These quiet homes with their happy lives held no meaning for her.
At last, the taxi turned onto Butternut Avenue. Seichan had been to the home of Gray’s parents only once. At the time she’d been shot and fleeing toward the only man she could trust. She glanced over to Gray. It had been almost three months since she’d been this close to him. His face, if anything, had grown more gaunt, his features detailed in harsher lines, softened only by full lips. She remembered kissing those same lips once, in a moment of weakness. There had been no tenderness behind the act, only desperation and need. Even now, she remembered the heat, the roughness of his bearded stubble, the hardness of his hold on her. But like the quiet homes here, such a life was not for her.
Besides, the last she knew, he was still casually and intermittently involved with a lieutenant in the Italian carabiniere. At least, that was the case months ago.
Gray’s eyes suddenly pinched in worry, revealing the deep-set creases at the corners. She faced forward. The street was as dark as the others in the neighborhood, but ahead, a small Craftsman bungalow with a wide porch and overhanging gable blazed with light, every window aglow. No one was sleeping there.
“That’s the house,” Gray instructed the driver.
Even before the cab pulled to a full stop, he was out the door, tossing a fistful of bills at the driver. Seichan met the cabbie’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He looked ready to respond harshly at such rude treatment, but she stared him down, silencing him. She held out a palm.
“Change.”
She left him a small tip, pocketed the rest, and climbed out.
She followed Gray as he hurried across the street, but his goal was not the front porch. To the side of the house, a narrow driveway stretched to a single-car garage in the back. The roll-up door was open, lights on, revealing two slight figures silhouetted in that glow. No wonder no one had answered the house phone.
Gray stalked quickly down the driveway.
As Seichan drew near the open garage, she heard the whining sound of a saw motor, the bite of steel into wood, smelled the cedar scent of sawdust.
“Jack, you’re going to wake the entire neighborhood,” a woman begged plaintively. “Shut things down and come back to bed.”
“Mom . . .” Gray hurried forward into the middle of the drama.
Seichan kept a few steps back, but Gray’s mother still noted her with a pinch of her brows, trying to identify the stranger who accompanied her son. It had been two years since they’d last set eyes on each other. Slowly, recognition and confusion played across the older woman’s face—and not unexpectedly a flash of fear.
Likewise, Seichan was shocked at how aged Gray’s parents appeared, frail shadows of their former selves. His mother, her hair disheveled, was dressed in a housecoat, cinched at the waist, and slippers. His father, barefoot, wore a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, exposing his prosthetic leg, belted at the thigh.
“Harriet! Where’s my sander? Why can’t you goddamn stay out of my stuff?”
Gray’s father was standing at a workbench, his face red with fury, his brow damp with exertion. He struggled to secure a piece of wood into a vise clamp. Behind him, a table saw idled with pieces of oak cut into haphazard sections scattered on the floor beneath it, as if he’d been trying to construct the pieces of a wooden puzzle whose solution only he knew.
Gray stepped forward and unplugged the saw, then crossed to his father and tried to gently guide him away from the workbench. An elbow lashed out, striking Gray in the face. He stumbled back.
“Jack!” his mother yelled.
His father looked around, confused. Realization seemed to sink through whatever fugue state the man was in. “I’m . . . I didn’t mean . . .” He placed a palm on his forehead, as if feeling himself for a fever. He reached an arm toward Gray. “I’m sorry, Kenny.”
Gray’s face flinched a bit. “It’s Gray, Dad. Kenny’s still in California.”
Seichan knew Gray had a brother, his only sibling, who ran some Internet start-up in Silicon Valley. Gray, his lip split and bleeding, approached his father more cautiously.
“Dad, it’s me.”
“Grayson?” He allowed his son to take his arm. Eyes, red-rimmed and exhausted, stared around the garage. A flicker of fear passed over his face. “What . . . where . . . ?”
“It’s okay, Dad. Let’s go inside.”
He sagged, wobbling a bit on his bad leg. “I need a beer.”
“We’ll get you one.”
Gray guided him toward the rear door to the house. His mother hung back, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Seichan stood a few paces off, unsure, uncomfortable.
His mother’s gaze, brimming with tears, found her face. “I couldn’t stop him,” she said, needing to explain to someone. “He woke up all agitated. Thought he was back in Texas and was late for work. Then he came out here. I thought he was going to cut his hand off.”
Seichan took a step toward her, but she had no words to comfort the distraught woman. Seeming to sense this, Gray’s mother ran her fingers through her hair, took a deep steadying breath, seeming to draw a bit of steel into her back. Seichan had seen Gray do the same many times before, recognizing at this moment the true source of his resiliency.
“I should help Gray get him back to bed.” She headed toward the house, crossing close enough to reach out and squeeze Seichan’s hand. “Thank you for coming. Gray always shoulders too much alone. It’s good that you’re here.”
His mother headed toward the door, leaving Seichan in the yard. She rubbed the squeezed hand, still warm from the touch. She felt an inexplicable tightness in her chest. Even this small bit of inclusion, this bit of familial closeness, unnerved her.
At the door, Harriet turned toward her. “Do you want to wait inside?”
Seichan backed away. She pointed toward the front of the house. “I’ll be on the porch,” she said.
“I’m sure it won’t be long.” With a small, sad smile of apology, she let the door close behind her.
Seichan stood a moment longer, then crossed back to the garage, needing to do something to steady herself. She turned off the light, pulled closed the door, then headed to the front of the house. She climbed the porch and sank onto a bench, bathed in lamplight from the front parlor. She felt exposed, her body limned against such brightness, but no one was about. The avenue remained dark and empty—yet so inviting. She had a momentary desire to flee. The streets were her only true home.