“Jesus, you got a lot of stuff, kid,” Luke said, his arms laden with bags. “It’s like you think you’re moving in.”
Margot cut her eyes to him to see if this was a joke—she was moving in after all—but there was only the twinkle of teasing in his eye, not that of knowing. She laughed lightly. “You know me.” Then, when he didn’t move, she nodded toward the door at the end of the hall. “I was hoping I could stay in the office?”
A jolt of recognition as he nodded. “Sure, sure.”
Her aunt and uncle’s office had never gotten much use, as they’d both worked in South Bend, Luke as an accountant and Rebecca part-time at an art museum. In the first fifteen years of their marriage, the room had been a cheery yellow, a crib standing forever empty in the corner. Then, when Rebecca turned forty and gave up hope, she painted the walls gray. They’d bought a desk and a futon, and to Margot’s knowledge the room was only ever used by her uncle, who sometimes liked to play solitaire on the computer before bed.
The sight of the room now made Margot’s chest ache. It was clear her uncle had, in bursts of lucidity, begun to prepare the room for her visit, though most of the tasks appeared to have been abandoned midway. The futon was pulled out, a fitted sheet tucked over three corners. Two bare pillows laid on the floor next to it. She’d have to rummage around for a blanket and pillowcases.
“This is perfect. Thanks, Uncle Luke.” She hesitated. “Well, I drove straight from the office, so I’m starving. Have you eaten?”
After Margot assessed the contents of her uncle’s refrigerator—mostly condiments, mostly expired—she picked up a pizza from Wakarusa’s only pizza place and they sat down at the kitchen table with glasses of tap water and their slices on paper towels instead of plates because there were no clean dishes. Margot had learned from their phone calls over the past few months that conversations were best when she was the one talking, so she spoke between bites, all the while aching for the days not that long ago when, if they were in the same room together, she and her uncle could talk for hours.
“Thanks again for letting me stay,” Margot said, sneaking a look at Luke’s face. What she really wanted to say was: Do you know why I’m here? Do you remember your diagnosis? How are you coping with it all? But every time she brought up anything related to his illness, Luke’s voice turned hard. Margot recognized the emotion hidden beneath—her uncle was losing his mind at the devastatingly young age of fifty and he was terrified. So she talked around it. When she’d invited herself to move in, she’d told him she needed a change of pace and wanted to be closer to him, citing a made-up “new flexibility at work” as a seemingly good opportunity to do so.
“Of course,” Luke said, his eyes on his pizza. “You know you’re welcome anytime.”
“And just remember I’m happy to help out, so if you need anything…”
Luke smiled, but it was tight. “Thanks, kid.”
Margot opened her mouth to say something else, but he’d already changed the subject. “Hey, how’s Adam doing? And your mom?”
Margot stifled a sigh. They’d just jumped from one sticky topic to another, and she didn’t know how to navigate any of it. Until six months ago, she’d never hesitated to tell her uncle the truth—about his brother or anything else. But with his diagnosis, he seemed fragile, and from her research, she knew that fragility could lead to mood swings and outbursts. It had only happened a few times over the phone so far, but the thought of Luke losing himself scared her. “He’s—”
“Still a mean drunk who refuses to get help?”
Margot burst into surprised laughter.
“C’mon, I may be losing my mind, but there’s no way I could forget that,” he said, and she laughed even harder.
It wasn’t that she found anything funny about the fact that her father was fonder of whiskey than of both his only brother and his only daughter, but this was the Uncle Luke she missed. The one person in a town of fakes who’d always speak the truth. The person who made Margot feel understood without her having to try. The person whose sense of humor was the exact same as hers, who’d one time made her laugh so hard midsip that soda had come out her nose. Plus, the absence of her dad’s affection, or her mom’s, for that matter, wasn’t new to Margot. Her childhood home had been one of shouted arguments punctuated by hurled glasses shattering against walls. It was why she was so close with Luke. Every day after school, she’d walk to her uncle’s house rather than her own. On the weekends, she’d spend the night. She would have moved in with him and Rebecca—they’d offered many times—but her mom had worried about what people would say.
Similar was her reaction a few weeks ago when Margot told her mom she was moving back to Wakarusa. “What’re you gonna tell people when they ask you why you’re back?” her mom had said.
“What do you mean? I’m gonna tell them the truth, that I’m staying with Luke to help out.”
“That’s nobody’s business, Margot. Anyway, your dad says it can’t be that bad. Luke’s his younger brother.”
“How the hell would Dad know? When was the last time the two of them talked—2010?”
“If you’re really this worried, why don’t you just hire a nurse or something? You don’t want to go back to that sad little town where that terrible thing happened.”
Margot had pulled the phone from her ear to give the screen an incredulous look. “A nurse? With what money?”
“My lord, Margot. Sometimes you sound so crass.” When she spoke next, her voice had gone breathy as if the whole thing was beneath her. “You have a good job. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”
Now, to Luke, Margot said, “And Mom’s the same as ever. Delusional.”
Luke snorted. “What’s Bethany delusional about this time?”
“She seems to think I’m a millionaire because I write for a newspaper.”
“Wait. You’re not a millionaire?”
She grinned.
“How is the paper, by the way?”
Margot looked down. “It’s fine, yeah.” She hated keeping things from her uncle, but she couldn’t stomach the idea of making him feel guilty for something he couldn’t control. She couldn’t tell him that her work had been suffering for six months now because her mind had been in Wakarusa with him instead of in Indianapolis with her paper. She couldn’t tell him how reluctantly her editor had signed off on Margot’s move to remote work. “Really,” she added more brightly this time. “It’s great.”
But when she looked up, her uncle was giving her an odd look. His eyes darted from the slice of pizza in his hand to Margot’s face, a hard line on his brow. “Rebecca?”
Margot swallowed. “It’s me, Uncle Luke. Your niece, Margot.”
He blinked for a moment, and then his expression cleared, a smile spreading across his face. “Kid! I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Me too.”
* * *
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