Role Playing(31)

He took a deep breath.

“Scared the hell out of me,” his mother said, going back to the kitchen and turning on the small TV there. It was her habit: get up, get a cup of coffee, then watch the news or a rerun of Murder, She Wrote. “And Prince Albert here was terrified. Spent about half an hour barking.”

Aiden looked at the dog with narrowed eyes, and the dog glared at him right back. Or at least, it seemed to, from underneath a thick fringe of beige hair. It was a Pomeranian or something, from what he could tell. He liked animals and generally loved dogs, but he preferred bigger dogs. Also, he couldn’t imagine why his mother, who wasn’t particularly a pet person, would be responsible for one. “When did you get a dog?”

“I’m watching him for Gladys,” she said instead.

He kept his face completely impassive as he crouched down and tried to befriend the dog, who growled at him with suspicion. The last thing she needed was a dog to take care of, but he knew better than to say so, or to even show his uncertainty. He chose his battles.

After having a cup of coffee of his own, he gathered up the books, piling them on the coffee table and along the wall in the living room. The thing was, he’d inherited his father’s unhandiness. He was decent on a computer, and he felt like he had a real skill when it came to taking care of someone sick. But wood, nails, plaster? Not his wheelhouse. At all.

“You know, maybe Riley knows somebody,” he started, only to have her instantly up in arms.

“No! I don’t want to spend money on this!” she said, and as cranky as she sounded, he could see the genuine panic in her expression, and he relented.

“Mom, if I try to fix this, I’m just afraid it’s going to be a nightmare,” he said. “I can pay for it.”

She huffed. “You should be saving your money,” she said. “You’re not even working. Not even looking for work, for God’s sake, Aiden. You can’t just throw your money around.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t fix this, and neither can Davy.” Even if he ever made it out here. He forced himself to smile encouragingly. “So . . . here’s what we’re going to do. We’re either going to hire someone to make you a built-in—”

“No!”

Startled, he saw that she was teary eyed.

It occurred to him that this shelf, one of the things his father had actually built for her on their anniversary, wasn’t something she’d want replaced by Random Handyman. He nodded.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Aiden finally agreed, even as he felt a falling sense of doom.

A few days later, after much discussion with talkative guys at Fool’s Falls Hardware, he had a vague idea of what he needed to do. To add insult to injury, the dog was slowly won over, and was currently trying to get his attention. He gave the puffball some skritches that had him wriggling until Aiden thought his butt would wiggle right off. “I need to do this, buddy,” he said firmly, but the dog was intent on getting in the way. “Mom, can’t we shut him in the bedroom or the spare room until I’m done with this?”

“He’ll pee,” she said, shaking her head. “He gets nervous when he’s left alone. He already peed on my bedspread when I took a shower.”

Aiden sighed, making a mental note to change out her bedding. He couldn’t leave the dog in the yard, either, since she had no fence. Well, he’d just have to make do.

So, clenching his jaw and trying to find a stud, he found himself ignoring the yipping antics of the dog, the high volume of his mother’s television (which was spouting something that he knew, had he been paying attention, would’ve pumped his blood pressure up by a dangerous amount), and fielding questions from his mother as he tried to work.

“Did you find a date?” his mother asked, apropos of nothing, as the news complained about immigration. Prince Albert let out a little sharp bark, like punctuation. He was cute, if somewhat demanding. At least his mother wasn’t tasked with taking care of, say, a Great Pyrenees.

“Not yet.” The stud finder lit up, and he marked it off with a pencil. Then he went to find the other stud.

“You aren’t trying hard enough,” she said. “You can’t just sit in your house, playing video games. You’re not a kid, for God’s sake! You should go out, date. Get married.”

His eyes widened, and he was surprised enough to stop looking at the wall, turning to her. “Married? That’s a little excessive, isn’t it?”

She sighed, shaking her head. “Never married, never dating in college, never dating since Sheryl. At fifty.” She looked both mournful and frustrated. “People talk.”

He turned back to the wall, trying to draw a connecting line between the two x spots he’d marked. Then he took out his measuring tape, hoping that he’d gotten the right-size piece. “So let them talk?” he suggested.

A quick glance showed her scowl had deepened. “It’s a small town, Aiden,” she said. “And I have to live here.”

You know, you really don’t.

But that was not the conversation he was going to have with her now.

The thing was, she loved Fool’s Falls. Her church was here. Her friends were here. She’d scattered his father’s ashes in the Bureau of Land Management forest that he’d loved—which Aiden wasn’t quite sure was legal, but up here, folks looked the other way.