Once Lauren had finished saying goodbye to her house and locked the door on her way out, Ryan climbed into the truck, but Josh saw Lauren hesitate. Her eyes were a little damp as she gave her home a last look. He knew this was the final transition from her old life to her new one in Brookline. When Nick’s holiday visit with his dad was over, they’d be meeting her ex-husband halfway to pick him up—which they’d do every other weekend, too—and when they came to Whitford to visit, they’d be staying in Ryan’s room at the lodge.
Once Lauren was ready to go, Josh and Katie buckled up and he pulled his truck out behind Ryan’s. They hadn’t gone twenty miles when he heard Katie’s gentle snoring and shook his head. So much for company. He decided to leave her alone, though, because the more rested she was now, the better she’d be at keeping him awake on the drive home. He might even have her take a turn at the wheel. But for now, it looked as if it was just him, the radio and Ryan’s taillights.
Amazingly for a weekday morning, they didn’t hit too much traffic, so they pulled into Ryan’s driveway before noon. Which was good because, even though they’d stopped a couple of times along the way, a lot of coffee had been consumed and it had been a while since the last pit stop.
Once the mad rush to the bathroom was over, Josh took a look around his brother’s house. It looked a lot less like a model home and a lot more like a home home than the last time he’d been there. The living room was painted a dark, creamy-peach color and there were family photos on the walls instead of stock art. Lauren’s knickknacks were here and there, along with obvious signs of teenager debris.
It must be nice, he thought, to get to choose your home. To be able to choose the style and how many bedrooms and whether or not you let strangers sleep in them. He’d always tried to be grateful he’d always had a home and a job, but sometimes, when he saw others getting to make choices like that for themselves, he wished he could make them, too.
A couple of years before his dad died, Josh had started collecting pictures of houses. He found them in ads and magazines and the real estate pages. He’d been partial to log cabins that had a lot of glass, and he’d thought when he got to buy a house someday, it would look like those. Then his dad had passed away.
Mitch, Ryan, Sean and Liz had all been there for the funeral, of course. They’d even spent a few days together as a family, with Rose fussing over them. He could remember sitting on the couch with Liz because she wanted to look through the old photo albums with him. Katie had sat on his other side, holding his hand.
Then they’d all, essentially, told him to let them know if he needed anything and gone back to their lives. A week later he tossed his folder of house photos into the woodstove.
“If you guys start unloading the truck, we’ll start unpacking stuff,” Lauren said, pulling Josh out of the self-pity pool he’d been drowning in. “I know we can’t waste any time, because it’s a long drive back for you guys. Are you sure can’t spend the night? We have plenty of room”
There was no doubt about that. It didn’t have as many bedrooms as the Northern Star, but his brother was doing all right for himself. “I have people checking in tomorrow. I can’t be away on Fridays, so we’ll hustle and get back tonight.”
He lost track of the number of trips they made from the truck to the garage. Every third or fourth trip, Lauren and Katie would appear and take a couple of boxes into the house. A few were so heavy that Ryan or Josh carried them and then they’d bring more from the truck.
Finally, just when he was considering crawling under the truck for a nap and hoping nobody noticed, Josh could see the back wall of the box truck. He grabbed one of the final boxes before they hit the few pieces of furniture Lauren hadn’t donated to Goodwill and headed back down the ramp. Ryan was between him and the garage, but he didn’t step out of the way. Instead, he decided it was a good time to make conversation.
“When did you start sleeping with Katie?”
Josh almost dropped the box, and since Lauren had written Fragile all over it in huge black letters, that probably wouldn’t be good. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m not blind. Not stupid, either. It’s pretty obvious.”
It was? “What do you mean?”
“You’re treating her like a woman.”
“She is a woman, dumbass.”
“Yeah, but you’ve never treated her like one. You’ve always acted like she was one of the guys.”
Josh wasn’t sure what that meant. It’s not as if he’d spent the day handing out roses or throwing his coat over puddles. And he’d been very careful not to touch her in front of his family. At least he thought he had.
“When you got here, you opened the screen door and then stepped back to let her go first,” Ryan said.
“I have manners. You’re right—I must be having sex with her.”
“When we stopped to have a drink, you broke the seal on her bottle of water before you handed it to her instead of tossing it to her from across the room like usual.”
“Lauren has nicer knickknacks than we do and Katie can’t catch for shit.”