5

Chapter 5

Milo

The wind blew all night and stopped at dawn.

I woke up in room twelve of the Starlight Motel with my chin stinging and Rhett asleep in the chair by the door, still in his boots, his jacket thrown over him. He'd refused to drive home in the storm. He'd also refused the second bed.

The heater was rattling. Outside, the parking lot was covered in broken branches and a thin sheet of frost. I checked my phone. Twenty-nine degrees, and the radio said the cold front had stalled north of the state line.

Rhett opened his eyes when I sat up. "You slept good?"

"Don't think so."

"Me neither." He stood and stretched until his back cracked. "The parkas I ordered won't come until the eighth, and after last night, I don't trust the eighth. Westfield Mall opens at nine. Harmon Outdoor has real winter gear. We're going."

"We? you speak French? Talking about some we.."

"You almost got flattened by a semi yesterday. Yeah. We."

Harmon Outdoor took up half the second floor of the mall. I bought six down parkas rated for extreme cold, thermal base layers, wool socks by the dozen, insulated gloves, balaclavas, and three pairs of expedition boots. Rhett checked every seam and every rating tag before he let me put anything in the cart. By the time we got to the register, we each had four full bags in each hand.

That was when I heard my mother's voice.

"Anything you want, baby. Just pick."

She was standing in the coat section with my father and Owen. Owen was trying on a long black wool coat, turning in front of the mirror, and my mother was looking at him the way she used to look at his old school picture on the fridge, with her hand pressed over her heart.

There were already three coats over my father's arm. Price tags hung off every one of them. Four hundred. Six hundred. Eight hundred and fifty.

When I was sixteen, my sneakers split open at the sole. I asked for a pair of thirty-dollar sneakers on clearance. My mother told me I didn't deserve new shoes while my brother might be sleeping in the street somewhere because of me. I wore those split shoes through a whole winter.

"Get the gray one too," Owen said to her. "And the boots. And Mom, we should get Dad the heavy jacket, the expedition one. Just in case it gets really cold this year."

"You're so thoughtful," my mother said.

My father put everything on the counter. The clerk rang it up. Two thousand nine hundred dollars.

My father handed over his card. The clerk swiped it, frowned, and swiped it again.

"I'm sorry, sir. It's been declined."

"Then your machine's broken. Run it again."

She ran it a third time. "Sir, it says the card has been frozen by the account holder."

"I am the account holder." My father's voice went up loud enough that people turned around. "Gary Bennett. It's my account."

My mother pulled out her own card and pushed it across the counter. "Use mine."

Declined.

The clerk's face went red. "Ma'am, it's the same account. It says frozen."

My father stood there with his mouth open. Then he went pale, then dark red, and I watched him put it together.

"Milo," he said.

He turned around, looking for me, and found me standing ten feet away with eight bags in my hands.

My mother saw me at the same time. For a second, her whole face lit up. She looked at the bags, at the parkas sticking out of the top, and she pressed both hands over her chest.

"Oh, Milo. Oh, sweetheart. I knew you'd come around." She came straight over and reached for the bag in my right hand. "You bought coats for all of us? Gary, look, he bought for the whole family."

I pulled the bag back. "These aren't for you."

Her hands stayed in the air. "What?"

"I froze the cards," I said. "I took all of you off my account yesterday."

The store went quiet. The clerk stopped moving. Two women by the gloves turned around, and one of them took out her phone.

"You did what?" my father said.

"It's my account, Dad. Every dollar in it is mine. Mr. Porter showed me. You never put in a single dime."

"You little thief." He came at me across the store, pointing at me so everyone could see. "You hear this? My own son. Robs his family the day after his little brother comes home from sixteen years missing!"

"I can't rob you of my own money."

"We raised you! We fed you! Everything you have, you have because of us!"

"You spent ninety thousand dollars of it," I said, "and I never even had a card."

People were whispering now. The woman with the phone was holding it up higher.

My mother started crying. Loud tears, the kind she saved for an audience. "Milo, please. Not in front of people." She grabbed my wrist with both hands. "Just call the bank. Right now, baby. Call them and fix it, and we'll forget all this happened. I promise. We'll forget everything."

"No."

"He's your brother!" Her voice cracked down the middle. "He came home with one bag! What kind of person lets his own brother freeze?"

I looked down at her hands on my wrist. The same hands that had lined up my cans on the shelter floor.

"I don't know, Mom," I said. "What kind of person does that?"

She let go of me as if I'd burned her.

"Gary," she said, turning to my father, "do something."

He didn't need to be asked twice. He came at me fast.

"Dad!" a voice yelled from the entrance.

Trent was storming in, red-faced, with a young guy in a Bellini's Catering polo right behind him holding an invoice.

"Sir, you can't just leave," the catering guy was saying. "You ordered eighteen hundred dollars of trays. The card's declined. Either you pay or I call the police."

"None of my cards work," Trent said to my father. "What the hell is going on?"

My father pointed straight at me. "Ask your brother."

Trent turned and saw me, and his face twisted. "You froze them? Are you insane? The food's for the house, we needed it!"

Eighteen hundred dollars of food. Six propane heaters ordered on Monday. Sleeping bags rated for minus sixty. Expedition jackets. Winter boots.

My family didn't buy supplies. My family had never planned anything past the next weekend in their lives.

I looked at Owen.

He was standing by the mirror in the black wool coat, quiet, his hands folded in front of him. Every single thing they bought this week, he had asked for. Just in case. Just to be safe. The bigger heater. More food.

My father grabbed the front of my jacket and pulled his other hand back.

He never swung it.

Rhett caught his wrist in the air. He didn't pull or twist it. He just held it there, and my father, who had been the biggest man in every room of my life, couldn't move his arm an inch.

"Let go of him," Rhett said.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Let go of him. I won't ask twice."

My father let go. Rhett let go of him a second later and stepped in front of me, his shoulder between us.

Then I heard something hit the floor.

Owen had dropped the gray coat. He was staring at Rhett, and every bit of color had gone out of his face. His hands were shaking. He took one step backward and walked right into the mirror.

"Mom," he said, high and tight. "Mom, I want to go. Let's go now. Please."

"Baby, what's wrong?"

"Now, Mom!"

He grabbed her arm and practically dragged her out of the store. My father went after them, still swearing. Trent stood there for a second with the catering guy yelling at him, then ran out too.

Rhett turned around and looked at the door they'd gone through. "Your brother know me from somewhere?"

"He's never been to this town in his life."

"Then why'd he say my last name on his way out?"

I hadn't heard it. I'd been watching my father. But I stood there with eight bags of winter clothes in my hands and went back over everything Owen did this week. The ring. The field station. The heaters. The food. Every single thing my family bought for a cold that hadn't come yet.

Owen had been asking for all of it.

Nobody knew the freeze was coming except me.

Unless Owen had died once too.