The Favor Read online

  Janelle cried out, earning a startled query from her mother, who was concerned that something had gone wrong. “They’ve made me breakfast, Mom. That’s all.”

  “Oh, how nice. I’ll let you get to it, then. Have Bennett call me later. I miss him.”

  “We made eggs,” Bennett said when she’d disconnected. “And toast, and Nan helped me make cinnamon buns.”

  “He did most everything but the icing.” Nan wore a colorful dressing gown and had tied a kerchief over her hair. She beamed.

  “Happy Mother’s Day, Mama.” Bennett came around the table to hug her, and she squeezed him tight. He’d grown, she noticed. His head came up past her shoulders now.

  “Sit down, Janelle. Let Bennett bring you some eggs. Bacon, too.” Nan waved for her to come to the table.

  Janelle sat, suddenly emotional and overwhelmed with it. “This all looks so great.”

  “He wanted to do it,” Nan said. “Come on, before it gets cold.”

  The eggs were delicious, light and fluffy, with a sprinkling of cheese. The cinnamon buns were, of course, amazing. Even the coffee was great. Janelle ate until she was stuffed, then sat back with a sigh to rub her stomach.

  Nan hadn’t eaten much, but she had eaten. Now she plucked apart a cinnamon roll and licked at the frosting. “What time is everyone supposed to come over today?”

  “About noon.” Janelle looked at the clock. They had a few hours until then, and everyone was supposed to be bringing a dish, so that she didn’t have much to prepare.

  “Time for a nap, then.” Nan yawned and pushed away from the table. She staggered a little, though, and Bennett caught her arm.

  Janelle was next to her in a another moment, both of them holding Nan so she didn’t fall. “Got you.”

  Nan sighed, then managed to straighten her shoulders. “Just got a little woozy, that’s all. I’m okay. I’d like to nap in my bed though, honey, not the couch. That way if I’m still sleeping when people get here, they can sit and visit.”

  “Do you need help, Nan?” Bennett asked.

  Janelle was so proud of him she wanted to cry. Together, they helped Nan to her bedroom. It all went fine until just before they reached the bed, when Nan stumbled again. Bennett did his best, but as she twisted to keep her grandmother from falling, pain ripped through Janelle’s neck, shoulder and back. She gasped aloud, barely keeping the worst sort of curse from flying out by biting her tongue, hard. That pain was nothing compared to her neck and shoulder.

  Nan didn’t seem to notice, though Bennett looked concerned as Janelle tucked the covers around her grandma as best she could with only one arm that felt as if it worked. In the hall, he asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Just wrenched my neck.” She gave him as broad a smile as she could muster, which seemed to satisfy him. “Can you do me a huge favor and clean up the dishes from the table? And do your best in the kitchen. I’m going to need to put some ice on this.”

  She’d originally injured her neck and shoulder in a relatively minor fender-bender before Bennett was born. Riding in the passenger seat of her friend Heather’s car, neither of them wearing seat belts, both more concerned with the music on the radio than watching for slowing traffic. Heather had rear-ended the car in front of them. She’d cracked the windshield with her forehead, while Janelle had managed to hit the dashboard with her neck and shoulder. It didn’t bother her all the time, except when she slept wrong, or bent and twisted a certain way. Then the pain was excruciating. It had effectively ended her short-lived career as a dancer in Vegas—not that she’d expected it to last forever, and it had turned out to be a blessing, since it had forced her to get her real estate license.

  People coming to the house would just have to deal with a mess. Janelle took a soft ice pack from the freezer and shaped it to her neck with a wince. She watched Bennett clear the table, thinking she could help at least a little bit, but knowing as soon as she lifted her arm that was going to be impossible. She’d be lucky if she could move tomorrow at all, and then only if she took care of this right now. Ice, anti-inflammatories and, in about an hour, a steaming hot shower.

  “Thanks, honey, I appreciate it,” she told her son.

  Bennett looked up with a stack of plates in his hand. He might’ve been in the habit lately of arguing with her, but not today. “I’m sorry your neck hurts you.”

  She wanted to hug and squeeze him, but fortunately for him, could not. “How did I get so lucky to have such a great kid?”

  Bennett shrugged. “I guess I have a great mom.”

  “Good one.” With her non-aching arm, Janelle mimed punching a clock. “Cha-ching, that goes in your bonus account.”

  “Mom, is it okay if Andy comes over today for the picnic? I said he could. And Mr. Tierney, too.”

  Janelle shifted the ice on her neck. “I guess so. Why not?”

  Bennett moved past her to put the plates in the dishwasher. “Well, Andy doesn’t have a mother to spend the day with, so I figured he could come over. But I thought maybe you wouldn’t like it if Mr. Tierney came.”

  She would not, in fact, be sad if Mr. Tierney did not come, but that wasn’t the same thing as not liking it if he did. “It was very nice of you to ask them.” She paused, biting back her next question until it managed to wriggle free, anyway. “What about Gabe?”

  Bennett, concentrating on slotting dishes into the rack, didn’t even look up. “I don’t know. I guess he might come, too.”

  Upstairs, she dosed herself with ibuprofen. Did she want Gabe to come to the picnic? Did she care?

  Janelle had seen him a few nights ago, coming in late. She’d been up reading, half watching for the light in his bedroom to turn on, though she’d never have admitted it. When it did, she’d clicked off her reading lamp and pulled the blankets to her chin to keep herself from peeking at him through the window. Temptation had won.

  He’d been out drinking. She could tell by the way he leaned a little too heavily on his dresser when he lifted one foot and then the other to untie his boot laces. Not drunk enough to be impaired, just enough to be a little loose. His hair had been rumpled, the tails of his shirt untucked. He looked like a man who’d been tussling, or who’d gotten dressed in a hurry.

  He’d stripped down to his shorts and stood in front of the window as if he were putting on a show just for her. Not that he ever looked her way, even once, because he didn’t. He moved from the dresser to the laundry basket to the bed without even glancing toward the window. She knew he slept in pajama bottoms or boxers, sometimes with a T-shirt when it was cool, so when he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his briefs, pulled them off those long, lean thighs and kicked them aside, she expected him to put on something else.

  She hadn’t expected him to climb into bed naked and finish off for himself what the night had so obviously started.

  Watching from her own bed, her line of sight obscured by the angle and the halfhearted attempt she’d made at closing the curtains when she went to bed, Janelle knew she shouldn’t watch him. She should close her eyes and turn away from what was meant to be private. It was licentious and yes, creepy, to spy on him no matter what he was doing, but especially when he did...that. It didn’t matter that back in those before times, the open curtains had been an invitation to whatever show Gabe felt like putting on. Time had passed, things had changed. They were adults, and he probably didn’t even remember those days. She should’ve felt ashamed about the way her breath caught and held as she watched his back arch, when the pace of his stroking hand quickened. She should’ve felt guilty, and she would have, if only Gabe hadn’t gone to the window when he was finished and stared right through it into the darkness of her bedroom before firmly and deliberately closing his blinds.

  “Jerk,” she muttered, but without heat.

  Shaking her head at the memory, Janelle arranged her pillows to cradle her as she opened her laptop and typed in her Interflix password. She’d been working her way through a series of Br
itish comedies Bennett had no use for—he tolerated Monty Python and laughed sometimes at Benny Hill, but that was the limit of his patience for foreign funnies. She queued up the next in the series and settled back with her ice and her damp cloth, and in moments, was asleep.

  She woke with a start, as if someone had touched her. Or said her name, she thought, looking automatically for Bennett. The room was empty, her door still closed most of the way. From his room she heard the buzz and clang of one of his games. Maybe that was what had woken her.

  Wincing, Janelle pushed herself up from the pillows. The ice pack had gone warm, the cloth on her forehead dry. She glanced at the clock, wincing again as she twisted, but the pain had backed off quite a bit. Everyone was due in about forty minutes, though of course, could show up earlier or later than that. She had enough time for a hot, hot shower to work out the rest of the kink, and as long as she kept herself from too much activity, she’d be fine. It could’ve been a lot worse.

  She spent more time in the shower than she’d meant to, but for once the hot water didn’t seem to be in any danger of running out, and it felt so good, just so good, to lean against the shower wall and let the heat pound into her. By the time she forced herself out, she had barely enough time to swipe a comb through her wet hair and slip into a pretty sundress and sandals before she heard a car in the driveway, the back door opening a few minutes after that.

  “Bennett,” she said. “Come on down. They’re here.”

  “Couple of minutes, Mom, I’m almost to the save spot!”

  Betsy had sons just a little older than Bennett. When they got here, Janelle would send them up to get him. For now, she needed to get downstairs herself and greet everyone. It was chaos, of course, the quiet disrupted in the best way by laughter and talk. Janelle hugged and kissed cousins, aunts and uncles she hadn’t seen in ages.

  It was a little disconcerting, how they all came in and made themselves at home. Of course they did—this was Nan’s house. Her uncles had been raised in this house. Her cousins had spent more time in it than Janelle ever had, though she was the only grandchild ever to actually live here.

  But she lived here now. Those were her throw blankets on the back of the couch, her Crock-Pot on the kitchen counter, her barbecue tools by the grill. And it wasn’t that she minded, not exactly, the way they all came in and helped themselves to everything in the house. Janelle knew how to be a gracious hostess, which to her included allowing guests to make themselves feel comfortable. And these weren’t guests, they were her family...but they felt like guests. It felt as if they were moving in on her turf.

  Stupid, she told herself as she showed her aunt Kathy where to find the platters. Nobody here was trying to take anything away from her, and it was good to have visitors. Nan would love it. She needed it.

  Outside, Joey was firing up the grill. He and Deb had brought the burgers. Bobby and his wife, Donna, had supplied the buns, someone else the drinks, another the paper products. Janelle had made a gigantic bowl of potato salad from Nan’s recipe—Nan overseeing, of course—along with an equally huge bowl of her mom’s macaroni salad. She’d also bought plenty of chips, pretzels and dips, all stored on the shelving unit on the back porch.

  “Oh, my God, Janelle!” Betsy hugged her hard enough to crack her spine—which would’ve been fine if she hadn’t wrenched it earlier.

  Janelle winced, but hugged her cousin back. “Wow. It’s been so long. You’re...blond!”

  Betsy twirled a strand of her hair around one finger while she laughed. “Yeah. Turned forty. It was this or get a tattoo and a boob job.”

  Her mother snorted as she pulled out an oval ceramic platter from the cupboard. “Oh, good Lord, Betsy. Didn’t these used to be in the cabinet over the stove?”

  “I moved some things around,” Janelle explained. “To make it easier for Nan. She can’t reach up that high anymore.”

  Kathy blinked for a moment, then smiled. “Oh, right. Sure, of course. Where is Mom?”

  “She’s napping.” At least she had been napping. Janelle had a sudden, horrifying vision of walking in to check on her grandmother and finding her passed away. “I could go check....”

  “Oh, let her sleep. We’ll get everything set up. She’ll just want to get involved, and you know how she has to oversee things.” Kathy said it like an aside, like a secret.

  Kind of, Janelle thought, a little mean.

  “So what’ve you been up to?” Betsy settled a few plastic grocery bags of food on the counter and started unpacking them, handing some off to her mom in a perfectly coordinated mother-daughter display that left Janelle standing awkwardly in the corner, trying to stay out of the way. “I mean, I follow you on Connex and everything, but wow, it’s been a long time. You look good.”

  Janelle touched her hair, tied back with a scarf and falling over one shoulder. “Um...thanks.”

  Betsy laughed and moved around her mother, who was fussing with the platters. She fell into a stream of chatter Janelle found herself caught up in as they moved around the kitchen, sharing gossip and comparing the bits and pieces of their lives—kids, jobs, favorite movies, books. The conversation was easy enough and flowed with laughter, making Janelle realize how long it had been since she’d simply...hung out. Relaxed. Laughed.

  “We should get together,” Betsy announced as she poured a bag of chips into a bowl. “Girls’ night out, how’s that sound?”

  It sounded surprisingly good to Janelle, even if she wasn’t quite sure how she’d manage it. “Great!”

  “Janelle? What’s all this?” Kathy had opened the cupboard under the sink, looking for the waste bin. “All this food?”

  “Oh, I cleaned out the fridge earlier to make room for the salads. They’re in those huge pottery bowls of Nan’s—they wouldn’t fit otherwise. But I thought I told Bennett to take out the trash—”

  She turned to see Deb, who’d come in the back door, and Kathy staring in confusion at the garbage pail. It overflowed with a thick and gloppy mess of potato and macaroni salads. Janelle gaped.

  Deb shook her head. “Oh, gosh.”

  “But I don’t...” Janelle shook her head, not sure what to say. Hours of work, ruined. All that food, wasted.

  “Did you leave her alone?” Kathy’s expression said she was trying to be understanding. Her tone, however, was more than a little judgmental.

  “I took a nap.”

  “She does this. I told you,” Deb said to Kathy in an undertone.

  “You left her alone,” Kathy stated with a frown. “I thought you were here to be making sure this sort of thing didn’t happen—”

  Janelle didn’t stay to hear more. Nan’s door was closed tight, though Janelle had left it cracked open. She knocked twice and opened it before Nan could tell her to come in. Her grandmother sat on the edge of her bed, the front of her nightgown thickly stained, the trash can at her feet filled with crumpled tissues. She pulled a few more from the box while Janelle watched, and used them to scrub at her hands. She looked up.

  Nan looked so sad; her expression broke Janelle’s heart. “I wanted to help for the picnic. I don’t know what I thought, honey. I got confused. I didn’t remember making that bowl of potato salad. I thought it had been in there for a long time.”

  “So you threw it away.”

  Nan nodded. “I threw it all away. I didn’t want anyone getting sick from it. Then I came in here and thought I’d just lie down again until everyone came. And then I realized what a mess I’d made.”

  “You know we just made that potato salad yesterday, right?” Janelle took the tissue box away and set it on Nan’s shelf. “Let me help you. That’s not going to do it.”

  “Is everyone here?” Nan’s voice shook.

  Janelle forced a smile, forced herself to look Nan in the eyes. “Yes. So we’re going to get you cleaned up. Put on something nice for your company. And then we’re going to go out and have a picnic, okay?”

  “But the potato salad...”
/>   “Someone can run to the store and get some more. Or I’ll just make up a quick pasta salad. We have plenty of elbow macaroni in the pantry, and with some Italian dressing, a few olives, cherry tomatoes, it’ll be great. No problem.” Janelle put her hands over Nan’s, ignoring the slick goo of mayo and mustard. “Come on, Nan. It’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine!” she cried. “I ruined it!”

  Bennett had gone through a tough period when he was in third grade, just after Janelle and Ryan had called it quits. He’d blamed himself for everything from the mail not being delivered on time to the teacher yelling at his class and making them miss recess, to his favorite TV program getting canceled. He’d cried out “I ruined it” more than once, just this way, and Janelle had done the same for him that she did for Nan now.

  “You didn’t.” She squeezed her hands gently. “There’s plenty of food.”

  “Who’s out there? Deb? Joey?”

  “Yes. And the cousins. Everyone we invited.”

  Nan sniffed. “Kathy will say something about it, you know she will. She can’t keep her opinions to herself, never could.”

  “We’ll tell her there were spiders in it.”

  Nan looked surprised. Then slightly gleeful. “No!”

  “Sure.” Janelle grinned. “I’ll tell her you put the bowls out on the counter while I was napping, and spiders crawled in there and you had to throw them away.”

  “She’ll never believe it.” Nan laughed, then again.

  “Doesn’t matter. That’s what we’ll tell her, anyway.” Janelle got up and went to the plastic stacking storage bins she’d tucked into a corner of the bedroom. When Bennett was a baby she’d kept them next to his diaper changing area to store supplies, and she’d found a similar use for them here. Wipes, lotions, medical supplies. She took a package of wipes and held it up. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  As she wiped away the mess from Nan’s hands, careful not to scrub too hard at the thin and fragile skin, her grandma sat quietly. When she was done, Janelle meant to move away, but Nan took her hands and held them. She turned hers over to show the brown spots on the backs, the swollen knuckles. She still wore her wedding band, plain gold, along with the broader band that had been her husband’s.