Page 41 of Everything We Left Behind

Kristen calls from the house that the salad and potatoes are ready. Nicole squeals at the patio table, followed by Marc’s answering laugh. Nick adds the last steak to the plate and brushes down the grill, scraping off food bits. James picks up the plate to take inside.

“Like I said, the boys trust her. And from what I’ve read, I do, too.”

Present Day,

June 27

Two days later, James and his sons are back at the airport and he’s wondering about the woman he’ll see in six hours.She’s family,James thinks as he follows Julian and Marc through airport security. So far, she’s the only member of his family who hasn’t either screwed him over or tried to control some aspect of his life. Quite the opposite, actually. She’s been more than a sister-in-law to him and aunt to his sons. The way he sees it, he owes her. Call him curious, but he wants to meet the woman who once loved him.

By the time they collect their belongings from the carry-on baggage conveyer and James puts on his shoes, Marc is dancing on the balls of his feet. “I have to pee.” He cups a hand over his privates.

James motions to Julian. “Restroom, both of you, then breakfast.”

After a visit to the bathroom and a brief battle with Marc to wash his hands, he orders hot chocolate and pastries for the boys and a coffee and oatmeal for himself. They take their food to the gate, which is packed with vacationers in a multitude of colors and tropical prints, and find a single seat by the window. Marc climbs up on his knees to watch the plane and promptly drops his doughnut behind the chair. He looks at James and his lower lip quivers.

“Idiot,” Julian remarks at the same time he’s splitting his doughnut. He offers the half to his brother.

“Thanks.” Marc wipes a hand under his nose and bites into the doughnut.

James watches his oldest son sink to the floor, back propped against his pack, and is hit with that rapid free fall that comes with déjà vu as though he stepped off the edge of a diving board. He sees himself in Marc. How he curls his fingers as if holding a brush when he has the itch to paint. The tilt of his head when he’s listening to something important. And the reverent way he looks up to his big brother as though Julian’s words are gospel. But for the first time, he sees himself and Thomas in the way Marc and Julian interact. Julian is antagonistic and bossy toward his younger brother and James blames himself. The boys have been through several life-changing events in the last six months. But despite the upheaval, Julian still watches out for Marc while Marc continues to idolize his big brother. They’re closer to each other than to him, which had been the same for him and Thomas with their parents.

He removes the coffee-cup lid and blows across the surface, recalling one event in particular when Thomas had saved his hide. James had swung by the art store after school one afternoon to buy new brushes and pigment tubes. But in his haste to get home and change clothes to meet Nick and their buddies for a pickup football game in the park, he’d left his backpack with the supplies on the couch in the great room. He arrived home a couple of hours later, sweaty, grass-stained, and muddy, to find Phil in the dining room skimming through his geometry notes. The textbook, cracked to the latest chapter James had studied, lay open at Phil’s elbow. Phil had left the wide-open backpack on the chair beside him.

“What’re you doing with my stuff?” James’s gaze jumped from Phil to the backpack and back. He didn’t want to make it obvious he was looking for the art supplies, but where were they? The shopping bag was gone. He heard his mother on the phone in the other room. Did she take the bag?

James glared at Phil, who glanced up casually from the notebook.

“Mom said you failed your last test. I thought I could help you study.”

James narrowed his eyes. Math was his best subject. He might have missed two questions, and so what if Mom thought that was failing an exam. He didn’t need Phil’s help studying. And he sure didn’t want Phil going through his stuff without asking.

James flipped the textbook closed, dropped it in his pack, and tugged the notebook from under Phil’s forearm. It didn’t budge. He tugged again and Phil slowly grinned, leaning back in the chair. He hooked an elbow on the chair back and nodded his chin at James. “Watchya been up to?”

“Football with the guys.” He tucked the notebook away.

“That’s all?”

James zipped up and shouldered the backpack. “That’s all,” he replied, leaving the dining room.

“I was only trying to help,” Phil called after him.

James flipped him the bird over his shoulder. Then he swept through the great room looking for the shopping bag, first under the couch, then behind the table. His gaze skimmed the kitchen counters before he went to his room. He underhanded the pack onto the bed and stood there, rubbing his forearms. Had he left the bag at the store? No, he distinctly recalled stuffing it into his backpack before he hauled his ass home.

Too stressed to realize he was caked in filth, he sat at his desk and tried to study. He rolled the pencil between flat palms. He bounced the tip on the opened textbook. He shoved fingers into his crusty hair and squeezed. Complementary and obtuse angles blurred on the pages as his heart beat in his throat. His throat was dry and he wished he had a glass of water, but didn’t want to get one in case he ran into his mother. The longer he sat there, staring at his homework, the more he believed his mother had searched his backpack and found them. It was only a matter of time before she’d realize he was home. She’d ground him for months.

A light tap rapped on the door. James twisted in his chair and stared wide-eyed at the door. It cracked open. The shopping bag appeared, swinging from a hooked finger. Seconds later, Thomas’s wide shoulders filled the door frame. His brother shut the door behind him and tossed the bag at James. He caught it midflight.

“Where’d you find it?”

“On the floor in the dining room.” Thomas launched himself on the bed, landing on his back, hands behind his head and legs crossed at the ankle. “I bet it fell out when Phil snooped through your books. What an ass.”

“Thanks for covering mine.” James shoved the shopping bag into the desk’s bottom drawer, under a pile of old school notebooks. “He would’ve been a jerk about it.”

“It’s not his fault he is the way he is.” His brother grabbed the baseball tucked inside James’s glove abandoned on the floor by the bed. He shot the ball straight up, catching it before it landed on his nose.

“So it’s my fault he went digging through my stuff?”

“He’s just trying to get a rise out of you, but listen.” Thomas tossed the ball again, then curled up, sitting on the bed edge and catching the ball in one move. Resting his forearms on his knees, he lightly juggled the ball side to side. “Mom dragged us along to the Valley Fair Mall a couple of days ago. We ran into Dad’s secretary.”

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