The Favor Read online

  She reached to squeeze his arm, meaning to be reassuring, but she must’ve surprised him, because at the touch, Andy jerked his arm from her grasp. He whirled, eyes wide. It passed in a moment, nothing more than an automatic reaction, but Janelle stood with her mouth open and her arm outstretched. She pulled it back in a second, embarrassed and not sure if it was for him or for himself. Andy blinked, then grinned.

  “Sorry,” he told her matter-of-factly. “I’m a little crazy sometimes.”

  The grin had broken her heart, just a little. His statement finished the job. Janelle said a strangled goodbye around the lump in her throat, and let herself out the front door.

  Andy stalks the halls without looking from side to side, gaze straight forward but seeing nothing. If you’re in his way, he elbows past. If you step in front of him to catch his attention, you end up shoved against a locker.

  “Hey!” Janelle says, pissed off. “Andy, what the hell?”

  He turns, slow, slow, his face pale, blue eyes somehow dark. He looks at her without emotion. He says nothing.

  Whatever Janelle meant to ask him is lost in the depths of that gaze, and she watches him walk away, feeling as if a goose is dancing on her grave.

  Outside, the frigid air turned to smoke in front of her face, and the tears became glass on her cheeks. She paused on the bottom step of the Tierneys’ front porch for a moment to swipe her eyes clear. The path was slippery enough without trying to navigate it with blurred vision. Snow crunched under her boots on the sidewalk as she headed for Nan’s back door.

  “I’m just looking out for him, you know. For both of them.” Gabe’s voice stopped her with her hand on the door handle.

  Janelle turned. Gabe leaned against the back porch railing of his house, gazing over the shrubs that still looked new to her. The cherry tip of his cigarette winked at her. She’d given up smoking when she found out she was pregnant with Bennett, and had never taken it up again, but the old craving rose in her with a sudden fierceness.

  “I understand.”

  “No,” Gabe said. She couldn’t see much of his face, but that hint of sardonic laughter was familiar enough. “You don’t.”

  She wasn’t going to stand out here in the cold and argue with him, but she didn’t want him to have the last word, either. “So, try me. Tell me what your problem is, Gabe. Because you’re right. I don’t get it. I don’t understand how it feels to be responsible for someone’s welfare and well-being, what a burden it can be.”

  She drew a shuddering breath. “I sure as hell can’t possibly know how it is to feel like everyone relies on you. I certainly don’t have any clue what it’s like to have guilt weigh you down so much that you’ll do just about anything to make yourself feel better. Oh...wait. Yes. I can.”

  He laughed again. The cigarette went dark. He became nothing but shadow.

  “Big difference,” he said. “You had a choice.”

  Then he went inside his house and left her standing in the freezing dark.

  FIFTEEN

  ANY MOTHER OF a twelve-year-old boy had to also be an archaeologist. Sorting through the detritus in Bennett’s backpack, layer by layer, Janelle could’ve written a dissertation on the social life of a sixth-grader. Along with the half-filled water bottles, candy wrappers and worn-to-the-nub pencils, there were also the crumpled, forlorn and ubiquitous pieces of paper.

  She was looking for a permission slip for the field trip, which absolutely had to be turned in tomorrow or Bennett would have to stay behind in the principal’s office. She found the needed form and set it aside. She also found a lot of other things.

  With Nan napping, Janelle didn’t want to holler for him, but neither did she want to haul everything up to his room. She settled for calling him from the bottom of the stairs. When he appeared at the top, she held aloft a rainbow of papers. “Come here.”

  Reluctantly, he did.

  “What’s all this stuff?”

  Bennett shrugged. “I don’t know. Stuff. Junk.”

  Janelle pulled out an insurance form, one for reduced lunches, another with instructions on how to deposit lunch money in his account so he didn’t have to carry cash every day. She’d been killing herself trying to make sure she had small bills for him to take, and now she found out she could’ve just written one big check to last a few months.

  “Some of this stuff isn’t junk.” She plucked at a creased paper covered in what looked like melted chocolate from a granola bar or something. “Some of this is important. From now on, please make sure you take everything out of your backpack when you get home and sort through it.”

  “Okay.” Bennett had a foot on the stairs, easing upward, but he wasn’t going to get away so easy.

  “Hold it.” Janelle shuffled through the papers again and pulled out a test emblazoned with a scarlet F. It had a space for her to sign. “Were you supposed to show this to me?”

  His shrug was maddening.

  “This says I was supposed to sign it and you had to return it. Obviously, you didn’t.” She dug farther and pulled out a note from his teacher expressing concern about Bennett’s performance in math, and requesting a meeting. Janelle held it up, hating the way his eyes shifted from hers, how his feet shuffled. Connor had looked at her that way once or twice, and that had been enough.

  “You can sign it now.”

  She’d known he was struggling with math, but not the extent. Andy had come over only a couple times to work with him. “Is Andy helping you at all?”

  Another shrug.

  Janelle sighed. “Is your homework finished?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Math? Everything?”

  Bennett paused. “Yeah.”

  That didn’t convince her. She dug again and pulled out a reading log with spaces for books read, how many minutes spent and if a comprehension test had been completed. Half the log was blank but for red pen marks. Janelle’s stomach tightened, anger making her grit her teeth. Math was one thing, but Bennett had never struggled with English or Social Studies.

  “What is going on with you? You’re supposed to be reading, and you’re not? What?”

  “I already read the books she has on her list. She won’t let me skip them.”

  “So finish the tests on them, get the credit if you already read them. You have to do the work, Bennett.” Janelle pinched the bridge of her nose against a headache. “No games.”

  “What? No!”

  She nodded. “No games or anything else until you’re caught up on your work. And you bring it to me. I’ll check it.”

  Bennett sighed from someplace deep inside, turned around and went up the stairs. He didn’t stomp or slam his door, but it was easy to see how put-upon he felt. Janelle hung her head for a moment, one hand on the newel post, trying to gather the strength not to be annoyed by what she knew was typical kid behavior. God knew she’d given her mother more hard times than Bennett, so far, had ever given her. She didn’t know how her mom had managed.

  “I almost didn’t,” her mom reminded her on the phone a few minutes later when Janelle called her. “I was at my wit’s end with you.”

  “Rehab or reform school. I remember.” Janelle laughed quietly. She’d taken her phone out to the back porch so she could be close if Nan called out. Spring was on its way, but it wasn’t unheard of for March to have blizzards as bad as any in December, and though she was comfortable in a sweatshirt, the sky told her it shouldn’t be a surprise when the temps dropped again. The air smelled good, though. Fresh. She breathed deep.

  “But you went to Nan’s instead. I was lucky.”

  “No,” Janelle said. “I was lucky.”

  Her mother chuckled. “Looking back, I think I made so many mistakes with you because I was so determined to make you perfect.”

  “Really?” Janelle had never heard her say that before. “What made you think you had to?”

  “Oh...so all the people who looked down their noses at me for having you without marrying your dad m