Chapter Eight
Grace
I spent the morning helping Maureen in the kitchen. I liked Colleen. She didn’t look like her mother, but their personalities were very similar.
I wondered if people would think the opposite about me.
I was the spitting image of my mother. But we were night and day.
Sometimes I wondered if my memories of her were real.
Ever since her death, I had built her up in my mind.
After meeting Maureen, I wondered how much of it was real and how much was my mind wanting to remember who she could have been rather than who she was.
I loved my mother. My whole life it had been her and me. Being a single mom couldn’t have been easy. Uncle Stephen was there when I was young, but not consistently. We never knew when he would show up.
I remembered the last few times he was there; things seemed to be tense.
They argued a lot. Then we moved and I never saw him again.
I loved Uncle Stephen. He was fun, and he wasn’t there just to visit my mom.
He took us places like the zoo and the aquarium.
Places that were fun for me. I remember wishing he weren’t my uncle.
I wanted him to be my dad.
I had flashes of memory of my father. I didn’t know he was my father at the time, but he was the opposite of Uncle Stephen. He wasn’t friendly. He didn’t spend time with me. Or his other girls.
“Shit!”
“Grace?” I looked up at Maureen.
“I have sisters.”
“What?”
I shook my head. “I forgot all about them. I need to talk to Nav.”
The kitchen door opened, and a man I didn’t know walked in. I had met all the brothers in the club that were here visiting, but this man wasn’t one of them. His cut was different.
“Ma’am, King said to come see you about some food? I know it’s past lunch time,” he said.
“Nonsense, have a seat.” Maureen moved slowly around the kitchen.
The man looked at Maureen’s belly and said, “I can make something myself. You should sit.”
I pulled my lips between my teeth as Maureen spun around, moving faster than I had seen her do in months.
“Excuse me? Do I look like an invalid?”
“N-no, ma’am.” He looked at me for help, and I shrugged.
He was on his own.
“Is there a reason you think I am not capable of making you food?” Maureen crossed her arms over her chest, resting them on her protruding abdomen.
“Mom, be nice,” Colleen chastised as she entered the kitchen. “Can’t you hear his accent? He’s a Southern boy, Mom. Not a Neanderthal from Boston who thinks women are weak. He has manners.”
Colleen winked at him, and he grinned, lowering his eyes.
“I mean no offense, ma’am.”
“Enough with the ma’am bullshit,” Maureen scoffed, waving her hand at him. “My name is Maureen.”
“Jackson, ma’am.” When Maureen cut her eyes to Jackson, he winced. “Sorry. It’s bred into me. Nothing I can do.” This time his smile was wide. Maureen just shook her head and made herself busy making Jackson a sandwich.
Maureen placed the meal on the table in front of Jackson and sat down across from him. She tilted her head to the side as she stared at him. “Your eyes are very interesting.”
“Thank you?” he said, though it sounded more like a question.
“You’ll have to forgive my mom. She’s from New England, where people are kind, but they aren’t nice.”
Jackson lifted an eyebrow in question. And I had to admit, I didn’t understand what Colleen meant either.
“How can you be kind but not nice?” I asked.
Colleen chuckled. “In New England, if you get a flat tire, people will stop and help you change it, but they’ll tell you how stupid you were for running over a nail in the first place.
They’ll give you the shirt off their back to make sure you’re dressed but criticize you for not bringing an extra. ”
I smiled at her analogy. “I guess that means Southerners are nice but not kind. ’Cause they are sweet as pie when they say, ‘bless your heart,’ knowing damn well the second you turn your back, they’ll take the knife they cut that pie with and stab you with it,” I added.
“Exactly,” Colleen said, pointing her finger at me.
Jackson chuckled, but Maureen was still watching him.
“Maureen?” I poked her arm to get her attention.
She sat back. “I’m sorry, there’s just something familiar about you. Where are you from?”
“Tennessee,” Jackson answered, clearly uncomfortable.
“And your parents?”
“Mom, leave the man alone.”
“I’m sorry.” Maureen shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts or knock loose whatever was nagging at her. She stood up from the table and went to the refrigerator to grab the tea. Filling a glass, she set it in front of Jackson. He looked at the glass and then at Maureen.
“It’s sweet. I don’t know how you all drink that shit. Fucking diabetes in a glass.”
I couldn’t help it; I threw my head back and laughed at the look on Jackson’s face. The door opened, and King walked in, sobering me up in an instant. I stood up from the table and moved to the far side of the room.
“Grace, can we talk?”
“Fuck you, King.”
“Grace,” he groaned. “It will only take a minute.”
“Sorry, I promised Colleen I’d get a coffee with her.” I glanced over at Colleen.
She must have seen the look in my eyes, because she added, “That’s right. She promised. She’s always working, so we haven’t had a chance to get to spend time together.”
“Johnny is still at the hospital,” King said.
“I don’t need a fucking babysitter.”
“Yes, you fucking do,” he countered. “And so does Colleen. I promised Duncan I’d keep her safe.”
“Then someone else can go with us.”
“Grace,” he growled.
“I’ll go,” Jackson offered.
“You’re fucking hurt. You aren’t going anywhere.”
I pulled out my phone and sent a text. When it beeped, I smiled. “Indie is going with us.” I grabbed Colleen’s arm and dragged her through the door of the kitchen before King could say another word.
As we left, I heard Maureen snap, “What the fuck did you do now?”
Colleen and I drove to Audrey’s coffee shop, with Mimic and Indie on his bike behind us. Colleen, Indie, and I went inside, while Mimic leaned against his bike outside watching the street.
I understood it. It had been like this since I met King. There was always someone watching over me, or so it seemed. I was surprised he didn’t have someone sitting at my house every night. But then again, if he did, he wouldn’t be able to come and go as he pleased.
We ordered our coffees and sat down at a table, waiting for Audrey to drop them off. Colleen didn’t waste any time bringing up King.
“What’s the story between you and my cousin?” Colleen asked.
Indie snorted beside me, and I shoved her shoulder.
“There is no story.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Indie snarked.
I closed my eyes and sighed. “There is nothing going on between King and me.”
“Then what the hell was that in the kitchen? ’Cause that wasn’t nothing,” Colleen asked.
“What happened in the kitchen?” Indie asked, suddenly all ears.
I liked Indie. She was young. A year younger than Mimic and Kytten. I didn’t know her story because I had been avoiding the clubhouse, but I knew she was running from something. Now that she was with Mimic, she could stop running. The Silver Shadows would protect her with their lives.
The bell over the door jingled, and I instinctively looked up. Colleen and Indie both followed my gaze. Colleen’s mouth hung open, and I chuckled as Audrey set our order on the table and then stuck her finger under Colleen’s chin to close it for her.
“Right?” she said with a wink and went back behind the counter to wait on the man who walked in.
I recognized him immediately and wondered where he had disappeared to the night the bar was attacked.
Jude looked my way and winked. I dropped my gaze down to my cup, ignoring him, hoping he wouldn’t walk over this way. When I realized that was exactly what he was doing, I spared a quick glance at Mimic, who’d moved from his bike as he watched the man.
“Hello, Grace.”
“Jude.”
“You don’t look happy to see me.” He flashed a smile, showing off his perfect white teeth. The bell of the door jingled again, and I knew without looking, it was Mimic.
Indie stood, but I didn’t spare her a glance; my eyes remained locked on the man who disappeared as soon as the cops showed up the other night.
“Why did you disappear?” I asked, crossing my arms and sitting back. He’d given me a weird vibe the other night, and the one I was getting now wasn’t any better.
Colleen was watching me intently, but she stayed silent, as did Indie. Mimic, however, normally a man of few words, decided he was in the mood to talk.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Jude looked over at Mimic, his eyes dropping to the patch on his cut. He smiled again before turning back to me.
“I left because I wasn’t ready for King to know I’m here.”
Mimic took a step closer to Jude, and Indie put a hand on his arm. “Public space,” she whispered.
“Listen to your woman, kid,” Jude hissed. “I don’t care what you think you can do; I promise you I can do worse.”
“Why didn’t you want King to know you were here? And why change it now?” I asked.
“Because I’m sure Banshee has already spilled the beans.”
“You’re Chasm,” Mimic said. “The dead man.”
“Not so dead anymore,” he offered, holding his arms out to display his fully intact body. He turned back to me. “Give King a message for me?” When I didn’t reply, he chuckled and said, “Tell the son of a bitch I’m coming for him.”
Indie slipped in front of Mimic, pushing him back with her hands on his chest as Jude walked out the door. Mimic glared at the door and then at Indie.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped.
“Am I going to have ban you from my shop, Indigo Cambridge?” Audrey asked with a smile as she walked over.
“Everyone made it out alive and unharmed,” Indie replied, returning her own smile.
The last time Indie had come to the coffee shop with Kytten, someone had tried to kidnap her.
She had knocked him out and Audrey was there in an instant with zip ties, to contain him until the club could come and get him.
It made me wonder what Audrey’s story was. I knew she’d lived in Diamond Creek her whole life, but the way she was so calm when trouble arose made me wonder what secrets she was hiding.
Everyone had secrets. Some scarier than others. Jude certainly had secrets. Mimic had called him a dead man, and given the scars I’d seen peeking out from the neck of his shirt and the cuff of his sleeve, I wondered if he was someone King believed was dead.
The big question was, why would a man King believed to be dead come back now? Mimic called him Chasm, which meant he was probably in a club. But which one? And where was his cut?
“We should get back,” Indie said, pulling me out of my head.
Colleen had gone quiet, and I looked over expecting to see fear, or concern. What I saw was resignation. Like somehow, the scene that just played out was something she’d been waiting for.
“Are you okay, Colleen?”
She smiled at me. “Mob princess. This kind of shit isn’t new to me.” She sighed and stood up. After asking Audrey for a to-go cup, she dumped her coffee into the disposable cup and walked out the door without a word.