Page 19 of The Deadbeat Next Door

“Yeah,” I asked. “How so?”

The commercial break ended, the game came back on and we returned our attention to it. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to answer me, but he did as soon as we hit another commercial break. “I was pretty messed up,” he said. “I’d been getting in a lot of trouble, but more than that…” He met my eyes and the pain on his face felt a bit like my own. I knew a thing or two about screwing up. “More than that, I didn’t believe in myself, didn’t even like myself very much. I was headed for a very short life and a miserable, probably violent, end. Aunt Carrie took me in and she didn’t lecture me or try to get me to see the error of my ways. She just told me she loved me every day, she told me I could do better than I’d been doing, and little by little I started to believe her.” He bounced his leg, thinking it over. “Or maybe I just wanted to make her smile. She doesn’t smile enough.”

Something I’d never considered, probably because I hadn’t given her too many reasons to smile at me. “She seems like a good person,” I said. “But…” The game came back on and I held my thought.

“She is a good person,” Harrison said. “She’s the best. I never considered how my choices, now that I’m not under her roof anymore, might hurt her. I don’t want to cause her more pain.”

“Maybe,” I said, working it out as I spoke. “Maybe it’s enough that she believes in you. If she wants the best for you and wants you to go after it, maybe that’s enough, even if you think you’re not good enough or don’t deserve it for whatever reason.”

His expression lightened a bit. “Yeah. Maybe that’s all any of us need. Someone to believe in us when we’ve forgotten how to believe in ourselves.”

Light flashed through my dining room window and into the dimly lit living room. “That’s your aunt home,” I said. “Better go see how her date went.”

He stood. “Thanks for the snacks and the drink and the game. And thanks for the punch. I’m thinking it might have knocked some sense into me.”

“Anytime. Take care of your aunt.”

I watched him walk out and I almost wished I was going with him. Carrie gave so much of herself to so many people, it was a shame no one bothered to give her anything back. A shame she had no one to take care of her and make her smile, to believe in her when she couldn’t believe in herself.

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