The Homecoming
Page 43

“Yeah,” she said. “I could manage that, maybe....”
“I don’t have a long weekend anytime soon. Like maybe a month. But think about it. Could be fun.”
“Could be. Want a pickle with your grilled cheese?”
“What I’d really like is tomato soup,” he said. “I’m sure that’s out of the question, but growing up I used to dip my grilled cheese in tomato—”
She opened a cupboard where she stored about twenty cans. One of them was tomato soup. She smiled at him and he was a little overcome with how pretty she was.
He’d really never noticed that before.
* * *
Seth devoured the pizza while Iris checked the pictures on his phone. She laughed at the costumes of the Thunder Point shop owners, especially Grace, and cooed over the little ones. “I didn’t even take pictures,” she admitted. “I was doing good to get to the door with candy before they started yelling! Halloween is cute but honestly, it wears me out!”
She’d pick up a piece of pizza, take a bite and chew, put it down and go through the pictures again and again. By the time she was finally ready to concentrate on the pizza, he’d consumed half of it.
She handed him back his phone. “You got it all greasy,” he said, wiping it off with a napkin.
“You’re very quiet tonight,” she said.
“Oh? I’m sorry, was there time for me to speak?” he asked.
“Very funny,” she said. “It was a quiet night, wasn’t it?”
He shrugged and took another bite, though he didn’t really feel hungry all of a sudden. He put his pizza down. “Got a beer?” he asked.
She cocked her head and gave him a half smile. “In uniform?” she asked. But she grabbed a beer from the fridge.
“I logged off for the night. I just haven’t changed yet.” He opened the beer and took a pull. “Ahhh,” he said. Then he looked at Iris. “I had to deliver a twelve-year-old home to his mother. Sassy.”
Iris put down her pizza slice. “Oh?”
“He ripped off candy from a couple of younger boys. He didn’t hurt them, but I was right there and caught him. I’d like to think he wouldn’t have hurt them, but I will never know for sure. That’s a bully move. I hate that.”
“Kind of soured you on all the Halloween fun, I guess.”
“Yeah, but it’s Sassy who sours me more. The way she talks. She thinks there was something between us. Something meaningful.” He shook his head. “I don’t get that. I remember it as painful. Short and painful and better forgotten.”
Iris was very quiet for a long stretched-out moment. All the way through him wiping off his hands, taking another slug of beer, wiping his mouth with the napkin. Then he looked at her and said, “What?”
“That’s how I was sure you thought of us,” she said.
“Iris, I didn’t know there was an us. At least, I wasn’t sure what kind of us there was. I was grieving a lost friendship without knowing there was more to it. There was a good reason you were so hurt and angry. It’s not like that with Sassy. She’s been married at least three times since high school and still talks as if we should give it another chance.”
“I guess that’s how she feels,” Iris said. “Maybe she’s felt that way for years.”
“If she has, she’s delusional. Look,” he said, then he paused at length as if thinking about things. “I’m bound to screw this up. I was an ass and an idiot. I was a teenager. I thought I was a gentleman, my mother drilled good behavior toward girls into my thick head. I did have the occasional gentlemanly act. But honestly? I was drawn to Sassy because she exuded sex and opportunity. I couldn’t have put words to it then, but that’s what it was. And it was a miserable experience that filled me with shame and jealousy and frustration.”
“And broke your heart,” she added.
“For fifteen minutes, until the next pretty girl came along. The next one broke my heart, too. So did the one after that. I was quite a bit older before I was clear on what mattered, what was genuine. Sassy was never a friend, never a girl I trusted. That’s not right, Iris, but that’s all I had at the time. And guess what? That’s all she had. I haven’t lost a second of sleep over her since.”
“That doesn’t mean she isn’t hurting over it now,” Iris said.
“There’s nothing I can do to help her with that. It’s time for all of us to grow up and move on. She might not have admitted it yet, but she’s got bigger problems than whether one of her old high school boyfriends wants to date her. If she doesn’t pay attention to her kids, at least one of them could get real mean. He’s a big kid and he could get in some real trouble.”
Iris sat up a little straighter. “Um, could we have a professional conversation? High school counselor to deputy sheriff? Confidential and all that?”
“Sure. But what—?”
“There’s a girl at school I worry about a little. Could be she’s just kind of klutzy. She’s got an excuse for each of her bruises, perfectly logical excuses. There’s just something a little suspicious and I... Not just me, other teachers have been wondering what’s going on. I never thought about a younger brother being responsible for her injuries, but what if a brother is fighting with her? Knocking her around?”
Seth shrugged. “I fought with my brothers regularly. Nick and Boomer got into it a lot—my mother went after them with a broom, swatting them till they gave up. But they usually came away with bruises. The occasional black eye. I wouldn’t call either of them abusive. Just stupid. And siblings. For that matter, you and I used to go at it pretty good. You beat me up!”
“You totally had it coming,” she argued. “Besides, you could’ve taken me. Why didn’t you? Now that I think about it, if you could beat up Robbie Delaney, you could beat me up, but you didn’t....”
“I wasn’t allowed to hit girls,” he said. “And we were young then. That never happened when we were older, like teenagers.”
“This is a teenage girl,” Iris reminded him. “A sweet girl. She’s not a scrapper, not someone who would pick a fight and end up with injuries.”
“What kind of injuries?” he asked.