108. Chapter 108
A cloud of dust and rocks blew into the storage unit.
“Shit. Shit,” Jase hissed, scrambling to his feet.
The wooden wagon was driving away with both women in the front seat.
Graham peeled himself off the floor and called after them. “Wait!”
Over. Lindsey was gone. Dust settled in the parking lot and panic settled in Jase’s bones. This time it wasn’t about the money.
It hadn’t been about the money for some time.
Graham pulled out his phone and screeched a fuck that split Jase’s temples, and he saw his brother’s screen was cracked. Graham worked his fingers over the shattered glass, put his phone to his ear, and Jase heard Helen’s voicemail message.
Their father’s package had been discarded on the ground in front of the Road King. Leaving the unopened package behind sent a clear message.
Knuckles split and shaking, Jase picked up the box, dusted it off, and dug his phone from his pocket. He wasn’t surprised when Lindsey didn’t answer. He hung up, gathered himself, and tried again.
“Hey, Linds.” He cleared his throat to stop his voice from breaking. “Listen, I know you hate me, and you have every right. I should’ve told you about the money.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I should’ve told you a lot of things. I don’t know why I didn’t. I’m sorry. If you could just… I’m sorry.”
Jase ended the message with all the missed opportunities to tell her the truth hanging like a noose around his neck.
Graham called Helen a few more times and dropped to the curb in front of the now-empty storage unit, snorting blood up his nose.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” he said.
Jase sat beside his brother. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”
Graham squinted through the sun at the blood and dust Jase could feel on his own face, and muttered, “You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah,” Jase agreed. “Yeah.”
“Why’d you do it?” Graham asked.
“You had it coming.”
Graham spat a gob of blood between his feet. “I meant sleep with her.”
Jase shook his head. “I couldn’t help it.”
“That’s such bullshit,” Graham said.
“No, it’s not. You should know.”
Graham scoffed. “If you liked her so much, why didn’t you tell her about the money?”
“In the beginning, it was your lie, and it wasn’t my place,” Jase said. Graham screwed up his face and Jase insisted, “It wasn’t. Later, the lie just got too big. Why didn’t you?”
“Fuck if I know.” Graham shrugged. “Things were sort of rough between us before we left.” Graham paused and picked at the blisters on his palms from the wagon’s steering wheel. “With Dad gone, I think I knew we were on the way out. Not telling her seemed easier.”
Jase sighed. “I had plenty of time to tell her, too. You know, it didn’t have to come out this way. You’re pissed at me, I get it, but that was shitty, even for you.”
“Yeah, well, sleeping with her was shitty…even for you. Is no one sacred? You were screwing Dad’s nurse, for fuck’s sake.”
“You knew about Denise?” Jase asked, taken aback.
“Everyone knew about Denise. She was too good for you too.”
“You’re not wrong. So what? Why do you have an opinion about who I sleep with?”
“I didn’t, until now.”
“You know what? This doesn’t have anything to do with Lindsey, or me.”
“No?”
“It’s about Dad.”
“Dad?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Enlighten me.”
“He’s gone, and I wasn’t there to help as much as you were, and you haven’t gotten over it.”
“No. You weren’t there. Even that wasn’t enough to—” Graham dropped his head.
“To what?”
“To show him you’re not perfect. I get it now.
After this trip it all makes sense. You’re his carbon copy.
He sees himself—or saw himself—in you, so you could do no wrong.
Even when he was sick and you were hardly around, he understood.
But me? He never approved of anything I did, and he never—not once—took the time to know me that well. ”
Jase rubbed his bloody knuckles, beginning to regret how many times they’d connected with his brother’s face.
“It didn’t matter how many doctor appointments I drove him to, or how many times I changed his sheets so Mrs. Aldridge wouldn’t worry.
” Graham shook his head. “I went to school, I got a degree, I never left Ohio, I was at his side every damn day, and I brought home an amazing woman—someone he loved so much he sent you all the way out here just to drop off her consolation prize—and it wasn’t enough.
I did all the things I was supposed to do and none of it mattered.
At the end of the day, I still wasn’t you. ”
Jase let his brother’s words settle as Graham pinched the sides of his mangled nose and snorted more blood. There might’ve been an ounce of truth scattered in there. Graham’s truth, distorted by the way he saw the world, but truth nonetheless.
“I couldn’t watch him die,” Jase said quietly. “I know I should’ve been there more. I’m sorry I put it all on you. I still remember when Mom—”
Jase pinched the sides of his own stinging nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “I couldn’t go through it with Dad. I couldn’t watch him waste away. He was my best friend.”
They stewed in their own sweat and wounds for a few beats, then Graham admitted, “I could’ve waited for you. I didn’t want you at the funeral.”
“I was here the day he died, delivering this.” Jase lifted the box by the twine holding the wrapping together.
“Fuck, I could’ve figured out a way to make it back in time for the funeral, but I couldn’t bring myself to bury him.
” Lindsey’d had every right to call him out at the nice restaurant.
“I…might’ve used you as an excuse to miss it. ”
Graham nodded, frowning. “We’re a couple of assholes, aren’t we?”
“Yeah.”
Graham swiped at his phone screen. “I keep messing up with Helen.”
“I think you’re wrong about one thing,” Jase said. “Dad did understand you. He sent you to Austin to the woman you loved, knowing it would hurt Lindsey. He wanted what would make you happy. You belong together.”
“Yeah, and now she’s gone. She took Dad’s car.”
“Hey, I never said I liked her.”
A small seed of an idea suddenly sprouted. If their dad sent Graham to Austin to reconnect with Helen, then he knew Lindsey would never stick around to finish the trip. Unless…
Jase checked his phone for a message he didn’t have, then glanced down the road for the station wagon that was long gone, and it hit him.
I’m never going to see her again.
It turned the blood beneath his sunbaked skin cold. Why would his father make her stay until the end once Graham reconnected with Helen? If Jason loved her, he wouldn’t want to punish her. Then…what?
He did it for me.
It was crazy. And it was just the sort of thing his old man would do.
Jase shot to his feet. “Get up. Let’s go.”
“What? Where?”
“You have that tracker thing on your phone?”
“What tracker thing?”
“A tracker. Helen’s boyfriend used one to find us in the desert. Do you have one?”
“No, and even if I did”—Graham held up his shattered screen—“it wouldn’t matter.”
“Okay. Okay, where would they go? They hate each other, so it can’t be far. Where were you and Helen going after this?”
“The airport. We talked about selling the car and flying back to get the money.”
“Of course! They’re going home.”
“She wouldn’t sell the car without me,” Graham said. “Right?”
“She left your ass in the middle of Santa Cruz. What else wouldn’t she do? And who cares about the stupid car? What airport were you going to?”
“San Francisco. It had the best flights into Dayton.”
“San Francisco. Okay, let’s go.”
Graham peeled his bruised body off the curb. “All right, genius, how are we going to get there?”
Jase was looking at the motorcycle glistening in the California sun. “You ride?”
Graham squinted at the bike and muttered, “Aw, hell.”