Page 82 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“The answers to this and many more questions can be found in the Yellow Pages,” Nathaniel says, turning around. The little twist of a smile drops from his face when he sees Susan.
“I want to make a record,” Susan says.
Nathaniel’s expression is perfectly blank. “Do you.”
“I negotiated a pretty decent contract. Your name’s on it. All you have to do is sign.”
Nathaniel shuts his eyes. “Susan.”
Susan reaches into the pocket of her jeans and pulls out Nathaniel’s notebook. “There’s a song in here.”
“There’s a nervous breakdown in there,” Nathaniel says.
“Same difference. Are you working this morning?”
“No. I just need to fix this.” He holds up his hand, showing the bloody bandage.
“I have Band-Aids and mercurochrome upstairs,” Susan says. Nathaniel drops the shovel and follows her upstairs, brushing Patrick’s arm with his hand on the way out.
Patrick spends the morning typing up letters to prospective buyers. He keeps the shop door propped open so he can hear the music drifting down from Susan’s open window.
25
“I still can’t believe you brought them on the plane,” Iris hisses at her brother.
“I wasn’t going to leave them in San Juan,” Hector says.
“You should have left themhere.”
“Hey, you two,” Patrick says when he sees them. “How was your trip?”
“It’s good to be back,” Mrs. Valdez says, entering the store behind her children. She looks harried. She looks like someone who’s spent two weeks with bickering teenagers. She looks like a woman who will be thrilled to go back to work tomorrow.
“There’s wine in the fridge,” Patrick says, because Susan’s mother sent her back with three bottles of sweet white wine. “No wine glasses, but if you can put up with coffee mugs, help yourself.”
She heads back to the kitchen like she doesn’t need to be told twice.
Sometimes, when Patrick watches Hector and Iris, he wonders if he and Michael were ever like that. He doubts it. They’d been less than a year apart, but Patrick felt every day of those extra eleven and a half months. Protecting Micheal had been his job—not just protecting him from bullies or their family, but from the knowledge that they were all alone.
Maybe everyone feels a sense of guilty failure when they lose a younger sibling, or maybe this is something his brain cookedup special just for him. Maybe if they’d been on better terms, Michael would have figured out some way not to go to Vietnam. But it’s been seven months since he died, and Patrick is pretty sure that what he’s really tearing himself up over is that he didn’t make it right between them. He doesn’t know what it would have taken, or what words he should have said, just that he’ll never get a chance to say them.
Mrs. Valdez puts a mug of wine on his desk. It has the logo for Shell gas on it. Her mug says something in faded black, with WAFFLES the only word still legible.
“You looked like you needed it,” she says. “Also it’s only four o’clock and I’m not drinking alone.”
He holds up his mug in a silent toast.
“How was your vacation?” he asks.
“About a week too long.”
“Your kids are a lucky to have you.”
She gives him a look. “You aren’t wrong, but what’s this about?”
Patrick just wanted to say something nice to a person who’s been more than kind to him for the nearly three years they’ve known one another. They’re friends, right? They’re sort of friends. She’s forty-five and he’s never called her by her first name, but he thinks they’re friends.
“I don’t think I ever thanked you for taking care of Susan and the baby when they got here.”
