“Some. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge, honestly—there’s things like this, and then some, you know, really cheap replacements here and there.”
“When was the house built?” He’s pushing the ladder down the wall a bit, climbing on the first step to look down at me before going any farther.
“1870. It’s a row house, Queen Anne style.”
He nods, and I can see his mind working. “This is probably original,” he says, climbing up the ladder and reaching toward one of the uppermost bins. I see a flash of his taut stomach and avert my eyes. Reluctantly.
When he comes down, he’s holding a bubble-wrapped package, and he sits on one of the lower steps of the ladder so that now I’m looking down at him as he unwraps it. He holds it out to me, an exact match for the doorknob I brought in. Those eyes. “Wow,” I say, and am mostly referring to the doorknob.
“I’ve got a lot more up there. These show up a lot, probably from houses in the area built around the same time as yours.”
“That’s—that’s great. I didn’t really count, though, before I came in. And there’s all the other stuff I should look for too. I should’ve made a list, I guess.” But I thought I was coming here as a formality, I don’t add.
“Well, we could start by checking out some of the things that match the style of the house. My dad organizes things mostly by period, so that shouldn’t be too hard. And Russell and Erwin did all kinds of hardware, so we could start by looking there…”
And he’s off, moving down the wall with his ladder, pulling out bin after bin to set on the floor, and I should say that this is all too much trouble, that I can’t stay long, that I’ll have to come back another time. But it’s easy to get pulled into this orbit, and before I know it, I’m kneeling down on the hard concrete floor, carefully unwrapping filigreed switch plates that Ben says were manufactured right around the same time as the doorknob, and would I also want to look at some hinges? Hinges? I think. Hinges sound awesome, as long as you’re still within smelling distance, because frankly, you smell amazing.
It’s like this for a few minutes, Ben crouched next to me, occasionally bringing me another bin, and I feel a giddy sense of excitement about the possibilities of this place, about what I could find here for my house. At one point, I unwrap a hinge—a hinge, who knew?—that features a delicately carved leaf pattern, and in my surprise at the work put into something so largely unseen, I say, “Look at this,” and hold it out to Ben.
There’s this moment where our eyes lock, and we’re both smiling, sitting here like we’re two kids who found a buried treasure, and I forget all about Ben being such an idiot last week.
And then the yelling starts.
Chapter 4
Ben
In general, I don’t scare easy. When I was eleven, I found a copperhead snake under my sleeping bag during a school camping trip, and I just backed away slowly and found the ranger who was supervising, keeping an eye on any person who might head in that direction and put themselves at risk. When I was seventeen and stood in front of a judge who was going to make a decision that was going to affect the rest of my life, my hands were as steady as granite, my voice, when I spoke, came out clear as a bell. Even when I got the call about my dad two weeks ago, I’d managed to stay calm, to ask the right questions, to make all the necessary arrangements to get back here.
But when I hear my dad yell, I think my stomach is leaping out of my body, if only to jam itself back down my throat, settling somewhere in the vicinity of my chest. I spring up from where I’m crouched on the floor, dropping a handful of switch plates behind me, and tear toward the office, my mind racing. Surely it’s impossible for me to have so many thoughts in the twenty or so seconds it takes me to reach him, but it seems like I have them all: Has he fallen, how bad is it, will there be more surgery, could it be a clot, a stroke, how could I have let him come here—
I barely register Kit’s presence behind me, not until I barrel through the office door and stop in my tracks, Kit’s small frame bumping against me with an oof of surprise. My dad’s still in his chair, looking as hale and hearty as he has all day, but he’s shouting, banging his one good fist against the window overlooking the scrapyard, his face getting redder by the minute.
“Dad, what the—”
“Get outside!” he shouts to me. “Get out there and get that kid!”
I take a step toward the window, and outside across the yard I see a short, skinny kid dressed in tight black jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt, taking bricks off a pallet and hurling them at my dad’s truck, the one he mostly keeps on site.
“Shit,” I mutter, and hit the pavement.
Jasper and I run most days back in Houston, early mornings where we meet up to strategize, so I’m quick. But it’s still weird that with my loud boots on the gravel, the kid doesn’t try to flee until I’m almost on him, and I barely have to make a few more strides before I snag him by the back of his hood and pull him toward me, wrapping my other arm around his shoulders to keep him still. I don’t realize he’s still got a brick in his hand until he drops it on my foot.
“Fuck,” I groan, lifting my foot against the pain while tightening my grip against his struggle. “You need to settle down, kid.”
He elbows me in the gut, but I’m prepared for that; I’ve made myself a wall against him. “I’m fucking serious. I don’t care how old you are. I will lay you out if you keep this shit up.”
“Fuck you,” he spits, but he’s slumped over a bit now, the fight gone out of him. I loosen my grip and keep a hold of his elbow, turning him to face me. Jesus, he looks young, maybe thirteen? His hair is an unnatural grayish-purple color, swooping over one eye, and his jawline is pocked with acne. I feel like hell, manhandling a kid this way, even if he is a little criminal. And anyways, that look in his eyes—that stubborn, angry stare—I know that look. I was that look, back in the day.
“Name,” I say.
“I’ll tell it to the cop.” His voice is unusual, slightly accented, and when he turns his head away from me, avoiding my stare, I catch a glimpse of a hearing aid wrapped around his ear, peeking through his longish hair.
“You’ll tell it to me,” I say, resisting the urge to raise my voice, “or else you get no help when that cop gets here.”
“River.”
“This isn’t a western, kid. What’s your first name?”
“That is my first name,” he says, and boy, he does not sound happy about it. “And you can save your fucking jokes. I’ve heard them all.”
“I’m not in a joking mood.” My dad’s truck is a mess, the right fender smashed to hell, the windshield shattered but still in place, which is more than I can say for the passenger side window, which I’m guessing is in pieces all over the front seat. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”
“That’s pretty obvious, genius.”
Damn, the attitude on this kid. “Well, I’d say what’s obvious is that you’re looking for some way of getting caught out here, since it’s twelve fucking forty-five on a Thursday afternoon and you’re making a hell of a lot of noise right outside an open place of business.” Shit, I think. Was the remark about the noise insensitive? Honestly I don’t know why the fuck I’d care, since this kid is trying to destroy my father’s property. “Let’s go,” I say, and tug him back toward the entrance. I have no idea what I’m going to do when I get him there. I’m not really sure whether a citizen’s arrest is an actual thing or just something Dad used to yell at me when he caught me stealing the Oreos from the top shelf of the pantry.
Kit and my dad are out front, her standing behind his chair. I don’t want her to see me dragging a teenager around by the