All Good People Here(3)
“Still a mean drunk who refuses to get help?”
Margot burst into surprised laughter.
“C’mon, I may be losing my mind, but there’s no way I could forget that,” he said, and she laughed even harder.
It wasn’t that she found anything funny about the fact that her father was fonder of whiskey than of both his only brother and his only daughter, but this was the Uncle Luke she missed. The one person in a town of fakes who’d always speak the truth. The person who made Margot feel understood without her having to try. The person whose sense of humor was the exact same as hers, who’d one time made her laugh so hard midsip that soda had come out her nose. Plus, the absence of her dad’s affection, or her mom’s, for that matter, wasn’t new to Margot. Her childhood home had been one of shouted arguments punctuated by hurled glasses shattering against walls. It was why she was so close with Luke. Every day after school, she’d walk to her uncle’s house rather than her own. On the weekends, she’d spend the night. She would have moved in with him and Rebecca—they’d offered many times—but her mom had worried about what people would say.
Similar was her reaction a few weeks ago when Margot told her mom she was moving back to Wakarusa. “What’re you gonna tell people when they ask you why you’re back?” her mom had said.
“What do you mean? I’m gonna tell them the truth, that I’m staying with Luke to help out.”
“That’s nobody’s business, Margot. Anyway, your dad says it can’t be that bad. Luke’s his younger brother.”
“How the hell would Dad know? When was the last time the two of them talked—2010?”
“If you’re really this worried, why don’t you just hire a nurse or something? You don’t want to go back to that sad little town where that terrible thing happened.”
Margot had pulled the phone from her ear to give the screen an incredulous look. “A nurse? With what money?”
“My lord, Margot. Sometimes you sound so crass.” When she spoke next, her voice had gone breathy as if the whole thing was beneath her. “You have a good job. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”
Now, to Luke, Margot said, “And Mom’s the same as ever. Delusional.”
Luke snorted. “What’s Bethany delusional about this time?”
“She seems to think I’m a millionaire because I write for a newspaper.”
“Wait. You’re not a millionaire?”
She grinned.
“How is the paper, by the way?”
Margot looked down. “It’s fine, yeah.” She hated keeping things from her uncle, but she couldn’t stomach the idea of making him feel guilty for something he couldn’t control. She couldn’t tell him that her work had been suffering for six months now because her mind had been in Wakarusa with him instead of in Indianapolis with her paper. She couldn’t tell him how reluctantly her editor had signed off on Margot’s move to remote work. “Really,” she added more brightly this time. “It’s great.”
But when she looked up, her uncle was giving her an odd look. His eyes darted from the slice of pizza in his hand to Margot’s face, a hard line on his brow. “Rebecca?”
Margot swallowed. “It’s me, Uncle Luke. Your niece, Margot.”
He blinked for a moment, and then his expression cleared, a smile spreading across his face. “Kid! I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Me too.”
* * *
—
That night after Luke had gone to bed, Margot washed dishes until one side of the sink was empty, then she sat at the kitchen table and made a list. She needed to make a copy of Luke’s house key for herself and organize his medications. She needed to clean the kitchen and living room and stock up on toilet paper and paper towels, both of which he seemed to be almost out of. She’d read somewhere that putting labels on things, like what was inside the kitchen cabinets, would help him navigate the house when memory failed him, so she wanted to do that as well. Also, with all the time it had taken to move to Wakarusa, she’d fallen about a week behind on work and needed to pump out some articles that weren’t complete garbage. She added Do your job to the list. Then, at the bottom, she wrote a reminder to herself to call the subletter she’d found for her apartment in Indianapolis. He’d sounded unnervingly wishy-washy the last time they spoke and she needed him to move in, make his first rental payment. Otherwise she’d owe a full month’s rental payment for a place where she was no longer living. Just looking at the list made Margot tired, but she’d have more time tomorrow.
But by the next day, the town was abuzz with what had happened—the news of it ripping through Wakarusa like a storm cloud—and it was hard to get anything done at all.
* * *
—
Margot first noticed something was off the next morning at the pharmacy. She’d left Luke a few minutes earlier nursing a cup of coffee and doing the book of crosswords she’d brought from Indianapolis because she’d read they could help keep him sharp. A bell above the shop’s door announced her arrival, so even though no one was behind the counter when she walked in, she assumed the pharmacist would appear soon. She stood by the counter, running her fingers absently along the bags of cough drops on display, the indistinct sounds of a TV coming from the back.