Love Next Door (Lakeside 1)

Limiting the snow removal to driveways and local businesses will mean my dad is safer, and we’ll have less wear and tear on the company vehicles. It’s a win all the way around.

My dad takes the wheel on the trip back home, and we stop at the diner to grab a bite to eat and pick up Mom, who sometimes works the Sunday-morning shift. She doesn’t have to—the house is paid off, and my dad can easily afford to maintain their simple lifestyle on his salary alone—but she loves the socialness of it.

She tried to scale back her hours a few years ago, but she didn’t like being idle, and she missed the conversation and the people. I also think she likes the opportunity to keep tabs on what’s going on in town, and she doesn’t want to get sucked back into the bookkeeping for my dad.

“Do you know what time Billy came home last night?” I ask as we pull off the smoothly paved road and back onto the pitted one that will take us through town.

Dad taps the steering wheel. “I figured he came home with you.”

“I lost track of him when the storm rolled in.” Worry and guilt make my throat and shoulders tight.

“Well, his door was closed this morning, and he left dirty shoe prints all over the kitchen floor, so he made it home fine either way.” He gives me a small smile, the kind that holds strain.

“Do you know what’s going on with him? I know he’s always been a bit of an ongoing concern, but he’s not a teenager anymore, and he’s still kind of acting like one.”

“You know boys are slow to mature.”

I nod. “Sure, I get it, and he and I talked about how it’s hard for him with me being back home, but I don’t know . . . I worry that there’s more going on. He has such huge ups and downs. Last night he was trying to do keg stands with a cast.”

“He was just looking to impress his friends.”

I should know better than to expect my dad to admit that there are more things wrong than he’d like there to be. It’s not that he doesn’t see it; it’s more that he doesn’t want to make Billy feel worse. Living in the shadow of a sibling isn’t easy, and I’m sure finding the balance between celebrating one child’s glowing accomplishments and another’s less flashy ones is tricky.

“Probably,” I agree.

I know he doesn’t want Billy to feel like his path is any less valued than mine, and having me home, working with Dad, makes that so much more of a challenge. I let it be for now.

“Do we have any more news on the court date?” I took Billy to meet with Bernie not that long ago, but I haven’t heard anything back yet, and I worry that if we don’t obtain the information directly from the source, Billy might accidentally forget to say something and miss it.

“Not yet. Hopefully next month, though. It’d be great to get that over with so it’s one less stress for your mom. I think we’d all like to move on.”

Again, I bite my tongue. There’s more to this than just getting it out of the way, but I don’t want to make more waves than necessary right now.

It’s early afternoon by the time we get back home, and I still have to tackle the mess that is my trailer. At least the sun is shining, and we’re not expecting another storm, based on the current weather reports.

I spend the next couple of hours tidying up, but there’s a musty smell in the trailer. I open the windows and haul everything out, fill a bucket with water, add bleach and soap, and get to work scrubbing down the surfaces. I also mark all the spots that leak and search my dad’s garage for the supplies I need to patch things up.

The entire trailer probably needs replacing, but I can’t see doing that now—not when I don’t have plans to stay here past Thanksgiving. But even as I think it, I wonder if it’s actually true, because as much as I love the city, I’m starting to find that I’m getting comfortable here, maybe more than I realized.

I’m in the middle of patching one of the bigger holes when my phone rings. The sound is muffled and probably coming from my purse. I drop what I’m doing, aware I haven’t heard anything from anyone all day.

I find my phone before the call goes to voice mail. I’ve missed more than forty messages.

“Hello?”

“Why is it dinnertime and we still don’t have an update on what happened last night?” Tawny barks.

“Unless you’re still with Van the Man? Oh my gosh, you’re breathing heavy. We totally interrupted, didn’t we?” Allie asks, which means they’re both on the call.