Page 46 of Shake the Habit

Chapter 10

“Cuzco?”

“It’s in Peru,” I said. “It’s just an idea. I wouldn’t go until everything around here has settled down more, anyway.”

“I think we’re doing ok,” Marc said cautiously. We both stepped down from his truck and into Caleb’s driveway, and Sir hopped after me. I praised him for waiting so nicely. “The well is a problem, though,” my cousin continued.

I had also been afraid of that, and we’d been waiting to hear from the drilling company. “I hope it’s not going to be expensive.”

Marc’s face told me that yes, it was going to be. “We’ll see. I never heard you talk about Peru before.”

We walked toward the barn, me in the new boots I’d gotten that were much better at jobsites than my sparkly heels had been. We were going to work together for a long time so I’d bought a good pair so I’d be prepared. “It doesn’t have to be Cuzco,”I explained, “although that does look very interesting. I was thinking about travel in general.”

“It’s a long distance away. Have you ever gone anywhere by yourself?”

“By myself?” I thought back and remembered traveling to North Carolina to party at the university in Chapel Hill. I’d gotten a ride with some people I’d kind of known from a former job in Chattanooga, but had then been stranded the next day when they’d driven back to Tennessee without me. I’d woken up late wearing someone else’s shirt and covered in what I’d hoped was my own vomit.

There had been another trip, too. “I flew to California,” I reminded him. My parents had paid for my first rehab out there, so I’d gone by myself after they’d walked me to security at the airport and then waited until the flight took off to make sure that I didn’t come back out. I had only blurred memories of that miserable place, mostly just awful smells and the sounds of crying.

“Peru’s a lot farther.” Marc sounded concerned. “Why don’t you ask Aria to go with you?”

Because everyone had more important things to do, that was why. Aria and the rest of my family had responsibilities of their own, like careers and companies, spouses and partners, and kids who needed them. I had my job with Marc but he’d be ok without me for a while. I had Sir but I imagined that he’d be happy to stay with anyone who had cheese in their fridge. Icould pay for his upkeep and while he’d be happy to see me again, I doubted he’d miss me much while I was gone.

“I think I would like traveling by myself. I think,” I added. I also thought about how my parents would react to the idea, and I knew it would be with a whole lot of worry. “Again, I’d plan it all out with you in advance, so I wouldn’t leave you shorthanded.”

“I know you wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t mind getting away, too,” Marc said, and sighed. “Look at that mess.” He walked off toward a pile of construction debris near the barn and I continued toward the house with Sir. He was doing a good job of staying with me but once we were near the front steps, I told him to go ahead and he ran at top speed. It was warm today and Caleb had opened the doors while he worked on packing his office, so the dog ran right inside, too. As nice as the weather was, though, I still shivered as I looked into the hallway where Sir had disappeared.

I decided to stay outside with Lara-Lee Woodson’s big desk, which I hadn’t looked into since the day that we’d tumbled off this porch. The broken gap in the railing now had a two by four nailed across it, and the desk was covered by a dusty tarp. I pulled that back and tugged at the top again. My grandfather, my mom’s dad that I had never met, had owned a desk a lot like this one, and it had sat in my nana’s living room for years before she gave it away to her brother in McMinnville. Hers, of course, had been neat and functional, and I’d loved to put up the top and then let it crash back down, the slats rattling. She hadn’t enjoyed that as much.

I pulled hard and the top of Lara-Lee’s desk snapped back, also with a loud noise. “It’s just me,” I called into the quiet house, in case anyone was worried. But this place really did seem to absorb sound and there was no answer. I started to move around piles of papers and documents, sorting the bills and invoices, the letters, and the reminder notes. Those were from Lara-Lee to herself, it seemed, lots of “to do” lists with folded-over, yellowed tape at the top. She must have stuck them around this desk and removed them when she’d completed the tasks. But why had she kept them at all? Why had she saved this electrical bill from three years before, which was marked “paid” at the top in the same cramped handwriting that I recognized from all the notebooks she’d piled around her bedroom?

The woman was a slob, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud this time. I’d been remembering how the front door had slammed when I’d insulted her before. Not that she was listening, but it hadn’t been a nice thing for me to do, especially not with her son around. I kept sorting and straightening, enjoying the warmth of the day and listening to the work happening in the barn. No one was yelling or upset, and it went on steadily. It sounded like music to me.

After a while, Sir padded back out onto the porch and nosed my hip to say hello before he lay exactly in the spot where I would trip over him if I moved at all. I didn’t enjoy being at this farmhouse, but things seemed peaceful now. There wasn’t even a breeze to blow things around, which had also happened the last time I’d been out here and looking at this crap.

I finally forced enough order onto her mess that I could access the little drawers and slots at the back of the desk, which I’d also loved to play with as a kid. I’d taken my nana’s ring and put it one of the drawers, I remembered, but I had forgotten what I’d done with it afterwards and she hadn’t thought that was very fun game…yeah, maybe I hadn’t been the brightest child.

The first small drawer at the back of Lara-Lee’s desk was full of slips of paper, which turned out to be mostly gas station receipts. I thought so, anyway, but a lot of them were so old that the print had faded away. The second drawer held expired credit cards, car and health insurance cards, and even old library cards—one was for the library on Signal Mountain and her signature on it looked like a young girl’s, a lot rounder and with more curls than the other examples that I’d seen of her handwriting.

But the contents of the third drawer made my jaw drop. It was stuffed, absolutely to the brim, with chocolate bar wrappers…his mother had kept a stash of candy hidden in this desk! Caleb had told me how he’d sucked eggs because he was so hungry. No treats, he’d said. No cake, no ice cream. No candy! But she’d been having it, the sneak.

“This is terrible!” I told Sir. “She was off in the barn eating chocolate and she didn’t share with her son.”

He picked up his head.

“I do share with you,” I reminded him. He’d even had a little bite of ice cream at my birthday party, but that had been from my dad.

“Let’s see what else she was hiding.” I did find more wrappers and every time that happened, I got even angrier until I was cussing under my breath. One little drawer, though, was stuck. I tugged hard on the metal knob but it didn’t move, and jiggling didn’t help. Neither did more cussing.

Sir suddenly stood up but when I looked, his tail was wagging. It was because Caleb was coming to join us, and he smiled when he saw me. “Hello, Kayleigh. It’s nice out here,” he said, “nicer than inside.”

“Hi! Are you done taking your computer apart?”

He nodded. “Just about. I need help with one of the monitors I have clamped onto the desk, though. What did you find in there?”

“Oh, just, um, nothing upsetting.” I didn’t want him to know about the candy wrappers. How would it have felt to realize that while he was going hungry, his own mother was hiding food from him? I quickly closed those drawers but then pointed to the one that was stuck. “I can’t get this open.”

Caleb pulled it, too, with the same result: it stayed shut. “I can find a screwdriver,” he said, but I wanted to get him away from those wrappers.

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