Some inner light had dimmed in Josh, after Vance’s desertion, and sometimes Briana feared that it would go out entirely.
“At least until Dad gets here, it is,” Josh said.
Ignoring that remark, Briana flipped on the overhead lights, sent the twilight shadows skittering. “You wouldn’t really run away, would you?” she asked carefully, making the artwork flutter like ruffled feathers on some big bird when she opened the refrigerator door again. Bologna sandwiches aside, the boys would need a real supper. “If your dad comes to visit, I mean?”
The silence stretched thin between her question and Josh’s answer.
Still in the chair in front of the computer, he looked down at the floor. “I’m ten, Mom,” he said. “Where would I go?”
Briana set aside the package of chicken drumsticks she’d just taken from the fridge and went to her son. Moved to lay a hand on his shoulder, then withdrew it. “Josh—”
“Why can’t he just leave us alone?” Josh broke in plaintively. “You’re divorced from him. I want to be divorced from him, too.”
Briana bent her knees, sat on her haunches, looking up into Josh’s face. He was one very worried little boy, trying so hard to be a man. “I know you’re angry,” she said, “but your dad will always be your dad. He’s not perfect, Josh, but neither are the rest of us.”
A tear slipped down Josh’s cheek, a little silvery trail coursing through an afternoon’s worth of happy dirt. “I still wish we could trade him in for somebody different,” he said.
Briana’s chuckle was part sob. Her vision blurred, and her smile must have looked brittle to Josh, even forced. “Cardinal cosmic rule number one,” she said. “You can’t change the past—or other people. And the truth is, while things were pretty hard a lot of the time, I don’t regret marrying your dad.”
Josh sniffled, perplexed. “You don’t?”
Briana shook her head.
“Why not? He’s chronically unemployed. When he does send a child-support check, it always bounces. Don’t you ever wish you’d married another kind of man? Or just stayed single?”
Briana reached up, ran a hand over Josh’s ultrashort summer haircut. “I never wish that,” she said. “Because if I hadn’t married your dad, I wouldn’t have you and Alec, and I can’t even imagine what that would be like.”
Josh ruminated. They’d had the conversation before, but he needed to be reminded, even more often than Alec did, that she was there for the duration, that she’d fight monsters for him, or walk through fire. For a year after Vance had left them, Josh had had nightmares, woke screaming for her. Alec had suffered, too, wetting the bed several times a week.
“We’re a lot of trouble,” Josh said finally. “Alec and me, I mean. Fighting all the time, and not doing our chores.”
“You’re the best things that ever happened to me,” Briana said truthfully, standing up straight. “It would be kind of nice if you and your brother got along better and did your chores, though.”
The door to the boys’ bedroom creaked partway open, and Alec stuck his head out.
“I’m done being mad now,” he said. His glance slid to Josh. “Mostly.”
Briana laughed. “Good,” she replied, getting out the electric skillet to fry up chicken legs. “Both of you need to clean up. Josh, you go first. Shut down that computer and hightail it for the bathroom. Alec, you can wash here at the kitchen sink, and then we’ll go over your multiplication tables.”
For once, Josh didn’t argue.
Alec dragged the step stool over to the sink, climbed up and scrubbed his face and hands. “It’s summer, Mom,” he protested. “I bet the kids who go to real school aren’t worrying about any dumb old multiplication tables.”
“Alec,” Briana said.
“One times one is—”
“Alec.”
Alec rattled through his sixes, sevens and eights, the sequences that usually gave him trouble, before he got down off the step stool. Then he stood facing Briana, hands and face dripping.
“I know Dad’s cell-phone number,” he said.
Briana’s heart pinched. Alec lived for any kind of contact with Vance, no matter how brief or limited. He probably expected her to shoot down the visit like a clay bird on a skeet-shooting range, but he was willing to give her the information anyway.
“That’s okay,” she said, a little choked up. Alec was only eight. Even after all the disappointments, and all Briana’s cautious attempts to explain, he simply didn’t understand why the four of them plus Wanda didn’t add up to a family anymore. “You know, of course, that your dad… changes his mind a lot? About visits and things like—”
Alec cut her off with a glum look and a nod. “I just want to see him, Mom. I know he might not come.”
Briana’s throat cinched tight. Vance was always chasing some big prize, some elusive victory, emotionally blindfolded, stumbling over rough ground, trying to catch fireflies in his bare hands. Their marriage was over for good, but he still had their sons. They were smart, wonderful boys. Why were they always at the bottom of his priority list?
“I know,” she said, at last. “I know.”
CASSIE STROKED the dog as she regarded Logan in her thoughtful way, seeing way inside. She looked completely at home in her skin, sitting there on the porch step. Unlike most of the women Logan knew, Cassie never seemed to fret about her weight—it was simply part of who she was. To him, she’d always been beautiful, a great and deep-rooted tree, sheltering him and his brothers under her leafy branches when they were young, along with half the other kids in the county. Giving them space to grow up in, within her constant, unruffled affection.
“You look so much like Teresa,” she said quietly. “Especially around the eyes.”
Logan didn’t answer. Cassie was thinking out loud, not making conversation. She never made conversation, not the small-talk variety, anyway.
Teresa, his mother, had been Cassie’s foster daughter, so they weren’t really related, he and this “grandmother” of his. Still, he loved her, and knew she loved him in return.
Cassie looked around, sighed. “The place is a shipwreck,” she said, still petting Sidekick, who was sucking up the attention, snuggling close against Cassie’s side. “You should come and stay in my guest room until the contractors are through.”
“Your guest room,” Logan said, “is a teepee.”
Cassie laughed. “You didn’t mind sleeping out there when you were a boy,” she reminded him. “You used to pretend you were Geronimo, and Dylan and Tyler always fussed at me because you wouldn’t let them be chief.”
The memory—and the mention of his brothers—ached in Logan’s rawest places. “You ever hear from them, Cassie?” he asked, very quietly and at a considerable amount of
