The Favor Read online

  Gabe glanced at his brother, who was busy digging into what looked like a plate of nachos. “Yeah. I can. But why should I?”

  “You know, your job? Your business, what you do for a living? You fix things, right? I can pay you.” Her chin lifted. She didn’t mention anything about favors this time. That had been a cheap shot.

  “You could pay someone else,” Gabe said.

  She’d thought of that, and it was true. Yet here she was, like a beggar with her hand out. And why? “My uncle Joey’s the executor of the estate or something like that, and he won’t approve any major repairs without a lot of legwork on my part. Any legitimate service or person wants a deposit, wants to charge an arm and a leg, and they can’t give me any reasonable estimate of when they’ll be finished.”

  Gabe frowned. “What do you mean, he won’t approve them?”

  “I have a budget,” she told him. “It’s embarrassing. It’s ridiculous. They want me to get the house in order, so they say, for when Nan...when it comes time to sell the house, it’ll be ready to go on the market. That’s what they told me, anyway, when they asked me to come and stay with her, until...”

  “She dies,” Andy interjected.

  “Jesus, Andrew. Way to be sensitive.” Gabe reached over casually to knock the back of his brother’s head.

  From the living room came a shout. “Watch your language!”

  Janelle burst into giggles. It was so much like it had been back then, when they were young. Gabe didn’t laugh, but he did lean against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed.

  “So you think I’ll just fix a bunch of stuff for you on the down-low? For cheap?”

  “I think,” Janelle said honestly, “that you’d do a good job and let me pay you how I can, and if you say you’ll do it, I can count on you to finish.”

  Gabe’s expression didn’t change. His gaze didn’t flicker. His lips didn’t twitch. “What do you need done?”

  Janelle pulled her list from her pocket. It had gone soft from being folded and refolded over and over again. “I listed everything I think needs to be fixed or changed, but I prioritized. Major repairs at the top.”

  “What’s his problem? Your uncle?”

  “I don’t know.” She wished she had a better answer than that. “He doesn’t want to face his mother dying? He wants to pretend it’s not inevitable? I wish I could tell you. All I know is, I’m tired of running out of hot water and washing dishes by hand.”

  On impulse, she crossed the kitchen toward him. She reached, but didn’t quite touch him. “Gabe. Please? I know I could hire someone else, but...I want you.”

  From his place at the table, Andy let out a snort. Gabe and Janelle both looked at him. He held up the empty plate of nachos.

  “Maybe you can get him to buy a dishwasher for this place, while you’re at it,” Andy said. “I’m tired of washing dishes by hand, too.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND.” It was all Janelle could think of to say. The school had called, told her to come get Bennett because once again he’d been in a fight. The same boys, Bennett the victim, yet Mrs. Adams’s frown of disapproval had said he was also somehow to blame. “What is going on with you?”

  “Nothing.” Bennett looked out the truck’s window.

  Janelle had pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food place, not wanting to wait until they got home to talk about this. At the house he could escape into his room. Lock her out. She supposed he could get out of the truck now and run down the road away from her, if he wanted, but so far he seemed willing to stay put.

  “Bennett, I had to have Andy come over and sit with Nan so I could pick you up today. I can’t be doing that all the time. We’re just lucky he wasn’t at work. So I need you to look at me, and I need you to tell me what’s going on with those boys.”

  He shook his head, arms crossed tight over his chest. His lower lip trembled. He still wouldn’t look at her.

  “Mrs. Adams seems to think you’re friends with those boys.”

  “They’re not my friends. I don’t have any friends here,” he muttered.

  Bennett had always made friends so easily, Janelle couldn’t believe that he’d had trouble here. “If they’re not your friends, are they bullying you?”

  He hesitated, then shook his head. Janelle tried to keep herself calm, but it wasn’t working. She wanted to shake him. What had happened to her get-along kid, her smiley-faced boy? When had he become this grim-mouthed gremlin? This changeling?

  “So why were they pushing you down in the hall?”

  His shoulders rose and fell as he heaved a sigh. Bennett leaned closer to the truck door, pressing his forehead to the glass. “They were mad at me.”

  One piece at a time, that was how she’d solve this puzzle. “Why?”

  “Because they said I owed them...something.”

  “What? What do you owe them?” Janelle cried, frustrated and afraid. “Why would they push you down in the hall or give you a swirly?”

  Bennett reached to his feet to pull up his backpack. He dug inside it, still without looking at her, and drew out a plastic Baggie. He handed it to her without a word.

  “Oh, my God.” Janelle stared at the Baggie, the plastic slick and cool in her fingers. She thought she might drop it, but her hand closed convulsively around it.

  Harsh smoke filters into her lungs and she coughs. Gabe laughs and take the joint from her, holding it over her head so she has to jump to get it. They’re both high, and she loves being high with him because sometimes—not all the time, but sometimes—it makes him giddy and silly, and he laughs like he never does when he’s sober.

  Basically, Janelle just loves being high.

  She hadn’t smoked a joint or had more than a couple drinks in years. She’d talked often with Bennett about the dangers of drugs. She never told him about her past habits.

  “Why do you have this? Where did it come from?”

  “I brought it from California,” Bennett said in a low, shaking voice. “I got it a long time ago, from Ryan’s house. I had it with my stuff.”

  Ryan. It figured. Dull and aching fury filled her, drying her mouth so speech was nearly impossible until she forced herself to swallow hard, several times. “Did you smoke any of this?”

  He looked at her then, eyes wide, mouth turned down. “No, Mom.”

  “Bennett, don’t you lie to me. Did you smoke any of this pot?” She tucked the plastic Baggie with its load of four or five joints against her thigh, out of sight in case anyone happened to look into the truck.

  “No! I didn’t. But those boys at school, they wanted it. They offered to pay me a lot of money for it, so I said I would.”

  “How did they even know you had it?” Visions of child protective services being called rose up. Of being arrested. Worse, of Bennett being arrested, tossed out of school.

  “I told them.”

  She sagged. “Bennett. Why? Why would you do something like that? Didn’t we talk about how drugs are bad for you? Even pot?”

  “They were all bragging about how they could get drugs. I thought maybe everyone did it here.” He gave her a bleak look. “I didn’t want to do it, but they said they’d give me money. I wanted to buy the new Crazytown game, and you said you wouldn’t get it for me. They promised to pay me, but only after I gave them the stuff, and I said I wouldn’t do it until they gave me the money up front.”

  She’d raised a dealer. Janelle clapped a hand over her mouth to keep herself from bursting into hysterical laughter. Some strangled chuckles leaked out, anyway.

  Bennett looked alarmed. “I’m sorry, Mom!”

  The school couldn’t know, or else Bennett wouldn’t just be sent home. He’d have been suspended. The other boys, too. “Mrs. Adams has no idea?”

  Bennett shook his head. “I don’t think so. They told her we were just fooling around, and I said the same thing. She never said anything about the money or anything.”

  Janelle pushed the