“I don’t care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching--they are your family.”― Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty
at me every time I stop at a light…”
“I need an oil change…”
“I need an inspection and need to be at work at 9. Can Benny get me in…?”
The morning at Benny’s shop had been crazy. I barely had time to think about Jack leaving today.
Barely.
It was always there, a lingering thought in the back of my head despite all of my brave words about not holding him back and having to find my own path and blah blah blah…
The fact was, if I thought about him leaving too much, I would probably fall apart. This would not be good for Benny’s business to have his sister a blubbering mess in the middle of a busy morning. Word must have got around that Benny officially took over the shop from Uncle Rob and people wanted to be supportive. Apparently, being supportive means if their car was making any kind of “funny little clanging sound” in the past six months, they were bringing it in this morning.
I was happy for Benny, truly, but the morning had been a lot and I needed a break. I was hiding in the back of the garage where we had a little room with a refrigerator, microwave, and small table that had seen better days. It could really use some sprucing up. The microwave looked like it might be one of the first ones ever invented, and the refrigerator door had more scuff marks on it than the garage floor. Both Benny and my Uncle Rob had the habit of grabbing what they needed out of it and then kicking the door shut with their black work boots.
I was busy making plans to clean up and redecorate a bit when Uncle Rob came in to join me for lunch. John, one of Uncle Rob’s best friends and former employee of the shop for more years than I can count, was watching the front for me. He retired a few years back, but still came in nearly every day to see Uncle Rob and Benny and chat with the customers. The shop was his home. He was comfortable here. And his wife might kill him if he hung out at home all day bugging her.
“Hey Tess,” Uncle Rob said as he came in the room. He grabbed a bag lunch out of the refrigerator and kicked the door shut. I rolled my eyes.
“What?” he asked.
“That door is going to fall off one day from you and Benny kicking it shut. And its nearly black from all the scuff marks.”
“That just gives it character,” he said with a smile.
“No, that is not character. I will give this room character when I fix it up,” I replied.
“Tess, I’ve got way too much else to be doing and spending money on to worry about fixing up the break room right now,” Benny said as he entered the room to grab his own lunch. And like clockwork, he kicked the poor refrigerator door closed.
I just shook my head.
“I’m not asking you to pay for it. I have money saved up and it won’t take much,” I said cutting Benny off when he tried to say something. “I’m not redoing floors and counters or anything, just going to clean it up and maybe get a microwave from this century at Walmart. That thing is a health hazard.”
Both my uncle and my brother looked at the microwave and shrugged.
“Heats my leftover meatloaf surprise just fine,” Uncle Rob said.
“Yes, it only takes 15 minutes,” I deadpanned.
My uncle and I could banter back and forth like this all day, so Benny broke in to bring us around to talking about more important shop business than the decor of the break room.
“I’m going over to the salvage yard after closing,” he said. “I’ve finished with the inventory. There are a lot of parts that we can use for repairs here and list on-line for sale. Tess, I was wondering if you can help me. Do you know anything about redoing a website? We have a basic one now, but I’d like to revamp it.”
“I know a bit. I did some website work for the newspaper in college but I’m not a professional by any stretch of the imagination,” I said. “Let me search for a professional. You need a better website than I can create Benny.”
I could see my brother adding up the cost of paying someone to redo the website in his head. In the grand scheme of things, the ancient appliances in the break room were probably not a priority.
“I will search and get quotes and meet with people,” I said. He had a lot on his plate. Hopefully, this would help with some of his stress. I wondered if him getting that loan was a blessing or a curse. My brother went from calm and easygoing to looking like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders overnight. But it wasn’t the first time that happened to him. If he could survive losing his parents and becoming responsible for raising an emotional headcase of a teenager all in one night, he could do this.
A memory flashed in my head of a day not long after my parents died. It had been about a week since we officially gave the keys to my parents’ house to the bank and walked away. The house and land were for sale and the bank was auctioning off the equipment and cattle. We were still unpacking in the house that -- through years of fixing up and care -- Benny managed to turn into the home we live in now. Boxes were everywhere. It was late at night, and I was still awake. Even though it was our fifth night in the house, I still hadn’t got used to the unfamiliar room and being the only one upstairs by myself. I quietly made my way down the stairs with my pillow to sleep on the couch instead. I thought Benny was in bed already, but when I came around the corner to go into the living room, he was there. He was leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his head in his hands looking at the floor. For a second, I thought about going over and sitting next to him, to comfort him, but I didn’t think he would want that. My brother didn’t share his emotions easily, not even with me. After a minute, I quietly made my way back upstairs.
Now, back in the breakroom, watching him eat his lunch, I could see some of the same tension in him I saw that night. Not the grief, thankfully, but the stress.
After our much-needed break, we all went back to our respective tasks. The pace picked up at the front desk again in the afternoon as people were getting off work, but it made the hours fly by. I really didn’t have time to think about Jack too much until the day was over. I locked the front door and gratefully flipped the sign to closed. Leaning against the door with exhaustion and staring out at the darkening sky, it hit me, Jack would be long gone by now.
I knew that dwelling on it could suck me down into a dark hole. Between Leigh’s death and Jack moving away, I had lost my two best friends in the world in a span of a couple weeks. But I would not go back into that place I was for so many years after my parents died.
Turning back toward the garage, toward my brother and my uncle, toward the life full of possibilities that was open to me, I thought about helping Benny build his dream and my own dreams that I worked on during quiet times. I thought about Ruby, Uncle Rob, Leigh’s parents. I had a life here, and I was determined to live it. With these thoughts, I felt my heart get a little lighter.
Making my way to the garage, I heard Uncle Rob and Benny talking and laughing about something. Ready to go join them, a knock on the front door of the shop halted my forward progress mid-stride. I had just locked and displayed the sign telling everyone we were closed on that very same front door. Groaning and taking a deep breath, I turned around ready to tell a customer to please come back tomorrow, when I saw who it was at the door and stopped dead in my tracks.
Lexie Blake.
She couldn’t seriously be here.
I liked to think of myself as mostly a nice person. A kind person. I don’t kick puppies or throw rocks at kids, I’m not an Internet troll, I don’t run over pedestrians. I would take dealing with someone who does all of those things over Lexie Blake. If there was a person on this planet that made my blood boil the second I saw her, it was Lexie Blake.
I stared at her for a moment standing outside the door in the waning evening light and seriously considered if anyone would miss her if I ran her over with my newly tuned up Toyota. To say I disliked this woman was an understatement. I reigned in my homicidal thoughts and slowly came around the corner of the front desk, went back to the front door, and unlocked it. I left her to do the opening part herself.
“Tess,” she said quietly but evenly.
“Lexie,” I said just as quietly and evenly.
I gave her a moment. When she said nothing, I decided to move this along.
“What do you want?” I asked none too friendly.
“Is Benny here?” She had the audacity to ask the question, as if one, she didn’t know that he was in fact here and two, she had any business asking anything about my brother.
“Not for you he’s not,” I replied.
“Tess,” she started, but I put my hand up, cutting her off.
“Guess what? I don’t care. Whatever it is. I don’t want to hear it and I don’t care. Your car could be burning to bits on the side of the road, and I wouldn’t call the fire department. So whatever it is, I suggest you take it somewhere else and stay the hell away from my brother.”
My voice rose steadily as I ripped into her so that by the time I got to the end of my tirade (or hissy fit depending on your perspective), I was essentially shouting at her.
Of course, my brother and uncle heard this and decided to come out to see what was going on.
“Tess, Tess, stop,” my brother ran over and stood between me and Lexie with his hands up to keep us apart. Then, he turned to Lexie and apologized to her for my behavior!
My mind went blank. I think I was in shock because I could not believe what I was seeing. I looked at Uncle Rob. He glanced away and wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“What the hell Benny!?” I screeched, finally finding my voice again.
“Tess, you’ve been gone a long time, things change, people change,” he said, turning around to look at me.
“The past doesn’t change Benny,” I retorted. “She dropped you like a bad habit as soon as things got hard, when you needed her the most, that didn’t change.”
“We’ve talked Tess, we’ve been talking for a while,” he replied. “There was a lot going on then that you don’t know about. We talked through things and we still care about each other.”
I was silent. My eyes couldn’t believe what they were seeing, and my ears couldn’t believe what they were hearing. My brother had lost his parents, become guardian of his little sister, and needed to find a place to live after the bank foreclosed on the farm, and that’s when his girlfriend of nearly three years decided she couldn’t handle it all and dumped him. Up to the point things went to crap, they had been talking about a life together, getting married, where they would live. And she dumped him and left town when he needed her the most.
When I needed her the most.
I had loved Lexie. I couldn’t wait to get dressed up and stand at the altar and watch her marry my brother.
And she left us both at the lowest time of our life.
When I finally found my voice, I could barely look my brother in the eyes.
“You may have talked things through and forgiven her,” I said to him quietly before turning my gaze on Lexie.
“I have not.”
I turned around and grabbed my stuff from under the counter and left through the garage. No one said anything to me or tried to stop me.