120 days... (8 page)

Ethan stood in the shower with the water going cold, pounding on his head and running down his body. The run hadn’t done anything to calm his thoughts. Angry, he flipped the handle to off, grabbed a towel and started drying himself vigorously. The image of Dolores falling down played over and over in his head. Evan and his parents wouldn’t leave his thoughts.

Once he was dressed, he looked around his small room. Ethan’s mind was still jumbled. He knew there’d be no way he’d be able to stay in this room all night. He’d feel like a caged tiger. His eyes fell on his car keys and he realized what he needed to do. Drive. Get away for a while.

Jumping in his car, he raced down the mountain, not sure if he was running away from or to something. The late afternoon sun hid behind the storm clouds which were rapidly building like his emotions. He’d spent many years moving as far away from the wide-eyed happy child he used to be to the reserved man he had become.

His mind must have been on the past more than he’d realized. As he drove from the resort, he skirted the city, going around until, and as darkness fell, he realized he was driving down the street he grew up on. Finding a parking spot, he pulled over and cut the engine. Glancing up in his rearview mirror, he could make out the front porch of the house he’d lived in before everything changed. Before his parents were killed by a drunk driver. They never had a lot of money, but they had everything they needed, with a little extra for fun things for him and Evan, or to help someone who needed it. His parents were like that, always wanting to help people. They were coming back from visiting Miss Webber who went to their church, who had been sick.

He laid his forehead on the steering wheel. He hadn’t been back to his old neighborhood in years. The last time he’d been here, he’d still been young and feeling nostalgic, wishing for something that could never be. Taking a deep breath, he straightened up and put his hand on the door to open it, pausing before actually pulling the handle. His losses gripped him. The agony of being alone in this world a heavy burden on his shoulders. Moving those shoulders to release the tension, he quickly opened the door, and with a sharp slam, closed it then walked across the street to the house where he became who he was.

As the first few cold drops of rain fell on him, he went back to a time when things were perfect. On rainy nights, it seemed they’d always gather together to have a family game night or watch a movie. Something about a storm bringing them all together made him long for those days. He stood there as the rain poured down harder and watched on as the lights went on inside the house, remembering what the living room looked like, with him and his brother goofing around, his parents laughing at them. Even as he got older, he still loved those nights; although, he played it off like he was too cool and they were forcing him to stay in, he’d really loved it.

His eyes glanced up to the window that used to be his bedroom. White walls covered with posters of whatever rock band he was into at the time, he’d always loved music and the bands were forever changing. A student desk in the corner of the room where he’d do his homework or try to figure out what he was going to do after high school and community college. The small bed with a blue comforter where he’d fall asleep every night and never have to worry where the money for rent or food was going to come from. Where he didn’t have to worry about his little brother’s safety. They were both safe there.

The breath in his chest hitched as he remembered the night the police showed up at their door with the news his parents had been killed. Hours earlier, he’d paid no attention to his mom cooking soup, even when she put a bowl of it down in front of him while he worked hard to finish up his homework. There was a hot piece of ass he’d been hoping to take out later, but he knew he had to finish before he could leave. He still remembered his anger when his father had come home and said he was going to have to stay home to watch Evan, the way his father had gently reminded him that it was their duty to help other people, and how taking a few hours out of their evening wasn’t going to make a huge difference either way.

Little did he know, it would change everything.

The tears mixed with the rain as it ran down his cheeks. Ethan remembered the loss, the fear, the guilt, and not knowing what he needed to do. Both his parents were only children, so there were no aunts and uncles to ask for help. He didn’t know what arrangements to make or even how to pay for anything. By the time the small amount of life insurance they’d had came through, they’d already lost the house, and the little bit of security the two brothers had left.

Out on the streets and not knowing what to do, Ethan quit college and found a job at a local garage that would work around Evan’s school schedule and had a room for rent above it. It wasn’t in the best neighborhood so the owner of the garage was happy to have someone above it keeping watch, and he knocked a couple of bucks off the rent, which helped.

The first six months was a blur, working all day then helping Evan with homework, and trying to feed them—cooking wasn’t a talent of his. They both had nightmares which kept them up at night. Slowly, they got into a rhythm and started working together. Part of Ethan hated how quickly his little brother had to grow up and the other was glad he’d stepped up. There was so much he had to do and think of to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, not to mention, keeping them safe in a neighborhood where people would take you out for looking at them the wrong way.

One night when Evan was seventeen and out on a date with a girl, Ethan laid there on the lumpy couch, which doubled as his bed, staring at the grease stains above the stove ten feet away, and knew he didn’t want to live the rest of his life this way. Day to day. Paycheck to paycheck. His mind started going back over things he’d seen and heard around the neighborhood, things that played to his strengths. Swinging his legs around, he quickly sat up and slid his fingers through his long hair, pushing it back out of his eyes, starting to see clearly for the first time in years.

A few hours before, Evan had told me he was joining the Army. Dad had served and had always been patriotic, instilling in his children a sense of duty and pride for what so many men and woman had sacrificed so they could live free. The thought of joining had briefly passed through Ethan’s head, but he knew better. He didn’t take orders well. In the end, things worked out as they should have. He would have been in the Army when his parents were killed. Ethan had tried to raise Evan as his parents would have wanted, and apparently, he had since Evan planned to enlist as soon as he graduated from high school.

Evan had told him he would be sending money back to him because he wouldn’t need it, and he felt he owned it to Ethan since he’d had to put his life on hold to raise him. Ethan’s first thought was to put it in savings for the kid, so when he got out he’d have a nest egg, but he had another idea. He’d pulled open a kitchen drawer, taken out a pen and paper, and started making notes, creating a new budget, a budget that was going to change everything.

It was strange being in that small apartment all by himself after Evan had left, and in a moment of weakness, he’d made the trip back to the house they grew up in and stood in almost the same spot he was standing now, years later. The only difference was the rain, but his emotions were no less calm. He remembered the loneliness coursing through his veins like a virus, and wondering if it would ever go away. Picking up extra hours at the garage helped bring in the additional money he’d needed. Any free hours he had were spent doing research around the edges of the neighborhood, looking at properties and tracking what was selling and for how much. Watching the trends, he was almost ready to take his first gamble. His hands shook at the thought. It was either going to be the best thing he’d ever done, or the worst, but he had to do something. He wasn’t going to live the rest of his life above a garage working for someone else.

That was how it all began. His gamble had paid off more than he could’ve imagined. The trend continued over and over until he purposely moved as far away as he could from that lonely young man in that small apartment above the garage, who’d wondered daily how he was going to pay for Evan’s new school clothes, to his own multi-million dollar home. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost the smiling, happy boy he used to be and grew into the hard, distant man he’d become in business and his personal life.

He remembered Evan coming back on leave and being in disbelief of how Ethan was living. They had a good time the first few times he’d visited, and then slowly, over time, they grew apart. They lived such different lives, with Evan being all about the service and Ethan being all about the next sale. Even the phone calls dropped off.

Before Ethan knew it, they were both living their own lives with barely any contact between them. Until Evan showed up in his office to tell him he was dying.

The weight built up and his knees could no longer hold him up. The pain as they hit the wet sidewalk only added to the emptiness he felt. His head fell forward and his shoulders sagged under the weight of all the lonely, wasted years replaying repeatedly in his head. He wanted to go back and do everything over again, starting from that night at the kitchen table of this very house. He wanted his parents back. He wanted his brother back, but all he had was an aching hole in his heart where they used to live. His hands balled into fists on his saturated jeans, fingernails digging into the palms of his hands. With the tears still falling, he slammed his fists onto the hard concrete, his chest heaving from trying as hard as he could not to scream. He focused his attention on the rain, which was washing away the blood from his hands.

Turning them over, he noticed for the first time how much they were like his dad’s. His gentle giant of a father. He’d loved God, his country and his church, always there to give a helping hand. Evan had been like him, which was why he went into the service; he’d wanted to help people. Where did that leave him? Kneeling there in front of his childhood home, he could finally see how far he’d come from what his parents had hoped he’d become. He knew they’d still love him, nothing could have ever changed that, but he wondered what they would have thought of the man he grew up to be. Deep down he knew, they wouldn’t like the coldness, the distance.

Blinking, he looked up into the rain at the clouds, looking toward Heaven, wondering if the three of them were together looking down at him and what they were thinking. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t know what to do.”

With no one to answer him, he slowly stood and looked at the house one last time. He hoped the family who lived there was happy. He could have bought the place years ago, but he couldn’t bear to do it. Part of him never wanted to go back, or set foot inside that door ever again. The other part wanted to run up the steps, throw open the door and call for Mom like he used to as a kid.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before turning around and walking back to his car, not looking back. Once he was behind the wheel, he started the engine and cranked up the heat, hoping it would help his body stop shaking from the cold. Putting the car in gear, he headed back out of town and up north, back to Last Resort. The old saying went through his head.
You could never go home again
. And in a sense, it was true. But he knew, this time, he needed to. He needed to remember; remember who he was, what he’d become, and try to figure out where he wanted to go and how his intrigue with Samantha fit into everything.

Sam tried to fool herself as to why she’d stayed in the main house watching the rain on the road coming into Last Resort. They hadn’t had rain in a while and it was nice to sit there and enjoy it with a fire burning close by. All the guests were huddled up in their rooms or enjoying games in the rec hall. For once, she didn’t have a thousand things to do hanging over her head.

Dolores had slept most of the day, and besides being a little sore, she was ready to get back into the swing of things and had joined the other guests. There was a fierce battle of Monopoly going on that Sam wanted no part of. She was happy to sit there and watch the storm progress. In reality, she was worried about Ethan. This was her resort. She knew everything that went on. She knew when Ethan had gone for a run, when he’d came back, and when he’d left again without a word to anyone.