“I don’t know about that,” TJ said as he mounted the front steps. “You never know with monster beef.”
Grace backed up to let him in, frowning. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Sure it does,” he said, stamping the snow off his boots, taking in the familiar messy sprawl of the living room and the rich aromas of cooking stew. “Monster beef could come back to life. The little bits could attack each other right in the pot.”
His little girl rolled her eyes. “Not only does that not make sense, it’s really gross.”
“I’m a guy,” TJ said, unlacing his boots and pulling them off. “Guys are gross.”
“That’s for sure,” Grace agreed.
She began to giggle as he scooped her up and dropped her on the sofa, nuzzling and biting her belly and then, as she tried to free herself, locking his teeth on her forearm in true monster fashion. As a baby, Grace had cried every time they put her into her car seat, making any road trip a fresh descent into parental hell. That had ceased as soon as she grew old enough to talk and be distracted in the car, and otherwise she had been almost uncannily well behaved, so sweet and good-natured and polite that other parents always begged for their secret. Nobody ever wanted to believe their answer, which was that they had simply been lucky.
Now Grace was eleven and things were starting to change, not just her body but her relationships with her parents, too. Grace had grown old enough to challenge them, to push their buttons for no reason other than to discover the results of having pushed them. She had started to pay more attention to the way she dressed and the way she wore her hair. The whole thing unsettled the hell out of TJ. His pride in her seemed constantly at odds with his desire not to lose the purity of the relationship they’d had all her life up till now. They had a little while still, he thought, before the real battles over boys and makeup and dating would begin, but he knew that time with his little girl was fleeting, so he tried to make the most of it.
Of late it had been growing more difficult. Grace felt the tension between her parents and it created a distance that TJ wanted very badly to bridge. When he and Grace were alone, they could just be Dad and Gracie again, and he knew the same must be true of Grace and Ella. But when the three of them were together there was a kind of stiffness to their interactions, a wary uncertainty that TJ hated.
Maybe that’s the secret,
he thought.
No more family.
Growling, he pulled Grace’s arms away from her body and saw that the struggle had bared her abdomen. With a laugh he ducked in and began to blow raspberries on her belly. Grace squealed and tried to twist free, her right knee catching him under the chin. His jaws clacked together and he fell back off the couch, landing on his butt. He sat with one hand on his chin like a boxer unsure as to how he’d ended up on the mat. His jaw throbbed and he gave a low moan.
Grace tried to stifle her giggles out of deference to his pain but when he glanced up at her he couldn’t help giving a small laugh, which got her giggling even worse and then they were both laughing.
Out of the corner of his eye, TJ saw Ella step into the room, her dark, lustrous hair drawn back into a ponytail. She wore an open, indulgent smile full of such love that he wanted to cry for all the days they’d wasted on petty hurts and harsh words.
“All right, you goofballs, come and eat,” Ella said. She pointed at TJ. “Wash your hands first.”
“I think my jaw is broken,” TJ said, faking a muffled drawl.
“Serves you right, horsing around like that. She’s too big to be wrestling with you,” Ella chided him, but he could see she didn’t mean it.
“Not my little girl.”
TJ rose and passed the sofa, headed for the bathroom. He picked up a cushion and whacked Grace with it, inducing another fit of giggles.
“No fair!” Grace yelled. “No cookies for you.”
TJ froze, then slowly turned to look at Ella. “There are cookies?”
“Mom’s making them,” Grace said. “She promised.”
“You know Gracie likes me to bake when it snows,” Ella said.
TJ gave her a hesitant smile. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out, and perhaps that was for the best. In that moment, with the wind rattling the windows in their frames and the snow swirling beyond the glass, their little family unit remained intact. It felt as if they had somehow been transported back to a time before they had let their lives fall into a pattern of discontent and recrimination.
“What?” Ella asked, searching his face, not entirely trusting his smile.
“Just thank you,” he replied. “That’s all.”
For once, her smile seemed to reach her milk-chocolate eyes, but her expression quickly turned serious. She nodded, acknowledging all the things that TJ wasn’t saying … all the things neither of them would say tonight. A moment had arrived that was full of potential, and neither of them would ruin it.
“You’re welcome,” she said, turning away. “Now come on. Wash your hands so we can eat!”
Grace leaped from the sofa. “I call first dibs on cookies!”
“We haven’t even had the stew yet,” TJ reminded her.
Grace rolled her eyes and waved away this observation. “Psshht,” she said. “You can have first dibs on stew.”
TJ laughed and shook his head as he exited the room. While he was in the bathroom washing his hands he heard bowls and silverware clinking and cabinets opening and closing as Ella and Grace set the table.
Shutting off the tap, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He wore his blond hair a bit shorter these days and perhaps his face had thinned, and there were circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there even a few years earlier, but he had grown accustomed to seeing a sort of forlorn quality to his eyes that seemed absent at the moment.
He exhaled, feeling the stress easing out of him.
“Come on, Daddy,” Grace called from the kitchen. “You can’t have cookies if you don’t eat your stew.”
TJ smiled at his reflection in the mirror.
It was going to be a good night.
Jake Schapiro stepped back into his family room, drying his hands with a dish towel.
“It’s been a while since I made dinner for someone,” he said.
Harley Talbot sat cross-legged on the carpet with Jake’s photography portfolio open on his lap. The normally unwieldy portfolio looked like little more than a notebook in the hands of the gigantic cop.
One eyebrow arched, Harley regarded Jake sincerely. “Just so we’re clear, I don’t fool around on a first date.”
Jake threw the dish towel at him. “You’re not my type.”
Harley caught the towel before it hit him and tossed it onto the coffee table. “Seriously, man, what
is
your type? Every time we hang out, you ask me about who I’ve been seeing but you never have an answer yourself. Are you really that boring?”
“That’s why I made friends with you, Harl. I wanted to live vicariously through your love life.”
“Damn, but you are the king of evasive answers.” Harley tapped the open portfolio with one huge finger. “You got talent, man. Between the crime-scene stuff, your photo blog, and taking pictures for the
Gazette,
you’ve got like three jobs. These pictures you take for yourself … they’re beautiful. I don’t claim to be some kind of art critic, but these storm photos are pretty unique. And you know your way around a kitchen, which women love. So what’s the deal?”
Jake stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You liked the chicken, huh?”
“Shit yeah,” Harley said, grabbing his Sam Adams from the coffee table and taking a swig. “I don’t know how you cook it without burning that Parmesan crust right off, and the risotto was like eating a little piece of heaven—”
Jake laughed. “Oh my god, you did not just say that. How do you ever get women to pay attention to you for more than five minutes?”
Harley leaned back against the couch and took another swig of beer. “Come on, man. Just look at me.”
“Well, maybe that’s it,” Jake said. “I don’t look like you.”
“Granted, you’re kind of skinny, but you have your nerdy charm.”
“Hey, now. I’m not a nerd, man. Hipster, maybe.”
“Fine,” Harley said. “Hipster charm.”
“Thank you,” Jake replied. “Meanwhile, I’m getting another beer.”
He went back into the kitchen and fetched a Corona from the fridge, cutting himself a slice of the lime that he’d left out on the granite counter. Even just a room away from Harley, the house seemed to reassert the abandoned sort of quiet that had compelled him to buy it in the first place. Now, more than two years after he’d moved in, the rambling old farmhouse still needed almost as much fixing up as it had when he’d taken possession. The only room that he’d managed to get into pretty much the condition he’d envisioned was the kitchen, but even here there was the matter of the old window and the dead radiator beneath it. Both had to come out, but he was putting it off until he could afford to replace all the windows. Until then it would remain a house of winter drafts and half-renovated rooms, a work in progress. But Jake figured that he himself was a work in progress, so maybe it really was the perfect home for him after all.
Jake squeezed lime into the neck of the Corona bottle and left the twisted slice on the counter, heading back to the family room.
Family room,
he thought. Why did he keep referring to the space that way? He wasn’t in any rush to have a family. Not that he wanted to be alone forever, but he liked the solitary quality of his life out here on the outskirts of Coventry. Still, he supposed it had been too long since he’d had company other than Harley or the few friends he still kept in touch with from high school. Work had sort of consumed him. Harley had underestimated at three jobs. Jake also sold his photos online for everything from calendars to book covers to greeting cards. He still couldn’t ask a lot for such uses, but the more popular his work became, the higher he could push his asking price.
“What do you think?” he asked as he rejoined Harley. “You up for a movie? I was thinking
L.A. Confidential,
’cause you said you hadn’t seen it. That’s a gem, man. Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce, Kim Basinger … but it seems like it’s practically forgotten.”
Harley had moved to the big easy chair at one end of the coffee table. He’d closed the portfolio and sat sipping his beer, head cocked, gazing out the window at the snow falling. The storm had warmed a little, so the flakes that hit the glass made a wet ticking noise. Not quite sleet, but getting there.
“Sorry, man. I’ve got an early shift. Probably going to be a mess in the morning with downed lines and such. Soon as I finish this beer I should head home.”
“Says Officer Drink-’n’-Drive.”
“I had three beers in three friggin’ hours.”
“I know,” Jake said. “It’s pitiful how you nurse those things. Big guy like you.”
Harley chuckled, the sound a deep rumble in his chest, as Jake sat down on the sofa and took a long swig of his Corona. His gaze wandered to the window and he found himself staring at the frame and sash and sill, hating how dry the wood was and vowing to repaint in the spring if he couldn’t afford to replace them altogether. The wind gusted outside and the resulting draft made him shiver, as if the storm had reached right into the house and traced its fingers along the back of his neck. There were half-a-dozen blankets scattered around the family room thanks to that draft. Most of the time he found it just a part of the house’s charm, but not in a storm.
Not with the snow falling outside.
“You never answered my question,” Harley said.
Jake didn’t pretend that he hadn’t heard or didn’t understand the reference.
“You’ve had three girlfriends since I’ve known you,” Jake said. “It seems easy for you, jumping in and out of relationships like that. You start one up, get all intense, and then it falls apart for one reason or another.”
Harley shrugged. “You find out things about each other or you just realize you don’t like the woman as much as you thought. Or she doesn’t like you. That’s the way it goes, man. Trial and error.”
Jake nodded. “I guess. But it seems effortless for you. For me … I don’t know, it’s just too much damn work. Yeah, it’s nice to have someone. Have things to look forward to. And I’m gonna go out on a limb and say I like sex. Sex makes me the kind of happy that I usually only manage to be in dreams.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth he glanced at Harley, thinking his friend would mock him, but Harley’s intelligent eyes were wide and thoughtful.
“Anyway,” Jake went on, “I had a couple of long-term girlfriends in high school and maybe three relationships since.”
“But?” Harley asked.
Jake tried to find the words. Glancing around the room, he spotted the boxes of new hardwood flooring in the corner and something clicked in him.
“This house,” he started. “You’ve been in most of the rooms and I’m sure you’ve seen the pattern. The stairs are new but the railing needs replacing. The back bedroom has half a new floor. The bathroom down here has all new fixtures but the tile for the floor is in boxes.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. It’s kind of weird having to stand on broken-down cardboard boxes while I piss.”
Jake raised a hand. “There you go. I like the project, y’know. I bought this place so I could work on it, but why can’t I finish anything?”
“Maybe—”
“Rhetorical question. I know why.”
“And?” Harley asked, draining the last of his beer.
“I think I love the idea of the house more than I love the house. When it’s all fixed up—when it’s what I imagine it’s supposed to be—what happens then?”
Harley leaned forward in the creaking chair, set his empty Sam Adams bottle on the coffee table, and pointed at him.
“You’re saying that’s why your relationships don’t work? You can’t be bothered to work at making them better because you’re worried they’ll disappoint you in the end?”
Jake sipped his beer, mulling it over.
“It sounds shitty when you say it like that, but yeah. I guess that’s what I’m saying.”