Page 65 of Walking Wounded

She snorts. “Not your scene, huh? I’ll tell you a secret.” She drops her voice. “It’s not mine either.”

He gives her a look.

“Hey, I’m serious. In my mind, if you want to help a charity, you go down to their office and write a fat check. Or you go volunteer. Call and ask the animal shelter how much dog food they need to last the next six months. Donate all your old clothes. Work at the soup kitchen. There’s something bad wrong with needing a four-course dinner and a buncha ass-kissing before you’ll get out your checkbook.” She emphasizes the point with a wave of a cellophane bag. “And now I’ve got to sit here and put all these together, and people are still going to talk shit about me. How’s that for charity?”

“People suck,” Luke agrees, smiling.

“Some of them really do, yes. And most of them live in this city.”

He laughs, delighted to hear someone as seemingly put-together and graceful as Sandy rant like this.

“You got someplace to be? Or can you help me stuff bags?” she asks, waggling her eyebrows.

“I was going to say no, but then you make it sound so dirty…” He drops into the chair next to her, bag sliding off his arm onto the floor. “Show me which order everything goes in.”

She does, and they settle in to work, bags crinkling happily.

For long moments, Luke loses himself in the peaceful repetition of it. It’s the most relaxed he’s felt in a long time, and that’s why his guard slips. Mindlessly fitting gift cards into bags, he says, “I used to do stuff like this with my mom.”

“Hmm?” Sandy hums, encouraging.

“Yeah, always some kind of crafty stuff. She tried to get my sister to help but she always…” His heart stutters. Sadie is suddenly there, in his head, curled at the edges like an old photograph, the ghost of her laugh bursting behind his ears. “Screwed it up,” he whispers, and a gift card falls from his nerveless fingers.

Sadie. How long has it been since he thought of her actively? He locked her away, years ago, to spare himself the jagged pain of remembering her in every brown-haired girl he passed on the street, in the fog on the windowpanes, where she would have drawn a heart with her fingertip.

Sadie. With her shiny chestnut hair streaming behind her like a banner; her laughter bright and effervescent as bubbles.

Sadie. The first person he’d ever told that he liked boys; who’d frowned in her small fierce way, kissed his forehead, and dared the rest of the world to say anything cruel to her brother.

He remembers the Rycrofts’ living room, packed with people in black, and too many flower arrangements, the combined smells of florist carnations and too much perfume choking him. He remembers stealing to the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub, and thinkingmy sister’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead. And trying not to remember the way his mother had wailed when the police dragged her back from the crime scene tape. He remembers Hal coming to find him, and sitting on the hard tile at his feet, his head resting in Luke’s lap like a faithful dog. No words between them, just silent tears, and Hal’s strong, football-playing arms wrapped tight around his calves. He remembers knowing that his mother needed him, but that he needed this at the moment; to exist alone with his grief – alone, because being with Hal had always been like being with an extension of himself.

Someone touches his arm and it jerks him back to the present: Sandy Maddox’s kitchen, a cellophane bag crumpled in his left hand.

“It’s okay,” Sandy says, gently. “You went away for a minute there.”

His tongue is lead. His head is no longer connected to his body. He wants – viscerally, painfully – to feel Hal’s head on his leg, like the day of the funeral. He just…wants.

“My sister.” It sounds like his voice is coming from across the room, like it didn’t leave his throat. “She died. She was…killed.” When he closes his eyes, he can see her purple backpack with all its assorted pins lying at the edge of the shoulder like a run-over raccoon. Can see the way the grass leading down the hill is parted. Refuses to walk those steps he took in real life, and see again her crumpled form, a plucked flower left abandoned in the ditch.

“Oh God,” Sandy says in a low, strong voice. Not shock, only maternal love. “Oh God, baby, I’m so sorry.” Her hand leaves his arm and cards back through his hair.

The ticking clock on the wall counts out thirty seconds. The fridge hums quietly to itself.

“Would you like a really big shot of something out of the adult cabinet?” she asks.

Luke manages to nod.

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