The Favor Read online

  Most of the time, Janelle was able to follow Ryan’s ramblings, but not this time. “Huh?”

  “It’s just this guy showed up here a couple weeks ago. Said he knew you, he’d tracked you down, I guess. From our old place.”

  “What guy?” It had been a long time since she’d lived with Ryan.

  “This old guy. Shit, I can’t believe I didn’t tell you. I meant to, the next day, you know, but I got into something and then I forgot....”

  “Ryan. Just tell me. Who was it? What did he want?”

  “He said he wanted me to tell him where you were. So I said you’d gone home to Pennsylvania.”

  Frustrated, Janelle spit out a sigh. “You told some stranger how to find me?”

  “Oh, no,” Ryan said with another laugh. “He wasn’t a stranger. He said he was your dad.”

  THIRTY

  Then

  THE LAST TIME Janelle actually saw her dad, he’d promised to take her on vacation to the beach. Not the normal beach, either, but one of those all-inclusive resorts with all-you-can-eat food and swimming and snorkeling and meeting dolphins and stuff. She knows better than to believe him. Her dad likes to promise lots of things and then not deliver.

  But this is different than a pony or a new stereo or even the car she knows she will never get, no matter how many times he tells her that when she turns sixteen she’ll have one sitting in the driveway. This is a trip, and she knows for a fact her dad is going because he booked a gig. He’ll play guitar for the drunk people by the pool during the day and drunker people in the bars at night. This is a good job for him, because he gets to play music for money, and also have a place to live and food to eat. And, he tells her, he gets to bring his family down to enjoy it.

  Dad left for the Caribbean still promising to send for her. Maybe over Christmas break, he says, but the weeks pass and Christmas comes and goes. Maybe spring break, he tells her on a postcard that arrives crumpled and stained sometime in February. But spring break also comes and goes without word, without an airplane ticket. And after that...she doesn’t hear anything again for a long time.

  He isn’t dead, she knows that much for sure, because she hears her mom hollering at him on the phone one night when Janelle’s supposed to be in bed. Randall knows she’s listening at the top of the stairs, because he passed her in the hallway on the way to his bedroom. He squeezed her shoulder as he did, but he didn’t say anything, which was the perfect thing to say.

  After that, sometimes postcards arrive from exotic locations, usually with nothing more than a scrawled signature. Envelopes with cash arrive even more infrequently, though those often also include photos. Janelle throws away the pictures but keeps the cash. She uses it to buy a VW Rabbit pickup truck.

  Still, when it comes time to send out the graduation announcements, Janelle has only a short list. Her mom and Randall, of course. Relatives from her mom’s side who won’t make the trip to St. Marys but will probably send her gifts. Her uncles and aunts from her dad’s side already know, of course, but they get their own announcements stuffed into the pretty envelopes and carefully addressed in Janelle’s best handwriting. Most of them will come to the barbecue at Nan’s, and hopefully they’ll all bring presents, too.

  Janelle has to ask Nan for her dad’s address, though. She’s not even sure Nan has it, but she asks. And Nan gives it to her.

  Janelle sends her dad an announcement, along with an invitation to the graduation party. A week later, he sends her a long letter telling her all about what he’s been up to, where he’s been. She doesn’t care much about that, but the part about how proud he is of her...that does matter. Even after everything else that’s happened, that matters.

  At least until the day before she’s set to graduate, and the phone rings. Nan calls her down from upstairs, holding out the phone with a small, sad smile. Janelle already knows who’s on the other line, and what he’ll say.

  So it’s no surprise, but it’s still a disappointment. Just one more. But the last one, she tells him.

  “Forget it, Dad,” Janelle says, thinking she might cry, and proud when she doesn’t. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I’ll come get you in a week or so. Take you traveling with me this summer—”

  “No.”

  He sounds surprised. “What? What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean, no, Dad. I’m not going anywhere with you. Ever. Don’t bother calling me anymore, either.”

  “Aww, Janny, don’t—”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  That’s when he launches into a long, exaggerated explanation of why, exactly, why she shouldn’t be mad at him, why she ought to just “get over it.” And that’s when Janelle hangs up on him. She does it softly, gently, the handset practically kissing the cradle.

  And she never speaks to him again.

  * * *

  “Yes. He called here, can you believe it?” Janelle’s mom snorted derision into the phone. “I told him he was an idiot.”

  “But he asked you where I was?” Janelle kept her voice low, mindful that Nan was knitting slowly on her afghan, and Bennett and Andy were at the kitchen table, working on math. With her luck, at any minute Gabe would show up with his tool bag and his sleeves rolled up. They could make it a party.

  Her mom hesitated. “Yes. I told him.”

  “Mom!”

  “He has the right to know his mom is dying, Janelle. He has the right to know his grandson.”

  “Yes to the first, no to the second. And frankly, if he doesn’t know about his own mother, maybe he doesn’t deserve to know.”

  Janelle’s mom was quiet for a moment. “I know you’re angry at your dad....”

  “Yeah, see, that’s the thing. I’m not angry. Not anymore. I got over that a long time ago.” It tasted like a lie she told herself so many times she no longer noticed how bitter the flavor.

  “Believe me, I’m not telling you to just greet him with open arms. But maybe you could find some way to forgive him. He’s your dad, for better or for worse. Mostly for worse.”

  “Did he say when he was coming?”

  “He didn’t say if he was going there at all,” her mom said. “He seemed pretty shaken up about your grandma.”

  “Yeah, and it wouldn’t be the first time he didn’t come through for someone, would it?”

  Janelle’s mom sighed. “No. It wouldn’t.”

  “I’m sure he does want to make his peace with Nan. But not for her sake. It would only be for his. And he doesn’t get a chance to mess up my son.” The words came out in a hiss. They hurt her tongue.

  Janelle peeked around the living room archway through the kitchen. At the dining room table, Andy laughed as he bent over Bennett’s work. Bennett laughed, too, and ducked away when Andy ruffled his hair.

  “He cannot,” she said, “mess up my kid.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  JANELLE HAD OFFERED him coffee and homemade cinnamon rolls when he finished fixing the molding around the front screen door, but instead of lingering over caffeine and sweets, Gabe lingered over the task. It hadn’t been complicated—just cutting out the wooden trim that had gone soft with rot, and replacing it. She’d told him he didn’t need to paint it to match, that she could handle it, but Gabe had cracked open the small can of paint and dipped the brush in. He’d started the job; he meant to finish it.

  That, and the longer it took him in here, the longer he could stay listening to all of them laughing and chatting without having to actually join them.

  He was such an idiot. He should finish up here the way he’d planned, then go home. Or out. It was Friday night. He didn’t have to work tomorrow. He hadn’t gone out in weeks. So why was he over here, making repairs and thinking about all the other things on the list she’d given him? She hadn’t even paid him for most of the stuff he’d already done.

  And there she was, leaning in the doorway, holding out a fresh mug of coffee.

  “Hey.” Janelle smiled.

  Gabe