Blood Brother by Anne Bird

Author:Anne Bird
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

Jackie kept calling. “Scott is not an evil person,” she said. She kept repeating it over and over again, as if it were her mantra. Scott is not an evil person.

Now she was mad at Scott’s bosses at Tradecorp. They hadn’t exactly fired Scott, but they had asked him to take a little time off, at least until this whole thing blew over. “Scott was very upset,” Jackie told me. “He was on his cell phone, screaming at someone from work. I don’t know who, but I know I’ve never seen him so angry in my life.”

She told me to hold a minute because another call was coming in and she thought it might be him. When she came back on the line she told me that it was Scott and that he was up in the cabin, at Lake Arrowhead, freezing to death. He had a sleeping bag on the floor in front of the fireplace, and he’d gone out into the bitter cold to gather wood, but he couldn’t find much more than a few twigs.

“I’ll call him,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”

I reached him. I let the phone ring twice then called again.

“Scott?”

“Yeah.”

“I hear you’re freezing?”

“I am.”

“Go downstairs. There’s a panel on the wall that’s hard to see. Slide it back. You’ll find an entire cord of wood in there.”

“Great. Thanks.”

“Call me if you need anything else.”

“Okay,” he said.

He was still removed, still distant. I guess he was mad at me. If he hadn’t been, he would have called me directly. Instead he had used Jackie to enlist my help. Maybe he was trying to tell me that he didn’t need me. It was payback time.

But the next afternoon he called me directly. “It’s really nice up here,” he said.

“I know.”

“And it’s so peaceful. You were right. I don’t have to worry about the press or anyone. From now on, whenever I refer to this place, I’ll call it ‘Uncle Jim’s cabin.’”

“Who’s Uncle Jim?” I asked.

“We don’t have an Uncle Jim,” he said. “That’s the point.”

I laughed.

“I met one of the neighbors today,” Scott said.

“Who?” I was worried he might be recognized.

“It was some little old lady. She was coming home with her groceries, and she was slipping and sliding on the ice, and I went over and helped her.”

“Did she say anything?”

He put on an old lady voice: “You’re such a nice young man!”

“That’s great!”

“I could live up here,” he said. “I could be a regular Boy Scout.”

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