She waited for a beat when he went silent. “I know. Best gristly hot dogs in the state. Aaron always came homesmelling like them. Mr. Hinkle was going to hire me when I was old enough. He promised.” The portly Mr. Hinkle and his tiny bird of a wife had seemed like relics from the past. Mr. Hinkle was a giant of a man with his red suspenders, and Mrs. Hinkle hand embroidered the names of all their employees on personalized aprons and baked a cake for each and every server’s birthday. She hadn’t thought of the couple for years. It wasn’t where she’d anticipated Gideon would start his story.
“We worked the after-school shifts.”
Something else she’d already known, but she sensed he needed to lay out all the facts, to sort through the details in his mind. She would let him tell the story in his way.
“It was homecoming week, and Aaron was trying to impress some kids from our school. Fooling around, sneaking free food to them.”
That was her brother. Rules rarely served him. He was the epitome of the “life of the party” even in the workplace. The trait landed him in regular trouble with teachers, principals, and as he’d aged, the police. Her parents doled out groundings, confiscated car keys, and stripped him of his phone. On each occasion, he appeared to be honestly remorseful, or at least saddened that he’d grieved them. It was difficult to be mad at Aaron for long, impossible even.
Gideon rubbed his forehead as if the memory pained him. “On their way to the big game, one of the jocks snuck into the kitchen and asked for some free fries. Aaron said yes, of course, and set some in the oil. The two of them started tossing a football around right there in the kitchen, and that’s when I decided to speak up. I told them toknock it off, but Aaron got angry at me for embarrassing him. When the jock finally left, he lit into me, and things escalated. He was furious and threw a ladle that landed in the fryer and splashed hot oil everywhere. The oil caught a kitchen towel on fire, spread to the old wood cupboards, and exploded from there. Lots of grease to feed it. Everything was old and not up to code.”
She tried to picture the scene as Gideon described. The fire, she’d been told, was accidental, a freak occurrence. In reality, it was her brother’s fault?
“It all happened in a flash, literally.”
She went completely still, listening to the sadness in his voice as he recounted the experience. Knowing Gideon, knowing Aaron, she was certain she was hearing the truth at long last.
“Mr. Hinkle was just arriving with supplies and he ran in, tripped on the threshold, and knocked himself out cold. So there we are, two teenage kids and an unconscious owner with the flames spreading and smoke everywhere. Aaron stared at me, and I’ll never forget that look. He couldn’t deal with the situation. Total and utter panic.” Gideon shook his head. “Maybe that’s enough, huh?”
“The rest,” she said. “I need to know. What did my brother do?”
A gust of wind howled like a wounded animal. Gideon’s next two words fell like boulders.
“He ran.”
Nine
“What?” She riveted on his eyes,wide and solemn. “My brother ran?”
“Yes. At first I thought he’d gone to get his cell phone or the big fire extinguisher, but he didn’t come back. He told me later he just panicked and took off. Left me there to deal with it.”
Left his best friend to handle an emergency like that? A memory intruded of Aaron in a high school talent show with Gideon. They were performing a juggling act they’d rehearsed for hours in Gideon’s parents’ garage. She’d been impressed with their intricate pattern of flying bowling pins. But during the performance, Aaron had gotten a whiff of the audience’s laughter when he bobbled one of the throws. He’d gone off plan then, let all the pins Gideon tossed to him drop, and he fell down as if in a faint. The audience had erupted with laughter, but she remembered Gideon’s expression—startled, embarrassed, uncertain how to behave after Aaron hijacked their act. Eventually he’d offered an uncertain smile and bowed alongsideAaron, then got offstage quickly. He’d never done another show with or without Aaron.
“Whatever made him feel good without considering the consequences.”
She thought of Gideon standing on that stage after her brother commandeered their act. Gideon, left with the fallout of Aaron’s decisions. What else had she overlooked, seen through a foggy lens of loyalty?
“What did you do then, Gid?”
“I dragged Mr. Hinkle outside. That was the priority over controlling the fire.”
“By yourself? How?” Gideon had been a slender, wiry teen, not the muscled adult he’d become, and Mr. Hinkle was a mountain of a man.
“Not very gracefully, turns out. I fell over a chair and sustained a complex shoulder fracture. Smoke was pretty bad by then. Had to haul him by the feet with my one good arm. Not smooth, not at all. Poor guy earned more bruises than he needed to, but he survived.”
Only because Gideon had stayed and helped. She put the information together with the version she’d heard from Aaron, the one he reported to the police, that Gideon had fallen and injured himself during an accidental fire trying to render aid to the owner. Her brother claimed to have been busy in the outdoor storage room when it happened and wasn’t aware of the fire at first. She stayed still, willing him to continue.
His face was the barest glimmer. “Fast forward from there. My parents had minimal health insurance, and they used their savings to pay for my reconstructive surgery and a hospital stay that became way more expensive when Igot an infection and wound up in the ICU for ten days. They never complained. Not once.” He blinked. “Surgery, recovery, physical therapy, they were there through it all, and I was covering for Aaron the whole time. I finally told them and Mr. Hinkle the truth almost a year later, and they didn’t complain then either. Neither did Mr. Hinkle. They all figured there was no gain in setting the record straight at that point.”
Mackenzie’s heart felt heavy, as if it were turning to stone. Gideon had been covering for her brother. The Landrys had sold some land right around then, she remembered. Several acres with one of their favorite fishing holes had been parceled out and bought by a couple for their summer home. She’d wondered at the time why they’d part with such a perfect spot.
Because they’d needed the money. Because of Aaron. She felt sick.
His voice changed. “Everything was different after the fire. For my family anyway.”
Was there a hardening in his tone? A shade of resentment? Or simple regret? She couldn’t tell.
“My brother Duncan wanted to go to college and play for Bama for as long as I can remember, had a partial scholarship. He delayed enrolling because of the mess I was in. Taking a gap year, he told everyone. He never wound up going. Stuck around. Eventually started working on the farm for our parents.”
