Page 18 of Bent Heavens

The previous night’s snow allowed Doug and Liv to follow Lee’s footprints step for step. Scrap wood, chicken wire, fence rods, and sundry other debris had been tossed from the shed to free up room inside. They twisted through it, and Doug knocked on the door.

“Lee?”

He responded with viper quickness. “Doug?”

“Uh-huh. Can we come in?”

A pause. “Okay.”

The door creaked open, and Liv almost sobbed with relief. The shed wasn’t some wildly colored, strobe-lit phantasmagoria in the style of Oliver! The ten-foot-square storage space had been transformed, with surprising competence, into a functional work shed, lined with pegboards from which hung assorted tools and wedged with tables upon which sat the machines driving the Flemings to financial ruin. Atop other tables, far more ominously, sat other objects covered by dusty sheets.

Lee grimaced an apology while he finished taking a note. Not in a journal, but rather a copy of Resurrection Update, the autographed one his students had gifted him, covered with sawdust. Its presence seemed both perverse and natural. Her father found poetry everywhere; it made sense he’d find it inside his own madness.

He shut the book and looked up. It seemed that Lee Fleming, emcee of a hundred events, practiced hand shaker, had forgotten the basics of interaction. His hands tried his skinny hips, the tabletop, and other places to settle, before he crossed his arms, then uncrossed them. His grin, too toothy now inside his gaunt face, was just as faltering. Liv, though, found faith in it. Her father was looking at her and Doug, really looking, like he hadn’t at anyone since going missing. Hope filled Liv’s chest, so much of it she couldn’t speak. Doug, though—today, no one could stop Doug.

“How you doing, Lee?” Doug asked.

“I…”

“Building stuff?”

“Well…”

“Looks like you’re really into it.”

“I am. I suppose I am.”

Keep him talking, Liv prayed.

“We got a coat and shoes for you.”

“Oh?”

“Although it’s pretty warm in here.”

“Yes.”

“School’s not the same,” Doug said. “Kids miss you.”

“Oh. That’s nice. That’s nice to hear.”

“Other than that, you’re not missing much. Same old junk.”

“Well, yes, I suppose that’s true.”

“Anyway, I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“No.”

“Guess I kind of missed you, too.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re supposed to say, ‘Doug, life has been meaningless without you.’”

Lee’s upper lip twitched—the start of a real smile. Liv leaned forward, desperate to see it completed.

“You’ve been…” Lee searched. “Getting along?”