his hand with my name in handwritten letters-"JAYNE HELLER." He was younger than I'd expected, maybe midthirties, and cuter. I shouldered my way through the happy mass of people, mentally applauding Uncle Eric's taste.
"You'd be Aubrey?" I said.
"Jayné," he said, pronouncing it Jane. It's actually zha-nay, but that was a fight I'd given up. "Good. Great. I'm glad to meet you. Can I help you with your bags?"
"Pretty much covered on that one," I said. "Thanks, though."
He looked surprised, then shrugged it off.
"Right. I'm parked over on the first level. Let me at least get that one for you."
I surrendered my three changes of clothes and followed.
"You're going to be staying at Eric's place?" Aubrey asked over his shoulder. "I have the keys. The lawyer said it would be okay to give them to you."
"Keys to the kingdom," I said, then, "Yes. I thought I'd save the money on a hotel. Doesn't make sense not to, right?"
"Right," Aubrey said with a smile that wanted badly to be comfortable but wasn't.
I couldn't blame the guy for being nervous. Christ only knew what Eric had told him about the family. Even the broad stroke of "My brother and sister-in-law don't talk to me" would have been enough to make the guy tentative. Much less the full-on gay-hating, patriarch-in-the-house, know-your-place episode of Jerry Springer that had been my childhood. Calling Uncle Eric the black sheep of the family was like saying the surface of the sun was warmish. Or that I'd been a little tiny disappointment to them.
Aubrey drove a minivan, which was kind of cute. After he slung my lonely little bag into the back, we climbed in and drove out. The happy crowd of families and friends fell away behind us. I leaned against the window and looked up into the clear night sky. The moon was about halfway down from full. There weren't many stars.
"So," Aubrey said. "I'm sorry. About Eric. Were you two close?"
"Yeah," I said. "Or...maybe. I don't know. Not close like he called me up to tell me about his day. He'd check in on me, make sure things weren't too weird at home. He'd just show up sometimes, take me out to lunch or for ice cream or something cheesy like that. We always had to keep under my dad's radar, so I figure he'd have come by more often if he could."
Aubrey gunned the minivan, pulling us onto the highway.
"He protected me," I said, soft enough that I didn't think Aubrey would hear me, but he did.
"From what?"
"Myself," I said.
Here's the story. In the middle of high school, I spent about six months hanging out with the bad kids. On my sixteenth birthday, I got very, very drunk and woke up two days later in a hotel room with half a tattoo on my back and wearing someone else's clothes. Eric had been there for me. He told my dad that I'd gotten the flu and helped me figure out how to keep anyone from ever seeing the ink.
I realized I'd gone silent. Aubrey was looking over at me.
"Eric was always swooping in just when everything was about to get out of control," I said. "Putting in the cooling rods."
"Yeah," Aubrey said. "That sounds like him."
Aubrey smiled at the highway. It seemed he wasn't thinking about it, so the smile looked real. I could see why Eric would have gone for him. Short, curly hair the color of honey. Broad shoulders. What my mother would have called a kind mouth. I hoped that he'd made Eric happy.
"I just want you to know," I said, "it's okay with me that he was gay."
Aubrey started.
"He was gay?"
"Um," I said. "He wasn't?"
"He never told me."
"Oh," I said, mentally recalculating. "Maybe he wasn't. I assumed...I mean, I just thought since my dad wouldn't talk about him...my dad's kind of old-school. Where school means testament. He never really got into that love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself part."
"I know the type," he said. The smile was actually pointed at me now, and it seemed genuine.
"There was this big falling-out about three years ago," I said. "Uncle Eric had called the house, which he almost never did. Dad went out around dinnertime and came back looking deeply pissed off. After that...things were weird. I just assumed..."
I didn't tell Aubrey that Dad had gathered us all in the living room-me, Mom, my older brother Jay, and Curtis the young one-and said that we weren't to have anything to do with Uncle Eric anymore. Not any of us.