That drew a faint smile from Callum. “He’s always been my biggest fan.” He blinked and his expression closed down. “Anyhow, thanks, but I got it from here. You probably have to head home.”
“Are you coming to the wake?”
“No. No offense. Just, I didn’t know your stepmom well. Grandpa will, though.”
“Okay.” I backed up a couple of steps, reluctant to end the conversation. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Maybe.” He turned back towards the car as if I was dismissed.
Grumpy bastard. What did a guy like that with a pro career and no responsibilities and everything going smoothly have to be pissed about? Not likehiswhole life just got rearranged in a week.
But I wasn’t going to talk to the back of his head. If he didn’t want my help, fine.
I swung up into my truck and headed out of the lot, although I couldn’t resist a look in my rearview before turning onto the road. Callum was bent over his phone. Either he got a call, or he was online looking up “How to change a tire.” I knew which bet I was taking, but I left him to his self-sufficiency and drove away.
The drive from the cemetery to the house wasn’t nearly long enough. I parked at the curb down the block and walked back to where the driveway was full of unfamiliar cars. Several were rentals from Krystal’s family.
On the front walk, I stopped to look at the house— once my father’s, then Krystal’s, and now, due to the fact that she’d never updated her will from her and Dad’s matching ones, half mine and half Josiah’s. There were a lot of memories for me in thatplace, some good, especially before my mother got tired of Dad and left, and some bad.
We’d moved here when I was a kid, when Dad requested a transfer from Toronto to Vancouver to take care of Grandma. I’d gone from an apartment in February snow and ice to this neat house with its garden already emerging months early, and an old woman happy to have family around her. Grandma passed just three years later, but we stayed here, even the year when Dad was deployed overseas. This three-story wooden home was now in need of painting, and the gardens were down to grass and bushes from the riot of colour of Grandma’s day, but I still felt a little lift at the thought of turning it back into the safe-haven it’d once been for me.
Walking in the door was anything but safe-haven at that moment, though. Krystal’s oldest cousin spotted me first and grabbed my arm. “Where have you been?” She waved at the dozen friends and neighbours standing around the living room, drinking from paper cups and speaking in hushed tones. “We’ve had to entertain all these people without you. Thoughtless.” She gave me a push toward the kitchen. “Go bring out some more food and then clear up the empty cups.”
Krystal’s mother was ensconced in the wingback chair that had been Dad’s, accepting condolences from a couple I didn’t recognize, perhaps colleagues of Krystal’s from the office where she’d worked. Mrs. Thompson glanced my way, frowned, then went back to her conversation.
There was no point in arguing. The Ontario contingent had taken over the house the last three days, and I was deeply outnumbered. I scooped empty paper cups and plates off the sideboard and end tables, carried them to the kitchen trash, and filled in the gaps in the food laid out on the kitchen table. Krystal’s mother had ordered finger foods, and the small sandwiches looked edible, but I had no appetite.
Krystal’s sister bustled in a moment later. “Oh, there you are. Go find Josiah and fetch him down. It’s very rude, him running off like that.”
“Running off where?”
“To his room, I assume. He vanished as soon as we got home, and his door is locked. I don’t hold with giving children locks on their doors. I understand that he’s sad— we’re all devastated losing Krystal so young— but that doesn’t excuse bad manners.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I said, partly for the excuse to avoid the wake a bit longer. “But if he doesn’t want to come down, he doesn’t have to. He’s twelve and his mother just died?—”
“Andmysister. We’re all upset.”
“—and,” I continued, “it’s his call what he’s comfortable with. You don’t want a preteen losing his shit in the middle of the living room.” That was unfair to Josiah, but might make an impression.
“Well, if he can’t control himself, maybe he’s better up there. Krystal was never good at discipline.”
I swallowed that down, and said, “I’ll go talk to Josiah. If anyone’s looking for me, let them know.”
The hardwood stairs to the second floor made their familiar, soft creaks under my feet. Until this week changed everything, I hadn’t been upstairs in this house for a couple years. After Dad died, I’d tried to be present for Josiah as much as I could, but between my job and Krystal’s hostility, that had petered out. The last two years, I’d managed occasional days when I showed up and took the kid off on an adventure. Not even that much, in the last three months of my undercover assignment.
The door at the end of the hall was Krystal’s, and once my father’s. I hadn’t had the strength to open that yet since returning home. Josiah was second on the right. I tapped lightly. “Hey, Josiah? It’s Zeke. Are you okay?”
“Go away,” came faintly from inside.
At least he was there and coherent. “If you like, but I wanted to talk for a minute.”
“I’m not going downstairs.”
“Sure. I’m not going to make you.”
After a moment of silence, the lock clicked, and Josiah pulled the door open just enough for me to squeeze through. Once I was inside, he immediately shut it and flipped the latch.
I went over to lean on the wall by the window, to give him as much space as he needed. He sat on the bed, looking at me. His dark hair was buzzed too short to get messy, but his eyes were shadowed and red, and he’d changed from his funeral suit into slightly-too-small sweats, exposing bony ankles and wrists. He chewed on his lower lip and said nothing.
