Page 2 of The Leaving Kind
Jorge returned the salute and slurped at his coffee. Cam took another mouthful of his and Luisa sipped hers. The three of them shared a long, silent moment where presumably their thoughts wandered in different directions. But Cam guessed they were all thinking pretty much the same. It was just the three of them now. There was a weekend manager, and a couple of college students on summer break who worked weekend shifts, but on a Tuesday at the beginning of July? Just them. Should have been more. Last year, there had been more.
Cam drained his mug and stood. He grabbed the printouts from the tray and glanced at the orders. Gravel and sand to an address down in Bushkill and trees and mulch to a house halfway between here and Milford. So, the opposite direction. He couldn’t fit both orders in one truck, anyway.
Bushkill first. He handed the slip to Jorge. “Want to load the sand and gravel? I’ll start cleaning up the mess around the gate.”
Silently, Jorge took the delivery slips. With another slight lift of his mug, he left. Cam took no offense from the wordless exchange. That was Jorge. Cam hadn’t been sure he could speak until they’d been working together for four months. He got it, though. Jorge was another vet. Like him.
Or maybe not like him. Jorge was ...
Cam shook the thought away. Degrees of damage didn’t really matter. It was how they were now. How they related to the real world. Sensing the weight of Luisa’s gaze again, Cam glanced over his shoulder. He shot her his most confident smile and raised his now-empty mug.
She smiled back and then busied herself at the computer.
His brother called while he was on the road to the second delivery. Cam tapped the dash-mounted phone and answered, “Nick.” For a long time, Nick had been Nicky, his little bro. But that had been decades ago, and Nicky was now Nick. A man. A somewhat odd but very talented craftsman. “What’s up?”
“I only have two minutes to talk.”
“All right.”
“I’m on a break.”
“Breaks are good.”
Nick’s partner, Oliver, had insisted Nick break his day into more than two halves. The rationale, as Cam remembered it, was to give Nick additional opportunities to engage outside of his work. To make phone calls and entertain visitors to his small gallery.
“Are you free on Saturday?” Nick asked.
“Probably. I didn’t think Oliver was doing a market this week?” Two weekends a month, Oliver paid Cam to run a second farmers’ market stall up in Milford for him. Used to be every weekend, but logistics and the growth of Oliver’s catering business had reduced the number of markets he attended. Cam didn’t mind that it meant less cash for him. Running the stall had never been about the money. It was about staying busy.
“I’m delivering a dollhouse to a client in Doylestown and would like help getting it into and out of the truck,” Nick said.
“Oh, sure. Text me a time and a place and I’ll be there.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re—”
Nick had disconnected the call. Cam chuckled. His little bro wasn’t big on small talk. The drive down to Doylestown would give them the opportunity to catch up, though.
With the empty hours of his Saturday potentially filled, Cam smiled his way along Milford Road as he looked for the turn off. There, Raymondskill Road.
He’d made a delivery somewhere along here before. As he navigated the dips and turns, Cameron studied the houses, mostly hidden behind the trees. Was it that place? No—that one. He slowed the truck as he passed a place set closer to the road. Yeah, that one. He recognized the house but not the garden. It seemed kinda sad, as if the owner had stopped caring for it. That was a shame. As he remembered, the garden, while small, used to show years of labor and love. It had resembled the garden back at his place—the house he was babysitting while his niece finished college—established so long ago that even the weeds knew where they were supposed to grow. Here, the weeds had gotten out of hand and the grass was way too long. The barberry bushes lining the driveway had merged into an unruly mess, and there were broken tree branches gathered into messy clumps and not cleared away.
Huh.
Wasn’t his business. This wasn’t the address for the delivery he had in the back of the truck: three cubic yards of hardwood mulch and four trees, two firebirds and two cloud nines. The firebirds were pretty, with a dark pink edge to the leaves that would darken to a fiery red in the fall. Cam had planted one at the corner of the drive last year and enjoyed watching the foliage change throughout the seasons.
He drove on.
Half a mile later, he caught sight of a mailbox printed with the house number and name from his docket. 693, Ness. The name rang a distant bell, which happened sometimes. Cam had grown up here.
He turned into an almost hidden driveway that rose in a long curve around a gentle slope. Midsummer had the trees on either side almost meeting overhead, creating a tunnel of green. Low beds flanked the drive, thick with the spiky fronds of lilies, a few orange heads still bobbing in the afternoon heat. The drive flattened and widened at the top, opening out into a broad circle of gravel with a water-stained fountain at the center. The lilies continued around the outside, breaking for paths that led off into trees on the right, rolling lawn and flower beds on the left.
As pretty as the garden was, though, the drama taking place on the small front lawn quickly drew all of Cameron’s attention. The grass was littered with objects: Boxes, garbage bags, and stacks of what might be clothing. In the middle of it all, two men screaming at each other. Actually, only one was screaming. The other held a defensive posture with an arm held up across his forehead as though to fend off an attack.
The reason why became apparent as the other man stooped to pick something up, cocked his arm back, and made an attempt to toss it. Whatever it was resisted his efforts, however, being perhaps too light for any sort of dramatic momentum. He overextended his arm, yelled—shrilled, really—and spun three-quarters of the way through a circle, the robe he wore fluttering open in an arc around him.
Cam blinked at the sudden exposure of skin. A lot of skin. Pale, as though the owner hid from the sun. With his cap of almost colorless hair, hiding was a good idea. He’d burn in no seconds flat. Was he Mr. Victor Ness?