He couldn’t manufacture an excuse to see her. It had to feel normal, believable, inevitable, or the wary, wild Charlie would turtle up or bolt. He had plan B, of course, and C, and even D, because he was a SEAL and that’s what he did.
“What’s this?” Ian, finally recovered enough to look at the note on the island, interrupted his train of thought.
“Mom wants us to clean out the eaves and go through the stuff up there while I’m home. The neighborhood garage sale is coming up, and she’s threatening to put everything out there if we don’t claim what we want.”
Ian blew out his breath. “Good thing we’re already sweaty,” he said. “It gets hot up there when the sun clears the trees.”
They took the stairs to the second floor, then walked down the hallway to the suite they’d shared as kids—two bedrooms, a shared bath, and a sitting room where they’d watched TV and played video games with their friends. Only a year apart in school, they’d shared the same social circle until Jamie graduated and left for the Navy.
“Mom redecorated a few years ago,” Ian said.
“I remember,” Jamie replied, looking around at the delicate furniture and the white carpet. The sitting room was now a library, the fireplace cleaned, the insert holding about twenty white pillar candles, her favorite quilt folded neatly at the bottom of the chaise where she read. One of the bedrooms was now a guest room, where his seabag and hanging bag took up very little space in the closet. “We better put down drop cloths to protect the carpet.”
A couple of minutes later they had most of the furniture clumped up at the far end of the sitting room and the drop cloths spread over the floor. “You ready for this?” Ian asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Jamie said.
They opened the narrow door leading to a narrower, steep staircase. Ian climbed to the top, looked around, and said, “Fuck.”
“That bad?”
“I think she’s got every toy, book, game, and art project we ever made,” Jamie said, then sneezed. “None of it dusted, ever.”
“That’s why Dad hired a cleaning service, remember? Mom would ignore the house for the garden seven months out of the year. Start passing me boxes,” Jamie said.
Ian grabbed whatever was closest and handed it down to Jamie, who stacked the totes and boxes three high. “That’s good for now,” he said.
Ian came down the stairs sideways, not trusting his size-twelve feet on the shallow treads. Dust clung to his hair and shirt. “Did Mom say what she wants us to do?”
Jamie turned the note over. “‘Three piles,’” he read. “‘Keep, garage sale, donate. And the keep pile better be the smallest one. Tell your brother he’s taking his stuff with him.’”
“I’ve got a one-bedroom apartment,” Ian protested. “What else is she planning to keep up there?”
“‘I need room for my grandkids’ toys,’” Jamie read.
Ian snatched the paper from his hand. “It does not say that,” he said. “Fuck. It does say that.”
“Consider ourselves hinted,” Jamie said. “Pick a box, any box.”
Ian took a tote and popped the top off while Jamie unfolded the flaps on an unlabeled box. “What do you have?”
“Books,” Ian said. “You?”
“G.I. Joe action figures and army men.”
“Oh, man,” Ian said. “Remember how much fun we used to have with those?”
“I’m surprised so many of them survived,” Jamie said, plucking one from the box and examining it for scorch marks and gouges. “Remember when we set the fence on fire tying these guys to fireworks?”
“Mom was so pissed. We burned that entire bed of chrysanthemums,” Ian said.
“Do we keep them?”
Ian looked torn, then said, “Nah. Set them aside. I’ll go through them, throw out the damaged ones, and donate the rest to the boys and girls club.”
They made good progress through a third of the boxes, getting hung up only when Jamie came across the binder holding his basketball trading cards. He sat down on the sheet and flipped through the plastic sleeves.
“That’s a walk down memory lane,” Ian said. “You used to sort those compulsively.”
“I loved playing ball,” Jamie said. “That was my favorite part of high school.”
“I saw you down at the court last night,” Ian said.
Jamie looked up sharply, about halfway through the pages. “Last night? What were you doing out?”
“Coming home from a very long meeting with the FBI. You were alone.”
The weather was spotty. That’s why he told himself Charlie hadn’t showed up. He’d try again tonight. Jamie relaxed and went back to looking at the trading cards. “I wonder if any of these are worth anything,” he said absently.
“She lives in the East Side,” Ian said.