Midnight Bayou

like five minutes ago, and now Emily’s going to New York. How can eighteen years go by, Anna, and you not look any older?”
    “Oh, I’ve missed you.” She laughed and squeezed his hand.
    “I’ve missed you, too. All of you.”
    “We’ll fix that. We’ll round everybody up and have a big, noisy Quinn welcome home on Sunday. How does that sound?”
    “About as perfect as it gets.”
    The dog yipped, then scrambled out from under the table to run toward the front door.

    “Cameron,” Anna said. “Go on out and meet him.”
    He walked through the house, as he had so often. Opened the screen door, as he had so often. And looked at the man standing on the front lawn, playing tug-of-war with the dog over a hunk of rope.
    He was still tall, still built like a sprinter. There were glints of silver in his hair now. He had the sleeves of his work shirt rolled up to the elbows, and his jeans were white at the stress points. He wore sunglasses and badly beaten Nikes.
    At fifty, Cameron Quinn still looked like a badass.
    In lieu of greeting, Seth let the screen door slam behind him. Cameron glanced over, and the only sign of surprise was his fingers sliding off the rope.
    A thousand words passed between them without a sound. A million feelings, and countless memories. Saying nothing, Seth came down the steps as Cameron crossed the lawn. Then they stood, face-to-face.
    “I hope that piece of shit in the driveway’s a rental,” Cameron began.
    “Yeah, it is. Best I could do on short notice. Figured I’d turn it in tomorrow, then use the ’Vette for a while.”
    Cameron’s smile was sharp as a blade. “In your dreams, pal. In your wildest dreams.”
    “No point in it sitting there going to waste.”
    “Less of one to let some half-assed painter with delusions of grandeur behind its classic wheel.”
    “Hey, you’re the one who taught me to drive.”
    “Tried to. A ninety-year-old woman with a broken arm could handle a five-speed better than you.” He jerked his head toward Seth’s rental. “That embarrassment in my driveway doesn’t inspire the confidence in me that you’ve improved in that area.”
    Smug now, Seth rocked back on his heels. “Test-drove a Maserati a couple of months ago.”
    Cam’s eyebrows winged up. “Get out of here.”

    “Had her up to a hundred and ten. Scared the living shit out of me.”
    Cam laughed, gave Seth an affectionate punch on the arm. Then he sighed. “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch,” he said again as he dragged Seth into a fierce hug. “Why the hell didn’t you let us know you were coming home?”
    “It was sort of spur of the moment,” Seth began. “I wanted to be here. I just needed to be here.”
    “Okay. Anna burning up the phone lines letting everybody know we’re serving fatted calf?”
    “Probably. She said we’d have the calf on Sunday.”
    “That’ll work. You settled in yet?”
    “No. I got stuff in the car.”
    “Don’t call that butt-ugly thing a car. Let’s get your gear.”
    “Cam.” Seth reached out, touched Cam’s arm. “I want to come home. Not just for a few days or a couple weeks. I want to stay. Can I stay?”
    Cam drew off his sunglasses, and his eyes, smoke gray, met Seth’s. “What the hell’s the matter with you that you think you have to ask? You trying to piss me off?”
    “I never had to try, nobody does with you. Anyway, I’ll pull my weight.”
    “You always pulled your weight. And we missed seeing your ugly face around here.”
    And that, Seth thought as they walked to the car, was all the welcome he needed from Cameron Quinn.