Chapter Thirty
June Twenty Fifth
Wolfgang
“Wolfie, there's somebody in the house.”
June shook him terrified.
He moaned in the dark, “I don't hear anything.”
“There’s someone here!”
She hissed in his ear.
Footsteps creaked up the stairs and Wolfie jolted out of bed, darted to the door and swung it open stopping in the doorframe of their room. A man pointing a gun in Wolfie’s direction stood halfway up the stairs. The man stopped in disbelief, staring at him, observing him, dissecting him in a quick moment and then questioned, “Brigham?”
Taken aback he replied and swallowed, “That's my dad.”
The man sighed in relief, lowering his weapon, “And Marilyn?” He asked.
“That's my mom.”
Wolfie’s eyes had focused from the dark and recognized the man as he dropped his knee on the next step up and sighed in relief with his head down, pressing his pistol barrel into the floor.
He exhaled and holstered his gun. “I'm your Uncle, Patrick.”
Nodding for Wolfie to come down stairs and join him.
“It’s fine, you can go back to bed,”
he whispered into the room and closed the door.
Pat turned the kitchen light on, “So what’s your name kid?”
He grabbed his keys and pressed them to the pantry door.
“Wolfgang.”
He looked at the clock on the stove, six thirty.
He stopped and turned to him, “Wolfgang? Are you serious?”
“Yes, sir.”
He found himself standing behind the island.
“She named you after our grandpa. Gee dub, we used to call him after Grandpa Wolfgang.”
He knew he was named after his mothers grandfather, the rest of the family didn’t know that, they didn’t know he existed. The pantry door opened and was larger than he was expecting. It contained another fridge and shelves full of preserved food. Wolfie smiled at his great grandpa’s nickname. “And Amy?”
He closed the internal fridge, pulling out eggs and bacon, dropping them on the counter. “You buy this?”
Pat pointed to the coffee maker.
He nodded, “She lives with my mom. She moved in with her after my dad passed away at forty three from cancer.”
Wolfie walked towards the machine to prepare a carafe.
Pat clicked his tongue, “That’s too bad, you look just like him. How many nieces and nephews do I got?”
“Only me. Amy never married and my parents struggled to have any others.”
“That’s a shame.”
He placed the strips of bacon on a baking sheet. “How old are you?”
“Twenty nine.”
Wolfie stood next to him to wash his hands.
“I got a twenty eight year old myself. Two girls, the other is thirty one.”
“My mom said you were married. That’s the last she knew.”
“Yep, Sylvia, been married for thirty three years. We found out we were expecting our first a month after Amy left. You got someone upstairs with you?”
He dropped the oven door and placed the pan inside while Wolfie found a seat at the counter.
“Yes, that’s Juniper.”
“Wife?”
“Girlfriend.”
“So,”
He leaned forward on the counter across from him. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
Wolfie exhaled, “On the island, they don’t like a lot of conflict. I met Juniper in January and a few months later her dickbag of an ex followed her, so they both had to leave. Well”
He corrected himself, “She chose to leave to prevent him coming back and so I followed her back here. The pilot will be here at the end of July.”
“Hm, I had some people scheduled to rent the place for the Fourth of July weekend, I’ll cancel them.”
Wolfie felt bad he was canceling and didn’t know if his family struggled to get by, wondering if he rented out their family cabin to make ends meet, “Can I pay for the time I’ve been here?”
Patrick laughed, “No. This is a family cabin, it's as much yours as it is mine. Wolfgang Killabrew bought it back in the day. My parents, your mother, Amy and I all spent summers up here growing up, my kids did too and now I have five grandkids of my own.”
“So,”
Wolfie paused, watching him open the carton of eggs to crack them one by one into a pan, “Why didn’t you go with Amy and my parents?”
He chuckled, “I thought they were nuts, I still think they are but I assumed they would be back in under a year. By the time Amy left, I had grown roots and Sylvia was completely against it.”
“How did the family feel about them leaving?”
The coffee machine beeped, Wolfie stood and grabbed the cups from the drying rack.
“My parents were heart broken, Amy was only eighteen when she left. I couldn’t let my daughters go like that, and they’re full grown with their own lives. It hurt them more that they couldn’t reach out to them ever. Not even on their deathbed.”
Wolfie placed a mug next to Pat, “Would you like to reach out to her or Amy now?”
“They get technology finally? Brigham was good at that.”
He smiled, “Yes, it sounds like it's better than the governments here. The only way I found Juniper was by the chip in her hand.”
He set the spatula down, “You mean to tell me that you tracked your girlfriend like a damn sea turtle?”
“Uh yes sir.”
Wolfie pulled his lips from the mug.
“Quit with that sir shit and ya’ll are all chipped? Hell no. The government can go touch electrical wires before I let them do that to me.”
Pat turned the stove off and pulled the bacon out of the oven, “Grab some plates will ya?”
He turned, reaching above the coffee maker, grabbing three plates, “It’s just the way the system works there.”
Wolfie stood with thought, setting the plates down, “Pat?”
Pat looked over at him, “Yeah?”
“Can I meet my cousins and my aunt?”
“Sylvia isn’t going to believe this story already, and if you didn’t ask, she would have. She always loved your mother. I’ll set up a time, when's good for you? Anytime before you leave?”
“Yeah,”
Wolfie smiled, “We don't have any prior engagements.”
Juniper
Juniper woke up to the smell of bacon for the first time they had been there and could hear two men having a conversation. She glanced over the railing seeing Wolfie with another man sitting at the kitchen table and tiptoed down the stairs with Zeppelin in tow. Hitting the bottom step and entering the living room Wolfie stood, “Juniper, this is my Uncle Patrick, my mom's brother.”
Juniper approached surprised as they had two mugs sitting between them, with empty plates. “Oh, it's nice to meet you.”
Her feet padded towards Wolfie, unsure of the uncle.
“Grab yourself a cup of coffee, the bacon and eggs are fresh.”
Patrick Invited her to sit with them. She noticed the pantry open and grabbed a cup, feeling his uncle's eyes following her. June sat with a question while Zeppelin made his good morning rounds. “How did you know we were here?”
“My neighbor lives up here full-time, sent a message to me almost a week ago, letting me know there were some people in my cabin longer than usual. He assumed you were squatters.”
He cleared his gravel voice, “I do rent this cabin out from time to time, but only for a few days here and there. I didn’t have anyone booked, so I came up to see what was going on. Never expected to find my sister's only child.”
His eyes twinkled towards Wolfie.
“I don’t think we expected to run into you either.”
She pulled the fatty part of her bacon off, dropping it to the dog.
He smiled at her, “I don't hate that you did.”
June Twenty Sixth
Wolfgang
“I’m just going up to the general store to teach June how to drive,”
He hollered at his uncle before closing the door.
“Alright, juniper.”
He pressed his seatbelt together. “The car is in park,”
he pulled the stick down, “This is reverse, and this is drive. You try.”
She repeated his motion, “What about these other ones?”
“Let's not worry about those yet, down there, you have your foot on the brake and next to it is the gas.”
He gently braced himself, “Now, if you go slowly on the gas, it will move the car forward.”
She copied what he said. “You can go faster than this June.”
She rolled forward, slowly moving thirteen miles an hour past the cabin.
“Are the cars the same on the island?”
Both hands hugged the wheel as she didn’t move her eyes from the windshield.
“Yes, they will be exactly the same.”
They pulled onto the dirt road.
“Dirt can be tricky,”
he warned. “Especially with loose gravel, you can slide around.”
She smiled not looking away from the road, “From the way you drove around the island, I doubt that.”
“June, just trust me.”
He sighed, “ Alright, let's just drive to the General Store and back. We can get some fresh milk and some other things.”
Her speed went up going twenty five miles an hour, coming up to the paved road. She pressed the brake hard, jerking Wolfie forward, “sorry,” she said.
“That's okay,”
He comforted her, “you just gotta be gentle. Ease into it.”
They pulled up to the general store. “Just park over here where nobody else is parking.”
Wolfie directed her "Let's be quick.”
They went inside, grabbed their things briefly and standing in line, Wolfie overheard the television behind the register. The news anchor was speaking fast but he followed along, hearing her say, ‘A man in Sacramento had been found weeks after he's been dead, the suspect is unknown and at large’.” He looked at the screen seeing Juniper's old apartment building. ‘Shit,’ he thought. He may have grown up on the island but he watched enough movies to know how this was gonna turn out.
He looked at Juniper’s brow pinched in fear, “You’re fine,”
he said. “I'll drive back”, he pulled the keys from her hand and paid the lady at the register while June stood back.
He closed his car door and looked at her “They don't know who the suspect is. They didn't even mention you or his name, you're fine.”
“Was that your plan when you're going to go talk to him? You were going to kill him?”
“June,”
He drove down the road calmly. “At first, it started out that way. Yes I was going to go talk to him, but the more I listened and watched the way he treated you, I wanted to beat the absolute shit out of him. Then you told me he raped you and nothing was off limits.”
He reached over and squeezed her hand, a good sign with her not pulling away. “Ben deserved what he got, if he wasn’t with you, it would have been the next girl or the next. Are you really upset because he's gone?”
“No.”
She looked out the passenger window, “I just didn’t want to know what happened, It made it real.”
June snapped her face at him, “What if they look at the cameras and they see me? What if they look at us the day before in front of that coffee shop? What if they put all this together and we-”
He kissed the back of her hand, stopping her thoughts. “Are you sure Margaret can't let us come back early?”
“And say what Juniper? I killed somebody. Can you come get us, please?”
The car rolled into the property. “Juniper, it takes time. They're not going to look at the cameras. Figure out who we are and find where we are, all in the next day, maybe week, maybe even month. Nobody knows we're here except my mom, Jay, and my uncle. And none of them for sure as shit know what I've done. Nobody knows except you and I, so just please, don’t stress about it.”
He pulled back into the workshop, closing the door behind him as they exited out the side door. He stopped her next to the wood pile. With heavy shoulders she looked up at him, “I just wanna get back to the island I want to feel safe. I want what we had before Ben arrived. Everything was new and fresh.”
Her lip trembled.
“We will, Jay will be here in three weeks and we will be gone for good the week after that. Do you want to message anybody? My mom, Brittanya or Whitney?”
“No, does Margaret know I'm coming back?”
She sniffled.
“I told her things had ended with Ben and that you went a separate way for a few weeks. So if he does track you he will lose you through the woods. I haven't seen a single camera since we got off the freeway.”
“Okay.”
She turned to walk into the cabin as Patrick came outside.
“Hey, you got a minute?”
He stomped towards Wolfgang.
“Yeah, what's up?”
He watched past his uncle to see June get inside safely.
Patrick led him back into the workshop, “Well I can’t get a bolt off of this bike here.”
He pulled a tarp off of a motorcycle.
“This is the exact same bike as my dads.”
“Are you serious, he still had that thing?”
“I have it now, it doesn’t run because we can’t get parts for it.”
“We bought our bikes together.”
He smiled at the memory.
Wolfies eyebrows rose, “Really?”
“Yep.”
Patrick turned his hat backwards. “But I had a question and I’m just going to ask, are you two in any sort of trouble? Running from something?”
Wolfie looked up, his eyes looking into his uncles. “What do you mean? I told you why we were here.”
“Well, on the internet, there’s a few pictures going around saying two people killed a guy and robbed him. That wouldn't be you two, would it?”
“Pat,”
he licked his lips, “It was all me.”
Patrick’s face twisted, “Let me tell you, the ex that was following her was abusive and raped her the day I finally got to him, I saw the marks she made on herself trying to get him off. If things went on longer, I would bet things would be worse, either she would be dead or married to him with kids, chained down even more. He wasn’t going to let her go, the rape alone should have been a death sentence. But If you go to the cops, please, just turn only me in. She had nothing to do with it, she wasn’t even there.”
Pat stared at him with a blank expression, absorbing the information, “I’m not going to the cops.”
He scoffed, “The picture they got is of two guys and a girl in an elevator, and it’s so damn pixelated, if you squint hard enough it might look like you. There’s no way it’s you two.”
“Thank you, we will be gone as soon as we can be. Can you not tell Juniper you know?”
“I hate to see you guys go so soon, and I don’t have anything to tell her. You two didn’t do anything. Now, how ‘bout this bolt.”
*****
Wolfgang checked his messages on his tablet:
Marilyn responded to her daily message, 'You met Patrick? I'm shocked, I told Amy and she is amazed too. That's great to hear that he is still with Sylvia. Thank you for the update about my brother and I hope you get the chance to meet his children. Will you ask again if he will come out here? How is June doing? Max and Shianne are getting married. I asked Margaret to keep your apartment for you and June. Keep me updated. I love you. Mom'
Wolfgang ‘We are planning a dinner next weekend and I think he will be bringing his kids or just Sylvia. I will ask him again, I don’t think he heard me the first time, we were kind of all over the place with our conversation. June is good, she’s stressed and ready to come back but she found a dog. Thank you for keeping my apartment for us. Love you too.’
Brittanya 'SHE LET YOU CUT HER HAIR?! I cannot wait to see this. I'll set an appointment for her now for when she comes back, no offense. Love you wolfie. Be safe. B’
Wolfgang ‘Brittanya, can you do me a favor and move all June’s stuff into my apartment when Max and Shianne move out? That’s where we will be living. Thank you.’
Margaret 'Wolfgang, that's great. Everything sounds like it will work out in Juniper's favor. No one has asked me before if they could bring a dog. I would be willing to try it but you will be responsible for Juniper and this dog. Jay is on track for his arrival July sixteenth and will be coming back July twenty third, as you know. You have his information and keep in touch with him to meet up. Since we are doing a repeat location for your sake, please help him find resources. Thank you.’
Wolfgang ‘I understand, I will take full responsibility, I plan on having Juniper move in with me when we come back. I have it all arranged, Just keep Max’s old room reserved for June. I have talked to Jay and I will help find resources, can I bring you back anything specifically?’