Page 52 of Resilience on Canvas

“God willin’,” Robert replied, that half smile returning for a fraction of a second, and then he thumbed over his shoulder toward the back of the store. “Well, I better start unloadin’ that cereal.”

“Yeah, I’ll, uhm, I’ll head over to yer house.”

He and Robert nodded at each other.

“I’ll see you when I’m finished here. Unless...” Robert trailed off, and the faintest hint of pink colored his cheeks. “Unless you’ll be back home by then?”

Goodness. Robert was asking him to stay, wasn’t he? Henry’s chest tingled with the most wonderful warmth.

Smiling shyly, Henry replied, “No, I’ll wait for you.”

He would wait for Robertalways.

Chapter Thirteen

Henry

Henrycouldhearthefaint back-and-forth of the twins fighting from outside Robert’s farmhouse. Dirt crunched beneath his feet as he made his way from his Model A toward it, unease slithering up his spine. Raymond’s body was rotting in one of the bedrooms. God, how awful it was.

Swallowing thickly, Henry climbed up the porch steps and then took a long, slow breath to calm himself. He only needed to knock twice before Clara opened the door.

Henry’s heart cracked the moment he saw her. Beautiful Clara’s face looked careworn, as though maybe she had sprouted a few extra wrinkles since he’d last seen her, with one vertical one between her eyebrows and a long line stretching from one end of her forehead to the other. Even though the rims of her eyes weren’t pink like Robert’s had been, Henry couldn’t miss the tiny little red spots beneath them. He knew those spots well himself. Because whenever he cried too hard or too long, he wound up with them too.

Ignoring the lump that had formed in his throat, Henry said, “Hey, Clara.”

“Robert isn’t here.He—”

“I know. He, uhm, he sent me here. To check on you all?”

Clara sighed and said, “Well, we’re still here. Guess that’s somethin’.”

Henry glanced past her into the house just in time to see one of the boys push the other into the wall. A frying pan fell off the hook behind him, and it clattered to the floor, making Clara startle.

“I know I ought to stop them,” Clara said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “But, oh, I’m so tired.”

“Let me try,” he said, pushing past her.

He walked into the house, briefly noticing May snoozing on the tattered brown couch, somehow too exhausted to be woken up by the ruckus happening nearby, before he continued into the kitchen area. The boys were there, still tugging on something, back and forth, back and forth. He knelt in front of them to see what it was.

“It’smine!” one of the boys—the one who was asmidgetaller with one single freckle on the tip of his nose—said, pulling on what looked to be a knitted monkey.

“Yers is missing the little ball on the top of its head,” the other replied.

“Not no more! Clara fixed it!”

Henry placed his hand on top of the monkey, his presence momentarily making the twins stop pulling on the thing.

“Where’s the other one?” he asked.

Wordlessly, the twins both turned their heads toward the hall. Henry followed their eyes to the bedrooms.

“Which room?” he said, though he thought he knew which they’d say.

“It’s the one with... the one with Pop,” the boy with the freckle said.

Henry’s stomach lurched, but he fought to keep it from showing by briefly pressing his lips together and waited for the wave of nausea to pass.

When he finally felt less wobbly several seconds later, he stood up and said, “Alright, well, I’ll retrieve it for you. And then you can figure out whose is whose.”

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