Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Diana
I wake up, still naked, in Dragon’s arms.
As much as I don’t want to leave, I have to get up and let the dog out. He’s standing by my side of the bed, his head hanging low, and those big brown puppy-dog eyes are begging me for some attention.
“Okay, Teddy.” I pat his soft head, which is now clean thanks to the bath I gave him. “Let’s go.”
I slip out of bed quietly so as not to disturb Dragon. If anyone ever needed the escape of sleep, he does.
I throw on a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt, slide into some flip-flops even though it’s fall, and attach Teddy’s leash to his collar.
He whimpers, and I shush him. “We don’t want to wake Dragon,” I whisper.
Teddy’s ears perk up as if he understands me. He doesn’t, of course. He’s just happy to have a kind word from someone, I’m sure.
I kneel to his level, look into his sweet eyes, and scratch him behind the ears. “You’ll never be hungry again,” I promise. “You’ll always be loved.”
I take him out of the room, close the door quietly, and head to the elevator. Once we’re outside the hotel, I take him to the designated dog area. Once Teddy is done with his business, I clean up after him, and the two of us watch the gorgeous sunrise.
I take him back upstairs to feed him. I get his food ready in the other room so I don’t disturb Dragon. Then I shower, dry my hair, and pull it into a ponytail. I dress in jeans and my Steel Vineyards sweatshirt.
“I have to run an errand,” I say to Teddy. “Let’s go tell Dragon.”
Dragon is still asleep, but I don’t want him to worry when he wakes up and finds me gone. I nudge him.
He grumbles.
“Dragon,” I say.
He opens one eye. “Yeah?”
“I have to run a quick errand. The dog has been fed and he’s been out. I won’t be gone too long.”
I expect him to ask me where I’m going. To my surprise, he doesn’t.
“Okay,” he says and closes his eyes again.
I grab my purse and phone and leave the hotel room. Teddy whimpers, and I lean down and pet him again. “I won’t be long. I promise.”
I know exactly where I’m going.
The idea came to me while I was in the shower.
It’s not my place, but I’m here. I’m a part of this, whether Dragon wants me to be or not.
I’m going to see his mother.
Stefania Locke. Or Christina Delaney. Whoever.
The address is still programmed in the GPS in my car, so it’s easy to get there. I drive through the neighborhood and stop at Mrs. Locke’s trailer.
It’s about eight a.m. Early, perhaps, if you don’t grow up on a ranch or don’t work for a living.
But she will talk to me.
What I want most in the world right now is to help her son. And I can only do that if I know the whole story.
I get out of the car, walk up the rickety steps, and knock on the door.
No one answers.
I knock again, louder this time.
And again, no answer.
I sigh.
I suppose it wasn’t meant to be.
I walk back to my car and get in. A memory edges into my mind.
A memory of my father, and of a lesson he taught me.
He drilled it into me my whole life, but it became especially apparent when he took me to this old dive bar on the outskirts of Grand Junction when I turned twenty-one.
Five years earlier…
I look around the dive. Scratched tables and vinyl barstools with rips in them.
“Uh…Dad?”
“Yes, Dee?”
“When you told me you were going to take me out for my first legal drink, I kind of had something else in mind.”
Dad laughs. “I’m sure you did. Your brothers said pretty much the same thing to me when I brought them here.”
“Dale and Donny never mentioned that to me,” I say.
“That’s because bringing them here was something personal between me and each of them.” He looks into my eyes, smiling at me. “Same as it is for you, Diana. This place means a lot to me.”
“I’m sure there must be a reason behind that,” I say.
“There is.” He signals to the bartender. “I’ll have a bourbon.” He turns to me. “What do you want, sweetheart?”
“I suppose he’s going to want to see my ID,” I say.
The barkeep shakes his head. “No need. Mr. Steel here wouldn’t bring you in if you were underage.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You know my dad?”
“Yeah. He comes in every now and then.” The bartender holds out his hand. “I’m Lonnie.”
“Hi, Lonnie. I’m Diana.”
He nods. “I know you are. I know your brothers too. I’m sure in a couple years, I’ll meet your sister.”
I turn to Dad. “You’re a regular here?”
“Lonnie’s been here for about eight years,” Dad says. “He was here when I brought Donny in. Hadn’t started when I brought in Dale, though.”
“Okay.”
“You haven’t told me what you’d like to drink,” Lonnie says to me.
I don’t drink a lot. I kind of lost the desire when I was drugged my freshman year of high school. But I don’t mind a glass of wine every now and then. “Do you have any red wine?”
Lonnie turns around and looks through his shelves of booze. “I think I’ve got a Merlot back here somewhere.”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
Dad leans in, lowering his voice. “I have to warn you, honey,” Dad says. “This won’t taste anything like your Uncle Ryan’s wines. And the bourbon I get won’t taste anything like Peach Street.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Then I guess I have to ask again, Dad. Why exactly are we here?”
Dad looks out onto the bar. “You may not believe this, Diana, but this little dive was my second home for a time after I turned twenty-one.”
“Really?” I wrinkle my forehead. “Why?”
His gaze darkens slightly. “Let’s just say I needed an escape. Somewhere where no one knew my name.”
“But Dad…”
I think of the old Cheers reruns Mom and Dad like to watch, where the characters hang out at a local bar where “everybody knows your name.” Seems weird that my dad was going for the opposite.
“What?”
“I don’t get it. Why?”
He frowns. “Sometimes it helps to get a different perspective, honey. Back then, this was a haven for the melancholy. For the outcasts.”
“But that wasn’t you , Dad.”
He exhales sharply through his nose. “Wasn’t it? Maybe it was at the time. Anyway, I later joined the military, as you know, and not too long after I came home, I met your mother.”
“Okay,” I say as Lonnie pushes a glass of red wine in front of me. It’s in a lowball glass, not a wine glass. Strange. “Thanks.” I take a sip. It’s…not good. But then Dad warned me.
Why is he paying good money for this? Especially when we have Uncle Ryan’s wines at home for free?
Dad takes a sip of his bourbon and winces as he swallows. Then he lets out a breath. “Whew!”
“Good?” I say with sarcasm.
“Yeah, in its own way. Sometimes it’s what I need.”
I pretend to take another sip of the shitty Merlot. “Help me understand why I’m here, Dad.”
He sets his glass down. “When I was thirty-five years old, I found myself back here.”
“You met Mom when you were thirty-five.”
“Right. It was just after I met her. I needed something. I wasn’t sure what, but I found myself here, hoping I could figure it out. I was walking around this area, and I got mugged.”
I gasp.
He holds up a hand. “Obviously I lived. It wasn’t the first time I had been mugged. I often walked through the seedy area on the outskirts of the city at night, just waiting for some dumbass to try to jump me. Two times before that night I had been jumped, and two times before I had disarmed the mugger and beat the shit out of him. No one had ever called the cops on me.” He shrugs. “I didn’t care if they did. I was careful never to do any lasting damage. Plus, self-defense and all. The guy who mugged me here, though, I wanted to go back and finish the job with that one. I had to force myself not to go running back and pummel him to death.”
I swallow. “Dad…”
“I won’t lie to you, Dee. That night, I wanted to see that mugger dead. I could still feel the heat of his shitty breath on my neck. But I wasn’t crazy. I knew killing was wrong. I wasn’t a sociopath.”
I gulp down another sip of the wine, my nerves jumping. “Of course you weren’t.”
“I didn’t say that to convince you, honey,” Dad says. “I said it to myself at the time. To convince myself.”
I look away from my father. He had just returned from his military service at that time. He was bound to be a little screwed up. Still, I don’t like what I’m hearing.
“Anyway,” he continues, “it turns out I met a friendly old guy. His name was Mike, and he was sitting next to me at the bar. He asked if I had troubles. I told him he didn’t know the half of it.”
“But you’d just met Mom…”
“Right, I had. But I was dealing with some stuff. The military, seeing what I saw, can fuck a person up. This Mike was recently widowed, had worked hard in construction all his life. We were different as night and day. Anyway, I was pissed.”
“Well, sure. You got mugged.” I scan the musty bar. “What were you doing around here anyway?”
He cracks a small smile. “It’s nicer now than it was then. The area has gentrified a lot, but somehow this little dive keeps standing.”
“What happened next? With Mike, I mean.”
“He asked me what was wrong. I told him I got mugged, and he told me off. Told me I couldn’t go walking around this part of town in my expensive ostrich boots and expect not to get mugged.”
I’m still confused. So this guy was rude to my father? Why is he telling me this story?
“He said I was asking to get mugged, or I wouldn’t have come around here.” Dad laughs. “And damn, he was right.”
“Why would you want to get mugged, Dad?”
“I was messed up in the head. I had just met your mom, and I didn’t feel like I was good enough for her.”
“Dad…”
“Let me finish, Dee.” He takes another sip of bourbon. “I got pissed, said Mike didn’t know what he was talking about, and got up to leave. And he said—and I’ll remember this until the day I die—‘running away is never the answer, son.’” Another sip. “So I stayed. I stayed because I’d heard those words before, from Uncle Joe and Uncle Ryan. From others, when I decided to enlist. I looked into his watery blue gaze. They were eyes that had seen a lifetime.”
I blink. I don’t think I’ve ever heard my father talk like this.
He takes my hand, gives it a light squeeze. “He told me I needed to face whatever was troubling me, to never give up. To suck out the marrow of life, as Thoreau said.”
“Stop and smell the roses,” I say.
“To put it in a more eloquent way, yes. He said to concentrate on the good things, no matter how small. To never give up when something is worth having.” He grabs his glass off the bar and takes another sip. “So that’s why I come here, Diana. To remember the words of that wise old man—words I needed to hear at that time in my life. Words I still need to hear sometimes. And when I do, I come here. This place means the world to me, and that’s why I want to share it with you.”
I open my mouth, but no words come out. I simply grab my glass of red wine, clink it to my father’s, and we drink in silence as I allow the story he just told me to settle into my brain.
Present day…
I replay the conversation I had with my father that night five years ago as if it happened yesterday.
I understand so much better now why he was so troubled all those years ago. It wasn’t just what he had seen during his time overseas with the military, and it wasn’t just his budding feelings for Mom. It was his past. How he’d been abducted, abused, violated as a child by those three horrible men.
No wonder he was so screwed up.
But that place, and that old man, had such an impact on him that he wanted to share it with all of his children. Teach them the wisdom of never giving up.
And I’m not going to give up.
I’m not going to give up on Dragon. I’m not giving up on talking to his mother. I’m getting his whole story.
If my father can get through his tragic past, Dragon can as well. But I can’t help him if I don’t know.
I knock again.
And again.
Finally I pound on the door.
“Mrs. Locke!” I yell. “Open the damned door!”
I sigh, finally relenting. I turn?—
“Jesus Christ,” a voice says. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, waking me up at this hour?”