Page 39 of Shake the Habit

“I don’t want to let go.” The first time I’d hugged him, he’d given me sporadic pats on my back, but now he had his arms around me.

“I don’t mean to let go of me,” I said, because I didn’t want that either.

“I don’t know what I expected when I came back here to help her. I told myself that I didn’t expect anything, but I was still hoping for something different.” He pulled me a little closer and I let myself rest against him. “It was too late.” He sighed. “She was already out of it and the house was a disaster. It had never been neat or clean, but it was unfit for someone to live in. I was ashamed that I’d let it get so bad.”

“She told you that she didn’t want you here.”

“She wasn’t capable of making those decisions at the end. I shouldn’t have let my own anger stop me from stepping in, and I’m trying to make up for it. I’m trying to make up with a dead woman.”

The breeze rustled the papers on the desk and I turned my head a little to see.

“You said that I don’t need help, but I do,” Caleb said. “Will you help me with her stuff? There’s that desk and there’s more in her bedroom. Even the glovebox of the truck is full of her things but I haven’t gone through it.”

“Yes,” I answered. “Yes, I will definitely help the man who washed cow pies off my dog and wants to loan me his perfect car.”

“It’s yours for as long as you need it. Is Sir pushing you?”

“He’s participating in this hug by shoving all his body weight against my legs,” I said, and laughed. “He’s—what was that?”

Because I’d heard a cracking sound. And then the next thing—

“Hell.”

“Caleb!” I sat up, pulling away from him. “Caleb! Are you ok?” Sir stood above us barking so loud that I wasn’t sure if he’d heard my question, although I was now lying on top of him.

“Yeah.” But he winced and he felt his head. “The railing broke,” he pointed out.

It had, and we’d gone backwards off the porch. Sir had scrambled free and I’d landed on Caleb, but he’d landed on a scraggly bush that couldn’t have given much cushion from the hard ground. “Are you hurt? My Lord! You could have been killed!”

“I don’t think so. But it’s not great,” he acknowledged. “Sir, knock it off. Come down the steps and you’ll see that I’m fine.”

The dog joined us and did stop barking. He started licking, though, and trying to join us in the bush, and it took a while for everyone to be up and out of it. We were all dirty by that point, covered with more dead leaves and dust.

I helped Caleb to his feet and he frowned at the broken boards. “Maybe I’ll ask Marc to start on the house sooner rather than later,” he mentioned as he brushed off his jeans.

“Or maybe it would be better to let him finish one project before he begins another,” I said quickly. “That way you would know that everything was done thoroughly and had all his attention.”

“Uh, ok. Your arm is bleeding. I think you got scratched.”

We had to go back inside the house, which only seemed darker and gloomier than before. We did the best we could to clean ourselves, wiping away the dirt and dabbing at our scrapes with some antiseptic that Caleb found.

“What is that?” I asked, looking at the bottle. “Is it homemade?” I sniffed and then jerked my face away. “What is that smell?”

“I don’t know exactly what’s in here,” he said, holding it up to the light. The liquid was cloudy and there was stuff floating in it, even though he’d shaken it hard. “My mother didn’t believe in purchasing medicine so she made her own remedies. The first time I took aspirin for a headache, I thought it was a godsend.”

I took the bottle from his hand. “This may work fine, but maybe we’ll just stick to soap and water. I would feel more comfortable with that.”

He looked at it too, and then nodded. But there wasn’t a way for me to shower at his house and I needed to. My hair was full of sticks and leaves, so Sir and I left after a little while so we could use something besides the weird antiseptic and the trickle of water that came out of the faucets at the farmhouse.

And I did take the car, the one with the Florida plates. I’d given in when I’d gotten another whiff of my nana’s vehicle and had found that the smell seemed to have intensified.

“Call Mama,” I ordered Caleb’s car, and it listened to me. It was so nice, and I was so afraid that Sir and I would do something to it. That was why I’d also borrowed blankets and towels to cover all the leather seats and on his side, the dashboard.

“Caleb’s mother was a witch,” my own mother announced after I’d told her some of the things I’d heard over dinner.

“That’s not nice.”

“What else would you call a woman who treated her son like that?” she demanded. Her voice rang out through the speakers and she was right: witch was a good word for Lara-Lee Woodson.

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