The Favor (6 page)

“You always tell me not to hover around dropping crumbs,” he protested. “You always tell me to sit down at the table like a human being, not a cow at a feed trough.”

This was true, but Bennett’s prickly reaction was unusual. Janelle offered him a cookie. She wasn’t sure she could deal with a breakdown at the moment. Everything felt too close to the surface—the move, this house, the past rising up to bite her like a snake. Nan on the couch, so still and silent Janelle thought she ought to have checked to make sure she was breathing. If Bennett, who hardly ever gave in to an emotional display, started up, Janelle wouldn’t be able to help him through it. She’d dissolve right along with him, and probably worse.

“Cookie,” she said firmly, and handed him one. “Milk. It’s good, Bennett, just try it.”

The look of horror he gave her after he bit into the cookie he’d dunked in the milk seemed like a joke—until he bent, choking and spitting, over the sink. “Mom!”

“Oh, Bennett, c’mon. What?” The cookie she snagged was a little burned, but rock-hard. The milk would fix it.

Unless, of course, the milk was sour. Janelle spit her own mouthful into the sink, then ran the water to rinse her mouth. She looked at her laughing son. “You think that’s funny, huh?”

Bennett shook his head, but grinned. “Gross.”

Janelle checked the date on the milk. Sighed. It was expired by two weeks. “Was this open when you took it out?”

“Yes. But I didn’t do that to it!”

She laughed, loving him so much it hurt. “I know you didn’t.”

The carton was almost full, even taking into account the two glasses Bennett had filled. Which meant the milk had been opened but barely touched. Joey had told her that up until her fall, Nan had still been able to get around on her own. In the three months it took for Janelle to tie up her business in California and get out here, she’d assumed someone had been checking on Nan at least weekly—though seeing her now, it should’ve been daily. Janelle opened a pantry cupboard, studying the contents. Canned soups, dry cereal, plastic bins of pasta. The fridge was also crammed with plastic containers, but the first few she pulled out were expired, too. Clearly, she needed to take a good inventory.

“What are you doing?” Nan sounded hoarse, but her eyes were bright. “Oh, are you hungry? I can make some sandwiches....”

“Nan. No. That’s okay, I’ll make dinner in a little while.” If there was anything to make dinner with. “When’s the last time anyone brought you some groceries?”

“Oh.” Nan shuffled forward, paused with a fingertip to her lips, thinking. “That would be Deb and Joey. They came for New Year’s dinner. Donna and Bobby, too, along with the kids. And Joey a few days before that to bring me the turkey and my pills from the pharmacy.”

Janelle made a mental count. “So...a week or so? Did they bring you stuff for New Year’s, and other groceries, too?”

“They took me out to dinner.” Nan tugged at the fridge door, which at first didn’t want to give until she grunted and pulled harder. “I didn’t eat all of it—I brought some home with me. Where is it... Oh, there.”

She turned with a foil-wrapped container in her hands. “I had some spaghetti and garlic bread. I could heat that up for my supper, honey. You don’t have to make me anything.”

“Nan, you can’t eat that. If you want spaghetti, I can make some.”

She frowned. “It’s such a waste....”

Janelle took the foil package from her and peeked inside. “No, look. This is no good. You’d get sick eating it. And your milk was spoiled. I think I need to go to the grocery store. Like, tonight. Now.”

Nan looked briefly confused. “Okay, let me get my coat.”

“You can stay here.” Janelle tossed the leftovers in the can under the sink, now full, and pulled it out. Tying the bag shut, she bent to replace it with a trash bag from the normal spot. She looked beneath the sink, expecting to see bottles of dish detergent and other soaps, trash bags, a package of sponges. Nothing. “Shi—oot.”

“What? Mice? I had them come and put traps.”

Mice? “Good Lord, Nan, you have mice?”

“Well, no,” Nan said. “But I might get them someday, right?”

No argument there. Janelle checked for traps, just in case. She didn’t need one snapping on her fingers. The space beneath the sink didn’t have any. She took a deep breath.

First things first.

“Okay. I’m going to run to the store for some things, and tomorrow we’ll go through the house and make a list of everything we need, maybe take a trip out to the store together. How’s that sound?”

“Oh, yes, sure.” Nan nodded. “I can make a list.”

“But for now—” God, she hated talking to her grandma like she was a toddler “—I need you to just go back to the couch and relax. Bennett...”

She didn’t want to leave Nan alone, but leaving her with Bennett didn’t make Janelle feel much better. She’d only started feeling comfortable having him stay by himself, no longer than an hour or so. He’d been complaining about it for months.

“You have your cell phone. You call me if you need anything, okay? Go upstairs and clean your room. Don’t open the door for anyone. Nan, don’t
you
go upstairs, okay?”

Bennett apparently wasn’t going to wait around for her to change his mind. He took off at once.

Nan frowned, already shuffling back toward the living room. “Good heavens, Janelle. I haven’t been upstairs in months. Why would I go upstairs?”

Because Janelle wouldn’t be home and there to stop her, that was why. Because bad luck, especially of the falling-down-the-stairs-breaking-your-neck sort, didn’t just happen. It was almost always the result of bad choices.

Janelle grabbed her coat and keys and got in the truck, starting off without waiting for it to warm up. A block away, she let out a breath. Then another. Two deep, sobbing breaths that lifted a weight from her so devious it had disguised itself as maturity. Now she recognized it as relief, and it made her so giddy she almost ran a stop sign when her foot slammed the gas.

Three days, that’s all it had been.

Oh, God. How was she going to get through the rest of the week, much less a longer time than that?

California had never seemed so golden. So warm. So far away.

She parked along the curb in front of Pfaff’s, the small market closest to Nan’s house. She first checked her phone for the text or voice mail she just knew would’ve come in during the ten-minute trip. More relief swept her when she saw nothing. She dialed her uncle’s number. Deb answered.

Trying not to sound accusatory, Janelle explained the situation. Her aunt sighed. “She throws it away.”

“What?”

“The food,” Deb said. “Sometimes she throws it away, because she wants us to think she ate it. Or because she thinks mice have gotten into it. But sometimes she gets rid of the new stuff and keeps old food.... I don’t know what her rationale is, hon. She’s old and not well. And she doesn’t want us to worry about her, so if she hasn’t been eating—and you know she doesn’t eat right—then she tries to make sure we don’t find out. There were mice last winter, but Joey took care of them. I haven’t seen any signs since.”

Janelle pressed the pad of her thumb between her eyebrows. “Okay. Well...I’m here at the market, picking up a few things for dinner tonight. I’ll take her shopping tomorrow. Is there anything else I need to know?”

“You can use the debit card. There shouldn’t be any problems.”

Janelle loaded a basket with eggs, bread, milk, butter, flour and pancake syrup. Also a bag of frozen hash browns. They could have breakfast for dinner.

“You must be Mrs. Decker’s granddaughter,” the cashier said as she tucked Janelle’s purchases into a pair of plastic bags.

Too late, Janelle thought of the reusable tote bags she’d brought with her from California. She’d have to dig them out. “Yes. I’m Janelle. Could I have paper, please?”

The cashier looked surprised, but pulled a couple of paper bags from under the counter and started transferring the items. “I’m Terri Gilmore. Your grandma and my mom are in card club together. She told us all about how you were coming to do for her.”

Janelle smiled. “Yep.”

“And you have a son? Right?”

“Yes. He’s twelve.” Janelle took the bags. “Sixth grade.”

“You lived with her, didn’t you? When you were in high school.” The woman’s smile seemed a little wider now, but also a little less friendly. Kind of predatory, actually.

Janelle paused. “Yes. I did.”

“Next door to those Tierney boys.”

“They still live there.” Janelle kept her voice steady despite the stepped-up thump of her heart. “Well, not Michael, but...”

Terri nodded. “Of course not. But Andrew, God love him. And his brother, of course. And old Mr. Tierney, though I hear he’s not well. Not at all.”

“Oh. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.” Janelle hefted the bags and backed away. “Nice meeting you. I’ll tell Nan I met you.”

“Gabriel Tierney,” Terri called after her, the words as effective as a hand clutching the back of Janelle’s coat to stop her.

Janelle half turned. “What about him?”

“He was in your grade, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. He was.” They’d shared some classes. They’d ridden the bus together, though he’d sat in the back and she’d always preferred the middle. He’d always had cigarettes. Sometimes other stuff, harder stuff.

Terri shook her head, eyes wide, smile gone. “Shame about what happened, wasn’t it? Such a shame.”

The woman stared at her expectantly, as if Janelle was going to come back over and start to dish. Janelle shifted the bags again. She didn’t know if she should nod or shrug or what.

“Were you still here when it happened?”

Janelle had to clear her throat to answer. “Um...no. I was gone by then.”

“Oh.” Terri looked disappointed, then brightened slightly. “You know what happened, though, right?”

“Yes.” She knew.

“Such a shame. Such a sad, sad shame. To shoot your own brother like that.” Terri clucked and shook her head. “You give your grandma my best.”

“I will.” Janelle escaped.

At home she sat in the driveway for a minute or two longer than necessary. The little pickup had just heated enough to be tolerable, and she was unwilling to leave it for the cold. The family room lights in Nan’s house were on, but the Tierneys’ house next door was dark.

What had happened. Such a shame.
Terri’s words echoed in Janelle’s head as she gripped the steering wheel and pressed her forehead against it.

Where you still here when it happened?

No, Janelle had said. But that was a lie.

SEVEN

GABE NEEDED A beer and bed, in that order. He’d scheduled several early appointments tomorrow, nothing strenuous or complicated, but 6:00 a.m. seemed to come earlier and earlier the older he got, even when he wasn’t out too late the night before. He’d have gone to bed an hour ago, but the old man had been wheezing and shouting at the TV, and showed no signs of wanting to turn it off and go to bed himself. Besides, Andy wasn’t home yet, and even though his brother didn’t need Gabe to wait up for him, he never felt right hitting the sack until the front porch lights were out and the doors locked.

Andy had called to tell him he was going to the movies with a couple of the girls he worked with, and that was fine with Gabe, because he could count on Tara to bring Andy home. She was a good kid. He’d worked with her dad at the Sylvania plant before starting the handyman business. It was the other two or three she hung around with that Gabe wasn’t too sure about. Giggly, giddy girls just out of high school, no college in their futures. They wore their skirts a little too short and their lipstick a little too red. They were the sort of girls Gabe would like in a few years when they started hitting the bars, but seeing them fawn and coo over his brother left a bad taste in his mouth.

Not because he didn’t think his brother should get laid now and again, so long as he was careful about it. Michael liked to lecture Andy on abstinence and chastity, but Gabe had made sure to hammer into their brother’s sad, broken brain the necessity of using a rubber, no matter if the girl told him she was on the pill or what. Gabe didn’t like how the girls treated Andy, as if he were stupid. They took advantage of his generosity, that’s what Gabe thought, and though he’d tried to explain to his brother that he didn’t always need to pick up the check, especially for girls who could easily afford their own popcorn, Andy didn’t listen.

As if on cue, the phone rang. Gabe checked the number—it was Michael. He’d have let it go to the answering machine, but the old man picked it up. The low murmur of conversation began from the living room.

Gabe cracked the top off a beer and sipped at it, savoring the cool sting. A cigarette would go best with the drink, but he didn’t smoke in the house, not with the old man’s oxygen tank ready to blow them all up with the flick of a spark. Besides, Gabe liked to smoke. He just didn’t like to eat and drink smoke, or sleep with it on his pillow or wake up with it. So for now, he drank slowly at the kitchen table and read from a battered paperback copy of
The Books of Blood.
He’d lost track of how many times he’d read it, but he’d had it since he was a teenager, back before the days of the internet where you could find anything you wanted with a well-typed search. Back then he’d had to special-order it from the bookstore at the mall in Dubois and wait weeks for it to arrive.

Janelle Decker had turned him on to Clive Barker’s books. Gabe had seen that
Hellraiser
movie, but she was the one who told him it had been based on a novella, and that there were other stories, too. She’d brought a box of paperbacks with her from home when she moved into her grandma’s house. Lots of horror, lots of historical romance, a few classics. He wondered if she still read the same kinds of books.

He wondered if she still loved to dance.

The light in the hall came on, and moments later the old man shuffled out in his bare feet, his hair corkscrewed into spikes. Without a word he dragged his oxygen tank toward the fridge and dug around inside, found a coconut cream pie Andy had brought home from work and plopped it on the table. He brought out two plates and two forks. He took his seat with a heavy sigh and sat there for a moment with his head hanging before he looked up, his expression strangely defiant.