Authors: Lauren Gilley
Wait
passed as a silent communication between the four of them. Jordan drummed his fingers against the leg of his jeans and strained against the thread of tension that connected him to his brother and brother-in-law – his
brothers
.
If Hank had been drinking, he held it well, because his steps were sure as he left the truck and came toward the house. Jordan heard the jangle of keys in his hand.
“Nice night for a little pickpocketing,” James called out and Jordan gave a little jump.
Hank came to a startled halt, the black square of his head lifting. “Who’s there?”
James pushed away from the wall and stepped out into the relative, colorless light of the yard. “Henry Wales?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Cobb Police. You’re under arrest for assault.”
They had discussed what was supposed to happen next. James was going to cuff Hank. Mike was going to pop James hard enough to make the story about Hank resisting arrest look legit. James would take Hank to the station and find some way to spin a story in which he just happened upon an assault suspect vandalizing cars. They’d discussed every little detail.
But Tam blew it all to shit.
Mike made a grab for him, but he was ducking under James and tackling his old man before any of them could get hold of him. Tam was a vicious, wounded animal out for blood, all fists and growls and curses. James and Mike leapt into the fray, but in such close proximity, James’s gun was useless. And in the tumult, Hank slipped loose.
Jordan watched stupidly, stunned, as Tam’s father got his feet under him and took off at a great lurching gallop down the yard, over the walk, and into the street. He was getting away.
Jordan went after him with a deep, lung-scratching inhalation of cold night air, his muscles reacting like so many well-oiled, ready springs. “Go, Jordie!” Mike yelled, and he did.
When he hit the street and his shoes bit into the pavement, he focused every ounce of attention and energy on his pumping lungs and reaching legs, and he bore down on Hank like he was moving in slow motion. The hulking shadows of parked cars and sidewalk trash cans flew past in a black blur. Hank was taller and longer legged, but he was older too, and not a former track state champ.
Jordan caught him at the top of the street, just before they reached the intersection.
This is gonna hurt like hell
, he thought, and wished he could hear his brothers’ pounding feet above the thunder of his own pulse as he threw himself at Hank.
It was like crashing into a water buffalo. Forward momentum and Jordan’s outstretched arms, his fingers hooked in the greasy fabric of the big man’s jacket, were the only things that dragged Hank to the ground. They landed with an
oomph
as air left both their lungs, the hard shock of hitting pavement a bone-rattling jolt that snapped his teeth together.
“Jordan!” someone called.
Hank rolled and Jordan clawed for purchase, his sneaker soles scratching over the asphalt, but he didn’t have the weight advantage. Hank flipped him onto his side.
Shit!
His face made contact with the street, his shoulder bounced so hard he thought it might have come out of the socket. And then a meaty hand latched onto the hair above his left ear. Jordan surged against the hold, his legs kicked and he scratched at Hank’s thick wrist, but his head got picked up…and slammed down onto the pavement.
The world came alive with big, bold, tolling peals of bells. The asphalt scored his cheek and chin and the soft patch of skin along his temple. His eyes clouded with water and all he saw was white: a hot, fierce white light that was like needles going through his pupils and into his brain.
Am I dying?
A tumbled echo of shouts sounded like it was coming to him through a layer of cotton.
I am. I’m fucking dying
.
Hank’s weight floated off of him. The light grew so intense his eyelids fluttered shut.
There was a noise: a squealing. A monstrous, inhuman sound. A
thump
.
Something caught him in the ribs and rolled him over onto his back. The light went away and Mike’s face floated above his. “Dude, are you okay?”
“I dunno.”
**
A thousand times, in a thousand different ways, Tam had imagined the moment of his father’s death. In a deep, obsidian part of his imagination, he’d always thought that he would be the one to deliver the final blow. It was a sick sort of fantasy he never allowed to come to the surface of his conscious mind. He needed – his dead mother needed – to exact the toll Hank had taken on them; he needed to be the last thing the motherfucker saw before his eyes closed the final time.
He’d never thought it would be like this.
The man who’d made Tam’s childhood a living nightmare, the man who’d preyed upon Melinda’s gentle heart and too-forgiving mind, lay sprawled across a patch of asphalt illuminated by headlights, his arms flung wide, legs bent as if he were running, head twisted at an impossible angle.
Dead.
Running to the intersection, lungs bleeding and full of cold air, Tam had watched the car come to a desperate stop too late in the middle of the intersection. Hank’s body – the towering, invincible body he’d beaten his family with – had crumpled like an empty sack of floor.
Thump
against the bumper.
Crack
as his skull hit the pavement. And then he was still.
“Oh, shit!” The driver of the car flung open his door and clambered out into the night. “Oh, holy…what did I…is he?”
James produced something shiny from his jeans pocket – his badge. “Sir, stay in your vehicle.”
“Is he dead? Did I…holy shit! Did I just kill that guy?”
It should have been me
, Tam thought, and hated himself for it. He hated that he was this genetic byproduct of a monster; that he had the visceral urge to turn violence back on the man who’d been the center of all his trauma. And yet, that was a foul, sickening reality he couldn’t push aside and ignore.
“Dude, are you okay?” Mike’s voice cracked his head around on his neck and the only thing more disturbing than Hank’s body, was Jordan’s.
Jordie
.
He was on his back, but his eyes were open, bouncing around as he sought his bearings. The right side of his face was black and slick with blood, but he was moving.
“I dunno,” he murmured.
Mike put his hands under his little brother’s arms and picked him up like he weighed nothing, like he was a child. Jordan wobbled when his legs straightened, but he grabbed at Mike’s shoulder and kept his feet. There was dirt and little bits of loose asphalt ground into the blood on his face.
“Shit, Jordie,” Tam said, and didn’t say anything else because he didn’t trust his voice.
“Man.” Mike reached up and tousled Jordan’s hair in an effort to search for more extensive damage. “I think we covered this when we were kids. You’re a shit tackle.”
He looked dazed, but he managed a crooked half-smile. “Yeah.”
“Guys.” James joined them, the whites of his eyes looking too bright in the dark. “You need to take off. I gotta call this in and it already looks bad enough.”
“Is he…?” Mike began.
“As a motherfucker.” He looked to Tam and made firm eye contact. “Is that gonna be a problem?”
Because he couldn’t call it a blessing, and because he couldn’t convey his disappointment in a freak accident, Tam shook his head. “No.”
**
It was true what people said about watched pots never boiling. Jo stared fixedly at her mother’s heavy copper tea kettle on the stove and counted every second that passed as another second that Tam was in danger. Beth was upstairs, running the vacuum – Jo could hear its steady drone through the ceiling – turning her nervous energy into something useful. And here she sat, pregnant and useless, her right side throbbing like one massive bruise, unable to even make tea because the freaking water wouldn’t boil.
Delta’s boots made sloppy, scraping sounds across the linoleum as she trudged in, detangling her long, dark hair with her fingers. “Is it ready yet?”
“No.”
Delta got down mugs and tea bags from the pantry, set them up at the table for them. She looked tired and stretched thin, her baby bump the largest part of her. Even her fingernails, Jo noticed, were chipped, her normally flawless nude polish was…well,
flawed
.
“How are you doing?” she asked out of sudden impulse.
Delta propped a hip against the breakfast bar and watched the tea kettle. In profile, the convex discs of her eyes were coffee-colored. “My husband’s out there too, you know,” she said without any malice.
“I know,” Jo said softly. “And I’m grateful to him.”
Delta turned a wavering, tired smile toward her. “It’s not like you had to ask him. Mike’s always gonna look after Tam; I knew that when I married him.”
“You knew it. But are you okay with it?”
She sighed and picked at invisible lint on her pajama bottoms. “You know that old saying about not just marrying a man, but marrying his family too? That’s definitely true of your family.”
Jo studied her – the thoughtful pluck of one corner of her mouth, the absence of stress lines around her eyes. “And you’re okay with that?”
“For a long time, I didn’t think I would be.” She flicked a guilty look up through her lashes. “But - ”
The kettle whistled, a sharp, angry blast that caused them both to jump.
Jo took it off the stove with an oven mitt and carried it to the table, filled both their mugs, tea bags bobbing up to the surface, string tails dangling over the sides. They sat down across from one another at the long table, hands curled around their mugs, the overhead lamp casting shadows across Delta’s face Jo knew were mirrored on her own.
The humming vacuum above them sounded aggressive. In the yellow light of the kitchen, the house creaking in the seams where the wind raced around the corners, it felt like they were huddled together against the dark beyond the windows and all the wild things it held. In their sweats, with hair they’d tangled with countless passes of their nervous fingers, all of Delta’s pretention was stripped away. And all of Jo’s righteous indignation had receded. For the moment, they were two girls waiting on the boys they loved.
Delta wanted to say something – the energy of it whispered through the elegant lines of her face and hands – and Jo was braced beforehand. Just in case.
“What your family does for Tam…” She shook her head a fraction. “That’s not anything my family would ever do. My parents don’t love anyone unconditionally.” Not even the daughter they’d coerced into having an abortion at sixteen. “I didn’t – I don’t – know how to find a place in a family like that.” In a family that didn’t love based on merit, but on who needed it.
“I think my mom would still be having babies if she could,” Jo said and watched her sister-in-law grin. “She wants as much family as she can get, even if it takes a little longer to find ‘places’ for everyone. You’re doing fine.”
Car doors slammed in the driveway and Jo felt a cold shudder ripple through her. Delta’s hand came across the table and landed on her wrist for one brief moment.
“I’m sure they’re all fine.” But her brown eyes were brimming with worry.
Jo pricked her ears and strained to hear three distinct sets of footfalls coming up the stepping stones to the patio. “…clean you up…” She heard Mike.