Brick paused on the porch outside the screen door that led into his grandparents’ kitchen to brush the dust and dirt from his jeans and peel off his boots. It was a new routine that came with a new life. One he wasn’t sure he was adjusting to.
It had been a good day of hard work. He’d picked up some odd jobs as a handyman but most recently had landed a full-time position at one of the stables. Being able to continue working with horses was the highlight of the move to Mackinac Island with his little brother in tow. The rest of it basically sucked. Because as much as he enjoyed working in the stables, he still had to return to someone else’s home. To people who were strangers to him. To a grandfather who looked at him and saw nothing more than a reflection of his father.
But he could deal with it. He’d bear it as long as it took for Spencer to feel comfortable here. Then Brick would be free to move on with his life. At twenty-four, he felt like if he could get far enough away from his father’s shadow, there might still be good things in store for him.
He bent and peeled off one boot when a cheerful voice carried out to him.
Remi Ford. He knew it without peering through the screen. The wild child redhead who lived two blocks away was in his grandparents’ kitchen. He debated slipping around to the front door and hightailing it upstairs. There was something about the girl that made his palms sweat.
She looked at him like she had plans for him. But then he heard his name from her lips and paused.
“You must be so proud of Brick,” Remi said.
He dared to sneak a glance inside. His grandfather, an old man with wispy hair and a wheelchair, sat at the kitchen table with his back to the door. Remi sat next to him, spooning up something bright yellow and holding it to the man’s thin, chapped lips.
It should have been sad, devastating even. The withered old man whose life had whittled down into a handful of rooms and a wheelchair being fed by the vibrant, bubbly teenager. But Remi was the wild card. There was something almost beautiful about it. About her.
“William,” his grandfather muttered gruffly in his painful, post-stroke speech.
“I call him Brick,” she insisted, scooping up another spoonful.
“Dad prison. Same name. Same blood,” his grandfather rasped.
Brick shrunk back from the doorway, away from the truth of the words. Apparently Mackinac wasn’t far enough to escape a father’s sins.
“Well, that’s just silly,” she chided. “Brick’s as far away from a criminal as you can get. I’ve never met anyone with a bigger heart.”
“Big,” his grandfather wheezed.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Brick could hear the smile in her voice. “That’s why everyone thinks I call him Brick. Because he’s so big and strong. But really it’s because he’s impermeable. Indestructible.”
His grandfather chuckled then opened his mouth nice as you please for another spoonful. Brick shook his head. His grandmother was at her wit’s end trying to get her stubborn husband to eat. And all it took was a pretty girl who didn’t make him feel like an invalid. He couldn’t blame the man.
“While we’re on the subject, what did Brick and Spence’s dad do to end up in jail?”
Brick closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, willing the dread away. It didn’t matter what she thought. She was a teenager. The eight years that stood between them might as well have been an entire generation. She was the youngest of a tight-knit, loving family. He was the oldest of a splintered, scattered faction that didn’t have things like Christmas morning traditions or family cookouts.
His grandfather struggled with the words. She waited with what looked like patience and interest, just the right amount of both to defuse Pop’s automatic rancor at his condition.
“Hang on!” She lit up like the world’s greatest idea had just landed in her head. “Why don’t you write it down? I’ll get you a piece of paper.”
That sneaky little redheaded manipulator. Gram had mentioned to her in passing last week that they couldn’t get Pop to do his physical therapy. Which included writing.
“Here. I got you a pen, a pencil, and a marker,” she said, dropping the items in front of him on the sheet of paper.
Brick watched in amusement as Pop picked up the pen, then discarded it in favor of the thicker marker.
“I’ll get the cap for you,” Remi insisted. “There you go.”
Pop took the marker and, with a shaking hand, guided it to the paper. She leaned over the table, red hair falling over her face like a curtain of fire.
“Oh! He was a con man!”
At his grandfather’s harrumph, she rolled her eyes. “Well, it’s not like he’s out there kidnapping and murdering people.”
“True. Still. Lazy,” Pop wheezed.
“Well, yeah. I mean, obviously, if he’s just taking someone else’s money and not trying to earn his own. But Brick’s nothing like that. I mean, all you have to do is look at how happy-go-lucky Spencer is. That’s all his big brother’s work there. I’m sure you know Brick didn’t have to come here. He’s a grown man. But he feels responsible for taking care of his brother. It’s obvious he’s done a heck of a job there. Spencer seems happy and well-adjusted to me, and I’ve known my fair share of teenage boys. There’s only two places that could have come from. His big brother and his mom.”
His grandfather’s shoulders slumped. “Should be with them,” he rasped slowly. The words seemed to exhaust him, and for the first time, Brick glimpsed the bone-deep disappointment Pop had for his only daughter.
She should have been with them. But, like William Callan II, their mother had chosen another life. And just because her choice wasn’t illegal or unethical, it still left the same bitter aftertaste. Both parents had chosen something other than them. Than him. He never wanted Spencer to feel the weight of that.
Remi patted Pop on the arm. “I know. But if she were, they might not be here. It might be just you and Dolores in this big old house, and Brick and Spence might never have found their way to our little island. You gave them what they needed most. A home, a place to finally plant some roots. And they fit right in like they were born and raised here. That’s your doing and Dolores’s doing.”
That manipulative, little redhead. He saw exactly what she was doing. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
Pop struggled to say something, his lips working uselessly to form the words that wouldn’t come. He gripped the marker and moved it over the paper.
“Pink s-h-o-r—” Remi broke off laughing. “Spencer’s pink shorts! They are terrible, aren’t they?”
To Brick’s amazement, the stubborn Pop gave a shuddery chuckle. The man had never once laughed in his presence.
“Okay, maybe he doesn’t fit in quite as well as Brick does. But his grades are up.”
The old man nodded once.
“I tell you what,” she said. “If you eat the rest of that mac and cheese, I promise I’ll spill something really bad on those pink shorts the next chance I get.”
Brick watched as Pop raised his trembling right hand and managed a shaky thumbs-up.
“It’s a deal. Let me just warm this up a little bit for you so you don’t have to eat cold mac.”
Remi snuck another scoop from the pot on the stove into the bowl on her way to the microwave.
Her head lifted, and her eyes found him in the doorway. “Well, hey there, Brick. How were the horses today?”
Busted.
He pried off his other boot, dropped his cowboy hat on the bench outside and warily stepped into the kitchen. “Fine,” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
“You want some mac and cheese? We made a whole pot of it,” she said brightly.
He eyed his grandfather, looking for a reaction. Pop reached for the paper and dragged the marker over it in a familiar pattern.
Brick stared down at the large hash mark, and Pop pointed to the chair Remi had vacated.
An unexpected invitation. Unsure, he glanced over at Remi, who flashed him a wink.
“I should shower first,” he hedged, hand on the back of the chair. He’d been under the impression his grandfather hated the idea of his dirty grandsons on his antique furniture.
“Quality time doesn’t require soap. Hang out with us now, shower later. Besides, I kinda like the smell of horses. Don’t you, Pop?”
Pop didn’t answer. Instead, he drew a crooked X in the top right of the hash mark and then slowly, painfully nudged the paper toward him.
Brick’s throat tightened. There were a lot of reasons in the moment. The ravages that time and age took. The unexpected invitation. The absolution of a father’s sins. The acknowledgment of how fucking hard he’d worked to give Spencer as much normal as he could.
The girl with the wild red hair lighting up the room and making it all possible.
His toes curled in his socks, gripping the floor, but he did as he was told and sat.
Just as he carefully drew his first O, Remi leaned over and placed a bowl of neon yellow noodles in front of him. She smelled like sunscreen and summer, and he knew he’d never forget the scent. Or the memory she’d made for him there that day.
He and Pop were in the middle of their third game when Spencer burst into the kitchen in a V for Vendetta t-shirt and the infamous, god-awful pink shorts. His hair was getting lighter thanks to the island sun. Mackinac seemed to agree with him, to Brick’s relief.
“I caught the biggest freaking fish today!” he announced.
Remi whirled around from the open refrigerator with a squeeze bottle of ketchup. An arc of tomato red noisily squirted out, raining down on his brother’s shorts.
“Oh, man! My shorts!” Spencer whined, looking down at the damage.
“I’m so sorry! I was just going to have Pop try mac and cheese with ketchup, and the next thing I know, it’s raining condiments!” she said, all wide-eyed and apologetic.
“Who eats mac and cheese with ketchup? These are my favorite shorts!” Spencer moaned.
Brick got the wash rag out of the sink and started to clean the excess ketchup from the cabinets and floor. Pop let out another wheezy chuckle that he covered with a cough. Remi earned another trembling thumbs-up as Spencer bemoaned his wardrobe’s fate.
“I feel awful,” Remi said with theatrical horror. “Run on upstairs and take them off. I think with ketchup stains you’re supposed to let them set for a few hours before washing it out. Right, Pop?”
Pop gave one enthusiastic nod, the corner of his mouth still lifted.
Spencer thundered up the stairs cursing all tomato-based condiments.
“What on earth is going on in here?” Brick’s grandmother, Dolores, demanded from the doorway. Her sterling silver cap of hair had been set in fresh curls. “It looks like a crime scene in here.”
“I swear it’s not blood. No one’s been maimed,” Remi announced, grabbing the roll of paper towels off the counter and joining Brick on the floor. “It’s just ketchup.”
“Well, what’s it doing all over my kitchen?” Gram demanded.
“It was an accident,” Brick volunteered.
Remi gave him an impish grin.
“Pop and Brick were playing tic-tac-toe, and we were all enjoying some macaroni and cheese, and I was telling them about how my friend Tammy Kim likes to eat it with ketchup, and they didn’t believe me. So I was going to have them try it, and then Spencer came in, and I guess I just lost my grip on the bottle—”
“Pop and Brick were playing tic-tac-toe?” Gram interrupted.
“And eating,” Brick added.
His grandmother nearly went misty-eyed on them as she crossed the kitchen to put her hands on her husband’s thin shoulders. She took in the bowls, the paper and marker, and dropped a kiss on the top of Pop’s bald head.
“Hair looks…nice.” Pop formed the words slowly.
“You old charmer,” Gram whispered.
Brick felt like he was intruding on a private moment and itched to give them their space. Remi must have had the same notion because she nodded her head toward the hallway.
“I’ll help you take the trash out, Brick,” she announced brightly.
She waited while he hefted the bag from the bin, then led the way to the back of the house. She held the door for him, and together they stepped out onto the back patio.
“I’ve never seen someone do that much good by telling that many lies,” he told her when they were out of earshot.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said cheerfully, plucking the metal lid off the trash can. He dropped the bag inside. “Teamwork makes the dream work,” she said, closing the lid and wiping her hands on the back of her shorts.
“Thanks for that in there,” he began. “All of it. Gram’s been worried about him.”
“I hardly did a thing,” she insisted. “Sometimes folks just need to remember there’s a whole lot of life left to live.”
He dipped his head and glanced down at his feet. “Well, thank you for reminding him.”
“Think Spence will forgive me for those damn shorts?” she asked, not sounding like it bothered her a bit.
“Eventually. Probably.”
“I guess I’d better get back home. I have to write an essay I told my dad I finished Friday.”
Not for the first time, he found himself at a loss for words around her. Remington Ford was a handful of trouble and sunshine.
“I guess I’ll see you around then,” he said.
She wandered into the backyard toward the gate in the fence. “You know, if you enclosed this whole porch thing, it might be a nice big living space for Pop,” she mused.
He grunted.
“Well, I’m sure we’ll be seeing lots of each other. Bye!”
He said nothing as he watched her stroll around the side of the house and let herself out through the gate.
