Suzie’s House 153: Good Bye, Drew

“Mom! You’re home! Where’s Drew?” Ben leaned to the left and then to the right, trying to see around the hug fest between Mom and Diane and Miranda.

Seemed like one minute the house was empty, the next everyone came home at once. Except Ben couldn’t see Drew.

He tried slipping around everybody in the hall to look out the front door, even though Drew wasn’t the type to hang out on the porch, and besides, Vin was inside, so who would Drew hang out with?

He wasn’t there. Been headed back up the hall to talk to Mom and get her to tell him where Drew was. She was already talking about him to everybody else.

“That man! Here he is an FBI agent, and he nearly got arrested for shooting a crow!”

“He shot a crow? What for?” Miranda said like she thought it was funny.

“It was noisy. Don’t look at me like that, Diane. If I’d had a gun, I might have taken a shot at the thing myself.”

“Hah hah. So Mr. Straight as an Arrow has his limits too, huh?” Vin grinned from ear to ear.

“Where is he?” Ben interrupted. “Where is Drew?”

“Oh, Honey. I dropped him off at the airport. He was flying out of Milwaukee, and it just made more sense.”

“But…” But Ben wanted to say good bye.

“It’s not like he hasn’t already said good bye to each of us a dozen different ways.”

“But….”

“And all his stuff is already gone…” Mom looked around at each of them like they might say something important.

Ben almost said it wasn’t fair. Maybe he and Drew had already talked about it, but it didn’t really feel like they’d said good bye. Ben only wanted a few more minutes with him. But Mom was right. It didn’t make sense to come all the way back to Madison only to turn around again and go back to Milwaukee.

His eyes felt hot and his mouth shaky, and they were already talking about how Drew had to talk the owner of the bed and breakfast where he’d shot a crow out of calling the police when he heard the gun go off, and how Mom wasn’t even entirely sure the bird got hit. No body paid him any attention, and he didn’t mind. Not a bit.

At least Gene would understand. Ben went upstairs ‘cause that’s where he saw Gene going last. And there he was, sitting on the bed in the room he took from Drew. He had a magazine in his lap and a plate full of cookies and he was smiling.

It wasn’t a big old honking grin like someone else might have been doing, but with Gene it didn’t have to be. The little smile said more than enough already. He was in the room he took from Drew and happy about it. And Ben couldn’t complain because of the underwear thing.

Ben turned the corner on the stairwell and headed up the hall to his own room.

Well fine. If no one wanted to listen, he’d write. That’s what writers were supposed to do, right? Write about things? This felt like something that ought to be written down. He grabbed a note book and a pen and flopped onto his bed, then stared into space. He had all these thought and feelings, but when he thought about writing any of it, there weren’t any words.

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