Chapter 4-5
701 Words
Tim smiled and waited for Macy to enter first. Her eye roll was so familiar that he almost reached out to “beep” her nose, but she was gone inside before he had the chance.
At five a.m. in mid-July, French Pete’s was about a quarter full. There was no factory or anything in town, it was simply summer near the Arctic Circle and a lot of folks were up. They sat in groups of two and three and were mostly quiet over coffee. Carl had never been a big believer in music and the local radio station wouldn’t be on the air for a couple of hours, assuming Janice was still running it.
Tim breathed in deep. The air was thick with deer sausage, warm syrup, and toad-in-a-hole—a single egg fried in a hole torn in the middle of a slice of toast. Carl made it with the good dark bread. Herb Maxwell came in after closing and worked through the night to bake it when Carl didn’t need the ovens for anything else. It was a whole world of good that Tim had forgotten even existed.
Tim headed for their old booth, dropped into it, and only then realized what he’d done.
“Damn! Sorry, Mace. You pick where,” he started to get up, but she dropped in across from him.
“This is fine.”
Tim struggled back into place and tried not to feel too weird about knocking knees with Macy. He shifted to the inside on his side to get some clear foot space; which was Stephen’s usual spot. Tim typically sat to the outside so that he could stretch out his legs, but the dog was already curled up there.
Macy was watching him fidget with that strangely blank expression, making it so that he barely recognized her.
“Stop it,” she told him softly.
“Stop what?” Tim froze.
“He’s been dead for five years, just stop being so twitchy.”
Tim tried. He put his hands flat on the table and simply stopped. Akbar was always the one busy about something and Tim the quiet and steady one of the pair, or at least by comparison. He and Stephen had been the same way.
“Sorry. I’m—”
“An i***t,” Macy finished for him. “But we know that about you already. He’s been dead a long time and I’ve had to let him go. Stop jumping at every goddamn ghost.”
“Sorry,” he held up a hand as she opened her mouth. “I know. Apologizing too much. I just—” Tim looked at the ceiling where his old model airplane with the tiny gas engine presently hung upside down, which was the poor thing’s usual position in flight—Tim had been an expert at crashing. He’d wondered what happened to the thing after he’d stopped fooling around with it in favor of girls.
He looked across at Macy. Sometimes the straight line was the best one at bars, maybe he should try it here when it mattered.
“I really am sorry I haven’t been around. I feel like I’ve let down both you and Stephen by not being here for you more often.”
“Are you really that dumb?”
He looked down at Baxter who was also wondering the same thing, but Tim suspected him of food-based bias. It still didn’t give him a clue why he was being dumb. He turned back to Macy.
“Apparently, yes.”
She rolled her eyes in that way of hers that always made him feel particularly stupid. “I’m a big girl, Harada. Don’t need six feet plus of gawk to protect me from anything.”
“Maybe not. But I still think of you as the kid sister and my natural, in-born notion of decency says that if you need anything, I want to be the one that’s there for you. I feel like crap for how I’ve treated you since Stephen died.”
Macy closed her eyes and thudded her forehead on the table as Carl came up with two mugs of hot chocolate, one with marshmallows, one without. Tim had long since switched over to coffee in the mornings, but didn’t see any point in making a fuss.
“Problem?” Carl asked Tim as Macy continued thunking her head.
“No. Seems about normal. I’ll take two toad-in-a-holes with a side of bacon and another of the deer sausage.”
Macy looked up at him.
“What? I’m a growing boy doing a man’s job. Firefighting is hungry work.”
Macy sighed, “Give me what he’s having, but half as much.”
Carl patted Macy’s shoulder as if telling her to be strong before he moved off.
Tim wondered what that was about.
- Writer
