One Door Closes (9 page)

“Fine.” His smile felt stiff. He saw it when Will’s face closed down. “Just, let’s quit for the day. Get you home early.”

He was repeating himself. He didn’t think it was possible to feel more misery, but Will’s face went completely still, as if he’d hit some button, locking himself into a single instant, and hidden the controls away so that Calvin had no hope of regaining that vitality. For an awful second, it felt like punishment. Calvin wasn’t sure who it was coming from.

“Yeah,” Will said at last. He backed up, putting space between them all. “Let me get Julia.”

His eyes flicked lightning-fast to Devon before he fumbled his hand onto the door frame and vanished into the house. Calvin could do nothing but stare after him.

And Devon watched him do it.

His foster brother, just standing there, was enough to ignite the regular bitterness full force. Calvin hitched his shoulders and glowered out at the drive, now long with shadows. “We need to talk. All three of us.”

“Danny’s upstairs.” Devon’s voice was quiet enough not to grate. “You want us in the library?”

“No.” Anywhere but a room that, whenever he walked into it, still managed to smell like their mother. “No. Dining room.”

He stood on the porch until the chance of meeting Will and Julia on their way out became too great, then escaped into the kitchen and poured water down his parched throat. Two full glasses. Calvin wiped his mouth with the side of his wrist. “Fuck.”

* * *

It didn’t take long for Devon to get Danny down to the dining room, but the situation compressed until it felt like the passage of an age. Calvin kept his gaze on the table. Didn’t lead in with anything fancy. Just the basics, flat-out and in everyone’s face. Far less fanfare than Angus had managed. Other than his voice, the room was so quiet he couldn’t even hear his foster brothers breathing.

“I’m not on them anymore.” He wasn’t about to look them in the eye yet. One battle at a time, and in light of the others lining up, this one was not worth the fight. He scratched at the tabletop with a fingernail. “They were prescription. I never—they weren’t even that bad, not on their own. There are others that are more potent, with worse side effects.”

Devon’s face hovered between expressions, as noncommittal as ever, but Danny looked downright unsettled. His hands had curled tightly round either elbow, and Calvin found himself fixating, because that was the other half of this, wasn’t it? He had no idea what Danny’s side of the story was going to be and no idea how to segue into it.

He’d deal with the mess he was bringing first. “They’re for clinical depression.” He’d always believed that it was good to talk about his situation openly, but that rarely made the initial revelation easier.

“I had no idea you were having so much trouble.” That was Devon, finally, breaking a lengthy silence and sounding like he was stepping around landmines.

Calvin reddened at the unaccustomed openness in Devon’s face and looked away. “No reason you should know at all.” Unless there had been more in Audrey’s letter to Devon than Calvin had ever suspected, and wouldn’t that be a kick in the teeth? “I’m not even taking meds anymore. Haven’t for over two years. I don’t know how the hell he got hold of the information.”

Danny made a sharp sound. At first Calvin thought it was a laugh, but the look on his younger brother’s face put paid to that assumption immediately. Danny’s jaw worked with an agitation Calvin had never seen in him before, and he was...he was pacing. Danny wasn’t the type to pace.

“Danny.”

“No.” Danny snapped a hand through the air. “This guy is fucked up. He’s into some fucking shitty things, if he can— Who
is
he, who does he know that could—” He yanked both hands through his hair and thumped down into a chair.

Devon eyed him. “He’s telling the truth about you, too?”

“I was a minor! It should have been expunged, it shouldn’t even be available anymore. Fuck, don’t look at me like that, Devon, I didn’t steal a fucking Monet.”

“Okay, I’m sorry.” Devon raised his hands. “Danny? I’m sorry.”

It was all going to shit. Calvin couldn’t fathom how normal things had been just this morning, comparably, and now, mere hours later, he couldn’t see a path forward anymore. “Where the hell are we going to get the money?” he breathed, mostly to himself, but there was no way they hadn’t heard him.

“We could go to the police,” Devon said doubtfully, but Danny jumped up again.

“
No
. Not if he’s pulling out this old stuff, who knows what he—”

“Okay.” Calvin wanted to know what Danny had managed to do as a kid when he was supposedly here with Audrey, the best influence that existed in this world. Even more, he wanted to know why Audrey hadn’t come to him for help when her new kids started going off the rails. But there wasn’t time to expend on it right now. “I don’t think we should push him. There might be other things he could use.”

He let it drift there, and they all drank it in. Devon’s mask had come back on. Calvin wondered if they should be concerned about something on his end as well.

Devon must have seen it in his face. “Hey, no. There’s nothing I can think of. Not even something that...should be privileged.”

But it didn’t really matter, did it? “I’m still waiting on a loan application from my bank in Spokane,” Calvin said. “But it won’t be much. My car’s the only collateral I have and it’s almost twenty years old.”

“I barely have any money to my name.” Danny sounded beaten in a way that scared Calvin. Realization flooded.

“Wait, you have a job, I know you do.”

“Pay’s for shit,” Danny muttered. “My savings aren’t enough for this.”

“How were you going to—”

“I would have figured it out,” Danny exploded. “Somehow. Gotten a second job, something. I’ve been looking, filling out applications. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t leave you hanging, I swear I wasn’t going to cut and run or foist the debt off on you, it wasn’t like that!”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” Calvin had been there before, eking it out well enough on his own, but witless as to how he was ever going to make something more of his situation. Taking a chance with what he had left and all the while counting on something to happen soon, just in time.

But he’d had Audrey then. Now Audrey was gone.

Devon didn’t even own a car. A mortgage was out of the question, not with the house in legal limbo. “Anyone have any other property?”

Danny looked absolutely blank. Devon just shook his head. Not a surprise. Calvin didn’t own any property himself, and he could hardly expect someone as nomadic as Devon to put down such roots. This house, here, was about as permanent as any of them had ever gotten. Calvin couldn’t get around the sickness in his gut, a match to the way he’d felt during his darkest years. The idea of slipping back there was terrifying after he’d fought so hard to get out.

His mind reeled outward, grabbed hold of the only thing that could distract it—he zeroed in on Devon. “And
you
don’t have anything we could use?”

Devon frowned, a slow, dark shading of his features. “Okay, what is your problem?”

Calvin raised his eyebrows and Devon’s glower deepened.

“Why are you so damn angry with me all the time?”

He felt Danny’s eyes on the side of his face. Even in the corner of his sight, something had closed off, as if Danny had drawn inward. Calvin tilted his head, keeping Devon’s gaze. “Just trying to figure out how we’re getting out of this.”

The room sizzled silently. Calvin had never had the opportunity to see Devon angry before, and it flared fiercely at his insides, egging his emotions hotter. The air felt dense around his cheeks and throat, just waiting for something to shatter its glass.

It was a shutter that did it, clapping smartly against the house outside. Calvin jumped, scraping a knuckle painfully across the rim of the tabletop, and they all spun toward the offending window. The shutter swung back in the breeze and bumped again, much less violently this time. Calvin couldn’t remember it being windy enough to pop the shutter free of its mooring.

Devon cleared his throat. “I can talk to that credit union. I’ve battled my way through loan negotiations before, sometimes you just have to—”

“Have to what?” Danny still sounded oddly shrill. “Dump the fact that I was in jail out into the open? What about Calvin’s youth group? Forget his pills, if they find out I was locked up, they’ll never let those kids come over to the house again. They’re the reason we’ve held on to the house at all up till now. If they back out, we have no leverage.”

“You didn’t see them at the bank,” Calvin said. “I didn’t faze them at all. The most they looked was sorry.” But not in a way that meant they’d correct the problem. Whatever hold Angus had over the credit union likely had taken root elsewhere as well. Calvin was reminded of how very much an outsider he still was here. Despite having spent their childhoods in Elk Ridge, the word
local
didn’t apply to them in a way that could help.

Deal with the now
,
though
,
not what’s coming.
That had been his cornerstone for months. “I’ll talk to Jerritson tomorrow. Devon, if there’s any way to get in to see one of the council members—”

“Yeah,” Devon said shortly.

“Try, uh...” Calvin pressed his fingers to his eyes. “One of them has a son in my group. Sommersby. Try him. And Danny, can you call and just...see how much money we’d need to work with Audrey’s lawyer on this?”

Danny nodded.

Calvin drew a breath. “I still have funds to handle the rest of the plumbing and the big safety issues in the agreement. Maybe it’ll be enough.”

The others’ silence struck hard and rough, and it was then that Calvin realized just how much he’d been counting on one of them to offer another option.

* * *

“
It’s all right
,
you know
.”

He can’t look at her. He doesn’t even know if he’s standing or sitting, moving or lying down. The touch of her fingers is far too fragile.

“
It’s all right if the house goes
,” she murmurs. Her hand curls more firmly around his wrist. “
Calvin
,
look at me.
”

She looks nothing like him. She’s never looked anything like him. The fine lines around her mouth and the steadily graying hair do little to change the reality of her face—fair-fleshed with prominent cheekbones, a strongly angled jaw. As a kid, it mattered, being reminded again and again that Audrey never gave birth to a son with dark, thick hair and gently slanted eyes. His hands, wide where hers were slender, her bowed mouth to his full one. He told her only once—

“
Calvin
,
look at me
,” she said then, too, deadly serious. “
You are my son.
”

Everything after, he bore in silence.

“
I’m so
,
so sorry
,” he says, and she leans into him. “
I’m out of options.
”

“
There are always options.
Is Will helping?
”

He laughs and it sounds painful, even to him. “
He tries.
”

“
What do your brothers say?
”

He shrugs, too exhausted to be angry or even frustrated. “
Devon couldn’t get a meeting with a council member in time.
And a lawyer’s even more out of bounds than just paying the damn fees.
” His brothers are both distracted, Danny ferociously, Devon retreating, and he doesn’t have to tell her because she knows already. Somehow, she knows. “
And Devon would rather be out of the house.
He just...
”

She rubs his arm. “
Trust him.
”

He can’t tell her why he can’t drop that guard, why a single moment in history can taint the well, turn every one of Devon’s escapes into another brick between them. Devon’s done it before, to Audrey herself. Devon has walked out with no intention of coming back. It took someone dying to reverse that. Calvin both wants and doesn’t want to know where Devon goes during the afternoons...nights...now that he’s seen him interacting so cozily with Will.

“
I
wanted
—” God, he’s going to cry right in front of her. He looks around his bedroom, hears the echo of vacant rooms as if the house’s voice is made of the deafening silence. “
I
wanted to do what you did.
Give kids a refuge
,
at least
,
if it couldn’t be a home.
”

“
You can do that even without this place.
” She rubs his arm again and strokes hair from his face. She’s so very small sitting beside him on the bed, he practically towers over her, and here she is, still the load-bearer. The strong one.

“
You are plenty strong.
” She touches lips to his head. “
You all are
,
because you’ve had to be.
Your whole lives.
”

He feels weaker than he’s ever felt, even during those dim, flavorless days before he came to her house. He covers his face with his hands. “
Mom
,
it’s your home.
”

“
And I need you to know that I don’t mind.
And that I love you.
”

* * *

He woke with the tracks of her fingers through his tears, cold lines across his skin where the moisture had dried. He lay gasping at the ceiling. Blinking until it blurred.

Dreaming about his mother as if she were there in the room, feeling like someone had just let go of his hand, still feeling the heat of her touch—maybe he
was
going insane. Maybe the pills had already made him crazy, and everything Angus said about him was the bitter, sad truth.

Chapter Five

“Shit.
Shit
.” Calvin snatched the keys from the ignition and threw them hard against the passenger seat. “Just great.”

And ironic. Trying to drive into Spokane to deal with a loan contingent on his barely working car.

Well, he was on his way to missing that appointment, wasn’t he? He pulled out his phone, but just ended up staring at it. Danny was at work, and he didn’t have a vehicle anyway. And Devon, what was he going to do? Pack Calvin onto the back of his bike?

He called anyway. Devon’s line rang and rang before flipping over to—

“
You’ve reached Devon McCade
,
specialist in research and freelance photography.
Your call is very important to me
,
so please leave a—
”

“Shit.” Calvin nearly followed the keys with his cell, except with his luck, he’d probably put a hole in the passenger window. He got out into the drizzle and slammed the door. Had to go back into the house, call the bank. It was probably a sign that he wasn’t due to get this loan either.

Farther up the drive, Will stood behind the open bed of his truck. He had on a Washington State sweatshirt that looked thick and comfortable, if a little faded. Calvin took a deep breath, the fight slipping out of him. Even the way Will held himself was different since yesterday, a new caution to his bearing. He was watching Calvin without trying to hide it, but didn’t approach.

Calvin cleared his throat. “Car won’t start. Weather changes and it...kind of decides when it feels like working.”

Will pushed the wood he hadn’t needed for the back porch under the tarp. “You need a tow? I know a guy.”

“Probably should.” He just didn’t know if he could afford it. Except. Calvin rolled his shoulders back. “Actually—”

“Where do you need a ride to?”

Calvin looked from Will to the truck, then to the house. With the windows all dark like that, the place looked ominous and abandoned. “No, it’s in Spokane and you’re about to leave. I can’t ask you to—”

“You didn’t ask.”

There was nothing aggressive in Will’s countenance, no accusation. He was just waiting for an answer. It snapped and shuddered between them, a cable pulled tight. Calvin could almost hear the twang. He took a cautious step forward. The damp seeped through the top layer of his clothing. “Seriously, Will. You sure you’re okay with that?”

Will just nodded, reached for the end of the tarp, and tied up the cords to secure the wood. He didn’t say anything else, and Calvin took the silence as invitation. He got into the passenger seat of Will’s truck, waiting to shut the door until Will hopped in on the other side. The cab was cool, the bench leather chilly through his jeans. Will started the engine, turned the heater up a few notches, and backed deftly around Calvin’s stranded car, his arm thrown across the back of the seat.

“Thank you,” Calvin said as they cleared the gate.

Will put the car into gear, glancing Calvin’s way as he drove. “You haven’t said where we’re going.”

Calvin gave him the name of his bank in the city, and they stayed quiet until they were in the middle of downtown Elk Ridge. The truck was much warmer now, comfortable enough for Calvin to lean back fully into the seat. He watched Will shift gears, his hand moving without thought through the stick shift’s range.

“So.” Will’s voice startled him. “What’s so urgent?” He gestured toward the bag at Calvin’s feet and the folder sticking out of it.

“They’re sale documents for my...” He shook his head. “For my car. The bank’s processing a loan application for me, and I would have just faxed them over from work, but they asked to look at the originals first.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone ask for extra documentation.”

“Probably has to do with the guy I bought it from. He tried to shove off some of the tickets he’d racked up at the time on me, and then he took almost a year transferring the registration paperwork afterward. I’m sure the check on the car turned up a record of some kind.” He was lucky they’d even asked for more paperwork and hadn’t just turned the loan down flat.

Will turned onto the freeway just as the drizzle ramped up to respectable rain. Cars whooshed by in glistering flashes, water peeling away from their tires as they sped toward Spokane. The inside of the cab felt very enclosed, sheltered from the outside world, and the air hung, dense and waiting. Calvin couldn’t resist the opportunity to look at Will while Will couldn’t look back.

His sweatshirt hood bunched at his nape, dark material brushing the strands of his hair. He looked enfolded, the cut of his jaw somehow soft. A muscle worked briefly at his temple, and Will blinked once. He had long eyelashes, lighter than his eyebrows, and up close like this, fainter freckles Calvin had never seen before dusted the curves of his chin and nose.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

Will’s eyes did fly to him then, lingering before returning to the road. “What? When?”

“Yesterday.”

Will’s brow furrowed. “You didn’t. I’m a little confused as to what was going on, but you weren’t rude.”

“I thought I was.”

Calvin thought Will might ask, but instead he turned his blinker on and switched lanes. It was several minutes before he shifted convulsively. “Look, was it Angus? Because if he’s making some kind of threat concerning your contract, I really didn’t want that to fall back on you.”

Panic clawed at Calvin’s belly, its edges lined with every secret he hadn’t been able to protect. But Will was still talking.

“I know I got you into an untenable situation the other day, and it honestly wasn’t my intention to make things harder for you. If there’s anything you need me to do, to say to him or to—”

“No.”

Will fell silent immediately. His hands tightened around the wheel. Calvin licked his lips. He could smell Will. Sawdust and soap, and then the rain, bringing forth the faintest curl of a cologne or aftershave that pricked at Calvin’s nose. His jacket was too warm, too tight to his skin.

He found himself eyeing the pale skin where the hood rested against Will’s neck, and felt his fingers twitch. “It’s not about the contract. At least, not your contract with me.”

Will’s nod was stilted, but some of the tension eased from his grip. Half a minute later, “What was it?”

All the counseling in the world, all the self-encouragement, failed Calvin in the face of Will’s gentle question. He almost reached then for that stretch of skin, a reaction that made no sense. As if touching Will was warranted, or had anything to do with it.

He didn’t want to get into all of it again, explain what Angus held over him. It still dragged such a stigma with it, and he could face that particular look from a lot of people, including Devon and Danny, but not from Will. If
Will
looked at him askance, as though he was trying to figure out just how broken Calvin still was these days...

“They want the house.” He felt like a coward. “It’s a lot of stress, and they’re pushing hard, and I just really need this loan to come through or we’re sunk.”

Will frowned. “What about Devon?”

Calvin wasn’t sure if it was relief or dismay he felt when the topic shifted even further away. “Devon doesn’t want any part of this.”

“He said that?” Will demanded.

“He doesn’t have to. He’s never at the house. He goes into the city most nights, he’s leaving for Seattle in a week, and he hasn’t given any sense of when or if he’s planning to be back.” Calvin couldn’t comprehend the sudden urge to discredit Devon, couldn’t quite believe that the words, however true, were actually coming out of his mouth like this. “If he’s not willing to—”

“I can’t believe that he’s not willing,” Will bit out. Calvin’s vitriol sank back and away. In Will’s frame, he saw a fervor that had not existed before, and now its lines lay everywhere, in everything. There was a challenge there, a foreign one Calvin didn’t know how to meet.

“If you know something I don’t...” he started, and Will reddened. His eyes remained on the road, but his fingers slid around the wheel and back again in a strange tic.

“Look, are you...”

Will looked at him and away again. It would have been so much easier just to stay silent. But Calvin couldn’t let this bottle up anymore, or turn him into someone he couldn’t be proud of. His next breath rasped noticeably. “Will, do you like Devon?”

Will’s mouth worked. He glared out at the rain-washed road, and for the first time, he looked baffled. “Yeah. He’s all right.”

Frustration sprang up in the pit of Calvin’s throat. “Yes, but are you and he—”

Will’s expression contorted. “
No
, I’m not. No.” His cheeks reddened and though his head turned Calvin’s way, he aborted it, checking his mirror instead. “Not that kind of thing.” His hands slid around the wheel and back again.

Something in Calvin shrank tight at the snap of the words, and Will’s mouth bent further downward. But he didn’t reiterate, or explain.

It was hard to talk after that. Will answered when Calvin spoke, but his preoccupation, and a clear, standoffish sense of disappointment grew more intent until Calvin was grateful to pull up in front of the bank. He spent a little time with the agent there while she went over the originals and made copies of her own, and left with no new knowledge about the status of his loan. Just a friendly smile and a “Have a good afternoon.”

Will, waiting inside the door for Calvin to finish, was scowling into the middle distance when Calvin walked up.

“Can I pay you for gas?” He shoved both hands into his pockets to keep them still. Will focused in on him like a blade, confusion coloring his eyes, but Calvin didn’t let him protest. “I would really feel better if I did.”

After a second, Will nodded. “Sure.” He held the door open for Calvin to walk through.

Will’s cell rang while he was unlocking the truck, so Calvin sat in the front seat while Will talked. He counted out cash from his wallet and kept it folded in his palm during the ride back. This time, Will tried to make remedial conversation, but it was clear his mind was still elsewhere. Calvin wished he could hear what Will was thinking, even if, at that moment, it might be the opposite of what he wanted to hear.

“Are you okay?” Calvin finally said.

“Of course.” Even that was gruff. Calvin studied the side of Will’s face and found the shadows under his eyes even deeper than before.

“You’re not getting sick?”

Will’s huff would have been amused, if not for the unsettling curl of his mouth. “Not that I know of.”

“You look tired again.”

Will’s frown fell into a flat line. He looked over his shoulder and switched lanes, and when he was done, the tiredness was plain, unconcealed by the other emotions. “Trust me. I’m sleeping fine.”

Despite the lowering clouds, the rain had stopped by the time Will pulled into the driveway on Lantern Lane. The house looked the same as it had before, and the idea of being alone inside it did not appeal. Still, Calvin climbed out of the truck and was about to shut the door when Will leaned over the seat.

“Listen.” At his belt, his cell rang again but he didn’t even glance at it. “Call me. Please. If Angus does anything else, call me and I’ll figure out a way to fix it.”

Except that Will had little hope of ever fixing this. Calvin gave him what was probably a dry smile. “Thanks again.”

Will’s phone went off a third time just as Calvin was shutting the door. Will backed down the drive again, fixing his headset to his ear as he went. By the time Calvin got onto the porch, the truck was already trundling down the street. He was left with the feeling of something wrenched from his grip, his palms abruptly chilled in the damp air.

For the first time in Calvin’s memory the house felt cold not in temperature but in personality. As he let himself inside, his heart jumped up in the frailest of shudders, only to flop back when the welcome of his childhood dwelling fell flat. It was like arriving to find that a guest had departed without a word, leaving everything in its place but lifeless. The front hall stretched long and empty, the ceiling arcing upward like the roof of a cavern.

The sound of footsteps overhead echoed loudly enough to make Calvin jump. He checked the time on his phone. Must be Danny, already returned from work. The gait was too quick to be Devon’s.

One thing was for sure: if footsteps were enough to startle him, the place was far too silent. Calvin opened the library windows, and those in the kitchen, hoping for the usual murmur of air. Instead, all the breeze seemed to do was whistle strangely around the turns and bends, emphasizing just how empty the first floor was.

“Danny,” Calvin called up the stairs, a hand on the banister. His brother didn’t answer. Calvin felt like he was the only one listening, aching to catch a whisper of a voice. “Dan?” He started up the stairs, their creaks grating against his ears. He had no idea what he was going to say to his brother when he got up there, but he needed someone else’s presence. It had been so tempting to invite Will in. Only the awkwardness stretching tight between them had stopped him.

Upstairs, the air was thin and damp. Calvin wound around to Danny’s room and knocked on the door. When no answer was forthcoming, he pushed it open, an apology ready.

Danny’s room was empty. His bed was unmade, a pair of sneakers kicked off into a corner, and a huge lumpy sweatshirt hung over the closet door. A pile of filthy laundry sat in the plastic hamper Danny had dragged in during his first week.

Must have been Devon, then. Calvin shrugged the tension out and headed down the hall in the other direction. He might not be on the best terms with his older brother, but at the moment, any company was welcome.

But Devon’s door was wide open, the room just as empty as Danny’s. Calvin froze, his fingers brushing the door jamb. He stared into the vacant room, heart hammering against the back of his tongue, then peered down the hallway. The light was gray and flat, an odd watery quality.

He’d heard someone walking, he was sure of it. There was no way to traverse these floors without something creaking or squealing. Calvin was moving before he knew it, hurrying down the hall and throwing his own bedroom door open. The big room was quiet, the door to the en suite ajar enough to see inside. Everything where he’d left it.