He’d sat beside her, and she’d petted his head, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Hello, Mama,” Rhett said, leaning his forehead against hers. “I’ve missed you. I’m sorry I’ve been away so long.”
“Never mind that now,” she said. “We’re just glad you’re here. Aren’t we, Josh?”
She didn’t remember. There were so many big dark spots in her memory now; sometimes Josh could tell it took her a second to recognize him. The dementia seemed to come and go. She remembered things from his childhood that he had long forgotten: his red bicycle, the striped shirt he insisted on wearing every day when he was five, screaming bloody murder when she wanted to wash it, his stuffed bear Buttons. He noticed that it was the unpleasant things mostly she claimed that she couldn’t recall—like the reason Rhett had been away for as long as he had. And Rhett knew that Josh wouldn’t be the one to remind her. Mama’s boy. The taunt still echoed around in his head, like so many of the things Rhett had said over the years.
“Sure are,” Josh had said a beat too late, earning a dark sideways glance from his brother. Even now that look could make him shudder.
“You don’t look a day older,” she’d told him.
“Neither do you,” he’d said. “You’re as pretty as you were when we were boys, Mama.”
“Oh, silly,” she said, clearly pleased and placing a palm to each of his cheeks. “You always were a charmer.”
Rhett did look older, his face a landscape of deep lines, his black hair thinning and going gray. But his body was lean, muscles sinewy and rock hard, hands thick with callous. If anything, he looked stronger than he had when he was younger. He was still broad through the shoulders and a good four inches taller than Josh. Any softness there might have been to him once—and there hadn’t been much—was gone. He was hard hewn, as jagged and stealthy as a shiv.
“What are you doing here?” Josh said now. He’d served his mother her breakfast, bringing it upstairs on a tray like he did every morning before work. Now he put a plate in front of his brother. Eggs, bacon, buttered toast. He poured coffee in the red mug with the chipped handle, put it down on the table.
“A man can’t visit his family?” Rhett said.
Josh poured coffee for himself and pulled up a chair. His father had made the long wood table. He’d used wood from an oak that had been struck by lightning in the backyard. One of the larger branches smashed through the roof of his father’s workshop. How old had Josh been—maybe ten? The sound had been so loud that he had jumped to his feet before he even fully woke up, hearing his father and brother already thundering down the stairs.
“My goodness,” said his mother. She clutched at her nightgown and reached for him as he walked out into the hallway. “What in the world was that?”
He’d stayed behind with her, the storm raging outside. From the window, they could see how the branch had fallen, hanging by splinters still, the bottom of it piercing the gabled roof of the workshop. Josh marveled. Such solid things . . . the old oak, the barn turned workshop, things that seemed so fixed in the world, immutable—fallen, smashed. His father was swearing downstairs; his mother had Josh wrapped up tight. He would always rather be with her than with them.
He ran his hand along the surface of the table. In the grains of the wood he always thought he could see the old man’s face, pulled long in disappointment the way it often was in life. The table, like everything his father made, was as solid as it was the day they carried it into the kitchen. Josh ran his hand along the perfectly straight edge. Measure twice, cut once.
Josh was aware of that notch in his throat that he always seemed to get when Rhett was around. His brother was a loaded gun waved in the air, a storm gathering in the distance. You just didn’t know what was going to happen. Maybe nothing. Maybe something awful.
“The truth is,” his brother said, pushing at his eggs. “I need work.”
Josh felt a dump of dread and resentment in his middle, rubbed at his eyes with a calloused thumb and forefinger so that Rhett wouldn’t see it on his face. He heard the television come on upstairs, the dripping of water from the leaky kitchen sink faucet. He’d redone the counters and resurfaced the cabinets last year, but the kitchen with its old four-paned window and fading floral wallpaper needed an overhaul.
“I don’t have any place else to go,” his brother went on when Josh didn’t say anything.
“More trouble?”
“Some,” said Rhett with a shrug. He shoved the eggs into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in a week.
“Is it going to follow you here?”
Rhett offered a vigorous shake of his head. “No,” he said. “Course not. I wouldn’t do that to Ma.”
Josh nodded.
“Who’s going to hire me?” asked Rhett, locking Josh’s gaze.
Right. Who was going to hire an ex-con who went to prison for being part of an armed robbery, which wasn’t nearly as bad as other things for which he’d never been caught? Who was lazy and shifty and looked like a thug, to boot?
It took Josh a long time to understand what his brother was, and what he himself became when his brother was around. Josh took a sip of his coffee. The back door stood open, and the October air was still warm, smelling like the last stand of Indian summer, the last moment of green before brown, the last lingering of long days before short.
“There’s not a lot of work right now,” said Josh.
Rhett polished off the rest of his meal, rubbing crumbs out of his thick, dark goatee. He leaned back, ran big hands through the mass of his black hair. Sideburns made twin Ls along his jawline. It was a look.
“Ma said you might have a regular gig,” said Rhett. “Handyman on some rich lady’s restoration project.”
Josh had left them to talk last night. He shouldn’t have.
“I haven’t been hired.”
Rhett dropped his gaze on Josh, and Josh tried not to shrink from it.
“You’re still so pretty, little brother.” Funny how an innocent word like that could be a razor blade, could slice painful and small, going so deep, so fast as to draw blood. “I bet if you tried hard enough, you could get that girl to hire you.”
“She’s not looking for a date,” said Josh. “She’s looking for a handyman.”
Rhett cocked his head to the side, cracking his neck, squinting. “Dad always wanted us to work together. That was his dream, that we’d take over his business.”
Josh let out a little snort. “Dad had a lot of dreams that didn’t work out.”
“Thanks to me?” said Rhett. His voice as cool and flat as a blade. “Is that what you were going to say?”