Free Jaq With a Q (Kismet) by Jettie Woodruff Page B

pulling each other into a brotherly hug. I hadn’t realized how much I missed him until I saw him. Silas and I talked a few times a week, but it wasn’t the same as getting together. We didn’t do it often, once or twice a year, if we were lucky. It was basically a conflict in schedules more than anything. I spent so many years in school, always staring at a final, plus a job, and Silas was busy saving the world, one company at a time. It just never seemed to work out.
    “I was trying to get here before you did, always gotta up me one,” I teased, my smile genuine and full. Silas gave me two quick slaps on the back and I pulled away, scoping out the place. “This doesn’t look too bad. Have you been inside?”
    “No, just got here. Look, the boat’s still flipped upside down on the dock.”
    I turned to the lake, a flood of nostalgia affecting me more than I had expected. A vision of Silas and me, laughing, swimming, fishing, stargazing in the middle of the lake on inner tubes, and sometimes fighting, one trying to out scream the other. “Home sweet home, huh?”
    “Dude, if this isn’t God’s country, I don’t know what is. Man, I’ve missed this place.”
    “Come on, let’s go check out the inside.”
    Silas and I walked side by side, my eyes being pulled to the French doors, where Jaq would stay. Where she could roam free, and even walk out to her little sitting area on the covered porch. Sure, it needed some tender loving care, but in all honesty, I sort of looked forward to the task.
    It was so perfect. Like one of those weird life things being tossed in your path. That’s what Jaq was, an obstacle placed there for a reason. As an expert quantum physicist, I believed that. Things like this didn’t just happen. Girls like Jaq don’t accidently call the wrong hit man. It just wasn’t fathomable, not in my mind.
    “Oliver?”
    I blinked away my thoughts, my brother coming into focus. “Huh?”
    “I said the porch is in good shape. Needs a paint job.”
    I climbed the four steps, a creaking board whining below my feet, and looked around. Chipped stain and a few rotten boards spread out over the covered porch, more nostalgic feelings manifesting from a swing still hanging on the end. “Yeah, I can paint this. Remember the last time we painted it?”
    Silas gave me a thumbs up, pointing it toward the square concrete pad where a makeshift lab once occupied the garage. “Look at that cut. Dad stitched me up in his lab. How could I forget? I still owe you for that one.”
    I turned my back to him, pointed to the one-inch V in the back of my head, a horse shoe, Silas on the giving end. “Done, nine years old, right over there, stitched up in Dad’s lab,” I retaliated, reminding him with a cocky nod and a wink.
    We laughed, remembering the incident, both fishing keys from our pockets. I slipped mine in first, thinking about Silas still carrying his as well, wondering why. Was it for the same reasons as me? Did he sometimes need to hold onto it, come back here for one of our summers, too? What stood behind the door took precedence over my key inquisitiveness and I refrained from asking, squashing the wishy-washy feelings with awe. I felt like a kid again, the wistful recollections plethoric, every one smile worthy.
    “Check it out, our gloves,” Silas said, his leather mitt sliding over his left hand.
    I caught the baseball midair, the feeling of leather and another memory in the palm of my hand. “It’s not that bad,” I said, the ball flying up, landing in his glove.
    “I mean if this is what you’re into.”
    I pulled the white drop cloth from the sofa with a memory of hanging out with Silas and my dad, usually watching some science documentary. That was about all we were allowed to watch back then. He didn’t want us to catch the TV dumb, his way of assuring that he and who he said were the only ones who influenced our minds.
    “I can live with this. I mean, yeah, it needs a lot of cleaning,