One Door Closes (7 page)

“Danny—”

“Yeah.” Danny snatched the pen. A quick scribble, and the third line was filled in. He dated it and dropped everything on the desk, raising his eyebrows at Calvin’s stare. The corner of his lip lifted in the tiniest of smirks.

Calvin turned away.

The agent gathered the documents up. “I’ll make copies of the application and your bank statements for the reviewer, and we’ll get this going. I’ll have an answer for you as soon as the credit checks are complete.”

When he returned with copies, they stood and shook hands. The place was almost empty, only a few minutes after closing. The guard unlocked the door to let them through.

Outside, the sun had washed the street in milky pink light, and the breeze bit at Calvin’s wrists. He was unused to the sense of...was it relief? Yes, for the ease of the loan application, and for Devon’s unexpected but ready involvement. Calvin tugged his sleeves down and his jacket zipper up. Over the line of buildings, the clouds had built themselves into piles and the smell of rain drifted. By the time Calvin looked away again, Danny was halfway across the tiny parking lot toward Calvin’s car, hands shoved deep into his pockets.

“Hey.”

Calvin turned back at Devon’s summons. His older brother had come to a stop a few yards behind him. “Yeah?”

Devon’s gaze wavered. “Let’s get a drink.” He gestured down the street at the cramped block of storefronts and restaurants. “My treat.”

Calvin nearly said that he didn’t drink, but he heard the hesitant trudge of Danny’s footsteps coming up behind. This might be an awkward shot on Devon’s part, but it was still an earnest attempt, and in celebration of something worthwhile. God knew they could use it. Should use it.

And if Devon was proving him wrong, ready to finally step in and take some of the weight onto his shoulders, maybe Calvin needed to let go of things first. “All right.”

The Turnstile was on a side street, its door open wide. The music was audible halfway down the block, which was where they were when Calvin remembered the loan application still in his hand. “Here, wait. We don’t need this stuff in there.”

Devon opened his mouth, but Calvin just took his papers from him, too agitated to worry about his manner. Danny handed his over as well and Calvin backed up, waving them in the air. “I’ll catch up.”

He jogged back to the bank’s parking lot. By the time he reached his car, Danny and Devon had disappeared into the bar. Calvin popped the papers into the trunk, sliding them out of sight under the mat, then grabbed his wool hat out of the backseat—he didn’t expect to be in there long, but the temperature was already dropping—and headed back.

He was starting to feel as if he’d struggled out from under drenched tarpaulin and was standing upright at last. If they got this loan, it would take care of a multitude of things all at once, and he could get used to
not
feeling stressed again. It wasn’t just his loan, either. Both Danny and Devon had equal parts in handling it.

It was nice to be part of the solution rather than the whole of it.

The glimpse of blue caught his eye when he was nearly at the door. Across the road, parked in front of a cozily lit furniture store, Will’s truck gleamed, water beading off the sides from a recent washing. Calvin’s stomach gave a not-unpleasant twist. He peered through the furniture store’s windows, but there were no customers inside. The other businesses on the street had already closed up shop. Calvin eyed the bar’s open doorway for a long moment, then went inside, his pulse thumping in his fingertips.

The Turnstile’s tables were all full, and voices undulated over each other like the sea. A trio of women in trendy business suits had commandeered the L-curve of the bar, their high heels hooked over the rungs of their stools. The rest of the bar was just as packed. Rather than find an empty space, the bartender had resorted to passing dripping beer glasses over the heads of other patrons. There were no vacant seats in sight.

It was the only place in town that wasn’t run-down, and it made sense that everyone would congregate here on an inclement evening, but Calvin still wasn’t sure where all these people had come from. His idea of Elk Ridge was much smaller than this crowd warranted, but then, it had been a while since he’d actually lived here. Hell, he still commuted to Spokane to work. Some of the people here looked familiar, but only in a distant sense.

Two men were playing a game at the pool table, shimmying their way around the multitude of chairs to line up shots. They had either picked up a crowd of observers or come in with them, and Calvin found Danny in the middle of the group, drinking a tumbler of pale lager.

“You like Heineken?” Danny passed over another full tumbler.

“Not especially.”

Danny shrugged. “More for me.”

How in the world had Danny ingratiated himself with a group of strangers so fast? “Where’s Devon?”

“Bathroom? Maybe.”

The woman nearest Danny turned their way and Calvin recognized the bright smile breaking over Julia’s face. “Hey, Calvin. Right?” She waved the last two fingers of the hand holding her beer. She was dressed in jeans and a plain black tee, her hair pulled into a French braid that released tendrils around her face. Immediately the guys at the pool table triggered firmer recognition as Will’s coworkers. But Calvin hadn’t seen Will anywhere.

“How’s it going?” Calvin asked.

“Pretty well for a Tuesday.”

Danny wiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “Wait, you already know Calvin?”

Julia peered at Danny more intently. “Oh. Oh, you’re the brother I haven’t met.” She transferred her drink and stuck her hand out. “Julia. I’m doing your electrical.”

Calvin swirled the glass of beer he’d been handed and looked around the bar again. Maybe he should just bull through it, regardless of his taste buds. Thank Devon through action rather than words.

“Ooh, baby’s first loan.” Julia’s words snagged his attention again. Calvin found them high-fiving, Julia still with her wide smile, Danny smirking back at her. “How was it? You get palpitations? Here, toast.”

Danny clinked his glass to her bottle, his smile growing by the second. Julia squinched up her nose at him and turned back to Calvin. “Well, that’s great. You guys can move forward then. Will’ll be glad to hear that, he’s around here somewhere.”

Danny’s expression was more telling now, tuned fully on Calvin with that cool half smile back in play.

Calvin cleared his throat, actually glad of the bitter mouthful of beer. “Saw his truck.”

A yell from right behind him made all three of them jump, but Julia and Danny immediately began to laugh. One of the pool players was performing an awkward and heartfelt victory dance at his opponent’s expense, bumping into tables as he strutted around, wheeling his arms in tiny skyward punches. The loser swiped his shoulder with an elbow, knocking him off balance and overturning two empty tumblers on a table nearby, to much amusement. Calvin wiped his forehead. The air felt too close.

“Think I’ll find the bathroom, too,” he said. Danny nodded absently, his attention on the victory celebrations. His cheeks had taken on a glow Calvin hadn’t seen before, and it was far too early to have anything to do with the alcohol. It was clear that Danny thrived on people.

Well. That made one of them.

Calvin wove his way through the crowd to the hallway behind the bar. He stepped aside to let a pair of women out of the narrow space, and it was as he was returning their smiles that he looked to his left and found Will.

Sitting in the corner booth where the light didn’t best reach. With Devon.

It was so incongruous that Calvin stopped, blocking the hallway’s entrance. But it was definitely Devon. That canvas jacket was impossible to miss, even had he not recognized the man’s profile. Devon sat with both hands clasped on the table, leaning in, and Will bent forward as well, their noses close in the tight space. Will’s mouth moved, a quick purse, followed by words Calvin had no hope of making out over all the noise. His tongue came out to moisten his lips. Devon nodded once, then again, his face softening, and Will’s hand stretched out, his fingers tapping the table an inch from Devon’s wrist.

Devon, who had barely spoken a handful of willing words to Calvin since he’d arrived. And Will.

His first assumption was as quick as it was unsettling. He stepped closer, shaking it off, and just then, Will smiled, wide and toothy, lighting up his eyes in a way that Calvin recognized fiercely. It had been his favorite smile, back in high school, one that most people outside of Will’s family never saw.

Calvin turned on the threshold. He set his glass down on a table that was transitioning between customers and wiped his hands on his work khakis. Headed back out into the crush.

At the pool table, another game was underway, this time with Julia breaking, a slick crack and a scattering of color as the balls shot outward. Danny was just finishing his lager, and Calvin was struck again by Danny’s youth. Old enough to be here, but not by much.

Danny’s eyes skipped to him, away, then fixed back on him. He tilted his head. “What about the bathroom?”

“Someone’s in it.”

“You find your friend?” There was something loaded in Danny’s tone.

Calvin looked away. “He’s around.”

* * *

This time, the old bite was even harder to ignore.

Calvin laid the latest letter down on his desk with a grunt. No way he was going to make his self-imposed quota in the last fifteen minutes of his day. Public commentary was fairly flamboyant on a good day, but today, stuck checking the next batch of form letters for inventive additions, Calvin’s mind had firmly lifted off and refused to zero back in.

He could remember a time when the process behind environmental law had fascinated him utterly, when it had been fun to read what the public had to say about the latest proposal. And afterward, to know how it all worked, how much time and effort, and repetition, went into each proposal before the project even saw actual implementation. It wasn’t what he’d ever expected to be doing with his life, but it had been fresh and interesting, seeing it all come together, developing the rubric for analysis, learning what could be realistically accomplished with the promised funding. Seeing exactly how many vetoes and rewrites a proposal had to go through before it was acceptable.

Today, however—hell, the past two months—the whole thing felt like one gigantic wheel whirling and whirling past the same words, the same thoughts. The same dreary method. He didn’t want to feel bitter again, not after having tasted true relaxation. But it was harder than it had ever been to push it back.

Devon McCade had always been a fiery force, the first of Audrey’s kids, vivid in the memories of those who came after. And maybe that was what arrested everybody, in spite of everything. Calvin could clearly recall walking into Audrey’s room, hesitant even after a year to ask anything of his foster mother, and finding her in tears, slumped on her window seat with a framed photograph in hand. As soon as she saw him, she wiped her eyes, but she also showed him the picture.

It’s okay
, she’d said, sniffling a little,
it happens eventually.
And he hadn’t known what she was talking about until he heard the other boys arguing over who got Devon’s bed now that he was out of the house.

They all counted down their days, and each other’s, perhaps the only interest they truly shared. Devon McCade was old enough to age out, but this wasn’t the kind of house kids wanted to leave. And Devon, the favored first, didn’t come back, not even to visit.

Though Audrey was cheerful in the daylight, Calvin caught her again and again, red-eyed and fixated on that photo, until it became clear to him that Devon had no intention of returning in any form.

To this day, Calvin didn’t know if Devon was aware of
what
he’d left. Only the remaining kids got to see that, if they were paying attention. And Calvin had been a meticulous child. Plenty of space for observation.

Like most foster children, Calvin understood sadness. He knew what it looked like, he knew the taste of it on the back of his tongue. He knew how thinly it stretched the hours of a day, and he’d seen the ways people suffered from it. The way Audrey suffered was left in the shadows, not paraded around for the other kids to see. A thankful thing, given some of the foster homes Calvin had been in. But it still damaged. It still cut.

Calvin had known immediately that when he stepped out of the front door of the house, he would come back, that Audrey needed help no matter how much she waved it off, and that even if he didn’t visit every day, he’d never be able to just put his foster mother behind him. He wasn’t capable of pretending it all didn’t exist, that he was somehow beyond it. Audrey was a huge part of who he was. His life would have been nothing without her support.

Devon didn’t deserve the bond Audrey continued to cradle for him. Yet somehow he warranted none of the ire their foster mother was well within her rights to feel. He had been likeable then, too. Striking. Pensive. A free spirit with very few tethers, and that was appealing.

Even now, his presence slunk up and caught hold without one’s awareness. In place of that youthful vibrancy, the sense of calm wakefulness pervaded.

“Why shouldn’t Will want to know him?” Calvin muttered as he packed up his work bag. It didn’t evoke surprise, not really. Just a ridiculous jealousy Calvin had no business feeling anymore.

And that, coupled with Will’s proximity day after day, the very jump of Calvin’s blood whenever he got close...

He wanted to skip out on the bank today, punish Devon by not doing what he could to get the loan. But that would mean punishing Danny, too, and ultimately himself. Besides, Devon hardly deserved that sort of retaliation just because Calvin was mad at himself for ever letting Will go.

As soon as he turned on his phone, it buzzed in his hand. He flipped it open as he jogged through the downpour, expecting voicemail. But it was a call, a local number he didn’t recognize.

“Hello—sorry—” He dodged around a customer making a break to one of the shops in the plaza, and pressed the phone to his ear. “Hi.”