Page 5

chapter four

Tuck

Ten Days Ago

“You’re home early,” my uncle said through a mouthful of turkey sandwich, setting it back down on the plate in front of him.

“I got let go.” I tossed the apron I’d forgotten to leave behind over the kitchen chair. I’d return it tomorrow to the restaurant. Or maybe I wouldn’t. What was another theft on my record, especially one that wouldn’t be officially reported? They’d obviously expected me to steal something. Why disappoint them?

My uncle was studying me casually. “I told you—you should have disclosed your record.”

I fell into the chair with a sigh. “Yeah. Well.” I felt defeated, no energy left in my body to do much of anything, not even form a meaningful sentence. Alfonso obviously guessed why I’d been fired anyway, so why use a bunch of words to explain? Yeah, I should have been honest about my criminal record, but recent history had taught me that didn’t go well when attempting to find employment, and so I’d lied. And I’d hoped that, if they did check, they’d let it slide that their dishwasher had served time.

Clearly, that had been a miscalculation, even though I’d worked hard, showed up every day on time, and kept my head down. Apparently, I wasn’t even worthy of scraping dried food off other people’s dirty plates.

“What are you gonna do now?” my uncle asked.

I looked away, tapping my knuckle on the table. What are you gonna do now? That was the question. The one I’d been trying to answer for the last four months since I’d been released from prison. Only, what I did now didn’t seem to be up to me. Once…once I’d had a legacy. Now I had a criminal record and extremely limited employment options, if any existed at all.

But I pushed thoughts of legacy far, far away. That had been taken from me a long time ago and it wasn’t something worth dwelling on. “I don’t know,” I murmured. But I had to do something. The terms of my probation required me to have a job, not to mention I’d racked up some serious debt before I’d been sent to prison. And adding to that, I had a responsibility to help two people who’d suffered the fallout of my failure.

Hopelessness flooded me and for a moment I felt crushed under its unseen weight. My uncle had taken me in when I was seventeen, put up with a whole slew of bad behavior over the years, and then taken me in again when I was released, but he had issues of his own and lived paycheck to paycheck as it was. He couldn’t afford to help me financially, and though I appreciated the roof over my head, the thought of living on my uncle’s couch for even one more month, made that weight grow heavier.

Stop looking a gift horse in the mouth. It’s leagues better than the lumpy cot you slept on for six years in a windowless cell. That was true, but it did little to bolster my mood. Because in prison, I’d had an end date to move toward. Here, in the outside world, it was becoming increasingly clear that I was still stuck, even if in different ways, just as I’d been behind bars.

Strangely enough, I hadn’t minded the dishwashing job. It was solitary work, and I’d become a solitary person since I’d been locked up. I’d grown used to—almost comforted by—a rigid schedule and precise way of doing things. Loading that machine, pressing the button, listening to the whir of the brushes and the gush of the water, and then unloading, separating, stacking…and then doing it all over again, was mindless work, but it fed my new affinity for order. There was a word for what had happened to me during those six long years where I woke at the exact same time every morning and was directed through my day by others: institutionalized . I was well aware, and so I recognized that the loss of the job wasn’t simply about a paycheck—paltry though it was—but about having the meager sense of order I’d regained being taken away.

A magazine was off to the side, and my eyes lingered on the cover headline, “Sun’s Fury.” The subhead read: “Scientists Warn Solar Flare Could Hit Earth in Our Lifetime.”

I read it once, then twice, finally sighing, and pushing it aside.

If only.

With one massive explosion, I’d be on common ground with every other man and woman out there.

Which was to say, we’d all be fucked.

Fortunately or unfortunately—I couldn’t quite decide—that wasn’t going to happen.

Alfonso stood and dropped his plate in the sink with a clatter. “Oh, by the way,” he said, plucking a piece of mail off the top of the pile on the counter. “This came for you.”

I took it, and he gave me a pat on the shoulder as he moved past, pausing. I waited for the words of encouragement he might give me before he left. “Wash those up, would you?”

I eyed the sink full of dirty dishes. “Thanks for the words of wisdom,” I muttered sarcastically.

His soft chuckle drifted behind him. “You’ll see the wisdom in not letting small messes accumulate. Take it from someone who’s been where you are.”

Sure. Okay.

The front door opened, and then closed, and a minute later I heard the growl of his car’s engine as it pulled away from the curb, off to his job as head custodian at a local high school. Maybe he had a little more of his father’s determination than my mom had believed, because he’d started out as a janitor there right before I’d gone to prison and was now running the custodial team. Unfortunately for me, they were currently on a hiring freeze. In any case, maybe my uncle would never live in Bel Air, but his outlook was a whole lot better than mine.

He’d been where I was, even if his time spent in jail had been for a series of shorter stints. He’d struggled with drugs for much of his youth and had finally gotten clean right before I came to live with him. He’d put up with me when he didn’t have to, and while he might not have been equipped to deal with an angry, grieving, troubled teenager when he was only just getting his own life together, he’d done what he could. He’d put a roof over my head and food on the table, and I’d “repaid” his generosity by being a total fuckup.

And here I was living the consequences. I tapped the table with the envelope in my hand, my heart giving a small jolt when I caught sight of the return label. I tore open the flap and pulled out the Christmas card from the Swansons. The shiny front featured a colorful rendition of Santa, and on the inside, it had a generic printed greeting under which Mrs. Swanson had written: Merry Christmas, Tuck. Thinking of you this holiday season and wishing you well. Let us know if you’re ever in the area. We’d love to see you. Love, Jena and Phil.

I placed the card down on the table. They’d sent me a Christ mas card every year since I’d moved away, even when I’d been in prison. They must have heard that I’d been released. Shame wound through me. Jena had been my mom’s best friend. It must hurt her to know how devastated my mom would have been had she lived—

The chair legs scraped across the tile as I stood and then headed for the living room. But I paused in the doorway, the kernel of an idea making me turn, my gaze landing on Santa’s jolly grin. I took the few steps back to the table and picked up the card and the envelope, staring at that return address, the one I’d once known as well as my own.