Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Sunday morning, Winnie was stretched out on the couch in the living room, scrolling through her phone while music blasted through the Bluetooth speaker. The TV was on with the volume turned down, and her laptop was open.
“Have enough sensory input going on in here?” Ryan yelled over the conflicting sounds.
“A little too much, now that you’re talking,” Winnie said, grinning to herself.
“Hmm,” he said, letting his hand bump into the laptop hard enough to close it.
“Just kidding.” She turned off the TV but left the music on and continued scrolling. “What’s up?”
“I have a proposition for you,” Ryan said.
Winnie raised an eyebrow but kept her eye on her phone. “Unless there’s a financial reward at the end of this, I’m not interested.”
“Of course there is. The problem is, my proposition requires dishonesty, and Nina is very anti-lying. So, it’s going to require you to not only lie to Jasper, but also to Nina. It requires emotional maturity. Lucky for me, you’re very mature.”
“My services can be yours for fifty dollars, minimum.”
“Then it’s your lucky day. I have a crisp one-hundred dollar bill with your name on it,” Ryan said, opening his wallet. He held it up between two fingers and watched her face light up.
“Keep going,” she said.
“I need you to convince Nina to have a party with the chickens in my room.”
Winnie laughed. “What?”
“Don’t ask too many details. It’s better this way.”
“Won’t they make a mess?”
“Well, yes,” Ryan said. They would, but that was the point. A few chickens couldn’t possibly destroy the entire room. “But I’ll handle the cleanup.”
“That’s disgusting. I don’t understand.”
“Don’t worry about the reason. For one hundred dollars, there is no reason.”
Winnie put her phone on the couch and turned to him. “Okay. So, what are we doing, exactly?”
“You and Nina will move a few hens into my room. Two or three. I’ll need you to make sure there’s no trace of them anywhere else, and you’ll need to close up the coop so Jasper doesn’t suspect anything is up when he gets home.”
“This is very weird. I don’t think so. Uncle Jasper is going to tell my mom I can work at the park next summer, and I can’t risk that.”
Ryan nodded and bit his lip. “What if I give you two hundred dollars?”
Winnie thought about it for half a second. “Okay.”
Ryan relaxed against the back of the couch. “Great. You’re the best.”
“When do we need to do this?”
“Tomorrow morning, after Jasper goes to work. That way, the chickens will be in there all day while Jasper is gone. You and Nina have the day off, right?”
“Yeah, no school tomorrow,” Winnie said. “I was planning on sleeping in.”
“You can sleep in. I’ll get you up no later than ten.”
“I don’t understand why you can’t do this. Uncle Jasper won’t even be home.”
Ryan grinned. “Plausible deniability.”
After trudging through what felt like the longest day in existence, between multiple disciplinary issues to deal with and the school board breathing down his neck to schedule a tour of the new science lab, Jasper was unsurprised when he felt a tickle in his throat as he made his way to his car.
He wasn’t used to the level of stress that came with working his normal job, having someone else in his house nonstop, and being unable to sleep because of new noises and new thoughts plaguing him.
Stevie and Beni couldn’t get home soon enough.
The drive home was easy at least. There was no snow left, just a chilly dampness in the air he was happy to deal with if it meant the roads were clear.
All Jasper could think about was climbing into bed and sleeping the rest of the day, but he’d volunteered to steam all the costumes for Nina’s dance class, and they needed to be dropped off with the studio by Tuesday for their upcoming recital.
As much as he’d been lamenting the loss of his alone time, Jasper couldn’t deny the pleasure of walking into a house smelling of herbs and spices and the promise of a home cooked meal.
Ryan hadn’t noticed Jasper walk in, probably because he had music playing on the kitchen speakers.
He was standing over the stove, stirring something while shaking his hips slightly to the beat of whatever song he had playing.
Jasper didn’t recognize the song, but did recognize the scene before him, one he’d seen a thousand times before but that normally took place before Ryan went out on a tour.
Old hurt flared instinctually, a reflex from years of lonely dinners and hours-long freezer meal prep, until he remembered things had started to feel…
different. Domestic and nostalgic, how it was ten years ago, not two years ago.
Jasper must have been standing there thirty seconds before Ryan finally looked up. He let out a quick yelp before clutching his chest and letting out a breath.
“Jesus, you scared me.”
“Sorry,” Jasper said, setting his backpack on the kitchen table.
“Wow, you look terrible,” Ryan said, approaching Jasper with his hand out, pressing it against his forehead.
Jasper closed his eyes and leaned into it, Ryan’s warmth melting away the tension he’d been carrying all day.
“No fever, at least. That’s good. Why don’t you go sit down, I’ll bring you some dinner in a minute.
The girls are out hunting for wild carrots, which I’m pretty sure are not in the woods here, but it’s keeping them busy and… away from me.”
Jasper huffed out a small laugh. “Thanks. I’m exhausted.”
He settled in on the couch and put on a comfort TV show, zoning out until a few minutes had passed, and Ryan entered the living room with two bowls of something hearty looking.
Some sort of grain, mushrooms, vegetables, and an unidentifiable protein laid across the top.
It smelled great and the idea of a warm, stew-like food against his increasingly sore throat was exactly what he wanted.
“Eat up,” Ryan said.
Jasper swallowed a spoonful and groaned. “This is really good.”
“Thanks. I had to get creative. We need groceries.”
Jasper nodded and stared at his bowl, ignoring Ryan’s use of the word we in case it was a mistake or reference to this two-week vacation from their normal lives. The two sat on the couch in silence and ate their dinner, watching TV and existing together the way they’d done so many times.
The kids came in moments later, a basket filled with, to Ryan’s obvious surprise, wild carrots.
“Where the hell did you find those?” Ryan asked.
“Language!” Nina said.
“There are tons of them out there, down the path in the back,” Winnie said. “I’m going to make pickles with them.”
“That sounds awesome,” Ryan said. “Do you need help?”
“No, I’m fine,” she said. Her eyes flicked to Jasper quickly before moving back to Ryan. “I’ll take the scraps from dinner to the chickens and get to work.”
“Okay,” Ryan said, glaring at her before nodding towards the kitchen. “You do that.”
She grinned. “Okay.”
“The inside chickens or the outside chickens?” Nina asked. “Can I help?”
Winnie coughed out a laugh and said, “Yes, you can. Come with me.”
“Inside chickens?” Jasper said, grinning at Ryan. “Imagine.”
“Yeah, right?” Ryan said. He coughed and leaned forward on the couch. “So, you seem pretty tired. You should probably head to bed.”
“I’m tired, but not sleepy tired yet. You trying to get rid of me?”
“No! No.”
Jasper set his bowl on the coffee table and was about to consider whether he wanted to scoot slightly closer to Ryan on the couch, when he heard a noise.
“What was that?”
“What was what?” Ryan asked, staring at the TV.
“I heard a noise coming from the bedrooms. Like, an animal noise. Where’s Calliope?
” Jasper sat up and looked around for the cat, relieved when she was in one of several of her favorite spawn points.
This time, it was the homemade cat bed Ryan had built when Jasper mentioned feeling sad she couldn’t see out that window that overlooked the bird feeders. “Oh, there she is.”
“I didn’t hear anything.” Ryan stood from the couch. “You all done? I’ll take your bowl. Can you turn up the TV so I can hear it when I go into the kitchen?”
“What? No, why would I do that? You’ll be back in twenty seconds.”
Another, slightly louder noise rang out then. Definitely an animal, and definitely from the bedroom side of the house.
“Seriously, what is that?” Jasper stood up and started walking towards the bedrooms. Ryan followed close behind.
“Okay, uh—”
“You’re being weird.”
“I’m not being weird. I actually wanted to talk to you about something, though. Something so important.”
Jasper paused in the hallway and turned to look Ryan, who was weirdly sweaty and his Adam’s apple bobbed with an exaggerated swallow.
“Are you feeling sick too?”
“No—oh, actually, yeah. A little bit.”
Jasper lifted his hand and pressed it against Ryan’s forehead, like Ryan had done earlier. “No fever,” he said, smiling.
“Let’s go back to the couch. We should be resting.”
The noise hadn’t repeated, and while Jasper was still curious about what caused it, he couldn’t deny he was fading quickly. Whatever cold they’d come down with was worsening by the minute, general malaise moving down his body, inch by inch.
“I have a few things to do before bed, but you’re probably right.”
“What do you have to do?” Ryan asked.
“I have to steam the wrinkles out of all the costumes I made for Nina’s dance recital, and I need to pack them up so I can get them to the school this week.”
“I can do that.”
“You can steam wrinkles out of fabric? Since when?”
Ryan scoffed. “Excuse me, it’s like you’ve forgotten the many different gear designs I’ve had over the years. A lot of that required steaming because I’m bad at packing suitcases.”
Jasper smiled. “You are.”
“Let me take care of the costumes. I have nothing going on tomorrow. You can go relax.”
“Okay. Thanks, Ry.”
A third, loud noise came from the bedrooms and Jasper paused in the hallway again. Before Ryan noticed Jasper looking at him, his face was pinched—worried, or confused, which only added to Jasper’s need to identify the source of the noise.