Winter Winds (6 page)

“But I was home all night,” Trev said. “Ryan and I watched some TV and ate ice cream.”

“I don’t know, Trev. Maybe Honey called the church number by mistake. I never thought to ask.”

“Yeah. There were a number of hang ups when I checked the messages this morning.”

“He-he looks so vulnerable, Trev. Weary.” Disbelief filled Phil’s voice.

Trev’s hand went to his heart, and he rubbed there as if he could make the pain of those words go away. “Maybe all they’ll have to do is Roto-Rooter his arteries or bring down his blood pressure or something equally doable.”
Please, Lord, may it he so!

“If the doctors know, they haven’t told us yet. When can you come?”

“I’ll be there in a couple of hours. I’ve got to take care of Ryan first.”

The brothers hung up, and Trev quickly cleared his calendar for the next two days. Then he rushed home to pack and caught Ryan.

Now he zipped his bag shut and went downstairs. Ryan hadn’t moved, and Jack had climbed back onto the sofa and draped himself over the boy’s lap.

“Will you and Todd stop by a couple of times tonight and tomorrow to take care of Jack?”

Ryan reached a hand to Jack’s silky black head and fondled an ear. “You want me to take care of you, boy?”

Jack grinned his doggie grin.

Trev smiled at the dog. The one thing that had gone right since Ryan came to stay three weeks ago was the mutual affection between the boy and Jack. In fact, Jack had deserted Trev’s bed to sleep with Ryan, a fact that pleased the boy immensely.

It was a simple case of someone caring, and Trev couldn’t begrudge the need for an extra blanket at night to replace Jack’s body heat. He knew all too well Ryan’s uncertainty because he’d felt it himself when his parents died, and he’d had Phil and Dori to
help him get through it. Poor Ryan had no one. Well, he had Mae Harper, his grandmother, but she wasn’t available at the moment.

The boy’s father had gone AWOL two weeks after Ryan was born and hadn’t been seen nor heard from since. His mother left her then two-year-old toddler with her mother so she might go to New York and become a famous Broadway star, an ambition she had still not achieved after eleven years. She deigned to visit Seaside once or twice a year as the mood struck her, but then she only stayed a couple of hours.

For years Ryan’s only security had been his grandmother. Now Mae was in the rehab center on the mainland, trying to recover functions damaged in a terrible fall at her bookstore. Breaks in both hip and leg had required surgery and guaranteed it would be some time before she could return to work. All attempts to find Ryan’s mother to tell her of her mother’s injuries and her son’s need had failed.

Trev went to the kitchen to get himself something to eat on the trip to see Pop. He opened the refrigerator and stared. There were no two ways about it: The worst part of living alone was having to feed yourself. And having a hungry Ryan around did not simplify the matter. For a little guy, Ryan ate an amazing amount of food. In fact, Ryan reminded Trev of a younger Jack, all big feet and unbelievable appetite.

Finally Trev shut the fridge and pulled the trusty jar of chunky peanut butter from the cupboard. He slathered bread with it and a cholesterol-defying amount of butter and slid the sandwich into a plastic bag. He grabbed an apple, a pack of chocolate Tastykakes, and a bag of Herr’s chips. He went back to the refrigerator. There were two twenty-ounce bottles of Coke chilling there, and he grabbed one. He made a mental note to buy more.

He stood quietly in the kitchen for a moment. What was he supposed to say to Ryan? His natural tendency was to make light of the crime, to be flip, to make it a joke. One day out of school was not going to ruin Ryan’s life nor cost him admission to a good college.

So where was Lucy Harper when you needed her? Of course, she’d probably do a worse job than Trev if her past record was anything to go by. Missed birthdays. Unkept promises of visits.
And Christmas might as well not exist for all the attention she paid her son at that time of year.

No, the kid was probably better off stuck with an ignorant guy like himself, an ignorant guy who had no idea what to do but at least was present. Somehow Pop had always known how to handle him and Phil. So, what would Pop do?

Who knew? Neither he nor Phil had ever bagged school. But if they had, there would have been plenty of sound and fury. He was sure of that.

Sound and fury. Okay, Lord, give me the right words, please!

His mental loins girded to deliver a telling lecture on school and responsibility of the thirteen-year-old kind, Trev walked from the kitchen. He stopped short at the sight of Ryan with his head buried in Jack’s neck and his arms wrapped around the dog. The boy’s nape looked so vulnerable, his skinny shoulders so fragile, that the lecture died before one word was spoken.

Ryan straightened when he heard Trev’s footsteps. He tried to recapture the bravado he’d had when Trev first came home but failed miserably. All he managed was to look woebegone with a capital W. “I can just stay here with Jack. I can take care of myself, you know.”

“I’m sure you can,” Trev said.

“In fact, I can take care of myself all the time. Then I wouldn’t be a bother to you.”

Trev blinked. “You aren’t a bother to me.”

Ryan looked skeptical. “Whatever. But if I took care of myself, I wouldn’t have to go to school if I didn’t want to. Or church.” Ryan’s resentment at what life had dealt him bled out in every word. “I wouldn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to.”

Trev nodded. “But how would you get to the store to buy your food? And where would you get the money to pay for it?”

Ryan frowned.

“And what about paying the rent on your apartment? Or getting new clothes as you grow? Where would that money come from? Even if someone was willing to hire you at your age, how would you get to the job?”

“But I just want to call my own shots! I just want to do what I want!”

Trev looked Ryan square in the eye as he bit his lip to keep from smiling. “When you have the money and the transportation to care for yourself, then you can do as you want. But in the meantime, I’ll drop you at school on my way out of town.”

The unhappy face somehow managed to become unhappier. “You’re going to make me go back?”

Trev didn’t answer.

“Yeah, you are.” Ryan gently pushed Jack aside and got to his feet. With a sigh he grabbed his Eagles jacket from the chair where he’d tossed it. When he pulled it on, it swallowed him whole. Mae had undoubtedly bought it for him to grow into. It would probably only take five years.

Trev zipped his red Lands’ End Squall and grabbed his duffel. The two walked in silence to the car.

They were almost to the school when Ryan spoke, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry, Pastor Paul.”

Trev reached over and patted Ryan’s knee. “Sometimes life stinks, big guy. There’s no other word for it. But we have to keep going.”

Ryan nodded, a picture of dejection.

“Did you know that I’m an orphan?”

Ryan looked at him, surprised. “Then who’s Pop?”

“My grandfather. After our parents died, he raised my brother and me.” And Dori.

Interested in spite of himself, Ryan asked, “How old were you when they died?”

“Nine. Phil was twelve.” And Dori was seven.

“How’d they die?”

“Drunk driver.”

“Yuk.”

“You can say that again.”

Ryan was quiet for a minute. “At least they didn’t leave you on purpose.”

Trev’s heart stumbled. “No, they didn’t. But, you know, Ryan, God’s our Father who never leaves.”

Ryan sat up straight and stared out the windshield as Trev pulled to the curb in front of the school. “No offense, Pastor Paul, but I’m not sure I believe all that God stuff anymore.”

Trev nodded. “I understand.” And he did. He remembered all the years when he blamed God for everything that had happened to him. How he had teased Dori when she “got religion” at a Young Life meeting back in high school. He wondered, as he frequently did, whether she still followed the Lord. Whenever he called her, she kept the call so short that he didn’t have time to probe. The few times he’d visited her, she always made certain someone else was with them, so again no time to talk about anything of substance.

He rubbed absently at his chest. Would the pain that speared through him whenever he thought of her ever go away? But how could it? When you lost your heart, you were bound to feel the ache of its absence.

Ryan climbed reluctantly from the car. Trev felt like an ogre even though he knew the boy had to go back to school.

“I’ll see you Sunday,” Trev called after Ryan as the boy dragged himself up the walk. A weak little wave over his shoulder indicated that he had heard. When the school door swung shut behind the kid, Trev drove away.

He worried and prayed about Ryan as he crossed the Ninth Street Causeway and made his way to the Garden State Parkway. Taking the boy in had seemed such a logical thing to do when Mae got hurt.

“Just until your grandmother comes home,” he’d said to Ryan at the hospital that first night. “We don’t want her worrying about you unnecessarily.”

“I can take care of myself,” Ryan had answered.

Trev looked at the determined set of the boy’s jaw and nodded. Pride was about all the kid had left. “I’m sure you can, but do you want to? It’s always nicer to be around another person. And you’ll love Jack.”

At least he’d been right about that. It was hard to tell who trailed who, Ryan Jack or Jack Ryan. He just knew that where one was, there was the other.

As he turned north on the Atlantic City Expressway, Trev’s mind turned to what awaited him. Pop. A heart attack. Unbelievable.

When he and Honey had come to rescue Phil, Dori, and him
the day after their parents died, Trev had responded immediately to Pop’s strength.

I want to be just like him
, his boy’s mind had thought. Little had happened to change his mind. Even when he found Christ in college, Pop was still a model of common sense and reliability to him.
If I can be just like him with the added depth of knowing Christ, I just might be a man worth knowing. And, Lord, please help Pop come to know Jesus as Savior. Honey, too
.

Pop had run a tight ship. He and Honey expected the three of them to obey regardless of their feelings on a matter.

“This home is not a democracy,” he frequently told them. “It is a benevolent dictatorship. I am the dictator, and Honey is the dictatrix or whatever the female counterpart is. What we say is law.”

There was always so much fun and love mixed with the law that none of them minded. Still, he never had any doubt that to cross Pop was to ask for it.

Trev smiled to himself. Whenever he thought of the summer he was fifteen and Dori thirteen, he knew he had the quintessential Pop.

It was the first Trev noticed her
that
way. Up until that day in June, he’d loved her like a sister. He considered himself her protector, her guardian, her big brother, the one whose job it was to tell her what to do and how to do it. He could pick on her as much as he wanted, but let anyone else, even Phil, bother her at his peril.

Then that day as he was mowing the lawn, she’d walked into the backyard in her new bathing suit.

Trev looked up from following the faint marks in the grass that showed where he’d last mowed and almost swallowed his tongue. He stood, paralyzed by the vision before him. When had she grown that figure? When had she turned from a skinny, scrappy little girl into a femme fatale? He couldn’t stop staring.

Pop was working in the garden, and when the lawn mower seemed stuck in one spot, he looked over to see why. He got to his feet, walked to Trev, and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Turn it off,” he mouthed, pointing to the mower.

Trev blinked himself back to reality and let the machine die.

“Come with me,” Pop said. “You need a break.”

Still feeling as if he’d been hit over the head, Trev followed Pop into the kitchen. Pop went to the refrigerator and pulled out two cans of Sprite. He handed one to Trev. They popped the tabs and took long drinks.

As if his head were attached to a lead that pulled him, Trev turned to look through the sliding glass doors at Dori, spreading a towel in the freshly mown grass.

“Trev.”

“Um?” She was going to lie there and sun herself. Suddenly he felt a need to get a tan too.

“Trev.” Pop’s voice was more insistent.

“Yep?” She lay on her stomach, her head pillowed on her arms. Her dark hair was pulled high on her head in a ponytail. Her face was turned in his direction, her brown eyes closed against the sun.

“Paul Michael Trevelyan!”

Trev jumped and turned to Pop, Dori momentarily forgotten. All three names? What in the world had he done?

“Look at me, boy, and listen closely.”

Trev blinked and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Dori’s becoming a very beautiful young lady.”

Trev grinned.

“And if I ever catch you looking at her like that again, I’ll send one of you away.”

The grin disappeared. “What?”

“You heard me. I will not have any romantic folderol in this house.”

Folderol? “Send her away?”

“Or you.”

Trev knew implacable when he saw it.

“Pop!” “I want your word that you will leave her alone.”

“You’d actually send one of us away?”

“Swear to me, Trev, that you will stay away from her in any way romantic whatsoever. Swear.”

And so for years he said nothing about how he felt.

Did she know about Pop’s illness? Had Phil or Honey called her? Surely she would come, wouldn’t she? As he pulled up to the
hospital, his heart was thudding wildly, and he wasn’t sure which scared him most—seeing Pop or perhaps seeing Dori.

When he reached the third floor, he saw Phil leaning against the wall outside a room whose door was closed.

“Phil.” The brothers shook hands, then hugged awkwardly. “How is he?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t seen the doctors yet today. I’m hopeful though. His pain level has gone way down. He knows what’s going on around him. He’s cranky and giving orders.”