Free The Half Brother by Holly Lecraw

every now and then.”
    “I plan to,” she said.
    A YEAR OR SO EARLIER, B.J.—Booker Junior—had taken up the drums, directly over my head. I kept my mouth shut, though, because Booker ran a tight ship, and I didn’t want any complaint of mine to spell the end of B.J.’s musical career. Who knew where music might take him? Then he started a band. They moved up to the attic, but still, every Saturday afternoon, sometimes into the night, the entire house shook, not always in a discernible time signature.
    But then the solution appeared. Booker was promoted to head of facilities, and a faculty house opened up for them on campus. They’d sell their house and Angela would help me find a new, quiet one of my own. “Early spring,” she said. “You hit it exactly right, Charlie.”
    At first she showed me houses in Abbottsford proper, the historic district, but buying there seemed so audacious. Yes, I loved the Lowells’, the Bankheads’, but could I claim such a spot? No, I thought, so we kept going. We headed northwest, where Abbottsford dwindled to a dinky strip mall, a garden center, a hardware store that serviced snow-blowers, a last service station, and then the county highway turned straight and fast.
    We spent a couple of Saturdays this way. I found out she and Booker had met at U Mass. They were each the first in their families to go to college. “Booker’s family wasn’t too happy when we said we were raising the kids Jewish,” she said. “And my family wasn’t happy about him being the wrong color.” She glanced at me and I realized it would be okay to laugh, and so I did, with her. “And that’s why we like it out here in the country, away from the in-laws,” she said, in her city Bahston voice.
    I told her the money for the house came from Hugh. “I don’t really feel like it’s mine.”
    “But he must have wanted you to have it.”
    “I suppose.”
    “So we just have to find the perfect house, then, don’t we.” Puhfect .
    One Saturday afternoon I went outside to wait for her and found Zack in the driveway, shooting baskets. I lowered the goal for him all the way so he could dunk, and then I put it back up at B.J. and Cassie’s height so they wouldn’t get mad, and picked him up so he could dunk that way. This was our routine. But he wasn’t smiling and cheering like he normally did, and when Angela came out he took the basketball and went and sat on the front steps and didn’t look at me.
    I went and sat down next to him. “I’m looking for a house with your mom,” I said. “She’s really good at finding houses.”
    He didn’t say anything.
    “Your new house is really cool. Have you seen it?” No answer. “Hey, Zackie Bear. Want to come with us today? Will you help me pick out a house?”
    A very slow nod. Angela rolled her eyes but looked pleased. “He’s not happy,” she said. “He does not like change.”
    “I know how he feels,” I said.
    We were still looking outside town, going farther and farther down that highway, and I was beginning to worry there was nothing to find. That day, as we drove around looking at ranch houses, exposed in the country way on large windy lots, worry gave way to bleakness. I had no idea what I was looking for. Plus, early spring depressed me. The trees were still leafless and the bare ground brown but the light was higher, intrusive, dragging us awake, out of hibernation. I liked hibernation. Midwinter spring is its own season . But it was also the first weekend that the local dairy bar was open. “Let’s get ice cream,” I said. “My treat.”
    I got rum raisin and Zack got vanilla with jimmies, and I sat down next to him on the bench attached to the picnic table. “I think I should just get another apartment,” I said. “What do you think, Zackie? Little place in town. Little bachelor pad. It’ll be hip. It’ll be a happening place.”
    “I thought you wanted a house,” he said.
    “Well, we can’t find one.”
    “I liked