Page 12 of Love Again

“Mine are stubby.”

“They still work. You need to come visit me out at Cummings and let me show you more of the campus.”

Cummings is where Claire went to school, too, and when we helped move Travis there, it was the Claire dog and pony show. She was excited to be back, but it was too much for me and I shut down.

“That would be great. If I had more time, I could do it today.”

He shakes his head and starts piling pancakes onto a plate and hands it to me. “Syrup’s in the microwave.”

When we were young, my parents always traveled with a hip flask of maple syrup for Travis. He was obsessed. I remember being embarrassed in diners when Dad would dramatically produce the flask, to the annoyance of most waitresses.

Geo opens the back door, and a cool shaft of early spring air slices through the kitchen.

“Sorry,” he says and then sees Travis’s plates. “Okay, so it’s breakfast first, then a shower.”

After we eat, I wash up, brush my teeth, and try to prolong the visit. I’m never ready to leave Geo and Travis. I love it when it’s the three of us, and it so rarely happens. In public, I think people assume Travis and I are dating and Geo is his dad, which is all so funny, it makes us laugh.

Travis spares me a heart-wringing goodbye by departing first. As Geo and I stand in the front yard, waving and watching the lumbering station wagon make a left toward the turnpike, Geo puts an arm over my shoulders and pulls me to him for a quick hug.

“You know,” he says, “getting back to last night’s conversation. Those boys—Keller and Luke—lost their parents.”

I pull back. “What?”

“Tom Keller died ten years ago. He was much older than Patricia—well, Patty. She remarried Charlie Walker and had—Luke is his name, right?”

I nod.

“Luke. Charlie got cancer and died about the same time.”

Luke did tell me his father was dead when we met.

“Patty died last year.”

“And it’s just the two boys?”

He nods. “I didn’t know they had much to do with each other. They’ve got to be ten, fifteen years apart. Keller had that mastiff, remember? Jaunty?”

Jaunty used to come to the games. He was a bear of a dog—sweet, but he looked and walked like a black bear.

“There are no aunts or uncles or cousins. It’s only the two of them now.”

“So?” the last thing I need right now is a wave of sympathy for Luke. That would open all kinds of doors that absolutely must stay shut.

Geo releases my shoulder and stuffs his hands into his back pockets. “There is no family, Devon. There are no family issues to sort out. If it helps any, that’s not the reason Luke’s back.”

Chapter Four

Luke

I saw Devon’s car tearing up the road heading out of town just hours after she finished painting the community room at the station. I went to Weaver’s before they opened this morning, before sunrise, and her car was still missing. This meant she spent the night somewhere.

I spent the night trying not to listen to my brother shout in his sleep. Not only does he blurt out unintelligible words like some fated vampire, but he also sleepwalks, which was terrifying when I was a kid. The few times we were together growing up, he’d ended up wandering in the backyard like some hulking beast and scared the shit out of me. Once, he was loitering in the hall, this massive thirty-year-old man. I was a skinny fifteen-year-old and practically jumped out of my skin.

At least he doesn’t wander outside anymore.

I did hear him up once last night to get a glass of water.

I lay on the fold-out sofa, awake most of the night, trying to either triangulate where Keller was, or trying hard not to think about where Devon was headed last night. Two years is a long time, and of course she would move on. My trek back from Weaver’s parking lot was miserable this morning.