The Return of Bowie Bravo. Christine Rimmer

For the rest of them, he would either earn their respect—or get along without it, as he’d been doing for all of his life.

       Later, after Brett and Little Tony left, Bowie sat in Glory’s kitchen for a while, wondering what he ought to do with himself now. The women were all upstairs with Glory and the baby, doing whatever women do after a baby comes. The kitchen clock and the Timex watch he’d used to time Glory’s contractions both agreed that it was quarter of one. What time did school get out? Two? Three? Four?

       He took off the watch and put it back in the drawer where he’d gotten it and then he wandered around downstairs for a while. It was a great house. He’d always admired it. The place was well over a hundred years old and still standing strong. There were built-ins—that little desk area in the kitchen, the dining-room china cabinet and the waist-high bookcases on either side of the family-room fireplace. The bookcases, like the mantelpiece, were hand-carved with flowers and vines.

       Eventually, when he ran out of quality woodwork to appreciate, he put on his jacket and went outside. The storm had dropped about six inches of new snow, white and pure, stretching out over the wide field at the back of the Rossi house, all the way to where the pines started. Since the house was at the end of Jewel Street, where the street hooked to the northeast and then came to an end, there was a good deal of open land around it on the north and east sides. His breath pluming in the icy air, he stood at the base of the back-porch steps and looked up at the mountains that rimmed the town, all of them blanketed in snow-dusted evergreens.

       His hometown. In some ways it still didn’t seem real to him, that he was here, that he’d actually done it. Returned to the place of his childhood. The place where he’d grown up and made such a mess of everything.

       After a moment, he shook his head. He started moving, trudging through the fresh, powdery snow, out to the big gray barn fifty feet or so behind the house.

       The barn had windows. He wiped the snow off the panes and peered in. The structure had been divided. The smaller side was a garage for a riding mower and other yard equipment. The larger section was a workshop. Through one of the workshop windows, he saw a cot and a free-standing woodstove, as well as pegboards hung with tools and long, rough waist-high wooden workbenches. A fluorescent light fixture hung from a ceiling beam.

       It wasn’t bad. Big enough for both a place to work and a living area. His needs were simple. A cot to sleep in and a stove to keep him warm during the long winter nights. If he stayed, the workshop would suit him fine, although he’d have to have a phone installed because his cell wasn’t going to be any use to him here.

       But getting a landline put in was no biggie. The biggie would be getting Glory to go for it. He hardly felt confident on that point.

      You’ve got zero hope of getting a yes if you never ask the damn question, Wily Dunn would have said.

      Right, Wily. But it’s Glory we’re talking about here. Glory wouldn’t give him a yes if her life depended on it.

       Still. If he felt he had to, he would ask the question, anyway. He’d know better what his next step should be after a certain six-year-old got home from school.

       He returned to the back porch, knocked the snow off his boots and went inside again. Angie and Stella were in the kitchen and something that smelled good simmered on the cooktop.

       “Soup and a sandwich?” Angie asked. She looked at him warmly, he thought. And suddenly, he was grateful after all that he’d come today, that for once, he’d been there for Glory when she needed him—and that her sister knew it.

       He realized he was starving. “Soup and a sandwich would be great.”

       Angie fixed his food and he sat down to eat while she and her aunt loaded up a couple of trays and went back upstairs.

       After he ate, he started wondering how Glory and little Sera were doing. He went out into the front hall and stood at the base of the stairs with a hand on the newel post and thought about going up there. He wanted to go up, but he didn’t quite dare to. Instead, he went into the family room and rebuilt the fire that had burned down to coals during Sera’s birth.

       He’d just gotten it going good when he heard the front door open. He shut the door to the fireplace insert, hung the poker back on the stand and rose to his feet. The front door closed. Hesitant footsteps came closer. And stopped. He turned slowly to face the sturdy, handsome boy who stood in the arch to the foyer.

       Still in his coat and hat, his rubber boots and backpack, the boy had Glory’s brown hair and big eyes. And the telltale Bravo cleft in his square chin. He took his time, looking Bowie up and down.

       Bowie returned his stare. The only sound was the crackle of the newly revived fire at his back. For Bowie, in that wordless moment, the world seemed to shift on its axis. Everything came into sharper perspective. He saw what he’d already known in his mind. But now he saw it through his heart and whatever that thing was that might be called a soul. Only at that moment did he fully accept that he had a job to do here, a job he’d left undone for too long.

       There was no way he could leave town. Not in the near future anyway.

       “I know you,” the boy said at last, his mouth that was the same shape as the mouth Bowie saw when he looked in the mirror, curved in a sneer. “I’ve seen your pictures in Granny Chastity’s house. You’re the one they call my dad. But you’re not my dad. My dad died. And I hate you.”