The Favor

by Megan Hart

  Mice? “Good Lord, Nan, you have mice?”

  “Well, no,” Nan said. “But I might get them someday, right?”

  No argument there. Janelle checked for traps, just in case. She didn’t need one snapping on her fingers. The space beneath the sink didn’t have any. She took a deep breath.

  First things first.

  “Okay. I’m going to run to the store for some things, and tomorrow we’ll go through the house and make a list of everything we need, maybe take a trip out to the store together. How’s that sound?”

  “Oh, yes, sure.” Nan nodded. “I can make a list.”

  “But for now—” God, she hated talking to her grandma like she was a toddler “—I need you to just go back to the couch and relax. Bennett...”

  She didn’t want to leave Nan alone, but leaving her with Bennett didn’t make Janelle feel much better. She’d only started feeling comfortable having him stay by himself, no longer than an hour or so. He’d been complaining about it for months.

  “You have your cell phone. You call me if you need anything, okay? Go upstairs and clean your room. Don’t open the door for anyone. Nan, don’t you go upstairs, okay?”

  Bennett apparently wasn’t going to wait around for her to change his mind. He took off at once.

  Nan frowned, already shuffling back toward the living room. “Good heavens, Janelle. I haven’t been upstairs in months. Why would I go upstairs?”

  Because Janelle wouldn’t be home and there to stop her, that was why. Because bad luck, especially of the falling-down-the-stairs-breaking-your-neck sort, didn’t just happen. It was almost always the result of bad choices.

  Janelle grabbed her coat and keys and got in the truck, starting off without waiting for it to warm up. A block away, she let out a breath. Then another. Two deep, sobbing breaths that lifted a weight from her so devious it had disguised itself as maturity. Now she recognized it as relief, and it made her so giddy she almost ran a stop sign when her foot slammed the gas.

  Three days, that’s all it had been.

  Oh, God. How was she going to get through the rest of the week, much less a longer time than that?

  California had never seemed so golden. So warm. So far away.

  She parked along the curb in front of Pfaff’s, the small market closest to Nan’s house. She first checked her phone for the text or voice mail she just knew would’ve come in during the ten-minute trip. More relief swept her when she saw nothing. She dialed her uncle’s number. Deb answered.

  Trying not to sound accusatory, Janelle explained the situation. Her aunt sighed. “She throws it away.”

  “What?”

  “The food,” Deb said. “Sometimes she throws it away, because she wants us to think she ate it. Or because she thinks mice have gotten into it. But sometimes she gets rid of the new stuff and keeps old food.... I don’t know what her rationale is, hon. She’s old and not well. And she doesn’t want us to worry about her, so if she hasn’t been eating—and you know she doesn’t eat right—then she tries to make sure we don’t find out. There were mice last winter, but Joey took care of them. I haven’t seen any signs since.”

  Janelle pressed the pad of her thumb between her eyebrows. “Okay. Well...I’m here at the market, picking up a few things for dinner tonight. I’ll take her shopping tomorrow. Is there anything else I need to know?”

  “You can use the debit card. There shouldn’t be any problems.”

  Janelle loaded a basket with eggs, bread, milk, butter, flour and pancake syrup. Also a bag of frozen hash browns. They could have breakfast for dinner.

  “You must be Mrs. Decker’s granddaughter,” the cashier said as she tucked Janelle’s purchases into a pair of plastic bags.

  Too late, Janelle thought of the reusable tote bags she’d brought with her from California. She’d have to dig them out. “Yes. I’m Janelle. Could I have paper, please?”

  The cashier looked surprised, but pulled a couple of paper bags from under the counter and started transferring the items. “I’m Terri Gilmore. Your grandma and my mom are in card club together. She told us all about how you were coming to do for her.”

  Janelle smiled. “Yep.”

  “And you have a son? Right?”

  “Yes. He’s twelve.” Janelle took the bags. “Sixth grade.”

  “You lived with her, didn’t you? When you were in high school.” The woman’s smile seemed a little wider now, but also a little less friendly. Kind of predatory, actually.

  Janelle paused. “Yes. I did.”

  “Next door to those Tierney boys.”

  “They still live there.” Janelle kept her voice steady despite the stepped-up thump of her heart. “Well, not Michael, but...”

  Terri nodded. “Of course not. But Andrew, God love him. And his brother, of course. And old Mr. Tierney, though I hear he’s not well. Not at all.”

  “Oh. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.” Janelle hefted the bags and backed away. “Nice meeting you. I’ll tell Nan I met you.”

  “Gabriel Tierney,” Terri called after her, the words as effective as a hand clutching the back of Janelle’s coat to stop her.

  Janelle half turned. “What about him?”

  “He was in your grade, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. He was.” They’d shared some classes. They’d ridden the bus together, though he’d sat in the back and she’d always preferred the middle. He’d always had cigarettes. Sometimes other stuff, harder stuff.

  Terri shook her head, eyes wide, smile gone. “Shame about what happened, wasn’t it? Such a shame.”

  The woman stared at her expectantly, as if Janelle was going to come back over and start to dish. Janelle shifted the bags again. She didn’t know if she should nod or shrug or what.

  “Were you still here when it happened?”

  Janelle had to clear her throat to answer. “Um...no. I was gone by then.”

  “Oh.” Terri looked disappointed, then brightened slightly. “You know what happened, though, right?”

  “Yes.” She knew.

  “Such a shame. Such a sad, sad shame. To shoot your own brother like that.” Terri clucked and shook her head. “You give your grandma my best.”

  “I will.” Janelle escaped.

  At home she sat in the driveway for a minute or two longer than necessary. The little pickup had just heated enough to be tolerable, and she was unwilling to leave it for the cold. The family room lights in Nan’s house were on, but the Tierneys’ house next door was dark.

  What had happened. Such a shame. Terri’s words echoed in Janelle’s head as she gripped the steering wheel and pressed her forehead against it.

  Where you still here when it happened?

  No, Janelle had said. But that was a lie.

  SEVEN

  GABE NEEDED A beer and bed, in that order. He’d scheduled several early appointments tomorrow, nothing strenuous or complicated, but 6:00 a.m. seemed to come earlier and earlier the older he got, even when he wasn’t out too late the night before. He’d have gone to bed an hour ago, but the old man had been wheezing and shouting at the TV, and showed no signs of wanting to turn it off and go to bed himself. Besides, Andy wasn’t home yet, and even though his brother didn’t need Gabe to wait up for him, he never felt right hitting the sack until the front porch lights were out and the doors locked.

  Andy had called to tell him he was going to the movies with a couple of the girls he worked with, and that was fine with Gabe, because he could count on Tara to bring Andy home. She was a good kid. He’d worked with her dad at the Sylvania plant before starting the handyman business. It was the other two or three she hung around with that Gabe wasn’t too sure about. Giggly, giddy girls just out of high school, no college in their futures. They wore their skirts a little too short and their lipstick a little too red. They were the sort of girls Gabe would like in a few years when they started hitting the bars, but seeing them fawn and coo over his brother left a bad taste in his mouth.


  Not because he didn’t think his brother should get laid now and again, so long as he was careful about it. Michael liked to lecture Andy on abstinence and chastity, but Gabe had made sure to hammer into their brother’s sad, broken brain the necessity of using a rubber, no matter if the girl told him she was on the pill or what. Gabe didn’t like how the girls treated Andy, as if he were stupid. They took advantage of his generosity, that’s what Gabe thought, and though he’d tried to explain to his brother that he didn’t always need to pick up the check, especially for girls who could easily afford their own popcorn, Andy didn’t listen.

  As if on cue, the phone rang. Gabe checked the number—it was Michael. He’d have let it go to the answering machine, but the old man picked it up. The low murmur of conversation began from the living room.

  Gabe cracked the top off a beer and sipped at it, savoring the cool sting. A cigarette would go best with the drink, but he didn’t smoke in the house, not with the old man’s oxygen tank ready to blow them all up with the flick of a spark. Besides, Gabe liked to smoke. He just didn’t like to eat and drink smoke, or sleep with it on his pillow or wake up with it. So for now, he drank slowly at the kitchen table and read from a battered paperback copy of The Books of Blood. He’d lost track of how many times he’d read it, but he’d had it since he was a teenager, back before the days of the internet where you could find anything you wanted with a well-typed search. Back then he’d had to special-order it from the bookstore at the mall in Dubois and wait weeks for it to arrive.

  Janelle Decker had turned him on to Clive Barker’s books. Gabe had seen that Hellraiser movie, but she was the one who told him it had been based on a novella, and that there were other stories, too. She’d brought a box of paperbacks with her from home when she moved into her grandma’s house. Lots of horror, lots of historical romance, a few classics. He wondered if she still read the same kinds of books.

  He wondered if she still loved to dance.

  The light in the hall came on, and moments later the old man shuffled out in his bare feet, his hair corkscrewed into spikes. Without a word he dragged his oxygen tank toward the fridge and dug around inside, found a coconut cream pie Andy had brought home from work and plopped it on the table. He brought out two plates and two forks. He took his seat with a heavy sigh and sat there for a moment with his head hanging before he looked up, his expression strangely defiant.

  “It’s hell getting old, you know that?”

  Gabe wasn’t yet forty, but his joints creaked and his hair was starting to silver. When he looked in the mirror he had to suck in his gut a little more than he used to. He could only imagine what it was like for his father, who’d been an old man already by the time he was Gabe’s age, and had done nothing but become ancient since.

  “So die,” Gabe said. “Save yourself any more trouble, and us, too.”

  The old man snorted and dug his fork into the pie. He licked the tines and pointed it toward Gabe. “Maybe you should fill your mouth with pie. You won’t feel the need to talk so nasty.”

  “I don’t like coconut cream.”

  The old man grinned. “I know.”

  “So who’s the second plate for, then?”

  “For your brother, dummy.” The old man pointed the fork at him again. “He’ll be home soon, won’t he? Andy likes coconut cream. He’ll sit here and eat a piece with me. Keep me comp’ny.”

  “What do you need company for?”

  The old man paused with the fork halfway to his mouth. “Why not?”

  When Gabe was younger, his father had spent time with his buddies in a bar or at hunting camp. Sometimes he went to play poker at Al Hedge’s house, though Al had died about ten years ago and nobody had taken up the game after him. And sometimes, when Gabe was much, much younger, his dad had left them overnight and gone to who-knew-where, but it must’ve been someplace nice because he always spruced himself up a lot before he went. Other than that, his dad had never been what Gabe might’ve considered the sociable sort, and time hadn’t improved that.

  Gabe shrugged. “I just figured you liked sitting in front of the TV by yourself all day long. Why else would you do it?”

  The old man said nothing for a few minutes while he decimated his pie. When he’d finished a hefty slice, he dropped the fork onto the plate with a clatter and pushed back from the table. “What do you know about me, anyway?”

  The truth was, Gabe knew more about his father than he ever wanted to. More than he ever should have. “I know you spend all your time on your ass in that recliner, cultivating your piles. If you want company, why don’t you go out somewhere?”

  “Where would I go?”

  “Wherever you want. Go visit some of your buddies, go to the VFW. Hell, go to church.”

  The old man hadn’t been to church in so long Gabe couldn’t remember the last time. Maybe when Michael had been consecrated. Of course, that was the last time Gabe had been in a church himself.

  “Church.” The old man snorted, then coughed. The cough turned into a choke, which became a wheeze.

  Gabe watched impassively, wondering if he’d need to jump across the table in a minute to resuscitate him. Wondering, if push came to shove, if he’d bother. The old man’s choking tapered off, and he gave Gabe a glare.

  “Wipe that smile off your face.”

  “Didn’t know I was smiling,” Gabe said. “Sorry.”

  His father wiped his mouth with a paper napkin from the basket in the middle of the table. His hands were shaking. When he looked at Gabe, his eyes were red-rimmed and watering.

  “You think I hate you, but I don’t.”

  Gabe got up to pour his unfinished beer into the sink. “I’m going out for a smoke.”

  “But you hate me.”

  Without looking at him, Gabe pushed open the back door and stepped onto the porch. A light swung into the alley from a vehicle in the Deckers’ driveway. A few minutes later he heard the crunch of boots on the ice and salt. Janelle, arms full of brown paper grocery bags, made her careful and slightly unsteady way down the alley toward the back door. Her movements lit the motion-activated spotlight at the back of the house.

  He watched her struggle for a minute before she looked up to see him standing there. “Hey.”

  “Hi,” Janelle said quietly. She shifted both bags to one arm so she could open the door with the other. “You’re going to freeze.”

  “Hot-blooded,” Gabe said without thinking, forgetting for a minute she was the one who’d first called him that.

  She laughed, and it was just how he remembered it. Full-on, no holding back. She shook her head a little and pulled open the screen door, one foot on the bottom step. She looked back at him from just inside the back porch.

  “Good night.”

  She didn’t wait for him to answer. And Gabe, hot-blooded though he might be, was suddenly aware of the cold. He went back inside the kitchen, expecting to find his father gone to bed, or if not that, back in his usual spot in front of the TV.

  The old man hadn’t moved from the table. He hadn’t eaten more pie, and hadn’t bothered to put it back in the fridge or take his plate to the sink. Neither was a surprise.

  “I don’t hate you,” the old man repeated in a low, rough voice that didn’t sound like his own at all. “You always thought I did. But I never did. Maybe one day you’ll stop hating me?”

  It was a question, but Gabe had no answer.

  “I’m going to bed.” He didn’t point out all the hundreds of ways over the years Ralph Tierney had expressed his feelings for his sons.

  Hate or love, either way, it was too late for whatever it had been to become anything else.

  EIGHT

  NAN HAD HAD a few bad days, but she was having a good one now. By the time Bennett went off to school, she had already baked a pan of cinnamon rolls from scratch and done half a book of number puzzles. She sat at the kitchen table in her favorite fuzzy blue housecoat, her hair covered by a matching bandanna tied at a jaunty a
ngle.

  “Helen will be over later to do my rollers for me.” White icing clung to the corners of Nan’s mouth. “We have card club tomorrow, you know.”

  Card club consisted of ten or so women Nan had known since grammar school. She’d confided to Janelle that it had been months since she’d hosted her turn or even attended a meeting, but with Janelle here it made everything so much easier. And if it made Nan happy, that’s what counted, Janelle thought as she slid into her seat with a cinnamon roll in her hand.

  Delicious didn’t do the roll justice. Gorgeous. Awesome. Amazing. “Awesomazing,” Janelle murmured, licking sweet icing from her fingers. “Nan, you’re such a good cook.”

  “I should teach you how to make them before I go.”

  “To card club?” Janelle asked.

  Stupid.

  Nan didn’t answer, just smiled and tapped her book with her pen, peering over the top of her reading glasses when Janelle licked her fingers clean. “Your daddy used to do that same thing. Lick his fingers instead of using a napkin. Didn’t matter how many times I told him.”

  Janelle paused, then grabbed a napkin from the holder on the table. The question came out before she could stop it. “Do you...miss him?”

  Nan took off her glasses and set them carefully on the table, then rubbed the small red marks they’d left on the sides of her nose. She tapped her pen on the puzzle book again. “He was my oldest boy, Janelle. Of course I miss your dad.”

  “Do you ever hear from him?”

  “No.” Nan frowned. “And maybe it’s better that way. When someone breaks your heart over and over again, sometimes it’s better to just let them go.”

  Janelle had let her dad go a long time ago for that very reason. Until now she hadn’t ever thought about how it must’ve made Nan feel to have lost touch with her son. Until she was a mom herself, Janelle wasn’t sure she’d have understood. She couldn’t imagine letting Bennett go, not like that. She reached across the table to squeeze Nan’s hand.

  “How about something to drink?”