You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone (40 page)

Luke's town house seemed like home now. Aunt Dee had redecorated while he and Luke had been in the hospital. It was a mix of things he knew from Luke's place, knickknacks he remembered from his aunt's apartment in Washington, DC, and stuff from his parents' house. Luke had told him to make the guest room into his room. So once out of the hospital, Spencer had taped his Bill Murray movie posters on the walls—and on the bookshelf, he'd displayed framed photos of his parents.

He told himself this was as close to
home
as he'd ever get.

For company tonight, he'd put on a pressed blue shirt, a tie, and clean khaki cargo pants. Even though they all knew about him, everyone was nice. Aunt Dee had busted her chops to prepare a terrific dinner. Luke seemed in a great mood—for a while anyway.

But it was weird for Spencer to be
home
—and not have his mom and dad there. No one really understood that he missed them horribly. Until his arrest, his holidays had always been with them—and Aunt Dee. He missed his grandfather, who used to dote on him. And now the bitter old man refused to talk to him.

The cab arrived for Dana. Spencer took Dana's threadbare jacket off a hanger in the closet, and gave it to him at the door. “Well, thanks for helping me clean up,” he said. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

The strange-looking man smiled at him. “I read so much about you before I met you,” he said, putting on his jacket. “And I came to the conclusion that you were a pretty good kid who got a raw deal. I know now that I was right. Happy Thanksgiving, Spencer.”

“Well, thanks,” Spencer said, shaking his good hand.

He stood at the door and watched the man hurry toward the waiting taxi.

Then Spencer stepped back inside—to the empty, messy house. He shut the door behind him. He suddenly felt so lonely, he wanted to cry.

His phone rang. He pulled it out of the pocket of his cargo pants. He saw on the caller ID that it was Bonnie. He cleared his throat, and clicked on the phone. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” she said. “What's going on there?”

“Absolutely nothing,” he replied, wandering toward the kitchen. “I'm alone. My Aunt Dee took Luke back to the rehab place. There are two slices of pie left and about a million dirty dishes to wash.”

“Well, can I come over for some pie? I'll help with the dishes.”

He smiled. “That would be great.”

“I'm on my way,” she said.

“See you soon,” Spencer replied. He clicked off, and then slipped the phone back into his pants pocket.

He turned on the hot water, and started washing off the dirty plates. He thought of his parents again. He was always going to miss them, and he would always be horribly sorry for what happened.

Spencer looked down at his hands holding a plate under the stream of hot water. He thought of Dana's mangled hand.

Some people had scars on the outside, and others carried them around inside. They would always be there.

He figured the trick was learning to live with them.

Before his thrillers landed him on the
New York Times
bestseller list, Kevin O'Brien was a railroad inspector who wrote novels at night. He moved from the train tracks to writing full-time in 1997, when his novel,
Only Son
, was picked up by Readers Digest and optioned for film, thanks to interest from Tom Hanks. Since then, five of his novels have been
USA Today
and
New York Times
bestsellers and his books have been published in into fourteen languages. O'Brien's 17th novel,
You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone
, will be released by Kensington Publishing in August 2016. Born and raised in Chicago, he now lives in Seattle, where he is on the board of Seattle 7 Writers (
Seattle7Writers.org
), a collective of bestselling, award-winning authors that includes Garth Stein, Maria Semple, Jess Walters, Tim Robbins, Erik Larson, Terry Brooks, Erica Bauermeister, Susan Wiggs, Jennie Shortridge and Elizabeth George. Please visit Kevin online at
KevinOBrienBooks.com
.