Chapter 1 #2
Asher was still calling when she took off running. She hung the shovel back in place and went up the stairs two at a time, coming out into the kitchen just as Asher came back into the kitchen. She could hear Gunner crying down the hall and the murmur of voices.
“What’s going on?” she asked as she hurried to the sink to wash the dirt off her arms and hands.
“Gunner just woke up. He and his bed are all bloody. He lost a tooth in his sleep, and we guess he swallowed it. He’s crying because he won’t have a tooth for the tooth fairy.”
“Then we better get him cleaned up,” she said, and headed to the big bedroom where the two younger boys slept.
Brenda calmed Gunner down with a promise to write a note to the tooth fairy and sent Dylan and Asher to bathe the blood off her baby boy, while she stripped the bed and put on clean sheets.
Finally, she had Gunner in clean pajamas and fresh sheets on his bed, and a handwritten note to slip under his pillow for the tooth fairy. He smiled at her, and the little gap where his tooth had been broke her heart. Innocence. She was going to destroy their innocence.
When Dylan and Asher saw her slide the note under the pillow, then lean over and whisper in Gunner’s ear, they grinned. Their little brother still believed in Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy, and they kept up the pretense for him, and for her.
She did the tucking in bed business all over, but this time pausing in the doorway between their adjoining rooms. The rooms were dark but for the little Pokémon nightlight by Dylan’s bed.
“I love you guys…so much. Thank you for being my best boys,” she said, and then walked away.
Later, she slipped back in, took away the note to the tooth fairy that she’d written, and replaced it with a dollar bill, then took herself to bed.
She was pretending to sleep when Jacob finally came to bed.
She was too emotionally wrought, and terrified of what yet may come.
When Jacob slipped into bed beside her, she heard his weary sigh as he pulled up the covers and turned out the bedside lamp. He was such a good man.
Oh God, oh God… What have I done to this family?
* * *
In the bright light of a new day, things didn’t seem so awful.
Gunner was crowing about the money under his pillow, and sticking his tongue between the space where his tooth used to be as they were eating breakfast. She had the TV on in the other room and was listening to the news and weather when she heard the lead-in to the morning news, stopped what she was doing, and took her cup of coffee to the living room.
“…daring robbery of an armored van in front of the downtown bank in Amarillo yesterday. Four gunmen wearing motorcycle helmets, and driving a white van, opened fire on the guards. Two guards were killed. The driver and one other guard are in the hospital, recovering from multiple gunshot wounds. Less than an hour ago, three of the gunmen were arrested and the fourth one, who was shot during the robbery and dropped off at the hospital afterward, was instrumental in naming the others involved. We will be reporting on updates as they occur.”
Brenda went numb. She didn’t know whether to run now or wait for the other shoe to fall. Then Asher was behind her.
“Mom, we’re ready to go,” he said.
She turned, saw her sons with their ready smiles and backpacks, set her coffee cup down and kissed each one of them on the forehead, and went to get her purse and keys.
“Did you tell Daddy goodbye?” she asked.
“Daddy’s in the shower,” Asher said.
She nodded. “Then let’s go.”
They filed out the back door and into the car. Brenda waited for them all to buckle up and then drove away. There was already a line of cars and kids on the walkway and others going into the building when she pulled up.
“Love you all. Have the best day ever,” she said, and blew them all a kiss. They got out on the run and never looked back.
It was the final cut of the cord that bound her to them. She knew before the day was over that federal agents would be coming for her, and the swath of shame and humiliation she would be leaving for her family to suffer. And all for the sake of a fuck and a high.
* * *
Jacob had already opened the bar by the time she got back.
She cleaned up the kitchen, then went up front as he was plugging in new kegs and refilling the coolers with his bestselling longnecks and cans.
She stood for a few moments, staring at him, wondering what happened to her to make her forget how much she’d wanted him. What she’d done to get him.
He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with sharp, chiseled features and eyes that turned a little icy when he was angry, an emotion he rarely allowed to show up, and even then, it was never with them. Just the occasional unruly customer. All three of their sons were younger, smaller, versions of him.
And then Jacob looked up and caught her staring.
“Morning, honey; did the boys get off okay?” Jacob said.
“Yes. Gunner lost his first tooth in bed last night. He woke up bloody as hell, bawling because he’d swallowed it.”
Jacob grinned. “I’m sorry I missed all that.”
“He’s okay. I wrote an excuse note for the tooth fairy. He was crowing about his dollar this morning.”
Jacob winked. “You’re a good mama.”
She turned away before he could see the flash of her tears. “Not really,” she said.
He frowned, but before he could ask her what she meant, customers began coming in.
The regulars who played dominoes at the two front tables, and the old cowboy who shot pool alone, so he didn’t ever have to say he lost a game.
And in the process, he forgot about Brenda’s comment until two black SUVs pulled up in front of the Tumbleweed.
Four men entered the bar, flashed their badges, and asked to speak to Brenda Kingston.
Jacob’s heart skipped. “She’s my wife. What’s this all about?”
“Sir, we need to speak to her. Is she here?”
“Our home is attached to the bar. She’s back there. Follow me.”
Jacob’s heart was pounding as he walked them to the door, unlocked it, then walked inside with the federal agents right behind him.
* * *
Brenda had been outside when she saw the cars drive up and had raced back into the house.
She’d been thinking all morning about what she’d done, and the one thing she couldn’t face was having her sons know that their mother was in prison.
Her hands were shaking as she emptied the bottle of antidepressants into her hand—all thirty-two of them—and washed them down with a glass of water, then walked back into the living room and sat down to wait.
When she heard the key in the lock, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then began whispering the Lord’s Prayer in her head. She was right at the “yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” when Jacob spoke her name.
“Brenda? Honey…”
She opened her eyes.
“These men are from the FBI. They want to talk to you.”
She nodded.
Jacob’s heart skipped. “What have you done?”
She stood up and held out her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “So sorry. For everything.”
The special agents were taken aback by her acquiescence as they handcuffed her.
“What has she done?” Jacob shouted.
“Abetted in the armored car robbery resulting in the death of two armed guards and the wounding of two others. One of the robbers who was shot yesterday named all of the participants. According to the confession, Brenda Kingston has been having an affair with Pete Brandt, the man who planned and orchestrated the robbery.”
Jacob reeled as if he’d just been shot. “No. I don’t believe it. Brenda! Tell them it’s a mistake!”
She dropped her head. Her silence said it all.
They walked her out of the bar in full view of everyone inside, and then the regular customers all ran into the house looking for Jacob, who was coming undone before their eyes.
But what the special agents didn’t know was that Brenda Kingston was, for all intents and purposes, already dead when they put her in the car and drove away.
When she fell asleep in the back seat, they thought little of it until they reached their destination and found out they hadn’t transported her. They’d transported her body.
* * *
The shock of her arrest and subsequent suicide left Jacob and his sons prostrate with grief and disbelief, and then following that, the shame that came down upon them. Dylan and Gunner hadn’t been told the details, but Asher knew, and it forever changed the child he’d been meant to be.
Jacob began closing the bar at 10:00 p.m. to take care of his boys, and not one customer complained.
Asher stepped up and stepped into a man’s shoes.
He hadn’t only lost his mother, but he’d lost the rest of his childhood.
He became the one who helped his brothers with homework, and did the laundry, and when Gunner or Dylan woke up crying for their mother, Asher was the one who took them into his bed and cradled them back to sleep.
Within days, the whole town of Crossroads picked up the rest of the slack in Jacob Kingston’s life. A volunteer cadre of people began taking the boys to school, while others picked them up and took them home at the end of the day.
Pete Brandt and his crew got life in prison.
Life went on, and Jacob’s boys grew up and moved away.
The Tumbleweed Bar saved Jacob’s sanity, and ultimately, forever rooted him in Crossroads, and the missing money became a footnote in history.
* * *
Texas State Prison—Twenty-one years later
Mostly, it was the machines hooked up to Pete Brandt’s body, and the steady morphine drip going into his veins deadening the pain of his cancer-ridden body, that were still keeping him alive.
The prison warden had notified his next of kin that death was imminent, and the next morning, both of his sons were at the prison asking to see him. It had been a little over five years since they’d been to visit, partly because they’d been incarcerated for their own sins in those years.