Free Ghosting by Kirby Gann

finished her shift at the clinic. Sometimes he picked her up, too. Her mother Eudora was a practical woman and did not blame her girl when she finally landed in bed with Mack after so long with a wandered-away husband—no, Eudora got upset only when Lyda got knocked up again so quickly. Eudora did not take gossip unless it covered somebody else’s family, and Lyda getting pregnant with her husband gone gave everyone at First Pirtle Baptist much to chew on happy. Her own mama asking if she didn’t know how to keep from getting pregnant! Lyda told her it was a little late to discuss it now.
    Mack, sweet, welcomed the news. He told her: We roll with what comes. They did not talk about what they might do if Bethel returned. Lyda tried hard to believe he was gone forever. As her belly grew she admonished herself to stop looking out the front of the house for any unwanted sign of him. Superstitiously she wondered if by ceasing to keep an eye out she was somehow encouraging Bethel to show up. Mack told her she was too young for such old-woman silliness; maybe she lied about her age? She slapped his shoulder. They never had one sign of his coming back, no hint of any homecoming until Bethel was already home.

    He arrived to find Lyda as he had left her: alone, carrying a toddler at her shoulder. The front door stood open to invite the breeze. She had finished setting the washed breakfast dishes on the dry rack. Bethel walked in without a hello standing in the doorway as he waited for her to notice him. When she did, his eyes were on the baby—and then Fleece ran in through the back door, calling her to come see a kill he’d made with his bare hand. He stilled at the sight of Bethel, too. Didn’t know who the man could be.
    Bethel, Lyda said.
    Well Lyda Skaggs, Bethel said. He tossed his small bindle bag and cardboard suitcase onto the couch.
    He said he could not accept such outright betrayal. He had come all this way , he said, through near-starvation and miles on his feet, only to find himself obliged to kill the bastard who give her that baby? Lyda assured him he didn’t have to kill anyone, Mack was already dead. I’ll kill his brother then, Bethel said. But the hard smile on his creased face suggested maybe he wouldn’t if she told him he did not have to.

    With Cole on the way Mack had redoubled his efforts to realize his ambitions and gone in with his younger brother Ronnie on a rental property in downtown Montreux, a shotgun that required renovations before listing. They ripped out soiled carpets and refinished the floors, only to have a rainstorm reveal the roof needed repair. Ronnie held the ladder while Mack climbed with a bucket of tar pitch and neither noticed the worn lining on the wire connecting the house to powerlines overhead. A small misstep with the bucket, and the ladder shifted; Ronnie flew back against the house next door where the wind blew out of him. By the time he recovered and reached to where Mack had fallen, his brother’s skin looked like an overripe plum.
    The insurance went to his brother. Ronnie did not particularly care for Lyda; he had no trouble (he made clear) telling her as much, but he promised to do right by his brother’s child. And eventually he did; he did try. Years later when a twelve-going-on-thirteen James
Cole got himself arrested (chasing after Fleece in his way), Ronnie discovered Lyda harrowing deep into her own pitched spiral, and his own wife agreed they were honor-bound to get young impressionable Cole off the lake. Lyda thought they did try to do right; they all did. But they succeeded only in making the boy a stranger to both houses.

    Morning blues the cheap thin valance in Cole’s bedroom window. By habit he stays still as long as he can, refusing even the smallest move despite knowing he’s not asleep anymore. It’s dawn early, he can tell by the modesty in the twitters and calls of the birds outside, like they’re struggling to wake up after a rough night.