Cecelia Ahern - The Gift

Gabe handled the car well. He brought them from the city to Howth smoothly, without once having to fidget for an indicator or search for the window wipers. He seemed at home in the sports car.

Lou noticed this and began to get irrationally jealous. “Actually, let me drive,” he said grumpily, squirming in his seat to get out. “I don’t like people thinking this is your car.”

“It’s dangerous to drink and drive, Lou. You could crash.”

“So,” he huffed childishly. “That’s my problem, isn’t it?”

“A friend of mine died not so long ago,” Gabe said, his eyes on the road. “And believe me, when you die, it’s anything but your problem. He left behind a right mess. So I’d buckle up if I were you, Lou.”

“Who died?” Lou closed his eyes, ignoring Gabe’s advice but giving up on his idea to drive. He leaned his head back on the rest. “How’d he die?”

“Car crash,” Gabe said, pushing his foot down on the accelerator. The car jerked forward quickly, the engine loud and powerful in the quiet night.

Lou’s eyes opened slightly, and he looked over at Gabe warily. “Yeah?”

“Yep. Sad, really. He was a young guy. Successful. Young family. Lovely wife.” He pressed his foot down harder on the accelerator.

Lou’s eyes were fully open now.

“It just shows you never know when your time is up.”

The speedometer neared one hundred kilometers in the fifty-kilometer zone, and Lou grabbed the door handle and held on tightly. He moved from his slouched position and was sitting up poker straight now, watching the speedometer and the blurred lights of the city across the bay whizzing by.

Lou began to reach for his seat belt then, but all of a sudden, as quickly as he had sped up, Gabe took his foot off the accelerator, checked his side mirror, turned on the signal, and moved the wheel steadily to the left. He looked at Lou’s face, which had turned an interesting shade of green, and smiled as he stopped the car.

“Home sweet home, Lou.”

It was only over the next few days, as the hangover haze had begun to lift, that Lou realized he didn’t recall giving Gabe any directions to his home that night.

“MUM, DAD, MARCIA, QUENTIN, ALEXANDRA!” Lou announced at full boom. As he entered the house, he found Ruth sitting at the dining table filled with dirty plates and glasses. She was alone.

“I’m ho-ome,” he sang. “Where is everybody?” He looked around. “Oh. I’m so sorry I missed dinner; it was such a busy evening at the office. Busy, busy, busy.”

Even Lou couldn’t keep a straight face with that excuse, and so he stood in the dining room, his shoulders moving up and down, his chest wheezing in a near-silent laugh.

Ruth froze, watching her husband with mixed feelings of anger, hurt, and embarrassment. Somewhere inside her there was jealousy, too. After returning from the school play, she’d put the kids to bed and run around the house all evening in order to get dinner ready and the house presentable. She was physically flushed and tired, but also mentally drained from trying to stimulate her children in all the ways a parent should — from being on her knees on the floor with Bud, to wiping tears off the face of a disappointed Lucy, who’d failed to find her father in the audience despite Ruth’s attempts to convince her otherwise.

Ruth looked at Lou swaying in the doorway, his eyes bloodshot, his cheeks rosy, and she wished that she could be the one who threw caution to the wind and acted the idiot. But Lou would never stand for it — and she would never do it — and that was the difference between them. But there he was, swaying and happy, and there she was, static and deeply dissatisfied, wondering why on Earth she had chosen to be the glue holding it all together.

Gabe joined Lou awkwardly by the dining room door in the long heavy silence that followed. Ruth smiled at the stranger.

“Lou,” Ruth said quietly, “perhaps you should have some water or coffee. I’ll make some coffee.”

Lou sighed loudly. “Am I an embarrassment, Ruth? Am I?” he snapped. “You told me to come home. I’m home!” He made his way to the living room across the hall, like a sailor aboard a rocky ship.

Gabe walked over to the table to Ruth. “Hello, Ruth, I’m very pleased to finally meet you.”

She barely looked him in the eye as she limply took his hand.

“Hello,” she said quietly. “Please excuse me while I take all this away.” She stood up from the table and began carrying the leftover cheese plates and coffee cups into the kitchen.

“I’ll help you,” Gabe offered.

“No, no, please, sit down.” She rushed into the kitchen with a load in her arms.

Gabe followed her anyway and found her leaning against the kitchen counter where she had placed the dirty plates, her back to him. Her head was down and her shoulders were hunched, all life and soul of the woman gone at that very moment. He placed the plates he had carried in beside the sink so that she knew he was there.

She jumped, alert to his presence, and composed herself, then turned around to face him.

“Gabe.” She smiled tightly. “I told you not to bother.”

“I wanted to help,” he said softly then. “I’m sorry about Lou. I wasn’t out with him tonight.”

“No?” She folded her arms and looked embarrassed for not knowing.

“No. But I do work with him at the office. I was there late when he got back from the…well, from his coffee meeting.”

“When he got back to the office? Why would he…” She looked at him with confusion before a shadow fell across her face as realization dawned. “Oh, I see. He was trying to drive home.”

It wasn’t a question, more a thought aloud, and so Gabe didn’t respond, but she softened toward him.

“Right. Well, thank you for bringing him home safely, Gabe. I’m sorry I was rude to you, but I’m just, you know…” Emotion entered her voice and she stopped talking, and instead busied herself scraping food from the plates into the trash.

“I know. You don’t have to explain.”

From the living room they heard Lou let out a “Whoa,” and then there was the sound of glass smashing, followed by his laughter.

She stopped scraping the plates and closed her eyes, sighing.

“Lou’s a good man, you know,” Gabe said softly.

“Thank you, Gabe. Believe it or not, that is exactly what I need to hear right now, but I was rather hoping it wouldn’t come from one of his work buddies. I’d like for his mother to be able to say it.” She looked up at him, eyes glassy. “Or his father. Or it would be nice to hear it from his daughter. But no, at work, Lou is the man.” She scraped the plates angrily.

“I’m not a work buddy, believe me. Lou can’t stand me.”

She looked at him curiously.

“I used to sit outside his building every morning, and yesterday, totally out of the blue, he stopped and gave me a coffee and offered me a job.”

“He mentioned something about that last night.” Ruth searched her brain. “Lou really did that?”

“You sound surprised.”

“No, I’m not. Well, I am. I mean…what job did he give you?”

“A job in the mailroom.”

“How does that help him out?” She frowned.

Gabe laughed. “You think he did it for his own good?”

“Oh, that’s a terrible thing for me to say.” She bit her lip to hide her smile. “I didn’t mean it that way. I know Lou is a good man, but lately he’s just been very…busy. Or more distracted; there’s nothing wrong with being busy, as long as you’re not distracted.” She waved her hand dismissively. “But he’s not all here. It’s like he’s in two places at once. His body with us, his mind constantly elsewhere.” She composed herself. “You obviously brought out the good side in him, Gabe.”