by Anela Deen
“Why don’t you let me give you a ride to the airport? I can’t vouch for my truck’s radio but the seats are comfy.”
Her phone buzzed on the coffee table next to us. She picked it up and glanced at the text.
“My ride is already here.”
I struggled to keep the disappointment from my voice. “No worries. I heard it’s going to be a clear day, so at least you’ll have decent travel conditions.”
Weather commentary. My happy place.
She produced a business card from her pocket and handed it to me.
Joelle Spain, Pilot
Expanse Charter Plane Services
Seattle, WA
“You’re a pilot?” She’d never mentioned that before.
“Now you see why they can’t leave without me.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “I just—You’re a pilot?”
“Sam, if you say that with any more disbelief, I’ll have to put you back on the floor.”
“It’s not that,” I assured her. “I guess I hadn’t realized you had another job.”
“What, you thought I could buy groceries and pay rent with spells and pentagrams?”
“I suppose not.”
She tapped a finger over the contact information. “That’s why I’m giving you the card. I know you said you’re not online much but I’m obligating you to come to this century, Sam, and email me now and then.”
“I will,” I promised and meant it.
She eyed me dubiously, her gaze lighting on the card and falling away.
“Don’t believe me?”
“I do, but I also know life gets in the way.”
“Have some faith in me,” I teased. “I’m a saint after all.”
She laughed. “You know, this town of yours isn’t so bad, even if it is the size of a postage stamp. Maybe I’ll come back to visit sometime.”
“We do have a pretty sweet windmill down by the river.”
“True,” she smiled. “I’m really going to miss it.”
Her phone vibrated again and her smile faded.
She stood. “I have to go.”
“Right,” I nodded, getting up even as my insides sank. I forced a crooked grin onto my face. “Any chance for a hug, or will I end up in a headlock?”
“I thought hugs were against your upbringing.”
“More like proof mother doesn’t always know best.” I lifted a brow. “Well?”
She swiped an auburn curl out of her eyes and smirked. “Nothing risked, nothing gained, Sam.”
I went for the hug. When her arms looped around me, I held her tight, wishing this didn’t hurt and grateful that it did all at once. Friendship was a gift and I didn’t have many of them.
When she left, I almost wished she would’ve planted my face to the floorboards instead. It bruised just as much to watch her go.
Chapter 22
Sunshine gushed through my skylight when I woke up later that day. Bleary and disoriented, I frowned at it. What time was it? Why hadn’t my alarm clock woken me? I peered at it on the bedside table. It stared back, dark.
Swell, a random power outage. Shouldn’t that require a storm or something?
I dragged myself out of bed and stumbled about in search of my phone. A dull ache pulsed behind my eyes. Oh yeah, I’d overslept for sure. I located my phone on the kitchen counter and turned it on.
12:37pm
Wonderful. That left me a handful of hours before I could go stare at the horizon. Again. At least I wouldn’t be late to the pair of jobs I had scheduled this afternoon.
A voicemail from mid-morning winked on the display. My hand tightened on the phone as I tapped to listen. If I’d missed a last call from Jo because of a power outage…
“Hey Sam, its Nick.”
Nick? That woke me up. Nick and I had known each other since freshman year in high school. He was the only friend I’d kept consistent contact with since graduation, even after he’d joined the army. He wasn’t supposed to be back from deployment until Christmas.
“You’re probably surprised to hear from me. I’m only in town for a week. My…uh…my big brother died.”
I sucked in a breath.
There was a pause before he went on. “The funeral was yesterday. Don’t worry about missing it. We haven’t really told anyone what happened and my folks, they…wanted a small service. I—if you’re free—it’d be great to meet up tonight. Maybe grab a beer? If you can’t make it, that’s cool, but otherwise, I’ll be at the Hideaway Pub in Ames around eight o’clock. I won’t be able to pick up my phone most of the day, so just leave me a message when you get the chance. All right, buddy. Later.”
Briefly I wondered why he was going to a bar over an hour away instead of one in town. Then I shoved the thought aside and left a message to say I’d be there. The timing might be a bit tight with sunset around 6:45pm, but I’d make it work. Alice preferred I did my assignment from look-out hill where the view was better, but if I couldn’t get there, I’d just have to contemplate the heavens through my rearview mirror.
As I ambled down to the fuse box in the garage, I worried for my old friend, wishing I’d been awake when he’d called. Nicolaus Anastas. Tall, with a quarterback’s waist and a linebacker’s shoulders, he’d been vastly more popular than me in high school. Sure, it might’ve been his Greek carved-from-the-angels good looks, but once one got past that, it was the humility he carried about him that most noticed. The easy smile and the friendly, unassuming disposition. The fact that he wasn’t interested in girls made him the perfect wing man.
I’d only met his brother Paul a couple of times. He’d been ten years old when Nick was born so most of our teenage years, he’d been in grad school, pursuing a doctorate in archaeology at NYU. I knew they’d been close though. What happened to him?
Sadness for my friend’s loss prodded me as I stared at the open fuse box. I looked through the glass top and spotted the broken metal line on one of the fuses. The box of spares sat on the shelf next to me. As I reached to unscrew the broken fuse, two things happened: I heard the gentle chime of Alice’s bell, and I remembered, too late, that I hadn’t turned off the main breaker.
The instant I touched it, lightning lanced through every vein in my body and white fire scorched a savage path across my nerve endings. My vision went black. When it returned, I blinked up at the unfinished rafters of the garage, my chest heaving.
Alice’s face swam into focus where she crouched over me. “Don’t look so surprised. I told you your death would be a shame.”
Was I dead? Because it hurt like being alive. The muscles in my body felt like they’d been pan fried in hot oil. I squinted at her in confusion.
“Your credit, remember?” She stood. “It is now spent.”
It came back to me. The graveyard. The mausoleum with Moreau’s spectral lock on it. The “do-over” Death had agreed to give me.
When had my life become so strange?
Alice stared down at me. “Are you going to get up?”
I considered it…Nope.
“Floor’s good,” I whispered. “I didn’t think it would hurt that much.”
“You electrocuted yourself through distraction and sheer stupidity, Sam. You were expecting another result?”
“I guess not.” I propped myself up on my elbows with a grimace. Recollection drifted across my mind and, despite having literally killed myself, a smile hooked my lip. “Hey, was that your bell I heard?”
“If you hear my arrival you’ll startle less, complain less, and thus waste less time.”
A predictable answer but I was getting better at reading her stony expressions.
I grinned. “You do like it.”
“It’s practical object that I…appreciate.” She turned to leave.
“Hang on. Does this mean my next and final death will be better than this one?”
She sent me an admonishing look. “You must know I can’t tell you that.”
“Not even a hint?”
“Sam—” She paused. Her eyes moved left to right as though reading pages of text. “Odd. I can’t see it.”
“What, my death?”
Her expression grew troubled. “It is hidden from me.”
“And that’s…bad?”
“It is unprecedented.”
“Maybe it means I’m going to live a long and healthy life,” I offered, sitting up.
“I don’t know but I intend to find out.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Meanwhile, pay more attention to what you’re doing, Locksmith. Pain is temporary. Death is eternal.”
With that delightful thought, she was gone. Eager to get out of there, I finished up quickly in the garage, but took the time to carefully tape a note to my future self on the fuse box:
Breaker! Breaker!
I chuckled. Then stopped.
Great. I was laughing at my own jokes now.
As I exited the garage the glare from the overhead sun blinded me from seeing the silver BMW in the driveway at first. I froze, hand squeezing the doorknob in a death grip. Mr. Lindonbury’s car. My mom mentioned yesterday that he’d be coming by after they had lunch together. I’d completely forgotten.
My eyes swept across the driveway. No one. Maybe I hadn’t been noticed. I started to edge back inside.
“Sam!”
Son of a burrito.
Mr. Lindonbury waved as he stepped out of the kitchen door on the side of the house. Turning back, I hastily rearranged the grimace on my face to something closer to pleased. It didn’t feel authentic. I probably looked constipated.
“Hi, Mr. Lindonbury.”
“Call me Matt,” he said, striding toward me in his tan suit and black shoes.
“Yes, sir.”
My mother followed behind him, touching up her lipstick while holding a compact in her hand. Lord, did she have to leave me wondering what had prompted the need to fix her makeup? I still hadn’t gotten over pulling into the driveway the other night to find them necking in the car. They’d only been dating a couple of weeks and it showed. Mr. Lindonbury was a partner at the advertising firm where my mom worked as an executive assistant. Not his assistant, thankfully, as I didn’t need that situation haunting my brain.
He was a nice guy, as far as I could tell, close to fifty with all his hair and teeth. He kept trying to win me over though, like it was a required part of dating my mother. As if my opinion would ever sway her on the matter. I’m not sure why he kept at it so doggedly. I’d been nothing but friendly.
Still, my mom had been happier since they’d been seeing each other, which worked fine for me. I only found her snooping around my apartment some of the time, instead of all of the time.
“Are you coming or going?” he asked, extending a hand as he neared.
“A little of both,” I murmured, my guts squelching in on themselves. There it came, the reason I avoided the guy. Our handshakes always landed wrong. Always. And there was no way out of it. The laws of men dictated I could not leave a dude hanging.
I put out my hand, wondering idly if it would be less uncomfortable to grab another live fuse.
It went just as expected. He came in too fast, palm skidding off my fingers to land at my wrist, then retreating to my hand, missing the target again, and clasping my thumb.
Shudder.
“Good to see you,” he smiled, oblivious, then clapped me on the shoulder. Well, he tried to anyway. It wound up too close to my neck. “How you been, Sam?”
“Doing great, Mr. Lindonbury.”
“Matt.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What are you doing out here in a t-shirt?” my mother said reprovingly as she reached us. “It’s barely forty degrees.”
“It’s good for young men to tolerate a little cold, right Sam? Keeps them fit.”
I smiled. “Exactly.”
My mother sent a softer look of reproach his way. “You only say that because you don’t like bundling up either, even though you should.”
“Winter coats don’t give me enough room to maneuver.” He put an arm around her waist and tugged her against his side with a wink.
“Well,” my mother actually blushed. “You both have no sense.”
Awful handshakes aside, the man didn’t need to win me over. My mom and I had our issues, but anyone who could prompt such a happy flustered look from her face already had me in their corner. In the back of my mind, the fatherless boy in me felt a twinge of betrayal for my dad. Just a distant whisper, murmuring the ache of loss that would never go away.
Or maybe it was the smack on the back of head Nana gave me when I’d made a grossed-out face after overhearing a smoochy goodbye between them. Nana’s stern, “Mind your business” surprised me given the animosity typical of her relationship with my mom. I’d given up trying to figure out their rules of engagement a while ago.
It was probably this distracting thought that tripped up my duck-and-cover strategy when Mr. Lindonbury asked, “How’s your love life, Sam? Seeing anyone special?”
“Me? No, I mean—No.”
“Your Nana seems to think you are,” my mom said. Sure, on this point their lines of communication functioned perfectly.
Mr. Lindonbury’s face lit up. “Hey, maybe you could bring her to dinner at my house sometime. A sort of double date.”
Oh God. “That’s nice of you, but there’s really no one.”
“Aw, come on, Sam. I can tell there’s someone on your mind.”
“Seriously, there isn’t—”
“What color eyes she have?”
“Blue.” What?! “That is, no color. No color because no eyes. Not that she has no eyes, but—Because there’s no girl. No girl, no eyes.”
In practically an all-out retreat, I started backing up the stairs leading to my apartment. Whether it was this or the epic word volcano, they watched me go with matching expressions of bewilderment.
“Well, got a few jobs this afternoon, so, uh,” I reached behind me for the knob, bashed my elbow on the doorframe, tripped on the rug, and nearly fell on my rear when the door swung open. I caught myself, barely. “Uh, great seeing you Mr. Lindonbury. Bye mom.”
My mom gave me a look like she thought I’d dented my head. “Wear your coat next time,” she called up in a tone that was more “Quit being so weird” than motherly concern.
I gave a stiff wave in reply, shut the door, and leaned back against it.
“Blue eyes,” I muttered.
First the hypothetical-not-hypothetical date and now this. Better not examine that too closely. I’d already electrocuted myself once today.
Chapter 23
The city of Ames, Iowa wouldn’t seem like a sprawling metropolis to most people, but coming from my little town, it felt enormous. Driving in big towns tended to stress me out. Bellemer’s roads were two lanes across at the most. This four-lane highway deal full of traffic and multi-directional stoplights made my palms sweat, especially after travelling an hour on empty country roads to get here.
I arrived at the Hideaway Pub a few minutes after eight. The place was aptly named. A squat, brick building on a street corner nestled among residential backstreets, it was definitely off the city’s main drag. It had that worn hole-in-the-wall neighborhood bar look to it, replete with sizeable potholes in a parking lot only a quarter full. Still early on a Friday night. Probably only the regulars hanging out.
Striding past a pair of smokers stinking up the entryway, I went in. The interior had a rectangular layout with the bar taking up one side, the wall behind it lined with bottles and a chalkboard touting drink specials and food. Two-top seating edged the opposite walls, along with a few booths, and a couple of free-standing tables. A handful of rather substantial guys were parked on the stools at the bar in front of the modest-sized flat screen, nursing drinks and watching a muted football game. Country music twanged from the surround sound.
With its wood paneled walls, half lighting, and surprisingly delicious smells coming from
the kitchen pass, it was a welcoming enough place, but not so different from our usual haunt. Why had Nick wanted to meet all the way out here?
“What can I get you?” the bartender called out. He was a big guy, wide across the chest and gut, but more in the dense muscle way than the mashed potato variety. He probably didn’t like me standing idle in the entry.
“A beer, thanks,” I sidled up to the bar, scanning the seating. No Nick. “Whatever’s on tap.”
“We got a house brew if you want to try it. A stout.”
“Sounds good.”
The regulars gave me the side eye for a moment, then returned their attention to the game.
“Out-of-towner?” The bartender slid me a glass mug of dark beer with barely a speck of foam at the top. I instantly liked him.
“I’m coming from Bellemer.”
He gave an approving grunt. “Good town, Bellemer. That fella who won the lotto a few years ago is from there, right?”
“Sure is. Mr. Upland.” I took a healthy swig of seriously good beer. “Wow. This is a house brew?”
Hard features brightened. “Yep.”
“I think you mean ‘unbelievable brew’. Is the food here as good as this?”
“We got a burger that’ll knock you out. Homemade fries too.”
“Sold.”
We exchanged a few more pleasantries as he put the order in. I checked my watch and glanced at the door. Nick was half an hour late, which was unlike him.
“Waiting on someone?” the bartender asked.
“I’m meeting a friend of mine here.”
“There was another out-of-towner came in about an hour ago. Took his beer to the far booth.”
“He did?” I leaned back for a better look. There was a booth all the way in the back corner but if someone was there, they’d taken the inside seat not visible from here. “Tall, dark blond?”
“Suppose so. Hard to tell with a buzz cut. Military fatigues and young like you. He looked a little off but he’s kept to himself over there.”
I slid off the stool with a tingle of worry. “That’s him. Thanks.”
“I’ll bring your food that way if you don’t come back.”
When I got to the booth, I stopped short. Nick was asleep, his arms wrapped around a rucksack he used for a pillow on the table. A half-full mug of beer stood next to him. Ever since he joined the military after graduation, I had to do a double take when I saw him. His old wardrobe had consisted of jeans and band t-shirts during our entire high school career, along with his signature long, dark-gold hair. Thor-God-of-Thunder length hair. Sporting fatigues and a buzz cut, he almost looked like a different person.
