The Intruder - 60

CASEY

I’m teaching Nell how to play poker.

She’s scarily good at it. That girl can look me in the eye and lie her pants off. I am almost certain she doesn’t have anything good in her hand, but as she takes a bite of her scrambled eggs and raises me two chips, I can’t be sure.

“Well?” She grins at me across Lee’s kitchen table. “Will you see my bet?”

I think about it for a moment, then shake my head. “No, too rich for my blood.”

Nell’s face lights up, and she grabs the contents of the pot. I have to say, even though I hate losing, I love to watch her win. I do wonder if she had something better than two pairs though. I guess I’ll never know—she always refuses to show me her hand when I fold.

Lee wanders into the kitchen, wearing a pair of old blue jeans and another of his checkered shirts. He cracks a smile at the sight of us. “Yep, this is what I love to see, Casey. You teaching my niece to gamble over the breakfast table. Wholesome.”

After Jolene Kettering’s body was found, no other next of kin came forward, and Lee stepped up as Nell’s legal guardian. She’s been living here with him ever since the fateful night of the storm, and as far as I can tell, she’s been flourishing—she’s even gained fifteen pounds and no longer looks so skeletal. She’s finally found an adult that she can trust, and although there’s still a lot of healing left to do, she’s well on her way.

I should know.

I never got in trouble for Jolene’s death, and neither did Nell. I kept expecting the police to show up at my door, and I wasn’t sure if my alibi would hold up. As it turned out, Jolene’s boyfriend had a rap sheet the length of my arm, and he was stupid enough to keep his shirt with traces of her blood still on it. Maybe Jax wasn’t the one who finished the job, but after stabbing his girlfriend and leaving her for dead, his arrest seemed well deserved.

As for me, I kept up my part of the bargain and have been at Lee’s cabin all the time to help out. We discussed it, and we decided to homeschool Nell for the rest of the school year, so I’ve been the one taking that on. She’s an incredibly bright girl, and I’ve loved getting back into teaching. But for next year, Lee is planning to move back to town to let Nell attend the local school.

“Anyway.” Lee looks down at his watch. “I better head out, but I’ll leave the two of you to your super fun schoolwork.”

“Yuck,” Nell says, even though she actually loves her classes. She just likes to pretend to be difficult.

He grabs a piece of toast off the pile I made on the center of the table. I used to offer to make him a full breakfast, but he always says no, so I just have some toast available to go. “How about this? When I come home tonight, I’ll bring home pizza.”

“How late?” Nell asks.

“Not too late.”

Her lower lip juts out. “You’re always late on Fridays. What are you doing so late every week?”

Lee’s ears turn pink for a split second, and I almost would have missed it if I weren’t watching him carefully. “Hey, I have a job to do. Somebody’s got to pay the bills around here, kiddo.”

She’s right though. Every Friday, he comes home late, and he always shrugs and says he’s working. But whenever I call him, the phone goes straight to voicemail. I used to think that it was probably a girl he was seeing, but I don’t think that anymore. I don’t know what he’s doing, but I’ve learned to accept there are things about Lee’s life that he isn’t ready to share with me.

Nell gets out her notes for the day, and I walk Lee to the door like I do every morning. Even though I still live at my own cabin, I am here quite a lot. I don’t sleep here, but other than that, I am here morning through night seven days a week.

As we get to his front door, Lee turns to smile at me. I ironed his shirt for him, and he looks very handsome this morning. I’ve been thinking that more and more. I always noticed he was attractive, but lately, I’ve been getting that tug every time I look at him. I think about him all the time, and when he gets home late, I miss him.

Yes, I’m technically here to help with Nell. But Lee is the one I can’t stop thinking about. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been depriving myself from relationships for too long. Yes, there are things about him I don’t know, but one thing I do know is that he’s a good man.

My father would have approved.

“So,” he says, as he lingers at the door, “I’ll see you later. With pizza.”

“Yes,” I say.

He wants to kiss me. I can see it in his eyes. I haven’t had a boyfriend in a long time, but that look is unmistakable. He stands there for a bit, and I can tell he’s thinking about it. I take a breath, waiting for him to press his lips against mine and make our relationship official. I’ve been scared of this, but I’m realizing that a life with Nell and Lee is all I’ve ever wanted.

But he doesn’t kiss me. He reaches out instead and gives my arm a squeeze. Then he smiles awkwardly. “Bye, Casey. See you tonight.”

I watch him walk out to his truck and climb inside. I don’t quite understand Lee Traynor. He’s a good man—he’s proven that many times over—but sometimes he’s a bit of a mystery. Where does he go on Fridays? Why won’t he kiss me when I know he wants to?

But at least he’s never called me Ella again.

When I return to the kitchen table, Nell has her math textbook on the table. It’s a thick book, which thankfully has answers in the back, because my knowledge of seventh grade math is admittedly a bit rusty. Nell is probably better at solving the problems than I am.

“So,” I say as I slide into the seat next to her, “ready to get started?”

She nods eagerly. “I did all the practice problems last night, and all my answers were correct.”

“Good for you!” She really is better at this stuff than I am. “Okay then, let’s continue where you left off.”

Nell has a bookmark in the textbook, and she flips it open to the last page she was working on. But I notice it’s not actually a bookmark—she used a photograph to hold her place in the book.

“What’s that?” I ask her.

“Oh, that’s a photo of my dad that Uncle Lee gave me.” She picks it up and looks down at the faded photo with undisguised affection. “He made me promise to keep all the photos safe in my room though so they don’t get lost. I better put it back.”

It hits me that in the last six months, Nell never shared any of the photographs of her father with me. It obviously means a lot to her. Math can certainly wait.

“Would you like to show me the picture, Nell?” I ask her.

She smiles shyly. “It’s very old. From back when he was my age.”

I return her smile. “I’d love to see it.”

She gingerly slides the photograph across the table to me, as if it’s a piece of delicate artwork that might be destroyed with improper care. I pick up the slightly faded color photo as the boy gazes back at me.

Oh my God. I can’t believe this.

Yet it all makes a terrible sort of sense.

I stare at the photograph, my head spinning. Nell is looking at me expectantly, waiting for a comment, but my throat is closed off with grief. I can’t believe who I’m looking at. After all these years…

My fingers fly to my neck, to the silver chain that still hangs there. I still keep a paper clip hanging from the necklace, always tucked into my shirt for safekeeping. So I’ll always have a way to escape a bad situation. And so I’ll always remember him .

“Casey,” Nell says anxiously, “why are you crying?”

How can I explain it to her? How can I tell this girl that the boy who was her father was my very first friend? That I loved him in my own way—a way I’ve never quite felt since then. That I’ve missed him every day since the police hauled him off in handcuffs.

And now, somehow, he’s dead.

LEE

It’s visiting day at the prison.

I know the drill by now. I go through the metal detectors, but the guard doesn’t give me the usual spiel most visitors receive because they all recognize me. They call me by my first name. I’ve never missed a week in nearly thirteen years. I can’t.

I wait in a seat behind the glass enclosure. Sometimes they keep me waiting here for up to half an hour before he comes out, and usually, I don’t mind. I don’t have much to do in general, but today I do. I drove two hours to get here, and it will be two hours to get back. It’s a long time to leave Nell alone, and I’m anxious to get home as quickly as possible. It still feels strange having a responsibility other than myself. Strange but good.

So I’m grateful that only five minutes pass before a guard leads my older brother to the seat across from me, on the other side of the clear glass. Like always, he’s wearing a tan jumpsuit, his head shaved like it’s been for the last five years. But I’m glad there are no new cuts or bruises on his face. I hate it when I see that.

He picks up the phone on his side of the glass as I do the same. “Hey, Brad,” he says. He’s the only person in the world who calls me that anymore. After high school, Bradley became just plain Lee. Like Casey, I wanted to leave my old life behind by changing my name.

“Hey, Anton,” I say.

Anton’s blanket instruction has always been that if anyone asked about him, I should tell them he’s dead. He doesn’t want anyone to know he’s spending his life in prison—he insists on it.

A day after Nell first arrived, I went out to my car to call my brother from my cell phone so she wouldn’t overhear. I begged him to reconsider and let me tell his daughter that her father was still alive. It killed me to tell her that lie, but it was Anton’s right to decide—he gets to control so little these days, so I allow him this. He told me he didn’t want Nell to know he’s in prison, so I won’t tell her the truth until he gives me the go-ahead. It might never happen though. After all, he’s in here for the rest of his life.

And I owe him. I owe my big brother so much.

But the fact that he’s still alive made it easier for me to get guardianship over Nell. I brought him the papers, and he signed them. I promised him I’d take good care of his daughter.

“How is she?” he asks.

“She’s doing great,” I say. “She’s a good kid.”

A smile touches his lips. He doesn’t smile much these days. “Did you bring a picture?”

Once a month, I bring Anton a new photo of Nell. The one I brought this week is from when we were playing Scrabble together—me, Nell, and Casey. I’ve got plenty others with Casey in them, but the photo I brought features only Nell.

The guard has approved my bringing in the photo, and now I put it in the bin that sends it across the glass to the other side. Anton grabs for it, and as always, he studies the photo for a full minute. “She looks so much like me.”

“Yes, I see it too.” When he was a kid, Anton had red hair, which he hated. As soon as he could, he started bleaching it and then dying it different colors. “Except for her eyes.”

Genetics is funny. Both my parents and Anton have brown eyes, but mine are blue. So are Nell’s.

“I wish I could see her.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I wish I could be there for her, Brad. I wish…”

Anton has been in prison for nearly thirteen years now. I was seventeen years old at the time of his sentencing—one year away from being able to move out and be on my own. I wish I had taken Anton up on his offer to move in with him before it all went down, but I wanted to finish high school. Then one day, our dad came home drunk and beat the crap out of me.

It wasn’t bad enough that I had to go to the hospital, but he knocked out two of my teeth, I had one eye swollen shut, and my ribs were covered in bruises from his boot. I never got it checked out, but I’m pretty sure he broke my nose because it’s been crooked ever since that day. That’s why as soon as I turned eighteen, I changed my last name. I didn’t want to have anything in common with that man.

The next day, when Anton found out what our father did to me, he lost it. He drove out to the bar where my father was currently getting drunk, and he beat him to death with his bare hands. Anton had been lifting weights for years, and he always talked about how one of these days, he was going to be ready for our dad. He was ready all right—too ready. They called it first-degree murder.

All my life, my older brother was my best friend. He taught me everything. He protected me from my father when he could. He played with me when nobody else would. He taught me how to shave. But I wish he hadn’t done something to get himself sent to prison for his entire life. I bet he wishes it too.

“I’ll take care of her for you,” I tell him. “I promise.”

He nods gratefully. “And how is Ella doing?”

Six months ago, I rented a cabin near Elizabeth Casey Carter, who I usually think of as Casey now. I did it because Anton read a news story about Ella taking a baseball bat to a police officer’s car. He called me the next day.

Brad, I need you to keep an eye on Ella Casey. She means a lot to me. Please make sure she’s okay.

I remembered Casey from when she came to our house a bunch of times when I was only eight years old. She was, in fact, my first crush, before I even knew what that meant. Casey and Anton exchanged letters for a long time while he was in juvenile detention for what he did to that girl when he was thirteen. They lost touch, which was partially his doing. He thought she was better off without him. But he still thinks about her. And when he asked me to keep an eye on her, I took the responsibility seriously.

But now things have changed.

I’m in love with Casey. I think about her all the time. I’ve never met anyone like her, and the urge to grab her and press my lips against hers is almost more than I can bear sometimes. I never really thought about settling down before, but when I look at Casey, I see my entire future with her. It’s keeping me awake at night.

But I can’t kiss her—not yet. I can’t make a move without my brother’s blessing. Because even though I love her, he loved her first. But I think he’ll tell me it’s okay. He wants me to be happy, and he certainly wants Ella to be happy. Sometimes I think that’s why he sent me to watch over her, because he knew we’d end up together and I’d be good to her like she deserves.

And then when he tells me it’s okay, I’ll drive straight home and press my lips against hers before I even step through the front door. I’ll marry her if she’ll have me.

“Brad?” Anton is giving me a funny look. “What’s wrong? Is Ella okay?”

“She’s fine,” I manage. “Great, actually.”

I can’t ask him—not today. He’s been having a hard enough time dealing with the fact that he’ll never see his daughter. I can’t take Ella away from him right now. It wouldn’t be fair.

Also, part of me is scared he’ll say no. He’ll tell me he doesn’t want me to be with Casey. And if he says that, I’ll have to respect his wishes. If he asks me not to, I won’t lay a finger on her. He’s my brother, and I’d do anything for him.

There’s nothing more important than family.

The End