Emmett that no one else had stepped up to be for either of them.
He had to be that.
“You can stay here,” West said.
“I can?” The question sounded cautious, and not exactly optimistic.
West nodded. “Yes. There’s plenty of room here.”
“Well,” Pansy said. “Then I suppose there’s the small matter of...”
She turned and walked out of the room, and left him standing there with Emmett.
“Was there more to that sentence?” West asked.
Emmett shrugged. The two of them just looked at each other until Pansy returned, with a dog following behind her. “He was waiting in the car,” she said. “He’s a good boy.”
“You have a dog?” West asked.
Emmett lifted a shoulder. “I found him. He was a stray. And I guess...” Emmett squared his shoulders. “Well, so am I, I guess.”
“Not anymore,” West said. “You can stay here. So can he.”
His brother blinked twice. Hard.
And if West were a different man, he might have attributed the shifting sensation in his chest to emotion.
“Do you have any clothes or anything?”
Emmett shrugged. “Some. I took a few things with me. Not a lot.”
“Have you been camping this whole time?”
“No. When the weather was really crappy I stayed with some friends. But when I came to Gold Valley...yeah.”
“So you’ve been in the barn at Hope Springs, and you’ve been out here.”
“Yeah,” Emmett said. “I camped a few other places too. It was nice if I could find a barn, because I felt a little less worried that I was going to get eaten by a cougar. But the dog helped with that too.”
West regarded the dog. It was looking at Emmett, like Emmett was his master. His expression didn’t hold any concern or worry at all. Just a kind of steady watchfulness. It reminded West of the dog he’d fed all those years ago.
And West had the oddest feeling that he should thank the dog.
For keeping an eye on his kid brother. For being there for Emmett so he wasn’t so lonely and scared.
But that was ridiculous.
“Do you have any of the money from the wallet?”
“Some,” the kid said. “I used it to buy food, but I was saving the rest.”
“Well, hopefully if we return everything we’ll get Barbara on our side.” Pansy sighed. “I assume your brother will pitch in what’s not there. You chose an incredibly unsympathetic target, kid. Not the best choice.”
“I’m not exactly out here making historically awesome choices,” Emmett said. “I mean. I would have thought that much was obvious.”
Pansy shook her head.
“Are you hungry?” West asked.
“Starving,” Emmett said.
West looked down at his reheated burger. “I haven’t started that yet.”
“Can I have a beer too?” he asked, far too hopefully.
“No,” West said, emphatically, even though he was sure his younger brother’d had multiple beers in his lifetime. That wasn’t the point. He wasn’t going to allow it. “Eat,” West said, picking the beer up. “Can I talk to you?” He directed the last part at Pansy.
Pansy nodded and the two of them walked out of the room, then out the front door onto the porch.
It was strange, because even though they were outside, they were alone again, and the night air seemed to wrap itself around the two of them like a blanket. Suddenly, it all felt a lot more intimate than it had a few moments before.
Your street urchin of a half brother is in the house eating your soggy french fries. And you’re thinking about getting Pansy naked?
Yeah, he was.
“I don’t want him in any trouble,” West said.
“I don’t want him in any trouble either,” Pansy returned. “But I’m going to have to handle this like I would handle this for anyone. Whether I’m sympathetic or not.”
“Right. Just like you had to write me a ticket for being in a loading zone.”
“I’m under scrutiny,” she said.
“Yeah,” West said. “For a job. This is his life.”
“My job is where I spend forty hours a week. It’s what I poured my whole life into. Why do you think it’s a separate thing? I learned before I was his age that I had to behave myself. That I was going to have to behave differently than the people around me if I was going to have the life I wanted someday. The one I needed. He’s going to have to do the same. And if he has to learn the hard way that’s nobody’s fault but his. He broke into that store. He got into Barbara’s car and took her wallet. I don’t have control over what they decide to do