by CD Reiss
He was mine to comfort.
The moment I accepted that in my heart, my mind rebelled. I was freeing myself. Now wasn’t the time to go backward.
But his lips on my throat. His breath in my ear. His tears had stopped and the connection between us had started something else.
He paused when we were nose-to-nose, brown eyes so close I could see the flecks of black and green.
Could I do this?
“Don’t kiss me,” I said. “It’s too soon.”
“I won’t.” His lips brushed mine so gently, I only felt the shifting of air between us.
His gentleness forced me to yield, returning his kiss. He was different. The kiss was different. He was a little taller and broader, holding me tighter, and despite his vulnerability a minute ago, his kiss was confident. His kiss wasn’t a demand or command. It listened, and my body screamed into it.
His kiss was achingly familiar, yet startlingly new. I remembered everything that I had tried to forget. I remembered the way his hands gripped my back as if trying to find purchase in the way his tongue could command my mouth, I remembered the feeling of a new beginnings. His kiss was the start of something old. His kiss was the birth of a child we knew and loved and welcomed.
“Chris,” I said when I had to breathe. “Chris.” I put my hand on his cold cheek.
He turned and kissed it, closing his eyes. “Do you forgive me?”
“Never. But also, I did the minute you came back.”
“I want to go back and do it all again. Every moment.”
We kissed again, but we weren’t gentle. Passion excluded care, mouths slipping, tongues lashing to taste every surface in each other.
Gravel crunched on the road, and we pulled apart with an inward gulp as if we wanted to suck away the last of each other’s breath.
Three trucks. Johnny and Kyle in the first. Orrin, Reggie, and Percy, who barked when he saw me, in the second. The black pickup in the back was strange to me.
Chris answered my question before I could voice it. “That’s the delivery service with Lance.” He straightened my collar. “The guys are helping me dig.”
“I’ll get you guys something to eat.”
“Will you stay for the service?”
I’d forgotten I’d told him I couldn’t make it. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Will you stand next to me?”
Orrin got out of the truck, and Percy jumped out, a smaller version of Lance.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll stand next to you.”
* * *
By the time I got back with coffee and sandwiches, the hole next to Galahad’s plot was four feet deep and wide. A brown leaf fell onto Lance’s black crate and surrendered to the wind, clicking across the surface and away. Percy sat next to it with his tongue lolling, standing guard as if he knew his brother was in there.
The men made short work of the job. Cross-legged like children, we ate and drank in the grass.
“How long are you in town?” Reggie asked Chris.
“As long as it takes.” He tossed Percy a slice of ham from his sandwich and the dog kept his post while gobbling it up.
I knew what Chris meant, and I turned my face away to smile.
Reggie glared at the place where my knee touched Chris’s. “Long as it takes to what?”
Reggie was a gentle man and an artist. He was one of us. But his voice dripped with alarming hostility and suspicion. Chris was going to answer and I had no idea what the reply would be. If he wanted to prove his commitment to me, he’d say he was staying for me. Or he could obfuscate. Or change the subject. But with his companion in a plastic bag, ready to be lowered into a hole, he might be vulnerable enough to make me his reason.
“Long as it takes him to bury Lance,” I scolded. “And if he wants to visit with us afterward, he’s as welcome here as anyone in the family.”
Reggie snorted and wrapped up the last third of his sandwich.
Johnny, who was never good at letting things slide, threw a chip at him. “Take it easy, asshole.”
“I’m easy. Sunday mornin’ easy.” Reggie got up.
“It’s Friday, dumbass,” Bernard said around a big bite of sandwich.
Reggie ignored him and pointed at Chris’s feet. “Got your fancy shoes dirty.”
“Yeah. Thanks for letting me know.” Chris stood.
I gathered his trash before he had a chance to bend down for it. “We should get started before it rains.” I picked up the last of the containers.
Above me, Chris reached down to help me up, but before I could take his help, Reggie was on my other side, offering his hand.
If I took Chris’s hand, Reggie would lose his Sunday mornin’ easy.
If I took Reggie’s, he would get the wrong impression and Chris would feel betrayed.
With an armful of containers and foil, I only had one hand free.
I tensed it on the grass and got up myself without dropping a single thing.
“Let’s get to it then,” Johnny said, groaning about his bones creaking.
Kyle and Bernard followed suit. They lowered the black bag into the ground. I stood next to Chris as dirt clapped off it and Lance slowly disappeared.
“I have this thing,” he said, taking out a leather-bound pad. “A few words. It’s not very good.”
Reggie scooped dirt into the hole and watched me with Chris. Was he going to be a problem? I didn’t think I could take it.
“Go ahead.” I put a reassuring hand on Chris’s arm. He needed me more than Reggie did. “Please.”
Chris ran his fingers through his hair. I’d never imagined him feeling insecure or unsure, but the cracks in his confidence were wide enough for me to see what was inside him.
The boy I’d loved.
He looked at the paper, then back at me. I nodded, loaning him a little confidence.
“Lancelot Carmichael, you were a good boy. Always. You were always there for me, even when I didn’t have food for you.”
He stopped, tilting the paper. That was all that was on it, but he kept going.
“When it was raining and cold, he stayed with me.” Chris closed his book. “He gave me everything. There was this one time, right in the beginning, when I had…” He made a rectangle with his fingers. “I had this much in a Chinese food container. It was all I had. I knew he was hungry, but when I offered, he wouldn’t take the meat. He pushed it to me. He took care of me, even when I failed him… and… I’m sorry, Lance. I’m sorry for letting you down. Putting you second to my work. I’m so sorry.”
His fingers found mine. We twined them together, and he squeezed my hand so hard I thought they’d fuse into a single gesture.
He let go and helped shovel dirt in. When it was no longer a hole but a mound in the grass, we set up the slab of stone at the head.
Lancelot Carmichael
Brave Knight.
Marked territory in Barrington and New York City
2004-2017
Chris held my hand on the way back to the car. He leaned into me and whispered, “Tonight. Are you free?”
“Lucky for you, I am.”
“Can you meet me at our tree?”
I couldn’t contain my smile.
Reggie watched us from the other side of the parking lot, and he didn’t look happy.
Chapter 24
CATHERINE
I discovered the picture of Chris and Lance in New York in my pocket and inspected it. It was taken early in our separation. The background was hatched with monkey bars, blurry children running, a chain-link fence with a solid wall of red brick behind it. The ground was beige concrete. Lance was fully grown, looking away from the camera. Chris was still a boy, and very much a man. His shirt was tight in the arms, his pants were short, and he crouched next to a knapsack that had seen better days.
I flipped the picture. He’d handwritten the date and a note.
* * *
We miss you.
“I missed you too.”
Against the back wall of the hall closet, I kept a stack of photo albums. I kneeled on the floor and fingered the spines, plucking out one of the middle. Hunched in front of the closet and opened it in the middle.
My world had red brick in the background too. The factory closed. Daddy had given notice two weeks before, and the workers had set up a “locked doors party” onsite, celebrating what they couldn’t control. It had seemed like a bump in the road back then. Something to have a few beers and eat barbecue over.
I put the picture of Chris and Lance in that timeframe.
Downstairs, something shattered. I hurried to the kitchen to find Harper cleaning up a broken glass in bare feet.
“Are you all right?” I pushed her away, taking the broom and dustpan. Her hair was greasy, her eyes were puffy, and her lips were bitten red.
“I’ll get over it.” She hoisted herself onto the counter and got a new glass from the rack. She filled it, sniffling.
My sister didn’t cry. I did all the crying for the family. Harper worked, studied, followed her curiosity down rabbit holes. Her spirit had been crushed. Something beautiful had been destroyed. I jammed the broom into the corners and edges of the kitchen as if I wanted to beat the glass out of them. My rage had its own mind, running my blood faster and hotter, contracting my muscles into tight, sinewy braids.
“Where is he?” I asked, slapping the edge of the dustpan into the trash. The glass tinkled in.
“He went back to California,” she said into her glass before she finished it, looking out the window. “It’s over. I have things to do now.” She put the glass on the counter and saw me for the first time since I walked in. She put her hands up as if warding me off. “Whoa, Cath. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay.”
“I’ve never seen you look like that.”
“Like I could kill him?”
“Yeah.”
“I will. I’ll fly to California and find him and rip him apart.” I wasn’t going to kill him. I wasn’t going to shred him. But I wanted to, and I could get close enough by saying it. “Look at you. You’ve been crying.”
“You cry all the time.”
What a sad, sad accusation.
“It’s a tension release. You’re crying over Taylor leaving, and I’m going to kill him.”
She picked her glass up again and filled it. “It’s not his fault. I broke up with him.”
“Why? You liked him.”
She took a long drink. “I love him.” Her face scrunched as if she was ready to cry all over again. “But he was ready to give everything up for me, and I can’t live with that. I can’t live with holding him back.”
She broke down in tears, slipping off the counter and into my arms. I took her glass and put it safely on the counter while holding her. My beautiful, genius sister. The one who was supposed to go anywhere and do anything, she felt unworthy enough to be unhappy rather than bring someone else down.
“You wouldn’t have, Harper. That’s…” The idea was absurd, ridiculous, unjust. I kissed her head as it shook against my shoulder. “Are you wiping your nose on my shirt?”
She nodded against me. “I have to do laundry anyway.”
I gave her a paper towel. She took it and stepped into another hug. I stroked her hair and leaned against the counter while she sniffled in my arms.
“Can I tell you something you don’t want to hear?” I asked.
“No.”
“You need to finish college, Harper. Not to make yourself worthy, because you’re the best woman I know. But because you need to be the person you were meant to become. I did it here. You can’t. The world needs you to do that.”
She leaned away from me, leaving me with an empty, cold place where her sadness had been. She honked into the paper towel and folded it in half so she could blow her nose again.
“The world needs you too,” she said, sniffing and wiping the sides of her nose.
“Maybe.” Outside, a car pulled down the driveway. “But you need to think about college again.”
“I will.”
We both looked out the window. Reggie’s Chevy was driving so slowly into the garbage cans that they tipped but didn’t fall before he stopped the car.
“What is he doing?” Harper asked.
I looked at the clock. It was only ten minutes after noon. “I think he’s been drinking.”
I went out the side door before Harper could reply.
Reggie got out, letting the door open so hard it bounced halfway closed again as he came toward me like a man barreling into a bar fight.
“Reggie!”
He put his hands on my face and his mouth on mine. He tasted like beer and desperation, and when I pushed him away, he grabbed me tightly so I couldn’t get away.
The klonk was preceded by a whiff of wind and followed by Reggie’s grunt. He was off me, and Harper stood a foot away with the top of a metal garbage can in her hands. Reggie had been thrown against the side of the house, bleeding from the head.
“Jesus!”
“Don’t you do that, Reginald,” Harper shouted. “I’m mad enough to take you out, drunk or not.”
Reggie’s response was a series of sharp ahs and moans. He stumbled trying to get up. “Why’d you do that?”
“If I gotta tell you…” Harper wielded her garbage can cover like a knight carried a shield.
“I was just trying to…” He took his bloody hand away from his skin. “Jesus.”
“I’ll get you some ice,” I said, still tasting his beer on my tongue.
“It’s bleeding!”
“And a towel.”
“Catherine, you know I didn’t mean anything by it, right?”
He came toward me, but Harper got her backswing ready, turning the shield into a weapon.
“You’re drunk.” I started for the side door.
“You want his money, don’t you? You think he can take care of you.”
I didn’t have to answer him. I didn’t owe him an explanation of my feelings or actions.
“Sit down, Reggie.” Harper swung a plastic chair behind him. “Before I give you a concussion, sit.”
He ignored her. “He can’t. You know he lost all his money right? He’s got nothing.”
I felt a few things at once.
I was sad for Chris. I knew how hard he’d worked.
But it didn’t reduce my attraction to him. It increased it.
Why?
Why would it even matter?
Leaving the side door behind, I stood in front of Reggie and pushed him gently into the chair Harper was holding still.
“Reginald, I’m sorry you feel rejected. I know it hurts. I hate that you’re hurt and I hate that I hurt you, but I don’t hate it enough to lie to you. Don’t kiss me again. Ever. Drunk or sober. Ever. I’m going to call Johnny to bring you home.”
I stomped into the house, and Harper was right behind.
Before the door closed behind her, Reggie shouted, “You’re a whore, Catherine Barrington. A fucking whore!”
“Oh, fuck this,” Harper started back out, but I grabbed her arm.
“Leave him be.” I closed the door and locked it. “He’ll regret it when he sobers up whether you concuss him or not.” Picking up the wall phone, I dialed Johnny and Pat’s house.
“He did, you know,” she said while the phone rang.
“He did what?”
“Chris’s hedge fund lost a bunch of money. Something like seventy-three point four six percent of its value.”
“I don’t care.”
“I mean, guys like that are never totally broke. He probably has a billion hidden away.”
“Still don’t care.”
“Hello?” Johnny’s voice came over the phone.
“Hey, Johnny, are you on shift this afternoon? Reggie needs to get picked up and poured into bed.”
Johnny agreed to fetch him. I hung up and prepared
an ice pack.
Someone was going to deeply regret kissing me, and I wasn’t sure who.
Chapter 25
chris
Marsha’s office was bright white, bedecked in fresh flowers and sunlight. I sat on the white-leather-and-chrome chair, and she sat across from me. Elbows on her white wood desk, she steepled her fingers. She had two huge rings on each hand and matching bangle bracelets. Her right eye squinted in my direction, and that side of her lips curved into a smile.
“We all had a feeling you two went back there,” she said.
“Grounds keeping had its privileges.”
“And you need it set up by tonight?”
“I’ll pay for the service and tip whoever has to do extra work to get it done.”
“You bet you will.”
“I need access and privacy.”
“We aim to please, Mister Carmichael.”
We shook on it. As she led me to the door, she said, “She’s worked hard for everyone else over there. It’s nice to see something good happen to her.”
“I may not be all that good.”
“At least Harper won’t have to hit you over the head.” I must have taken too long trying to put her meaning together, because she explained without me having to ask. “You didn’t hear?”
“I just saw her.” What possibly could have happened?
“Gossip travels fast around here.”
She untangled the grapevine on the way to reception. Reggie had gone to the Barrington house to make Catherine his, and when she refused, Harper had done something completely expected and bashed him over the head.
I made light of it, and Marsha promised to have the club set up for me by nightfall.
Everything was going fine, but it wasn’t. It was terrible. I didn’t know how long I stood in that front garden, staring through a rosebush, asking myself what the hell I was doing. I’d disrupted everything.
A bit of yellow was visible at the base of the bush. I reached through the leaves and thorns. A tennis ball. You were supposed to throw it back, but no one was playing nearby. The kid who kept the grounds would take it back to the pro shop and toss it in one of the coach’s baskets.
