Did You Ever Have A Family by Bill Clegg Read Free Book Online Page B

drunks, but they’re little guys, wiry, and as aggressive as they can get, they usually avoid a brawl. Problem is that there are so many of them around here. Dirk always feels free to mouth off because there are usually two or three cousins nearby to defend him if he gets in a scrape. His family is the volunteer fire department, so he must have felt bigger than usual that night. It was lucky that Luke got to me before any Moreys did, because after I hit Dirk the first time, I shoved him to the floor and dove in. I’d heard this guy heckle and mouthoff since we were kids, and I’d saved up a few swipes over the years. I got a couple good ones in, too, before Luke dragged me off to the parking lot. June Reid stood to the side while Luke made sure I wasn’t going back in for more, but when Sandy and I started walking to our car, June ran up and grabbed my hand. Not a thank-you, no words. She pulled one of my hands into hers, squeezed it, and let go. She was looking down the whole time, so I couldn’t see if there were tears on her face, but she was upset. She rushed back to Luke before I could say anything.
    I didn’t know much about June Reid before she starting seeing Luke. I knew the house—it was one of the oldest in Wells, and I remember going there as a kid at Halloween for candy and being frightened because the place looked haunted. It’s funny to imagine that she would have been roughly my age now when I came knocking at her door in my He-Man costume. When I first heard about her with Luke, I thought it was a little weird, but when I saw them together, I was mostly glad to see Luke lighten up, begin to have fun again. He was a pretty depressed guy when he came out of prison. And he didn’t hang out much. He crashed in a room above Mr. Delinsky’s garage for those first few months and then got an apartment near the hospital. I’d see him at the lake and then at Harkness, but besides that he kept to himself, went to the gym at the high school and still swam laps in the pool. I saw him there with June a few times, workingout. I think it was the first time I heard him laughing or saw him smiling since high school. I remember one time watching him attempt to teach her a complicated exercise with free weights and was surprised to see how quickly he got frustrated by how uncoordinated she was. She didn’t seem to mind and instead teased him by mimicking his serious face and exaggerating his careful movements. He was clearly annoyed but she was relentless and eventually he couldn’t help but smile. I don’t think most people would have expected June Reid to have a silly side, but she did, and I think it was just one of a number of things about her that brought Luke back to life.
    When my mother found out what happened, she asked me to bring the cake down to the firehouse for the guys who’d been called out to June’s place that morning. Dirk Morey was there when I arrived and so was Earl, along with all the others. For once these guys had nothing to say. I brought the cake into the kitchen and told Dirk’s cousin Eddie that I’d come back next week for the tray. I got out of there as fast as I could. I didn’t want to hear any of the grisly details. I just wanted to get home to Sandy and Liam and lock the door. I started back to our place, but for the first time since my dad died when I was in eighth grade, I started to cry. Maybe it was because both were accidents—my dad’s car got hit head-on by a drunk driver on Route 22 after he picked up some part for Mom’s dishwasher. Or maybe it was because Luke had become a friend. We were alwaysfriendly growing up, but he had his eyes elsewhere—girls, swimming, college—and for better or for worse we never were that tight. But after he got out of jail and was up and running with his landscaping business, we saw each other all the time. He’d swing by with the Waller boys for a cup of coffee and a pastry in the mornings while we were opening up. We never got