Jane watched Prett wrap the elastic bandage around her foot and ankle. "Thanks," she said as he finished. "I thought for sure I could go without it today."

He eased her foot onto the concrete floor. "Don't want to rush things," he replied. "Might do permanent damage."

"Yeah. Holly says she still has trouble with her ankles sometimes."

Prett nodded. "It's amazing she didn't break them that day." He returned to his seat across from her.

Jane scooted her folding chair closer to the improvised work table created from a sheet of plywood laid across two sawhorses. "She says you've always been her hero for carrying her to the house."

Prett shrugged.

Okay. New topic.

The dull ache from Jane's ankle made it hard to think of one, though. Especially when she still sensed Prett's tender touch on her foot. "Danny says you like taking care of people. That you took care of his mom when she got sick."

Prett ran a block of fine-grain sandpaper across the baseboard in front of him. He avoided eye contact. With an air of dejection, Jane picked up a sandpaper block and matched his strokes on her own board.

The brothers had taken Jane to an urgent care center where her twisted ankle had been diagnosed as a sprain. She'd spent two dull days sitting around with it iced and elevated. Painting was on hold due to her inability to bear weight, so when she insisted on getting back to work, Prett had brought her to his shop. Housed in a one-story century-old brick building a block from the hotel, the workshop held wood-working machinery at one end and a mechanic's garage at the other.

"Just how many buildings do you own, anyway?" she had asked when Prett first brought her here.

"I don't own any," he'd replied. "Vel owns this one. Val owns the apartment building. Westfall-Montgomery owns the hotel."

Two days of buzzing saws and routers had precluded much conversation beyond that.

Jane had enjoyed watching Prett work. The router in particular fascinated her. With a few passes, a straight board transformed into a baseboard profile or custom crown molding. Prett seemed most content when the motors rumbled on and boards hit blades with a high-pitched whine.

Now the blades were silent and the work of finish-sanding begun.

They had avoided mentioning The Kiss. Jane still blushed every time she thought of it.

I should explain I was only feeling grateful for his kindness and care.

Instead she glanced at her car jacked up on a ramp at the far end of the building. "Danny said he fixed my heater. What else was he doing to it again?"

"He mentioned adding a flux capacitor."

Jane was quiet for a beat. Then she laughed. "It's an Impala, not a DeLorean."

Prett's lips raised in his half-smile. "Not after Vel gets done with it. You might want to limit the scope of his 'repairs'."

Jane continued to smile. She had missed Prett's teasing the past few days. "Oh, I don't know. A time machine would come in handy. In fact..." Her eyes lost their focus. "I know exactly what I'd go back and change."

Prett gave a slight shake of his head. "I wouldn't change it," he mumbled.

Jane came out of her reverie. "What?"

He stilled. "What?"

"What wouldn't you change?"

Prett didn't look at her. He remained unmoving, and his expression registered surprise. Or panic.

The Kiss.

Jane flushed. With renewed intensity she concentrated on sanding. Long, smooth strokes. Prett did the same. The sound of scraping drowned out her pounding heart.

Say something.

"So you like having brothers?"

Idiot. Not that.

"Sometimes," he hedged.

"What I mean is...ah...who are you closer to, Val or Danny?"

He frowned and stopped sanding to look at her. "I prefer not to choose. Why do you ask?"

"It's just that Danny said you're closer to Val."

"He's always thought that." Prett returned to sanding. "Viewed it as some kind of competition."

"He said you and Val are unbreakable. That he tried for years and gave it up as futile."

Prett snorted. "Didn't realize his antagonism was a strategy."

"He was antagonistic?"

"And surly. Never wanted to..."

"To..." Jane prompted.

"To be our brother."

"He does now. He said he's joined your madness. His word, not mine."

"Our madness?" Prett twitched his head. "He's the one installing flux capacitors."

Jane smiled but pressed on. "He thinks you'd be hermits if not for him."

"He sure talks a lot for being mute." Prett blew the sawdust off his board. "This is what I get for letting you run off with him the other day."

Run off? Oh, yeah.

Jane's mind went back to sitting in the truck by the Platte River. "He kissed me, too."

She froze.

Good God, I said that!

"I mean, it wasn't anything," she said in a rush. "It wasn't like—like—but I'm not saying that you—" She stared at Prett, wide-eyed, as he lifted his own eyes to hers, the hint of a smile on his lips. "I was just feeling grateful for—you've been so kind, and—and—" Jane wished her burning face would combust her entire body and end her mortification. "It was just—what was it you said after Danny started crying?"

Prett took a second to respond. "'Everyone's been chock-full of emotions today.'"

"Yeah, that. That's all it was. Emotions. Grateful...emotions."

Prett gave a nod. He stood and moved his baseboard to the stack of sanded ones while Jane wiped her sweatshirt sleeve over her forehead.

"What made him cry, anyway?" she asked when Prett returned with a new board.

He shrugged.

"It still seems to be bothering him, whatever it is," she added. "He isn't as...chipper lately."

"I wouldn't know." Prett resumed sanding. "Apparently my brothers talk to you more than they do me."

Jane ran her hand over her board. "Not Val. He hasn't spoken again. At least not that I've heard. I thought maybe he'd had a breakthrough or something and would start talking more. But...I guess he just doesn't want to."

"Yeah." Prett's tone held a shade of sadness.

"I'm sorry."

Prett looked at her. "For what?"

Jane scrunched her brows. "That...your brothers..." She gave a wan smile. "That they don't talk to you."

Prett gazed at her a moment longer then turned his attention back to his board. Jane did the same. A few more strokes completed her sanding and she stood to carry it to the finished stack. Prett stopped her.

"I'll take it," he said. He replaced it with a new board then returned to his seat. For a couple minutes the only sound was sandpaper on wood. Then Prett spoke.

"I don't know what to do for them anymore. Sometimes I think...there are things going on I don't know about. That I don't understand." His voice lowered to just above a whisper. "And that it's all my fault. Because I can't fix it."

Tears formed in Jane's eyes at his pain. She stretched her arm across the table, but her fingers fell inches short of reaching his. "I'm sorry," she repeated.

He regarded her with a mixture of grief and wariness before sliding his sandpaper across his board. "My brothers aren't the only ones prone to blab things when around you, Miss Jane." He sighed. "This topic isn't entertaining. Shall we pick a new one?"

She pulled her hand back with a smirk. "That's usually my cue to talk about myself."

"A safer topic around here."

"Fine." Jane took a deep breath and released it slowly. She picked up her sandpaper block. "You were mistaken about what I wanted to change. I was talking about my parents' car accident. Not..." She gestured the block towards him. "You know."

"Your having checked my temperature using the latest alternative method?"

Jane barked a laugh. "Yeah, that." She looked at her board. "If I could go back in time I'd change what happened with my parents."

"I've often thought about that."

Jane looked at him. "My parents?"

Prett gave a slight head shake. "Changing the past. I've tied myself up in knots thinking about it. Which things do I change? How far back do I go? One bad thing is tied to another. Some are connected to good things." He scowled. "Daddy once said..."

His eyes narrowed and glazed over as if lost in reflection. He sat still, his forehead crinkling.

Jane waited to see if he would continue. After a long pause, he did.

"'There's no erasing the bad without erasing the good.'" Prett's voice expressed a muted surprise. "It's taken me...more'n twenty years to really understand what he meant. Go back and change all the bad, the mistakes, the wrong decisions...and in the end..." His scowl disappeared. "My brothers wouldn't exist." He lifted his eyes to her. "And neither would I."

Jane had to look away. "But do you think...do you think it's better if some people..." She fought back tears. Unable to speak, she halfheartedly ran her sandpaper over the board. The action helped her regain composure. "I don't know what good things would be erased if my parents had lived. At least, what good things I would miss."

"Perhaps your life has been simpler than mine."

She was silent a moment.

"At least I would change what I said. And my attitude. I would've left well enough alone. Not asked so many questions. Then..." She left her thought unsaid.

Prett didn't press her, and for several minutes they didn't speak. He replaced their finished boards twice. When he replaced their boards a third time, the silence had become oppressing for Jane.

"I always wanted a brother," she said. "That's where it started. I had a crush on my best friend's brother and thought it would be great to have one myself." She looked at Prett. "I told you about him. The day we met. Miles. He was deaf, and I wanted to marry him. Remember?"

Prett nodded.

Jane returned to sanding. "Anyway, he was ten years older than us. Rachel and I would follow him around like little lost puppies. Sometimes he'd shut us out, but most of the time he was nice. We adored him. I think it was because he gave us attention."

She smiled. "It certainly wasn't his looks. He wasn't ugly, but he wasn't handsome either. I saw him at Rachel's wedding a few years ago and he was as nice as ever, but..." She shook her head. "I'm glad he broke my heart by marrying someone else. They were in love. And my crush was over." Jane picked up her board. "This one's done."

Prett carried it to the stack.

"But he's the reason I started lobbying my parents for a brother. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't get me one. They said they were too old, in their fifties. That didn't make sense to me. I wanted an older brother, not a younger one. They weren't too old to adopt me, so I kept trying to convince them."

Prett stopped in his tracks, balancing two eight-foot boards. "You were adopted?"

"Yeah. At birth. I get it now, of course. They'd adopt a baby, but not an older kid. Especially a boy. Someone who'd been in foster care. Abused. That sort of thing. They wouldn't want to risk it."

Prett stared at her, unmoving.

"You okay?" she asked.

After a delayed second, Prett gave a nod. He returned to the table and set down the boards before carrying one around to Jane. "That was the last of the short ones," he murmured.

"No problem. I can do these, too."

Prett helped move her chair to the board's end.

"My parents were so overprotective," Jane continued once she was settled. "Never even left me with a babysitter. Mom stayed home when I was a baby and then worked when I was in school. Or nights, when my dad was home. Sometimes they'd go out, but I'd stay next door at Bennell's, playing with Rachel. They'd always show up right before bedtime to take me home. They never stayed out late. It was stifling."

She chuckled. "Well, I didn't think it was stifling until I got to be a teenager. Then everything was stifling."

Her smile faded. "I always knew I was adopted. It wasn't ever a secret. They told me I was special. A blessing. I used to like to hear the story of how they thought they'd never have children and I was their miracle from heaven. It was all very romantic. Until I got older and started asking questions. Why couldn't my birth mom keep me? Did they know her? Will I ever meet her?

"That's when their story got vague. I stopped feeling special. And I used it against them. Mom, mostly. I'd tell her she wasn't my mom. That my real mom would let me do what I wanted. Stay out late or wear a mini-skirt or whatever.

"One time I had this huge blow-up. I wanted to go to a party and Mom wouldn't let me. So I started in on her. I told her they'd probably kidnapped me and that's why they didn't want me to socialize. That she didn't want me to know the truth. That she'd lied to me my whole life. That my real mom wanted me back. That she was out there, looking for me. I was going to find her and live with her. That she loved me, not Mom. Not Dad."

Jane paused as tears formed in her eyes once more. She didn't want to continue. She had told few people her story, and in the rare times she had, their responses had left her morose.

I shouldn't be here.

The old refrains returned.

I never appreciated what I had till it was gone. I didn't deserve their love. I should never have lived. Should never have been born. I'm a mistake.

New topic.

New topic.

New topic.

But there was no other topic.

I'm a horrible mistake that should've been destroyed from the start.

The only way to stop the self-incrimination was to talk. And no other subject came to mind but her own. Maybe, just maybe, Prett wouldn't dismiss her existence as others had.

"After that fight Mom sat me down to tell me about my mother. And I got scared. I thought she didn't want me anymore, that she was going to send me back to some woman I didn't even know. How's that for irony? The thing I said I wanted was the thing I was most scared of. That they didn't really want me anymore. And the way I acted, why would they?

"She tells me she understands why I'm angry, why I'm confused. But how could she? I didn't understand it myself. Then she tells me my birth grandma was an alcoholic. That my mom was taken away from her and put in foster care. That she was twelve years old when she had me. Twelve."

Jane looked at Prett. He had stopped sanding and sat staring at the board.

"I was only fifteen myself. I couldn't...even think of having a baby. At twelve. Mom told me she didn't tell me before because I was too young. But now I was old enough to know."

Jane stared at the sandpaper block she now held in her lap, her thumbs rubbing against the granules. "But she was wrong. I wasn't old enough to know. I wish she had never told me. Though...it's better I do know. So I don't ever try finding her. Learning the truth. That story can't be good and...so..." She faltered, waiting for Prett's condemnation. For his pronouncement that a young girl should never have been forced to carry a pregnancy. That the issue should have been dealt with swiftly.

Terminated.

Never existed.

But he said nothing.

His tightened eyebrows indicated he was troubled by her revelation, but that was all. For this Jane was grateful. His quiet concern encouraged her to finish.

"If Mom thought knowing the truth would stop me from making wild accusations, she was wrong. I just got nastier. We'd get in arguments and I'd say the most awful things.

"That's how it was that last weekend. I was supposed to spend a couple days with Rachel. We and a couple other girls were going to spend a day in the city and stay up all night watching movies. Sort of a last hurrah before the semester started. We'd planned it for weeks. Then some cousin of my mom's dies and we had to go to the funeral. I was so ticked. I didn't want to go to a stupid funeral for somebody I'd never even met. I don't even know why Mom wanted to go. She hadn't seen any of her relatives in years. I begged her to let me stay home, let me stay with Rachel. But she wouldn't. I was so mad I didn't talk the whole way there. Dad even bought me a caramel roll to cheer me up and..."

Jane choked back a sob. Her voice tightened and rose in pitch. "I refused to eat it."

She took several fast breaths and wiped her hand over her eyes. She sniffled and breathed out her mouth. When she had herself under control she continued.

"We stayed in a dive motel because that's all there was. The morning of the funeral I locked myself in the bathroom and wouldn't come out. Mom tried to reason with me and I called her a bitch. Dad yelled at me to apologize, but Mom said they would just go. So they did.

"Of course as soon as they walked out the door I changed my mind. But it was too late. I watched them drive away. I was so...livid they'd actually leave me behind I threw the caramel roll onto the gravel outside."

The last one he ever gave me.

Jane dried her eyes and nose with her sleeves.

"On the way back to the motel that night they swerved to miss a deer and the car flipped over. And I didn't know for two whole days. Because after they left, I got sick."

She glanced at Prett. "With the flu, of all things. When the maid came the next morning, I said we were staying another night. I didn't know why they hadn't come back. I thought maybe they were trying to teach me a lesson for being such an ingrate."

Red smears appeared on her sandpaper. She turned her hands over to see the skin on her thumbs rubbed raw.

"The second morning when they still weren't back I was too sick to get out of bed, and the maid called the police. They took me to the hospital, and that's when I found out my parents had been brought there. Mom had already died from her injuries. Dad wasn't as bad off, but they wouldn't let me see him because I was still sick. A couple days later his heart just stopped. And I never got to say goodbye."

Watery discharge dripped from her nose onto the sandpaper, diluting the blood. Jane sniffled and mopped her nose and eyes again.

She set the block beside the board and clasped her hands in her lap. Then she held up her thumbs. "I think I need bandages."

Prett looked up, his eyes growing wide and his eyebrows rising when he registered her bloody skin. He retrieved a couple bandages from a metal desk shoved against the wall and applied them to her thumbs.

Jane slumped in the chair, letting him once again tend to her.

If only he would hold my hand. Hold me.

He didn't.

Yet as Prett returned to his chair with a new board, Jane's weariness lessened. She had revealed the most painful part of her past. Her exhaustion evaporated into a lightness, a buoyancy she hadn't felt in years.

She had no more secrets to tell.

A weight had lifted.

She could breathe free again.

She resumed sanding with a renewed purpose. By the time she reached the middle of the board, she was smiling. She even felt like singing, and might have done if Prett hadn't spoken.

"When LuLu—" His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and started again. "When LuLu got sick, she...needed help around the house. My brothers were too young...and Daddy worked long hours in the shop. So it fell to me." He kept his eyes on the board he was sanding and murmured, "Not that I minded."

He cleared his throat again. "That last summer she just...wasted away. But she'd still smile. At me." Again his voice croaked, and he stopped sanding. He swallowed several times before going on. "I'd sit with her. Keep her company. Keep her comfortable."

His voice became a whisper and Jane stopped sanding, too, to hear better.

"I never said goodbye," he said. "I couldn't. I didn't want to. I didn't think it would affect me. I was more worried about Danny and...because they were so young. I was older, stronger. I didn't realize...how much it would...hurt." His eyebrows knitted together as he said in a strained voice, "How...as time went on...that hurt would grow. Not fade. Because I never said..." Prett's breath hitched. "...goodbye."

Jane wiped her eyes again. They sat in silence a long moment.

"I think..." Jane said, "I think I picked another topic that brought us down."

Prett looked at her with watery eyes and a small wry smile. He opened his mouth to reply, but a ping interrupted him. He read the text. "Looks like our next topic has been picked for us," he said, raising his eyes from the phone. "Lunch."

Author's Note: Thanks for reading! Please help me improve my writing by pointing out problems. And if you like what you read, please click the Vote button below. 😊

Fun Fact: The reference to a "flux capacitor" is, of course, from Back to the Future. Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown builds a time machine in a DeLorean car using technology that came in a vision:

https://youtu.be/VcZe8_RZO8c

Fun Fact 2:  A few weeks ago we sanded our daughter's bedroom floor with a rented orbital sander.  My husband couldn't get far before the sandpaper discs gummed up with old polish and had to be replaced. He got concerned he hadn't bought enough discs. So we decided I'd try picking off the gunk to see if they could be reused. 

It was working rather well, I thought. My knuckles scraped against the sandpaper once in a while, but that was no big deal. I just tried to be more careful with each disc I worked on. That is until I happened to notice my knuckles were bleeding! I hadn't realized it was that bad. 😱 I put on a glove after that. My efforts were all for naught, though, since we had just enough new discs to finish the floor.

When I was writing this scene, I needed an action tag to demonstrate Jane's emotional state. Hmmm...sandpaper. I had a recent experience with that substance...😁

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