The Red Hunter(16)
Raven had put on some clothes and a long sweater and was standing on the porch, arms folded, watching as Claudia returned.
“Just that barn door,” Claudia said. “It finally fell apart.”
“Like everything else around here.”
The sullen, oh-so-disdainful Raven had returned. The sweet clingy one, the one who loved Claudia and had always thought she was so wonderful, was gone again; she came and went. Every time she disappeared, Claudia prayed she wasn’t gone for good. That little person was the truest friend she’d ever had, the kindest, the most honest, funniest, sweetest little dear. In the dim orange light of the lamp beside the door, her daughter looked more like an unfriendly stranger.
“Well,” said Claudia, forcing brightness. “That’s why we’re fixing the place up.”
Raven glanced away, wrinkling her nose. Disgust. With the place? With her mother? Claudia didn’t dare ask.
“I want to stay with Dad this weekend,” she said, looking down at her toes—which she’d painted black. Once upon a time it had been all pink and sparkles, princesses and unicorns. Now Raven’s fashion palette was black, slate gray, and light gray, and black again. “He said I could.”
Claudia nodded, wrapping her arms around her center. “That’s fine. Sure.”
It crushed Claudia when she did that. It shouldn’t. It was normal for a teenager to pull away from her mother, to try to pit her divorced parents against each other, to want to hurt Claudia a little. But the twist, the anguish Claudia felt—as if someone were mercilessly squeezing her vital organs (it wasn’t an exaggeration; she literally felt physical pain sometimes)—almost always brought tears to her eyes.
She turned back toward the barn so Raven couldn’t see her face. Claudia had never been good at hiding her feelings. Anyway, Raven wasn’t looking, didn’t care; her perpetually angry teen went back inside, slamming the screen door behind her.
five
“Maybe it’s my imagination, but I wouldn’t say you seem overly happy to see me, brother.”
“Of course, I am,” said Josh, staring at the eggs in the pan. The words sounded fake on the air, probably because he was definitely not happy to see his older brother Rhett. Not at all. In fact, he’d hoped never to see him again. The fact that Rhett was back was a little like thinking you had beaten cancer only to discover during a routine visit to the doctor that it had returned, more virulent than before.
Their mother, on the other hand, was as giddy as a schoolgirl. He’d never seen her face light up the way it did when Rhett walked in through the door of her bedroom last night, as if Jesus Christ himself had come down from heaven.
“My baby,” she’d said. “My Rhett. Am I dreaming?”
He’d sat beside her, and she’d petted his head, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Hello, Mama,” Rhett said, leaning his forehead against hers. “I’ve missed you. I’m sorry I’ve been away so long.”
“Never mind that now,” she said. “We’re just glad you’re here. Aren’t we, Josh?”
She didn’t remember. There were so many big dark spots in her memory now; sometimes Josh could tell it took her a second to recognize him. The dementia seemed to come and go. She remembered things from his childhood that he had long forgotten: his red bicycle, the striped shirt he insisted on wearing every day when he was five, screaming bloody murder when she wanted to wash it, his stuffed bear Buttons. He noticed that it was the unpleasant things mostly she claimed that she couldn’t recall—like the reason Rhett had been away for as long as he had. And Rhett knew that Josh wouldn’t be the one to remind her. Mama’s boy. The taunt still echoed around in his head, like so many of the things Rhett had said over the years.
“Sure are,” Josh had said a beat too late, earning a dark sideways glance from his brother. Even now that look could make him shudder.
“You don’t look a day older,” she’d told him.
“Neither do you,” he’d said. “You’re as pretty as you were when we were boys, Mama.”
“Oh, silly,” she said, clearly pleased and placing a palm to each of his cheeks. “You always were a charmer.”
Rhett did look older, his face a landscape of deep lines, his black hair thinning and going gray. But his body was lean, muscles sinewy and rock hard, hands thick with callous. If anything, he looked stronger than he had when he was younger. He was still broad through the shoulders and a good four inches taller than Josh. Any softness there might have been to him once—and there hadn’t been much—was gone. He was hard hewn, as jagged and stealthy as a shiv.
“What are you doing here?” Josh said now. He’d served his mother her breakfast, bringing it upstairs on a tray like he did every morning before work. Now he put a plate in front of his brother. Eggs, bacon, buttered toast. He poured coffee in the red mug with the chipped handle, put it down on the table.
“A man can’t visit his family?” Rhett said.
Josh poured coffee for himself and pulled up a chair. His father had made the long wood table. He’d used wood from an oak that had been struck by lightning in the backyard. One of the larger branches smashed through the roof of his father’s workshop. How old had Josh been—maybe ten? The sound had been so loud that he had jumped to his feet before he even fully woke up, hearing his father and brother already thundering down the stairs.