In This Life
Page 4
Yet somewhere in the back of my mind I thought the day would come when we’d get another chance. Someday maybe he and I could sit on the creaking front porch of his old house with a couple of beers and have a conversation like fathers and sons did in all places and times.
Someday.
It was all too bitter a fucking pill to swallow at this point. I couldn’t quite choke it down yet.
Darkness had long since settled when I finally reached the city limits of Hawk Valley. The place looked pretty much the same as it had the last time I’d seen it. Hawk Valley was a town stuck in time, maintaining a dusty kind of quaint charm while trying to keep its small businesses above water. The real estate boom and bust cycles of Phoenix didn’t stretch this far north and vacation home buyers tended to bypass the place and choose mountain cabins instead. There was a small college on the outskirts of town but on the whole Hawk Valley was more of a pass through place that relied on the fringes of the tourist industry spending their loose change in the souvenir shops on Garner Avenue or grabbing a quick lunch at the local cafes. The people who lived there just got by and held onto what they had.
A shared custody arrangement meant I spent summers and vacations here as a kid. Then the summer I turned fourteen I became a permanent resident. It wasn’t by choice. It was because the worst possible nightmare had come true. But that was the last thing I wanted to think about. The current situation was fucking terrible enough to handle without dwelling on the past.
The news was all over the local radio. Raging brush fire in the Hawk Mountains. Two lives lost. Blaze a hundred percent contained at this point. There was no information yet on how the flames had ignited but with high winds and dry conditions it wouldn’t have taken much. The fact that the skies saw fit to open up just as the fire roared out of control was a lucky break for the emergency crews. It just didn’t happen soon enough for my father and his wife.
Jane was too distraught last night to hand out many details. While I was paused at a traffic light on Garner Avenue I tried to call her to let her know I was here. I was worried about her. My aunt was a fragile kind of soul. She probably wasn’t dealing with the death of her big brother very well.
“Hello?”
“Jane. It’s Nash. I just got to town.”
“Nash. Oh god, this is all so awful and I can’t say how sorry I am. Jane’s asleep in my room. She asked me to answer if you called.”
I was confused. “Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry. This is Kat Doyle.”
The matter-of-fact way the woman said her name made me think it should mean something to me. I searched my memory but after twenty hours on the road all the connections were shot.
“I’m heading over to my father’s house,” I said, although I didn’t know what I expected to find there. My voice cracked at the word ‘father’. When I said it out loud I couldn’t escape the truth that I didn’t have one anymore. Chris Ryan, the man who taught me how to catch a ball and hammer a nail was dead. Sure, he had his flaws. So did everyone.
“Why don’t you just come to my place?” Kat Doyle said. “I know there’s so much to deal with but it doesn’t have to all get done tonight. Jane badly needed to get some rest but she’ll want to talk to you. And Colin’s here. I’m sure you want to check on him.”
I digested this information and asked Kat Doyle for her address. I couldn’t even begin to list all the things that needed to be sorted out. Jane wouldn’t be in any position to handle the funeral arrangements. There was no one on our side of the family who would take the reins and I knew Heather didn’t have much immediate family either. But all that could wait for a few more hours. The woman who answered my aunt’s phone was correct. I wanted to make sure my brother was all right.
Kat Doyle lived in a duplex among the old houses where some mining company had built housing for its employees some eighty years ago. The mines that were ten miles outside town had been closed since the Regan administration and at first glance most of these leftover houses looked like prime projects for one of those moronic home renovation shows.
The woman who answered the door had long reddish hair that curled halfway to her waist, a vaguely familiar face and a body that not even her shapeless t-shirt and flannel pajama pants could hide. Of course I felt like an asshole for even noticing her body in these circumstances but some things are just hard wired.
“Nash,” she said and her green eyes were full of warmth and sympathy.
“Kat?” I guessed.
She nodded. “You might remember that I used to live three houses down from you. I was a few years younger though.”
Something clicked. I recalled a skinny girl with a cap of boyishly cut red hair who always wore classic rock band shirts that were way too large for her. Kathleen Doyle was well known not for her looks or wardrobe choices but because she was a local legend, a damn genius who won every academic award ever invented by the Hawk Valley Unified School District and generally put everyone else to shame. She also used to follow me around all over the place even though I never acknowledged her.
“Kathleen,” I said. “I remember you now.”
A pleased smile tilted her lips and then faded just as quickly. Her eyes filled with sudden tears. “Heather was my cousin,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Nash. We’re all still in shock.”
Standing outside Kathleen’s door I could smell the smoke in the air. It was everywhere. Never again would I be able to light a campfire without wanting to fucking vomit.
Roxie stuck her head out of the window of the pickup truck and barked once, just to remind me she was still there.
“Settle down,” I called and she whined once but sat down on the seat.
“You brought your dog?” Kathleen asked. She looked puzzled.
“Yeah. I was driving anyway and didn’t know when I’d be going back to Oregon.”
She appeared to mull that over and gave me a long look of appraisal that I couldn’t quite interpret.
“Come inside,” she said and backed up so I could clear the doorway. “Oh wait, what about your dog?”
I snapped my fingers in the direction of the truck. “Roxie, stay.” I turned back to Kathleen. “Don’t worry about her. She’s well trained and the window’s open. She’ll be fine.”
Kathleen Doyle’s kitchen looked like a time capsule from 1983. However, except for a few dishes in the sink everything was neat and clean.
“Coffee?” she offered.
“No thanks. I’m not a fan of caffeine.”
She poured a cup anyway, probably for herself. “I’m too big a fan,” she said. “I don’t know how I’d get through a day otherwise.” She set the coffee pot down. “Do you want me to wake Jane up? She’s asleep in my room. She took a powerful sedative to calm down and Kevin—her boyfriend, Kevin Reston—didn’t want her to be alone while he went to take care of fire department matters.”
Kathleen paused to take a sip of her coffee. She leaned against the kitchen counter in her bare feet and pajamas and watched me. Again, I got the feeling her sharp green eyes were conducting a rapid assessment.
I leaned against the nearest wall and stared back at her. Now that I was here in Hawk Valley the reality was starting to sink in. My father and his wife were dead. My baby brother was an orphan. I hadn’t cried yet but this girl was looking at me in a sad way that said she understood how much I wanted to. The fire had been a ferocious act of nature so there was no blame to assign but I wanted to scream and break something with my hands anyway. And even though I hadn’t shed a tear yet I could easily sink to the floor and weep until the sun came up again. But I wasn’t going to do any of that in Kathleen Doyle’s kitchen.
Someday.
It was all too bitter a fucking pill to swallow at this point. I couldn’t quite choke it down yet.
Darkness had long since settled when I finally reached the city limits of Hawk Valley. The place looked pretty much the same as it had the last time I’d seen it. Hawk Valley was a town stuck in time, maintaining a dusty kind of quaint charm while trying to keep its small businesses above water. The real estate boom and bust cycles of Phoenix didn’t stretch this far north and vacation home buyers tended to bypass the place and choose mountain cabins instead. There was a small college on the outskirts of town but on the whole Hawk Valley was more of a pass through place that relied on the fringes of the tourist industry spending their loose change in the souvenir shops on Garner Avenue or grabbing a quick lunch at the local cafes. The people who lived there just got by and held onto what they had.
A shared custody arrangement meant I spent summers and vacations here as a kid. Then the summer I turned fourteen I became a permanent resident. It wasn’t by choice. It was because the worst possible nightmare had come true. But that was the last thing I wanted to think about. The current situation was fucking terrible enough to handle without dwelling on the past.
The news was all over the local radio. Raging brush fire in the Hawk Mountains. Two lives lost. Blaze a hundred percent contained at this point. There was no information yet on how the flames had ignited but with high winds and dry conditions it wouldn’t have taken much. The fact that the skies saw fit to open up just as the fire roared out of control was a lucky break for the emergency crews. It just didn’t happen soon enough for my father and his wife.
Jane was too distraught last night to hand out many details. While I was paused at a traffic light on Garner Avenue I tried to call her to let her know I was here. I was worried about her. My aunt was a fragile kind of soul. She probably wasn’t dealing with the death of her big brother very well.
“Hello?”
“Jane. It’s Nash. I just got to town.”
“Nash. Oh god, this is all so awful and I can’t say how sorry I am. Jane’s asleep in my room. She asked me to answer if you called.”
I was confused. “Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry. This is Kat Doyle.”
The matter-of-fact way the woman said her name made me think it should mean something to me. I searched my memory but after twenty hours on the road all the connections were shot.
“I’m heading over to my father’s house,” I said, although I didn’t know what I expected to find there. My voice cracked at the word ‘father’. When I said it out loud I couldn’t escape the truth that I didn’t have one anymore. Chris Ryan, the man who taught me how to catch a ball and hammer a nail was dead. Sure, he had his flaws. So did everyone.
“Why don’t you just come to my place?” Kat Doyle said. “I know there’s so much to deal with but it doesn’t have to all get done tonight. Jane badly needed to get some rest but she’ll want to talk to you. And Colin’s here. I’m sure you want to check on him.”
I digested this information and asked Kat Doyle for her address. I couldn’t even begin to list all the things that needed to be sorted out. Jane wouldn’t be in any position to handle the funeral arrangements. There was no one on our side of the family who would take the reins and I knew Heather didn’t have much immediate family either. But all that could wait for a few more hours. The woman who answered my aunt’s phone was correct. I wanted to make sure my brother was all right.
Kat Doyle lived in a duplex among the old houses where some mining company had built housing for its employees some eighty years ago. The mines that were ten miles outside town had been closed since the Regan administration and at first glance most of these leftover houses looked like prime projects for one of those moronic home renovation shows.
The woman who answered the door had long reddish hair that curled halfway to her waist, a vaguely familiar face and a body that not even her shapeless t-shirt and flannel pajama pants could hide. Of course I felt like an asshole for even noticing her body in these circumstances but some things are just hard wired.
“Nash,” she said and her green eyes were full of warmth and sympathy.
“Kat?” I guessed.
She nodded. “You might remember that I used to live three houses down from you. I was a few years younger though.”
Something clicked. I recalled a skinny girl with a cap of boyishly cut red hair who always wore classic rock band shirts that were way too large for her. Kathleen Doyle was well known not for her looks or wardrobe choices but because she was a local legend, a damn genius who won every academic award ever invented by the Hawk Valley Unified School District and generally put everyone else to shame. She also used to follow me around all over the place even though I never acknowledged her.
“Kathleen,” I said. “I remember you now.”
A pleased smile tilted her lips and then faded just as quickly. Her eyes filled with sudden tears. “Heather was my cousin,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Nash. We’re all still in shock.”
Standing outside Kathleen’s door I could smell the smoke in the air. It was everywhere. Never again would I be able to light a campfire without wanting to fucking vomit.
Roxie stuck her head out of the window of the pickup truck and barked once, just to remind me she was still there.
“Settle down,” I called and she whined once but sat down on the seat.
“You brought your dog?” Kathleen asked. She looked puzzled.
“Yeah. I was driving anyway and didn’t know when I’d be going back to Oregon.”
She appeared to mull that over and gave me a long look of appraisal that I couldn’t quite interpret.
“Come inside,” she said and backed up so I could clear the doorway. “Oh wait, what about your dog?”
I snapped my fingers in the direction of the truck. “Roxie, stay.” I turned back to Kathleen. “Don’t worry about her. She’s well trained and the window’s open. She’ll be fine.”
Kathleen Doyle’s kitchen looked like a time capsule from 1983. However, except for a few dishes in the sink everything was neat and clean.
“Coffee?” she offered.
“No thanks. I’m not a fan of caffeine.”
She poured a cup anyway, probably for herself. “I’m too big a fan,” she said. “I don’t know how I’d get through a day otherwise.” She set the coffee pot down. “Do you want me to wake Jane up? She’s asleep in my room. She took a powerful sedative to calm down and Kevin—her boyfriend, Kevin Reston—didn’t want her to be alone while he went to take care of fire department matters.”
Kathleen paused to take a sip of her coffee. She leaned against the kitchen counter in her bare feet and pajamas and watched me. Again, I got the feeling her sharp green eyes were conducting a rapid assessment.
I leaned against the nearest wall and stared back at her. Now that I was here in Hawk Valley the reality was starting to sink in. My father and his wife were dead. My baby brother was an orphan. I hadn’t cried yet but this girl was looking at me in a sad way that said she understood how much I wanted to. The fire had been a ferocious act of nature so there was no blame to assign but I wanted to scream and break something with my hands anyway. And even though I hadn’t shed a tear yet I could easily sink to the floor and weep until the sun came up again. But I wasn’t going to do any of that in Kathleen Doyle’s kitchen.
