The Favour

Before they could say anything else, the back door opened. Nan didn’t seem surprised, but Janelle was still in the California mind-set—nobody left their doors unlocked, and anyone who came in uninvited and unannounced might as well have a target painted on their chest.

It was Andy. Today he wore a striped, long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, his feet in socks, not slippers. He’d probably kicked his shoes off on the back porch. He looked totally put-together, and if you ignored the thick white stripe in his slicked-back hair, hardly different than he had as a teen. He gave her that grin.

“Janelle! Hi!” He remembered her name this time, at least.

“Hi, Andy.” She gave him a cautious smile. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, he came over to play cards with me. Get me warmed up for the club.” Nan gestured. “Come on in, honey. Janelle, bring those cinnamon rolls in here to the table.”

“Your Nan makes them the best,” Andy confided. “I missed ’em.”

“You could’ve come over anytime, honey, you know that,” Nan said.

He hesitated, looking a little guilty. “Gabe said not to bother you. I sent flowers, though, when you were in the hospital. Did you get them?”

“They were lovely. And you’re never a bother. Sit down, honey. Sit.”

“Andy, do you come over to play cards a lot?” They’d spent hours, back in the day, playing poker for M&M’s or pennies. Andy had had an amazing poker face. They’d played other games, too. Bullshit had been a favorite. Blackjack. She smiled, remembering.

“Sure, whenever I can. When Dad’s napping and Gabe’s at work, and if I don’t have to work.” He opened the corner cabinet and pulled out the worn box filled with multiple decks of cards that had been around since Janelle’s childhood. “You wanna play?”

“No, thanks. I need to figure out what to do with the dishwasher.” She eyed him. “Where do you work?”

He named the town’s bigger grocery store. “I work in the stockroom. Or I help bring the carts in. They don’t really like me to bag the groceries because of my bum hand. I drop too many jars.”

She’d assumed he couldn’t work. Somehow knowing he had a job made Janelle feel better. Like you have the right to feel good about anything that happened, she thought. “Oh, that’s good.”

Andy’s laugh had always been as sweet as his smile. “It’s okay. Gabe says I should try for something else, maybe. But I like what I do.”

“Something else?”

Andy dealt out the cards, solicitously moving the pile close enough to Nan so she didn’t have to stretch for it. “Yeah. Like school or something. Maybe. But it’s okay. Mikey went to college. I don’t need to go.”

Janelle leaned in the doorway. If she was thirty-eight, Andrew would be thirty-four, or close to it. “Gabe thinks you should go to school now?”

Andrew shrugged. “He thought I should go before. But now, I don’t know. I can’t drive because of the seizures. Can’t remember stuff. School seems like a waste of time.”

Janelle kept her voice neutral. Gabe had always talked about leaving St. Marys. Becoming something.

“I’m getting out of here,” he says as the smoke curls out of his mouth. “Never coming back.”

She’s feeling lazy and hazy and has no idea what she’s going to do when school’s over, when she has to enter the real world. “What do you want to do with your life?”

“Just get out of here.” He’s dead serious. “Get away.”

“Did he go to college? Gabe, I mean.”

“Nope. He worked at the plant.”

Nan sorted her cards. “Their daddy retired from there, but Gabe wasn’t there for very long, was he? He started his own business a while ago. He’s a handyman, isn’t he, Andy? How long’s he been doing that?”

“Nope. Since...” Andrew frowned. “Since... I’m sorry, I don’t remember lots of stuff. It sucks sometimes.”

A handyman. That made sense. He’d always been good at fixing things. Breaking them, too.

“It’s okay. You and Nan play the game. I’m going to figure out what to do with this dishwasher.” Which first meant unloading it and washing the dishes by hand.

All of them.

There was actually a kind of contentment in it. Filling half the double sink with hot water and soap, setting up the drain rack. Taking the stuff from the dishwasher, biggest to smallest, and making sure each piece was cleaned and rinsed. Scrubbing at the dried-on dirt. It was the pleasure of a job done carefully and well, but there was something more to it, as well.

“C’mon, Janelle. Let’s go!” Andy pokes his head in the back door, grinning. “Gabe says he won’t wait anymore.”

They’re supposed to go out to the cabin in the woods to shoot guns. Snow day. Nan’s at work, and Janelle has chores.

“I have to finish the dishes first.”

Gabe wouldn’t put a foot inside this house, but Andy doesn’t hesitate. “I’ll help. It’ll go faster that way.”

And it does, even with the suds going all over the place, especially when Mikey’s sent inside to see what’s taking them so long. They pull him into the suds fight and the three of them make a mess and clean it up while they laugh and Gabe waits, stewing in the truck. He’s so mad he won’t talk to any of them until they get to the cabin.

She was nearly finished when Andy came into the kitchen. Without a word, he went to the drying rack and started putting things away, being sure to wipe the wet ones with a towel he pulled from the drawer. Janelle handed him a few forks she’d just rinsed, watching as he held everything carefully against his body so he didn’t drop it.

“How was the game?”

“Good. She won.” He grinned. “She’s napping on the couch.”

Andy’s phone rang from his pocket. He didn’t reach for it, though it chirped at him several times. At Janelle’s curious look he said, “It’s my brother.”

“Won’t he worry if you don’t answer it?”

Andy looked exactly the way Bennett did when she asked him if a teacher wouldn’t scold him for not turning in his homework. “I left a note on the counter. It’s not like I ran off without telling him.”

A moment later, the phone rang again. Andy dried his hands and pulled the cell from his pocket, flipping it open. “Gabe, I told you, I’m over at Mrs. Decker’s. Playing cards. Yeah. Well, yeah. Tomorrow at three, Candace said she’d give me a ride. Yes, I took them. No.” Andy sighed. “Fine, all right! I’ll get to it, I told you! Fine. Hey. Hey, Gabe?”

But apparently Gabe had already disconnected, because Andy shoved the phone back into his pocket. “I was going to ask him if he could come and take a look at the dishwasher.”

“Oh, that’s okay.”

“No, really.” Andy sounded eager, which also reminded her of Bennett and how he could be when he wanted something for some reason he didn’t feel like he could be up-front with her about. “He fixes all kinds of stuff. He’s supergood with his hands.”

She laughed at that, though she had no suspicions Andy was talking in innuendo. “Oh, I’ll bet he is.”

“He can fix a lot of things,” Andy said wistfully. His gaze went unfocused for a few seconds as he stared past her with such intent Janelle turned to see what he was looking at. Then his gaze snapped back to her face. “Not everything, though.”

“Nobody can fix everything, Andy.”

“Too bad, huh?” he said.