Chapter 3 – Age 17
“What happened to your eye?” Jule whispered as soon as Tor sat at the desk beside him, sporting a huge shiner.
“Tell you later.” He pulled a pencil out of his backpack.
“You’ll tell me now.” He always hated seeing Tor hurt. Well, he usually hated seeing Tor hurt. The two of them had marked each other up plenty of times when they’d scuffled, but that was different. They were having fun.
“Shh. Ms. Fields is handing out the tests, and she’ll kick you out if she catches you talking.”
“Tor,” he demanded. “What the fuck happened?”
“Julian Sterling, do I hear you talking during your AP exam?” the teacher said.
They hadn’t even started yet. She was being ridiculous and Jule was about to say that when Tor squeezed his shoulder.
“That was me, Ms. Fields,” Tor quickly responded. “It won’t happen again.”
She frowned at them but continued placing exam booklets on each desk.
Julian wanted to demand an answer, but Tor would throw himself under the bus if they got caught and he didn’t want to get him in trouble, so he forced himself to be patient.
That wasn’t his strong suit, which made concentrating on the AP Physics exam extra challenging. Thankfully, they’d studied hard for it.
Tor had drilled the information into him and even found ways to show him real life examples of the different types of mechanical and electrical concepts they were learning while he fixed up an old trailer they’d put on cinder blocks in the backyard.
Tyson and his girlfriend and Trey were living in it while Travis and his daughter and Titan lived in the house.
Travis and Titan were doing mostly legal work at an auto shop now, so they no longer had parts all over the yard, which freed up space.
Tor planned to put up another trailer once they had enough money.
He was amazing at repairing and building anything.
He was doing the plumbing and the electric too. He had taught himself.
Tor was brilliant so he’d probably get a five on the physics exam, which was the top possible score.
A three would be good enough to earn credit and Jule thought he had a solid chance of getting that.
They were the only two juniors taking the test so worst-case scenario, he could try it again the next year.
“What the fuck happened?” Jule demanded when they left the room three endless hours later.
“John Jones is back,” Tor whispered.
“Your father?” Jule hissed.
“The one and only.”
They walked away from the group of people outside the room and down a relatively empty corridor.
“He hit you?”
Tor nodded and then shook his head. “Yeah, but he wasn’t aiming for me. He was pissed at Vickie.”
Aside from them all being grown now and Travis having a kid and Tyson having a live-in girlfriend, another reason for the trailer was that Tor’s mother was back in the house, had been for a few months, which meant Jule’s father had been spending time there too.
That situation had gotten weirder as they’d gotten older.
Not because it had changed but because Jule was now old enough to understand how incredibly messed up it all was.
His father had tried dating Vickie when they were in high school, but his parents didn’t approve of her.
The Sterling family was all country clubs and political appointments and old money.
The Dunworthys were none of that. So, Harold Sterling had pretended to move on.
He’d had the right kinds of girlfriends, went away to college and law school, gotten the right kind of job at the right kind of firm, and eventually married the right kind of woman.
But Jule now realized that his father had never loved his mother, because throughout that entire time, he had still been seeing Vickie Dunworthy, off more than on, but almost thirty years of that added up.
“John Jones hit Vickie?”
“He tried to anyway. I got in between them, and this happened.” He pointed at his eye. “John Jones is a psychopath, but he’s never laid his hands on me. When he realized I wasn’t going to get out of his way, he took off, but I don’t trust it. He was way pissed at her. He’ll be back.”
“Jesus,” Jule said under his breath.
“Yeah. I told Vickie that she needs to tell your dad to stay the fuck away from the house, but the way she’s coked up all the time, who knows what she’ll remember so you should tell him too.
Honestly, I don’t know why he still comes around at all.
He’s the fucking Arizona Attorney General.
If someone catches him at the house, he’ll be ruined.
The whole thing’s stupid and risky as hell. ”
“They don’t leave the bedroom. How is anyone going to catch him?”
Tor cringed. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure John Jones knows Vickie’s seeing someone and that’s why he’s raging.”
“Isn’t he married to a lady who lives in Tucson?”
“I don’t think he’s married to anyone.” Tor shook his head.
“But, yeah, he lives with someone there sometimes when he’s not in prison.
I think he’s got the same thing going with a woman in Avondale.
Maybe there are others. Who knows. Doesn’t matter though.
He thinks Vickie belongs to him, so when he feels like fucking her, he expects her to be single and excited to see him. ”
“That’s fucked up.”
“That’s John Jones.” Tor sighed. “Anyway, tell your father, okay? And you shouldn’t come over for a while either.
He’s not safe to be around. My brothers are shacking up in other places too.
They’re living, breathing reminders that Vickie fucked other people, and if that’s thrown in his face right now, there’s a solid chance he’ll try to eliminate the living and breathing parts. ”
“Damn,” Jule said. “Why are you letting her stay at the house? She’s never done anything for any of you and she’s nothing but trouble.”
Tor went still and looked him in the eyes. “Vickie’s a fuckup but she’s family. Family takes care of family.”
“Right.” He dipped his head. “Maybe you should get out of there until John Jones is gone.” Jule stepped even closer, curled his hand around Tor’s hip, and moved his thumb back and forth over him. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’m probably the only person he’d never hurt.
” Tor paused and touched the bruise under his eye.
“Well, on purpose anyway. I’m his only son and that seems to mean something to the bastard.
If I take off, he’ll probably be even madder at Vickie, and the way he was last night, I already thought he was going to kill her. ”
“If he cares so much about you, why was he okay with Vickie not giving you his last name? All your brothers have their fathers’ last names.”
“That was his idea. John Jones has a ton of enemies, and if they knew he had a son, they could use me against him, so he made sure that wouldn’t happen.”
“What kinds of enemies?”
“Vickie never said, but I have some idea. It’s too much to talk about right now. What’s important is that you and your father keep far away from the house while he’s here. He never stays long, and once he’s gone, things can go back to normal.”
“I don’t like this.”
Tor pressed his lips together, arched his eyebrows, and shrugged. “Nothing we can do but wait it out. Come on, we’re already late to next period.”
***
“Did Vickie give you any details about what set John Jones off?” Tor asked.
He was lying on his back in a trench they had dug across the yard, head under the trailer.
He wore jeans with the legs cut off and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, both of them stained with grease and dirt, and he looked so hot that Jule wanted to jump him.
“Not really,” Tyson answered, a cigarette perched at the edge of his lips. “She said some shit but most of it didn’t make sense.”
“The bitch is so fucked up all the time it’s a wonder she can talk at all,” Trey said. He was sitting cross-legged in the dirt, drinking a beer. “It’s hot as balls out here.” He took off his cap and wiped it across his brow.
“It’s July,” Tyson said.
“What kind of shit?” Tor asked.
“Something about her being a snitch, I think.”
“What’s she going to snitch about?” Trey asked. “The only intel Vickie has is the name of her dealer and there’s no way she’s giving that up.”
“That is strange,” Tor said. “Jule, hand me the coupling.”
He looked around at the various parts and tools strewn around them.
“That one.” Tyson pointed at a black rubber cylinder at Jule’s feet. “Yeah, like I said, it didn’t make sense.”
Jule squatted at the edge of the trench and handed Tor the coupling. “What does that do?”
“It’s going to make the bathroom in this thing useable, so we don’t all have to share the one in the house.
” He started attaching the coupling to the trailer, his arm flexing from bicep to forearm.
Tor wasn’t especially big, his brothers and Jule were all taller and weighed more, but he was powerful, his body comprised entirely of sinewy muscles.
He had no trouble holding Jule down when he had him bent over.
“I’m connecting this to the waste outlet on one end and then I’ll connect it to this PVC pipe we laid”—he tapped his foot against a white plastic pipe that ran down the entire trench—“on the other end. I’ve already got the pipe tied into the sewer. ”
“How’d you learn to do that?” Trey asked.
“The internet and common sense.” Tor twisted some sort of screwdriver into the metal ring around the coupling. “Stop getting wasted all the time and you’d have more of it. You could learn to do this too.”
“Fuck off,” Trey said.
“I mean it.”
“Why are you giving me a hard time? It’s not like I’m getting high.”
Tor lowered his arm and shifted his cool gaze from the underside of the trailer to his brother. “Because you’re drunk. Right now. Every day.” Like always, his tone was calm, voice low. “Do you want to turn out like your father?”
“Go to hell,” Trey spat. He rose to his feet, but he was wobbly.
“There’s a meeting every night at six at the Mennonite Church. I looked it up. I’ll go with you if you want,” Tor offered.
“Fuck you.” He turned and walked toward the side of the house. “I’m out of here.”
“Trey,” Tyson said. “He’s right.”
His back to them, Trey held up his hand, middle finger raised.
“I’m worried about you,” Tor called after him.
His steps faltered. “I’ll be back later.” He walked around the house toward the front yard.
“You think he’ll listen?” Jule asked quietly. Tor had a good point about his brother. Trey had been drinking way too much.
“Eventually,” Tor said, continuing to work on the trailer. “Ty, what’d you say about Vickie being a snitch? What does that mean?”
“No idea.” Tyson shook his head. “I think maybe he accused her of fucking a cop?” He scrunched his nose, sniffed, and then took a drag off his cigarette.
“She wasn’t clear. I think we’d know if a cop came around here so either she doesn’t understand what set him off or John Jones has the wrong information. ”
Tor scooted out from under the trailer, stood up, and then jumped out of the trench. He looked back and forth between Jule and Tyson as he wiped his hands on his jeans. “Either that or he considers the state attorney general to be a cop.”
“Fuck,” Tyson breathed out. He dropped his cigarette into the dirt and ground it out with his shoe.
“Yeah,” Tor nodded.
That was bad. Very bad. “Should I go inside and warn my dad?” Jule asked. His father was in the bedroom with Vickie, as usual.
“Probably.” Tor nodded. “Let’s—”
Shouting from inside the house cut him off. They all turned toward the sound.
“Trav and Tan are at work, right?” Jule said. “I thought Trey left.”
“They are.” Tyson was frowning at the house as he took a step forward. “He did.”
Tor was completely still. “Oh, fuck me.” He reached for Tyson and gripped his arm. “Get him out of here.” His voice was rough, panicked. Jule had never heard him sound like that.
“Who?” Jule asked. “Trey?”
“That’s not Trey,” Tyson said again, his voice shaking that time.
“Jule, you need to leave right fucking now,” Tor snapped.
“Why? What’s—”
Before he could finish his sentence, a loud bang rang through the air.
“Ty, get him the fuck out of here.” Tor started running toward the house.
“What’s going on?” Jule asked. Tyson grabbed him and started pulling. “What are you doing?” Jule tried to shake him off. “Tor!”
Another bang rang out.
“Jule, we need to leave.” Tyson snaked his arm around Jule’s waist and hefted him over his shoulder.
He wasn’t taller than Jule, but he was built.
Every time Tyson got locked up, he seemed to gain another ten pounds of muscle.
They liked to joke that he kept getting caught as part of a workout plan.
“Ty, what the fuck? What’s happening? Where’d Tor go?”
Tyson took off at a run, veered around Jule’s father’s Mercedes, which was parked in its usual spot behind the house, down the side of the house, and over to the street.
He ignored Jule’s demands and questions, yanked the back door of his car open, tossed him inside, and slammed the door shut.
Before Jule could get his bearings, they were peeling away from the house.
“Where are we going?” Jule sat up and gripped the front seat. “Where’s Tor?”
“I’m taking you to your house.”
“What? No. Where’s Tor? What’s happening?”
“Shit just went really wrong. Really, really wrong.” Tyson slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “Fuck. Fuck.”
“Turn the car around.”
“No.”
“Ty!”
“Tor said to get you out and that’s what I’m doing.”
Jule would have jumped out of the car but the way Tyson was speeding and swerving through traffic made that impossible. They got to his street in half the time it should have taken, and Tyson slammed the breaks at the end of his block.
“I don’t want cameras picking up my car in front of your house. Get out and go inside now.”
“Not until you tell me what’s happening.”
Tyson turned around and his face was full of fear, something Jule had never seen and hadn’t considered possible. “Tor’s handling it and I’m going back to help him. Your job is to get inside your house and stay there. And you can never, ever tell anyone you were at the house. Ever.”
“Fuck that.” He felt his anger rising. “I need to help Tor. If you won’t take me then—”
“Jule!” Tyson shouted. He had never yelled at Jule before and the shock of it shut him up. “There isn’t time for you to freak out right now. If you want to help Tor, get into your house and keep your mouth closed.”
“Okay.” His stomach twisted but he opened the car door and climbed out. “Tell him to call me.”
Tyson dipped his chin. “Not a single word to anyone. No matter what.”
“Got it.” Jule closed the car door and walked to his house, hoping that whatever happened wasn’t as bad as it seemed.