Page 2 of Ebbing Tides
“You’re a good boy,” I reminded him, clearing my throat as the wave passed, and with a sigh, I put on baseball cap and opened the door.
I lived on a quiet street in suburban Massachusetts, not too far from Salem, where I worked my nights away. Fifteen minutes, twenty tops if there was a little traffic. I loved this house, this street, and although my sisters often insisted I move closer to them after everything changed, I never did.
Why would I want to leave the place where I had spent the best months of my life? A year after the accident, Grace and Lucy had asked if it was too painful to be reminded of them—Laura, the baby, and the girls—all the time … but what was the alternative? Toforget?
I would never allow myself to forget them, no matter how painful it often was to remember.
But I never faulted my sisters or their husbands—my best friends, Sid and Ricky—for caring, even if they were, at times, a bit … suffocating. I guessed they felt like they owed me, after I spent so many years caring for them, but as the oldest, living under my father’s reign of terror, wasn’t that my job?
Anyway, I loved this street. Loved my neighbors even. Ten years ago, I hadn’t had many of them on this bit of shoreline, but ten years was a long time, and there were now a few more houses where there once had been none. And right now, I looked across the road to see little Jack Douglas standing at the end of his driveway behind a table of model cars. A sign readingCARS FOR SALE, written in his appropriately sloppy handwriting, was taped to the table. Lido walked easily beside me as I headed over.
“Jack, I didn’t know you were in the used car business,” I called, squinting at him beneath the brim of my hat.
The sunlight glinted off the piles of remaining snow, banked at the sides of his driveway. He looked up and smiled at me, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. The kid looked like he was freezing, even in his snow boots and winter coat.
“My dad said I could get a new video game if I could pay for half,” he explained, his eyes now on the table of cars.
“How much have you made so far?” I asked, pulling my wallet from my pocket.
Jack’s already-rosy cheeks darkened in hue. “Um … my grandma gave me five dollars.”
“Hmm.”
I loosened my hold on Lido’s leash, and with his new bit of found freedom, he rounded the table to lean his eighty-pound body against the kid’s legs. Jack was thrown off-balance, damn near knocked over altogether, and he laughed as he got down on his knees to wrap his arms around the big dog’s thick neck, ruffling the fur along his back.
“Nice selection you have here,” I complimented, scanning over the display of cars. “You built all of these yourself?”
“Not all of them,” Jack replied. “Some of them are Luke’s, but he doesn’t want them anymore.”
Luke was Jack’s older brother by two, maybe three years. I didn’t know for sure how old Luke was, but I knew Jack must’ve been eight, maybe nine. Had life not happened the way it did, I would’ve had a son about his age. Maybe they would’ve been friends. I would’ve liked that. Jack was a good kid, the kind you wouldn’t mind your own kids hanging out with.
I picked up a black Dodge Ram. The driver’s door was a bit scuffed, but it was otherwise in nice condition.
“This was my first truck,” I mused, turning it over in my hand as I thought about the adventures I’d been on in that old truck.
The drives from the base in New Jersey to Revere.
Hanging out with my sisters during my brief stints home from the Army.
The flat tire in Connecticut that had led to one memorable dinner with a woman I could never forget.
Melanie.
I held the car up and asked, “How much for this one?”
“Um … ten dollars?” Jack asked, uncertain, as he stood up, his hands never leaving Lido’s wriggling body.
I opened my wallet and thumbed through my cash. “How much more do you need for your video game?”
“I dunno,” he muttered shamefully. “Probably, like, thirty dollars or something like that.”
“All right.” I took out two twenties. “How about this? I’ll buy the truck and give you forty bucks. Next time it snows, you come shovel my driveway, and we’ll call ourselves even. Deal?”
I handed over the bills, but he didn’t take them from me right away. He just stared, wide-eyed.
“Really?”
“Yep.” I nodded, nudging my hand toward him.
