The Overnight Guest(8)

“What do you want to do first?” Josie asked.

“The goats,” Becky answered as an angry shout came from outside.

The girls moved to the open window to see what the fuss was about. Below them, Margo paused as she opened her car door, and Lynne pressed her hand against her forehead, salute-style, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun. Both were looking toward the barn.

Ethan stormed out first, face set in the scowl that he seemed to wear all the time now. Close behind was their father, William. He clapped one large hand on Ethan’s shoulder, whipping him around so they were face-to-face. Other angry words were swept away by the hot breeze, but fucker was clearly heard. Margo looked uneasily over at Lynne, who smiled apologetically and murmured something about teenage boys nowadays. She had been doing that a lot lately. Ethan ineffectually swatted at his father’s hand.

“Honey,” Lynne called out and, seeing that there was company, he let his hand fall from Ethan’s shoulder. The sudden release caused Ethan to lose balance and drop to one knee. William reached down to help him up, but Ethan ignored it and got to his feet on his own. William looked over and raised his hand in greeting toward Margo. Ethan flinched as if about to be struck.

“Come on,” Josie said, pulling Becky away from the window. “Let’s go out back.” She blinked back tears of mortification. This was just a snippet of the way her father and brother had been going at it lately.

Ethan had pulled away abruptly, his transformation sudden. He stopped talking, and when he did, it was in angry, resentful grunts. He was openly defiant and refused to help out on the farm.

“Your brother called your dad a fucker,” Becky said, and just like that, the two began to giggle and couldn’t stop. One of them would gather her composure and then the other would whisper fucker, and they would collapse in another fit of laughter.

After dinner, Lynne asked Ethan to run a pie she had made over to her parents’ farm a mile down the road. “You go right over there and then come straight home,” she ordered.

Ethan rolled his eyes. “Ethan,” Lynne warned, “don’t push it.”

Before Josie could hear Ethan’s smart-aleck response, she and Becky were out the door.

Josie’s favorite spot on the farm was the big red hip roof barn. Eighty years old, it greeted Josie each morning with its broad red face. Its nose the hayloft door, its eyes the widely spaced upper windows, and its mouth the entry large enough to drive a truck through.

The barn smelled of sun-warmed sweet hay and tractor oil. It smelled of dust motes and goats. Josie filled the wooden feed bunks that ran down the center of the barn with feed. Josie filled a small bucket with pellets while Becky ran from corner to corner, searching for the mama cat and her kittens. They were squirreled away somewhere, nowhere to be found.

Josie and Becky walked back outside to where the barn opened up into a fenced area where the thirty-odd goats spent the day. When they heard the bucket bumping against her leg, the goats came running on their spindly legs. Josie and Becky reached into the bucket for the pellets and slid their hands through the fence, their palms laid flat. Becky laughed at their black caterpillar-shaped eyes and humanlike bellows.

“Hey, what’s your brother doing?” Becky asked.

Josie looked up and spotted Ethan, walking toward his battered truck, a shotgun in one hand and the pie to be delivered to their grandparents balanced on the other. “I don’t know, but he’s definitely not supposed to be doing that,” Josie said, hands on her hips.

“You are so lucky to have a big brother. He’s so cute. Let’s go see where he’s going,” Becky said, brushing the remaining pellets from her hands, and before Josie could stop her, she was running after Ethan.

“What are you going to shoot?” Becky asked breathlessly when they caught up with him.

“Kids who follow me around and won’t shut up,” Ethan said, barely glancing their way.

“Ha, ha,” Josie deadpanned. “It’s not even hunting season yet. Does dad know you’re taking a gun to grandpa’s?”

“I can hunt pigeons or groundhogs anytime, and no, Dad doesn’t need to know every little thing I do. Besides, I’m just going to shoot at targets.”

“Yeah, he’ll never hear the gunshots. Good plan there, Ethan,” Josie smirked, looking over at Becky, but she was focused on Ethan.

“Can we go with you?” Becky asked.

“Suit yourself,” Ethan muttered as he carefully placed the shotgun in the gun rack in the back window of his truck. The girls climbed in and Becky commented on how clean it was. She poked around in his glove box, sorting through his things, pulling out a pack of gum and a tin of mints.

“You must really like fresh breath,” Becky said with a laugh. Ethan blushed. Becky pulled out the Green Lantern figurine that Ethan kept in his glove box as a good luck charm and spoke in a low voice and walked the figure across his arm.

“Knock it off,” Ethan said in a way that let Josie know he liked the attention Becky was giving him.

Becky chattered happily as Ethan sped down their lane and pulled right up to the porch and the red front door. “Run this in really fast and give it to grandma,” Ethan ordered. “And don’t hang around gabbing. I’m in a hurry.”

Josie awkwardly climbed over Becky to exit the truck, the pie tipping dangerously. Not wanting to antagonize her brother, she did as Ethan said. Josie opened the front door without knocking and hurried to the kitchen where her grandparents, Matthew and Caroline Ellis, finished their own supper.