“We’re up here,” he yelled from upstairs.
The familiar sound of cars skidding on pavement and the occasional outburst from a teenage boy told her he had a friend over who was racing him on a virtual track in a video game. Owen’s laughter met her ears halfway up the stairs. Rachel paused and smiled. Hearing the sounds of normal lifted her spirits.
She poked her head through the crack in the door to find Owen and Ford perched on the edge of his bed, controllers in hand, eyes glued to the flat-screen on Owen’s wall.
“Hey, Ford.”
“Hi,” he said, his eyes never leaving the screen.
She looked around the room; an empty bag of corn chips lay on the floor, a half empty bottle of water sat beside Owen. “Did you eat?”
“I’m starving,” Owen announced.
“Dude, knock it off.” Ford turned his controller with his whole body, as if that would make the online car move in the direction of his arms.
Owen obviously didn’t knock the whatever off that Ford was talking about. Not that it mattered, both boys continued to ram their virtual cars into each other while they laughed.
“I’ll get something started for dinner.”
Rachel was sure neither kid heard her.
“Are you staying for dinner, Ford?”
“That would be great.”
As she turned to leave the boys to their task of crashing and racing, Owen announced, “There was a package at the door when I came home from school. I left it on the table.”
“Okay.”
She stopped by her unfinished bedroom, pulled off her boots, and replaced them with a thick pair of socks. The hardwood floors kept the old house the temperature of its basement, something she had yet to get used to. California homes didn’t have subterranean space for storage, laundry, and spiders. Luckily there were a few high windows down there that helped brighten up the place. But she’d vowed to drywall as much of the open room as she could and paint the whole thing in a shade of white before summer. Basements like hers belonged in scary movies with screaming women. Neither of which she wanted anything to do with.
Back downstairs, she clicked on her speaker and linked her Internet radio station in. A new pop song had her humming as she walked into the kitchen. Before Owen moved in with her, dinner on a Friday night at home would be half a bottle of wine and a salad. Now that Sister Responsibility was her middle name, the wine was replaced with iced tea, and something had to go along with the salad. With two teenagers eating, tonight would be something filled with carbs. She scanned her pantry, hoping the meal would jump out at her.
Pasta.
Easy, quick . . . and she could heat up sauce and boil noodles without a recipe.
She added half an onion and a handful of mushrooms to the sauce, nothing fancy, but something to make her feel like she was actually cooking. A morphed cucumber and a moldy tomato ended up in the trash, reducing their salad to lettuce and carrots.
A Saturday trip to the grocery store was in order.
While the water boiled and the sauce simmered, Rachel found the stack of mail on the dining room table. She fingered through a few bills and tossed the junk to the side to add to the recycle bin. The box Owen had spoken of didn’t have a mailing label. In fact, all that was written on the plain brown box was her name, her first name.
She peeled away the tape, not knowing what to expect. Once she folded the lid back, she saw a handwritten envelope on top of a white canvas bag. It took a little effort to lift the noisy bag from the box—the sound of metal hitting metal struck her as odd. She set the envelope aside, unread, and opened the bag.
Chains.
Chains for the tires on her car.
“Who . . . ?”
She thought maybe Julie, perhaps Gerald . . . then she opened the note and a second paper fell out.
Rachel
Thank you for braving this stranger in a storm and keeping me from frostbite. I thought maybe Owen would like to replace the kitchen knife with skills. I know the owner, first month is on me if he is interested.
Welcome to Connecticut.
Jason
Below his name was a phone number.
Rachel glanced at the paper that had fallen out. A flyer for a tae kwon do studio and a name, address, and number were attached to a simple note that said, “Tell Bruce I sent you.”
Something inside her stomach flipped, the buzz a teenage girl feels when she notices a popular boy watching her from the other side of the classroom. Or maybe she was reading into it. Maybe this was just a thank-you, a friendly gesture from a grateful, stranded traveler.
Before she could consider her options further, the sound of water boiling over on the stove directed her attention to dinner. Back through the door in the kitchen, she relit the flame on the stovetop and turned down the temperature of the sauce.
Ten minutes later, Owen and Ford were sitting at her small table, passing the salt. The boys were animated in their conversation about the video game they’d been playing and about the football team at their school. Neither one of them was on it, but each of them had an opinion on whether or not the team would make the finals.
Rachel listened and would occasionally try and say something worthy of hearing. The boys entertained her comments but redirected the conversation back to what only the two of them knew anything about.
“We should probably get there early,” Ford said during the quarterback debate.
“Yeah, it’s gonna be packed.”
Rachel pushed her plate aside, catching on to their discussion. “Are you guys going to the game tonight?”
“We talked about this earlier,” Owen told her.
“We did?” She remembered something about a game last weekend but hadn’t remembered to put anything on her calendar.
“It’s your turn to drive,” Owen said, his voice more than a little annoyed that she’d forgotten. “Unless you let me use the car.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Nice try.”
Owen scowled.
“You boys clean the dishes, I’ll change.”
Owen stared. “You don’t have to stay at the game.”
She shrugged her shoulders and pushed back from the table. “I don’t have anything else I’d like to do tonight more than go to a high school football game.”
Owen looked between her and Ford. “Fine, but we’re not sitting with you.”
She almost laughed. “I wouldn’t think of it.”
An hour later, half frozen among several hundred teenagers and excited parents and alumni, Rachel tried to remember any redeeming value of sitting in the stands in arctic temperatures when she could be at home painting a bedroom. Her gaze traveled to Owen, who sat with Ford, Lionel, and two girls she didn’t recognize. “I’m only here because you would have dragged me along with you, Em.”
The lady on Rachel’s right glanced out of the corner of her eye. Speaking to herself probably wasn’t the best way to make friends.
Rachel smiled and pretended to pay attention to what was happening on the field.
The quarterback of East Ranch High looked like he was either on his sixth year at the school or belonged in college. And one of the linebackers had enough facial hair to be the spokesman for the crew of Duck Dynasty. Rachel didn’t remember boys looking like men when she was in high school. And much like most of the adults in the stands, she wasn’t that many years away from that time in her life.
While she watched the spectators, something happened on the field, and half of the people in the stands stood and started to cheer. She stood, just to put some circulation in her legs.