Chapter 12
Twelve
brOOKS
By the time The Funnel Cloud finally goes quiet, it feels like my body has been pulled apart and restitched together with rusty nails and carpenter's glue.
I'm covered in dirt. My shoulders ache like I've been carrying the whole town on my back for hours.
Somehow, I've managed to split my lip and have no recollection of how as I don’t recall Tony being the one to split it.
And I'm sitting here staring at the bar top as if years of scratches and dents can give me the answer to all the questions that are currently plaguing me.
Fat chance.
Most of the volunteers have gone home or at least found a corner to sleep in.
Deputies come in searching for coffee and Petra provides.
There's a lineman passed out in a booth with his arms folded under his head.
I don't know the man, but I can clearly imagine what he must have looked like as a kid. Outside, the generator keeps humming.
The most important part of this tableau is what's missing.
Sam.
I've only seen her once since the fight with Tony.
She'd been standing beside the SAM rig with a tablet in her hand and that battered notebook that I've almost come to think of as part of her person.
She was talking to a deputy, then to Hershel.
And I resented every person who got to talk to her without two years worth of baggage between them.
She looked beautiful. Dirty, windblown, exhaustion coloring the skin beneath her eyes.
And yes, every part of me wanted to remove her from the grief of the scenario and put her somewhere safe.
Flexing that muscle has left me bone weary and tired, but I'm still determined to work it into shape.
Her ring sits in the pocket of my jeans. I've reached in, checking to see if it was still there all throughout the day.
What haunts me isn't the image of her pulling it off her finger, though my mind's been running through that one plenty.
It's what she said just before she pulled it off.
You blame me.
The words are the most hateful ear worm I've ever dealt with.
For two years, I have carried that night like a piece of metal lodged too deep to remove. I remember the call I made. The road I chose. Sam's voice telling me to go east. My own certainty that I had it handled.
Then the slide.
The impact.
Sam's hand on her belly.
The sound she made.
I remember holding her in the back seat while Hershel drove too fast through rain, one hand pressed to the side of her face because I needed her eyes open.
I remember begging her to stay with me. I remember thinking if I lost her too, there would be nothing left of me worth hauling out of that truck.
I never blamed Sam.
Not once.
And somehow I spent two years making her believe I did.
The jukebox clicks on.
The first notes of "Diggin' Up Bones" roll through the bar.
Of all the damned songs. I look up, seeing Petra walking away from the machine.
"Petra," I say, as if I've got a right to say anything about her choice of song on her own jukebox.
From somewhere near the jukebox, she answers, "Yes, Brooks?"
"You trying to torture me?"
"Yes."
Well, at least she's honest.
I watch as she walks over with two glasses of water. She sets one in front of me, then slides onto the stool on the other side of the bar. There's no masking the judgment in her expression.
"You look like hell," she says.
"I have no doubt that I do."
"I could say worse."
"It would take a lot to hurt my feelings at this point, Petra."
Petra studies me for a moment. She looks more tired than I've ever seen her.
"When we were kids," she says, "Sam watched Twister so many times my mama threatened to hide the VHS."
I can imagine Sam, young and hopeful, watching that movie over and over again.
Petra props her elbows on the bar. "She thought Bill Paxton was the perfect man.
Maybe not him exactly, but his character.
She liked that he understood the storm. That he didn't treat it like a party trick.
She said she was going to find a man like that someday.
Somebody who knew the danger and the science and the chase, and who would stand beside her in the middle of it. "
I look down at the glass she gave me. There is a chip along the rim.
"Maybe she would've been better off if she'd gotten Bill Paxton," Petra says.
"He's dead."
"Then you get my point, don't you, Brooks?"
I press my tongue to the inside of my split lip until pain sparks.
"First time she came home after meeting you, I knew she was gone. Completely gone. She talked about you until I wanted to pour queso in my ears."
"That would've been a waste of queso."
"Don't attempt charm with me tonight. I'm immune."
I shut my mouth.
"Then I saw you two together," she says. "And I stopped worrying. Because you looked at her like she'd hung the moon. You were just as gone."
My fingers curl around the glass.
"That's the part that makes all of this hard to watch," Petra says quietly.
"If you'd never loved her right, I could tell her to bury you and be done with it.
But you did. She had that. She had you beside her.
She had a life she loved. Then bit by bit, she lost confidence.
Lost her place. Lost the version of herself that knew exactly where she belonged.
And she started believing the man she loved most didn't want the real Sam anymore. "
I swallow, and the water stays untouched.
"I want her happy," I say. It comes out rough. "There is nothing I want more than that."
Petra's face hardens. "Your behavior says otherwise."
The instinct to defend myself rises fast. I did what I did because I was scared. Because I saw blood on my hands. Because every chase afterward put me back in that truck with her going pale in my lap.
I breathe through my nose.
"You took her out of the field because it made you less afraid," she says. "You'd swear to God and everyone that it was because you were protecting her. And, God help your dumb ass, I think you even believed it. But only one person paid for it: Sam."
I stare at the bar top.
"You put another woman beside you because it made the operation easier and let you avoid the big ugly thing sitting in the middle of your marriage. Maybe you never wanted Luci. Fine. I believe that. I don't care."
My eyes flick to hers.
"Sam watched you remove her from the place she loved and let Luci, with her tight little jeans and cute little blonde ponytail, step into it," Petra says.
"Whatever you meant by doing it, the reality is: you replaced her with someone younger and blonder.
I think you're smart enough now to know how that feels. "
It's funny how obvious it is in hindsight.
No. Not funny. It's nauseating. Idiot. I'm an idiot.
"You want Sam happy?" she asks. "Then stop doing things to her because they make you feel better. Stop calling your fear love and handing her the bill. And understand this real clear: Sam loving you does not mean she owes you another chance."
My fingers find the ring in my pocket.
"Love isn't the issue, Brooks." Petra slides off the stool. "You have to stop hurting her."
She leaves me with Randy Travis, a chipped glass of water, and a truth I can't talk my way around.
The motel parking lot somehow wound up a lot better off than the rest of the town. A few strewn limbs and bucket trucks where normally there'd likely be empty spaces.
I park crooked because I'm too tired to care.
The room waits at the far end of the row, one weak light buzzing above the door.
I want a shower. I want eight hours where my own head leaves me alone.
I want to knock on Sam's door, wherever she's sleeping tonight, and tell her everything I should have told her two years ago.
Instead, what I get is Tony sitting on the concrete outside of my room.
I stop ten feet away.
He stands too fast, then winces, hand going to his ribs. His mouth is swollen. One cheek is already yellowing around the edge of the bruise I gave him.
"I'm not here to fight," he says.
"Good to hear it, because I'm not really in the mood to finish kicking your ass."
My voice sounds flat enough that his eyes drop.
"I know I'm probably fired," he says. "After today."
I say nothing because, yeah, he's right.
He rubs both hands over his face. They shake when they fall back to his sides. "I came here because there's something you need to know."
Every tired part of me goes still.
Tony looks toward the parking lot like he expects someone to step out from behind a truck. "I need to come clean."
I wait.
"Luci came to me before this all really started," he says. "She knew I liked her. I thought..." He laughs once, bitter and small. "I thought there was something there."
My stomach goes cold.
"She said she wanted a bigger place on the team. Said Sam still took up too much space, even stuck back at command. Said if people saw me around Sam more, if things looked a little... blurry, it might help."
The motel light hums above us.
"What things?" I ask.
Tony's throat works. "Texts. Comments. Coffee. Standing too close when you were around. Little stuff. Innocent enough that Sam wouldn't think anything of it, but enough for you to notice."
Acid burns in my belly despite not remembering when I last ate.
"Luci said you were already pulling Sam back from the field," Tony continues.
"She said all we had to do was make the rest easier.
Make her seem distracted. Make Luci seem indispensable.
We picked clips for social posts. Captions.
Moments where you and Luci looked close.
Moments where I was near Sam. It was all supposed to push the same story from both sides. "
I take one step toward him.
Tony flinches.
I stop.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
His jaw tightens. "Because when you hit me today, I thought she'd care."
There's something ugly in his voice. But despite the ugliness, whatever it is, it's not aimed at me.
"I was bleeding on that bar's floor," he says. "Luci barely looked at me. She went straight to you. Touching your face. Asking if you were okay. Like I wasn't even there."
I remember Luci's hands coming up. I remember catching her wrists and pushing them away.
Tony looks at the ground. "That's when I got it. It was never about getting ahead. Not really. It was you. She wanted you."
The night air feels thicker than it did ten minutes ago.
"You should also know because I know you thought it at times," he continues.
"Nothing ever happened with Sam and me. Hell, she never even flirted with me.
She was always nice. You know that she is.
If I'd been a homeless man on the street, she would have treated me with respect.
But honestly, most of the time, she barely even registered my presence. She was just…Sam."
Just Sam.
My wife, who notices shifts in wind before instruments catch up. My wife, who can look at a sky and read danger in the color of it. My wife, who still didn't think to suspect a man who brought her coffee because she was too busy doing the job I had trapped her inside.
"Everything you thought you saw," Tony says, "we wanted you to see it."
The words strip the air out of my lungs.
The texts. The looks. Tony near her desk. Luci telling me not to upset Sam by asking questions. The posts. The laughter in the truck. The clinic.
God, the clinic.
Sam rushing in, wild-eyed and terrified because she thought I was hurt worse than I was. Luci in my arms. Sam's face draining of color.
I could have let go.
I could have crossed that room.
I could have said, Sammy Girl, no. Come here. I'm okay. It's not what you think.
Instead, I stayed exactly where I was.
Because I was angry. Because I'd seen Tony hovering with his hands on her neck and let suspicion rot through the place where trust should have been. Because some mean, wounded part of me wanted Sam to feel the same jealousy I thought she'd handed me.
Then I went home and told her that Luci was the one I wanted in the truck with me.
My hand braces against the motel door.
Sam had been there.
She warned me. I ignored her. She left command and came running anyway.
Luci built the stage. Tony helped hang the lights.
I still spoke the lines.
"You need to say something," Tony says, quiet.
I look at him.
He takes a half step back. "I know. I know you want to hit me again."
"I do."
He nods once.
"But that would be too easy," I say.
His brow furrows.
I pull the room key from my pocket, but my fingers close around Sam's ring instead. Small. Cold. Real.
For months, I punished my wife for a betrayal she never committed. Before that I punished her for the fear that kept coursing through my veins at the thought of ever coming that close to losing her again.
"I trusted the wrong people," I say. "But I made the choices."
Tony's face shifts. He looks relieved for half a second, like maybe I've given him something that lets him breathe easier.
I don't.
"You helped her hurt my wife," I say. "And I let you."
His relief dies.
"I'll deal with you when I can look at you without wanting to break something."
Tony nods, pale. "Yeah. Okay."
He turns to leave, then stops. "Brooks?"
I don't answer.
"I'm sorry."
I say nothing because, as much as I know my part in this whole charade, I don't accept his apology. Maybe I never will.
Tony walks away across the wet lot.
I stand outside my motel room wanting to simply bang my head against the door because I'm certain the hurt would be less than what I'm feeling surging through my chest at the moment.
Until tonight, some selfish part of me has still been thinking in terms of getting her back. Say the right thing. Explain the right way. Find the one sentence that makes her look at me like she used to.
Petra was right.
Love is not the issue.
I have to tell Sam the truth about the baby. I have to tell her I never blamed her. I have to tell her I blamed myself and still turned that blame into a cage around her life.
I have to give back what I took.
The field. The work. The trust. The right to decide where she belongs.
And if she takes all of it back and still wants nothing to do with me, then I'll stand there and let her choose that too.
I unlock the door, but I don't go inside right away.
Out beyond the motel, Muncie sits aching and hurt from a storm that blew through. Somewhere across this little spit of a town, Sam's somewhere. Maybe awake. Hopefully asleep.
I pull out her ring and close my fist gently around it.
I spent two years making choices because I was afraid of losing her.
Now I have to stop thinking about what I want to keep.
I have to start thinking about what Sam deserves to have back.