Make It Right by Megan Erickson Page B

of it, arms crossed over their chests, and glanced at Max as he approached them, boots crunching on the dry grass.
    Calvin pulled his beanie down over his ears. “Hey bro. Thanks for coming. We gotta get this shit taken down before Dad gets home.” Cal was shorter than Max and wide, with a barrel chest he’d used to his advantage on the offensive line of the Tory High School football team. Like Brent, Calvin worked with their father at his automotive shop.
    “Remind me why we’re doing this again?” said Brent, the tallest of the three, at a lean six-three.
    Cal flexed his fingers in his work gloves. “You know he’d try to do this all himself, then he’d throw his back out, and it would be all our fault. I don’t want to have to be over here vacuuming his floors and making his meals and shit because he can’t get off the couch. Now haul ass.”
    Brent grumbled as Cal fired up the chainsaw with a grin.
    Hours later, Max was sweating buckets under his parka and his knees and hips were killing him from squatting to pick up fallen tree limbs. Cal had made it a game to try and drop branches on his head as he cut them off. Asshole.
    The branches were bundled and the trunk lay in neatly sawed chunks on the grass.
    Brent rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist, leaving behind a smear of dirt. “Good enough for now, right? He can deal with this or we’ll come back later.”
    “I’m starving,” Cal said.
    Both brothers looked at Max expectantly.
    He sighed. “I’ll see what Dad has in the kitchen.”
    He left his brothers outside to put away the work tools. He threw his coat over the back of the couch and rubbed his hands together. Funny how he could be damp with sweat but his fingers were still frozen.
    He rummaged in the pantry and sighed. When he’d lived with his dad, he tried to keep the pantry full of ingredients easy to make into quick meals. Which his father ate with a grunt and then left the dishes on the table for Max to clean up.
    Max pulled out a long-forgotten box of spaghetti and a jar of pasta sauce that was close to expired. In the freezer, he found a half-opened bag of meatballs. They looked a little freezer burned but the guys would never notice, so Max plopped them in a pot with some sauce and started water to boil for the pasta.
    Then he leaned back on the counter and looked around. The kitchen floor could use a mopping and a thin film of grime coated the windows, but at least the house wasn’t covered in clutter. Cleaning had been Brent’s job when they all lived at home. Brent and Cal now lived together in an apartment. Max missed that sometimes—a full house with deep voices arguing or laughing. Someone to eat meals with. Someone to watch hockey with.
    It’d just been the four of them then, their mother bailing on the family shortly after Max was born. It had changed every couple of years, but she lived in California now with her musician husband. She sent him Christmas cards signed Love, Jill . Which he always found funny and depressing at the same time.
    The back door banged open as Max dumped the pasta into the boiling water, and his brothers barreled into the house.
    Brent stuck his head in the fridge. “Who wants a beer?”
    “Spaghetti and meatballs?” Cal asked, dipping his finger into the sauce and then sticking it into his mouth. “Any garlic bread or salad or anything?”
    “Seriously?” Max said. “You two probably live on pizza and chicken wings at your apartment. Don’t get all uppity and demand garlic bread.”
    “Well, no beer for you, Mr. Touchy,” Brent said, popping the cap on two bottles and handing one to Cal.
    Max rolled his eyes and retrieved his own beer.
    Once the pasta was cooked, he dumped in the meatballs and sauce, mixed it around, and then scooped the mess onto three plates.
    “Thanks, Max,” Cal said. Brent grunted his gratitude.
    While they ate at the kitchen table, the only sound the clinking of forks on plates and slurping of noodles, the