18. Julie
eighteen
Julie
The kitchen was already hot when I walked in, and the tension made it worse.
Mom sat at the battered table, both hands wrapped around a mug of black coffee.
The mug looked like a weapon in her grip, chipped at the lip and stained by a thousand mornings just like this one, but nothing about her posture was morning-casual.
She had a manila envelope in front of her, thick and dog-eared, and next to it a stack of photographs rubber-banded so tight the edges curled.
She didn’t look up when I entered, just flicked her eyes once over the top of the envelope and then went back to waiting.
“This doesn’t look good,” I said. “Someone piss in your Cheerios?”
“She was like this as a child,” Mom said. “Always something to say.”
Bram sat with his left arm pulled away from his body, the way you do when you’re hiding stitches but don’t want anyone to mention it.
He looked tired, which for him was saying something—normally he could outstare an animal, but right now even his glare was dulled by fatigue.
His hands were flat on the scarred surface, palms down, knuckles gray-white.
He’d poured his own coffee and hadn’t touched it.
The mug steamed quietly between his fingers, the heat going nowhere.
“Nice shirt,” he said.
“Not much of a selection in your drawers.”
“I’ve got a selection in my drawers for you,” he said.
Mom shook her head. Emma chuckled.
“Guess I need to read the room,” Bram said. He looked at Mom. “Although this is my fucking club.”
“One big happy family,” Rusty said and grunted. “We should have our own comedy show.”
Rusty hovered near the doorway, arms crossed, feet planted shoulder-width apart.
He didn’t sit. He didn’t say anything else.
You’d think he was the one being interrogated, not the other way around.
I thought maybe Mom had broken his dick off last night during their second or third round, but I think he was still steaming over the Colonel walking away from the club yesterday.
He wasn’t going to let Bram kill the man he wanted to kill.
I slid into the chair next to Emma. She sat hunched, both elbows on the table, her bruised forearm mapped with yellow and green.
The pattern made my stomach sour, but the girl herself looked steady, sharp.
She kept her gaze moving—first to Mom, then Bram, then a quick, unreadable glance at Rusty—before settling on the envelope.
She was already trying to game out the next move.
Mom reached for the photographs. She stripped off the rubber band, dropped it on the table, and flipped the top one over without ceremony.
It showed the Colonel—my biological father—shaking hands with a state official.
Next was the Colonel in front of the Barstow courthouse, surrounded by a press scrum.
The third was a grainy shot of me at my law school graduation, the Colonel’s hand perched on my shoulder like a tarantula.
I stared at that one a long time, my mouth going dry, waiting for the explanation I hoped was never coming.
Mom let the photos sit a second, then lined them up with her index finger. “He kept these on his desk,” she said. Her voice had the warmth of a cop radio. “Every time you called, he made sure to look at this one.” She tapped the graduation photo. “You were his prize. Not his child. His project.”
I felt my jaw lock. My pulse hammered up through my eardrums. “Why are you showing me this now?” I asked.
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she went back to the envelope, cracked it open, and spilled out a new set.
These weren’t photos. They were records: court transcripts, official letters, a stack of financial printouts so thick it nearly toppled itself.
Sally spread them in a fan, face up, all the color drained from the page.
She pointed at the first sheet. “This is the wire transfer that paid for your first campaign. It didn’t come from the usual PAC—it came from an offshore account, ran through two dummy corporations. He bought your seat before you ever filed paperwork.”
Next sheet: “This is the letter from the governor’s office, the one that pressured the DA’s office to create a vacancy for you. He threatened to release dirt on the governor if he didn’t comply.”
She pushed the documents forward, each page heavier than the last. “He built your career. Every interview, every award, every case you won—he either orchestrated it or made sure you’d have what you needed to survive the next round.
” Mom’s voice was calm, but there was an edge to it, something just shy of rage.
Emma said, “He’s been pulling your strings since you were fifteen.” Her tone was flat, almost bored, but her eyes were bright. “Like you were a puppet.”
I didn’t look at Emma. I couldn’t. I was still caught on that photograph, the memory of the Colonel’s hand on my shoulder. I remembered the feel of it, the weight. “Why did you never tell me?” I said. I meant it for Mom, but it hung there for everyone.
Mom’s hand found the mug again. She didn’t sip. She just held on. “I thought I could protect you if I kept quiet. He promised me if I did what he said, he’d leave you and Emma alone. When I tried to leave, he made it clear he’d take you both. I kept my head down. That’s what mothers do.”
There was a scraping sound as Bram finally moved—just a muscle twitch, but it made everyone look at him. He stared at the graduation photo, then at the wire transfer, then at me. His eyes weren’t kind. They weren’t angry, either. They were just—blank.
Rusty said, “So what’s the move? Do we dump this all at the DA’s office, or do we burn him down ourselves?”
His question was rhetorical, but Mom answered anyway.
“You have to be smarter than him. He’ll expect you to go public.
That’s why you need leverage.” She slid another slip of paper into the middle of the table.
It was a single sheet, handwritten, with the Colonel’s initials at the bottom.
“This is his personal ledger. Every bribe, every debt, every favor owed. I took it from his safe.”
For a long time, nobody said anything. Emma’s breathing was the only sound, slow and even, like she was practicing for something.
I stared at the ledger. I wanted to throw up.
Mom said, “I kept this stuff because I knew someday it would save you. Or kill him.” She looked at Bram. “I know what you want to do with it. But I needed the girls safe first.”
Bram’s eyes found hers. There was a long, electric pause.
Then he said nothing, and just looked at the paperwork, like he could end the whole story just by pressing it flat to the table.
No one touched the coffee. No one touched each other. The heat from outside felt like it was bleeding straight through the drywall, cooking us all alive.
Mom set the mug down and folded her hands, fingers interlocked, so tight the knuckles went almost blue.
“There’s something else,” she said. She looked at Rusty first, and in that split-second I knew—he knew too.
He looked at her like a man who’d already been shot and was just waiting to see if the bullet would finish the job.
Mom said, “Emma’s father isn’t the Colonel. It’s Rusty.”
I felt my pulse thump in my ears. Emma went totally still. Rusty’s arms dropped from his chest. He looked at Sally, then at Emma, then back at Sally. He didn’t move otherwise, not even a flinch.
“I told her in the holding room,” Emma said. She didn’t sound angry or sad—just done. Like a cup poured empty. “It made more sense than the other story.”
Bram didn’t react. At all. He just kept watching the pile of evidence in the middle of the table, not blinking, not moving, like he was willing it to combust.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” Bram asked Rusty.
“Same reason as her,” Rusty said, tilting his head at Sally. “He would have killed all three of them. Then me. He needed to think they belonged to him. At least until he got out and I could strangle his smug ass.”
I realized I was crying. Not sobbing, just a silent spill of water that cut down my jaw.
I didn’t wipe it away. My vision went watery around the edges, and I blinked to clear it, but it just kept going, a faucet with a busted gasket.
A person could be hard as nails, but life didn’t give a shit.
Sometimes it beat you down into submission, and you needed a good cry.
I tried to breathe, but the air was thick, stuck.
I looked at Bram, looked at his scarred hands, looked anywhere except at Mom.
Mom reached for the mug and missed. Instead, she pushed the ledger closer to Bram, the paper sliding over a sticky patch of old syrup.
“He’ll kill them both,” she said. “You think he cares about losing daughters? He cares about losing leverage. And right now, they’re not just useless, they’re dangerous. ”
Rusty’s hand tightened on hers. Emma watched it.
Bram finally moved. He pulled the paperwork across the table, squared the edges, and flipped through each page in sequence, his eyes darting fast. When he finished, he set the stack down and looked at Rusty.
“Call Church,” Bram said. His voice was so quiet I barely heard it.
Rusty nodded and stood, letting his hand linger on Sally’s for a half-beat before he left.
Bram looked at me again. There was something like apology in the set of his eyes, but I couldn’t read it, not then.
“We hit first,” he said. He pointed at the dirt on my father.
“Once he’s dead, we turn it all over to the authorities.
His next stop isn’t going to be another prison. It’s going to be the grave.”
Mom sat back, shoulders slumping for the first time since she’d come in the room. She looked at me and tried for a smile, but her face didn’t have the muscle memory for it. “Sorry I didn’t do better,” she said.
Emma leaned her head against my shoulder. She was trembling. I put my arm around her, felt her bones vibrating through the cheap polyester of my T-shirt.
Bram stood, gathered the ledger and the envelope, and didn’t look back. I watched his outline retreat down the hall, slow and careful, as if he was already in pain and didn’t trust his body not to betray it.
I wiped my face with the back of my wrist. The salt stung. Mom picked up the mug and drank the cold coffee without a flinch.
The sound of the meeting in Church filtered through the air vents—first a rumble, then the scrape of boots, then a quiet that was even heavier than before.
It was going to end, one way or another.
I squeezed Emma a little tighter. I wasn’t going to let her go, no matter what happened.