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After a while Tobey realized that Emmett wasn’t coming back to the kitchen, so he went on ahead and cooked lunch by himself. He could see Cosmo and Benny out the kitchen window. He cracked it open and yelled at them to come wash their hands.
Cosmo gave his dad another look as they sat down to eat.
Tobey ignored it. Never leave a job unfinished. And this family was one big, unfinished job.
He searched for Emmett in the master bedroom first. The garage conversion was dark and was nowhere close to passing bunk inspection. Clothes were draped everywhere, the bed was completely awry, and a few dishes had missed the cleanup the day before. But no Emmett Tran.
As Tobey ascended the stairs, he heard Kate making noises in her room. He cracked it open and found Emmett on the floor with Kate in his lap, showing her pictures from an open shoebox. The empty laundry basket was next to them.
“Lunch is ready,” Tobey said.
Emmett jumped up, almost throwing Kate to the carpet, and shoved the photographs back in the box before looking up. “Oh, hey,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Uh, thanks.”
“And I was going to put the clothes in the dryer, but...I didn’t see a dryer. Is it a ghost dryer?”
“We don’t have one,” Emmett said. “Ours broke and we couldn’t afford a new one.”
“Dishwasher broke, dryer broke...I’m sensing a theme here.”
Emmett blushed. “Most of our stuff was old when we got it. Secondhand. Anyway. There’s a clothesline in the backyard.”
“Great, I’ll get started on that,” Tobey said.
“No, no, I’ll do it,” Emmett said, picking up Kate as he stood. “You’ve done too much already.”
Tobey didn’t argue vocally, but he followed Emmett to the washing machine, helped him put the wet clothes in the laundry basket, and then followed him to the backyard.
The backyard was just a picketed-off rectangle of dead grass with two clotheslines stretched across two rusted Ts. Since this was the country, the surrounding land belonged to the house too, but outside the yard the weeds had grown unwieldy and there were enough mesquite trees to make Tobey worry about his allergies.
Kate immediately screamed to be put down so she could look for bugs, and Emmett obliged.
The clothespin bag hung on the closer line, and Tobey grabbed a handful, pinned them to the bottom of his t-shirt, and got to work. Emmett, not wanting to look completely helpless, started hanging a pair of Benny’s shorts on the opposite line. Tobey tried not to notice that Emmett was still only wearing boxers and an undershirt that rode up when he raised his arms.
“Where are Benny and Cosmo?” Emmett asked.
“I set them to work tidying the bedrooms for more laundry,” Tobey said. “They’ll probably get distracted by the Playstation.”
“Ah,” Emmett said. There was a long silence with only the squeak of clothespin springs to punctuate it. “So, uh, you were in the army?”
“Yes, I joined up right out of high school,” Tobey said. He paused, deciding if he wanted to elaborate. “My brother was starting to get into trouble, so I had to get out of town so he wouldn’t drag me down with him.” He gave an ironic laugh. “I wanted to get out of town, and they sent me to Afghanistan.”
“Shit,” Emmett said. “Talk about a dramatic change.”
“No kidding,” Tobey replied. He pulled a Pink Floyd shirt out of the pile and pinned it. He couldn’t see Emmett with the wall of clothes in between them. “But in the overall scheme of things, it wasn’t so bad. I liked the routine of everything. And I didn’t see much action during my tour. Then I got discharged before they could send my unit again.”
“What happened?” Emmett asked.
Tobey pinned another shirt.
“Sorry, uh, you don’t know me, I, uh, shouldn’t have asked.”
Tobey rubbed his hair. “Funny, that was the problem. Too many people started asking. And I got tired of not telling.”
“Oh. So you’re...”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
Shit. He should have just kept his trap shut. This wasn’t Chicago—
“Well, uh, since we’re bringing up awkward life stuff, my wife is dead,” Emmett said. “Lots to talk about there.”
Tobey gave a strangled laugh. “Sure, tell me all about it. If you want. Megan, right?”
“Megan, yeah.” Emmett sighed. “Well, we were best friends in middle school, and then people assumed we were dating, so we did, and then people assumed we were going to get married, so we did, and then people assumed we were going to have kids, so we had Benny, and Megan almost died, so we stopped. And then we got pregnant on accident, and Megan was so excited. And we thought maybe it would be better this time. But it was worse.”
“I’m so sorry,” Tobey said.
“It’s ironic. I keep thinking, I need Megan here to tell me how to live without her.”
Tobey took a minute to speak. “I wouldn’t know,” he said finally.
“I hope you never have to find out. It’s the worst,” Emmett said.
It was so much easier to talk with the clothes blocking his face, but the pile in the basket was getting smaller.
“You know they repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell a few years ago,” Emmett said. “You could join back up. If you wanted to.”
“Maybe I would, if I were still twenty-two and by myself,” Tobey said. “But I have Cosmo now, and I’m part owner of a motorcycle shop. And apparently a big-ass house up on a hill in the middle of nowhere.” He cleared his throat. “That house I was supposed to see yesterday and never found.”
“I can drive you up there, if you want,” Emmett said. “You know, so you don’t get lost again.”
“Thanks,” Tobey said. “I’d appreciate that.”