The Favour

Gabe watched impassively, wondering if he’d need to jump across the table in a minute to resuscitate him. Wondering, if push came to shove, if he’d bother. The old man’s choking tapered off, and he gave Gabe a glare.

“Wipe that smile off your face.”

“Didn’t know I was smiling,” Gabe said. “Sorry.”

His father wiped his mouth with a paper napkin from the basket in the middle of the table. His hands were shaking. When he looked at Gabe, his eyes were red-rimmed and watering.

“You think I hate you, but I don’t.”

Gabe got up to pour his unfinished beer into the sink. “I’m going out for a smoke.”

“But you hate me.”

Without looking at him, Gabe pushed open the back door and stepped onto the porch. A light swung into the alley from a vehicle in the Deckers’ driveway. A few minutes later he heard the crunch of boots on the ice and salt. Janelle, arms full of brown paper grocery bags, made her careful and slightly unsteady way down the alley toward the back door. Her movements lit the motion-activated spotlight at the back of the house.

He watched her struggle for a minute before she looked up to see him standing there. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Janelle said quietly. She shifted both bags to one arm so she could open the door with the other. “You’re going to freeze.”

“Hot-blooded,” Gabe said without thinking, forgetting for a minute she was the one who’d first called him that.

She laughed, and it was just how he remembered it. Full-on, no holding back. She shook her head a little and pulled open the screen door, one foot on the bottom step. She looked back at him from just inside the back porch.

“Good night.”

She didn’t wait for him to answer. And Gabe, hot-blooded though he might be, was suddenly aware of the cold. He went back inside the kitchen, expecting to find his father gone to bed, or if not that, back in his usual spot in front of the TV.

The old man hadn’t moved from the table. He hadn’t eaten more pie, and hadn’t bothered to put it back in the fridge or take his plate to the sink. Neither was a surprise.

“I don’t hate you,” the old man repeated in a low, rough voice that didn’t sound like his own at all. “You always thought I did. But I never did. Maybe one day you’ll stop hating me?”

It was a question, but Gabe had no answer.

“I’m going to bed.” He didn’t point out all the hundreds of ways over the years Ralph Tierney had expressed his feelings for his sons.

Hate or love, either way, it was too late for whatever it had been to become anything else.

EIGHT

NAN HAD HAD a few bad days, but she was having a good one now. By the time Bennett went off to school, she had already baked a pan of cinnamon rolls from scratch and done half a book of number puzzles. She sat at the kitchen table in her favorite fuzzy blue housecoat, her hair covered by a matching bandanna tied at a jaunty angle.

“Helen will be over later to do my rollers for me.” White icing clung to the corners of Nan’s mouth. “We have card club tomorrow, you know.”

Card club consisted of ten or so women Nan had known since grammar school. She’d confided to Janelle that it had been months since she’d hosted her turn or even attended a meeting, but with Janelle here it made everything so much easier. And if it made Nan happy, that’s what counted, Janelle thought as she slid into her seat with a cinnamon roll in her hand.

Delicious didn’t do the roll justice. Gorgeous. Awesome. Amazing. “Awesomazing,” Janelle murmured, licking sweet icing from her fingers. “Nan, you’re such a good cook.”

“I should teach you how to make them before I go.”

“To card club?” Janelle asked.

Stupid.

Nan didn’t answer, just smiled and tapped her book with her pen, peering over the top of her reading glasses when Janelle licked her fingers clean. “Your daddy used to do that same thing. Lick his fingers instead of using a napkin. Didn’t matter how many times I told him.”

Janelle paused, then grabbed a napkin from the holder on the table. The question came out before she could stop it. “Do you...miss him?”

Nan took off her glasses and set them carefully on the table, then rubbed the small red marks they’d left on the sides of her nose. She tapped her pen on the puzzle book again. “He was my oldest boy, Janelle. Of course I miss your dad.”

“Do you ever hear from him?”

“No.” Nan frowned. “And maybe it’s better that way. When someone breaks your heart over and over again, sometimes it’s better to just let them go.”

Janelle had let her dad go a long time ago for that very reason. Until now she hadn’t ever thought about how it must’ve made Nan feel to have lost touch with her son. Until she was a mom herself, Janelle wasn’t sure she’d have understood. She couldn’t imagine letting Bennett go, not like that. She reached across the table to squeeze Nan’s hand.

“How about something to drink?”

“Nothing for me, honey,” Nan said, her eyes bright, but without so much as a sniffle. “I’m going to finish my puzzle.”

Ice-cold milk would be perfect with the cinnamon roll. Even better than the coffee Janelle hadn’t made yet because she was still looking for her coffeemaker. She pulled the carton from the refrigerator and poured a glass, noticing too late that the one she’d pulled from the back of the cupboard was etched and striped with dirt. So was the next she pulled out. She held it to the light, twisting it.

Filthy.

Bennett was in charge of loading and unloading the dishwasher here, the way he’d been in California, and for a brief, irritated moment, Janelle wondered if he’d been too lazy to make sure the dishes were clean, or if he’d been too inattentive to notice. Or a twelve-year-old’s winning combination of both.

She checked the dishes in the cupboard quickly. The ones closer to the top of the stack, ones they’d been using regularly, seemed clean enough, but some beneath were crusted with bits of dried-on food. Just a few here and there, but enough to make her stomach turn. The flatware in the drawer was much the same. Some of the pieces looked fine, but there were a lot of dirty spoons, and forks with bits of food clinging to the tines.

Everything would need to be rewashed. She loaded dishes in the dishwasher. Added the soap. Turned the dial—because wow, was this machine old. An hour later she checked it and found it full of wet dishes that were still pretty dirty.

“Nan? Is there something wrong with your dishwasher?”

Her grandmother shuffled into the kitchen doorway. “I don’t think so.”

Janelle checked the dial settings, thinking she must have chosen some Light or Delicate option. Nope, she’d turned the dial to Normal Wash. She opened the dishwasher. Closed it again. “I think it’s broken. When’s the last time you used it?”

“Oh...” Nan looked apologetic. “I just wash the dishes by hand.”

“But you had people over for New Year’s dinner!” That meant not only dishes, but pots and pans and serving platters and extra silverware. “Nan, you didn’t wash everything by hand, did you?”

“No, no. Everyone helped do most of it.” She nodded firmly. “And when they left, I just did the rest.”

“Oh. Nan.” Janelle sighed and opened the dishwasher again. “I think you’re going to need a new one.”

“They’re expensive.” Nan sounded worried.

“You don’t need to worry about that.” Though of course, she would. And it would require some discussion with her uncles, since this was an expense that fell under improving the house, and Janelle was only approved to handle the daily household needs.

“Maybe we can just get it fixed,” Nan offered hopefully.