Now
GIDEON STOOD AT the open doorway to the back parlor, watching his mother sleep next to Sully, her snoring softly, Sully a culmination of blips and beeps and sucking sounds.
He was dead tired himself, but felt guilty wanting to lie down, not when he knew Beth was still out there trying to make sense of what all had occurred over the past few hours. The past week, once you factored in the tunnel’s walls coming down.
He’d reached out earlier via text, asking how he could help, and she’d told him: by resting up. A minute later she’d added: I’ll give you a job come morning.
Gideon’s nose still throbbed from Jax’s sucker punch.
He poured a shot of bourbon in the kitchen and downed it. The burn spread across his chest. He poured another, knowing it could help as a sleeping aid, and this one went down smoother. He walked the first floor of the Smite House looking for his father. There was no sign of Archie in any of the first-floor rooms, so Gideon walked up the curved stairwell toward the second. Archie was a beloved history professor at the University of Nebraska, with tenure and just enough publishing credits to keep him relevant. His expertise was the Roaring Twenties, through the Great Depression, those years between the World Wars so many teachers glossed over. And while the Smite House had been built in the 1860s, he‘d been renovating it for two decades now to match the pictures of what it had been in the 1920s, when the house—then owned by Lucius Smite’s grandson, William, and his wife, Samantha—had been host to countless parties and nights full of jazz and dancing, not so much in competition with but an extension of the historic Beehive Hotel up the street. Archie took the history of the house so seriously he’d insisted they all call it the Smite House, as on the Historic Registry.
As Gideon navigated the second-floor bedrooms and bathrooms and library, he realized how much Archie had gotten done in his absence. Work to the hardwood floors and baseboards and crown molding. Painting and wallpaper and wall sconces. He was still a few years away from getting it exactly how he wanted it, but when money was limited, renovations crawled. Archie often told Gideon as a young boy, sometimes it’s preferable to be the tortoise over the hare. True, Gideon thought now, but that’s a tough pill to swallow if you lack the patience, which Archie so often did.
Gideon heard a chair scoot across hardwood above, and followed the noise to the third floor. Either Archie was up there, or the Smite House was haunted like so many in town believed, like he and Beth and Jax had pretended while they played as youngsters. William Smite, when the stock market crashed in 1929, had supposedly hung himself in one of these third-floor bedrooms. Archie had never denied that but had always refused to tell inside which room it had happened.
Gideon found Archie in one of the three third-floor bedrooms, sitting on a wooden chair in the dark, a glass of something in his right hand, staring out the dormer window toward the street. Toward the Beehive Hotel, Gideon assumed, and the dead look in his father’s eyes saddened him. This bedroom had already been renovated. The bed was made up with sheets, a blanket, and pillows, and it didn’t take much detective work to realize Archie had been sleeping up here. His furry slippers sat on the floor next to the bed. On the end table rested an alarm clock, his reading glasses, and a book on Al Capone. Across the room, on his desk, his laptop was open, although the keys and screen looked dust covered.
Made Gideon wonder how long it had been since his father had touched it.
Archie must have sensed Gideon in the doorway. He held up the glass in his right hand. “It’s just orange juice. Blood sugar was dropping.”
Orange juice was his go-to; if desperate, he’d down sugar tablets. Maxine had been on him for years to get the pump, but he was hardheaded and kept needles for his insulin. Fingerpicks to test his blood. Five injections a day to keep him regulated. Mostly he’d shoot it into his upper arm. Sometimes into his gut.
Gideon said, “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Archie stared out the window.
When it was clear this was going nowhere fast, Gideon turned away.
His father’s voice stopped him. “This is the room,” Archie said.
At first, Gideon didn’t know what he was talking about, but when he saw the hint of a smile on his father’s face, he knew he was finally admitting in which room William Smite had hung himself in 1929. “No shit?”
“No shit.” Archie finished his orange juice, placed the empty glass on the windowsill, but didn’t elaborate.
Gideon thought about how his parents used to dance in the kitchen to jazz music from the twenties, or oftentimes Sinatra. He doubted they danced anymore. He said, “Good night.”
Archie nodded, and that was that. Gideon was nearly to the banister down the hallway when Archie said, “Welcome home.”
Gideon found his second-floor childhood bedroom clean and dusted, the bed neatly made, and the air smelling of the cinnamon candle his mother must have lit earlier.
His Army duffel bag rested next to his bed. They’d exited the gym in such a hurry earlier that he’d left it behind. Someone must have returned it. He unzipped it. The gun was still inside. He removed the baggie that held his Purple Heart, and then the bag holding the bullet. He placed both on the desk, where he’d spent so many childhood hours reading and playing video games and watching movies on his computer. It wasn’t the actual bullet that had traveled through the meat of his thigh inside that Afghanistan home, but, of course, nobody knew that but him.
And possibly Baxter. But Baxter had been as wide-eyed and shell-shocked as he had been, as they all had been, so there was no telling what was remembered after the dust settled and the room cleared of all that smoke.
Welcome home …
I’m no hero, Gideon thought, turning out the light. He slid underneath the bedcovers and closed his eyes. The house seemed more dysfunctional now than it had when he’d left. His time away had helped very little. Sully wasn’t ever coming back.
His eyelids grew heavy from the bourbon.
He still felt like he should be out there hunting down whoever had tried to kill Sheriff Meeks and Doc Bigsby, but Beth had said she already had Simon in lockup.
He texted Beth: How’s it going?
She responded a minute later: At the hospital now. Doesn’t look good. And a few seconds later: For either of them.
Gideon sent: Sorry and thanks
For what
Having my back at the gym
What was that about anyway
Dunno
We’ll talk tomorrow.
What’s going on, beth?
Don’t know yet. And then: Get some sleep
K goodnight
Goodnight
He waited five minutes before shutting off his phone. He closed his eyes, thinking back to the night before his deployment, replaying that evening like he had so many times overseas, coming to the same conclusion that it had all been a dream. But if that was the case, why could he still smell her hair, smell her arousal, smell the perfume on her neck …
Why had she not kissed him that night?
Because it wasn’t real, Giddy-Up.
It had all been a dream.
He drifted off.
Thirty minutes later he awoke with a gasp, covered in sweat, the sounds of those two Afghan children screaming, tormenting his ears.