Free No Place Like Home by Barbara Samuel Page A

“Go,” I said. “I’ll take it from here.” I grabbed a long apron from the hooks by the door and tied it on.
    He moved slowly, pushing up and away from the counter he’d been leaning on, and I turned toward the stove, giving him a little space for dignity. His big bony hand fell on my shoulder for a second and I touched it with my fingers, then let him go and opened a drawer to find the tongs for the wings. For a long minute, I stared into the tangle of utensils, hearing distantly the sound of the male voices, rich and full against the silence in the kitchen. Berlin’s nails clicked against the kitchen floor as she crossed the room to sit beside me, her sherry-colored eyes in a red face so very empathetic.
    Shane appeared and carried everything out while I mixed a pitcher of margaritas. Malachi came in, too, and took the bucket of ice, the glasses, and the saucer of salt. Shane came back for a forgotten pile of cloth napkins and saw the pitcher. “Cool.”
    I made a noise. “Like you’ll get one.”
    “Come on! I’m seventeen. It’s a party. Just one? It’s not like I never had anything to drink in my life.”
    “You’re lucky I’m going to let you eat, boy.” I picked up the pitcher and pushed him out of my way. “Go put some music on.”
    Michael, or maybe Shane, had gone all out. They’d gathered up dozens of my candles, all shapes and sizes and colors, and put them on the outside of the windowsills, on the table, along the railing of the porch. The round table was covered with a dark cloth—I smiled to think of Michael choosing the dark one in case people got barbeque sauce on it—and set as elegantly as a Martha Stewart picture. They were good at mood, these two. “It’s beautiful,” I said, putting down the pitcher. I pointed to Malachi’s big blue goblet and he handed it to me to be filled. “See how much better kosher salt looks than regular?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he said, lifting the glass in a toast.
    From within came the mellow guitar and whiskey voice of Bonnie Raitt. “Good choice,” Michael said with a smile, handing me his glass. “If he flunks out at the music game, he can always be a DJ.”
    Shane clicked off the dining room light as he came through, so we were plunged together into the intimacy of the candlelit dark. I remembered to pull the apron off over my head before I took the seat next to Michael. Shane sat between Malachi and me.
    I raised my glass. “To good friends and good food.”
    “And good God let’s eat,” Shane said. “I’m about to starve to death.”
    “When you went upstairs,” I said, helping myself to a pile of wings, sticky and juicy, “I thought you’d be out for the night.”
    “I just had to get away from all the lectures.” Shane scowled. “This is one part of living here I hate the most—getting a lecture from ten different people on the same thing. Most I ever got before was two.”
    “You might think,” Michael said, choosing a chicken wing at leisure, “that a body’d want to avoid trouble after that.”
    Shane looked down, chastened. He’d been flying all day on the slight notoriety, and the strangeness of Malachi’s arrival, and then the edge of teen righteousness at the repetitive lectures. Michael’s slow, reasonable, southern voice let the air out of him in one sentence. “Yeah,” he said. But he scowled at his plate, his knee wiggling in his discomfort. “I didn’t mean to really. Just . . . one thing led to another.”
    “Happens to the best of us,” Michael said, licking his thumb with careful disinterest. Then his blue eyes pinned my boy right where he sat. “Happens a lot more when you’re a fool about your liquor.”
    Malachi looked up at that, his eyes narrowing. “Damn,” he said quietly. “You sound just like the old man.”
    Michael grinned. “Yeah, I do. Been hearing it for years.” He looked at Shane. “What’re the rules about drinking, man?”
    “One an hour. No shots. No shotgunning beers.