I stomped up the porch steps to the side door, making my presence known and apparent. At this point on a Thursday, my nephew Tyler would be at school, so I just needed to make sure Temper didn't actually shoot me, not knowing who was coming through the door. I knocked as I twisted the handle. It was unlocked, either in anticipation of my arrival or because of the novel rural naivety that allowed an unlocked door to not even be a second thought.
It was a lot... smaller than I had remembered, a living room opening up into a small kitchen, with a hallway going to the left in front of a pair of bedrooms leading to a bathroom at the end of the hall. The house was only dimly lit by the sunlight outside, filtered through lace Priscilla curtains that my great-grandmother had picked out and bought for my grandfather when they had built this house. Though now, instead of the pristine white they had started as, they'd taken on sunbaked yellows, staining the light as it diffused into the room. I counted a third and fourth door that I hadn't recognized but figured Doc Isaac must have had added when Temperance and Tyler began living with him full-time after the situation between her and Levi. I didn't see anyone home, which was strange for someone who had given Ryan such a hard time about taking me anywhere else.
I sighed and wandered back to the kitchen area of the home, dimly lit by the indirect, pressing sunlight from outside. I posted up, resting the back of my hips against the countertops and resting my palms on the cool Formica surface, worn smooth from decades of hands, elbows, and other casual contact with the occupants of the home through the years. The counter squeaked under my weight, the different materials protesting and welcoming a new occupant to its decrepit, hallowed perch. I looked up, seeing my reflection in a mirror hung in the living room, and saw my father.
Not actually, but seeing myself in this pose, I hadn't realized how much I carried of him until now, standing here in the same pose, hands braced against the same counters. He'd spent hours like this, his thoughts locked away behind a furrowed brow. How many times had I watched him and wondered what he was chewing over, only to become the man doing the same without even knowing it?
After several minutes, Temperance Bennett-Sands finally came out to the living area of the house. She had on soft sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt, her coppery hair bundled in a wet mass of bun like she'd just gotten out of the shower.
"Judah-" she started, her eyes flashing in surprise at my presence in the house, and then anger at the same.
I threw my hands up in apologetic surrender. "That's my bad. Sorry. I should have called out instead of getting... sucked into my own thoughts."
Her eyes narrowed, deeper into anger and resentment. "Nice to see you home," she said, her tone dripping buttered cyanide. "You are a sight for sore eyes, even though it only took potentially your father being killed to get you to come by and at least pretend to give a damn."
"Excuse-" I said, rising out of my chair before the little demon cut me off.
"Excuse what? Twenty years, Judah. You booked out of here the first chance that came up, not that anyone could blame you there, but then you didn't look back for twenty years. That's older than my son, Judah. That's longer than my marriage to your brother, Judah. That's a whole-ass high schooler of abandonment that you put me and the rest of this family through, and I'm this mad about it and I'm not even the one related to you."
Her eyes were flashing daggers now, and each sentence brought her closer to me until her tiny frame was so close that I felt the need to take a step back from the radiating heat of her indignation.
"Where were you when Levi decided that me wanting to go into a master's program to help your dad was a good enough reason to jump into the drug scene, Judah? Where were you the first, I don't know, five or ten times that he'd pulled himself out of that scene, or when he fell back in, or when I was here, caring for a baby while having no clue what ditch my husband had passed out in? Or when he couldn't get or keep a job because of his habit?"
Well, if the universe wasn't enough for twisting screws in my guilt, Temper certainly didn't have a problem helping it out some.
Now I could see the tears forming as she raised her voice and pitched even higher.
"NOW YOU COME BACK? NOW YOU WANT TO HELP? NOW YOU GIVE A DAMN?" Her voice cracked. "What gives you any right, Judah Sands? What gives you the nerve?"
I am a big, strong man. I've stood and stared down drill sergeants screaming obscenities without so much as a blink to let them know they'd hit anywhere close to home. However, with this 100-pound titan of terror reading me a list of my sins, I crumbled like the proverbial house upon the sand. Leaning back against the wall of the kitchen, I sank to a sitting position on the floor.
I sat there for the moment, the stillness of the house only broken by the sound of Temperance's tear-streaked, heaving breaths, her energy spent in her emotional explosion. The silence lingered between us, growing like so much mildew on the exterior of the house, like its bones knew the rot of this family before even we did.
"I don't have the right. I know that. I don't have the right to walk into your home expecting any sort of welcome outside of a thrown cast iron. I fucked up, Temp."
She glared, the familiarity of her nickname not going unnoticed.
"I know that you sure as hell know it. I'm sure my dad and Levi also know it."
I sighed, looking around the room, and feeling the near-musty environment of decay and academia coming through even Temperance's fastidious protectiveness of her son's environment. Under the smell of cleaners were the hallmarks of age: dust, maybe the acrid tang of mold from broken pipes years ago finally taking root in the small corners of the unreplaced cabinetry. The wood swollen and warped like every promise I'd made and broken. My father had asked me to fix them years ago, and I'd walked away. Just like I'd walked away from all of this.
"I can't make it right, and I can't come back and be here to be a source of comfort and support over the last decade and a half. But maybe I can help Dad."
That prompted Temper to sit, hugging her knees to her chest as we both sat on the cool black and white checkered linoleum of the kitchen floor. She inhaled deeply and locked eyes on me.
"That's... not how I wanted that to play out." She sighed, the bomb apparently defusing a bit. "It's been a rough day. Luckily, Tyler was feeling better enough to go to school so I could sit with it a while and not have to keep up the positive mom face."
She sat her chin on her knees.
"I can imagine that would have been rough."
"You'd have to."
Cruel. But an accurate statement that just twisted the knife in the guilt more.
"I don't know how much Ryan has filled you in, but from what they could gather, Dad wasn't one of the ones they found up there."
"I mean, if it was an animal, couldn't it have dragged him off to eat him elsewhere?" she asked, a gloom creeping into her voice.
"You aren't wrong, but looking at the crime scene photos, this isn't like any animal attack that I've ever seen. And I've lived somewhere that you could actually get Animal Planet."
My attempted joke landed flat, and she glared daggers at me as I held up my hands in surrender.
"I had to try. It's a reflex in stressful situations. Ryan is waiting to hear back from the coroner in Jewel Hill, which might give us some more clues about who these folks were and what exactly happened to them. Hopefully, with that information, Ryan'll be more willing to let me go up to the scene with him to try to get a timeline on the attack."
"I'm coming with you guys."
"What about-"
"I'll call my sister and have her come watch him, but I didn't go with Isaac and this happened, so you best believe I'm not going to be responsible for leaving two Sands on that mountain."