Page 88 of The Evening Wolves

Tean toed some of the snow off the step below them. His boot made a soft, scraping sound until it thunked against the wood. “Anger isn’t always a bad emotion. It tells us where we’ve set our limits. It lets us protect ourselves and the people we care about. I think that’s an important part of who you are. I think you love people deeply, and I think it must be difficult to know you can’t protect them from everything, that even your anger can’t keep them safe.”

“It is fucking terrible,” Emery said, his voice breaking in the middle, and he wiped his face on his shoulder. He wrestled to get control of himself. “I can’t help John. I can’t stop what’s happening. God knows I can’t protect my son; the minute he steps outside of the house, he’s a moving target.” He fought again for control and lost, his voice stretched thin as he said, “I am so fucking sick of feeling helpless.”

Nodding, Tean rubbed Emery’s back. Somewhere nearby, the voices of children rose, words mixed with laughter and screams of excitement. “It’s none of my business, Emery, but I think right now, John-Henry doesn’t need your anger. He’s going to have plenty of his own.”

“But that’s what I don’t get! That’s my whole point! I would love for him to—to just go ballistic about this. Because it’s killing him, and he’s letting them do it, and I just want to tell him to be angry, to use that feeling, to stand up for himself and not let these sheepfuckers ruin every good thing he’s done and destroy the person he’s made himself.” Emery’s hands tightened around the heat pack. “Instead, he’s acting like he’s lost his mind.”

“He’s grieving. I think, in some ways, John-Henry understands the situation better than you, even though he hasn’t been able to put it into words yet. And he needs you right now, even though he can’t say it. Maybe even though he doesn’t know it, or doesn’t know how to tell himself what he needs. He needs you to be there for him, to help him understand that things are going to be ok. And he needs you to let him grieve all the things he’s lost.” Emery opened his mouth, and Tean spoke over him. “I’m not saying that we should all lie down and let these assholes get away with this, but that’s separate, Emery. You need to distinguish between the two. And you need to help him distinguish between the two as well.”

The wind picked up, spinning grains of snow to sting and melt against Emery’s cheek. On the next street, or the next, or somewhere, children were laughing. His hands were hot inside the gloves, and he fought, now, to keep his head up, his breathing even, as he looked out at the small, pale sun.

Finally, when he was sure his voice wouldn’t betray him, he said, “I believe Jem has a policy about the swear jar.”

Tean slanted a smile at him. “Jem also believes strongly in the policy of ‘what you don’t know won’t hurt you.’”

Nodding, Emery said, “I can live with that.”

20

John-Henry was going through the boxes in the basement when the familiar sound of Emery’s steps reached him. He opened the next box to discover a jumble of Easter decorations that, unless he was wrong, Cora had foisted on them when she decided she didn’t want them anymore. He did a quick scan to make sure nothing valuable was hidden below the felt bunnies, and then he slid the box to the donate pile.

Behind him, he could feel Emery in the doorway, watching.

He reached for the next box, opened it, and stared. Inside were the Wahredua High clothes he’d tossed in the trash the other night—the newer stuff, the sweats and hoodies and jackets he’d bought once Colt started at the school, and the older stuff as well, the few pieces he’d kept. His letterman jacket. The faint smell of the leather mixed with the scent of the old cardboard box.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t find those,” Emery said.

John-Henry stared at the neatly folded clothing. Emery had rescued all of it, apparently. Gone out in the middle of the night, probably, when he should have been sleeping, because God knew he never got enough sleep, and especially not lately. And he’d folded it all, and he’d put it in this box, and he’d hidden the box at the back of the shelf. John closed the flaps on the box and slid it toward the donate pile.

“Could we talk?” Emery asked. “I’d like to apologize.”

“You don’t need to apologize; we both got a little heated.”

“I’m going to anyway. I’m sorry, John.”

John-Henry nodded. His face felt hot, and his eyes stung, and he kept his gaze on the next box, which apparently was full of old paint cans. Donate. “Thanks. I’m sorry too. I unloaded a lot on you, I guess. Hey, can we do this later? I’m—I’m not really in a good place right now.” And then, in what—even to him—sounded like the most pathetic of all excuses, he added, “I’ve got to finish going through these boxes.”

Emery’s steps clipped against the bare concrete of the utility room. He moved into John-Henry’s field of vision, crouched, and studied him. Then he reached out. His hands were warm, and his touch was surprisingly gentle as he eased John-Henry’s hands off the next box. He turned them, adjusting them in his grip. John-Henry was surprised to feel the rawness of broken blisters as Emery’s hands closed around his own.

“What did you—”

“You don’t have to talk,” Emery said. “But I’d like you to come with me. Because I want to tell you something. And then, when I’ve said what I want to say, we can come back, and I’ll help you go through these boxes, or I’ll stay out of your way, or I’ll burn the goddamn house down, whatever you think is best.” He adjusted his hands once more, and John-Henry realized, with a flash of surprise, that Emery was nervous. Not angry. Not tense. Not bristling for a fight. But scared. “Please?”

And that was how John-Henry found himself riding shotgun in the Odyssey as they drove out of their neighborhood. Day was falling into night, the sky purpling to black. No stars, not yet. Christmas lights shining on the old Arts and Crafts houses. A few other cars out and about, headlights splashing across the pavement. His breath fogged the glass, and he had the childlike urge to write his name in it and watch it disappear.

When they got to the high school, John-Henry said, “Ree.”

But Emery just shook his head and kept driving. He parked out by the athletic fields and got out of the van and stood there, huddling with his back to the wind until John-Henry decided that dramatic husbands were perhaps even more unbearable than wrathful ones, and he got out of the van because apparently the other option was watching the only man he’d ever loved turn into a human popsicle.

Emery led them down a snow-covered slope toward the building. They approached a familiar pair of steel fire doors—generations of Wahredua High athletes had used these doors to go in and out from practice, to haul equipment out onto the fields, to hobble to the trainer after a bad tackle. When they reached the doors, Emery made a courtly, old-fashioned after-you gesture, and then he grinned. The grin was a surprise too, full of not only a kind of wry humor but also a vital energy that seemed like it belonged to another lifetime. But John-Henry found himself smiling too, and he did the little jump he’d perfected when he’d been seventeen, his palm slapping against the corner of the door. It popped open, and Emery caught it and held it so John-Henry could go first.

Inside, the warmth pushed back the evening’s chill. Only the emergency lights were on, which meant the hallway was full of shadows. The faint hint of floor wax hung in the air. Emery took the lead again. As they made their way down the hall, something kicked on in the HVAC, and a soft humming noise began. It was strange, John-Henry thought, how time was also a place. Because he felt like he was walking back in time, like he was walking back twenty years, like it was just around the corner.

He made himself say, “Ree, I appreciate this, whatever it is, but if you’ve got some big reveal like you had my jersey cleaned or you fixed the spray paint—” He had to stop. “I’m not trying to be difficult, but I just don’t think I can. Not tonight.”

In answer, though, all Emery did was take his hand and keep walking. The raw spots where he’d broken the blisters must have stung, John-Henry thought, but his grip was tight and sure.

In retrospect, John-Henry should have expected it. But it was still a surprise when Emery stopped at the door to the boys’ locker room. He frowned at the deadbolt and then, the corner of his mouth lifting, shrugged. “Ok, I have to admit I didn’t think about the lock.”

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