Page 25 of Laying Low

Which was a dumb excuse, but he didn’t have anything else.

With a sigh, he got to the bedroom and sank onto the pleasant green-and-purple quilt on the queen-sized bed.Laure’s room had ended up being the dedicated guest room because it was thebestroom—the best decorated and the prettiest and in the best shape—after all the kids moved out.

Val, Prock, and Sal had shared their own room, and Dean, Reg, and Chance had shared another, and Reg remembered alotof drywall work and painting had gone on as first one room, now the den, and then the other, now a combination sewing room/library, had been emptied out.

Boys werehardon walls.

And that’s as far as his brain got, apparently, because he was still sitting there on his sister’s quilt, staring into space, when Anthony walked in with two knapsacks—one on his back and one in his hand—and asked him how he was doing.

Seen and Unseen

LAURE: WAIT—he got into a shouting match?With DEAN?Dean!What did you do?

Dean: I told him to take Anthony with him on a little adventure we won’t talk about here.

Laure: Anthony, did you object?

Anthony: No.Why are we on group chat again?I am DRIVING here.

Dean: It’s called speech to text—it’s a beautiful new invention.

Anthony: Why am I doing it again?

Dean: Because we are WORRIED about my little brother!

Anthony: Don’t be worried.He can hold his own.In fact, he was doing a pretty good job standing up to YOU tonight, wasn’t he?

Dean: Yeah he was—which isn’t like him at all.

Anthony: Well maybe that’s the problem.You all are so sure you know what Reg is like, you don’t leave any room for him to be Reg.

Chance: Just got here for this.Anthony, I like you very much.Everybody else, get off their backs.Give Reg room to be himself.It’s all he’s ever needed.

Anthony: And just like that, I have a favorite.

Big words, Anthony thought now as he walked into the guest room, but somehow they didn’t seem as powerful as he needed them to be when confronted with the rather lost man sitting on the bed.

“What’s up?”he asked, depositing both the knapsacks on the floor with a thump.“I talked to your dad—we’re wheels up pretty early.I guess we’ll be taking Bailey’s SUV?”

“He just bought it,” Reg said, shaking himself and standing up.“The registration hasn’t been mailed in yet, so it’ll take them a minute to track it.”

“Good idea,” Anthony said.That had been the vehicle he’d actually been driving—it had been bought used, was a nice average navy blue andverycomfortable.The kids had places to power their phones, as long as they were in airplane mode, so that would help stave off boredom.

With a nod, Reg went into the attached bathroom (Laure had often boasted that this tiny bathroom with a shower barely big enough to hold an adult human had been the sole reason she’d survived being the only girl in this little house), and Anthony went to his own knapsack and pulled out his kit.

“Shower in the morning?”he called into the bathroom.

“Yeah,” Reg called back, garbled.After a moment he spit and drank and spat again, and then stuck his head into the bedroom while wiping his mouth.“If we’re up at five, there should be hot water and water pressure.Right now the dishwasher’s running.”

Anthony grimaced good-naturedly.“Old house?”

“Old house, old plumbing, lots of use,” Reg confirmed.“When there were seven of us, Mom used to run a bath for me and Chance every other day, and then she made a schedule—five-minute showers before school, and if you didn’t make your time slot, you werescrewed.The only exception was Laure, because it took her fifteen minutes to wash her hair and shave her legs.”He shook his head and smiled a little.“She could do it in seven, but sometimes, I think she just enjoyed the time alone.”

Anthony chuckled.“Lots of jockeying for position,” he said.

“Yeah.But still, nobody was happy when Val moved out, or Laure….”His voice trailed off, and Anthony realized that Reg would have watchedallhis siblings move out, because he had no doubt Reg had waited until Chance had gone off to school to get his own place.

“That must have been hard,” Anthony said, toeing off his battered lace-ups.“I’m going down to boxers and a T-shirt,” he said, thinking Reg would need the clarity.“Feel free to do the same.”