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Danny hears Riley barking and scratching at the door and frowns. He didn’t hear the doorbell ring, but he goes into the living room to check just in case. He looks outside the window and does a double-take at the sight of a teenage girl walking down his steps and towards the sidewalk, before stopping and turning back to walk back to the door. He leans forward against the window, watching in amusement as she shifts from one foot to the other, raises her hand towards the doorbell but drops it again at her side before ringing it.
He finally shoves the dog aside and opens the door, just wide enough to stick his head out, looking down on a face he hasn’t seen in a year and a half.
“You gonna knock or what?” he asks with a small smile. Brooke jumps and gives him a fleeting, embarrassed look before shoving her hands in her pockets and staring down at his porch.
“Hi, Danny,” she mumbles.
“Long time no see, kiddo,” he says. She gives a shrug as he leans against the doorjamb. “What’s goin’ on? Is…is Jen all right?”
Brooke flinches a bit at the sound of her aunt’s name, and jams her hands deeper into her pockets.
“Aunt Jen’s fine,” she says, finally looking up to meet his eyes. “But, um…It’s…I mean, I…”
She trails off, and his smile fades to a look of concern as he takes in her bloodshot eyes and the exhaustion mixed with pain on her face. Her hair’s damp and frizzy from the afternoon drizzle, falling out of her ponytail in ten different directions, and her clothes look like they’ve been slept in at least a couple of days.
“How ‘bout you come inside?” he says, “Get outta the cold for a bit, and you can tell me what’s up.”
“‘Kay,” she says, and follows him inside. Riley bounds up from behind him and jumps up on Brooke. Danny shouts and moves to get the dog down, but she smiles and kneels down to rub her face into his.
“Missed me, puppy?” she murmurs, reaching to scratch behind his ears, “Been getting into trouble without us, huh?”
“He ain’t a pup anymore,” Danny shakes his head, “Missed havin’ someone else to bother, that’s about it.”
Danny shoos the dog out the back door as they come into the kitchen and opens the fridge, bringing out a beer for himself and a diet Coke that he offers to Brooke. She takes the Coke but doesn’t sit down, leaning apprehensively on the back of a chair instead.
“Okay, kid, talk to me,” he says, looking up at her expectantly. “What’s goin’ on?”
She looks back down at the floor, and doesn’t answer for a solid minute.
“Aunt Jen and I got into a fight,” she says at last, “And, I don't know, it…” she tries to finish, but her hand clenches tightly around the Coke can and she bites down on her lower lip. Danny notices for the first time that her other hand is wrapped in a gauze bandage, threads trailing down from where she’s clearly picked at it.
“It was bad, huh?” he asks.
Brooke’s face reddens with embarrassment, and she doesn’t take her eyes off the linoleum tile.
“Yeah,” she says, “Yeah, it was bad.”
Danny nods in sympathy, and she doesn’t say anything further.
“So…” he finally supplies.
“So, I skipped town for a little while,” she says, “And I’m back now, but I…I can’t go home yet. I don’t wanna see her, not tonight. And I…didn’t know where else to go.”
Danny sighs. “Don’t you have any friends at that school of yours?” he asks, “isn’t that what they’re there for, to go to when stuff like this happens?”
Something flickers behind Brooke’s eyes and Danny remembers how few playdates she’d had in elementary and middle school, wonders if maybe she doesn’t, after all.
“Alicia’s staying at her dad’s for the weekend,” she shrugs, “and Lucy’s mom’s way too strict, she’d call Aunt Jen minute she realized I was there.”
Danny raises his eyebrows. A conversation with Jen Robertson is the last thing in the world he wants right now, but he knows what he needs to do in this situation, knows he can’t let Brooke take advantage of whatever free pass she thinks he has to offer.
“And what makes you think I won’t?” he finally asks.
Brooke looks back up at him with a betrayed expression. “You wouldn’t, Danny, would you?” she asks, her voice pleading.
“You’ve been gone a couple days, you said?” Danny asks, “I’ve gotta tell her where you are, Brooke, she’s gotta be out of her mind with worry for you…”
“She doesn’t care,” Brooke snaps, “she doesn’t give a shit about me.”
“Now, that ain’t true and you know it,” Danny says, “She cares about you, Brooke, and if you’ve gone and run off…”
“You weren’t there,” Brooke bites out, harsh with uncharacteristic anger, “you haven’t been there, but you know her, she never wanted me in the first place! She doesn’t give a shit if I’m here or if I’m dead in a ditch on the way to Ohio…”
Her voice cracks at the mention of Ohio and Danny gives a start, taking a guess as to where Brooke might have gone.
“Danny, please?” she begs, a hint of desperation in her voice now, “Just for tonight? I…I can’t go back and face her tonight, not yet, not after…”
He sighs again.
“Okay, Brooke,” he says gently, “It’s not a problem. But just for tonight--and it’s your job to take care of the dog, then, got it?”
***
Danny insists that Brooke take a shower—”you smell like a bus station, and I don’t mean that in a good way”—and hunts around for some old clothes of Jen’s that he knows he still has lying around. He leaves her upstairs and looks through the fridge for food he can cook for the both of them, before giving up and ordering in Chinese food.
They eat on the couch in front of the TV—Danny’s got a basketball game he wants to watch, and he’d rather have that than the awkward silence he fears will come with dinner. There’s a hell of a difference between thirteen and fifteen and he doesn’t have many talking points left in his arsenal. Besides, Brooke looks like she’s about to fall asleep where she sits. He notices that she foregoes the chopsticks in favor of a fork from the kitchen, eating awkwardly with her left hand. She’s taken the bandage off of her right, but there’s a series of stitches circling down her hand and around her wrist—Danny can only guess at how she got the injury, but he knows better than to ask.
He’s surprised, more than anything—he remembers his own years of teenage rebellion, but those had revolved around sneaking pot past his parents and cutting class with his friends to smoke behind the football bleachers. And no matter what’s changed in the past two years, he still can’t imagine Brooke acting out in that way.
He shakes his head as he finishes his lo mein. He knows Brooke and Jen are as different as night and day, knows Jen’s weaknesses as a guardian better than anyone. Still, he could never remember a time that Brooke had raised her voice to Jen, could never remember a time when Jen had doled out punishment for anything more serious than making a mess of the kitchen from a model volcano.
He wonders what had happened to make the dam finally break through.
“Y’know, I ran away once,” he finally says, thinking back during a commercial break, “wasn’t that much older than you, now that I remember it.”
Brooke scowls. “I didn’t run away,” she says petulantly, “There’s a difference.”
“Really?” Danny raises his eyebrows and gestures around the living room, “What else you call this?”
“Taking a break?” she offers.
He bites back a laugh.
“Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other,” he chuckles, “you ain’t gettin’ around it, kiddo.”
Brooke rolls her eyes and sinks back onto the couch, her arms folding in on themselves a way so reminiscent of Jen that Danny can’t help but feel a momentary pang of nostalgia.
“Okay, so I ‘took a break’ when I was sixteen,” he says, giving her a pointed look, “Happy now?”
“I guess,” she says, the corners of her mouth twitching in what might be a smile, “I thought you and your parents got along, though.”
“Ooh, not back then,” Danny shakes his head, “You kiddin’? Guy like my dad and a guy like me, there wasn’t no way I was growin’ up in that house without bangin’ my head up against his. And we laid into each other one too many times, and boom—” he slaps his hands together, “I was outta there.”
“Where’d you go?” Brooke asks, curious now.
“Chicago,” he says, “thought I could conquer the big city. I had a friend who was a few years older there, worked in a factory, said his boss had a job just waitin’ for me there.”
“So…” Brooke frowns, “What happened?”
“Whadd’ya think?” Danny snorts, “Bastard was lyin’ through his teeth. I tried to get odd jobs here and there, drifted from place to place for a couple weeks, but I gave up in the end. Couldn’t live like that forever, not as long as I didn’t know a damn soul out there. Missed my friends back here, missed my mom ‘n sister, believe it or not. So back I came. Jesus did my dad whale into me when I showed my sorry ass…”
Brooke’s face clouds over, and Danny suddenly regrets telling the end of his story. He can’t imagine Jen’s going to react too well when Brooke finally does return to her.
Brooke pulls out a battered copy of Moby-Dick and flips through a couple of pages before flopping it down and staring at the TV along with Danny. They pass the rest of the evening in silence, punctuated only by Danny shouting at the TV every so often when the other team scores.
He mutters out a final curse when the game ends before he turns off the TV and glances over at Brooke. She’s curled up around the armrest of the couch, eyes closed, shrinking into Jen’s old oversized shirt. She’s still so young, he can’t help but think. Too young to have gone through all that life’s thrown at her.
He thinks she’s fallen asleep but her eyes open as she reaches down to pick her book back up. She stares down at it, running her fingers over the raised lettering, before throwing him a hesitant look.
“Hey, Danny?” she asks softly, “Can I ask you something?”
He settles back onto the couch, leaning back against the other armrest.
“Shoot,” he says, eyeing her curiously.
“Why’d you leave her?”
Whatever else he’d been expecting, that wasn’t it. He rests his elbows on his knees and runs a hand over his face, wondering what the hell he’d done to deserve opening that can of worms.
“Aah, Brooke,” he sighs, “She couldn’t have answered that question for ya?”
Brooke shakes her head.
“She told me you had your reasons,” she says, “but then she got pissed when I asked what the reasons were. She wouldn’t talk about it more than that.”
Danny sighs again. He’d never really had to explain himself when it came to ending things with Jen—most of his family had never liked her in the first place, and were happy enough to see her gone they’d never bothered to ask why. His friends had either understood enough that they didn’t need to ask, or had churned up enough gossip amongst themselves they’d never needed to hear it from the actual source. But now—
Now there’s a fifteen-year-old kid sitting in his living room, asking, essentially, why he was in her life one day and out of it the next.
He supposes he owes her an answer for that.
“I turned thirty-eight," he says slowly, “Got one step closer to forty, one step closer to makin’ nothin’ out of my life with no one. I wanted—I didn’t know what I wanted for a family, still don’t. But I didn’t wanna say no to kids, and I sure as hell wanted someone who could commit to somethin’. Jenny…Jen couldn’t do that. Kids or commitment.”
“Because of me,” Brooke murmurs, picking at a thread on the couch cushion.
“What?” Danny jerks his head up to stare at Brooke in surprise, “Kid, this had nothin’ to do with you. Absolutely nothin’.”
“But she would have been able to make more of a commitment to you,” she says, “if she didn’t have me around she’d have had more time to spend with you.”
“She tell you that herself?” Danny asks, his voice hard.
“No,” she admits, her eyes locked onto the couch, “but she might as well have."
“Well, it’s a load of crap,” he says emphatically, “yeah, she spent a lotta time takin’ care of you, but I knew she had a kid to look after when I started seein’ her. And if it wasn’t you I promise she’d have found somethin’ else to take over her life that wasn’t me.”
Brooke shoots him a disbelieving glance.
“Look,” he says, “I was in love with Jen for…a long time. Loved her when she was still married to that two-timing sonovabitch, loved her when she was goin’ through guy after guy tryin’ to replace him. And she never saw me as anything other than the smartass who ordered coffee before the night shift, so I…gave up on it, after awhile. Was happy enough to be her friend, never expected her to change her mind.
“And, y’know, we can’t all be geniuses like you,” he gestures towards her and Brooke lets out a little huff, managing to sound both embarrassed and pleased, “but I ain't as dumb as I look. I knew when she did start things with me it was ‘cos I was the last guy standin’, that I loved her more than she did me, but I thought it’d be enough. And..."
He trails off and gives a weak shrug. "It wasn’t, in the end.”
“She did love you,” Brooke says quietly, “at least, if her bad mood for the next six months was any indication.”
“Maybe she did,” he replies, “But it’s…tough for Jen to show love. To anyone. That‘s her way. And you, you’re stuck with that, you’re her family, but I…didn’t want that to be who I spent my life with. I couldn’t.”
“Who says I have to be stuck with it,” Brooke mutters mutinously.
Danny gives a little smile, but he points his finger at her in what he hopes is a stern gesture.
“Nah, don’t go pullin’ none of that,” he says, “This’s a one-time deal, remember?"
"One time deal comin' here, maybe," she says, "But she doesn't want me back home anymore than I wanna BE back there."
Her expression's hardened, angry again, and Danny leans over and gives her knee a little shake.
"Hey," he says, and she looks up, "she loves you, too, you hear me? I don't want you goin' and forgettin' that. I dunno what you two fought about, and I know how she gets, but--you’re her family. She loves you."
"Right," she says, her voice dripping in sarcasm, "cos family's always done so much good for us."
She meets his eyes, daring him to deny it, but he sighs, knowing he can’t go down that road with her. There’s nothing he can say that isn’t going to sound inadequate or like he’s got a clue about anything. As much as he believes in what he’s telling her, he knows, too, there’s nothing in Brooke’s life that’s given her cause to place any trust in family.
And the worst part is, he knows Jen probably isn’t gonna do anything to prove him right.
"You're all she's got, too," he says at last, "and she's gonna figure that out, one day."
She looks back down at the couch, her hair falling in front of her face. They sit in silence for awhile, before Danny gets up to clear the empty food cartons off the coffee table.
"And hey…I'm sorry I didn't tell you none of this myself when I left," he says, even though he's pretty sure an apology isn't quite what she's looking for, "Least I coulda done was say goodbye."
Brooke snorts.
"I dunno," she says, "I don't think she'd have let you within spitting distance of the house. Still wouldn't, I'll bet."
“Ah, you’ve probably got a point there,” he says, “Still, there’s a lotta stuff I’m not proud of, there. We both messed up, no gettin’ around that.”
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, I…” she trails off, shakes her head, “never mind.”
You wish things’d gone differently? he wonders. Me too, kid. Me too.
***
Jen’s house isn’t too far out of his way to work the next morning, so Danny offers to give Brooke a ride partway there. They stop to grab donuts on the way there, but he pulls up a block and a half away from their house.
“Okay, this is your stop,” he says, “And if anyone asks, I had nothin’ to do with this. The last thing I need right now is the wrath of Jen Robertson rainin’ down on me.”
“You and me both,” she says wryly, and Danny chuckles in spite of himself. She gives him her own rueful smile, and on impulse he reaches out and squeezes her shoulder.
“Hang in there, kiddo,” he says, “The two of you will figure it out."
For a minute her eyes look like they're about to fill with tears, but she gives a little smile and a nod as she opens the door to the car.
"Thanks, Danny," she says, "Glad one of us thinks that, at least."
She gives a little wave as he drives away, and he wonders if he's not lying to them both after all.