They went back and forth across the driveway not just once but five more times, until Julia was getting out of breath. Each timePippa did better. “Okay, break time,” Julia said on the last lap. She bent over, hands on her knees, puffing. “You did good!”
“Mommy taught me,” Pippa said, looking down at the pink streamers that fluttered from her handlebars. Julia ran her hand through them, thinking they felt almost like a horse’s mane.
“I know she did, kiddo. She did a good job.”
At the bottom of the driveway, Wendell lifted a hand and went inside the barn. Julia was still furious with him, but she found herself almost waving back. She wondered what he was doing in Raddy’s barn at this hour and why he’d come.
As they wheeled Pippa’s bike back into the garage, he came out, carrying something in a large black garbage bag. She stood in the driveway, watching as he walked around to the rear of the truck. Once he glanced up at her.What is he doing?she wondered. Then she caught herself. Whatever it was didn’t matter. Raddy was gone. Her parents were gone. Wendell climbed in the truck and started the engine.Let him go, too,she told herself.
The truck headlights went on, and it backed away from the barn. As she watched it go, she realized she didn’t feel the usual sense of loneliness. Instead, an idea sparked. An idea inspired by Jamie Aldeen’s advice. So crazy, and such a long shot, that only a fool would bet on it.
“Hey, Pip,” she called. “It’s still early. What do you say we take your bike back out?” It was no longer about teaching her little sister to ride a bike. Suddenly, it was part of her plan.
Twenty-OneWendell
In the middle of the night, a noise outside startled him awake. Wendell lay in bed on his back, his senses on high alert. It was not unusual for the nocturnal wildlife to make some pretty crazy noises. The scream of a fox or the howl of a coyote could send shivers down a grown man’s spine. He held his breath, listening.
He heard it again. There was a sharp thud below his open window. Wendell slipped silently from his bed, muscles tensed. An evening breeze ruffled the curtains, and he moved quickly to the window, scanning the yard below. His father used to sleep with the front porch lanterns on all night, a sign to the town that he was always there, even in the middle of the night; but Wendell was not his father and did not like to waste electricity, so he’d not continued the practice after his father passed away. Now, squinting down into the inky darkness of the front yard and driveway, he wished he had.
It was probably a racoon messing around with the garbage can lid or some such, but he decided to check it out, just in case. From the floor, he retrieved his T-shirt and pulled it over his head. He was about to walk out the door when he heard a voice. Wendell froze. Yes, it was very clearly a human voice, not the sound of ananimal. He turned, retrieved the metal baseball bat he stored under his bed, and headed for the stairs.
His National Guard training had taught him to keep a cool head, to think critically in a flash of a moment, to judge a situation before acting. It was something that had stayed with him all these years after active duty, and he knew it always would. But after Wesley’s death, Wendell had never been able to recoup that sense of dead calm. In its place was doubt: about his timing as well as his judgment. There was no place for doubt in active duty, and after the loss of Wes, it had spelled the end of his military career. Now, as he stood on the bottom step with the bat in hand, images of Afghanistan flooded his mind. The white-hot heat. The desert dust rising up in his nostrils. The thud of bootsteps in sand during morning drills. It didn’t matter that he was in the safety of his own home and not in a war zone; the familiar trickle of doubt began.
Wendell let his eyes adjust as they scanned the windows of the first floor. The sound had come from the front porch area, and he moved toward the front door, ever so lightly so as not to elicit a single creak from the hundred-year-old pine floorboards. As he crept toward the door, he was met with a noise from the other side. Wendell’s blood froze. The desert images came again. He closed his eyes, willing his thoughts to clear, his heart to slow. But they had already gotten away from him.
Outside, there was a sound on the porch floor. Wendell gripped the bat harder and walked up to the door, keeping low. He was about to peer out the keyhole when he heard a voice. “Shhh,” someone said. There was more than one person. He was about to reach for the outdoor light switch when the door handle creaked. Wendell looked down in horror as it began to jiggle back and forth. They were trying to get in, to surprise him. Well, whoever it was had their own surprise coming.
In one fell motion, Wendell flipped the lock, flung the door open, and raised the bat over his shoulder. From the other side of the screen came two screams. Wendell kicked the screen door open and leaped out onto the porch.
Two figures stumbled backward, much smaller than he’d thought. One fell down. Both screamed again. They were female voices, young voices. “Wendell! It’s me.”
Wendell let the bat fall to his side and stepped back, letting his eyes adjust. “Julia?”
The girls sat side by side at his mother’s vintage Formica kitchen table, a crocheted blanket draped across their hunched shoulders. There were two steaming cups of tea in front of them, which neither had touched. Wendell reached for the one in front of him. What he really could’ve used was a shot of bourbon, but that wasn’t happening. So he poured honey into his mug and began stirring it with a teaspoon.
“That’s a lot of sugar, you know.”
He looked up. Julia was staring at him. “Sugar? You just tried to break into my house. I almost swung a bat at you, and you’re worried about my sugar?”
She glared back at him. “You scared us half to death.”
“I scaredyou?” Wendell sat back hard in his chair and laughed. It came out as a sharp bark, and Pippa’s eyes widened. “Sorry,” he said, regaining composure. Then to Julia, “You have some nerve.”
But he regretted it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He was on high alert, still coming down, and it made him irritable. When he thought of the raised bat over his shoulder and the two little girls tumbling away, he shuddered. It could’ve ended so badly.
Julia picked up her cup of tea and blew on it. She glanced at Pippa, who looked heavy-lidded and exhausted. “Still too hot,” she told her.
Wendell glanced at the wall clock: twelve forty-five a.m. “Does your aunt have any idea where you are?” Looking at the two of them, he already knew the answer.
“She’s sound asleep,” Julia said decisively. She set her teacup down. “We need your help.”
Wendell was set on knowing what on earth could’ve brought them out here in the middle of the night. Whatever it was, it must’ve been bad. But first things first. “We have to call her,” he said, rising and moving toward the old-fashioned phone on the wall. “She at least has to know you’re okay.”
“No!” Julia leaped from her seat and reached for his wrist, almost knocking over her cup of tea. It startled him, and the look on his face must’ve startled her, too, because she let go before he could jerk away instinctively. He was a trained soldier trying to deescalate. She shouldn’t be lunging at him like that. “Please, not yet. Let’s talk first.”
It went against his better judgment, but the night was already out of control, so he found himself sitting back down reluctantly. “You’ve got five minutes, and then we call her. I can’t risk her thinking you’re missing or maybe worse. It’s not right.” He didn’t add the next thought that occurred to him: two little girls from the family he worked for, alone with him in his house in the middle of the night. He winced. “Hurry up and tell me, please.”
Julia leaned forward, lacing her fingers together. Despite her young age, it was an authoritative posture of a person with far more years and confidence. “I have a proposal.”
