“Oh, so it’d be okay to wallow if I was eighty?”
Uncle Will snorted. “Well, I’m pretty sure that when you’re eighty I won’t be around to tell you to get your head out of your ass, so yeah, feel free to wallow away then.”
Aaron laughed. “Yeah, okay. It’s a deal.”
Maybe coming here hadn’t been a total mistake. Of course there would be things he had to confront about his past, and he’d known they would be painful. But there were good things too: there was Charlie and Uncle Will. Charlie had been his best friend forever growing up, and Uncle Will had sometimes felt like a second dad. If Dad was working and couldn’t make Aaron’s little league games, then Uncle Will had usually turned up instead. And, Aaron had realized once he’d gotten older, there had been a lot of times that Uncle Will had swapped shifts with Dad so that Dad could be there to open presents on Christmas morning, or to take Aaron to his first day of school, or help him make breakfast for Mom on Mother’s Day. Dad would have missed a lot of those occasions if Uncle Will hadn’t had his back.
Aaron had a lot of great memories of Dad, and Uncle Will to thank for them.
Had some pretty terrible memories too.
He could remember waking that night to Mom screaming, and stumbling downstairs to find her standing at the open front door, Uncle Will’s arms around her, holding her tight.
“I’m sorry, Grace. I’m so sorry! Jesus, I’m so sorry!”
And Aaron had known, even without being told, that something terrible had happened to Dad.
He shoveled another forkful of mac and cheese into his mouth, ignoring the pang in his chest as his gaze caught on Uncle Will’s uniform, and on his sheriff’s badge. He could remember being small enough to be carried around on Dad’s hip, his little fingers finding the shape of Dad’s sheriff’s badge every time.
“I saw Quinn MacGregor last night,” he said.
Uncle Will straightened up, his eyes narrowing. “He’s back in town?”
“I didn’t know he’d left, honestly. But at the same time, I wasn’t expecting to see him.”
“Yeah,” Uncle Will said. “Right after…Right after everything. His mother took him away somewhere. I didn’t think he’d ever show his face in Spruce Creek again.”
That was a piece of strange symmetry, Aaron thought. Both their moms leaving town with them after it all happened.
“You and he were friends for a while, weren’t you?” Uncle Will asked. “I remember Charlie was dating him.”
“Yeah.” Will concentrated on his mac and cheese, not meeting Uncle Will’s gaze.
The one thing they’d both been sure of that summer was that neither of their families could find out. So Charlie had “dated” Quinn, which was enough of a reason for Quinn to hang around them. In practice, Charlie had packed a book whenever they took off together, and read it with her earbuds in until Aaron and Quinn were finished messing around close by.
Jesus. The dumb things teenagers did.
“My dad would kick my ass if he found out I was kissing a MacGregor.”He’d been in a teasing mood that day, sucking at Quinn’s kiss-bitten bottom lip while he shoved a hand down his pants to stroke his dick.
“Yeah?”Quinn had pushed him away, dry leaves crunching under his back as he’d rolled to his feet.“Well, my dad would shoot me in the back of the head if he found out I sucked dick.”
A hot summer’s day, but Aaron had felt a sudden chill as he’d stared at Quinn’s pale, angry face and the stubborn set of his jaw. Because Aaron had been mostly joking. Like, Dad would ground him, probably, and give him a hell of a talking to, but Quinn wasserious. It was the most horrifying thing Aaron had ever heard, because he knew it was the truth.
When it had all happened, Aaron had been terrified to think that he and Quinn might have been to blame. What if Robert MacGregorhadfound out about them, but instead of shooting Quinn in the back of the head, he’d shot Dad? What if Dad had been killed just because Aaron hadn’t been able to stop messing around with Quinn MacGregor that summer?
He’d never come out to Dad. He hadn’t had the chance.
Uncle Will sighed. “Well, the MacGregors are still the MacGregors. I’m still chasing after Ian MacGregor the way Paul did with Robert MacGregor. Different cast, same old story.”
Aaron’s stomach twisted. “I hope yours has a better ending.”
“Shit, Aaron, so do I.” A cloud passed over Uncle Will’s face. “So do I.”
* * * *
Grocery shopping was a pain in the ass. Everything nowadays was a pain in the ass. Aaron filled his cart with pasta and frozen meals and shit that would be easy to make. Getting around the store with a cart with a wobbly wheel was a trial, but at least there was a kid bagging the groceries who helped him load them into his truck. Getting them out at the other end was a fucking trial though.
Aaron was hurting and sweating by the time he was done, and wanted nothing more than to climb the stairs and crash for a few hours—a painkiller with a whiskey chaser would do the trick—but Uncle Will was right. He needed to stop wallowing and get shit done.
