Beg, Borrow, or Steal (When in Rome, #3)(4)
On my way through the town square (which is actually laid out like a lowercase t) I walk under the familiar blue-and-white awning of the Pie Shop and can’t resist the pull to go in. I know Noah will be there because he always works Saturdays. He’s the only other person I’ve ever known who enjoys patterns and routines as much as I do.
The bell above the door rings as I step inside and I immediately smile at the sight of Phil (of Phil’s Hardware Store) running his mouth, monopolizing the coveted window seat per usual. He has a rapt audience today. At least five town members are standing around his table, sipping their coffees and holding a box of pie. However, Phil and Todd (partners in business and life) are sharing their traditional slice of chocolate pie.
“Something really juicy must have happened to hold everyone’s attention like that,” I tell my brother, Noah, as I approach the counter.
His blond head is bowed, flannel-clad forearms resting on the countertop studying a ledger. His only acknowledgment of me is a grunt as he continues tallying the numbers in his bookkeeping (of course Noah would still use a physical book instead of a software) and then finally responds with, “They’ve been going on about someone new moving to town. I don’t know, I’ve been trying to tune them out so I can focus on these damn numbers that keep coming out wrong.”
I’ve never been very good at letting my siblings work through their distress on their own, which is why I take a minute to study the lines of numbers. “You’re off on this one.”
His forehead creases as his eyes slide to where my cherry-red fingernail is pinpointing a line. “Dammit. How did you see that so quickly? I’ve been trying to figure out where it’s not adding up all morning.”
“That’s because Mom and Dad gave you all the beard hair and saved the smarts for me.” I grin at him, and he rolls his eyes. I gently close his bookkeeping journal and slide it across the weathered, generations-old countertop, and then up under my arm. “I’ll finish it for you.”
His eyes, almost the exact same shade of green as mine, hold both hesitation and relief. “You don’t have to do that, Em. It’s your summer break now.”
“Which means I have all the time in the world to help out. And I’d hate for you to run my favorite pie shop into the ground with your shitty bookkeeping,” I tell him with a tilted smile that he grins at in return. He knows better than to argue with me when my mind is set on something.
Noah stands to his full height—only a few inches taller than me—and leans back to stretch like he’s been hunched over staring at this book for hours. “Take a free pie, then,” he tells me, nodding toward the case.
“As if I wasn’t already planning to. Do you have any Vanilla Bourbon Apple?”
“I do—but those are for people who give me money in exchange for pie. What I meant was, take a rhubarb pie because those are reserved for sisters who help with things I never even asked for help with in the first place.” His eyes crinkle in the corners just like Annie’s do.
Looking at Noah is like looking at the original blueprint for each of us four Walker siblings. We are all a slight variation of him—but I tend to favor him the most. Golden blond hair. Tallish. Generally wary of people until they prove worthy of our trust. The difference surfaces when we open our mouths. Noah is more prone to grunting and silence. I’m all too happy to voice my opinions. In fact, I have to hold back ninety-eight percent of the time, and that two percent can still be too much for people.
“Where’s your wife? She’ll give me good free pie.”
“She’s on a videoconference call all morning with her label,” he says casually, like that doesn’t mean what we both know it means. Amelia is the worldwide pop sensation otherwise known as Rae Rose. She and my brother met by sheer luck when Amelia’s car broke down in his front yard three years ago. She stayed with him for a while to hide out from her fame and one thing led to another, and now they’re married. She didn’t tour her last album because she wanted some time to enjoy her new marriage and focus on putting down roots in Rome. It also gave her time to work on a new album, which she tells me is her favorite one yet. I imagine this call with her label is the one where they are begging her to go on tour for it.
A tour would mean at least a year where she and Noah won’t see each other much. They were only dating during her last one, and Noah didn’t get to visit a lot because he didn’t want to be away too much from our grandma, who had been living with Alzheimer’s. We all shared a rotating care schedule for checking in and visiting with her at the nursing home, and Noah rarely wanted to miss a single visit.
Although . . . she’s gone now.
There’s nothing left here holding him to the town.
My heart does that thing where it hurts, and hurts, and hurts and I can’t stop it. The feeling scares me. I’ve been outrunning it ever since Grandma died and all four of us siblings were standing in the church’s gymnasium after the funeral, shoveling various casseroles that none of us would take a single bite of onto our plates. We were all prepared for her death in theory, but when it really comes down to losing your last parental figure, it turns out there’s really no such thing as preparation.
I think that was the first day things started changing for us. I’ve always been able to fix everything for them—a Band-Aid on a skinned knee, a pep talk after a breakup, late-night study sessions before a big test—but now they don’t lean on me like they used to. They don’t need me. Noah was so broken after losing Grandma, but he had Amelia to turn to. And Annie had Will, and Madison had culinary school and her life in New York to focus on. It was clear that grief was swallowing us all, but whereas we used to all huddle together in hard times, this time everyone turned in different directions.