“Ben Tucker, from Beaumont Materials,” she says, with emphasis. “In case you want to google him. He knows Kit’s work. He wants her to move to Texas for some big job.”
“I’m not moving to Texas,” I say quickly, giving a vague sweep of my hand to indicate the house. “Obviously.”
“He’s over here a lot,” Zoe continues, as though I haven’t spoken. “I think he’s trying to woo her with all these knobs he brings over.”
Greer stifles a giggle behind her napkin, and Alex says, “What kind of knobs?”
“Just, you know. Hardware. For the cabinets and doors and stuff. His father owns a salvage yard here. They do a lot with the historic homes in the area.”
Alex narrows his eyes at me, then looks toward Zoe. “What’s he like?” This is ridiculous, but somehow, it gives me a warm feeling to see his protectiveness toward me.
Zoe opens her mouth to answer, but Greer speaks before she can. “He’s very nice. Very helpful and professional.”
“Also he’s got biceps like a comic book character,” says Zoe. “You should see him in a t-shirt.”
“I’ll pass,” says Alex, and I start picking up plates because I can feel my face getting hot. But he’s watching me with curiosity.
For dessert I’ve made a double-chocolate cake with a chocolate-mint frosting, and it’s so good it almost makes me dizzy to eat my whole slice. We’ve relocated back to the living room, where the conversation slows, but comfortably, no one seeming to mind the little silences that pass while we digest and grow tired.
“All right, Kit,” says Zoe. “Let’s do the dishes so I can go. Obviously I need to get up early tomorrow so I can run the ten miles that will be required to get rid of the cake I just ate.”
“No cleanup. I’ll take care of it. I want to show Alex around before he collapses totally.” I know he’s probably tired from travel, and now with a big help of sugar coursing through his system, he’s probably due for a crash.
We say our goodbyes, Alex offering to walk Greer to her faraway parking spot, but she demurs, insisting that Zoe will drive her over. She’s so adorably flustered at my brother that I have to hold in a laugh. Alex, predictably, has no idea of the effect he has on her, and when he goes in for a hug, Zoe and I share a speaking glance, both of us half-expecting Greer to faint with nerves and embarrassment.
Once they’re gone, I exhale loudly and smile at my brother. “Thanks. For spending time with them, I mean. They’re my people here. I never would have made it without them.”
“They’re great.” I beam under his approval. This is part of my dynamic with Alex—he’s always been the one I took my report cards to, the one I called whenever I had a paper accepted at a conference.
As we clear plates, I tell him more about the plans for the kitchen, figuring it makes the most sense to start the tour here. He’s interested, but I can tell he’s grown distracted now that we’re on our own, as though he’s anticipating what’s coming. After what’s probably about one hundred consecutive “uh-huhs,” I finally break, leaning back against the counter and crossing my arms. “Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath, “I was going to wait until breakfast tomorrow, but I can see you’re tense, so let’s do this now.”
“Kit, come on. Let’s not get into it.”
“It’s happening, Alex. It’s not something I want to argue about.”
He goes back out into the dining room, clearing more plates. But I can still see him, so I press on. “I’ve already met with my finance guy. Gifting the money gets expensive for both of us, with taxes and everything, but if I set up a trust—”
“No,” he says, his movements growing more hurried before bringing back in the stack of plates he’s collected. I try to barrel ahead, explaining what I’ve worked out for the trust, what paperwork he’ll have to be a part of, but he interrupts me. “I told you, Kit. I don’t want it. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s not what I want.”
“It’s what I want. You raised me, Alex. I want you to have half of this money. You took care of Dad on your own when I couldn’t, and I owe you this.”
“You don’t owe me anything. We both take care of Dad now, and I already know you’ve been sending him more in the last few months.”
“Right, but there were years when you were doing that by yourself,” I say, already frustrated. This has been a sticking point between me and Alex for years. In college, I tried to send some of the money from my part-time jobs to Dad, and Alex found out and sent it back to me.
“You were in school. I didn’t mind doing it.” His voice is gruff, impatient. But I know he minded. Alex’s whole life had been about taking care of our family. He’d worked full-time since he graduated high school, only leaving home to start photography seriously when I’d settled into my first year of college. He’d missed so many opportunities, sacrificed so much for me. I owed him everything—my safety, my education, what little stability I’d had growing up.
“Okay, you didn’t mind. But now I can do something for you. This money—it would make your life better. You could get a place, be a bit more stable.”
I’ve been too direct there—I can see it. Alex does not like to be mother-henned, probably on account of his not having a mother to have done it. But I hate that Alex travels all the time, that I don’t get to see him except for every once in a while. I hate that he sometimes goes to dangerous places, and I hate that he never seems to talk about anyone he’s close to—no friends, no girlfriends, no one except Dad, and that’s less about closeness than it is about obligation.
He clenches his jaw and inhales, turning toward the sink to start rinsing. I know he’s trying to stay calm, and I decide to give him a minute to cool off, so I go to collect more from the table. When I come back to the kitchen, he shuts off the water and turns to me, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I’m happy for you, Kit. I’m really happy you have this house, and your friends here, and that things are good for you. I know that’s what you’ve always wanted. But stability isn’t my dream. It’s yours.”
“But how do you know it’s not your dream? How do you know you couldn’t be happy if you settled down a little—”
He laughs, a snarky, clipped laugh, shaking his head as though he can’t believe what I’ve said. “I just know,” he says, and turns back to the sink.
“Okay, but what if I bought a place for you, something small and manageable, something you could come back to in between your trips? And then the trust could be used to maintain it, and—”
“Uh-huh,” he says, his tone still laced with sarcasm. “And where would this place be?”
I’m wringing my hands back and forth over a dish towel now, feeling childish in the way only my big brother makes me feel. But he’s pressing up right against the things inside me that are most soft and vulnerable, the things I’m always waiting for an opportunity to say, to make a reality. “Well, I guess it could be anywhere, but I mean, I don’t see why not here, if you think about it, because, you know, we’re family, and—”
“Kit, Jesus,” he breathes, setting down a plate too firmly in the drying rack. “No. No.”
“No, we’re not family?” I tease, trying to lighten his mood, trying to get us back to a place where we can talk without me touching every single one of his nerves. But he doesn’t respond, so I say, “Come on, Alex. Please. Please let me do this for you.”
“You don’t get it. I don’t want you to do anything for me, except to keep being okay, keep living your life. That’s what I want. I’m glad you have the money, because you can do that, and it’ll be so easy now, Kit. It’ll be so much easier for you with the money.”
“But I want it to be easy for both of us. We both deserve that, to be able to settle into a place and not worry about the next job, the next bill—”
“I don’t worry about that. I do fine, better than fine. Maybe you
don’t understand that.”
I don’t, really. In my mind, Alex must be struggling to work as much as he does, to be taking jobs in these far-flung places, to be staying in short-term rentals whenever he does have an extended break. “I—well, it doesn’t matter. It’s still something I can do for you, and I want to. I really—I need to do this.” Ugh, I feel tears well up a bit, and I swallow them back.
Alex’s expression softens. I know he knows what I’m thinking. “You can’t feel guilty about this, Kit. You got lucky. You’ve got to take your luck when it comes.”
That last thing—it rings a bell for both of us. It’s one of the things our dad used to say, usually right before he’d lose a ton of money and then go on a multi-day bender. Alex turns away, looking embarrassed.
I don’t want that hanging in the air, so I go back to my earlier point. “Would it be so bad, though? To—you know. Slow down a bit? I thought if you stayed here for a while, got to know the city, maybe you’d think about—”
“I’m only here for a couple of days. I’ve got a job next week in Johannesburg.”
“But you said you didn’t have to travel again until August.” I hate the way my voice sounds, a little whiny.
“I got a call yesterday.” He’s avoiding my eyes, a little too focused on his dishwashing.
I’m angry now, knowing he’s lying to me. I march over to where he stands at the sink and shut off the water. “Don’t bullshit me, Alex. You’ve been avoiding me for months.”
“Because I knew you’d do this!”
“Do what? Try and share this great thing that’s happened to me with my brother? Yeah, I’m being such a dick, right?”
“It’s not—” he breaks off, clearly frustrated, and passes a wet hand through his hair, making it stick up in all directions. “It’s great that you want to share it. But I’ve told you, I don’t need it, and if I took it, you’d just—you’d expect things. You already expect things.”
“I don’t expect anything! Jesus, that’s a horrible thing to say!”
“It’s not. It’s the truth. You want me around, you want me living a life more like this, staying in one place, everything easy.” He spreads his arms out, gesturing to the house around us, making my pride and joy feel—plain. Insignificant.
“Oh, okay. I’m sorry this is so dull for you. I’m sorry it’s not a tent in the freaking Amazon or whatever. I’m sorry that I actually wanted to have a home, a place of my own to take care of—”
“Kit, for fuck’s sake. I don’t give a shit that you wanted this. That’s great for you. But don’t forget—I did this already. It might’ve been in shithole apartments with no heat and leaky pipes and cockroaches, but I’ve got plenty of experience making homes. I made homes for you since the day your mom walked out. I did stability. I had to do it, for you and for Dad. I don’t want that now. I don’t want this. I don’t want your fucking money, and I don’t want to be tied down to anyone, anywhere. I just—I want to be on my own.”
This hurts so bad that I wish I could bend over right where I’m standing to catch my breath. But I can see already Alex is registering what’s just come out of his mouth, and for a second he clenches his eyes shut before looking at me again, his eyes full of pity.
I don’t want his pity. I only want to be away from him right now.
“Hey, Tool Kit, listen, I didn’t mean—”
“No, you know what? You did mean it. And you’re—you have every right.” I’m trying but failing to keep the wobble out of my voice. “I’m tired. You can leave everything, and I’ll clean up tomorrow, okay?”
I’m halfway out of the room already, and Alex has tossed something—silverware, probably—in the sink, making a loud clatter. I don’t even stop. I call over my shoulder to him that his room is the second door on the left upstairs, that I’ve put out towels for him in the bathroom. He’ll see everything half-done now, without me explaining all my careful renovation plans, but I’ve stopped caring.
I don’t hear him downstairs when I get in bed, even though I listen for a while. Maybe I should be angry at what Alex said, at him throwing it in my face that he got stuck with raising me, or maybe I should be sad for him, that his response to the way we grew up has been to cut himself off from anything permanent. But mostly I feel embarrassed, embarrassed at how excited I was to show the house off, that I was stupid enough to even suggest that Alex think about making this his home base.
It’s late, but I know if I call Greer or Zoe they’ll answer. Except I don’t want them to think poorly of Alex now, not after we had such a good time, and even after what he’s just said, he’s my brother and I love him, and I want them to love him too. I think fleetingly about the night I asked Ben to meet Zoe and Greer at Betty’s—was that the same instinct, somewhere deep down, that I wanted them to like him, to feel okay about whatever I was—am—doing with him? I think about calling him, maybe I could think of some question to ask him about the light fixture I want for the downstairs bath, and I know he’ll take my mind off this. I know he’ll have some funny story about his dad or River that will make me laugh.
But that’s ridiculous, to call Ben.
I feel lonely enough to cry, but I don’t. I just roll over into a ball and pull the covers around me, naming the elements from the periodic table until I finally fall asleep.
Chapter 12
Ben
“Riv, don’t go so fast,” I say, stilling the kid’s hand as he paws through the tray of loose pieces I’ve put out for him on the workbench in the office. My dad’s out front, dealing with customers, and even though he’d told me I didn’t have to come in today, I know weekends are risky for River, easy times for him to get in trouble without his classes. So I’d called him this morning, told him we had to sort through some inventory before Monday. Not true, and I’m pretty sure River knew it, but he’d still shown up at ten.
“You’ve got to go piece by piece with a tray this big,” I say, pulling out a yellowed candle tube to hold up. “See, this might look like junk, but it’s from a chandelier, same as the one we worked on last week. No cracks, and the socket’s in good shape. We find a bulb for this, and it’ll work.”
River doesn’t say anything, but he slows down, taking out pieces and setting them on a large piece of felt I’ve laid out. Right now, the way he’s ordering things doesn’t seem to me to make much sense, but I’m not going to say anything. This is how I learned too—getting a feel for the objects, making my own patterns.
I turn back to my project, frowning at what I’ve got so far. I’m still missing at least thirty pieces for the Baltic chandelier I’d found last week, but I’m in deep now with it. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed doing this when I was younger, how much I relished the puzzles of these old, found objects.
I want to call Kit to see if she wants to come over and have a look. But I know her brother is in town for the weekend, and I got the sense she’d planned a full agenda for them. And while we’ve spent a lot of time together over the last week, I’ve tried to make sure she comes to me first. I don’t want to crowd her. Or, I do—but it’s bad enough I don’t have my head in the game lately. Jasper called me on Thursday night, right as I was leaving her place, checking on whether I’d made any progress, and it had taken me a second to realize that I’d spent three hours with her and not brought up Beaumont once.
My dad limps in, looking a little pale as he lowers himself into the chair across from where River sits. His eyes scan the felt, and I feel my muscles tense infinitesimally. I’m hoping he doesn’t say anything about whatever nonsense system River has going here, because I want the kid to figure it out on his own. I think he might break when he opens his mouth, but then he just as quickly closes it again, looking up at me with a faint smile.
“Dad, you ought to go home. You look tired.”
“I am tired. I’m old,” he says, and River snorts. My dad nudges him
with his good foot. “Something funny, Smalls?”
To my surprise, River doesn’t even blink at the nickname now. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s trying to hold back a smile. Even though I was frustrated with my dad for taking on River, especially right now, when he’s still struggling to get better, I can’t deny how good he is at this, how calm he is around River, how easy it is for him to make teasing feel the same as a compliment.
“I’m serious,” I say. “Get Sharon to take you home so you can rest. I can be here until close.”
My dad leans forward and scans River’s tray, picking up what I’m guessing is a column from an oil lamp. “Aha,” he says, like he knows exactly where that goes. The stupid thing is, he probably does. “Just needed to take a load off. Sharon’s out there talking to some idiot about trying to match a stain. I couldn’t listen to another second. This guy, first of all, he puts his cold beer right down on his mother’s Eastlake side table. A real one too, Smalls, you hear? I’d say 1880, maybe. Now this mother, I doubt she’s operating at full capacity, keeping a piece that rare right out in her living space, but I don’t judge.”
River slides his eyes over to me, and I stifle a grin. The only thing my dad does judge people about is how they treat their furniture.
“So this genius looks online at how to get this water stain out, and you know what he finds?” He pauses dramatically, but River only shrugs. Still, he’s listening, I can tell. “Toothpaste,” Dad says, throwing his hands in the air dramatically. “Toothpaste!” He huffs another exasperated breath. “Now the thing about toothpaste is, sometimes it’ll work on water staining, but we’re only talking the real old-fashioned kind of toothpaste here, not this fancy shit they sell these days, you hear?”
I go over to the fridge in the corner and pull out Dad’s lunch, unwrapping his sandwich and pickle and putting it on one of the plates he keeps on top of the fridge. He’s still going on about water stains when I set it in front of him, his color back, and he barely notices me. “Eat,” I say, and snag the tray from River, setting it aside. “You bring lunch?”
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