LITMIR.BIZ

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huh? Who’s so pretty? You are, sweetie!” The kitten batted Bryce on the nose and mewed.

      Lucas had never had a pet. He could get one, he guessed; he just wasn’t home a lot. Maybe now that he was leaving Forbes, he’d get a dog who could ride in his truck to job sites and lie at his feet at night. It’d be nice to have some company.

      Well. He’d wait to get back to Chicago. There were plenty of animals waiting to be adopted in the city, he was sure.

      “You ever think about becoming a vet tech, Bryce?” he asked. “You’re really good with animals.”

      “Thanks! But not really, no. You need school for that.”

      “So? You could do it part-time, I bet.”

      “Well, whatever. Even so, the shelter can’t afford to pay anyone. We’re all volunteers, and Dr. Metcalf comes in when we need real stuff done.”

      “Could you work for Dr. Metcalf?”

      Bryce shrugged. “He has this hot chick who works for him. She volunteers here, too. We hooked up once or twice.” He scratched his head. “Maybe I should give her a call. I’m thinking about having kids.”

      Wow. “Yeah, you’d be a great dad,” he said (and hoped). “But you need a job first. And possibly a place of your own, so you don’t have to raise a kid in your mother’s basement.”

      “True enough. You wanna get a beer? I think O’Rourke’s is open.”

      “It’s eleven-thirty, Bryce.”

      “Yeah, so they’re definitely open. Oh, I get it. You don’t want to see Colleen.”

      Lucas gave his cousin a look. “I have no problem seeing Colleen.”

      “Okay.”

      “I don’t.”

      “Must bring up memories, though, right? Because you two were pretty hot and heavy.”

      “That was a long time ago. Anyway, about you getting a job, Bryce—”

      “Shit! I forgot. I’m supposed to have lunch with my mom. I gotta run.” Just then, the front door opened, and a very pretty woman came in. “Hey, Ange! Right on time.”

      “Hi, Bryce,” she purred, sparing Lucas a glance (and giving him a gratifying double take). “Your brother?”

      “Cousin. Lucas, this is Angie...Angie, uh...”

      “Beekman.”

      “Right! Ange, I gotta fly, but listen. You wanna grab a drink sometime?”

      Lucas couldn’t help feeling a flicker of sympathy for Paulie.

      “Sure,” she said with a coy smile. “See you around, boys.”

      Lucas scrubbed a hand through his hair as Bryce tore out of the parking lot a few seconds later, going too fast, as usual.

      * * *

      WHEN LUCAS WAS fifteen, his cousin saved his life.

      “Remember when I saved you?” Bryce would say from time to time. And Lucas would have to say of course he remembered, and yes, it sure was lucky Bryce had been there, and absolutely, they were as close as brothers, and yep, they did look alike, since they both looked like their fathers—and Dan and Joe could’ve passed for twins.

      It wasn’t that Lucas disliked Bryce. No one did. Bryce Campbell, the adored only child of Lucas’s aunt and uncle, was unendingly cheerful, up for anything and had an intense case of hero worship. He kept a respectful distance from Lucas’s sister, Stephanie, who was six years older and called him only “kid.” But he stuck to Lucas like a tick.

      About three times a year, Joe, Didi and Bryce would visit them (they, in return, were never invited to the wealthy suburb to the north of Chicago where Bryce and his family lived). And every time, Bryce would be glued to Lucas’s side, wide-eyed with wonder at anything Lucas had or did—his tiny bedroom on the third floor of the two-family house they lived in, his second-hand bike, the stunts he could do on it. Lucas was a White Sox fan, obviously, being from the South Side; Bryce traded in his Cubs shirt to match Lucas’s, which nearly got him stoned by his peers. Lucas would clear the crowded table after dinner because he was the kind of kid who did chores; Bryce decided that nothing was more fun and exotic than washing dishes by hand. And the thing was, he meant it.

      Bryce couldn’t get over the fact that Lucas was not only allowed to have a knife, but was allowed to use it as well, and viewed whittling as damn near miraculous. He peppered Lucas with questions about his late mother, who’d died of ALS when Lucas was six. Did he miss her? What had it been like to have a Puerto Rican mother? Did they ever see her ghost? It never occurred to Bryce that the subject might be a sensitive one.

      Lucas liked his cousin. But Bryce could be tiring, like a puppy who just wanted to bring you a stick. At first, it’s really cute. Aw, hey, a stick! Go get it, boy! But by the tenth time, when the puppy’s enthusiasm hasn’t been touched but yours is getting tired, you wish the dog would take a nap. By the twentieth time he brings you the stick, your arm aches. And by the fiftieth, you really wondered what you were thinking when you decided to get a dog.

      It was always something of a relief to see Bryce get reluctantly bundled off into the car with his parents. “My God, that woman is evil,” Dad would say of his brother’s wife, tousling Lucas’s hair. Though it was clear Aunt Didi barely tolerated her husband’s family, she never let them visit without her, even if she did brush off a chair before sitting on it. “But your cousin, he’s a pretty great kid, isn’t he?”

      And Lucas would agree that yes, Bryce was really nice. Which he was.

      Joe Campbell was the brother who’d made good; Dan never made it out of the careworn neighborhood where they’d grown up. Joe got into college, which was near-miraculous from the sound of it, whereas Dan became a mechanic, married the girl next door and moved into an apartment around the corner from where the brothers grew up.

      It was clear that Joe viewed their childhood as far more idyllic than Lucas’s dad did. Even when he was little, Lucas understood that, felt his father’s edge when Uncle Joe would wax poetic about riding their bikes in the empty lot or leaving pennies out on the rail for the train to flatten. After all, Joe and his family got to leave at the end of the day.

      When Steph was nineteen, she moved in with her boyfriend and had a baby girl. Another thing Bryce couldn’t get over—how cool was it that Lucas was an uncle! How he wished he had a sister, too, so he could be an uncle! “Bryce, angel, a baby’s not always a good thing,” Aunt Didi said.

      “This baby is,” Lucas said, giving his aunt a dirty look. Mercedes was cute and smelled nice, most of the time, and Steph was a good mom.

      Didi didn’t blink. “Well, we’ll see how things turn out, won’t we?” she murmured. “Not all of us are thrilled that our tax dollars pay for Stephanie’s lifestyle.” And though he wasn’t 100 percent sure what she meant by that, Lucas knew that it was a put-down just the same.

      Visits from Joe and Bryce and Didi were rare, he didn’t have to think about it much. Would it be nice to take a vacation in Turks and Caicos, wherever that was? Probably. Would it be fun to have a flat-screen TV in your room? Sure. But Lucas wouldn’t trade places, that was for sure. Home always seemed a little nicer after those visits. Careworn instead of shabby, washed in the light of relief that they had each other, at least.

      Until Dad was arrested.

      Things Lucas Didn’t Know About His Father:

      1 He’d been arrested at age eighteen for grand theft auto (a Camaro left with the keys in it, so really, who could resist? Certainly not an eighteen-year-old American male from the wrong side of the tracks).

      2 He’d been arrested at age twenty-one for breaking and entering and vandalism (Mrs. Ortega’s place, where he and his buddy sat in the living room, watched Cinemax, drinking her schnapps).

      3 He

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