The Spider & the Storm

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CONNECTICUT, PRESENT DAY

It was Thanksgiving Day, and I awoke, more thankful than I’d been in years.

The house was flooded with a bounty of scents, the varied foods being cooked. Foods I hadn't smelled or eaten in longer than I could remember.

Stormy rolled in my arms to kiss me with her eyes still closed. “Happy Thanksgiving, Charlie,” she whispered in a sleepy voice.

My lips stretched in a smile as I kissed her back. “Happy Thanksgiving, my love.”

She hummed, her face painted with happiness and contentment, and opened her eyes a crack. “I like that— my love . It's nice.”

“Well, get used to it.” I kissed her again. “I'm going to—”

Below us, the front door opened, and a jubilant squeal was carried up the stairs and to my ears. Stormy hurried from my embrace to check the time on her phone.

“Oh my God, it's already eleven,” she said. “We have to get up.”

“ Eleven ?” I was shocked. When was the last time I'd slept that late? When the hell was the last time I'd allowed myself to?

“My sister and her family are here,” she went on needlessly. I had already assumed by the excitement coming from downstairs. “I should've set the alarm. There's no time to shower. We have to get dressed and—”

“Hey.” I rounded the bed to grip her shoulders in my hands. “Relax. It's okay.”

“You don't get it. My sister … I love her, but she seriously has her shit together.”

I furrowed my brow. “So, you feel like you need to impress her?”

“No, not …” She averted her gaze from mine and shook her head. “Not really. It-it's just … she's been through a lot of shit, right? Like, a lot of shit, her whole freakin' family—you don't even know the half of it. I mean, so have I, but they don't know about any of that—or not most of it anyway. And even with everything she's been through, she still manages to keep her crap together. She gets up, she gets her kids fed, she goes to work, she makes good money, and her husband … the guy is, like, a fucking saint despite … everything … and—”

“And you want to show her … what? That you're capable of getting your shit together too?” I guessed, trying to put the pieces together as they were laid before me in a jumbled mess.

Stormy sighed and lifted her shoulders in a weak shrug. “I guess. Kind of. I think I just want her to feel for me the way I feel about her, you know? Like …” She gnawed at her bottom lip, the silver hoops clicking against her teeth before saying, “ Proud .”

There was such an endearing innocence reflected in her eyes, one I could empathize with. This woman before me had walked through her own version of hell and made her way out of it, only to try and pick up whatever was left of her life and make something out of it. She’d done well for herself, and now, she only wanted her family—all of them—to see that, hey, despite it all, she’d officially made it.

Hell, with all these recent thoughts of seeing Luke, wasn’t I desperate for the same approval and confirmation that I’d turned out okay?

Stormy laughed beside herself and closed her eyes, hiding the tears that had begun to well. “I know that sounds so fucking stupid. Like, why do I even care? I’m thirty-five fucking years old. What does it matter what my little sister thinks of me or you or whatever?”

She went to move away from my touch, but I stopped her, gripping her shoulders just a little tighter.

“It’s not stupid,” I assured her. “I can’t even begin to tell you how badly I want Luke to meet you. And not even because I think he’d like you—which I do—but because I want him to really see that, by some fucking miracle, I actually managed to get this lucky.”

Stormy stared into my eyes and nodded. “You want him to see that it was all worth it.”

I didn’t know entirely what she’d meant by that. The years he’d taken care of me? All the times he’d driven me to therapy? Ritchie’s murder? All of it? I didn’t know, yet I seemed to understand.

“Exactly.”

“I would love to meet him one day.” She smiled, and I smiled back.

“Okay. But first, I want to meet your sister.” I caught a heady whiff of roasting turkey, and I groaned. “And I want to eat that dinner because, fuck, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve had turkey.”

***

Stormy led the way down the stairs while I followed a few steps behind, like a shy, nervous little kid. The living room was filled with the ruckus made by a very young boy and the enthusiastic yammering of an older boy, both holding on to the attention of Stormy’s parents. A younger woman with light-brown hair pulled into some sort of complicated-looking braid, stood near the couch, shaking her head and laughing at the boys. From the emerald hue of her eyes, I knew she had to be Stormy’s sister, Rain.

“Hey! Did we wake you up?” Rain asked, hurrying across the living room to pull Stormy into a hug.

“Nah, we were already awake,” Stormy replied, squeezing her sister tight.

Rain’s eyes lifted to mine before I could divert my gaze. Old habits died too hard, and my social ineptitude had grabbed hold of me in the presence of her sister’s teasing smirk.

The two separated as Rain said to me, “Hi, I'm not sure we’ve met.”

“Oh!” Stormy looked over her shoulder, momentarily flustered, and extended her hand to me. I took it and allowed her to pull me forward to stand by her side. “Ray, this is Charlie. Charlie, my sister, Ray—or Rain—”

“But I prefer Ray.” Ray was a little younger than Stormy, but her eyes twinkled with the wisdom of someone who’d seen more than even I could imagine. “It’s nice to meet you, Charlie. I think …” She gave Stormy a questioning sidelong glance. “I feel like I’ve seen you before … like … I don’t know … I can’t—”

“When you guys came up last month, we bumped into him outside the restaurant,” Stormy cut in, her cheeks reddening with embarrassment. “But I didn't know his name then. I had called him—”

“The Spider,” Ray finished, her face lighting up with instant recollection as she nodded. “That's right. The tattoos.” Her eyes dropped to my forearms and hands. “Well, it's nice to officially meet you, Charlie.”

“You too,” I replied while trying to place her in my memory.

She had remembered me, but could I remember her? It felt shameful that she hadn't made as much of an impact on me as I apparently had on her.

She gestured toward the two boys, engaging Chris in separate but equally enthusiastic conversations. “Those are my kids. The tall one is Noah, and the short one is Miles. I'd introduce you, but obviously, I'd be interrupting something very important.”

I lifted one side of my mouth. “Yeah, don't worry about it. I'll say hi later.”

“Where's Soldier?” Stormy asked, looking around the living room.

Soldier …

My gut churned with the panic I’d felt weeks ago at the sound of his name.

Ray sighed with agitation, and I looked back at her in time to watch her eyes roll. “Miles is on an apple-juice kick. It's literally all the kid will drink, and Mom forgot to grab some at the store. So, Soldier ran out to find an open store.”

She laughed beside herself and lifted her eyes to mine, obviously attempting to pull me into the conversation. “You know, kids.”

Actually, I didn’t. It might've been silly and sheltered of me, but I couldn't say I honestly knew much about kids at all. I'd been one at some point, and I'd had brief interactions with them throughout my life—mostly while working or running into a grocery store. But apart from that, I couldn't say I knew anything at all about what they were like.

But still, I pushed my lips to smile and forced a laugh. “Yeah.”

Chris stood up from where he'd been sitting on the couch with the boys on either side of him. He announced to them that Grandma had been up all night, baking cookies for them, and he led the way into the kitchen. Only the younger boy—Miles—followed while Noah made his way over to where I stood with his mother and aunt. He eyed me warily, eyes narrowed. There was distrust written in the premature lines forming between his brows. Stormy had mentioned her sister had been through some things, never divulging what those things might've been, but now, I wondered. Had her son been through those same things? What had happened to make him eye a stranger that way? Like he had every reason to believe I was up to no good.

He reminded me of … well, me.

“Hey, kid,” Stormy greeted him.

She reached up to wrap her arms around his neck. He hugged her back, but his eyes never left me. So much suspicion was held in that darkened gaze, too old to belong to a kid this young. How old was he anyway? Sixteen? A little older maybe?

“God, you're getting too tall,” she complained, her tone teasing.

He ignored the jab though and instead asked, “Who's this?”

Ray bumped her hip against her son's and said, “Your aunt Stormy has a boyfriend .”

I didn't have to know much about kids and teenagers to understand a post-traumatic response when I saw one. So, I held my hand out to him, treating him with respect—like a man—so as not to give him the impression that he had reason to worry about his aunt.

“Charlie Corbin,” I introduced myself. “You must be Noah.”

“Uh-huh,” he grumbled, nodding. He was slow to take my hand, but he did. “You bumped into us, right?”

I chuckled awkwardly. God, did they all remember me? “Apparently.”

He was a few inches shorter than me, putting him at maybe six foot even. Good-looking kid with the same eye color as his aunt and mother—a startling shade of green, the color of springtime and new beginnings. But he had the haunted look of dead autumn and deader winter buried beneath that bright green, where he likely dwelled in a past darker than I wanted to acknowledge. A cold trickle of ice carried down my spine as I gripped his hand in mine. Fuck, I hadn't expected to feel like this, so much empathy and compassion for this kid, but I did. I wanted to know what had happened to him, and I wondered how I could find out without overstepping boundaries I had no business wandering beyond.

He dropped my hand and cleared his throat, crossing his arms over his chest. “I like your tattoos. They're cool.”

“Thanks.”

“Do they mean anything, or do you just like spiders?”

I huffed a soft chuckle, glancing down at the webs covering the backs of my hands and fingers, traveling up my forearms and disappearing beneath the sleeves rolled up to my elbows. “Uh … both.”

His eyes widened at that. “You like spiders?”

“Love them actually.”

“Seriously?” He was amused, incredulous.

Ray took Stormy by the arm, whispering something about letting us bond, and dragged her toward the kitchen, leaving me alone with the scrutinizing teenager.

I wasn't sure I could call it bonding, but it was certainly something.

“My mom hates spiders,” Noah said, turning to watch his mom and aunt walk away. Then, he looked back at me as he continued, “My dad hates them, too, but Mom hates them more. So, she has him kill them. Or me, if he isn't around.”

To be honest, I wasn't sure we were talking about spiders at all. Not entirely anyway.

“I don't kill them, if I can avoid it,” I said.

Noah nodded, keeping those arms tightly folded against his chest. Guarded. “That's cool, I guess.”

“Yeah, they're not so—”

The front door opened, not far from where we stood, and in walked a tall, burly man whose bicep muscles could be made out through the fabric of his sweatshirt. He stood easily four or five inches taller than me with a shoulder span that could overtake a bull, let alone someone like me, nearly frail in comparison. Weak .

“Hey, Dad,” Noah said. “You find the apple juice?”

This was Soldier, and he looked every bit of one despite the longer hair, uncharacteristic of anybody in the military. But maybe he'd been enlisted at one point. A Marine perhaps. I hated to admit it, but my anxiety peaked at the sight of him, reminding me of every moment I'd been tormented by Ritchie.

Or his brother . I cringed, hoping it was inward, but knowing it wasn't.

Soldier lifted the bottle in his hand. “Found it. Thank God. I wasn't prepared to listen to that tantrum.”

“Same though,” Noah muttered, laughing.

The giant of a man put the bottle down on an end table and pulled his sweatshirt off, revealing arms of steel blanketed in a patchwork quilt of tattoos. When I really took notice, I saw that every visible area of skin—apart from his face—was covered in ink. And while I couldn't say I found tattoos intimidating themselves, they certainly completed a picture when they were on a guy like this.

A guy like this. Shit. I was stereotyping, and I hated stereotypes. Shame on me.

Then, his eyes landed on me, and I swallowed. He cocked his head, curious recognition igniting in his golden eyes. That look only meant one thing. He'd seen me before, and the oddest part of it was that, in that moment, I realized I'd seen him too.

Probably from outside the restaurant. He must’ve stood out enough for me to remember him.

“Dad, this is Aunt Stormy's boyfriend,” Noah said, taking the reins in making the introductions since neither of us was clearly taking the first step. “Charlie, this is my dad.”

“Charlie,” Soldier repeated, taking a slow step toward me and extending his hand. “Soldier.”

“I know,” I replied stupidly, then quickly added, “Uh, Stormy told me. Your name, I mean. Or … nickname?”

I took his hand, and we shook slowly. Both of us taking the moment to assess the other.

“Nah, not a nickname.”

“Oh. Sorry.” I wanted to tuck my tail between my legs and find a hole to die in.

But Soldier didn't seem to mind the way I would've initially expected him to. “It's all good.”

He stared at me for a few silent moments before his eyes narrowed, like he was trying to place me somewhere, retracing the steps in his mind. “Man, this is gonna drive me crazy. I feel like I know you from somewhere. Where have I seen you before?”

Noah looked up at his father, who, now that I really thought about it, didn't look like him at all. It could've been nothing, but for some reason, it felt like something .

“We bumped into him outside that restaurant Aunt Stormy took us to last month. Remember?”

An awkward laugh pushed past my lips. “Apparently, everyone remembers this but me.” But that wasn't true either, was it? Because while I definitely didn't remember Noah or Ray, I did remember seeing this man. Yet my attempts to place him at the scene itself were feeble. Why is that?

“Huh.” That clueless look on Soldier's face remained, even as he nodded slowly. “Yeah. That might be it. I kinda remember something like that.”

“He's the guy with the spiderweb tattoos,” Noah pointed out, gesturing toward my hands.

Soldier looked down to assess them himself, and then his brows lifted with the sudden hit of memory. “That's right. She called you The Spider. God, that was, like, the beginning of last month, and here you are now, about to have dinner with us. That's crazy.”

It really was wild. How quickly things could change. Of course, I'd been no stranger to that life truth; I'd been aware of how suddenly the entire world could be flipped upside down from a very young age. But never had things changed so quickly for the better. That part was new, and I wasn't so sure I'd ever get used to it. Somewhere in my mind, I was still navigating this chapter of life with caution, not wanting to be too surprised when the next dose of trauma came to bite me in the ass.

“Things moved pretty quickly,” I replied for the sake of saying something and offered a sheepish smile while my brain raced through every possible scenario in which everything could blow up in my face.

“So it would seem.” Soldier smiled, but it seemed forced, as if, like me, he still couldn’t make sense of it. Like somewhere, a piece of the puzzle was still floating around, left unchecked, and nothing would feel right until it was put in its place.

***

The feeling lingered into the evening. Even as we all sat around the table, eating one of the best Thanksgiving feasts I'd ever had, I would glance across the table to watch Stormy's brother-in-law. His mannerisms. How he talked to Stormy's parents. What he looked like when he smiled or frowned or was deep in conversation. I hadn't intended to stare so intently at times, but there was a voice inside my head, screaming at me to remember, remember, remember , and what the fuck I was supposed to be remembering, I didn't know. But I hoped that, if I just watched him enough, if I listened enough, it would eventually come to me.

“So, Charlie,” Chris said, deciding to drag me into a conversation for the first time all night. His attention had been fixated so much on his youngest grandson, and I couldn't say I blamed him. Miles adored him, and from the looks of it, the feeling was mutual. “Stormy told us earlier that you live in the cemetery?”

He asked the question as if it were the most asinine thing he'd ever heard.

I couldn't help but chuckle.

“Yeah, I do. I've lived there for the past five years.”

Noah gave me a genuine smile for the first time. “Awesome.”

“What's that like?” Chris buttered a biscuit as he shrugged. “Do you … do you have a house there? Or do you—”

“Do you sleep in one of those houses they bury bodies in?” Noah blurted out, his face beaming with boyish intrigue.

I chuckled again. “A mausoleum, and, no, they don't usually let us camp out in those.”

Noah's grin broadened, his eyes gleaming with devilish delight. “ Usually is the key word there, right?”

It felt good to joke with him. It felt good to make him smile. But I turned to Chris and informed him that, yes, I had a house, not wanting him to believe his daughter was shacking up with some weirdo who pitched tents between the headstones.

“You're not scared?” Chris asked.

I shook my head. “There's nothing to be scared of.” Which was only half of the truth. I'd believed for a long time that there was nothing to fear, but that was before . Before the trinkets were left. Before the intruder. Before the scent of cigarettes lingered where there'd been none. Before I was haunted by the man who hunted me.

“What about ghosts?” Barbara asked, her face contorting like she'd just seen one.

“They're there,” I answered casually, truthfully. “But they don't bother me.” Well, not until recently anyway .

“It's not so bad,” Stormy jumped in, hooking her hand around the inside of my elbow. Coming to my defense, as I'd come to hers. “You get used to it. And actually, it's really nice. Like being so close to the city but also being far away from the noise and the people. Plus, the neighbors are super quiet.”

Her hand tightened on my arm, and I couldn't contain my smile.

Barbara shivered, and I half expected her to say something, the way she'd made a snide remark about Stormy's job last night. But she kept it to herself and instead asked the last thing I could've possibly wanted to talk about.

“I know your parents are no longer with us, but do you have any other family? Any siblings?”

Soldier's eyes diverted from the food on his plate to look at me, and I thought I might've seen something shift in his gaze.

I pulled in an unsteady breath. Stormy squeezed my arm tighter now, keeping me grounded in the moment. This wasn't a topic I wanted to discuss despite how innocent of a question it was. Most people might say that, yes, they had a brother, but I could guarantee very few of them would then follow it up by saying said brother was spending his Thanksgiving in prison because he’d murdered his childhood best friend. And I could lie, but a quick Google search would prove that to be bullshit, and then what? Sure, I could easily explain that my reason for lying was to save me from judgment and humiliation, but to what end?

So, I kept my eyes on my plate and replied, “I have a brother, yeah.” My voice sounded like it'd been raked across a cheese grater.

“Oh, what is he doing today?” Barbara asked.

“Older or younger?” Chris asked.

“Where does he live?” Barbara again. “Is he married?”

Why couldn't I have just taken my chances and lied?

I shook my head, unable to address any one person at the table, not even Stormy. “He, um … he's older, and n-not married, no. He, uh …”

“Charlie's brother is actually in prison right now, and he doesn't like talking about it,” Stormy interjected.

Dammit, I knew she had meant well. I knew she was trying to help. But all I could do was hold my breath, waiting to hear what they had to say. Waiting for another slew of unwanted questions about why and how long and whatever the fuck else.

Thankfully, they didn't come.

“Oh,” Barbara replied, clearly taken aback. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean—”

“It's okay,” I quickly said, lifting my eyes enough to meet her gaze. “It's just a touchy subject.”

“Of course,” Chris said, then cleared his throat awkwardly.

Then, Noah startled us all by saying, “Hey, Dad was in prison too. It's okay. None of us care about that kinda crap.”

It was a sweet sentiment and one I probably should've appreciated more. But at the mention of his father, I looked up at Soldier, and I found him staring right back at me. One brow lifted, hand gripping his fork, but not moving. I thought he might scold his son for saying something, for divulging a part of his past that maybe he hadn't wanted mentioned in a stranger's company.

Instead, he asked, “What prison is your brother in?”

I swallowed around a ball of lead and said, “Wayward.”

He released the fork in his hand and sat back in his chair. “What did you say your last name was?”

Soldier, Soldier, Soldier …

We stared each other down as I repeated his name in my head. Who the fuck named their kid Soldier? And why the hell did I feel like I knew it from somewhere? Why the hell did I feel like I'd heard it before? Not from Stormy, but … on the news? He'd been in prison, I knew that, so … whatever his crime, wasn't it possible I had …

Soldier, Soldier …

“… Soldier and I …”

My lips parted at the sound of Luke's voice ringing through my head. Remembering a time, a Sunday years ago, when I'd gone to the visitor center to bitch and moan about what a shit show life had turned into while my brother was living it up behind bars. Remembering a brief mention that had been so inconsequential at the time, so stupid and pointless, only for it to now feel so damning.

And Soldier remembered too.

The table went silent as he lifted his finger and wagged it at me. “Your brother … oh my God, your brother … we called him Zero.”

A torrent of emotions raced through my mind and heart at the sound of that nickname, at the realization that not only did he know my brother, but they were friends . At the knowledge that I had somehow—by some stroke of misfortune or luck or fate or whatever the fuck you wanted to call it—managed to fall in love with a woman whose brother-in-law just so happened to have shared a prison dorm with my brother.

I simultaneously wanted to scream, cry, run away, and wrap this guy in a big fucking hug.

But because I couldn't manage any of those things, I huffed a laugh that was tight and constricted by the sadness and disbelief wedged inside my throat. “I always thought that was the stupidest nickname.”

“Holy shit,” he said, bewildered.

Ray looked from her husband to me to Stormy. “This is absolutely insane.”

“It's certainly a small world,” Barbara seemed to agree.

That it is, Barbara , I thought, unable to take my eyes from a man who'd spent more time with my brother in recent years than I'd been allowed. A man who, I realized, might know far more than I was willing to admit. One who could potentially have the power to ruin everything. It is a small, small, small fucking world.