Chapter Twenty-Two #2
I don’t pretend not to know she means Derby.
“Yes.”
“He got you?”
The question slides under my skin.
“I don’t know.”
“Liar.”
I look at her.
She smiles toward the fire. “You know. You’re just scared of saying it because saying it means you got something else to lose.”
I want to tell her she doesn’t know me well enough. But she knew my mother. She knows something.
Maybe enough.
When August finally goes to the bunkhouse, he hugs Derby first.
Not me.
Derby catches my eye over August’s head, clearly realizing it at the same time I do. His expression says he is sorry.
I shake my head.
I’m not hurt.
Not in the way he fears.
I’m gutted because my son has grown another attachment in the wreckage, and somehow it isn’t a tragedy.
August comes to me next, sleepy and dirty and smelling like smoke and tomato sauce. “Derby said he’ll see court again tomorrow.”
“Did he?”
“Yep.”
I glance at Derby.
He looks caught.
“Tomorrow, huh?” I say.
Derby rubs the back of his neck. “Pending invitation.”
Hot Mama cackles.
August doesn’t understand the adult layer. He kisses my cheek, then goes with Maribel and the other kids toward the bunkhouse. I watch until he disappears inside.
Then the music changes.
A slower song.
Not sweet. Nothing in this place is too sweet. It has a rough guitar line and a woman’s voice singing about bad roads and worse men. The fire throws light across Derby’s face as he steps closer.
“Dance?” he asks.
The word hits me that same as they did in the Fire Pit.
This is different.
Just Derby asking in a campground full of women who would shoot him if I said no and he ignored it.
I put my hand in his. “Yes.”
He leads me near the edge of the firelight, not into the center, not making a show. His hand settles at my waist, and this time he doesn’t ask out loud.
He pauses with his palm hovering until I nod.
That is its own question.
Its own answer.
We move badly at first because we always do. Derby is built for motorcycles and fights, not dancing under string lights at a women’s outlaw shelter in Oregon. But he holds me like he remembers every place I’m bruised inside and refuses to press there unless invited.
“I’m mad at you,” I say.
His mouth curves slightly. “I figured.”
“You followed me.”
“You told me not to.”
“That usually means don’t.”
“With most men, maybe.”
“Derby.”
His face sobers. “I had to know.”
“If I was safe?”
“If you wanted me gone.”
My throat tightens.
“I don’t.”
“I heard.”
We turn slowly, boots scuffing dirt.
“Are you mad at me?” I ask.
“Yes.”
The answer is immediate.
Honest.
My chest aches.
“For leaving?”
“For leaving like that.” His fingers flex at my waist, then settle. “For making me wake up in that bed alone after you said you wanted real.”
I look down.
He stops moving.
“Eyes up, Amelia.”
The command is soft enough to be a request.
I obey anyway.
“I deserved more than a note,” he says.
Tears prick my eyes. “I know.”
“And so did you.”
I frown.
His jaw works. “You deserved me learning to let you leave without you having to sneak out.”
That breaks me a little.
I press my forehead to his chest, and this time he doesn’t stiffen. He lowers his chin to the top of my head and holds me in the middle of the song while the Queens talk, laugh, drink, and pretend not to watch.
“I thought you would chase Jeremy again,” I whisper.
“I might have.”
“I thought you would end up in jail again.”
“Probably.”
“I thought if I left, you’d be safe.”
His chest moves with a rough laugh. “Darlin’, I rode two thousand miles on a Harley after a woman who told me not to follow. Safe ain’t really my brand.”
I laugh against him.
Then I feel him go still.
Not a hard still.
A preparatory one.
Like he has put something heavy in his mouth and is deciding whether to let it fall.
I pull back enough to look up. “What?”
He doesn’t answer immediately.
The fire pops beside us. Music plays. A dirty song now that the kids are out of sight. Something about a woman named Sally. Hot Mama’s laugh rolls from near the picnic tables.
Derby’s eyes stay on mine.
“Oaks called before I got here.”
My stomach clenches. “Is something wrong in Kentucky?”
“Yes.”
The word is quiet. Too quiet.
“Lottie? She made it back okay?”
He nods.
“Derby.”
“Jeremy is dead.”
The world drops away. No sound. No fire. No music. No Queens. Only those three words.
Jeremy is dead.
My body doesn’t understand first.
My mind does.
Then my body catches up all at once.
Cold. Heat. Nausea. A strange floating lightness that makes me feel awful because part of me rises before the horror can push it down.
Dead.
Jeremy can’t call.
Can’t send packages.
Can’t file papers.
Can’t stand in a doorway and make my lungs forget how to work.
Can’t touch me.
Can’t touch my son.
I’m free.
The thought comes fast and bright and terrible.
Then guilt slams into it.
Because he is dead.
A man I married. A man I once believed loved me. A man who was August’s father, even if he turned that word into a weapon. A man who made me afraid enough to run. A man I wanted gone but did not know gone could be this final.
My knees buckle.
Derby catches me before I hit the ground.
“Easy.”
I clutch his shirt. “How?”
“Car accident.”
I close my eyes. “No.”
“Brake failure.”
My eyes open. I look at him. His face tells me he knows exactly what I hear in that.
Brake failure. Not a crash.
Not only.
A message. A method.
“Where?”
“Hell Road.”
A road answering a prayer I never said out loud.
Dead Man’s Curve flashes through my mind.
Hell Road.
The Widow.
Derby’s voice in the dark, telling me some say she warns women and some say she wrecks bad men.
I don’t believe in ghosts.
But I understand now why women invent them.
“Did you do it?” I whisper.
Derby flinches.
“No.”
One word.
Immediate.
Angry that he has to say it. Hurt that I have to ask.
I believe him. Of course I believe him.
He was on the road to Oregon. He was coming here. He had blood on his hands once, but not this.
Not this.
“I had to ask,” I say.
“I know.”
“Did they?”
His eyes move past me. Toward Hot Mama.
I follow his gaze.
She stands near the picnic table with a glass of whiskey in her hand, red mouth curved faintly, eyes on the fire like nothing in the world has changed.
Then her gaze meets mine. She lifts the glass one inch. Not a toast. Not a confession. Something older.
Worse.
I can’t breathe.
“Derby,” I whisper.
“I don’t know.”
But he doesn’t say no. Because he can’t.
Because the answer is written all over Hot Mama’s smile and the sudden looseness in Lottie’s shoulders when I imagine someone calling her with the news.
It’s written in the Queens’ code. In rule two.
No woman leaves with the man she ran from.
It’s written in the way this place feels warm and armed and ancient with female rage.
I press a hand to my mouth.
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know.”
“I wanted him to stop.”
Derby’s voice goes rough. “Now he has.”
A sob tears out of me.
Not easy grief. Not joy. Something ugly made from both.
Derby pulls me into him, and this time I let him. My face presses against his chest. His arms come around me, one hand in my hair, the other firm at my back. The song keeps playing because the world is cruel that way.
“Finger Fucking Sally?” the song says.
Women keep laughing softly somewhere. Kids sleep. Fire burns.
Jeremy is dead.
I’m free from him.
I’m not free from what freed me.
Hot Mama finds me later.
After I have cried in the bunkhouse bathroom.
After I washed my face in cold water and stared at myself in the mirror until the woman looking back seemed both younger and older than she was this morning.
After Derby sat outside on the porch like a guard dog who had been told not to enter unless invited.
I did invite him eventually.
Not into the bathroom.
Into the quiet.
He sat beside me on the porch steps while I shook. He did not tell me Jeremy deserved it, though he probably thought it. He did not ask if I was relieved. He did not make my guilt smaller because some things can’t be shrunk without turning poisonous.
He just sat.
Sometimes that is enough.
Now the campground has settled. Kids asleep. Fire low. Music softer. Derby is with August in the bunkhouse because August woke and asked for him in the dark, and I did not have the heart to say no. Derby looked at me before going, asking without words. I nodded.
That is how Hot Mama finds me alone near the garage. The garage is dim, lit by string lights and one overhead bulb. Bikes sleep around us, chrome catching little sparks of light.
She carries a small black case in one hand.
I know before she says anything.
“No,” I say.
Hot Mama smiles. “You don’t know what I’m asking.”
Hot Mama opens the case.
Inside is a small tattoo machine, sterile packets, ink, gloves, all arranged with professional care.
I look at the case. “Is that a tattoo kit?”
“Among other things.”
“I’m not getting a tattoo tonight.”
“Good thing I wasn’t asking.”
I fold my arms. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“No, baby. I don’t.” She steps closer and sets the case on a workbench near the garage. “But I do get to offer.”
Not a whim.
Not a drunken dare.
A ritual.
My fingers go to the skin behind my ear, the place where Lottie’s crown hides.
“Caroline had one?” I ask.
Hot Mama’s eyes soften for the first time all night.
“Yes.”
My breath catches.
“Behind her ear?”
“Left side. Tiny thing. She got it after a night she should not have survived and a man she should not have trusted.”
“Mike?”
Hot Mama says nothing.
That is enough.
My mother, young and wild and beautiful, sitting in this place or somewhere like it, letting a woman mark her with a crown because surviving needed a symbol.
Then leaving.
Then losing herself anyway.
Tears burn again.
“I don’t want to be owned by anyone else,” I say.
The words come out harsher than I mean.
Hot Mama nods. “Good.”