The Favour

Janelle kept her voice neutral. Gabe had always talked about leaving St. Marys. Becoming something.

“I’m getting out of here,” he says as the smoke curls out of his mouth. “Never coming back.”

She’s feeling lazy and hazy and has no idea what she’s going to do when school’s over, when she has to enter the real world. “What do you want to do with your life?”

“Just get out of here.” He’s dead serious. “Get away.”

“Did he go to college? Gabe, I mean.”

“Nope. He worked at the plant.”

Nan sorted her cards. “Their daddy retired from there, but Gabe wasn’t there for very long, was he? He started his own business a while ago. He’s a handyman, isn’t he, Andy? How long’s he been doing that?”

“Nope. Since...” Andrew frowned. “Since... I’m sorry, I don’t remember lots of stuff. It sucks sometimes.”

A handyman. That made sense. He’d always been good at fixing things. Breaking them, too.

“It’s okay. You and Nan play the game. I’m going to figure out what to do with this dishwasher.” Which first meant unloading it and washing the dishes by hand.

All of them.

There was actually a kind of contentment in it. Filling half the double sink with hot water and soap, setting up the drain rack. Taking the stuff from the dishwasher, biggest to smallest, and making sure each piece was cleaned and rinsed. Scrubbing at the dried-on dirt. It was the pleasure of a job done carefully and well, but there was something more to it, as well.

“C’mon, Janelle. Let’s go!” Andy pokes his head in the back door, grinning. “Gabe says he won’t wait anymore.”

They’re supposed to go out to the cabin in the woods to shoot guns. Snow day. Nan’s at work, and Janelle has chores.

“I have to finish the dishes first.”

Gabe wouldn’t put a foot inside this house, but Andy doesn’t hesitate. “I’ll help. It’ll go faster that way.”

And it does, even with the suds going all over the place, especially when Mikey’s sent inside to see what’s taking them so long. They pull him into the suds fight and the three of them make a mess and clean it up while they laugh and Gabe waits, stewing in the truck. He’s so mad he won’t talk to any of them until they get to the cabin.

She was nearly finished when Andy came into the kitchen. Without a word, he went to the drying rack and started putting things away, being sure to wipe the wet ones with a towel he pulled from the drawer. Janelle handed him a few forks she’d just rinsed, watching as he held everything carefully against his body so he didn’t drop it.

“How was the game?”

“Good. She won.” He grinned. “She’s napping on the couch.”

Andy’s phone rang from his pocket. He didn’t reach for it, though it chirped at him several times. At Janelle’s curious look he said, “It’s my brother.”

“Won’t he worry if you don’t answer it?”

Andy looked exactly the way Bennett did when she asked him if a teacher wouldn’t scold him for not turning in his homework. “I left a note on the counter. It’s not like I ran off without telling him.”

A moment later, the phone rang again. Andy dried his hands and pulled the cell from his pocket, flipping it open. “Gabe, I told you, I’m over at Mrs. Decker’s. Playing cards. Yeah. Well, yeah. Tomorrow at three, Candace said she’d give me a ride. Yes, I took them. No.” Andy sighed. “Fine, all right! I’ll get to it, I told you! Fine. Hey. Hey, Gabe?”

But apparently Gabe had already disconnected, because Andy shoved the phone back into his pocket. “I was going to ask him if he could come and take a look at the dishwasher.”

“Oh, that’s okay.”

“No, really.” Andy sounded eager, which also reminded her of Bennett and how he could be when he wanted something for some reason he didn’t feel like he could be up-front with her about. “He fixes all kinds of stuff. He’s supergood with his hands.”

She laughed at that, though she had no suspicions Andy was talking in innuendo. “Oh, I’ll bet he is.”

“He can fix a lot of things,” Andy said wistfully. His gaze went unfocused for a few seconds as he stared past her with such intent Janelle turned to see what he was looking at. Then his gaze snapped back to her face. “Not everything, though.”

“Nobody can fix everything, Andy.”

“Too bad, huh?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Too bad.”

NINE

Then

“EVENTUALLY, I’M GOING to get a generator out here. Propane tank. Maybe some solar panels—I read in Popular Mechanics how it’s the wave of the future. Self-sufficient houses.” Gabe flips the light switch up and down. Nothing happens, of course, since the wires in the walls, which still aren’t covered with drywall, don’t connect to anything.

Janelle shivers. Her breath puffs out in front of her in a silver plume. “I can’t believe you built all this yourself. How long have you been working on it?”

“A long time. Years. My dad used to take me hunting with some buddies, but they stopped going when I was about twelve. And I missed it. So...” He shrugs, pretending it doesn’t mean very much. Anyone else would’ve made him feel stupid about all this, but Janelle never does.

“Is that a loft?” She’s already put her foot on the ladder and is halfway up before Gabe can think to warn her off. Janelle peeks over the edge of the railing, then twists to look down at him. Her giggle sends heat all through him, welcome in the unheated room.

“Nice,” she says. “Porn-o-rama.”

It’s just a collection of old skin mags and a beat-up mattress with a sleeping bag. A camping lantern. He’s slept out here only a few times. Eventually, he’ll make the loft into a full second floor, maybe with a couple bedrooms.

“Do you bring other girls out here?” She disappears over the edge of the loft.

He can hear her shuffling around up there, and goes to the ladder. “No.”

Janelle peers over the edge. “No? Really?”

“Really.”

She dangles her feet. He could grab her ankle if he wanted, she’s that close, but Gabe only climbs the ladder halfway.

“How come?” Janelle sounds serious, not smug.

He wonders if she’d have been jealous if he’d said yes. Sometimes a few buddies, sometimes his brothers. But no other girls. “There isn’t any girl I’d want to bring out here.”

“Seems like a great place for a party,” she says. “I can think of loads of girls who’d like to come out here with you.”

“I don’t have parties.”

“I know you don’t, Gabe.” Janelle rolls her eyes. “But if you did, you could have them here. Who owns the land?”

It’s a practical question, and he shouldn’t be surprised she asked it. She’s a practical kind of girl. “My dad. He started this place. It was really just a storage shed where he kept some hunting supplies. He always said he was going to turn it into a real camp, but he didn’t. So I did.”

“What does he think?”

Gabe climbs the rest of the ladder to sit next to her with his feet hanging over the edge. Below them is the square room without dividers, a space blocked out for a kitchen. He’s planned on a small camp stove, a propane-powered fridge. There may never be indoor plumbing—that’s beyond what he thinks he can do—but there is an outhouse in the back and he’s done some research into composting toilets. The work’s been haphazard, piecemeal, and cobbled together from scrap lumber and scrounged materials. It’s garbage, most of it, but he’s done his best and it’s not too shabby a job.

“He doesn’t know.”

She twists toward him. “What do you mean, he doesn’t know?”

Gabe shrugs. “There’s a lot the old man doesn’t know.”

“He doesn’t come out here anymore?”

“Not really. If he does, he’s never said anything. And he would, if he knew about it.” Gabe’s sure about that.

Janelle pulls up her feet and scoots backward. She stands, her hands on the railing, to look over it. From this angle, she looks so tall, but he knows she’s not. She’d fit just under his chin, if he ever hugged her.

She takes a few steps back to the mattress and sits. She flicks through one of the ancient magazines and pushes it aside. “I’m cold. You’re always so warm. Hot-blooded, Gabe. That’s you. Come here.”

The sleeping bag’s not really big enough for two, but they manage to squeeze into it, anyway. Janelle pulls the flap up over their faces like a tent. Other girls smell like perfume. Janelle smells of cigarette smoke and hair spray and fresh air.

“Why’d you bring me here?” She turns on her side, her butt against his groin, and takes his arm to put around her.

It’s easy to answer her when he doesn’t have to see her face. “Because...I thought you’d get it. You’d understand.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long time, so long Gabe starts to doze. If this was another girl, she’d expect him to kiss her now. With another girl he wouldn’t be able to sleep like this. His heat has warmed the air inside the sleeping bag, enough that a trickle of sweat tickles down his spine. She’s linked their fingers and put his hand flat against her belly, inside her coat, under her shirt.

“Understand what?” She sounds as sleepy as he is, and somehow this also makes it easy to answer.

“How it feels to need a place that’s only yours, so you never have to...”

Janelle takes a snuffling breath. “Never have to what?”

“Rely on anyone for anything. You know what it’s like to want a place of your own so that when everyone else leaves, you still have a place to go.”

She’s quiet for another long few minutes, so long he starts dreaming. When she shifts and rolls toward him, her head does fit right under his chin. His arms go around her. Her knee nudges between his. They fit together like puzzle pieces.

He’s wide-awake now, embarrassed to be wrong. His heart pounds. He tries to push away from her, but the sleeping bag’s too small, and Janelle’s got her arms around him, too tight.

He’s said too much.

Janelle doesn’t tell him he’s right.

But she doesn’t tell him he’s wrong.

TEN

AT THE KNOCK on the door, the old man shouted, “Tell them we don’t want any!”

Gabe, who’d been reading on the couch, ignored him. At this time of evening it wouldn’t be a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness, but that didn’t mean whoever was on the other side would be any more welcome. He answered it, anyway, surprised to find Janelle.

She wore a heavy coat, a knit cap squashed down over her hair, a long striped scarf wound around her throat. She smiled brightly. “Hey.”

Gabe didn’t open the door wide enough to let her in, and he didn’t glance over his shoulder to look at the old man, who shouted out, “Who’s there? Who is it?”

“Hey, Mr. Tierney,” Janelle called, peeking around Gabe. “It’s Janelle Decker from next door.”

“Jesus, don’t keep her standing in the cold. Let her in.”

Gabe didn’t move to do that. He stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind him. “What’s up? Andy’s not here.”

“What makes you think I’m here for him?”

“Because he’s been over there a lot since you moved in.” Gabe’s breath became smoke, and he wished it was from a cigarette. “Just figured you’d want to talk to him. But he’s at work until ten.”

“I know. I came to talk to you.” She bounced on the soles of her feet, still grinning. “You’re not going to let me come in?”

She’d never, in all the times he could remember, ever come in the front door. Always through the bedroom window. Once or twice through the back. Never through the front, and tonight wasn’t going to be the first time.

He hadn’t said a word, but her smile faded. “Umm...okay, well...I just came over because Andy said you could fix our dishwasher.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t wash the dishes. I guess if I knew more than that, I could fix it myself, huh?” She eyed him. “I could call a service center. I just thought I’d ask you instead.”

“Save yourself some money.”

Janelle’s smile tipped a little wider. “No. I’ll pay you. It’s not that, Gabe.”

He didn’t ask her what else it was, but she told him, anyway.

“It’s good to see you again. I thought maybe...” She trailed off, sounding uncertain in a way he could never remember her being.

He didn’t want to hear any more. “Yeah. I’ll come. Let me grab my tools. Now?”

“Sure. Or another time, if you want, that’s fine. I mean, sooner rather than later, obviously.” She bounced again, rubbing her mittened hands together and blowing out a steamy breath. “God. So cold.”

“I guess it would be, when you’re used to California.”

Janelle paused, tilting her head just a little. “You know about that?”

He’d said too much. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

He shut the door in her face. The old man looked at him expectantly. “Was that the Decker girl? What did she want? Why’d you make her stay outside? Ashamed of your old man, that’s what you are.”

Ashamed wasn’t the right word. Gabe ignored him and got his tools from their place in the kitchen closet. He thought about going out the back door without a word, but the old man would wonder, and it would be worse when he came back.

“I’m going next door to the Deckers’ to see if I can fix the dishwasher.”

“Oh, she crooks her finger and you go running?”

“Dad, please. Shut up,” Gabe said. “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, okay?”

The old man laughed heartily and pointed. “Maybe if I had a set of titties you’d be more interested in fixing things around this shit hole.”

Gabe’s jaw went tight, but he knew better than to rise to the old man’s jabs. Ralph Tierney wanted to be discontent and grouchy, and he’d always find a way to do it. Gabe lifted his tools in farewell instead, and left his father alone.

Next door, he entered a world of warmth and the good smells of something baking, and laughter. A boy, Janelle’s kid, slapped down an Uno card on the table and tossed back his head, his hair too long. He crowed with glee as Mrs. Decker, sitting across from him, fanned out her cards and shook her head.

They both looked up when he came in the door. Mrs. Decker appeared surprised, the kid only curious. Janelle poked her head around the kitchen doorway.

“Hey!”

“Gabe Tierney,” Nan said. “What on earth?”

“I asked him to come over and fix the dishwasher,” Janelle explained. “Come on in. Bennett, this is Mr. Tierney.”

“Gabe. Mr. Tierney’s my old man.”

“You’re Andy’s brother,” Bennett said. “He said you were good at fixing stuff.”

“I guess we’ll find out.” Gabe lifted the tools, uncomfortable under Mrs. Decker’s scrutiny.

She gave him a steady, solid look that made him feel like that seventeen-year-old punk again, the one defiling her granddaughter. He’d lived next door to Maureen Decker his entire life. She’d never been unkind to him, but she’d never been overly sweet to him, either, the way some adults had been while he was growing up. If “those Tierney boys” had ever curled Mrs. Decker’s lip or moved her to pity, she hadn’t shown it. She’d given him Popsicles and chased him out of her apple tree and put candy in his trick-or-treat bag. She’d hollered at him more than once, when she thought he needed it. She’d treated him like she treated all the other neighborhood kids, and Gabe had never forgotten that.

Janelle showed him the dishwasher. “It’s ancient. I’m not sure you can do anything for it, really.”

“I’ll take a look.” Gabe got on one knee and hunted for a screwdriver to open up the bottom panel. It came away easily enough, and what was inside wasn’t anything he’d never seen before. If anything, these older models were easier to fix because they didn’t rely on all the electronic bells and whistles the new ones did.

He was aware of Janelle watching him. Too aware. Her heavy winter clothes had been hiding a pair of black leggings and an oversize T-shirt cut at the neck so it hung off one shoulder. She wore thick, bunched socks and stood with one hip against the counter and her foot propped against the inside of her calf. It was strange seeing her as a redhead, even though that was how he’d always thought of her even when she’d been dying her hair black.

“Do you think you can fix it?”

“Yes. It’ll need a couple new parts, but you can get them at the hardware store. I’ll write a list.”

Janelle sighed. “Will they be expensive?”

Gabe looked up at her. From the living room came a burst of laughter that gave him pause before he answered. “Cheaper than a new dishwasher.”

“Yeah. Of course.” She laughed. “And better than washing all the dishes by hand, I guess.”

They didn’t have a dishwasher, working or broken, at the Tierney house. The old man had probably never washed a dish in his life. He’d firmly believed chores like that belonged to women and children...even grown children who still lived at home.

She was still watching him, her gaze a tickle on the back of his neck. Gabe carefully replaced the screws on the front panel and got to his feet. “Do you have some paper and a pen? I’ll write down what you need.”

“Yeah, sure. In the drawer.” She leaned past him to reach it.

She smelled good.

Gabe backed up a step. She noticed, of course. She was sharp like that. She pulled open the drawer, the contents rattling, and sighed.

“Huh, not here. I’ll have to get some from upstairs. Be right back.” She looked into his eyes when she moved past him, holding his gaze for several long seconds.

She’d been gone for only a minute when Bennett came into the kitchen. “Hi.”

“Hey.” Gabe looked up from the tool bag he was putting back in order. “Bennett, right?”

The kid nodded and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “I came to get a drink.”

Gabe got out of the way, shoving his bag with a foot so it slid across the linoleum. The kid took a glass from the cupboard, then opened the fridge to pull out a gallon of milk. “You want some?”

“Uh...no, thanks.”

“You want a soda? Or my mom has a few beers in there.” The kid gave him that same curious head tilt his mother had.

Gabe shook his head. “No, thanks.”

Bennett sipped some milk and licked at the mustache it left behind. “Did you fix it?”

“Not yet.”

“But you will,” the kid said.

“I hope so. If I can get the right parts. It’s pretty old,” Gabe said. “But...I’ll do what I can.”

The kid beamed. “Good. Loading and unloading it is my chore, but if it’s broken, guess what my chore is.”

“Taking out the trash?”

“That, too,” Bennett said. “But also washing the dishes. It freaking sucks.”

A smile tugged at the corners of Gabe’s mouth, though he did his best to keep it straight. “Hey, language.”

Bennett looked surprised. “You think freaking’s a bad word?”

He didn’t, exactly, and it wasn’t even his place to have said anything to begin with. It had just slipped out automatically. To his horror, it was the sort of thing his old man would’ve said. Gabe grimaced.

Bennett frowned. “Don’t tell my mom, okay? She’ll be mad.”

In high school, Janelle had had a vast and colorful vocabulary. It had included a lot of creative curses that went well beyond the normal four-letter words. Freaking wouldn’t even have registered on her radar.

“You knew my mom when she was little, huh?”

It was weird the way he’d echoed Gabe’s thoughts from just a few moments ago, and Gabe stuttered a little bit on his answer. “Um, yeah. I did.”

Bennett nodded. “Nan said you did. She said you’ve lived next to her since you were born. How long is that?”

“A long time.”

“So you knew my mom when she lived here, with Nan?”

Gabe looked at the ceiling again, wondering if he could just write down the parts he needed at home and give them to Andy to bring over. Hell, he could just go to the hardware store himself and buy them. He didn’t want to stand here talking to Janelle’s son about knowing her, but the kid was clearly waiting for an answer.

“Yeah, I knew her.”

“You went to school together?”

“Yeah.”

“Same grade?”

“Yes,” Gabe said, irritated now. “Jesus, kid. What’s with the interrogation?”

Bennett frowned for a second. “Sorry. My mom says the only way to ever find anything out is if you ask questions. I just wanted to know what she was like when she was younger.”

“So why don’t you ask her?”

Bennett shrugged. “Duh, you think the stories she tells me are the ones I’d think were more interesting to hear? Or just the sorts of things a parent tells a kid.”

“What kinds of things would you want to hear?” Gabe nudged his tool bag with a toe, getting ready to pick it up and make his exit.

“You know, the good stuff. Maybe you don’t know any good stuff.”

Gabe looked at the kid seriously. “If I did, you think I’d tell you?”

“Maybe.” Bennett shrugged again. “Andy knew my mom in high school, too—she says he did. But he doesn’t remember her at all. So I figured you must remember. Especially if you were good friends.”

“Did she...tell you that?” Gabe bent for the tool bag, hefting its weight so the contents jingled. “She talked about me?”

“Nope. Not really. But you knew each other. You lived next door. Went to school together.” The kid gave Gabe another of those curious head tilts; it made his hair fall in front of his face until he shook it out. “She talks a lot about her other friends. Mom says the friends you make in school are the ones you remember best, and if you’re lucky they stay with you.”

“Sometimes if you’re unlucky,” Gabe muttered.

“The kids here are dickweeds.”

Gabe shouldn’t have laughed; the kid was clearly serious. But he looked so much like his mother. It reminded Gabe of too much that had happened, and he couldn’t do anything but stare. Bennett’s smile, so much like Janelle’s, slid off his face.

“I’ve moved four times since I was born. Including this time, that’s five times.” Bennett ticked them off on his fingers. “We moved when I was a baby, two times. I don’t remember it. Then when I was in first grade. Third grade. Now here. I had friends in my old school, but I haven’t made any here yet.”

“You will.”

Bennett scowled. “I liked California better, but Mom says Pennsylvania’s nicer in the summer. And no earthquakes.”

The kid paused expectantly, waiting for Gabe to answer. Again, he had nothing to say. The kid was chatty. Weren’t kids supposed to be shyer than that? Most kids around here gave Gabe a wide berth.

“Bennett! I thought you were bringing me something to drink!” Mrs. Decker called from the other room. “Did you fall in the sink and go down the drain?”

“Just a minute, Nan.” Bennett filled a second glass with milk and put the jug back in the fridge. “Sure you don’t want anything, Mr. Tierney?”

“Call me Gabe.”

Bennett shrugged. “Okay, Gabe.”

That’s when Janelle finally came back into the kitchen, carrying a legal pad and a pen. Gabe saw what had taken her so long upstairs—she’d pulled her hair on top of her head into a soft bun that he knew from past experience looked casual and messy on purpose, but had really taken effort. She’d swiped on some gloss, maybe powder or something on her nose and cheeks to fade her freckles a little. Nothing major, nothing he was supposed to notice she’d done...but he did.

“Sorry it took so long. I have a lot of stuff still shoved in boxes.” Janelle smiled as she held out the paper and pen. “Here.”

In order to take it, Gabe had to set down the tools again. He did so quickly, ignoring the kid still standing there with the two glasses of milk, along with his mother and her makeup and her familiar smile. Gabe wrote the list, three items, scrawling the last so fast it was illegible.

“Your handwriting hasn’t changed much,” she noted.

“It says it’s a hose,” Gabe snapped. “Just look closer.”

Bennett took that as a cue to leave. Janelle looked at Gabe with her mouth slightly parted as though she meant to speak, but didn’t. After a second, her brow furrowed and her mouth thinned. She was pissed.