The Favor Read Free

did. Some women didn’t. For them, a sneer was as good as a smile, maybe better. For them a kiss from a fist was better than nothing, but Gabe would never hit a woman, not even if she hit him first, and he’d had plenty of slaps to prove it. He’d deserved most of them, though if you asked him, any woman who went after a man who told her right up front he wasn’t ever going to be her boyfriend probably shouldn’t get bent out of shape when that turned out to be true.
    There were lights on in the Deckers’ second-floor bedroom, which meant he could see right in. There hadn’t been a light on upstairs in months, maybe even over a year. Mrs. Decker never went upstairs anymore, and though she sometimes had visitors, she didn’t have overnight company. Gabe moved closer to his window, hands on the sill. His breath fogged the glass, but he didn’t wipe it clean. He just waited patiently for it to clear.
    Earlier he’d seen the woman inside, moving back and forth, emptying boxes and arranging the furniture. Her hair was darker now than it had been in childhood, but still red. He bet she still had freckles across her nose, and that twisted sense of humor. Other things would’ve changed over time, they always did, but surely that would be the same.
    Janelle Decker had come back.
    The door to that other bedroom opened, and there she was again. In the dark, behind the shield of his curtain, Gabe watched, waiting to see if she’d look over. She didn’t. She straightened and slid an elastic band off her wrist, then used it to fasten her hair on top of her head. She stretched, rolling her neck and shoulders with a wince.
    Gabe had once sworn he’d get the hell out of this place and never look back, but Janelle had been the one to actually do it. At least until now. What was she doing back here? Easy enough to guess—Mrs. Decker was getting older and more frail. She’d fallen not too long ago, and Gabe supposed she needed caretaking. That explained the boxes and stuff in the upstairs bedroom, instead of only a suitcase or two.
    “So,” she says. “That’s it? It’s over?”
    “Nothing’s over. For something to be over, it has to start.”
    “I did it for you!” she cries. “You asked me for a favor, and I did it!”
    Then she’s leaving and his hands are on her. Too hard. He doesn’t know how to tell her he doesn’t want her to go, and he can’t make himself ask her to stay.
    And after that, everything fell apart.

THREE
    IN WHAT BENNETT called the olden days, this big room, separated into four sections by a T-shaped half wall, had belonged to four of her uncles. The smaller bedroom across the hall had housed Janelle’s dad, the oldest of the five brothers, until he moved out and the next oldest took his place. Ricky, Marty, Bobby, Joey and John, the Decker brothers. Her dad had often joked that if the others had learned to play instruments the way he’d taken to the guitar, they could’ve had a band to rival the Oakridge Boys or maybe the Osmonds. All five had shared the bathroom off the hallway, and Janelle shuddered to think of what that must’ve been like—the stink alone must’ve been enough to kill a couple of elephants. And it wasn’t a big bathroom, she thought as she settled one more box of toiletries on the floor. It would be a hardship sharing it with one medium-size boy, much less an army of brothers.
    Of the five brothers, four remained in contact, though none of them had stayed in St. Marys. John and his wife, Lisa, lived three hours away in Aliquippa, their three kids and spouses and grandkids close by. Bobby and Donna lived an hour and a half away in Milesburg, their four kids and their families scattered across the country. Marty and Kathy in Dubois, close to Joey and his wife, Deb, but that was still about an hour away. Marty and Kathy’s daughter, Betsy, lived with her family twenty minutes away in Kersey, but her brother, Bill, was unmarried and traveled the world as a journalist.