Redhead by the Side of the Road - Anne Tyler Page 0,10

unlocked the back door and stood aside to let Brink enter first. “I’m out of cream, I just want to warn you,” he said as they walked into the kitchen.

“That’s okay.”

Micah gestured toward one of the chairs at the Formica table, and Brink pulled it out and sat down. He was looking toward the living area beyond the kitchen. “Sorry about the mess,” Micah said. “I like to get my run out of the way first thing in the morning.”

And after that he liked to shower; already he had that itchy feeling down his back as the sweat dried. But he took the ground coffee from the cabinet and started measuring it out. His coffeemaker was an old-style electric percolator that he’d found here when he moved in. The glass knob on its top was wrapped in grayed adhesive tape that kept him from seeing inside, but it still made a good cup of coffee. He filled it with tap water and plugged it in. “You take sugar?” he asked.

“Yes, please.”

Micah set the sugar bowl on the table, along with a spoon. He sat down across from Brink.

He saw now that Brink could very well be Lorna’s son, in fact, although he wouldn’t have guessed it if he hadn’t been told. That dark hair (but hers had been long and streaming) and then those eyes, dark also and extra-pointy at the corners like a deer’s eyes. His mouth was not Lorna’s, though. It was curved at the top, dipping at the center, while hers had been straighter and firmer.

“So,” Micah said. “Your mom’s a lawyer. What kind of lawyer?”

“She works with Legal Aid.”

“Oh. Okay.”

In other words, not the high-powered attorney he had been picturing. That made sense. Her family had belonged to some type of fundamentalist church and she had wanted to do good in the world. But it didn’t explain the rich-boy son. “How about your dad?” he asked.

“He’s a lawyer, too. Corporate.”

“Ah.”

Micah drummed his fingers absently on the table. The percolator chugged in the background.

“They’re both, like, goal-oriented,” Brink said. “They’re always asking what my plan is. But I don’t have a clue what my plan is! I’m just a freshman at Montrose College! And even that is a comedown, as far as they’re concerned. They were hoping I’d get into Georgetown, where my dad went. Him especially; seems nothing I do can ever satisfy my dad.”

“That’s tough,” Micah said.

“Him and me are like oil and water,” Brink said. “I’m more your type of person.”

“Me?” Micah was puzzled. “What do you know about my type?”

“You’re just an odd-jobs guy. You don’t have a dedicated profession.”

Great: he had become a poster boy for layabouts. “How do you know that?” he asked Brink.

“My mom said.”

Lorna kept track of what he was doing nowadays? Micah blinked.

“I found your photo in a shoebox,” Brink said, “along with some others from her college days. Her and you were standing under a dogwood tree and you had your arm around her. So I took it to her and asked, ‘Who’s this?’ and she said, ‘Oh! It’s Micah. Micah Mortimer,’ she said, and then she said you were the love of her life.”

“She said that?” Micah asked.

“Well, or she’d thought so at the time, she said.”

“Oh.”

“I asked where you were now and she said the last she’d heard, you were some sort of computer guru over in Baltimore. My aunt Marissa told her.”

“Aunt…oh,” Micah said. That would be Marissa Baird, he supposed—Lorna’s college roommate.

“Mom said she gathered you’d had kind of a checkered career, though, so she didn’t know if you were still doing that.”

The percolator started its final frenzy of gurgles that meant the coffee was almost ready. Micah stood up and went to take two mugs from the overhead cabinet. He waited until the gurgles had stopped and then filled the mugs and brought them back to the table.

“Aunt Marissa still