CHAPTER THREE
Age Seventeen
Ike was thrilled when I told him we were staying. The TV and grilled cheese sandwiches had easily won him over.
Shawn wasn't as happy.
He thought I had lost my mind, like I'd been bought by food and a fancy house.
His accusations pissed me off, and I told him to get the fuck out if he didn't approve of the decision I'd made for us all.
Shit, he was his own person, even if he was just a kid, like the rest of us.
He didn't have to go along with everything I told him to do.
But like I'd already said, he and Ike were incapable of thinking for themselves, and of course, he stayed.
Luckily, none of us found reason to regret that choice.
Right away, Leonard set us up in two empty bedrooms with the promise that he'd clear out a third that had been used for storage since he had been a kid.
And the wild thing about Leonard was, he was good to his word.
A month after we moved in, that third bedroom was cleaned out, and for the first time in all our lives, we each had a space to call our own.
Two months after, Ike and Shawn were enrolled in the local public high school.
A year after, he helped me get my GED.
He celebrated our birthdays. He gave us our first real Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. He took us to the movies and out to dinner, and he bought us new clothes, shoes, and anything else we needed—and then some.
But more importantly than all that, he never lost his patience, never raised his voice or a hand, and never ever, ever sneaked into one of our rooms in the middle of the night.
Leonard Llewellyn was a truly, truly good man—the first any of us had ever known—and it was a shame that we were anything but.
"Thank you for bringing them home, Officer," Leonard said, sounding exhausted as he saw the cop out.
I listened to their brief conversation from inside the viewing room nearest to the front door.
"Mr. Llewellyn …” The cop sounded drained too. Like our existence on this planet was enough to deplete everyone around us of all their energy. “Your nephews are—"
"I know,” Leonard replied knowingly. “I'll have a talk with them."
"If this happens again, I'll have to—"
"I understand," Leonard interjected, kindly but nonetheless harsh. "You have to do what you have to do. I'll speak with them and lay down the law. You have my word."
My brothers and I sat with our hands folded in our laps as we listened to the door open. Leonard and the cop exchanged civil pleasantries, and then the door was closed again. We waited obediently, even if it seemed ridiculous to me.
I was seventeen, for crying out loud—nearly an adult—and that old guy now walking toward the room had zero control over me. None. Where the hell did he get off, thinking he could tell me what to do?
He entered the doorway with his hands on his hips and his head hanging. A sigh escaped his lips.
"You robbed a gas station," he stated.
None of us replied. The cop had caught us in the act; there was no denying it now.
He looked up, his tired gaze meeting each of us before he asked, "Why did you need to rob a gas station?"
I tipped my head and replied matter-of-factly, "I needed smokes."
His brow furrowed. "You needed …" He lifted a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I-I wasn't aware …” With an exhausted exhale, he dropped his hand and said, “I didn't know you smoked. You’ve been hiding it from me?"
"I keep it outside," I answered with a shrug. "I figured you wouldn't want me doing it in here.”
He looked absolutely downtrodden as he nodded. "I mean, yes, that's … that's correct, but … where … how have you been getting—" He cut himself off and raised a hand, stopping me from responding. "You know what? Don't answer that."
"Okay," I said.
With another sigh, Leonard turned and grabbed a chair to drag it over and take a seat in front of us. He steepled his hands, tapping the tips of his fingers together as he shook his head.
"If you needed cigarettes, Bram, why didn't you ask me?"
I huffed an incredulous laugh. "Right. Like I could've just come up to you every week and said, Hey, Leonard, time to grab me a fresh pack, and you would've just done it."
"Yes, Bram," he said with exasperation, meeting my eyes. "That's exactly what I would've done. And the fact that you still don't understand that after everything I've done for you boys is … well, if I’m being honest, it's very hurtful."
From the corner of my eye, I saw Shawn shift his gaze toward me.
He had told me not to swipe the cigarettes when the gas station attendant opened the locked case for someone else.
But then again, Shawn never liked when I stole anything, period.
And not because he didn't like the thrill of getting away with something bad—the little shit loved it just as much as Ike and me—but because he didn't want the cops to catch us again.
He didn't want us to get dragged back here.
He didn't want to make Leonard upset.
Somehow, I'd only just realized that I didn't want to make him upset either.
My tongue poked at my inner cheek as I fought my mouth to form the words I needed to say. But how was I supposed to say something I'd never said before?
"Bram, I don't care that you smoke," Leonard went on, helpless and sad.
“I even understand why you boys sometimes …
why you get into trouble. It's … it's all you've ever known, and I know I can't expect for you to turn that off with a snap of my fingers.
I don't expect it. But all I ask is that you try.”
Shame heated my cheeks, and I dipped my chin to touch my chest. “Leonard—"
“You boys have been an enormous help around here. I enjoy having you here. I-I appreciate your company. But other people … they don’t understand,” he went on.
“I need you to try to do better and stay out of trouble for the business. No … I need you to do it for me. Do you think you can try? Just a little bit?”
It had never occurred to me that our behavior could be a negative reflection on the funeral home’s reputation.
We worked around here, sure. Kept the place clean and the yard tidy.
Kept things organized, arranged the flowers and chairs, and carried whatever Leonard needed.
We did well within these walls. We listened, and we behaved.
Under this roof, I was Leonard’s. A part of the Llewellyn family.
But out there?
I was Abraham Crowley, eldest son to a liar and a homeless drug addict.
And whatever happened outside these walls was compartmentalized, separated from our lives here. Somewhere in our minds, we still belonged to the streets, products of a system that had failed us time and time again.
It never occurred to me that those sides of us had, at some point, intertwined.
“I’m sorry,” I managed to say, meaning it.
Leonard seemed as surprised as me. He sat up taller and stared ahead into my eyes. His brows lifted, and one side of his mouth tipped upward into a smile.
“Apologies aren’t necessary,” he said. “All I ask is that you try.”
I nodded once. “We can try. I will try.”
“Good,” he replied, then reached out to pat my knee. “You can smoke in the back. I’ll get you something to use as an ashtray. But no more sneaking around, all right? And if you need more cigarettes—”
“I can try to quit if—"
He lifted a hand, giving it a little dismissive wave. “Of course, that would be the best thing for you,” he said. “But until then, ask me for what you need. No more stealing.”
“No more stealing,” I repeated.
Shawn and Ike nodded.
No more stealing.
And we kept that promise.
We kept it for as long as we could.
***
Leonard was a man of his word, and we tried to follow his example.
I stopped stealing cigarettes, and when I ran out, I asked if he could grab some.
I never did try very hard to stop smoking altogether, but in an effort to not go through a pack too quickly, I did cut back significantly, only smoking one or two cigarettes a day, which was better than not trying at all, I guessed.
“Bram? You out here?”
Leonard’s voice called out from the side door—the same one we had broken into just a little over a year ago.
I huffed out with irritation, a cigarette hanging from my lips and my lighter still in my hand. I'd only just stepped outside a couple of minutes ago after vacuuming the entire main level of the funeral home, and the last thing I wanted right now was to be given another order.
But I would never complain out loud to Leonard. Not when he'd given us a safe place to live.
“Yeah?” I asked, wandering over with the unlit cigarette between my clenched lips.
He smiled apologetically when I came into view and said, “I just got a call. We have to do a removal.”
I held in a sigh. I hated removals, where we had to pick up a body from the place of death.
And it wasn’t the part about being around dead people that irked me.
As it turned out, as long as I didn’t know the dead person, I didn’t mind being around them at all. They were quiet, and they didn’t judge.
But the living, on the other hand …
The loved ones of the dead.
The mourners.
They liked to linger, making it harder for us to do our job. Leonard patiently gave them the time they needed to say their goodbyes while I hung around with him, silently itching to get the body bagged up and in the hearse.
It was frustrating work when all I wanted was to scream at them to leave us alone and let us do the job we had been sent to do. After all, we existed solely to make their lives easier. We did this so they didn’t have to. The least they could do was let us without getting in the way.
“All right,” I said, sliding my unsmoked cigarette back into the pack. “Let’s get it over with.”
In the hearse, Leonard drove. I wasn't far off from obtaining my own driver's license, but until then, I was a passenger, playing DJ and jabbing my finger at the buttons on the radio.
Normally, Leonard didn't mind. I thought he was just glad to have the company of a living person. But today, he reached out to turn the volume down, which could only mean one thing.