So I smiled. That usually worked pretty well for me. "I know," I told her. "People say that a lot."
"People say you have a lot of nerve, a lot?" Now instead of looking at me like I'd shit on the carpet, she looked like she'd smelled it.
"You've got to have a lot of nerve. In my line of work."
That earned me a huff and an eyeroll, but at least she stopped trying to zap me with her eyeballs.
Claire was doing her bossy-baby-sister routine, walking around informing everybody how to get to our house as if the entire town didn't know where its most famous residents lived.
"And don't forget that West Ridge is closed!" Ruby piped up, letting her eyes flick over to me.
I didn't have time to respond before my mother had me by the elbow. "You're staying with us, right?" she asked. Her fingers dug tightly into my arm,
I took a deep breath. Half of me wanted to protest that I was staying at a hotel, that I needed to get going in the morning. But that's what Gabe and my brothers would expect me to do, and fuck it, it was my home too. "Is my old room okay?"
She looked worried. "I might have some stuff in there. Storage and all. I'll have to move it around, get some sheets on your bed."
"It's fine, Mom," I told her, gently lifting her fingers from my arm. "I'll meet you over there, okay?"
That same sense of floating unreality I'd had in the funeral home only got stronger as I followed the knot of cars back to the house where I grew up. Everything seemed smaller, and the watery gray of the weak November light gave everything a flat, two dimensional feel.
The King house, as it was known even before it became known as the King Brothers' House, was a big rambling yellow farmhouse situated at the top of a small rise. The creek took a sharp, ninety degree turn right at the corner of our yard, forming a natural barrier between us and the next house over. The yard -if you can call seven acres a 'yard' - sloped sharply down to the creek and was dotted with the various sheds and outbuildings my father had erected to house his tools and projects.
The biggest one - nearly the size of a two bedroom house - was situated right alongside the bank of the creek. It was where Gid and Izzy had been living for the past nine years. The unreality sharpened as I pulled into the driveway and stared at it. Even thought I had just seen him laid out in his casket, some small part of me wanted to head down there right now to say hello,
I had to turn my body and force myself to walk up the drive to the house instead, then through the tacked on garage and into the kitchen. Mom had braids of garlic from her garden still hanging from the high exposed beams, still in the exact same places. I could hear their voices - Claire, Finn, Gabe - off in the living room, so I snuck to the staircase via the dining room and went upstairs to the first room in the hall.
From the center of the braided rug, an ancient yellow lump lifted his head.
"Duke," I exhaled, kneeling down to stroke his gray muzzle. "Jesus, dude. You're still hanging on?"
Duke King, the world's best dog, thumped his tail twice before lowering his big head to the floor with a huffing sneeze. He was ancient and gray-faced and by the smell of him was already starting to decompose while still alive. But he was here. Uncle Gid used to call him the sixth King kid.
The grief hit me like a slow rolling wave. Gid's death. The estrangement. The silence as greeting instead of hugs and backslaps.
I sat down heavily on the rug and reached out to scratch Duke's ears. We'd gotten Duke the week before the talent show that had changed our lives. Before we knew anything about how we'd be on the road more often than not. He was supposed to be our companion, but we'd abandoned him almost the moment we got him, and he'd stayed here with Claire and my parents. And now he was old and fading. It was depressing to think that his lifespan was also the lifespan of the King Brothers' career.
But that was self-pitying bullshit, though. I was still working. I was still punching the clock on stage every damn day. Of course, two night's ago, I had bombed more badly than I'd ever bombed before. So badly I could still hear the boos in my head. But even that was still working. Technically.
I was still a rock star. I was just feeling sorry for myself because the one member of my family who still seemed to like me was dead and the other one was close to it.
"You hold down the fort, Duke," I told my dog. Voices were drifting upstairs. The wake had begin.
Life in Crown Creek revolved around casseroles. Church dinner? Casserole. Potluck supper? Casserole. Someone's family member dies and you don't know what to do and also are super nosey about whether their famous son will show up for the funeral?
Casseroles for days.
I could smell a mix of canned soup and cheese from all the way up here. Hastily I wiped my eyes, lest some neighbor came up here in search of a bathroom and caught me on the floor. With one last pat of Duke's giant head, I headed back downstairs.
In the kitchen, my mother was kissing cheeks with Sheila Foster from next-door. The young woman hanging back on her heels, arms predictably laden down with casseroles, had to be Everly Foster, who I remembered as best as a big-eyed girl staring at me from under too-long bangs.
Always staring. Even though she'd done some growing in the past few years, I recoginized Everly by the way she stared at me open-mouthed as I entered the room. Just like how she'd peeped at me through the bushes when I came home from touring years ago. She'd grown in age, not in subtlety.
"Hi Jonah," she squeaked.
I smiled as best I could. "Let me get those," I told her, retrieving the casseroles before she pitched them to the ground in terror and ran away.
She lifted her face as I got closer to her, a fierce light in her eyes. "I'm sorry about your Uncle Gid," she said, clearly and slowly, like she'd been rehearsing. "He was a great teacher."
I blinked, remembering that Uncle Gideon had been teaching at the elementary school for the past ten years. Everly would have had him when he first started.
A strange tightness clenched around my heart. I'd always thought of Gid as my own personal refuge. When I came home, I'd make a beeline down to the shed and bask in his singular attention. He supported me the way no one else could. When I'd come home after a rough tour, it was like sitting in the warm glow of a fire after months spent in the bitter cold.
It never occurred to me that others might have been warmed by that same fire and I wasn't sure how I felt about it at all. "I'm sure he was," I said to Everly, shooting her a grin.
The fierce light went out of her eyes. She made a small squeaking sound before snatching the casserole out of my hand and shoving it into the fridge.
The house was filling up now. Everywhere I turned, there was another familiar face. The number of lines on the faces had changed, as well as hair color and amount, but I knew them. These people were the background to my life. The B roll.
Being home again felt like the last twelve years had never happened. I almost expected to look down and see knobby knees and too big feet, to see arms still covered in peach fuzz. I kept feeling like I had to shake my head to keep reality from sliding sideways into memory. Shaking my head to keep all that had happened straight in my mind. I was home, yes. But everything about it had changed.
It was hard enough remembering that just standing in this kitchen, so familiar it was part of my DNA. It was even harder as the same little vignettes played out around me like projections of my memories.