She opens her mouth as though to argue, but then simply sighs instead. “Of course.”
“We’ll start on supper,” Gerald continues, gesturing to his wife. She nods and follows him into the kitchen. Leon gives me an apologetic half-smile.
“Sorry about this,” he tells me in an undertone. “You never should’ve gotten mixed up in this. If you need to sneak out and go somewhere, check in with someone— ”
“No,” I reply quickly, shaking my head. “There’s — there’s no one.”
Leon blinks a couple times, a little taken aback by my response. I realize too late how pathetic it sounds. That there’s nobody waiting up for me. Nobody to worry over when I’m coming home. How depressing.
“Sorry about Gerry and Wanda. They don’t get a whole lot of visitors anymore these days, except for when members of the Club stop by. Wanda gets lonely, you know. She’s been a little off since Henry passed,” he explains softly.
I nod. “That’s understandable.”
“How are you holding up?” he asks, moving a little closer.
I frown at him for a moment, trying to ascertain what he’s talking about. Then it hits me. Obviously he’s asking how I’m feeling about my dad’s death. I must look cold-hearted. But it’s just the way I deal with things. I find ways to distract myself until I’m ready to face the problem head-on, and I’m just not there yet.
“Oh, I’m okay. Yeah, I’m good,” I reply, trying to strike a balance between nonchalant enough not to warrant his pity and genuine enough not to look like an emotionless drone.
“Well, if you ever wanna talk about it or — ”
“No. Not now. Thank you.”
Leon nods slowly, sizing me up. Then he just says, “Well, then, let’s go help the Lawrences make dinner. It’ll definitely speed up the process.”
He shoots me a brilliant, charming grin and we join the old couple in the kitchen to chop up vegetables and beef tips for a pot roast. It’s a relief to have something to do with my hands, and I find myself wrapped up in warm, comforting banter. Gerry and Wanda clearly adore each other, and they seem to regard Leon as their adoptive son. Throughout the evening I can’t stop smiling. Despite everything that’s happened, despite what I’ve recently lost, I can’t help but feel a little bit like I’ve come home.
“I wonder if they even know how dusty it is down here,” Leon jokes as we walk down the stairs into the basement room. It looks exactly like a typical teenage boy’s hideaway from the 90s, and I assume sadly that the couple probably haven’t even looked down here since Henry’s death. It makes sense that they would want to leave it exactly as he left it, even though he was much older than a teenager when he died.
“Looks like a time capsule,” I comment, pointing to the curling Nirvana poster on the wall. There’s a long-abandoned lava lamp on a rickety little coffee table across the room, the blobs of wax suspended in the same place they were when the lamp stopped working probably decades ago.
“Yeah, when Henry went off to college I think they kinda wanted to keep everything the way he had it, just in case he ever decided to move back in.”
“That’s sweet.”
“Not particularly well-adjusted, but yeah. I suppose it is sweet. They lived for that kid.”
“It’s hard losing someone who was the center of your world like that,” I answer, biting my lip. I can feel Leon staring at me from across the room but I don’t want to meet his gaze.
“Oh, hey! Look at this!” he calls out, waving me over excitedly.
“What is it?”
He holds up a big, dust-coated bottle of amber liquid. He rubs the dust off the label and laughs out loud. “It’s bourbon. Old as hell. I doubt Gerry even knows it’s down here.”
“I didn’t take him for an aficionado,” I reply, bemused.
“He’s not. In fact, he was a bit of a boozer when he was a young guy. Wanda told me once that the day they found out she was pregnant with Henry he gave up the bottle for good. That’s probably why this stuff is down here. Henry was a good guy, too. Never touched the stuff. I doubt Anya would’ve let him, anyway,” he chuckles.
He opens the bottle and wipes the top off on his shirt. Then he holds it out to me.
“Want the first taste?”
“Oh no. Finder’s fee. You first,” I reply, grinning in spite of myself.
“With pleasure,” Leon says, taking a big swig. He closes his eyes, swallows, and smiles.
He passes me the bottle and we get comfortable on the floor, spreading out the massive mountain of pillows and blankets Wanda supplied for us. We spend the next hour or so just laughing and sharing stories about what it was like growing up in Bayonne, passing the bottle back and forth until it’s nearly two-thirds gone.