Chase

Twenty-Six

Only thirty minutes earlier, Aunt Flo had been standing in the middle of the driveway, out front of her house, fists on her hips, when Jeff arrived back into the camp from the dump. She looked like laser beams were about to come out of her eyes.

Jeff had a choice of hitting the brakes or running her down. He decided, with some reluctance, to slam on the brakes for the second time that day. The truck slid to a stop on the gravel. Aunt Flo’s face was quickly at his open window, and she was angry.

“Where have you been? You’ve been gone nearly two hours! It doesn’t take two hours to get to the dump and back! Where were you? What in blazes have you been up to?”

“I got held up,” Jeff said, hands gripped around the wheel.

“Held up? Held up? What’s that supposed to mean? By bandits? Stagecoach robbers? There’s all kinds of things that need doing around here and they’re not getting done when you’re goofing off.”

Jeff killed the ignition and slowly pushed open the door, giving his aunt time to back out of the way. He walked right past her and headed for the house.

“I’m talking to you!” she said.

“Aunt Flo, there’s something I really have to deal with right now,” Jeff said. “I’m sorry.”

He walked briskly and Aunt Flo struggled to keep up with him.

“What do you have to deal with that’s more important than making sure my business runs efficiently?”

Jeff stopped and turned. “I don’t care about your business. I don’t care about your stupid camp or your stupid cabins or your stupid boats and most of all I don’t care about you!”

That stopped her dead in her tracks. Her mouth opened but nothing came out. Jeff was as stunned as she was. He couldn’t believe he’d said those things, and instantly regretted them.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. I mean, I did mean it, but I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

Aunt Flo found her voice, and said, “After all the wonderful things I have done for you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Taking you in, giving you a home after what happened to your mother and father. You think my life has been easy since you showed up?”

Her lip quivered. Jeff thought she looked like she might actually cry. He’d never believed, up until now, that she had the capacity to produce tears.

“It’s not just about you, you know! Do you have any idea how much I loved your father? He was my baby brother, and I adored him! And maybe I didn’t always get along with your mother, but I loved her, too. I know it was a hundred times worse for you, losing your parents, but I thought the world of them!”

Jeff didn’t know what to say.

“You think I’m tough on you? Well, maybe I am,” she admitted. “Do you think I do it just to be mean? You think I like yelling at you all the time?”

Jeff shrugged. “Kinda.”

“Well, I don’t!”

“You’re yelling at me right now,” Jeff said.

She seemed to deflate, like a tire losing some air. More quietly, she continued.

“Maybe I am. But you have to be strong. You’re going out into the world without a mother or father to guide you, and if you’re not tough, you’ll get eaten alive.”

A tear emerged from her right eye and ran down her cheek. Jeff gazed upon it as if it were a flying cat. Not the kind of thing one saw every day.

“Okay, maybe I never wanted to be responsible for looking after you, but now I’ve got you, and you’ve got me, and we’re stuck with each other.”

Jeff noticed, watching from a distance from behind the screen door of his cabin, his friend Harry Green.

“I never... I never understood,” Jeff said. “But I still hate it here.”

That actually made Flo laugh. She did something Jeff couldn’t remember her doing since he’d come to live with her. She held her arms out to him.

Really? She wanted to give him a hug?

Jeff stood frozen for a moment, then closed the distance between them and let her take him into her arms. Tentatively, he wrapped his arms around her in return. After three seconds, Aunt Flo disengaged herself.

“So, okay then,” she said, looking down at the grass as though embarrassed by her openness.

“Yeah, well,” Jeff said.

“Now, could you tell me why you were gone so long?” she asked, regaining her composure.

“No.”

“What?”

Jeff rested his hands on her shoulders. “Aunt Flo, there’s something I have to do right now that’s very, very important, and I can’t tell you, at least right now, what it’s about. You just have to trust me. I will be back as soon as I can.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m just running in to grab my phone, and then I have to take off for a little while. I promise I won’t be super long. If I run into a problem, I’ll call you.”

“But—”

“No,” Jeff said firmly. “There’s something I have to do and I can’t really explain what it is. You have to believe me.”

“But—”

Jeff gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Please.”

Aunt Flo took a deep breath. “Fine. But will you be here for dinner?”

“I don’t know. Just save me something.”

She lowered her head slightly in an admission of defeat. Jeff gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, turned and ran into the house. He flew up the stairs in less than a second and dashed into his bedroom. He had left his cell phone charging on the bedside table. He detached it from the cord and shoved it down in the front pocket of his jeans.

He was just turning to his bedroom door when he heard a car — what sounded like a big car — barreling down the driveway into the camp. He went to the window and stared in disbelief.

It was a big, black SUV.