The Neighbor Favor(3)
Over three thousand miles away in the city of Amsterdam, Nick Brown was trying his best not to embarrass himself and cry in a room full of people who’d been strangers to him only a month ago. But he couldn’t help it. He was touched that they’d thrown him a goodbye party. And he felt slightly self-conscious to have so much attention on him.
“Remember us fondly, Nick,” Jakob Davids said, raising his glass, his lips spread in a genuine smile. “We look forward to reading the article once it publishes. Proost!”
“Proost!” the rest of the Davids family shouted, clinking their glasses.
“Proost!” Nick said quietly, lifting his glass as well, although it was filled with only water.
Rubbing the back of his neck, feeling both grateful for the goodbye dinner but also that he wasn’t worth the trouble, Nick looked around at the Davids family and tried to commit them to memory. He’d spent the last few weeks with them. They were an Afro-Dutch family who owned a Surinamese cuisine restaurant, and he’d been writing a piece about them and their business for his column with World Traveler. There was Jakob and his wife, Ada, who, at thirty, were only three years older than Nick, their young children, Jolijn and Christophe, and Jakob’s mother, Ruth, who’d migrated from Suriname, South America, to Amsterdam in her early twenties. They lived in a small town house a few blocks away from Sarphatipark.
Nick’s job made it so that he was constantly on the go. It was what he liked most about it. His life was a revolving door of faces and places. But something about the Davidses had latched on to him. Maybe it was because they were a close-knit family who actually enjoyed spending time together, something Nick had always craved. He didn’t want to leave the Davidses and wished he could soak in their togetherness for a little while longer. But he was off to Munich in the morning for his next assignment. He’d have to leave the Davidses behind.
And that was probably for the best anyway. The past few weeks had been nice. But almost too nice. It was making Nick anxious. He found that he was constantly waiting for the inevitable dropping of the other shoe.
“Thank you for all of this,” Nick said to the Davidses. “I’m grateful that you allowed me into your home and your lives.” He took a deep breath, fighting off the strong wave of surprising emotions. “I’m really going to miss you.”
“We’ll miss you too. You’re basically family now!” Jakob barked out a laugh, unaware of the effect that his words had on Nick. He clapped his hand onto Christophe’s shoulder. “Isn’t he, son?”
Christophe grinned and nodded.
Nick felt a little twinge in his stomach, watching that small interaction between father and son. He shook it off and smiled at the Davidses, feeling slightly relieved when Ada began to play some music and beckoned Jakob to dance with her in the middle of the living room. Ruth, who was awake way past her normal bedtime, sat down on the couch and promptly fell asleep.
Then Christophe and Jolijn, the nine-year-old twins, suddenly appeared in front of Nick with a mischievous twinkle in their eyes.
“You won’t forget us, will you?” Jolijn asked, raising an eyebrow. She was the taller of the two. She tugged on one of her thick braids. Nick noticed she did this whenever she felt especially inquisitive. “Promise you won’t. Swear on your notebook.”
Nick laughed. “Why my notebook?”
“Because you always carry it with you. It must be your favorite thing.”
“And what will we do without your stories?” Christophe asked, hip-checking his sister out of the way to get Nick’s full attention. He was young, but he already had a booming voice like his father’s. “You never told us what happened to Deko the elf prince after he was bit by a life leech.”
Two weeks ago, when the twins had been antsy as their parents closed the restaurant, Nick had entertained them with a story he’d written years ago about an elf prince named Deko and his journey through a magical land called Ceradon.
“You’re right,” Nick said, nodding. “We never finished that story, did we? What do you think happened to Deko?”
Christophe frowned. “I think he’s gravely injured. Near death.”
“Not me,” Jolijn said. “I think Deko survived and then met a warrior elf queen, who is stronger and faster than him, and she becomes the ruler of the kingdom.”
“That’s stupid,” Christophe said, rolling his eyes. “Deko is obviously going to die and then be revived by a sorceress and with her help, he’ll seek vengeance on those who harmed him and his people!”
The twins began to argue, and Nick laughed. Quite honestly, they fascinated him. He’d been a lonely-ass only child, no one to bicker with.
“I’ll leave the ending up to your interpretation,” he said, finally intervening. “Whatever you want to happen to Deko is what happens.”
“You mean you don’t know the ending to your own story?” Jolijn asked, wide-eyed.
Nick shook his head. “Nope.”
“But you must know,” Christophe insisted, disappointed.
Nick wasn’t lying. He’d written that story in another life and had purposely ended Deko’s fate on a cliff-hanger, thinking he’d have the chance to continue Deko’s journey. But now, he had no intention of doing so. As far as he was concerned, the story belonged to N.R. Strickland, the silly pen name he’d created. But he observed the twins’ forlorn expressions. They didn’t want to hear his sorry backstory. They wanted to know what happened to Deko. So Nick came up with a special ending, just for them.