Joan Kilby - In His Good Hands

A half hour later he pulled into the gravel driveway of the seventies timber cottage where he had grown up. The ramshackle building, added onto in hodgepodge fashion as the family grew, was tucked in an old subdivision of Summerside. The backyard was big enough for a chicken coop, a veggie garden and, when Brett was a kid, for him and his brothers, Ryan and Tom, to chuck around a football. In his big earning years Brett had tried to buy his parents a newer house, but they’d wanted to stay where they had space for the grandkids to play. From the sounds of laughter over the fence, Tegan and little Charlotte were bouncing on the trampoline.

His dad opened the front door, big and bluff as ever. Hal’s graying hair still held traces of blond and his shoulders were as wide as his son’s. “Hey, Brett.” He feinted a karate chop.

Brett parried, only to find himself gripped in a headlock. He hooked a leg around his father’s ankle and got him off balance long enough to break away. Hal immediately twisted his arm up his back with an evil chuckle.

“Uncle!” Brett cried, knowing that otherwise this could go on for twenty minutes or more. Hal released him and he shook his shoulders to relax them. “Geez, Dad, when are you going to take up golf?”

“Golf is for sissies. Mary!” Hal bellowed down the hall. “Brett’s here.”

His mum, short and slight, limped forward slowly, hampered by her prosthetic leg. Brett went to meet her, picking her up and enveloping her in a bear hug.

“Let me go,” she cried, flustered and laughing, pushing back her curly auburn hair. After she was safely set back down, she said, “Are you and Tegan staying for dinner?”

“I have to get back to the gym in an hour. I’m just dropping off that coffee table we talked about. Dad, want to give me a hand?”

Hal followed him out to the car and helped him unhook the bungee cord holding down the trunk of the Mercedes. “How’s it going at the gym?”

“I got the loan. In thirty days the business will be mine.” Brett slid one end of the thick glass out of the trunk over the padding, steadying it so his father could grab hold. When Hal had removed the glass, Brett bent his knees and hefted the marble base, grunting under its weight.

“And the bad news?” Hal asked, somehow hearing it in the tone of Brett’s voice. He balanced the heavy piece of glass on his hip and crunched over the gravel to the front door.

“It’s all good.” Brett shifted the marble to get a stronger grip, then went sideways into the house. “Where do you want this?”

“Over here.” Mary waved him to a spot in the cozy living room in front of the his-and-hers recliners in worn brown Naugahyde.

“Brett’s got himself a fitness center,” Hal told his wife.

“That’s wonderful.” She motioned them a little farther to the right. “Not too close to the fireplace.”

Brett lowered the base, then helped position the glass top. Merlin, the fluffy gray cat, came to inspect the new addition to his home. Mary hunted up a cloth and a bottle of window cleaner.

“I’ll go find Tegan,” Hal said, leaving his wife to do the final touches.

“Thank you, Brett. This table is lovely.” Mary began to polish the glass top. “Doesn’t that girl who tutored you in math in high school work in the loans department? I’ll bet it helped that you knew her.”

Brett picked up Merlin and stroked him until he purred. “Oddly enough, needing math tutorials was no recommendation for a business loan in Renita’s eyes.”

“Renita, that’s her name.” His mum straightened, pressing a hand to the small of her back. “But what do you mean, no recommendation. Didn’t you get what you wanted?”

Somehow his mother always managed to coax information from him that he couldn’t tell his father. “Not the full loan,” he said flatly. “I can buy the gym but not refurbish it.”

Hal came through the door from the kitchen. “The girls are coming in now.”

“Tell your father,” Mary said to Brett. She took a potted African violet off the windowsill and placed it in the center of the table.

Hal glanced from her to Brett. “What is it?”

Brett groaned. “Don’t, Mum….”

“Brett’s got a problem with the bank. They won’t give him enough money. Can we help?”

“No, I’ll be fine,” Brett said firmly. His parents’ meager savings would see them through retirement as long as nothing unexpected came up. He didn’t like asking for help from anyone, and he definitely wouldn’t take it from his folks, who had so little to spare.

“Have you talked to Ryan or Tom?” Mary asked.

“No, and I’m not going to. They both have families and expenses of their own.”

“What about taking in a silent partner?” Hal suggested. “One of your old footy mates.”

Brett rubbed his jaw. It wasn’t a bad idea. Some of the guys could afford to throw a couple hundred grand his way as an investment. But to ask would mean revealing his ongoing problems with Amber and his financial embarrassment. “Nah, I’ll think of something.”

Hal clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Course you will.”

“If you change your mind, you come to us,” Mary said.

“Thanks,” Brett said, knowing he never would.

“Bring Renita around for dinner sometime,” she added.

“We don’t see each other socially.”

“Not even as friends?” Mary asked. “I always thought you had a soft spot for her.”

“I don’t know why you’d think that.” He kissed his mother’s cheek. “I’ll get Tegan on my way out.”

“Stay for dinner,” Mary said. “I was expecting you to. Ryan and Emma are coming soon to pick up Charlotte.”

Tegan appeared in the doorway, cheeks flushed, her ponytail coming loose. “Please, Dad?”

Four-year-old Charlotte, her light brown curls bouncing, ran up and pressed her hands together. “Pweeze, Unca Brett?”

Brett laughed. “Okay. But I’ll have to eat and run. Renita and her father joined the gym. She’s coming in tonight for her first training session.”

RENITA WARILY EYED THE racks of variously sized dumbbells lining the walls of the exercise room like instruments of torture. Loud music pumped from speakers in the corners of the ceiling. All by herself, she stood awkwardly, waiting for Brett. She felt like the first person to arrive at a party.

Through the glass wall she could see a girl in the local high school uniform of green gingham dress and white kneesocks doing her homework in the refreshment area. In the adjoining room, a faux blonde gym bunny with a spray-on tan pulled the handles of an exercise machine, flaunting her taut abs and sculpted body.

Renita hated her.

She wanted to be her.

Mirrored walls on three sides reflected Renita’s lumpy body, mostly hidden beneath an oversize T-shirt and baggy gym shorts. She hadn’t even lifted a dumbbell and already she was perspiring, just thinking about the embarrassment of working out in front of Brett. Her vow to Lexie seemed ludicrous now. What had she been thinking?

She was going through this for her father’s sake, Renita reminded herself. Steve was counting on her. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply and slowly, trying for some of the inner peace her mother found through meditation.

It didn’t matter how weak Renita was on the inside, as long as she appeared to be strong on the outside. Brett could be as sexy and charming as he liked. It would be like water off a duck’s back.

Renita breathed deeply one more time. Ready, she opened her eyes. Brett was nowhere in sight.

She might as well do something while she waited, so she rolled an exercise ball off its stand, glancing around to see if anyone was watching. No one was paying attention. She sat on it, crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back to do a crunch the way she’d seen on TV. Back, back…