Totally and Completely Fine(53)

We’d moved into the new house only a week ago. I still couldn’t believe it was ours—I would go around at night when I couldn’t sleep, touching the walls, the windows, the doorknobs—needing to convince myself over and over again that it was real.

Spencer had never been so happy. After all the work and saving we’d done, he’d finally accomplished the thing he’d wanted so deeply. We had a home. A daughter and a home and we were really, truly adults now.

It didn’t always feel that way, but sometimes it did.

Gabe was staying with us. He’d offered to help Spencer fix a few of the more immediate things, like the steps on the back porch—because we had a back porch! And a yard!—and the wonky shelves in the upstairs closet. We’d all agreed that manual labor for a bed and warm meal was a pretty good trade-off.

I was getting better at cooking. I had a real kitchen with a properly functioning stove and an island where I could chop things while Lena’s baby chair was clipped on to it. She loved watching me—her chubby hands reaching out to help. I’d usually give her a wooden spoon, which she stuck in her mouth and gummed for hours.

Things were still in boxes and there was an entire room that Spencer had urged us to stay out of because it needed so much work, but I was deeply in love with the house. I didn’t love it as much as Spencer, of course, but it was pretty close.

Part of me had never imagined that it would actually happen.

But it had, and we’d never again have to live in an apartment where our landlord ignored us and the rats didn’t. We were the landlords now. And the rats? Well, I just hoped they’d stay in the basement most of the time.

I could sense some envy in Gabe. It was most evident when we sat down for dinner every night. I’d catch him looking at me and Spencer, holding hands across the table, with an expression on his face that took me a while to recognize.

Even though he wasn’t getting the roles he wanted, he was still working steadily, still getting paid good money. He lived in Los Angeles where it was sunny all the time. Where there was a beach he could go to whenever he wanted—even though he insisted that no one in L.A. actually went to the beach.

I never imagined he’d be jealous of my life.

“It’s good being home,” he said one night when we had Mom over for dinner. “Maybe I’ll just stay.”

“That would be nice,” Mom said.

But we all knew that wasn’t going to happen. He’d barely given Cooper a backward look when he left. He’d complained nonstop about how small-minded everyone was, how all anyone ever did was gossip. And he wasn’t wrong. His exploits, as it were, had become a popular topic of conversation—not usually flattering.

People claimed that he’d “gone Hollywood.”

I didn’t know what it meant, exactly, but it clearly wasn’t good.

A part of me was secretly glad that Gabe was now the Parker everyone gossiped about. Lena never had to know. As far as Cooper was concerned, I was reformed, married with a baby, while my brother was off galivanting through Hollywood.

He’d be miserable if he stayed here. Wouldn’t he?

“What would you even do here?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Gabe said. “Maybe I could get a job at McKinley’s with Spencer.” He looked at my husband hopefully.

Spencer, who had a forkful of macaroni halfway to his mouth, froze.

“Uh,” he said. “Yeah. Sure.”

“You’re not going to work at a hardware store,” I said.

“Why not?” Gabe asked.

I gave Lena some smushed peas.

“I think it’s a lovely idea,” Mom said.

“Thank you,” Gabe said. “At least someone is excited for me to stick around.” He leaned toward Lena. “You too, I bet.”

She gurgled at him.

“I could babysit,” he said, sitting up. “You guys could go on dates or something and Lena and I can bond.” He gave her tummy a little poke. “It would be great.”

She stared up at him with her big eyes, marveling at her uncle and his big, bright smile.

Spencer and I exchanged a look.

Gabe would not be babysitting. Because Gabe was drinking again.

* * *

—

I didn’t say I told you so when Gabe got sick of Cooper after a month and decided that he was going to go back to Hollywood. The opportunity to continue being a dead World War II soldier was clearly more appealing to him than sitting around our small town hanging out with his baby niece.

There were times I wondered what it would be like to switch places. To get a chance to live outside of Cooper, outside of Montana.

But we had our house and work and a kid. We’d put down roots. We weren’t going anywhere.

The trip ended with a huge blowout fight between Gabe and Spencer. The kind of fight they never had—angry and vicious—about the thing they’d been arguing about for years: Gabe’s drinking.

Gabe insisted it wasn’t a problem. Spencer disagreed.

Gabe told him he was being a fucking mother hen. Spencer said that if he kept this up, he wasn’t going to be allowed to be alone with Lena.

Gabe told him that Lena was his niece, and no one was going to keep him away from her. Spencer said over my dead body.

“I tried,” he told me after Gabe flew back to Los Angeles. “He’s in denial.”