripped from the curls around his forehead to the messages on his phone screen as he re-read his last conversation with Helen for the hundredth time.
Two years and twelve hundred miles usually separated him from the woman in Texas he couldn’t shake.
On the road in Kentucky, he was a hundred miles closer to her front door.
I know it doesn’t mean much coming from me, but I really am sorry, Graham.
A ten-minute pause wherein Graham had consumed a large amount of bourbon, he recalled.
He had only messaged Helen Elsburg—Ellie, in case Lindsey ever looked over his shoulder and saw the name—to tell her his dad died. He hadn’t counted on…everything else.
You could come to the funeral.
Are you serious?
Graham.
Graham, are you there?
Graham!
More bourbon. The room had started to spin, and he could hardly focus on the flights from Austin to Dayton on his phone.
I really need you.
You’re not thinking straight.
Or I am?
Is your girlfriend there?
No.
You’re still with her?
Another pause.
She’s at work.
You’re still together then. What’s it been. A year?
You counting?
Do you love her?
He never answered. To say yes would’ve been a betrayal to Helen, and it might’ve been a lie. To say no wouldn’t have been fair to Lindsey either. There was no earthly reason why he shouldn’t love her, and there were plenty of times he thought he did. And if not now, that someday he could.
Do you love her? The best answer—the truth, as far as he knew—was it depended on the day, how bitter his coffee was, if they’d had sex recently, and if the sex was good.
Whether or not Helen still loved him.
It wasn’t fair and he knew it.
At the sound of an engine approaching, Graham stood, palmed the knot in his chest, and pocketed his phone. Lindsey was riding on the back of a four-wheeler behind a man about his father’s age. The four-wheeler was pulling a small trailer. Jase was sitting in it with what looked like…
Graham squinted. Was it a bear?
A streak of black fur bounded from the trailer. Graham tucked himself into the car and shut the door a second before the mammoth dog reached him. Standing on all fours, it was eye level with Graham in the driver’s seat. It jumped and put its front paws on the roof, trapping Graham inside.
The man climbed off the four-wheeler and slapped his thigh. “Tiny, Tiny, get over here.”
Tiny’s claws scratched the Ford’s paint on their way down.
“Howdy.” The man tipped his hat. Graham rolled down the window to shake the farmer’s hand. “Sorry about Tiny. Arthur Pederson. You must be the other brother.”
“Graham,” he said.
“Much obliged. Mighty fine ride you’ve got here.” Farmer Pederson brushed his hand over the fresh claw marks. “Needs a touch up.”
The culprit trotted up to Lindsey.
“Right,” Graham muttered.
“Got some gas for you,” Farmer Pederson said.
In the trailer was a small load of split wood and a five-gallon gas can he hefted over the side.
With Tiny in tow, Lindsey showed Graham a Polaroid through the open window. “See? This was the place.”
He studied the picture of his mother in leather, standing beside the younger, spryer version of the farmer filling Nadine’s tank.
A vein in his temple twitched with an unmistakable blood pressure spike.
It was his childhood all over again: Jase with a shit-eating grin and Graham the butt of his old man’s joke.
Now his mother, who he always thought would’ve had his back, was smiling at him as if she was part of the gag.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Lindsey asked.
“It’s something.” He handed the picture back to her and clipped out a thank-you to Farmer Pederson.
“How much do we owe you?” Jase asked.
The farmer waved him off. “I didn’t charge your folks, and sure as heck won’t be charging you. You don’t know how happy you made this old-timer today.” He capped the spout on the empty gas can. “Fill up at your first chance, okay? Old boats really guzzle the gas.”
“Thank you, sir. It’s been a pleasure,” Jase said.
“Pleasure’s all mine, son. All mine,” Farmer Pederson said. “I’d appreciate a picture, though, if you don’t mind. You know, this tree used to be a sugar maple?”
Lindsey lined up the shot with her phone and waved Graham over. “Come on. You should be in this.”
“I’m good here.”
“Your loss,” she said, snapping a picture of the farmer and Jase in front of the sugar maple’s gnarly skeleton.
“Good, now one with the lady,” Farmer Pederson said.
Graham watched him offer his arm to Lindsey and lean in to say something in her ear. Whatever it was startled her. She was looking at the farmer, not her phone, when the camera clicked.
“Thank you kindly,” Farmer Pederson said.
“If you wouldn’t mind sending me copies, I’ll set them up beside the one with your mom.
Makes for one heck of a story.” He took off his cap, slapped it on his pant leg a few times as if shaking out dust, and readjusted it over the wisps of hair clinging to his scalp.
“Of course, you could always pop in if you’re ever down this way. Tiny never forgets a face.”
“You bet,” Jase said.
Tiny barked at Jase’s handshake that turned into a hug. The farmer patted the dog’s head and took Lindsey in his bony arms.
“Think about what I said,” he told her earnestly.
With a final nod as if to instill his point, the farmer ambled to the car window.
“Thank you again,” Graham said.
“Don’t mention it.” While gripping Graham’s hand, Farmer Pederson said, “You got a fine woman there. Make sure you act like it.”
“What?”
The old farmer didn’t explain further. Graham’s temple twitched at the warning. He watched the four-wheeler turn in an arc through the center of the road and head back to the farm with the bear-dog in the trailer.
To Graham’s immense relief, Nadine started after a few pumps on the gas pedal and a few cranks of the key. He thanked the wagon for cooperating and hollered out the window, “Can we get the fuck out of here, please?”
“You mind navigating for a while?” he heard Jase ask Lindsey. “I haven’t slept in weeks.”
There was a long pause and a backwards glance at Graham.
He watched their exchange in the side mirror, flicking his thumb ring on the dashboard until his girlfriend and brother finally climbed in.
Graham pulled away from the shoulder and Lindsey asked Jase to hand her the sunglasses she left in the back seat.
Something had changed between them. The shift in attitude grated on Graham’s last nerve almost as much as the farmer’s unfounded—and unappreciated—judgment.
“Took you a while,” he said after stewing for a few miles. “You guys have fun?”
“I don’t think he gets a lot of company,” Lindsey said. “Thank God we weren’t selling magazines.”
“No kidding.” Jase laughed at their private joke. Because they have private jokes now. Graham’s shoulders nearly touched his ears. “Tiny would’ve torn us to shreds.”
“You should’ve seen it. Tiny attacked Jase,” Lindsey exclaimed. “Laid him out on the driveway.”
“Yeah, well, someone had to stay with the car,” Graham said, grinding his fingers on the wagon’s unfamiliar steering wheel. “What’d you tell him about me?”
“You didn’t come up,” Lindsey said. “Why?”
“Never mind.”
“Is something wrong? What did I miss?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“What is it? We met the farmer. We got the gas. Everything worked out. What’s going on with you?”
“Which part?” he demanded, if she really wanted to know. “What do you want to talk about? This piece-of-junk car breaking down in the middle of Kentucky? Or how about having some dried-up old bastard telling me—”
“What?” Lindsey asked. “What did he say?”
“Nothing, just forget it.”
Graham turned the radio up to an obnoxious volume and she promptly snuffed Elvis out.
“No. He went out of his way to help us—and your parents,” Lindsey said. “He’s not a bastard. You’re being ridiculous.”
“You should’ve taken a picture,” Jase said quietly from the back seat.
“What’d you say?” Graham asked. “You got something on your mind, speak up!”
“The guy got us moving, and all he wanted was a picture for it. If he thinks you’re an asshole for not getting out of the car, I agree with him.”
“You would.”
“Don’t do this, Graham,” Lindsey pleaded. “Don’t ruin this.”
“Ruin what? The magic of the moment at the Pederson farm?” he asked. “This whole trip? What exactly am I ruining?”
“Stop,” she shouted. “Just stop. If you can’t see that something really special happened here today, then just stop talking. Please.”
She pulled her sunglasses over her eyes and faced the window.
They drove a few miles in silence, and Graham considered giving her leg a squeeze to knock down the wall that shot up between them. She was a fine woman, and he didn’t always act like it.
But right now he needed reality, plain and simple, not wild fantasy. Easy miles and reliable cars and a time stamp on the final envelope currently under the pile of others they hadn’t cracked open.
His girlfriend keeping a distance from his brother because nothing good ever came from getting too close to Jase Young. Any woman who ever tangled with Jase could tell her the same.
If Lindsey wasn’t so damn romantic, she’d see there was no miracle in running out of gas. And if she wasn’t so desperate to make friends, she’d remember all the horrible things Graham told her about his brother and realize her new pal Jase was playing the role just to get under Graham’s skin.
And it was working.
He didn’t tell her any of it. Didn’t squeeze her leg either.
And he definitely didn’t look very long at the tears slipping out from underneath those giant sunglasses, but he understood now why she brought them.