Page 7 of The Leaving Kind

Forgetting, momentarily, that he was somewhere he didn’t belong, Cam stopped at another small lawn, this one not as trim as the front, abutting a patio put together with larger stones than the path. Proper pavers, set again between gravel. Weeds sprouted between the stones here and there, and moss crawled out from the shade of two gnarled trees at the rear. Furniture had been piled to one side as though someone had intended to tidy up the space but had then found something else to do.

Like tossing packed boxes out onto the front lawn?

“Can I help you?”

Cam landed back on his feet before he was aware he’d jumped. Catching his breath, he turned toward the house. Victor stood in an open doorway, wearing the same robe as the day before. This time, it was pulled closed and tied with a belt. His legs remained bare except for the black cat winding around his ankles. The visible V of his chest, however, indicated he was still only wearing briefs.

Had he not changed since yesterday?

“Hello?” Victor said.

“Shit, sorry. I ...”

“You appear to be trespassing.”

After trying and failing to find an amusing quip to explain his presence, Cam fell back on the excuse he’d invented on the way over. “The trees,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“I thought I might have delivered the wrong trees.”

Victor narrowed his eyes.

Cam let the rest of his breath trickle from his lungs and hauled in some fresh oxygen. “Sorry. I was checking in on you.”

“You were what?”

“You fell yesterday, and you seemed kind of upset.”

Victor’s expression fluttered between surprise, horror, embarrassment, and a recognizable what-the-fuck. Then he said, “I’m fine.”

“So I see.” Though Cam didn’t. They were six feet apart, and he could still smell wine and a hint of sweet smoke. Weed, maybe?

Hey, he wouldn’t judge. Cam liked a toke. Also, if he’d suffered as dramatic a breakup as Victor had, he might want to drift around in his robe and drink for a couple of days as well.

“Okay, um ...” Cam glanced up at the sky and nodded in that direction. “Rain forecast tomorrow. Most of the rest of the week, actually. If you don’t want to lose your mulch to that gully off the side of your drive, you should drag a tarp over it.” Or spread the mulch into some beds so it could take that rain and lock it down into the soil for the hot months ahead.

Victor made no answer.

Nodding again, toward Victor this time, Cam produced a confident smile—I was meant to be here, this meeting prearranged, but now I’m leaving, as agreed—and raised one hand in a half wave. Then he retraced his steps along the path to the driveway, got into his car, circled the fountain, and drove back toward the road.

Leaving was definitely the best course. He had been trespassing, after all. But a part of him wished he hadn’t left quite so quickly. The part that had noticed the forlorn set of Victor’s shoulders and the downward curve of his mouth. The fact he was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and that yesterday, he hadn’t appeared to have gotten dressed at all. The pallor of an already pale face. The dark thumbprints beneath Victor’s eyes.

Cam couldn’t put his finger on what it was that called to him. It wasn’t simple attraction, despite Victor’s otherwise fit state. It was something else.

Back around the longest curve of Raymondskill Road, Cam noted the kid had taken a seat in the long grass next to the mower. She—? He couldn’t see a face beneath the bill of a ball cap. They appeared to be studying their hands. Probably a cell phone. Emma was rarely without hers.

The itch to help still unscratched, Cam pulled into the bottom of the drive and parked. He got out and climbed the small slope to the lawn and pushed through grass up to his knees. Pausing a good distance away from the kid, he called out, “Everything all right over there?”

The kid looked up and waved a single hand in a nonchalant gesture, as if they were used to strangers appearing in their driveway. “Hold on.”

A soft voice. Feminine features. She shook her head at the phone, then stood in a quick but graceful gesture, rising as though pulled from the ground by invisible wires. If Cam had been sitting with his legs crossed, he’d have had to lean sideways and get his hands under him. Then his knees would have snapped, crackled, and popped and his left would have threatened to buckle before he stood.

Ah, the wonders of middle age.

She strode across the lawn to meet him. “You know anything about mowers?”

“A bit.”