The bushes were all clipped precisely. The walkway was free of weeds. The lawn was trimmed like it was a rug.
Going up to the front door, she propped the storm door open with her hip and fiddled with her key chain, her fingers sifting through to find the right one. It had seemed odd to have the key with her, especially as it was a symbol of everything that had been lost: Her father no longer the hero she had thought he was, her mother a weak person she couldn’t understand.
God, it still smelled the same. Her mom loved scented candles, the sweeter and more flowery the better, and as a result, the house was like a Yankee Candle store, all cloying gardenias and lilies.
She was going to be smelling the stuff for like an hour after she left.
“Tom?” She closed the door. “Where are you?”
The living room was not arranged the same, the furniture she was familiar with having been moved around into different corners and straightaways. The drapes had been changed, too. Now they were peach. Rug was new as well.
Guess Nancy Janice couldn’t stand her own decorating and had to shift her things around.
“Tom?”
When there was a soft answer, she went through into the kitchen and expected an addition to have been blown out the back or something. Nope. Decorator lust had not inspired a reformation to the dated, pickled pine cabinets or the white-Stormtrooper appliances.
Didn’t her mother know everything was gray and stainless now?
Then again, the house was a blue only her mom seemed to appreciate, so fads, based on the opinions of others, might not hold much weight. Anne had never bothered to ask how it all worked, and she wasn’t about to start now.
The door to the back porch was slightly ajar, but she checked out the damage to the family room’s flat roof first. The tree had been removed; there was fresh Sheetrock on the ceiling, and a new window set into a freshly mounted, unpainted jamb.
Nice work, and she wondered who over at the 617 had done it. Probably Vic. He was the carpenter of the bunch.
There would be no charge for the labor. The NBFD took care of the widows and orphans of fallen firefighters. It was part of the pension system. Her mom never had to call in plumbers, roofers, electricians, or woodworkers; someone was always ready to help from the extended blue family.
Stepping out, she found her brother sitting in a lawn chair by the grill, his hands linked in his lap, his knees out to the sides, his eyes trained on the square of mowed grass yet not focused. His NBFD T-shirt had flecks of sawdust on it—so did his navy blue work pants. And his boots were smudged with drying mud.
Behind him, the outside of the house showed where the repair had been made, the bald wood and feathered-in siding like a scar in mid-healing.
“Guess you did the reno.”
As she spoke, he jerked as if she’d surprised him. But he didn’t look over. “Yeah.”
Frowning, she went over and sat in the chair next to him. For no reason, she noted that the pair, along with the lounger and the two little tables, were going to have to be taken in for the winter. The grill would go in the garage. The swing across the way would stay.
Just as it had always been, the rotation of the outdoor furniture tracking the seasons. Measuring the years. Fading over time until their utility was lost and they required replacing.
Like people, she decided, the old generations passing as new ones were born, the cycle repeating.
She looked at her brother. His icy blue eyes scared her. So did his stillness. “Tell me. Is Mom sick? Are you?”
“What?” He finally glanced at her. “What are you talking about?”
“You need to talk to me. I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Do you find me . . .” He cleared his throat. “Am I hard to deal with? You know, about . . . anything.”
Anne’s brows shot up, and she momentarily blanked. Of all the things she had ever expected him to say, that was not it.
Not even close.
chapter
40
As Tom put the question out there, he knew Anne’s answer by the way she straightened and stared at him like she’d temporarily forgotten the English language. And then there was a silence that suggested she was trying to find an appropriate way to answer.
Treading carefully.
Which was reply enough, wasn’t it.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he muttered.
God, he was tired, and not just because he hadn’t slept since Mayor Mahoney had tuned up her size-whatever stiletto and kicked him in the can. He was exhausted on a molecular level.
“Where is this coming from, Tom?”
“Just wondering you, know you. Just . . . thinking.”
As the silence stretched out, he waited. Sister never shied away from conflict.
“You can be a challenge,” she said after a while. “You’ve got your own way of doing things and that tends to supersede everything and everyone else around you.”
“I’ve got to keep people safe. There are lives in danger every day on the job, and if I don’t make sure things are done correctly—”
She put her palm up to stop him. “Hey, you asked me. If you didn’t want my opinion, you should have kept quiet.”
“Sorry.” He scrubbed his face with his dirty hand, and his eyes stung from the sawdust on his palm. “The house is fine for Mom to move back in, by the way.”
“So I see.”
“You must be relieved.”
“I guess.”
Now he was the surprised one. “You don’t actually want her to stay with you.”
“Not really. But I want her safe above all. That’s what I worry about.”
“She’s not a geriatric who’s a slip-and-fall risk. She can move back in tonight.”
“Is the security system fully functional?”
“Not yet. They need to come and put contacts on the new window.”
“Then she’ll stay with me until that happens.”
Off in the distance, a dog barked and the neighbor on the right came home from work, plugging their Kia into their garage. He hoped they didn’t see through the bushes that there were people out here and decide to come over and talk about the tree falling.
“Are you okay?” Sis asked. “I’m worried about you. You’re too quiet.”
“Nah, I’m fine. It’s no problem. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Okay.”
In the back of his mind, he was aware that they were following procedure, and as he thought about Emilio in that hospital bed, and Danny going rogue-crazy, and Chuckie P’s drinking problem, he felt compelled to bang on the closed door of stoic privacy.
Not on his own, though. No, no, not tonight, motherfuckers.
“Can you please tell me why you hate her so much?” he asked. And before she could shoot him down, he put his hand up to his sister. “I just want to understand. I’m not asking to try to change your mind or where you’re at or to judge you. I just don’t get it. Maybe if I did, I could stop bugging you about her.”
As Anne’s eyes drifted over to the grill to avoid his own, he shrugged. “And if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine, that’s your business.”
The way she looked back at him in downright shock made him think about the mayor’s diatribe on his failings as a manager. Shit. He really was the problem, wasn’t he.
Anne took a deep breath, like she was bracing herself to lift a car off the ground. “Do you remember, two days after the funeral, when you and Uncle Aaron went on that biking trip? The one dad was supposed to go on with you.”
There was only one “funeral” in this context. And he hated the memories he had of that day, the hundreds of firefighters in dress, walking behind an engine bearing his father’s draped coffin. His mother red-eyed and tragic. Him, just graduated from college and ready to enter the Academy in the fall. Anne . . . stoic as ever even at thirteen, refusing to cry.