He started it up, and it was loud. It either had those old glass-pack mufflers on it, or maybe even no mufflers at all.
“You guys brothers?” he asked as we drove out of the bank parking lot.
I waited for Roy to say something, but he didn’t. I caught Joe’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Yeah,” I said. “Brothers.”
“Where do you guys live?”
“Over on Deerskill Lane. Last block before the dead end.”
“Sure,” he said. “I know where that is.”
We drove in silence for a time. Joe rolled down his driver’s window and lit a cigarette, which he held in his left hand, his forearm resting on the edge of the door. The air that flowed in felt hot and summery, even though it was heavy dusk. It smelled of cigarette smoke and contained a light stream of sparks. I couldn’t stop staring at them.
“How long you been back stateside?” he asked my brother.
At first, Roy said nothing. Then, when I guess the silence grew too heavy even for him, he said, “Not long.”
“I’m gonna write down my phone number,” Joe said. “In case you need someone to call.”
“I won’t,” Roy said.
“Never know what you’re gonna need.”
He pulled up in front of our house when I pointed it out to him. My mom had left the porch light on for us. I could see moths playing in the beam of it. Or maybe it wasn’t play to them. Maybe it was desperate. Some crazy way to satisfy a need.
Roy threw the passenger door open and jumped out. Right, I know. I would’ve thought the word “jumped” was a stretch, too, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.
“Here’s my number,” Joe said to me, scribbling on the inside of a cardboard matchbook cover with a pen that didn’t seem to want to write. “Give it to him when you get in the house.”
“I don’t think he’ll call,” I said.
“No. I don’t think so, either. But you never know. This way at least he’ll know he can.”
“Thanks,” I said. And took the matchbook from him.
I pushed the passenger seat forward to let myself out. But then I stalled and didn’t move for another few seconds.
“How did you know?” I asked him.
“How did I know what?”
“That my brother was in Vietnam?”
“Oh. That. Well, I didn’t know, now did I? I couldn’t really know. I just took a guess. Seriously injured is a clue, but he could’ve been in a car accident or something. Mostly I just had a good long look at his eyes and took my best shot.”
My mom was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking something that looked and smelled alcoholic. She looked up at me as though I’d wakened her from a dream.
My dad seemed to be absent. Again. I almost opened my mouth to ask if he still lived here. Really, officially lived here. But I never got the chance.
“So, how’s that going?” she asked me.
“The meetings, you mean?”
“That’s what I had in mind, yeah.” A little bit sarcastic. As always.
“Not sure. Maybe not great so far. But I think maybe it takes more time.”
She stared down into the brown, liquid eye of her glass again.
“Connor came by. He wanted you to come over. He said he had something he wanted to show you. But then I told him when you’d be back, and he said you’d best wait until morning.”
“Okay,” I said.
I walked upstairs, knowing that now I would have to lie there and try to get to sleep, wondering. Wondering what Connor could possibly have to show me that I hadn’t seen a million times already.
Chapter Sixteen
Promises and Repayments
I showed up at Connor’s house a little after six a.m. I could see lights on inside, so I knocked on the door. I thought his mother would scold me for coming by so early, but I had to do it. The suspense was killing me.
Instead she answered the door with a smile on her face. I was stunned. I don’t think I had ever seen such a thing before.
“Oh, Lucas,” she said. “Good. You’re here. Connor will be so glad. He can’t wait to show you his kitten.”
“Connor has a kitten?”
“He does! We picked her out yesterday afternoon. And she’s just the cutest little thing you’ve ever seen. Snow white, with the most beautiful . . . oh, but why am I telling you? You’re just about to see her. Go on up.”
I walked down the hall and was dazzled by something like . . . light. When I got level with the living room, I saw she had just one curtain open in that one room. On the side with a view of no neighbors. Just the woods.
I walked up the stairs and knocked on Connor’s door.
“Mom?”
“No, it’s me. Lucas.”
“Oh, good. Come in, but quick. Don’t let the cat out.”
I dashed through the smallest space of open door I could possibly manage, then closed it behind me.
Connor was sitting cross-legged on his bedroom rug. He was holding what I thought was a pretty inventive cat toy. It was just a little fabric mouse, but he had tied it on the end of a string and tied the other end of the string to a stick, so he could dangle the mouse like a caught fish on a rod and line.
Just for a moment I saw nothing else. No kitten.
I had a sudden panicky thought. What if there was no kitten? What if Connor and his mother were all happy and excited about something that turned out to be . . . you know . . . completely imaginary? How horrifyingly weird would that be?
A split second later a completely nonimaginary kitten came zooming into view.
She had apparently been crouched under Connor’s bedside table, gearing up to attack. And hoo boy, did she ever attack. She flew across the rug and leapt into the air, jumping maybe three or four times her height. She swung at
