Page 46 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

“Fuck you!”I scream one last time, throwing my whole body at the stupid thing, then I hear tires crunching over snow and see headlights flash in my eyes. I freeze. Who would be at my house at midnight?I begin to move to the wall to close the garage door, my heart racing, my body trembling. Before I can think through whether it’s the police with news, or Shelby, or something about the search for Bernie, or a rapist, I see who it actually is, and I exhale. It’s Billy. Billy, who I can’t fathom having a reason to be creeping up my drive right now.

He parks and turns the engine off, stepping down from the truck in a jacket too light for the cold, and all I can see is a white cloud of breath when he speaks.

“Hey. Sorry if I scared you.”

“You did” is all I manage to say, and he must read the look on my face correctly or just notice the dried tears and ruddy cheeks and not know what’s wrong with me, so he quickly continues.

“I just—we’re all taking turns driving around looking for Bernie. Like a round the clock effort, so I said I’d take a turn after Peggy took over for me at the bar…”

“Uhhh. He’s not here?” I say, and Billy sort of snort-laughs at this.

“No, I know. It’s just. I was trying to get a hold of you. Earlier…to see if you wanted to join, and when you didn’t answer, I mean with everything going on, I wanted to make sure you were okay. That’s all.”

“Oh,” I say. “Well, you can come in for a minute if you want so we don’t freeze to death,” I say. I see him hesitate and I don’t know if it’s because it’s an awkward request at this hour or because he doesn’t want to impose by showing up like this, but I’m too cold to worry about it, so I simply turn and head to the front door and I hear him follow behind.

Inside, I walk through to the kitchen and he stays politely with his boots still within the parameters of the front mat. Linus and Nugget are barking at him and jumping wildly at his legs.

“Can I pour you a drink? You can take those off, if you don’t mind,” I say nodding to his boots.

“Uh, sure,” he says. I shake a bag of treats and the boys come running back down the hall to me.I offer for him to sit in the living room and then I bring over two glasses of red wine.

“It’s all I have around, sorry. If I remember, you’re a bourbon guy,” I say, handing him one.

“This is great,” he says. I light the fireplace and sit in front of it on the rug with the boys, who curl up next to me. I look across the coffee table at Billy, and he’s probably wondering how the hell he went from a welfare check to having a drink on my sofa, and I’m thinking the same thing myself. It’s strange to have anyone other than Leo sitting there. And it might be the last time anyone is sitting on that sofa in this room, since I have less than thirty days to be out of my own home of twenty-three years.

“Thanks for checking on me. No word about Bernie yet, huh? Nothing?”

“Nothing. I mean, besides what’s on the news—his car’s missing, so some people think he just…” He stops talking and takes a sip of his drink. I can’t imagine he wants to say the words. “Some people think he just left on his own—doesn’t want to be found.”

“Right, I did hear about the car,” I say. I pet the top of Nugget’s head and take a big swallow of wine. I don’t know if it’s the chronic loneliness that comes with being abandoned or the arm’s-length friends in town that I can’t really open up to, which doesn’t include Shelby, of course, but considering what she’s going through, I can’t burden her with all of this… Or maybe the three glasses of wine I had before I decided to punch the shit out of the bag in the garage, or the idea of telling Rowan I’ve lost everything, or just his kind smile and me having nothing left to lose, but I just blurt it out. I just want to tell someone everything.

“I’m losing the house. I have to be out.”

“What?” he says, pausing with his glass halfway to his lips and then putting it down and furrowing his brow.

“I found out there’s a second mortgage foreclosure,” I say. No need to go into how I found out or the truck stop or Leo’s work bag, and God, it’s all too much, so I just stick with the basics. Maybe I’m looking for advice or maybe just a shoulder. I don’t even know, myself.

“And unpaid taxes…so they can seize the home and sell it, as it turns out.”

“I don’t understand. You…how could that happen?”

“Leo hid it, made statements digital only, in his name only. He must have forged a few documents to make that happen, but does that surprise you at this point?”

“How much is owed? You’ve lived here forever—God, can it be that much?” he says, leaning his elbows on his knees like he’s in emergency problem solving mode.

“Almost a hundred thousand,” I say and he blinks at me.

“Okay,” he says, and I know what he’s thinking. That I should have that as pocket change and is waiting for the rest of that sentence to be something like “I paid it but it was too late, they had sold it already” but I tell him the truth.

“I don’t have it. Leo gambled it away,” I say, like pulling off a Band-Aid.

“Oh God,” Billy says. “He…” he starts to stutter, so I don’t make him sit there trying to come up with a proper response. I just continue.

“I know the talk, so I know people know he gambles, that he got hit hard by COVID with the last couple small restaurants. People felt sorry for him but they still assumed—if all the overheard gossip I get wind of is accurate—that he still had a fortune tucked away from all the prosperous years, but as you might have figured out, that is not the case. If he did, in fact, tuck away a fortune and not gamble it all away, he made sure I didn’t know about it and is living large on it in who knows where with it now.”

“Oh, Mack,” he says. “God, I had no idea.” I move to the couch with a sigh and sit down next to him,leaning my head back and staring at the ceiling, feeling numb and overwhelmed at the same time.

“I don’t even know what to say—it’s shocking. I’m so sorry,” he says.

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