The Favor Read Free Page B

soup with spaetzle.”
    Janelle’s stomach rumbled, and she immediately headed down the stairs. “Nan. You shouldn’t be cooking anything. Let me get that.”
    Her grandmother gripped the newel post with gnarled fingers. She’d always been short but pillowy. It hurt Janelle’s heart to see how frail she’d become. When Janelle impulsively bent to hug her, she could feel every one of the bones in Nan’s spine. She didn’t want to grip too hard, but found it almost impossible to let go.
    Nan tutted and waved her hands. “It’s already made. I just need to warm up the rolls....”
    “Nan, I’ll get it.”
    For half a second, her grandmother’s shoulders slumped. Then, feisty as ever despite the weight she’d lost and the cancer nibbling away at her, she shook her head. “No, no. You go upstairs and work on putting your room together. The soup’s heating up, and I have the rolls all ready. You go. Go!”
    Janelle had spent her entire life heeding Nan’s instructions. Even when she’d ignored Nan’s advice, even when she’d deliberately disobeyed her, Janelle had always at least made a show of listening. Old habits didn’t simply die hard, they rose like the undead and kept walking. Now she backed up the steep stairs, catching her heel on every one and keeping her eye on Nan, who took her time, centering herself with a hand on the newel post again before she was steady enough to move across the living room’s polished wooden floor.
    As she turned and went up the stairs, Janelle heard Nan singing, the tune familiar though she couldn’t place it until she got into her room and recognized it as a particularly filthy pop song by an up-and-coming rapper. Laughing, she slotted the bed rails into the head- and footboards, then wrestled the box spring and mattress onto it. The bed itself she pushed kitty-corner under one of the dormers.
    Then she looked out the window, hung with beige lace curtains, ugly and useless at blocking the light. Or the view. She could see right through them and into the second-floor bedroom of the house next door.
    As she’d been able to do back then.
    Just one minute. One nostalgic minute. That’s all she meant to take. The alley between the houses was so narrow that she could easily lean out her window and shake hands with someone doing the same on the other side. Close enough to string a tin-can telephone—and with the memory of that, she stood on her tiptoes to run her fingers along the top of the window frame. The piece of string was still there, stapled into the plaster, the end frayed where it had been cut years ago.
    Hello. Hello. Vienna calling.
    “Mom?”
    Janelle turned, easing onto her heels, and wiped her dusty fingertips on her jeans. This room would take more work than setting up the furniture and making her bed. “Yeah, buddy.”
    “I’m hungry. Is it time to eat yet?”
    “Yeah. Nan made us soup. Let’s take a break. How’s your room coming along?”
    Bennett shrugged. “It’s okay.”
    Which could mean anything, from he’d completely unpacked or hadn’t slit the tape on a single box. Janelle poked her head in his doorway and found the room in a state someplace in between. Books and clothes covered his bed, but the small combo television and DVD player, hooked up to his game system, had been set up on top of his dresser the way it had been in California. Priorities, clearly.
    “Bennett, c’mon. Get this stuff cleaned up and put away.”
    “I’m getting to it.”
    “No comics or video games until this room is clean,” Janelle said. “I mean it. And it’s early to bed tonight. School tomorrow.”
    Downstairs, the good smell of homemade soup was overshadowed by the acrid odor of smoke. A baking sheet of crescent rolls rested on the stove, the tops golden-brown, the bottoms burned black. Nan had opened both windows over the sink as well as the door leading to the enclosed porch, but the smell lingered. She was in the family room, setting a handful of