Where All Paths Meet by Gregory Ashe

Author:Gregory Ashe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodgkin and Blount
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Baseball Bat Beats Knife

I drove home. The cottage glowed against the dusk, light seeping out from around the blinds, warm and yellow and pushing back the gloom—even if it was only by a few inches. I thought I could make out Dad’s silhouette through one of the windows. No sign of Holmes, but that had to be who Dad meant. My heart was beating so fast I thought I was going to be sick.

For my birthday, in some bizarre attempt at kindness, Holmes had bought me a truck. He’d ordered it, paid for it, had it delivered. He hadn’t shown up in person of course. And it wasn’t just any truck—it was a fully loaded 2019 Ford F-150. Black. I didn’t exactly have a truck fetish, but if I had, in theory, this truck would have produced spontaneous orgasm. And so, because I’d been firmly committed to hating Holmes with all my heart, I’d given it to Dad, and that’s why I was driving the Dodge.

All that is a long way of saying the Ford was parked under the carport, so I had to use one of the staff spots in the lot and walk the rest of the way. I spent the time focusing on not projectile vomiting, Exorcism style.

When I got to the cottage, the porch boards creaked underfoot. The front door opened easily. We never kept it locked, not living all the way up here. The smell of red sauce and cheese and carbs met me, and my stomach grumbled. I wasn’t sure the last time I’d eaten, and although fifteen seconds before, I would have sworn I wasn’t hungry, my stomach now decided to turn itself inside out.

Dad was in the kitchen, standing sentry over a pan of lasagna. Holmes sat on the couch, the stiffness of his body badly disguising his injuries. He’d found a crisp white oxford (of course he had, this was Holmes), and it only made him look more washed out. Dad narrowed his eyes when he saw me. Holmes’s head came up, his face transparent with relief.

“Outside,” Dad said.

“I just got here.”

“Jack—” Holmes began to rise.

“Outside,” Dad said again.

“Don’t get up, H. I’ll be right back.”

Holmes sank back onto the couch; even that short attempt seemed to have exhausted him, his face bluish in its pallor.

Dad bulldozed me out onto the porch and pulled the door shut. The light by the door threw a yellow cast over half his face, picking out the lines and wrinkles. The other half lay in darkness.

“We haven’t had lasagna in a while.”

Folding his arms, Dad seemed to wrestle internally for a moment. His voice was surprisingly even when he said, “Do you want to try that again?”

Crickets chirped in the night. Leaves whispered against each other with the perpetual restlessness of the canyon.

“I’m sorry,” I said, inspecting my Stan Smiths because it was easier than looking him in the eye.

The wind died. The trees held their breath. I risked a look up, where Dad’s face was still half a canvas of that waxy light.

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