He grabbed the rearview mirror and twisted it around to check his reflection. It wasn’t that bad. Apart from the split in his eyebrow that had thumbed blue down around the outer corner of his eye, most of the bruises were hidden under the scruff of stubble that was about four hours from officially being a beard.
Boyd poked gingerly at the bruise with one finger. The memory of another black eye flashed into his head, stripped fifteen years off his face, and added floppy bangs his mom had liked. He cringed and twisted the mirror back to its usual place.
If he didn’t go in now, guilt would get the better of him after his shift. It always did. Then he’d be back here tonight without the get-out-of-jail-free card of work in an hour. He’d have no reason to leave, no excuse to turn down a warm whiskey or close the old photo album.
That worked.
Boyd turned the engine off. The minute the air conditioner cut out, the damp unrelenting heat of the day pressed in on him. He grabbed the flowers from the passenger seat as he climbed out. This year they were from a bucket at the gas station. He’d gotten halfway here empty-handed and panicked, so he stopped at the first 7-Eleven sign he saw and paid too much for a scrawny bouquet of halfhearted daisies and a bird of paradise.
They’d end up in the sink, left to rot until the flies drove someone to throw them out. Like last year and the year before. It just seemed wrong to turn up empty-handed, and nothing else sprung to mind as an appropriate offering.
Chocolates? Whiskey? Inappropriate and a bad idea, respectively.
So Boyd clutched the flowers awkwardly in one hand as he crossed the road and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. He shifted his feet on the stoop and looked around.
The old playset still stood in the yard. It was rusted and bowed, the plastic seat of the swing faded from red to a washed-out pinkish white from nearly two decades of weather. Once, the first year, Boyd had sat on the still-red-then swing and creaked it back and forth. Now he thought it would fall in on itself if he looked at it too hard.
Untouched mail stuffed the mailbox on the side of the house, damp, wrinkled magazines and fly-shit-speckled envelopes. A week’s worth, Boyd worked out, or more. He knocked on the door again, harder this time, and tried the bell.
“I’m coming,” he heard from inside. “I’m coming.”
The tickle of disappointment at the back of Boyd’s throat made him feel guilty… guiltier. He stepped back from the door as it opened.
“Mrs. Calloway,” he said. Other people in town—teachers, old neighbors, his childhood pediatrician—he’d graduated to their names years ago. Not here. He was always eight years old when he was here, and Donna Calloway was Mrs. because that’s what he called all his friends’ moms. “It’s Boyd.”
Mrs. Calloway stared at him with tired, bloodshot eyes. “I got that,” she said in a bitter monotone. “I’m drunk, not blind.”
Boyd rubbed the back of his neck. “I wanted to check in on you,” he said. “It’s—”
Anger cut through the grease of grief and liquor in Donna’s eyes. “I know,” she cut him off. “Better than you. I know. I suppose you might as well come in.”
She turned her back on him and disappeared into the dimly lit house. Boyd took a deep breath—the air tasted like shut-up house and liquor—and followed her.
As always he was surprised at how normal the house looked inside. It wasn’t clean, but it was the clutter of a weeklong bender, not full-time neglect. Most of the year, Donna got up in the morning and went to work, she had her oldest son over for dinner on the weekends, and she slept upstairs in her own bed. Boyd knew that—he did the same thing—but it never really seemed to sink in.
“I talked to the chief of police yesterday,” she said over her shoulder as she sat down in the big recliner. A bottle of whiskey sat next to it, although it was more bottle than whiskey at this point. “Nothing. You’ll talk to him?”
“I will,” Boyd said. Some years he’d tried to argue, point out the futility of it. But in the end, why bother? It wouldn’t make her any happier to finally accept her son was dead, not just missing. He hovered uncomfortably in the middle of the room, flowers hung down by his leg. “Do you need anything?”
Donna shook her head. Gray-blond hair trailed over her forehead, and she pushed it back, the nails on her fingers bitten down to the bloody quick.
“Nothing you can get.” She looked over at him and waved a hand at the flowers. “Put them in the kitchen and get yourself a drink.”
He did as he was told. Rituals were what got them both through this. When they went off script, blood was drawn. Of course, Donna always went off script.
The fridge was full of beer and takeout. Boyd had to hunt to find the half-drunk six-pack of grape soda in the crisper drawer. It was Sammy’s favorite. He grabbed one and popped the tab to take a deep, bracing gulp of frosty carbonation before he went back in.
“Has Shay been over?” He took a seat on the edge of the couch, long legs uncomfortably folded under him.
Donna topped up her glass of whiskey with a glug from the handy bottle. “Not this week. Two drunks don’t make good company. Things are said.”
She drank. Boyd tried to think of something else to say, but he came up dry. He rolled the cold can of soda between his hands as the silence dragged out between them.
“If you need anyt—”
“You said that already.”
Boyd supposed he had. He carefully shifted position. The bruises on his ribs were harder to see, but he felt them more. He took another drink of soda and looked over at the cabinet where a dozen images of Sammy grinned, gap-toothed and happy, back at him. Just Sammy. A few of the pictures had Shay’s arm, tattoo bold and black against summer-tanned skin, or a slice of Boyd’s head as he grinned at the camera, but Donna had cropped the rest of them out.
