Chapter 15
fifteen
JUDE
My sister’s minivan isn’t in the lot when I pull into the diner, but I’m not surprised. She’s lucky to get away from the marina during the day at all. The lunch crowd is thinned, leaving a corner booth and a quiet spot to talk. Willa still hasn’t shown up when the waitress comes over with a menu.
It’s another five until I spot Willa making small, quick steps towards the door, the likely reason for her tardiness clutching onto her hand. Just a glimpse of Aiden lightens the mood that his father darkened.
When I notice them in the doorway, I stand and then crouch, waiting. Aiden drags his hand free of his mother and runs up to me at a sprint. When he hits my chest at full speed, I encase him in my arms and stand. “Hey, Squirt.”
“Hi, Uncle Dude…” he says.
I turn to bring him to the booth. “You've been good for your Mom?”
He nods his head up and down like it’s the solemnest of oaths.
After my sister Willa gives me a wary look that says he’s being less than honest, she slides in across from us, holding a small bump on her stomach.
Another niece or nephew is on the way. As much as I adore my nephews, I know how little their father pitches in at home.
“When did this happen?” I ask, trying to greet my sister with forced warmth.
“We announced it at the Fourth of July barbecue,” she answers wearily
This is baby number three. Everything was good with the other pregnancies.
They just watch her and the baby carefully and make drastic changes to her insulin regimen.
The worst part, according to my sister, is delivering the large babies that diabetic mothers tend to grow.
There are still concerns, the same as any other pregnancy, but my sister follows her self care meticulously.
It’s something I took into account before not pulling out as I intended with Greer, risking a pregnancy.
Is it really a risk if it’s something you’d love?
“So you’re feeling well, everything’s good?”
“Good with the baby? Yes. With our camera system? No.” The disapproving eyes of my sister scan over me before she pushes back her long dark hair. “Jesus, what were you doing there anyway?”
She couldn’t have actually seen any footage from other angles. She found out some other way. “I just went for a ride. Stopped by for a little bit.”
“In the dead of night?” she challenges. The waitress brings water to the table and a menu for an oblivious Aiden to color on.
“We’re getting chicken fingers,” he pronounces.
“Me too. With honey mustard,” I tell my nephew, giving him my entire attention.
He scrunches up his nose in disapproval, and my heart hurts at seeing the little changes in his face.
It’s thinning out and losing the last vestiges of baby features.
His hair, almost the same shade as mine, has been trimmed into a little man cut, making him look older.
“With ketchup,” he decides. Everything has to be the same for us when we’re together. Same flavor ice cream, same side of the table during dinner. Today it’s ketchup with our meal instead of honey mustard.
“Are you listening to me, Jude?” Willa accuses. “Do you know how weird it looks for you to be out there, that time of the morning with the boats?”
“I never went anywhere near the boats,” I insist, noting she doesn’t say what she thinks about my visit to Bayou Blue Charters.
“Then why else would you be there?”
“I told you. I went for a ride. Wanna tell me why my brother-in-law believes a trip to my own marina warrants a call to the sheriff?” I ask in a pointed tone.
Her hands are shaky when she plays with the straw in her water. “With those people you hang around, it’s easy to make assumptions.” She looks dead at me with her accusation, her voice snippy.
She’s accusing me of using the boats to get rid of somebody or something.
The boats that feed my nephews. Boy, does Rob have some nerve.
Willa can’t really believe all of this. She wouldn’t have brought Aiden. A lotta shit’s been slung around between us, all starting from when I became a prospect, but this is the first time they’ve accused me of wrong, instead of the club as a whole.
Starting to feel my temper rise, I say, “You don’t know any of those men to make assumptions.”
I blame my brother-in-law for all of this. Rob puts all sorts of crazy ass ideas in her head. He won’t even allow me to take the kids out for ice cream alone anymore.
I’ve tried to talk to Willa about Rob, but every warning is treated as a lie, only further fueling the distance between us. One day soon, I’m going to have to make her see him for who he really is as a person.
“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? I’ve heard how the club makes its money. It explains how you could suddenly turn your back on everything.”
Nobody would ever make it as far as prospecting with the Bayou Dogs if they were in it for financial gain. We earn, but we do it with blood and sweat.
My tone calm, I remind her, “You know why I walked away from everything.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s good for you to be with them. Our neighbor saw you riding on the highway with the man that worked over Joe Templet last year.”
Joe had it coming, but that’s not for my sister’s ears. I stay quiet, refusing to discuss club business with my sister, leaving my face placid. “Stop talking to others about the club.”
Aiden points to the paper where he’s drawn a tic-tac-toe square. There’s a fat 0 on one spot already with a red crayon, so I take the blue and draw a random X. “Your turn…”
I turn my focus back to my sister, more worried about the tears welling up in her eyes than a visit from the cops. Maybe I’m a sucker, but I hate it when girls cry. It makes me feel helpless.
“I was out riding with a woman,” I confess. “She has diabetes as well, and I wanted to give her a safe place to stop and treat a low.”
“So why delete the footage?” she asks dubiously.
“I didn’t want to stir things up, that’s all.”
“What’s her name?” Willa asks, the big sister kicking in. “And where did you meet her?”
“Her name is Greer, and we met at a red light, like something out of a movie.” My sister sees straight through the wonder I do a shit job hiding and rests against the seat back for the first time.
“And what does she think about all of this?” she asks, gesturing towards my leather covered chest. There’s the smallest streak of something in her eyes. Hope that settling down might drag me away from the club.
I shrug, not answering. She doesn’t need to know Greer and I met because she was eye fucking the hell out of me on my bike.
“She’s a good woman. A nurse.” Willa and I have never had the type of relationship where you tell your siblings all your secrets, but up until recently it wasn’t antagonistic either.
With our mother gone while we were so young, she was a surrogate mother of sorts.
Grandma pitched in a lot, but Willa was the one in the house when Dad was on an early morning charter.
“The way you’re going, you’re going to end up either in jail or scraped off the highway. If she’s a good woman, then don’t do this to her. Come home,” she implores. “If you don’t want to take the tourists out, you can do…something.”
Something.
I can spend my life doing something even though it makes my soul die a little bit each day. A lot of Cajun men make their living on the waters around the bayou. I’m making mine by the secrets it keeps.
“I already am home,” I say blandly. Aiden pokes my arm, another circle, this one in the middle, and a third across from it, with a line struck through. The little cheater. He’s not even good at it.
“Oh no, rematch…” I say, lifting up my crayon again. “Want to tell me how you found out I was at the marina in the first place?”
My sister gets a stubborn look on her face, “I promised Rob I wouldn’t tell you. He wants to know if you’ve been poking around.”
“On my own property? I’ve got a right to be there.” Tire marks. It could only be muddy tire marks. They didn’t know Greer was there. There’s no video footage left.
Willa sulks over lunch and tries to refuse to let me pay for her meal, as if my money is all somehow dirty.
After carrying Aiden back to the minivan, I buckle him into his booster seat and ruffle his hair.
“I love you. Try not to give your Mom too hard a time, okay?” He gives me fist bumps like I taught him, already distracted by a toy dinosaur he’s pulled off the floor.
The sliding van door closes with finality, then Willa’s standing with her arms crossed over her body, worrying her lip. “I hate that things are like this.”
“The club isn’t bad. You saw what they did for us when I had my wreck, and I was just a civilian employee.
” Folgers and the other brothers showed up in droves.
The old ladies brought meals for my family and offered childcare.
The club stepped up, taking care of all the bills.
Willa saw all the good the club did, but she blames them for the fact that I still ride.
I’ve never been arrested, never been accused of a crime—well, until Rob’s mud slinging today, so it’s not as if my sister is basing her bias on anything other than conjecture.
Accusations flare in my sister’s eyes, words we’ve said to one another again and again. It’s useless to argue at this point.
“You’re still welcome for Sunday dinner, ya know,” Willa says. No, I’m not. Rob will start his shit, I’ll snap at him, my sister will cry, and Dad—well, he won’t do anything but look sad.
I kiss her cheek. “I’ll try. I work long hours on the weekend.”
“Sell your portion,” Willa pleads. “Right now it’s the worst of both worlds. Rob’s mad you’re a partial owner but don’t work. He’ll calm down if you’d only let us buy you out.”
Rob’s mad I won’t turn over my half of the business, inherited from our mother’s side of the family, for a whole other reason.
“This is no different than when I was on active duty. You and Rob collect a salary and I do not,” I remind her.
The profits are split fifty-fifty, and my portion is being put aside as an emergency fund.
There’s no telling what I'll have to do to pull Willa’s ass out of whatever mess Rob manages to create.
“He says you’re just being petty and don’t want his name on the company.”
And he would be right. In an attempt to keep the peace, I’ve considered deducting one employee's salary from my share of the profits, but that would only further line Rob’s pockets.
It was him that approached me with a buy out offer, not Willa.
He handed me a check for that quarter and tried to get me to sign over the company in exchange for the check I’m already owed.
For three months’ profit.
The houseboat we rent out is worth more.
Rob wasn’t with my sister when I left for active duty, and my sister and I made a tentative agreement as to how to run the business.
He doesn’t seem to understand he’s my fucking employee and doesn’t have any say now.
“Even when Dad was widowed with two minor children, it wasn’t his name on the papers.
It was our mother’s, and then ours. Rob collects a salary.
A very generous one, might I add, that seems to go up every year of your marriage.
Six years in a row, he’s earned more for less work. ”
“He has to help out with the kids sometimes,” she argues. “He’s my husband. Let’s see how you feel when you get married.”
No, he should help out with the kids, but he’s out at the bars and fantasy football drafts. Ignoring her last statement, I say, “I have to go out of town for a bit. Text me pictures of the kids?”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m keeping a friend company while he takes care of some business.”
“Club business,” she snarks with an eye roll. She looks at me long and steady, “Try to drive safe, would you?”
“I always do.”
She shoots me the exasperated look of an older sister, but I don’t blame her.
As she pulls off, a part of me wonders when it will be the last time.
When will she stop seeing me, or stop bringing the kids?
I’ve always loved being “Uncle Dude.” My oldest nephew, Braxton, started the moniker, and I wear it on my heart, just like my road name.
I’ve tried explaining things to Willa. The club is about brotherhood, something I’ve missed since I got out of the Army. It’s hard to defend too much when the Bayou Dogs are, by definition, a one percenter motorcycle club.
After a war more than a decade ago, they got out of the higher risk stuff. I’ll admit the shadows of what the club once was still linger. That doesn’t make us bad men.
Using one of the boats to dispose of evidence. The idea’s too ludicrous to consider. What about the fuel I’d have burned running the boat, or the navigation systems? Doesn’t Willa realize the club would have a fleet of its own?
I should know. After all, didn’t I just bleach one down three days ago?