Page 19 of Hold

“Mm-hmm?” she mumbled, catching a drip of mortar. Butter. Not cream cheese. Check.

“Can I go out?”

“Where to, Jake?”

“Just into town. Some friends are getting pizza.”

She had no reason to say no. It was just that she had a sneaking suspicion that Jake’s friends were the ones with the reputation around town. Perhaps the ones who’d vandalized the kids’ playground last weekend. The day Jake had been hanging with them. Thea had cringed when she’d heard the news at the bus stop, and like the ostrich she was, hadn’t mentioned it to Jake.

But she was only guessing. “Which friends?”

“Zachary Benedetto, Andrew Gallagher—”

“Oh, Jake.” Thea didn’t spend much time gossiping with the other moms these days, but those names had filtered through to her.

“They’re all right, Mom. Anyway, we’re going to look for jobs, too.”

She looked at him now. His pale-blue eyes were wide open at her, as innocent as could be. The group was coming in an hour, and she had to feed Benji and get some appetizers put together. It was the last day of school, after all, and most kids were hanging around in town, enjoying their first day of freedom.

He couldn’t come to much harm with most of the school out and about, so she said, “All right. Have fun—legal fun!” she called after him as he whooped and began to run back upstairs. “Be home by ten o’clock!”

“Eleven!” came the voice down the stairs as Jake ricocheted off his walls, looking for his favorite sneakers, no doubt.

“Ten thirty!” she said, as he’d known, and she’d known, she would. Thea sighed, crossed her fingers and her eyes, whispered,please don’t let him smoke, then walked outside to see how Liam was getting on.

He was getting on just fine. The window where the air conditioner sat was empty, the window open. He’d set up a couple of sawhorses in the yard and was five steps up a ladder with a power drill in his hand, making holes in her siding. A pencil was tucked behind one ear, and the back of his navy T-shirt was already stuck to him with sweat on this hot June day. The temperature had quickly reached ninety degrees and climbed from there, yet he’d still come over as he’d said he would, two hours before class met, to either do work on her house or show her how to do it.

To distract herself from the view and Jake’s possible descent into vagrancy, she said, “I do a mean Jimmy Stewart, too, by the way.”

“I’ll bet you a million dollars you don’t,” he said without turning around. “Hand me the bracket out of the back of my truck, will you? Farther back, Ben.” Benji was riding his bike up and down the driveway behind Liam and kept getting his handlebars within the ladder danger zone.

“Benji, back off or you’ll have to go inside.” When she was sure Benji had changed his trajectory, Thea went over to the blue monster baby and looked in the bed. It was perfectly lined with polished wood and chrome slats, the bracket kept from sliding by a forest of bungee cords. She did her best to undo the cords without scratching the perfect paint job but flinched when she accidentally let go of one end and the hook sprang to the other side of the flatbed with a loudclunk.

She threw a guilty look behind her, but by the grace of God, Liam had the drill going and he hadn’t heard. She checked for dings in the paint, but didn’t see any, and got the bracket out of the truck.

The packaging for the bracket said very clearly on the cover: Installs from inside the house! No drilling needed!

“Uh, Liam?”

“What?” He stepped off the ladder and went over to the sawhorses, where he’d left a handsaw and a small pile of wood.

“This says…” He was looking at her impatiently, his mouth that thin line in his beard. There were two gaps below his lower lip where the beard didn’t grow. She wondered what he’d do if she pressed a finger to one of them. “This says, no drilling needed.”

She was rewarded for her concern with another long blue look and a frown. “Right,” he said, his voice as chilly as his eyes. “So you take the unit in and out every season?”

“Yes! Well, I used to.” Another thing that she’d let go after Gabe had left. Honestly, not having a man around the house, or at least someone with bigger muscles than her, was a pain in the ass sometimes. “It’s heavy,” she finished lamely.

“It’s heavy,” he repeated, well, heavily. “Okay, then, so since it’s sitting there, sagging under its own weight, with only the weight of that almost-rotten window pane holding it down, I figure the bracket’s going to need more support than this to make sure it doesn’t fall out. Since it sits there all winter with snow and leaves and God knows what on it.” He held out his hand for the bracket, already reaching into his toolbelt—and yes, it did make his pants slide down a little, but there was no plumber’s butt yet, and yes, she’d checked—for his tape measure.

Thea blushed and handed it to him. “You know, being a know-it-all can get old real fast,” she countered.

“You’d better get used to being one when you’re a teacher,” he said. “Never show them you don’t know something.”

“That’s terrible advice! Setting kids up to think adults are infallible!”

“Teachers have to be or you lose their respect.” He was measuring and drawing on one of the pieces of wood.

“But there’s no way I’ll know everything about every book ever written!”

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