Lone Wolf (The Texas Brand: Generations #4)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

His mother was dying and she was only forty-four.

She looked far older though, ravaged by cancer.

She wasn’t going to recover and get out of the hospital.

Not this time. And her nurses had told him it was close, so he’d stopped going in to work at all this week.

He came in the morning, took a break at midday when she was usually sleeping, then headed back for the evening visiting hours.

He sat by her bedside and held her hand. She opened her eyes and looked into his, her gaze direct and clear. He hadn’t seen that in a while. She said, “I’m too weak…to talk as much…as I should.”

“You don’t have to talk, Ma. I can do all the talking.” He leaned over, holding her hand. Her copper-red curls had faded to the shade of ground ginger, and the roses had fled her cheeks.

“I thought I’d have…more time.”

“I did too, Mom. A lot more.”

She smiled at him, but it was weak, and her poor lips were so chapped it probably hurt. He quickly grabbed the lip balm from her bedside stand and went to put it on, but she held up a hand, bending her eyebrows. “No. Listen.”

He lowered his hand, startled. Cilla had never snapped at him like that.

She took a breath, like getting mad had taken it out of her. Her eyes drooped, but she popped them open again. “You’ll have to read the journals, I guess.”

“What?”

“Too weak,” she said, her voice becoming a whisper. “But you need to know.”

“I need to know what?”

She muttered, “loose board” and “linen closet” before falling asleep.

He could tell she was down for the time being, so he kissed her forehead, tucked her blankets around her, uncovered her feet the way she liked, and then he went home, sure to his bones there would be no loose boards or hidden diaries to find in the linen closet.

Morphine and dying did odd things to people.

She said a lot of crazy things in the increasingly rare moments when she was awake.

And yet an hour later, he was standing in front of the linen closet on the second floor of their small, simple house.

A section of paneling was leaning on the open closet door.

Its shelves were on the hallway floor, towels and sheets and all, still folded.

He’d moved them with care. No point making a mess.

He didn’t even know his mother had kept journals. And why the hell would she hide them so thoroughly?

He was surprised when he found two small books behind the wall panel and took them both out.

The top one’s cardboard covers were wrapped in peeling red fake leather.

The second one was yellow with daisies. He untied the first diary’s pink ribbon and opened the small book.

The date inside was only a few weeks older than he was.

Then he looked at his watch. He had to grab a sandwich, then help his boss for just a few hours. He could still make it back for late visiting hours with his mom.

He took the little red book with him to read later, by his mother’s bedside during her intermittent naps.

Cilla Travail

August 10

I had a Greek mythology book in my backpack and seventy-five dollars in the pocket of my jeans-jacket when I rode my bike home from babysitting for the Belmonts today. It was seven p.m.

I used to keep my babysitting money in my music box. It was white with a ballerina inside, and it played Beethoven’s “Fur Elise,” cause I like the music so much. Stepdaddydearest keeps borrowing my babysitting money. Always promises to pay me back double, but he never pays me back at all.

Last time he asked, I told him I already spent it. Man, he lost his mind. Trashed my room, broke the lid off my jewelry box, and found the money. Then he backhanded me for lying and lectured me for an hour about being a selfish little brat who didn’t want to help my family.

So this time I kept my cash on me, like I do this diary.

It didn’t matter though. Cause when I pedaled into my driveway, Mom’s car wasn’t there.

I never like being home alone with my old man.

He’s always groping me when nobody else is around.

Been doing that shit since I was eleven.

Hands on my boobs, hands on my butt, hands on my crotch.

It’s worse when he puts his hands inside my pants, because then it hurts.

Sometimes he just pulls me close and presses himself against me and breathes his stupid cigarette breath all over me.

It’s gross and I hate it, but he says he’ll kill me if I tell, and that mom will never believe me anyway and hate me forever.

That part scares me most. That my mom will hate me. I feel so guilty for what he does to me that I bet it’s probably true. She will hate me if she ever knows.

Mostly I just avoid him and pretend my life is normal. But I know better. I am not normal. When I’m around other kids my age, I feel like a freak, as if everyone can see it. I’m not the same as them. I don’t fit in. I’m…weird.

So I got to the edge of our driveway, balanced the bike with one foot on the ground, about to pedal off and stay away until Mom got back, when Dad opened the front door and asked me why I was standing out there like an idiot, loud enough for every neighbor to hear.

I told him I was going to Shelly’s, but that didn’t work. He ordered me inside and asked if I got paid. I tried out my lie and it worked. He let the door bang closed and went back in.

I got off the bike, rolled it out of the driveway onto the grass, and walked inside about as slow as I could.

When I got in though, he wasn’t there waiting to grope me.

He went straight to the family room in back where he spent most of his free time in his reclining chair with the window open, winter or summer, smoking cigarettes and watching television.

A vehicle pulled in and I sighed in relief. I thought Mom was home. He never touched me when Mom was home—except in the middle of the night, sometimes.

I was expecting Mom to walk in all smiles and rosy cheeks and cluelessness, but instead, someone on the other side knocked.

So I opened the door.

Two men stood there, white guys. They didn’t say anything for a second, but they looked at me in a way that felt weird. And then they looked at each other and grinned, and I got chills and didn’t know why.

They asked if my dad was home, said he was expecting them. But before I could point the way, stepdaddydearest bellowed, “Back here, guys. You too, Priscilla.

I don’t know how to explain this in words, but it was like my feet were glued to the floor.

I felt like I was gonna throw up. The men started back, but I stayed where I was with my hand on the still-open door.

I couldn’t seem to close it. There was something bubbling, something like, Get out of here.

Get out of here right now, but I couldn’t figure out why.

I couldn’t ignore it, though. I didn’t really even think about it until later, when I had the time, finally, to sit still and write all this down.

It was just like…I had to leave. I couldn’t not leave. It was weird like that.

I looked around, feeling panic bubble up for no reason. And I noticed the rack beside the wood stove with only two logs in it, and I said loudly that Dad would kick my ass if I didn’t get some firewood in here.

Then I was out the front door. I didn’t go to the woodpile but straight past it to my bike. I almost took off right then. But I was still arguing with myself for this sudden urge to piss off my old man in a way that was bound to have consequences I wouldn’t like. And I was curious, I guess.

Miz O’Connor, my English teacher, says I have an inquisitive mind. My French teacher wants to send me to France next year as a foreign exchange student, but all Mom said when I told her was that the school must think parents are made of money and then asked what the hell I’d do in France.

Dad said what Dad always says. “No.”

I hate him so much.

I pushed my bike around behind the house to that always-open window and laid it down real quiet in in the grass, then I went closer but stayed down low out of sight, and I listened.

One of the strangers asked how old I was, and Dad said fourteen, and then the other guy asked if I was a virgin. Dad said, “Fuck if I know,” and the stranger said a number. Two thousand.

I gasped, then clapped my hand over my mouth and froze—I was so sure they’d heard me in there.

Dad haggled, asked for five, and said he was gonna have to go to all the trouble of convincing Mom I ran away, and that alone was worth five. And the other guy said he couldn’t go higher than four and Dad said okay.

My blood felt like it had frozen. I shivered, but besides that, I was paralyzed.

Dad bellowed for me to get my ass in there, and I finally managed to move again.

I grabbed my bike and pedaled through the next three backyards fast as I could. I felt like I was being chased the whole time. I couldn’t stop shivering, but I wasn’t cold.

I veered into the little woodlot with the shortcut path everyone always takes to school.

But I didn’t stop at school either. I just kept pedaling and thinking my stepdad had just tried to sell me.

To sell me! I don’t even know what for. But I had to get away, as far away as I could go.

I knew that for sure. Mom would never believe me if I told her. Nobody would.

After an hour of pedaling, I’d made it to the truck stop out near the highway exit.

I don’t know how many miles from home, but a ways.

There were lots of rigs, big and small, filling the parking lot, coming and going non-stop.

The smells coming from the deep fryer pulled me in that direction and my stomach growled.

I had enough money to eat, but I was still too close to home to be seen or to even stop riding.

Or at least to stop for very long. My old man would be out looking for me. So would Mom.

Poor Mom.