Yours, Mine...or Ours?

For the first time since they’d walked into the house, Rudy’s grin wavered. But only for a second. He even clapped his brother’s shoulder. “At least give me some credit. The agent also sent me dozens of photos from her camera phone.”

“Oh, well, then.”

“Look, I had to move fast. The price had just dropped—a lot—and there were two other interested parties. I made an offer and the seller pounced. It did pass the basic inspection, Kev, so you can stop looking at me like that. The roof’s not gonna cave in—probably—and no termites. It’s more run-down and neglected than anything. And anyway, with your lousy track record in the responsibility department, you’ve got one hell of a nerve looking at me like that.”

The creep actually laughed. “That’s just it—this is the kind of stunt I would pull, not you. You’re supposed to be…I dunno.” He frowned up at the stain again. “Not somebody who’d blow his entire wad on a piece-of-crap inn in the middle of freaking nowhere.”

“It’s not nowhere. It’s New Hampshire. You go forty-five minutes, an hour at the most, in any direction, you run into something. Lake Winnipesaukee, the mountains, even a speedway. What more could anybody want?”

“Civilization?”

“Now you sound like Stacey.”

“With good reason. What were you thinking, man?”

“What I was thinking,” Rudy said, caressing the wood fireplace mantel that probably hadn’t been refinished, or even polished, since Elvis’s heyday, “was that for thirteen years I’ve devoted every waking moment to my kid.” He turned his gaze on his brother. “Thirteen years of ignoring my own needs, my own life. All just so I could scrub this—” he made the L for Loser sign “—from my forehead.”

“Yeah,” Kevin said, his mouth twitching, “I can see where buying the Bates Motel—sight unseen—would do that—”

Stacey screamed. Rudy streaked from the room, Kevin on his heels, only to nearly collide with his hysterical daughter shooting from the opposite direction.

“It went in there!” she shrieked, the friendship-bracelet-choked hand pointing toward the kitchen a blur. “Get it out, Daddy! Get it out!”

“Get what out, honey?” he said as both he and Kevin crept toward the kitchen, unarmed except for their cell phones and the keys to the SUV.

“I don’t k-know!” Stacey whimpered behind them, so close Rudy could smell her girly shampoo. “Something big and fat and furry, with disgusting beady eyes!” She grabbed the back of Rudy’s plaid jacket; he could barely make out her muffled, “I hate it here, I hate it! I want to go home!”

It’s okay, these days she hates everything, Rudy reminded himself as the three of them shuffled like some giant, six-footed, whimpering (from Stacey) bug into the kitchen. Big, Rudy thought, his mood lifting even more. Lots of light.

Ugly as sin, he thought, chasing the thought with, Ugly can be fixed.

The Nixonian-era palette of avocado and burnt-orange reminded him of his childhood, when his parents had been too busy trying to keep six children alive to worry about things like color schemes and such. Even the boxy refrigerator and standard four-burner gas range were planted in their spots like a pair of alien geezers at the Home, waiting for Jeopardy! Extraterrestrial Edition to come on.

Fake-brick-patterned vinyl flooring covered God knew how many previous incarnations; blistering, dingy gold enamel choked the paned cabinets. But one large window faced east (morning sun!), another the woods behind the woefully neglected gardens. And wallpaper could be stripped. And maybe there were wood floors—

“Whatever it was apparently escaped,” Kevin said. “There’s a big hole in the plasterboard by the back door, probably leading outside.”

Right. The wildlife issue.

Kevin was bent at the waist, hands on knees, peering inside the hole. “Could’ve been a raccoon, maybe. Or a skunk.”

“A skunk!” Stacey shrieked again in the vicinity of Rudy’s kidneys. “Gross!” Except then she said, with great authority, “No, it definitely wasn’t a skunk—it wasn’t black and white.” As though suddenly realizing how uncool it was to be clinging to her father, she let go of Rudy’s jacket. Only to immediately say, “Do we have to stay here tonight?”

“Of course we’re stayin’ here tonight—”

“There’s no heat, bro,” Kevin quietly reminded him. “Or,” he said, flicking the lifeless light switch, “electricity.”

Damn. The Realtor had promised him the utilities would be back on. But they had candles. And he’d seen stacks of firewood on the back porch. And the nearest motel was clear on the other side of town.

“So we’ll fire up the woodstoves,” Rudy said heartily, “light some candles. And we brought a sh—uh, boatload of camping equipment, we’ll be fine. And tomorrow I’ll call the utility people, get the juice turned back on.” At Stacey’s skeptical look, he gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Oh, come on—where’s your spirit of adventure?”

“In the Bahamas,” she said drily.

Behind him, Kevin choked on his laugh.

At the height of the dinner rush, Violet Kildare grabbed one, two, three, four specials for table six from underneath the warming lights and thought, Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

“Mom!” George, her nine-year-old son, yelled as she whizzed past the booth where he and his younger brother Zeke sat surrounded by backpacks, Game Boys, assorted school papers and the remnants of the burgers and fries she’d tossed at them an hour ago. “What’s five plus four?”

“Use your fingers!” she called back as she set the plates down in front of Olive, Pesha, and the Millies, who trooped down to the diner from the retirement community every night, unless it was raining or the snow was over six inches deep, smiling for them even though they never tipped and at least one of them was guaranteed to find something wrong with her food.

“You shouldn’t tell him that, dear,” Old Millie (eighty-six as opposed to “Young” Millie’s eighty-two) said. “How’s he ever going to learn his sums if he keeps using his fingers?”

The other ladies all murmured their assent, interrupted only when Pesha—bony, blond and half-blind—poked Violet in the hip with one sharp fingernail.

“This isn’t what I ordered.”

“Yes, it is, Pesha. You ordered the special. Hot roast beef.”

“No, the special’s Salisbury steak.”

“That was yesterday. Today’s hot roast beef.”

Pesha squinted at Young Millie’s plate, directly across from her. “Is that what she’s having?”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s what they’re all having.”

“Well, I don’t want hot roast beef, I want Salisbury steak. Mushrooms on the side.” She shooed at the plate. “Take it away.”

With a heavy sigh, Violet snatched up the plate and headed back toward the kitchen. “Nine?” George called out. “Is five plus four nine?”

“That’s right, baby,” Violet said, shoving an orange—not auburn, not chestnut, not ginger—corkscrew curl out of her eyes as she swallowed back hot, pissed tears. She hadn’t signed on for this, night after night of chronically sore feet and aching back muscles, of dealing with cranky, cheapskate old ladies and old farts who clearly thought she should feel flattered by their very unwelcome attention. Night after night of tossing her babies scraps of attention, instead of being able to sit down with George like a good mother and help him navigate the minefield of letters and numbers he brought home from school every day.

“What the hell’s this?” came the stringy, snarly voice from the other side of the warming counter when Violet shoved the uneaten roast beef back across it.

“Sorry, Maude, Pesha wants Salisbury steak instead,” Violet said tiredly to the dull brown eyes peering out at her from underneath black bangs with more staying power than the Berlin wall. “Mushrooms on the side.”

The sixty-something owner of Mulligan Falls’s only independently-owned-and-operated-since-1948 eating establishment grabbed the plate, muttering, as “Mo-om! What’s six plus two?” sailed across the crowded restaurant, piercing her skull like a nail gun, and she thought, Buck up, chickie,’ cause going under’s not an option, even if she had been left on her own to deal with their smart-as-a-whip son who still couldn’t remember that five plus four made nine, who had to have all the directions on his assignments explained three times because he couldn’t remember them on his own. With their younger son who barely spoke, even at four, but whose smile could melt the hardest heart.

Not that she’d ever expected life to be easy—she wouldn’t even know what to do with easy—but she wasn’t asking for easy, just a chance—

“Here you go,” Maude said, clunking Pesha’s Salisbury steak on the serving counter. Pesha’s mushroom-smothered Salisbury steak. Not even taking the time to sigh, Violet grabbed a fork and scraped the fungus into a little glob beside the meat.

Then, hoping for the best, she strode back toward the old ladies’ booth, yelling out, “Use your fingers!” to George.

The bell over the front door tinkled. More customers. Yippy skippy. The diner went eerily silent, as though somebody’d pressed the mute button. Violet glanced up, skidding smack into a pair of smoky-blue eyes in a male face that didn’t have a single soft anything, anywhere. At least, what she could see underneath the beard haze.

He was big, bodyguard big, his head stubbled with little more hair than his face, big enough to nearly blot out the younger man behind him, to dwarf the pretty, long-haired girl in front, her slender shoulders swallowed by a pair of huge, hard hands.