Page 33 of The Dearly Departed

Shawn would always flinch at unsolicited touch.

And Ike …

Ike was something else. Unpredictable. You never knew which side of him you'd see on any given day, and I supposed today, he was the garbage collector—assuming he had picked up this old dresser.

I deflated with a sigh and reached into my jeans for my pack of smokes and lighter when the back screen door opened and slapped shut.

"Bram," Leonard said. "You busy?"

Slipping a cigarette from the pack and between my lips, I turned to address him and shook my head, chasing away the evil specters of the past. "Nope. What do you need?"

"I need you to pick up an order from the printer," he said. "I'd go, but my back hurts like a son of a gun today."

"I can pick it up. No problem."

He held his hands on his hips, squinting his eyes toward the sky with an assessing nod. "It's gonna pour," he stated, as if I hadn't figured that out from the dark clouds or rolls of thunder rumbling through every few minutes. "You probably want to go soon so you don't get caught in the storm."

"I'll go after I smoke," I said, lighting up.

“All righty,” he replied, his lips curling into a smile that exuded kindness.

Then his gaze lingered for a moment, inciting a curiosity in my brain. He always looked at us like that, like he held such fondness and affection toward me and my brothers, and I couldn’t understand why.

Old habits died hard, and I considered sneering and asking him what the hell he was looking at because no matter how much time had passed, I still couldn’t believe that this old man had any business looking at me like that.

But before I had the chance, the thought crossed my mind that his son must’ve been the luckiest guy on the planet to have gotten the chance to call this man Dad. And although I knew well enough that my brothers and I had won the lottery the moment we broke into his funeral home all those years ago, it hurt tremendously to know that Leonard would never be mine.

There was nothing I could ever do to change that fact, there was nothing he could do either, and suddenly, I couldn’t bear to look at him anymore.

I dropped my heavy gaze to the asphalt and sucked at the end of that cigarette until my lungs were full of poison, and I held it there, drowning in the burn and ache.

Leonard stood there at the edge of the porch for just a moment longer, and I only looked up when I heard him start to enter the house again.

Then I stopped him from disappearing.

“Hey, do you know anything about this dresser?”

He turned again in time for me to jab my thumb over my shoulder, implying the back of the old pickup.

He nodded with recollection. “Yeah, Isaac said he found it. He thought he’d sand it down and give it a new paint job. Why?”

I huffed a chuckle. Of course it was Ike.

“Nothing,” I grumbled, shoving away the old bad memories before they had the opportunity to take hold once again. “Just wondering.”

Leonard gave me another quick smile. “Drive safe, Bram,” he said.

I lifted my hand, cigarette pinched between two fingers, and gave him a little wave as I said, “Always do.”

Then, as he turned to go back inside, the first drop of rain landed on my shoulder.

A gentle prelude before the sky opened up to unleash its wrath over our corner of Massachusetts.

***

The drive into Beverly was easy. Midday traffic was light, and though the streets were slick and spotted with deceptively deep puddles, the ride was mostly uneventful, save for Shawn's yammering about Shelby—the girl he'd been seeing for the last few months.

Before I had left, he had stepped outside to grab the mail, seen me putting on my jacket, and asked if I minded if he came along. I hadn't at the time, but now, listening to him talk incessantly about this woman I had yet to meet, I found I did mind.