“Isn’t that right, Brandon?” Lydia’s question cut through the abyss.  Brandon snapped back, catching the pointed look she was shooting him from across the conference table.  He had wandered off again–had it been to the dim interior of the garage this time?  No.  As the clouds lifted, he shifted forward in his seat and folded his hands in front of him.  

“Of course,” he responded without hesitation.  He assumed a pleasant and reassuring expression as he looked between Lydia and their newest clients–another couple with too much money and not enough class who desperately needed help bringing character to their vanilla plastic McMansion.  He already had the feeling that there were white kitchen cabinets and gray hardwood floors playing a prominent role in this project.

Lydia echoed his smile, but it lingered nervously on her face as she stared at him and waited for him to elaborate on a question that he was completely unaware of having been asked.  His confidence faltered.  She gave a nervous laugh and pressed on.

“Yes, you can call us anytime.  Those are our personal cell numbers as well as our email addresses, which we check regularly.  We know that inspiration can strike anytime, and we definitely want your ideas and direction in the forefront as we embark on this design journey together.”

It was all Brandon could do to keep from rolling his eyes at her well-rehearsed line.  She always saved this for the closing, and he could already feel himself checking out again.  Where had he been?  Not the garage.  Not the construction site.  Ah, yes.  A humid forest in South Carolina.  Though he had never actually been there himself, he could see Anthony perfectly, pumping his legs and churning the southern clay up around his rubber boots.  Was South Carolinian mud red?  Probably.  Anthony would be holding his camera in front of him, watching the image through the screen as the rust-colored paste climbed his rubber covered calves.  Then he stopped, turned and smiled, giving a little wave.  But it wasn’t to Brandon.  It was to a slender young woman, tanned and wearing a sundress, bouncing a giggling baby on her hip.

Everyone around the table was standing up now.  Brandon followed suit, flashed another winning smile and indulged in another round of handshakes before the couple left and he collapsed back into the swivel leather chair.  He unlocked his phone.  No messages.  Lydia returned in a few moments, hands up in exasperation. 

“You goddamned did it again,” she practically snarled, placing her hands on the polished surface of the table directly across from Brandon’s seat and leaning in towards him.  “Where the hell did you go?  That’s like the third time this week.”

Brandon pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut.  “I know.  I have…I have no words.”

Lydia cast her eyes down at her reflection in the table as though considering her next words.  She sank into a chair and sighed.  

“Look,” she began, still studying the table.  “I know these last few months have been difficult.”  She paused, then amended, “really difficult.  Anthony, the move…it’s a lot for anyone to handle.”  Brandon turned to look out the window.  He didn’t need the landslide that was his life detailed out for him.  Lydia watched the retreat.  “You are essential to what we do here.  But if you don’t have anything to give right now…” she trailed off.  Brandon turned back, eyebrows raised.

“Then what?”

Lydia gave a shrug.  “Then maybe it’s time to think about a change.”

Brandon let out a chuckle.  Change seemed to be the only thing he could depend on.  He splayed his fingers across the glossy table and studied them.  “Yeah,” he finally said.  “Maybe it’s time.”

Lydia sat back, surprised.  “What would you even do?”

He mused.  “I’m not sure.”

---

Brandon eased the RAV-4 into the gravel drive and stopped.  For the past two months his commute from work had brought him here and he still wasn’t used to it.  He stared through the windshield at Anthony’s farmhouse at the top of the rise.  Home.

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Anthony had said, scooping another armful of clothes from a dresser drawer and dumping them unceremoniously into a garbage bag.  Brandon looked on from the bed.

“You aren’t asking.  I’m offering.”

Anthony paused and stared into the empty drawer.  “But you love your loft.”

Brandon shrugged.  “You love this place.  And it isn’t half-bad since I’ve gotten my hands on it.”

Anthony turned to face him.  “Brandon.  I don’t know what any of this means.  I don’t know how long I’ll be there, or…” he trailed off.

“Or if you’ll even be back?” Brandon suggested.  

Anthony sighed, but he didn’t contradict the idea.  It hung heavy in the air.  He ran a hand through his hair.  Brandon leaned forward and took his hands.

“Here’s the thing.  We don’t know where any of this is going to go.  But we do know that someone has to look after this place.  And Marbles.  For however long that’s going to be.  And I’m offering to do that for you.”  At the very least, it kept Anthony bound to him in the midst of a highly unpredictable future.

Anthony took his hands from Brandon’s and cupped his face, looking into his eyes.  “No more sconces.  Understood?”

Brandon drove up the drive and pulled up behind a pristine, oversized silver pick-up with a landscaping trailer.  Kyle was here.  Brandon had conceded to letting Anthony hire a service to tend to the property since he was far too busy with his job and with projects within the house itself to have time to maintain the grounds.  Even with most of the original farmland having been parceled away over the last several decades, the house still sat back from the road on a substantial plot.  As Brandon’s driver door clapped shut, he crunched up the drive toward the droning sound of a weed trimmer.  It led him around the back, past branches of hydrangea that waved out over the fence in the late August heat, their cone-shaped flowers slowly descending into a deep pre-autumn blush.

As he rounded the corner of the screened-in porch, he paused and smiled to himself as he thought about his own weed trimming experiences in this very spot nearly a year earlier.  The yard itself was a testament to just how much had changed since then.  Glazed pots dotted the flagstone patio, burgeoning with begonias and canna lilies.  Brandon had power-washed and repainted the tired, rusty patio furniture, which now gleamed in a creamy gloss in the late afternoon sun.  Even the old cat shit can now stood in its corner by the back steps in a tidy bed of crushed gravel. 

Kyle was around the far end of the house.  Here, between the house and the bordering cornfield, the yard sloped into a broad swale, a place for all of the run-off from the field to make its way down to the road.  With the house just to the east, and the large maple that stood at its southwest corner, this particular stretch of the swale was shielded from the blazing sun for most of the day, leaving it cool, damp, and thick with tall grass.  Kyle was working his way through the dense blades when Brandon found him, swinging the trimmer in wide arcs.  The lush stalks fell before him and fizzled into damp green shards that clung to his brown Carhartts as the invisible strings whipped across the ground.  Brandon’s eyes–as they so often tended to–roved to Kyle’s feet as he blazed a path through the lush vegetation.