Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
JENSEN
The day before we’re supposed to meet in the gorge, I get up early and leave the mansion.
It’s so hot and dry, I’m surprised the Earth doesn’t crack down the middle.
The sky is clear, and it’ll stay clear for a while, maybe through the month.
Now is the dry season in Kentucky, when it’s dangerous to flick a cigarette in the woods.
I take the water bottle in the dash and split it open with a knife to tap mine out in.
The road to Byway isn’t long, but I feel like years are adding on, not falling off, as I return to my stomping grounds. Everything is different now. Investors, real estate moguls, and anybody looking to snap up cheap land moved in since I left. Now, it feels like a suburb of the city.
That sits like a rock in my chest. I don’t think a no-count boy like me could have made it in Byway nowadays. The price tags alone would have eaten me up.
I pull off the highway and drive through town to the neighborhood behind the salon. That’s gone. I go by it slowly. The building is a chain donut store now. I turn and go out further, to where the land is flat and deep enough for willows to grow.
The house creeps up on me. I swing off the road and cut the engine.
There it is. Miss Holly’s house. It’s in good condition, paint fresh and lawn mown.
Somebody lives here now. I get out of the truck, and the humidity hits me like a brick wall, soaking my t-shirt.
It smells the same out here, a bit like the creek that runs through the neighborhood, like mulch and wet moss.
I stand by the truck, frozen in time.
Fuck. I didn’t realize it would hurt this bad.
The front door opens, and a man of around forty in a baseball cap steps out. He lifts his hand, coming down the steps. I start up the walkway, but I can’t get any further than halfway.
“You from the gas company?” he calls.
I shake my head. “I knew somebody who used to live in your house. Thought I’d stop by and see it.”
He puts his hands on his hips. “Oh yeah? We bought it about eight years ago, so whoever they were, they must have up and left.”
I shake my head. “She died.”
His brows shoot up. “Oh. Not in this house?”
“No, not here,” I say. “Is there still a trailer down the road, under the big willow tree?”
He’s a bit shaken up, but he nods. “Yeah, it’s condemned. Nobody’s hauled it off the property, though. The willow tree got hit in a lightning storm about three years ago, but half of it’s still there. How long has it been since you left?”
I sweep my gaze over the shutters, remembering when they were baby blue. The window to the right of the porch was Miss Holly’s room, where we spent hours together that year.
“Nineteen years,” I say. “My best friend lived here growing up. His mother was the one who passed.”
That sounds a little more normal. The man’s shoulders ease.
“Lot’s changed,” he says.
“Yeah, you could say that again,” I say. “Listen, thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll get moving now.”
He nods, lifting a hand as I walk back to the truck.
I’m not feeling anything at all as I get back on the road and drive the few blocks to the corner.
The willow comes into view, and that man was right.
It’s split right down the middle. I pull off and get out, walking down the slope.
Beyond the remaining half of the tree sits what’s left of a trailer.
There’s a single piece of tape across the front door, rippling in the breeze.
My chest seizes, and I’m right back where I never wanted to be.
BEFORE
I’m so scared, I keep choking on my dry tongue.
It’s twelve-ten by the clock on my dash.
I’m in my clothes from last night, flecked with blood.
Brothers’ voice, ordering me not to leave the mansion, is still ringing in my ears.
But I went anyway. I burst through the gates and drove straight to Byway without slowing down for a minute.
My heart is pounding so hard, I might throw up.
I screech off the road and hit the brakes, leaving my door hanging open as I run across the yard. The front door is wide open. It’s always a bad sign when a front door is hanging open like that. I catch a flash of the knob, splintered, as I surge through.
The hallway is empty. I reel, turning the corner into the kitchen, and stop short.
God, no.
My entire body feels like nothing, just the faint tingling sense of doom, like the whine of a bomb dropping.
Cherry sits in her chair, the landline belly up on the table. Her ash tray is cold. There’s a cigarette beside it. It’s the brand she used to smoke, Camels—the same as Holly smoked. Her head is back, hanging loosely. She’s got a bullet hole in her temple, right by her dyed red hair.
I take a step, and my foot hits something.
No. No. No.
It’s Kyle, on his belly. I drop down and push him on his side, but his blue eyes have departed.
This is my first time seeing him since he went to Lexington.
I never visited him after moving in with Brothers, the guilt too much.
He grew a beard. It’s not a great one, but it qualifies as the real thing.
I’m staring into his eyes when I realize who comes next.
She’s halfway in the hall, halfway in the kitchen, on her back, still in her white nightgown.
All her beautiful hair is matted in blood.
My stomach heaves as I rise, turning in circles, trying to soak in all the death around me.
The air is thick, smelling like the inside of Pat Pretty’s trailer, like fatal wounds.
I stumble through the kitchen, up the hall, and burst out onto the porch.
The yard is empty, but I see tire marks. Somebody left in a hurry.
Crossing it, I fall against the chicken wire fence and empty my stomach.
I did this.
I got involved in things I didn’t understand, and now, everyone I ever loved has paid the price for it.
The most obvious thing to do is run back to Brothers Boyd and let him do as he promised—protect me from the Caudills.
The problem is…I can’t remember, but I have this sick feeling Brothers has blood on his hands as well.
There’s a vague memory of something happening, more like a feeling, of an argument. Then, something so horrifying, I’ve blocked it out.
I sink into the front seat of my truck. There’s nobody here for me but the man who made me a criminal.
Now, I never thought I would be the damn president, but I did think I’d at least have a nice little handyman business, a wife, some kids.
I worked hard, and I had a fighting chance. But Brothers stepped in and took that.
He did that.
That sinks in for the first time.
And with it, comes a hell of a rage.
NOW
I blink, Cherry’s trailer swimming into focus. After we fought and she threw me out, we didn’t speak again. The next time I saw her was dead at her kitchen table. It’s a small consolation she doesn’t have to feel what I feel when I think about the past.
She was rough, a little mean, but she meant something to me. Cherry was my only blood left, a good woman.
I know now she was trying to protect me. She just did a shit job at it.
Kinda reminds me of somebody else.
My mind goes back to that day in the diner, when Brothers told me what Miss Holly was to him, that he didn’t know anything about me when he took me on. For the first time, I see the entire situation in perspective. It’s painful to admit it, but Brothers was more right than he was wrong.
He didn’t do this to me. He was just there for the aftermath.
Holly saw me, her son’s best friend, a vulnerable kid on the cusp of adulthood.
There were some weeks when I practically lived at her house, playing video games and loitering on the porch with Kyle.
She knew her house was a haven, a place where I could get a meal and some stability.
And she still chose me.
She could have walked away, never told Brothers about me, never fucked me on that kitchen floor.
But she didn’t.
All these years, I hated Brothers so badly, I wanted to hit him. Now, standing outside the remains of Cherry’s trailer, I’m starting to realize Brothers Boyd was a convenient stand-in for my rage. Holly was a woman, and I was never going to show her my anger.
But Brothers, he can take that punch.
He has taken that punch.
I close my eyes, lifting my face up to the sky. All the times Brothers made a snarky remark about Holly being in my room filter through my mind. He was constantly telling me to break it off with her, even going so far as threatening to fire her once if I didn’t.
My chest hurts.
In his own clumsy way, he was trying to protect me.
Brothers is guilty of getting me involved in the seedy underbelly of the city and what that did to Cherry and Kyle, but he never groomed me.
I think, looking back, that it killed him to see he’d accidentally had a hand in what Holly did.
Sometimes, I forget Brothers was pretty young too.
All of fifteen years younger than Holly…
and yet, he understood the situation better than I ever did.
My fist tightens on the truck keys.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty. I wish a lot of things had gone down differently. I wish I’d begged Cherry not to kick me out. I wish I’d told her everything the day Holly fucked me in the kitchen, and let her protect me.
But my head was so messed up, I couldn’t see anything clearly.
That’s what Holly did to me.
I can’t go back and change what happened, but I can do something right here and now, for Della and her boy.
I leave the yard without going into the trailer.
In the truck, I’m the emptiest inside I’ve been in a long time.
I’m turning over the last nineteen years and how I’ve tried to fill it with everything to fix what happened.
Sex, fighting, booze—the macho shit, as Jack would say.
Then, Della walked in. She touched a nerve so deep, it gave me the courage to come back home and face my past.
It’s going to give me the courage to save her. I’ll make the Caudills pay for what they did to Cherry and Kyle and Della. I’ll set myself free and end this cold war. When it’s all done, I’ll take her and Landis back to Montana, and I’ll never look back.
If I want this woman, I have to fight our demons and win. Absently, I crack my knuckles.
Fighting.
That’s something I can do.