Luke can’t process this sudden change in his best friend. Sure, it isn’t huge, and no one else would notice, but some barrier of sternness and bro-ness has been taken down from between them now.Haltook it down. And Luke has no idea why. From his side of things, nothing’s changed.
“A few things, yeah.”
The crooked smile Hal gives him turns his knees to Jell-O. Thank God he’s sitting down.
He dives back into his food and wills his face not to give him away.
After dinner, Matt says, “Luke, you ready to talk to Dad some more?” with a sympathetic smile, like he knows his old man’s a pain in the ass.
Luke will do just about anything to get away from whatever the hell Hal’s trying to do to him – though a part of him screams to stick around and let moretouchinghappen. “Sure,” he says.
“Sandy, can I help you with the dishes?” Hal asks, already rolling up his shirtsleeves. “I’ve got to wait for Luke, so you might as well put me to work.”
Luke knows that if he lets his eyes get too attached to Hal’s exposed forearms, he’ll end up gaping like a fish. So he goes to help a scowling, silent Will out of his chair and toward the library. A long and arduous journey, as expected.
Sandy has already started a fire going, and the logs snap and pop merrily, light dancing across the rug and their chairs, bright flickers. The lights are low, and branches rattle against the window pane in the early November wind outside. A scene straight from 221B Baker Street. Lukedoesfeel a bit like a detective.
Will makes a loud, unhappy old-man grunt of discomfort as Luke helps him into his chair. “Goddamn arthritis,” he mutters. “Pray you don’t get old.”
“You want me to die early?” Luke asks, taking his own chair, and pulling his recorder from his jeans pocket.
“Beats being like this.”
“Hmm. Guess I’ll let you know when I get there.”
Silence descends, broken only by the crackled-paper sounds of the fire.
“Fix me a drink,” Will says.
Luke is pouring bourbon into a cut-crystal glass at the trolley when Will says, “You get things sorted with your boy?”
A few amber drops slide down the edge of the bottle, sticky-wet and warm against Luke’s fingers. He sucks the liquor off his hand and says, “What’re you talking about?” while his heart pounds.
Will’s lined face is oddly impassive when Luke finally turns around. “Nothing,” he says with a shrug. “Just you two were looking cozy at dinner. Thought you musta fixed your fight or something.”
Luke can’t take a deep breath. His lungs flutter and ache. “We weren’t fighting,” he says. “And he’s not ‘my boy.’ Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.”
“Hmm,” Will murmurs. “You getting that drink, or what?”
Swearing inwardly, Luke sets the old man’s bourbon down on the table at his elbow and pours one for himself. He would argue it’s just to be a shithead, but really it’s because one line from a grouchy old man plucked at all his most sensitive nerves.Your boy. As if he’ll ever get to call Halhis.
Luke drops into his chair and takes a fortifying sip. “Pick up where we left off?”
Will nods, and he does.
~*~
December 1942
James came home just before Christmas. Finn wanted to be one of the pallbearers, but he wasn’t strong enough. And Elias couldn’t manage with his wooden leg. Will stood beneath a black umbrella at his mother’s side and watched as his father and five of their neighbors carried the casket from the hearse to the gravesite. Halfway through the service, the rain changed to snow.
Will’s parents invited everyone over to the house afterward for sandwiches and warm cups of cider. The Christmas tree in the den – Will’s father cut it down himself and dragged it to the house on a sled – seemed offensively cheerful beside the crackling fireplace. It was like it should stop being Christmas because someone was dead.
Julia perched on the sofa with an untouched cup of cider and the three girls lined up beside her in their good dresses. Elias sat unblinking, not acknowledging anyone who spoke to him.
Will went up to his own room and found Finn there, sitting on his bed and paging through a comic without any interest. Will eased the door shut and kicked off his shoes, walked to the bed and sat down beside his friend.
Finn sat with his legs curled up beneath him, head bowed, stare fixed on the patterned quilt while his fingers mindlessly turned the pages. His profile, limned in the soft silvery snow light coming through the window, was a finely-wrought shadow, precise lines and endless eyelashes. He sucked his lower lip between his teeth. “I didn’t really know him that well.”
