“You two had sex,” I declared. “Seriously? You just drove out here and you already had sex?”
“How do you – what makes you – huh?”
Darla's not a stammerer, so this was proof of guilt.
“We did,” Trevor said glumly. “But not the way you thought.”
“That hand job should have been enough!” Darla cried out.
“It was. It was. Better than nothing.”
“Wasn't my fault we were rudely interrupted before you could come.”
“Where, exactly, did you two have sex?”
“At a rest area,” Darla said.
“On a side road,” Trevor contradicted.
“Which is it?” I demanded.
“He didn't ask where you orgasmed, Trevor. He asked where we had sex.”
“Both count,” Trev said, voice tight as a newly-tuned guitar in the hands of a twelve-year old.
“What's wrong with a bed?” I asked, not wanting to know the back story behind these sexcapades.
“Nothing.” Darla yawned. “In fact, we'll need one after visiting Mama and the baby.”
“I got us an AirBnB,” I said.
Darla froze. “Mama and Calvin have a guest room.”
“I know,” I said, prepared with my defense. “But she just had a surprise baby and I'm sure they'll keep her and your brother for a few extra days. We don't want to be a bother.”
“It won't be no bother! And if we're there, we can clean the house and help get it ready for Mama.”
When I met Darla, seven years ago, she and her mother lived in a rotting out trailer in a park that looked like tornadoes hit it after Chernobyl. Once Cathy married Calvin, she sold the place off and moved into his three-bedroom, two story house in town, the home we stayed in when visiting. It was much nicer and there was nothing technically wrong with it.
But I was still uncomfortable.
“Didn't you say your stepsister was living with Cathy and Calvin, with her new baby and toddler?” Trevor asked, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. We were on the same page.
Darla blinked. “Ah, shit. That's right. Jenna's got the room we normally stay in.”
“See?” I jumped in, instantly grateful to Trevor. “The AirBnB is within walking distance of them.”
“What house is it?”
I pulled up the information on my app and read the address.
“That's right next to the library.”
“Is it?”
“Blue house? White trim?”
I looked at the picture. “Navy with white trim. Red shutters.”
She peered at the picture, a little too long and hard. Her hand flew to her mouth with emotion, eyes filling with tears.
Oh, no.
“Joe,” she whispered. “That's Mrs. Humboldt's home. Different paint job, but I'd recognize it anywhere.”
“Who?” I read the page. “It says the owner is Dmitri Petrokov.”
“Mrs. Humboldt must have sold it.”
“Who is Mrs. Humboldt?” I asked.
“Remember?” Trevor said softly. “The assistant librarian in town? The one who took Josie and Darla in after the car accident?”
“Oh.” Darla's shoulders sagged at Trevor's words, her big green eyes sparkly as she looked at the picture of the house on my phone. “Right.”
Of all the luck. I picked that house to rent. A house with ghosts and sadness, all at a time when we should be welcoming new life.
Not mourning old ones.
“I can cancel,” I announced, desperate to wipe away the swirling emotions that felt like churning waters, too rough to manage. I would drown in Darla's emotions if I tried to tread water.
“No! No,” she said, wistful mouth twisted in pain. “It's fitting somehow. Like the universe is sending me a message.”
“Multiverse,” I murmured.
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” I squeezed her thigh, then slipped my arm around her, Darla's cheek snuggling in to my shoulder.
“Food first. Hospital second. Mrs. Humboldt's house third,” Trevor said from the front seat, picking up I-76 west, taking us closer to Peters.
“Meet my new baby brother. Stay overnight where I lived when I learned Daddy died. Somehow it all works together,” Darla said with a sigh, echoing my thoughts. “Maybe that's why you were able to come, Joe. Maybe everything's happening to line up all my good, kind people in one place.”
Leave it to Darla to turn any situation into a reason to be positive.
“I love you,” I whispered in her ear.
“You want a hand job?” she replied, fingerwalking her right hand up my leg, then laughing.
Trevor heard it and groaned.
“You're using sex and humor as a distraction,” I informed her.
“You think I'm so self-unaware that I didn't know that?”
“No. I just decided to be Captain Obvious at ten a.m. after an early morning flight and realizing I accidentally rented a place that causes you pain.”
“It doesn't cause me pain. It reminds me of pain. Big difference. And it'll be healing to go there as an adult, with my two guys, in a completely different place. Maybe the ghost of four-year-old me needs to see twenty-nine-year-old me being okay.”
“You believe in that stuff?”
“I believe in love.”
We stayed silent for fifteen minutes.
Because what the hell do you say to that?
And then Trevor said:
“Joe? Can you take over driving? We’ve been up all night and — ”
I looked at Darla, my hand on her knee. “I thought you offered me a hand job.”
“You didn’t take me up on it. Offer expired.”
“Those offers have time limits?”
“The edge of my vision is starting to turn sparkly,” Trevor murmured, pulling into a small rest area.
I didn’t mind driving, but losing out on the hand job…
“Fine,” I said, unbuckling and getting out of the backseat quickly, feeling too many emotions about the handful of hours I’d spent devoted to getting to Ohio to be here for Darla.
And renting a place that caused her pain.
By the time I pulled back onto the highway, I heard Darla giggle, say something about refractory periods, and then a quick glance in the backseat told me her head was in Trev’s lap.
I smiled. Couldn’t help it.
Whatever mess we were driving into in Ohio would be fine in the end.
Because we were doing it together.
And because, apparently, I was a latent masochist.
Chapter 4
Darla
“I didn't know Cathy had it in her to open her legs,” said a ragged voice that I smelled before I saw. Aunt Marlene had a distinct odor, a blend of sour alcohol, cigarettes (no vaping for her), and charred desperation, mixed with cheap perfume and aged spooge.
“Let me correct you,” I said as Calvin's jaw tightened, his shoulder pressed against the glass next to the giant revolving door where we were all meeting in the hospital lobby.
“Excuse me?” Marlene's mouth curled in a snarl, but her eyes lit up all friendly.