The Favor

by Megan Hart

“Nothing for me, honey,” Nan said, her eyes bright, but without so much as a sniffle. “I’m going to finish my puzzle.”

  Ice-cold milk would be perfect with the cinnamon roll. Even better than the coffee Janelle hadn’t made yet because she was still looking for her coffeemaker. She pulled the carton from the refrigerator and poured a glass, noticing too late that the one she’d pulled from the back of the cupboard was etched and striped with dirt. So was the next she pulled out. She held it to the light, twisting it.

  Filthy.

  Bennett was in charge of loading and unloading the dishwasher here, the way he’d been in California, and for a brief, irritated moment, Janelle wondered if he’d been too lazy to make sure the dishes were clean, or if he’d been too inattentive to notice. Or a twelve-year-old’s winning combination of both.

  She checked the dishes in the cupboard quickly. The ones closer to the top of the stack, ones they’d been using regularly, seemed clean enough, but some beneath were crusted with bits of dried-on food. Just a few here and there, but enough to make her stomach turn. The flatware in the drawer was much the same. Some of the pieces looked fine, but there were a lot of dirty spoons, and forks with bits of food clinging to the tines.

  Everything would need to be rewashed. She loaded dishes in the dishwasher. Added the soap. Turned the dial—because wow, was this machine old. An hour later she checked it and found it full of wet dishes that were still pretty dirty.

  “Nan? Is there something wrong with your dishwasher?”

  Her grandmother shuffled into the kitchen doorway. “I don’t think so.”

  Janelle checked the dial settings, thinking she must have chosen some Light or Delicate option. Nope, she’d turned the dial to Normal Wash. She opened the dishwasher. Closed it again. “I think it’s broken. When’s the last time you used it?”

  “Oh...” Nan looked apologetic. “I just wash the dishes by hand.”

  “But you had people over for New Year’s dinner!” That meant not only dishes, but pots and pans and serving platters and extra silverware. “Nan, you didn’t wash everything by hand, did you?”

  “No, no. Everyone helped do most of it.” She nodded firmly. “And when they left, I just did the rest.”

  “Oh. Nan.” Janelle sighed and opened the dishwasher again. “I think you’re going to need a new one.”

  “They’re expensive.” Nan sounded worried.

  “You don’t need to worry about that.” Though of course, she would. And it would require some discussion with her uncles, since this was an expense that fell under improving the house, and Janelle was only approved to handle the daily household needs.

  “Maybe we can just get it fixed,” Nan offered hopefully.

  Before they could say anything else, the back door opened. Nan didn’t seem surprised, but Janelle was still in the California mind-set—nobody left their doors unlocked, and anyone who came in uninvited and unannounced might as well have a target painted on their chest.

  It was Andy. Today he wore a striped, long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, his feet in socks, not slippers. He’d probably kicked his shoes off on the back porch. He looked totally put-together, and if you ignored the thick white stripe in his slicked-back hair, hardly different than he had as a teen. He gave her that grin.

  “Janelle! Hi!” He remembered her name this time, at least.

  “Hi, Andy.” She gave him a cautious smile. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, he came over to play cards with me. Get me warmed up for the club.” Nan gestured. “Come on in, honey. Janelle, bring those cinnamon rolls in here to the table.”

  “Your Nan makes them the best,” Andy confided. “I missed ’em.”

  “You could’ve come over anytime, honey, you know that,” Nan said.

  He hesitated, looking a little guilty. “Gabe said not to bother you. I sent flowers, though, when you were in the hospital. Did you get them?”

  “They were lovely. And you’re never a bother. Sit down, honey. Sit.”

  “Andy, do you come over to play cards a lot?” They’d spent hours, back in the day, playing poker for M&M’s or pennies. Andy had had an amazing poker face. They’d played other games, too. Bullshit had been a favorite. Blackjack. She smiled, remembering.

  “Sure, whenever I can. When Dad’s napping and Gabe’s at work, and if I don’t have to work.” He opened the corner cabinet and pulled out the worn box filled with multiple decks of cards that had been around since Janelle’s childhood. “You wanna play?”

  “No, thanks. I need to figure out what to do with the dishwasher.” She eyed him. “Where do you work?”

  He named the town’s bigger grocery store. “I work in the stockroom. Or I help bring the carts in. They don’t really like me to bag the groceries because of my bum hand. I drop too many jars.”

  She’d assumed he couldn’t work. Somehow knowing he had a job made Janelle feel better. Like you have the right to feel good about anything that happened, she thought. “Oh, that’s good.”

  Andy’s laugh had always been as sweet as his smile. “It’s okay. Gabe says I should try for something else, maybe. But I like what I do.”

  “Something else?”

  Andy dealt out the cards, solicitously moving the pile close enough to Nan so she didn’t have to stretch for it. “Yeah. Like school or something. Maybe. But it’s okay. Mikey went to college. I don’t need to go.”

  Janelle leaned in the doorway. If she was thirty-eight, Andrew would be thirty-four, or close to it. “Gabe thinks you should go to school now?”

  Andrew shrugged. “He thought I should go before. But now, I don’t know. I can’t drive because of the seizures. Can’t remember stuff. School seems like a waste of time.”

  Janelle kept her voice neutral. Gabe had always talked about leaving St. Marys. Becoming something.

  “I’m getting out of here,” he says as the smoke curls out of his mouth. “Never coming back.”

  She’s feeling lazy and hazy and has no idea what she’s going to do when school’s over, when she has to enter the real world. “What do you want to do with your life?”

  “Just get out of here.” He’s dead serious. “Get away.”

  “Did he go to college? Gabe, I mean.”

  “Nope. He worked at the plant.”

  Nan sorted her cards. “Their daddy retired from there, but Gabe wasn’t there for very long, was he? He started his own business a while ago. He’s a handyman, isn’t he, Andy? How long’s he been doing that?”

  “Nope. Since...” Andrew frowned. “Since... I’m sorry, I don’t remember lots of stuff. It sucks sometimes.”

  A handyman. That made sense. He’d always been good at fixing things. Breaking them, too.

  “It’s okay. You and Nan play the game. I’m going to figure out what to do with this dishwasher.” Which first meant unloading it and washing the dishes by hand.

  All of them.

  There was actually a kind of contentment in it. Filling half the double sink with hot water and soap, setting up the drain rack. Taking the stuff from the dishwasher, biggest to smallest, and making sure each piece was cleaned and rinsed. Scrubbing at the dried-on dirt. It was the pleasure of a job done carefully and well, but there was something more to it, as well.

  “C’mon, Janelle. Let’s go!” Andy pokes his head in the back door, grinning. “Gabe says he won’t wait anymore.”

  They’re supposed to go out to the cabin in the woods to shoot guns. Snow day. Nan’s at work, and Janelle has chores.

  “I have to finish the dishes first.”

  Gabe wouldn’t put a foot inside this house, but Andy doesn’t hesitate. “I’ll help. It’ll go faster that way.”

  And it does, even with the suds going all over the place, especially when Mikey’s sent inside to see what’s taking them so long. They pull him into the suds fight and the three of them make a mess and clean it up while they laugh and Gabe waits, stewing in the truck. He’s so mad he won’t talk to any of them
until they get to the cabin.

  She was nearly finished when Andy came into the kitchen. Without a word, he went to the drying rack and started putting things away, being sure to wipe the wet ones with a towel he pulled from the drawer. Janelle handed him a few forks she’d just rinsed, watching as he held everything carefully against his body so he didn’t drop it.

  “How was the game?”

  “Good. She won.” He grinned. “She’s napping on the couch.”

  Andy’s phone rang from his pocket. He didn’t reach for it, though it chirped at him several times. At Janelle’s curious look he said, “It’s my brother.”

  “Won’t he worry if you don’t answer it?”

  Andy looked exactly the way Bennett did when she asked him if a teacher wouldn’t scold him for not turning in his homework. “I left a note on the counter. It’s not like I ran off without telling him.”

  A moment later, the phone rang again. Andy dried his hands and pulled the cell from his pocket, flipping it open. “Gabe, I told you, I’m over at Mrs. Decker’s. Playing cards. Yeah. Well, yeah. Tomorrow at three, Candace said she’d give me a ride. Yes, I took them. No.” Andy sighed. “Fine, all right! I’ll get to it, I told you! Fine. Hey. Hey, Gabe?”

  But apparently Gabe had already disconnected, because Andy shoved the phone back into his pocket. “I was going to ask him if he could come and take a look at the dishwasher.”

  “Oh, that’s okay.”

  “No, really.” Andy sounded eager, which also reminded her of Bennett and how he could be when he wanted something for some reason he didn’t feel like he could be up-front with her about. “He fixes all kinds of stuff. He’s supergood with his hands.”

  She laughed at that, though she had no suspicions Andy was talking in innuendo. “Oh, I’ll bet he is.”

  “He can fix a lot of things,” Andy said wistfully. His gaze went unfocused for a few seconds as he stared past her with such intent Janelle turned to see what he was looking at. Then his gaze snapped back to her face. “Not everything, though.”

  “Nobody can fix everything, Andy.”

  “Too bad, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Too bad.”

  NINE

  Then

  “EVENTUALLY, I’M GOING to get a generator out here. Propane tank. Maybe some solar panels—I read in Popular Mechanics how it’s the wave of the future. Self-sufficient houses.” Gabe flips the light switch up and down. Nothing happens, of course, since the wires in the walls, which still aren’t covered with drywall, don’t connect to anything.

  Janelle shivers. Her breath puffs out in front of her in a silver plume. “I can’t believe you built all this yourself. How long have you been working on it?”

  “A long time. Years. My dad used to take me hunting with some buddies, but they stopped going when I was about twelve. And I missed it. So...” He shrugs, pretending it doesn’t mean very much. Anyone else would’ve made him feel stupid about all this, but Janelle never does.

  “Is that a loft?” She’s already put her foot on the ladder and is halfway up before Gabe can think to warn her off. Janelle peeks over the edge of the railing, then twists to look down at him. Her giggle sends heat all through him, welcome in the unheated room.

  “Nice,” she says. “Porn-o-rama.”

  It’s just a collection of old skin mags and a beat-up mattress with a sleeping bag. A camping lantern. He’s slept out here only a few times. Eventually, he’ll make the loft into a full second floor, maybe with a couple bedrooms.

  “Do you bring other girls out here?” She disappears over the edge of the loft.

  He can hear her shuffling around up there, and goes to the ladder. “No.”

  Janelle peers over the edge. “No? Really?”

  “Really.”

  She dangles her feet. He could grab her ankle if he wanted, she’s that close, but Gabe only climbs the ladder halfway.

  “How come?” Janelle sounds serious, not smug.

  He wonders if she’d have been jealous if he’d said yes. Sometimes a few buddies, sometimes his brothers. But no other girls. “There isn’t any girl I’d want to bring out here.”

  “Seems like a great place for a party,” she says. “I can think of loads of girls who’d like to come out here with you.”

  “I don’t have parties.”

  “I know you don’t, Gabe.” Janelle rolls her eyes. “But if you did, you could have them here. Who owns the land?”

  It’s a practical question, and he shouldn’t be surprised she asked it. She’s a practical kind of girl. “My dad. He started this place. It was really just a storage shed where he kept some hunting supplies. He always said he was going to turn it into a real camp, but he didn’t. So I did.”

  “What does he think?”

  Gabe climbs the rest of the ladder to sit next to her with his feet hanging over the edge. Below them is the square room without dividers, a space blocked out for a kitchen. He’s planned on a small camp stove, a propane-powered fridge. There may never be indoor plumbing—that’s beyond what he thinks he can do—but there is an outhouse in the back and he’s done some research into composting toilets. The work’s been haphazard, piecemeal, and cobbled together from scrap lumber and scrounged materials. It’s garbage, most of it, but he’s done his best and it’s not too shabby a job.

  “He doesn’t know.”

  She twists toward him. “What do you mean, he doesn’t know?”

  Gabe shrugs. “There’s a lot the old man doesn’t know.”

  “He doesn’t come out here anymore?”

  “Not really. If he does, he’s never said anything. And he would, if he knew about it.” Gabe’s sure about that.

  Janelle pulls up her feet and scoots backward. She stands, her hands on the railing, to look over it. From this angle, she looks so tall, but he knows she’s not. She’d fit just under his chin, if he ever hugged her.

  She takes a few steps back to the mattress and sits. She flicks through one of the ancient magazines and pushes it aside. “I’m cold. You’re always so warm. Hot-blooded, Gabe. That’s you. Come here.”

  The sleeping bag’s not really big enough for two, but they manage to squeeze into it, anyway. Janelle pulls the flap up over their faces like a tent. Other girls smell like perfume. Janelle smells of cigarette smoke and hair spray and fresh air.

  “Why’d you bring me here?” She turns on her side, her butt against his groin, and takes his arm to put around her.

  It’s easy to answer her when he doesn’t have to see her face. “Because...I thought you’d get it. You’d understand.”

  She doesn’t say anything for a long time, so long Gabe starts to doze. If this was another girl, she’d expect him to kiss her now. With another girl he wouldn’t be able to sleep like this. His heat has warmed the air inside the sleeping bag, enough that a trickle of sweat tickles down his spine. She’s linked their fingers and put his hand flat against her belly, inside her coat, under her shirt.

  “Understand what?” She sounds as sleepy as he is, and somehow this also makes it easy to answer.

  “How it feels to need a place that’s only yours, so you never have to...”

  Janelle takes a snuffling breath. “Never have to what?”

  “Rely on anyone for anything. You know what it’s like to want a place of your own so that when everyone else leaves, you still have a place to go.”

  She’s quiet for another long few minutes, so long he starts dreaming. When she shifts and rolls toward him, her head does fit right under his chin. His arms go around her. Her knee nudges between his. They fit together like puzzle pieces.

  He’s wide-awake now, embarrassed to be wrong. His heart pounds. He tries to push away from her, but the sleeping bag’s too small, and Janelle’s got her arms around him, too tight.

  He’s said too much.

  Janelle doesn’t tell him he’s right.

  But she doesn’t tell him he’s wrong.

  TEN

/>   AT THE KNOCK on the door, the old man shouted, “Tell them we don’t want any!”

  Gabe, who’d been reading on the couch, ignored him. At this time of evening it wouldn’t be a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness, but that didn’t mean whoever was on the other side would be any more welcome. He answered it, anyway, surprised to find Janelle.

  She wore a heavy coat, a knit cap squashed down over her hair, a long striped scarf wound around her throat. She smiled brightly. “Hey.”

  Gabe didn’t open the door wide enough to let her in, and he didn’t glance over his shoulder to look at the old man, who shouted out, “Who’s there? Who is it?”

  “Hey, Mr. Tierney,” Janelle called, peeking around Gabe. “It’s Janelle Decker from next door.”

  “Jesus, don’t keep her standing in the cold. Let her in.”

  Gabe didn’t move to do that. He stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind him. “What’s up? Andy’s not here.”

  “What makes you think I’m here for him?”

  “Because he’s been over there a lot since you moved in.” Gabe’s breath became smoke, and he wished it was from a cigarette. “Just figured you’d want to talk to him. But he’s at work until ten.”

  “I know. I came to talk to you.” She bounced on the soles of her feet, still grinning. “You’re not going to let me come in?”

  She’d never, in all the times he could remember, ever come in the front door. Always through the bedroom window. Once or twice through the back. Never through the front, and tonight wasn’t going to be the first time.

  He hadn’t said a word, but her smile faded. “Umm...okay, well...I just came over because Andy said you could fix our dishwasher.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t wash the dishes. I guess if I knew more than that, I could fix it myself, huh?” She eyed him. “I could call a service center. I just thought I’d ask you instead.”

  “Save yourself some money.”

  Janelle’s smile tipped a little wider. “No. I’ll pay you. It’s not that, Gabe.”

  He didn’t ask her what else it was, but she told him, anyway.