One Hundred Three
IT’S JUST TAYLOR and me on the porch after dinner, EJ having long since gone up to bed.
Tay has poured whiskeys for both of us. She says, “Helene is more determined than ever to finish what Burt started.”
“More like obsessed,” I say.
I touch my glass with hers and we drink.
Now there’s just the quiet creak of both our rocking chairs.
It would be such a peaceful scene here, the front yard and the barn and the driveway lit by the moon, Bumper snoring softly between us, if it weren’t for two armed guards less than a hundred yards away.
Helene had suggested that both EJ and Taylor leave town for the time being, but I’d told her that would never happen with either one of them.
“Can’t speak for myself,” Helene had said. “But you’re not losing anybody else.”
She’s extended her order from the night the tattooed man and his crew had attacked me outside the farmhouse, keeping a county police car at the very end of the driveway round the clock.
One of the cops goes with EJ when she heads into town. One goes with Taylor when she’s behind the wheel of her school bus. Helene has the same police protection for the Ridenours, Holly being the only witness against Roof and Lynyrd Crockett, for now.
It has gotten chilly out tonight. Taylor gets up and goes inside. When she’s back in her rocking chair, I see she’s wearing one of EJ’s ancient cardigans. Somehow, maybe because she’s Taylor, she has made living here with us seem like the most natural thing in the world.
She takes another sip of whiskey, then puts her head back to stare up into a sky full of stars, and so much of a full moon the night looks more like the dawn.
“I can’t lose you, Silas,” she says finally. “I know I’ve told you that before. But if something ever happened to you… after Burt, and so soon after Burt… I’m not sure my heart could take it.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” I say. “And for the record? We both know that heart of yours could survive a damned nuclear attack.”
“They’ve already come for you twice at your own home,” she says. “There’s no reason they might not do it again if Helene keeps pushing.”
“Well, you know what they say.”
“No, Silas, what do they say?”
“Sometimes the best defense,” I tell Tay, “is a good offense.”
I see her face brighten now. It’s just one more moment when I can see the little girl in the amazing woman she’s become, see it fully, and understand all over again why I’ve always loved her the way I have, in ways I’m not even sure I fully understand, after knowing her my whole life.
“Don’t give me that shit,” she says.