EXILE
My plan for dinner with Lula and Dillon was to ask the kid questions. I knew how much children liked to talk, so I figured I’d keep her busy and show interest. Instead, Dillon interrogated me for forty minutes, asking everything from my living situation to my allergies.
“Is your sister your emergency contact?” Dillon asked, sounding like her mom rather than a kid.
“Yes.”
“Where’s her husband?”
“He disappeared.”
Dillon nodded and gave me an exaggerated wink. “I get you.”
Chuckling at her taunt, I couldn’t get over how much Dillon looked like Lula. Earlier, I’d been amazed by the similarities between Lula and Bebe. A curious thought lingered all evening. What would my kid with Lula look like?
I was still wondering about a potential child when I sat out back with Lula after Dillon had gone to bed. We drank beers and watched the moonlight shimmer across the lake. Xena sniffed along the black iron fence surrounding the backyard.
Lula asked, “Are you feeling chatty?”
“With you? Sure.”
“Is there a story behind why you wear your hat?”
“Does it bother you?”
“Nothing about you bothers me,” she said in an unguarded voice before frowning. “Well, you living in another state is a bummer, no matter how much I pretend otherwise.”
“We’ll make the long-distance thing work.”
Lula smiled and gestured to my hat. “So, is there a story behind why you wear it?”
“Can’t it just be that I like hats?”
“Sure, but is that the reason?”
I took a drag on my beer and considered my past. Lula knew the ugly details. Before we met, I was a fucked-up guy in a file. I assumed hearing those details from me would be better.
“My dad worked as a ranch hand. He loved horses and always talked about us getting our own place with stables.”
I hesitated when I sounded too fond of my father. Lula watched me with a patient gaze. She sipped her beer and smiled when I remained silent for too long.
“I was crazy about my dad when I was little,” I admitted. “The guy might have been a monster, but I didn’t see that side of him.”
“People are complicated. The men who attacked the sisters and me in the garage likely didn’t spend their off time kicking puppies. I’m sure someone will mourn them.”
Nodding at her meaning, I felt a little more comfortable admitting, “Danny was a good dad and husband. He doted on me and Nova. He treated my mom great. They were high school sweethearts. We lived in a tidy ranch. My mom stayed at home with Nova and me. We had a quiet, comfortable life.”
When I fell silent again, Lula whispered, “It’s not your fault you loved your dad.”
“Sure, people say that, but they also want me to hate him. After it came out about the murders, we basically got run out of town. My mom loved my dad too much. People thought she knew what he was doing and protected him. We had to move to my grandparents’ place in a different part of the state.”
Lula reached over and stroked my hand. “When was the last time you saw your dad?”
“We visited him before he took the plea deal. I wore the cowboy hat he gave me for my birthday. The man I saw in the jail visiting area was my dad. He wasn’t a monster that hunted young women. I didn’t know the ugly details back then. I only knew he had hurt people.”
“From what I read, the cops basically caught your dad in the act. There was never any attempt to feign innocence on his part.”
“No, but it’s still difficult for me to wrap my head around the idea that the fun, warm man I knew was a monster.”
Lula considered my words and asked, “What was your life like once you lived with your grandparents?”
“My grandmother’s solution was to pray away the evil. My grandfather wanted us to stop talking about my dad. He took my hat. Hell, he took Nova’s newest doll because it was a gift from our dad. My mom told people that her husband had passed away.”
“How long did you live with your grandparents?”
“Not long. As soon as my mom got her divorce finalized, she married a middle-aged man with a bunch of kids from his dead first wife. The guy wasn’t bad, but his family hated me.
They liked Nova well enough but decided her name should be Anne.
Nova was too weird. I couldn’t stand how fake everyone was. ”
“Did you live with that guy until you joined the military?”
“No, he died when I was fifteen. My mom jumped to the next fucker looking for a replacement wife. This one treated me like shit, and he was weird with Nova. His family thought my mom was a gold digger, which was dumb since she had money from the last guy’s life insurance.
My mom didn’t need to marry anyone, but she’d been raised to think she needed a husband. ”
“How was this stepdad weird with Nova?”
“He didn’t like how she was a normal girl.
She wore jeans and shorts. He was convinced she was developing too fast. His own daughter was a flat-chested, overly modest weirdo.
He demanded that Nova wear long skirts. He wouldn’t let her wear makeup.
She had to have her hair back in a ponytail.
I was so fucking happy to get away from those people.
The Marines felt like freedom after living with those fucked-up people and their stupid fucking rules. ”
Sighing, I felt like Lula was judging my family. I wouldn’t blame her for thinking we were defective on a fundamental level. I started hating us when I was young. That was one reason I didn’t return to South Dakota for so long. I wanted to pretend I wasn’t part of that world.
Lula watched me with her beautiful eyes for a long moment.
I realized I was supposed to be sharing my deep, dark secrets.
She had taken me to the quarry to tell me about her birth dad.
Lula expected zero barriers between us, yet I’d spent most of my life wishing I could forget my past in South Dakota.
“Did your mom ever have anyone she could lean on?”
“I don’t think so. I barely kept in touch with her after I joined the Marines. When I called her, we only discussed the basics. Once I left South Dakota, I never wanted to look back.”
“But you did look back at some point. That’s why Nova lives with you.”
“The only time I went back was after my mom died. I couldn’t leave Nova in that life. She was always the best part of my parents rolled up in a smiling doll. Seeing her with a black eye killed me. I should have been checking on her before then.”
Lula wrapped her fingers around my hand and squeezed. “Were you wearing your cowboy hat again by then?”
“Yeah, but only because I’d met Zodiac,” I said, recalling the day York brought me to the clubhouse to meet his friends.
“He was a weird guy who didn’t edit himself to seem normal.
He said I was a damaged man, and no amount of bullshit could hide that fact.
He claimed I ought to own my internal fuckery.
I figured he was spewing bullshit like he’s known to do. ”
I paused to finish my beer as if the liquor might give me the courage to face a time when I was hiding from myself.
“One day, I walked by a used clothes shop with an old cowboy hat in the window that looked a lot like my dad’s favorite one.
Right then, I chose to face how I would always be my father’s son.
I looked like him. I sounded like him. I had his name.
Acting like I could change whose blood flowed through my veins was a bitch move, and I wasn’t going to do it anymore. ”
Lula leaned over and slid her finger across my hat’s rim. Her smile demanded one from me. I couldn’t help myself. Her attention always made me feel like a million bucks.
“It couldn’t have been easy hating a part of yourself,” Lula said tenderly.
“But I get it. I had a chip on my shoulder for a long time. I pushed myself hard in school. Nothing was ever good enough. I thought I wanted to please my parents, but they aren’t the kind of people who expect someone to be an honor student or win a championship.
Pax and Bebe didn’t do well in school. They were proud of me even when I barely did anything. ”
“So, the only one pushing you was you.”
“Exactly. Everyone has baggage. You and I have more damage than most people, for sure. Our fathers were bad men. I can’t imagine how confusing it must have been to reconcile the man you knew with what he was like in the shadows.
But he loved you, and you loved him. You have nothing to be ashamed of, and I’m glad you wear that hat. ”
Grinning at her praise, I replied, “Well, I’m glad you pushed yourself. If you hadn’t been the Crimson Guard’s badass lawyer, we might have never met.”
“Or we might have met even earlier. After all, you met my siblings months ago.”
“True.”
“Did they make an impression?”
“Sabrina, sure, since she acted ready to brawl. Rowdy has a reputation, so I kept an eye on him. Vanessa didn’t make much of an impression.”
“She’s a sneaky girl,” Lula insisted, snickering at some secret knowledge.
“If you had been there for the meeting between our two clubs months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to take my eyes off you.”
“And I would have been slobbering all over myself at the sight of you. I can’t imagine how much Sabrina and Elle would have mocked me.”
Chuckling, I said, “Zodiac has the hots for your cousin.”
“Yes, and she’s considering using her undeniable feminine talents to trick him into confessing his club info,” Lula said and laughed. “But she texted me earlier to say she wouldn’t soil herself with Louisiana jizz since I’d gone ahead and taken one for the team.”
Maybe the booze had hit me just right, or I was feeling like a new man, but I laughed harder than I had in years. Lula followed suit, giggling over her cousin’s words.
Yet, I suspected her laughter and mine came from this perfect moment between two people witnessing their future coming together.