Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
It had taken a few weeks after that desperate call for help, but Micky—Myles now, because it seemed wrong while he lived in his pacifist sister’s home to go by a name his army buddies had given him—had worked with Lucky to sort out details for a summer vacation for himself and his niece and nephew.
To Myles’s relief, Lucky had been able to rent him a suite in the B and B he owned with his partner, Kreed, for as long as Myles needed it.
Now, on the day of departure, he hoped he was doing the right thing for everyone.
He wasn’t sure where in the house or yard the kids were.
Some days, it felt like the building dampened all the sounds, and others, that it amplified and echoed them so that Myles could never be sure where anyone was when he couldn’t see them.
Today, everything was so muffled it felt like he was underwater.
At least he could be satisfied they’d done what he’d asked. Shelly’s little pink princess suitcase sat by the front door, next to her school backpack bursting with drawing and painting materials.
Some of her favourite drawings peeked from an outside pocket, and he pulled them out to look. The top one showed an incomprehensible tangle of blue, red and yellow lines over the entirety of a piece of printer paper.
She had produced dozens of such images, none of them depicting anything except a tangled, dark mass of scribbled lines in various colours.
She’d always explained them. A man walking a dog.
Kites in the sky. A flower garden with a sprinkler.
She told him what each picture was, and though he didn’t see what she described, he’d stopped trying to figure it out weeks ago.
He was staring blankly at the artwork when Jet appeared, snatching the pages out of his hand.
“Jet.”
“You shouldn’t let her keep these.” Still, careful not to wrinkle them, he tucked the drawings back where Myles had found them.
Myles watched him and wondered, briefly, if there were any actual clothes in the suitcase, or if it, too, was filled with drawing supplies. He let the thought go. He was too tired to look. Jet probably had already. He wouldn’t thank Myles for double-checking his work.
“Why does it matter if she keeps them?” Myles asked. “If they make her happy…”
“It’s disturbed. She literally thinks she’s drawing something, and it’s nothing. Just scribbles.”
“Keep your voice down.”
Jet pursed his lips, but he glanced at the stairs, then returned his glare to Myles. “Why? So you can keep lying to her? Like you lied to us about Mom?”
“Jet—”
Jet snarled at him, spun on one heel, and stormed past him to the kitchen.
Almost, Myles let him go. Almost. Instead, he gripped his cane in a tight fist and hobbled after him.
“Hey.” He stopped in the kitchen doorway to watch Jet rifle through the fridge.
Jet ignored him.
“Jet.”
More of nothing from the teenager.
“Jet, come on. Would you look at me?”
Jet straightened, an energy drink in one hand and a juice box in the other. “What?” He slammed the fridge, then winced at the sounds of falling bottles inside. He didn’t open it to find out what had spilled, though. Just leaned on the door, arms crossed.
“You don’t think I’ve tried to talk to Shelly about the drawings? All it does is make her furious. Your mom was so good with her. She knew how to keep her calm.” Myles shrugged. “I don’t know much about kids, I’ll be honest. But I’m trying here.”
Jet huffed.
“And about your mom, that wasn’t my decision, it was hers.
I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t my place to go behind her back.
Believe me, I tried—a lot—to talk her into telling you guys.
I thought you had a right to know. I thought you had a right to share her last days as a family.
Together. To say goodbye properly. But she wouldn’t.
” He scrubbed a thumb over a smudged print on the side of the fridge. “I can’t change any of that.”
Jet had moved his glare to the floor, and Myles could see his rapid blinking. He knew the kid needed a hug. He knew Jet might take a swing if he got too close.
“I’m ready!” Shelly came careening into the room from the backyard, and directly into Jet’s legs, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing.
He patted her back, and she took off again. “Gotta find shoes!” she called back breathlessly, and Myles gaped at the dew-wet, sandy footprints left behind by her socked feet.
The tiniest mutt Myles had ever known came scrambling inside in her wake, tripped over his own feet to slide on his chest across the floor until he came to a stop against Jet’s foot.
“OMG. Dude.” Jet lifted him back onto his feet.
“Could you be more of a dork?” He clipped the leash from the hook by the back door to MJ’s collar, then stood.
“I’ll go help her find her shoes.” Scooping up the dog, he angled past Myles out of the room, then called for Shelly as he headed for the front of the house.
Myles followed more slowly. His own green army-issue duffel, depressingly flaccid though it held every stitch of clothing he owned, sat next to Shelly’s bright case. He placed the cane Ozzy had carved for him from a crooked tree branch against the wall next to the small pile.
The smooth wood of the handle had darkened over time and with use, but he remembered the day Ozzy had proudly handed it over. That had been a good day. No matter what—or who—had come and gone from his life since then, that cane helped him remember there were good days.
There could be more good days.
Because he and Ozzy hadn’t exactly parted on friendly terms, he’d figured on a lukewarm reception at best from Lucky because Lucky had given Ozzy refuge.
Myles should have known better. Lucky had never been a lukewarm kind of person.
He’d more than come through for Ozzy, and he’d now done the same for Micky.
He hoped it wouldn’t be more than a couple of weeks, but when he glanced across the room to Jet’s separate pile—because heaven forbid anything of Jet’s should look like it belonged anywhere close to anything of Myles’s—he had to wonder.
Jet’s huge-wheeled suitcase with its many pockets and extendable handle sat next to two totes filled with carefully packed sneakers.
The kid had more sneakers than Myles had hang-ups.
And, really, that was a lot.
“You ready?” Perhaps his oldest friend, Patricia, bustled in from the kitchen, brushing her hands together as she moved through the living room.
Myles grimaced at the black dots of garden soil, invisible against her dark skin but vibrant against the white entrance tiles, that she left in her wake.
“Yeah.” He opened the hall closet. “Let me just—” The door snapped shut, almost nipping his fingers, and he yanked it back open to grab a broom.
Patricia took it from his hand. “Stop it.”
“It’ll only take—”
“Stop. Myles, leave it. I’ll clean it up.”
“I—”
“Hey. You’re about to go on vacation where you won’t have to clean up after yourself or anyone else for the next six weeks.”
“Two.”
“To-ma-to, to-mah-to.” She grinned, showing off the spectacularly white, straight teeth of someone who grew up with a dentist parent. “Start now.”
Myles clenched his jaw and forced himself not to look again at the trail of dark dirt across the pale ceramic. He gave a curt, silent nod.
“What’s wrong?” Pat closed the closet door, broom still in hand.
“Yeah, no. Nothing. I’m good.”
“Also a terrible liar.”
“I just…” He pulled in a deep breath and took the broom from her to sweep the garden from the living room, then moved on to Shelly’s sandy prints in the kitchen.
“Would you—” She tried to reclaim it, but he evaded her grab.
“Let me. I’ll feel better.”
She made a face but backed off and let him sweep up the soil.
“It’s not unhealthy for me to clean up a mess that actually exists,” he told her.
“It’s not unhealthy to have a few specks of good, clean garden soil on the floor,” she countered.
“Leave me alone.”
She bent and held the dustpan for him to sweep the dirt onto. “You know I’ll never do that.”
“I do.” She’d been there for him when they were twelve and he’d realized he was gay and didn’t know how to tell his conservative pig-farming father, and she was here for him now, ready to house-sit while he ran away from the crushing sorrow of his sister’s death.
He sighed, silent as he watched her empty the pan into the kitchen garbage.
“This trip is going to be good for you,” she said on her way back to him. “For all of you.” She took the broom, snapped the pan back onto its handle, and put it away in the closet, which didn’t attack her as it had him.
“Jet wants nothing to do with it.”
Gently, she closed the closet door, and it snicked shut with a whisper. “Jet’s sixteen. He’s not going to want anything to do with anything that wasn’t his idea first.”
“Valid.”
“Myles, you need to learn to trust your instincts, here.”
He noted she used his given name and not Micky, as she and everyone else had back when he’d been deployed. He was Myles now, and most of him wasn’t sad about that.
“I’m not their father,” he reminded her.
“No, you’re not. But you are all they have in this world.”
As they were the only family he had left. “Summer break has hardly started and I’m taking them away from all their friends for what? So I can feel less isolated?”
“First off, I’ve met Jet’s friends. You don’t want him rattling around Calgary all summer with those hoodlums.”
“Harsh.”
“But true. Some of them are truly bad news.”
He didn’t think she was wrong, but there was no way he was going to try to point that out to Jet. As she’d already pointed out, nothing Myles said would be taken at all seriously. In fact, Jet would probably go out of his way to do the exact opposite of anything Myles suggested.
The best way to remove the negative influence of bad characters was to remove Jet from the temptation of hanging out with them and hope a few weeks away would diminish their influence. At least, that was the theory Myles was going with.
“So what was the second thing?” he asked.
She frowned at him.
“You said ‘first off.’ So what’s second?”
“Oh. You, feeling less isolated. You’re half a country away from everyone important to you.”
“Not you.”
“Pfft.” She waved him off. “I am not who you need right now. You need those people who kept you alive after you came back, Myles. You need your people.”
“You are my people.”
“Yes, I know, honey. But they understand you. They know what you went through, and they have their shelter, so they’ll know how to help you help these kids.
At least with Jet. You deserve their support right now, as much as Jet and Shelly deserve yours.
Please get it through your thick skull that you need to take care of you before you can take proper care of them. ”
“I know.” And he did, which was why he was going to Griffon’s Elbow and his friends. His family. Even Ozzy, because whatever their differences, however they had parted, deep down, he and Ozzy were family of the soul, and he needed those connections more than anything right now.
“Thanks for taking care of this place while we’re gone.” He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination that the lights flickered as he said that. “I swear since Nat… I mean, the house is just…” He sighed. He’d been about to say it didn’t like him, but that sounded too off the wall, so he let it drop.
“Thank you for giving me a place to stay while my place is being built.” She twinkled at him and petted a nearby door frame. “I’m going to enjoy the space while I have it.”
“If you don’t want a tiny house, why—”
“I do, though. It will be small, but it will be luxurious. And portable. You know Sharon. She needs portable.”
Pat’s partner was a musician by trade but a nomad at heart, and Myles was glad Pat would finally be able to stay close to her lover, despite Sharon’s inability to stay in one place long.
“You guys need to get on the road,” she said after a minute. She turned him and pointed him at the door. “You go load the car. I’ll round up the animals.”
He didn’t imagine that the door slammed on his heels as he limped out with Jet’s heavy suitcase.