CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella) (13 page)

After all, what would any reasonable person think of this view?  I was lying down with only a flimsy tank top covering my breasts.  Stone hovered over me with his shirt off and the button on his jeans still loose. 

Of course it wasn’t what at all what it looked like.  But how many guilty parties had made the exact same claim? 

Conway was broken, utterly crushed.  “Damn you,” he sobbed as he backed away from us.  “Damn you both to hell.”

CONWAY

“Fucking nuts,” I muttered to the mirror.  It only answered by continuing to spit back my weary reflection.  I’d been in here for too long, ever since I watched Erin run away, right after I accused her of betraying me with my brother. 

A fist thundered against the bathroom door.  “Get outta there, Gentry!” 

I splashed some cold water on my face and shoved the ratty baseball cap back on my head.   What had I done?  What was wrong with me?  I rubbed my eyes, trying to erase the image of Stone’s hurt face from this morning.  And then there was Erin’s devastated one from less than an hour ago.  These were the two people who meant more to me than anyone.  These were the two people who loved me the most in return. 

The thought of them together…it was ridiculous.  It was absurd.  It was a product of my paranoid imagination.  It
was
fucking nuts. 

“Gentry!”  The complaint on the other side of the door returned, along with another volley of battering knocks.   When I opened up I saw Booster standing there, hopping from foot to foot with a pained expression. 

“Go home and do that shit in your mother’s pillowcase,” he snarled before pushing me out of the way.  As soon as he shut the door I heard a colossal fart and a loud groan. 

Benji Carson had his head buried in the guts of a classic Mustang.   He looked up when I cleared my throat. 

“You okay, kid?” he asked. 

I could have made something up, a stomachache or other personal issue.  But I hated to lie to Mr. Carson.  I’d already burned too much karma lately with the people in my life. 

  “I’ve got something I really need to take care of,” I said.  “I swear I’ll be back in an hour.”

Mr. Carson mulled it over.  “You’re off the clock while you’re gone.” 

“I know.”

He shrugged and turned back to the car.  “Have at it then.  One hour?”

“Yes, sir.  Thank you.” 

If I’d had my phone I would have called them both with an apology but my phone was still somewhere on the sludgy floor of the Main Street canal.  Anyway, I owed both Erin and Stone face-to-face apologies. Plus I hadn’t yet told Stone about our mother’s confession and he deserved to know.  It seemed like once I told him it would somehow take the weight off of knowing it myself. 

As I jogged through the back shortcuts toward home I felt better already.  The echo of my mother’s poisonous words did not sting as much. 

She thought I was shit. 

So what?

I wasn’t shit.  After all, the triplets had grown up knowing they were Benton’s sons and they’d managed to evolve into good men.  I could do that too.  I could be just like them someday; self-reliant and honest.  And just like them I could keep my brother as my best friend and go home to my lady every night.  There couldn’t be a girl other than Erin in that role.  I didn’t care that we were young or that it was impractical.  I was ready to promise to spend forever with her. 

It took me almost twenty minutes to make it back to my street.  I’d have to hurry this along if I was going to keep my promise to Carson.  Stone would be easy.  An apology and an awkward man hug would put us back on track. 

Since I’d forgotten my keys back at the garage I headed for the side door, figuring it was more likely to be unlocked than the front door. The outer screen usually let out a rusty screech but it was propped open, leaving only the interior door, which didn’t make a sound. 

The kitchen was empty.  My mother would be at work but Stone should be around.  I didn’t get more than two steps before I heard voices.  I stopped.  There was a burst of female giggling.  

“Stone!” Erin laughed. 

I couldn’t hear what came next.  Soft murmurs.  I followed them, my mouth dry, my heart pounding.   I didn’t want to see what was in the living room.  My feet took me there anyway. 

She was on her back.  Her sweatshirt had been discarded on the floor and Erin, the epitome of modesty, was lounging on my living room couch wearing only a white tank top with no apparent bra.  Stone, bare-chested and disheveled, was leaning over her.  He gently kissed her forehead and the world exploded.  If they’d been totally naked and humping their ever-loving brains out it probably would have hurt a little less.  But seeing them so close, so intimate, in a way that was much more than lust, was a fucking dagger straight through the center of my soul. 

“Damn you,” I choked out and two shocked faces turned on me. “Damn you both to hell!” 

Erin let out a cry of anguish as Stone jumped to his feet.  He came to me with his arms out, saying my name over and over but I kept backing out the way I had come.  I couldn’t be near him.  Or her.  There were no thoughts of violence in my head, no desire for revenge.  There was only the cruel grip of betrayal squeezing my heart.    

“Conway!” Erin screamed.  “Come back!” 

I didn’t come back.  I ran, breaking the kitchen door from its hinges as I tore it open to get away.  I had to.  I
had
to get away.  I ran all the way back to Carson’s garage and promptly vomited into the break room sink. 

Later, much later, when I could stand the thought, I would wonder how different things would have been if I just would have stayed, if I just would have faced them instead of running.  I would have screamed in their faces.  They would have been full of denial or apology.  We all would have cried and maybe wounded one another even more as we shouted and begged and accused and threw things.  It would have been the hour of the rawest hurt of my nightmares.  Instead I ran because right then I couldn’t bear to do anything else. 

So that’s my crime.  That’s my cowardly role in this terrible heartbreak. 

But how could I have known what would happen next?

No, never once did I imagine how close we stood to a perilous ledge. 

It never occurred to me that we were
all
about to fall. 

ERIN

Stone looked at me.  I looked at him.  There was no room for tears, or even words.  I knew my face must be a mirror of the grief I saw in Stone’s.  

Conway thought we had betrayed him. 

He thought he’d caught us in the act and who could blame him?  The way he’d looked at us…such agony.  I’d never seen him so shattered. 

There was noise in the room.  It hurt to listen to it.  I covered my ears because it was hurting me.  It wasn’t until Stone came to my side and pulled my hands away that I realized the noise was a long, wailing moan that came from my own throat. 

Stone scooped my sweatshirt off the floor. “This can be fixed,” he was saying as he draped the sweatshirt gently over my shoulders.  “This can be fixed.” 

“How?” I whispered.  Right now Conway wouldn’t have any reason to believe a word we said.   “We need to find him,” I choked out.  “We need to explain, to make this okay somehow.” 

“We will.” 

“We have to find him.” 

“We will!” 

“Now, Stone!  We’re just sitting here and Conway’s alone.  He can’t be alone out there, running around in that kind of pain and thinking that we…OH GOD!  It’s got to be now. 
Right now.
  Tomorrow will be too late.” 

I was babbling, rocking back forth.  I didn’t know why I was so sure that tomorrow would be too late (
too late for what?
) but I knew that it was. 

Stone disappeared down the hall.  When he returned he was pulling a blue t-shirt over his head.  He took his phone out of his back pocket and then threw it down, probably realizing that there was no chance he could get in touch in Con that way since Con had lost his phone in the accident last week. 

“Fuck!” he shouted.  He started pacing back and forth and breathing in gasps. 

Somehow the sight of Stone losing it calmed me down a little.  I pushed my arms through the sleeves of the sweater and stood up. 

“Where would he go?” I asked calmly. 

Stone stopped pacing.  He looked around wildly.  “I don’t know.” 

“Back to Carson’s Garage maybe?”

He shook his head.  “Doubt it.  He’s probably run off somewhere to be alone.  That’s what I’d do, if I were him.  I wouldn’t be able to stomach the company of other people.” 

“Well.” I clasped my hands in front of me.   My mind was working quickly.  “Emblem isn’t that huge.  Your mom’s at the pharmacy, right?  Any chance she would lend you her car?”

Stone snorted.  “Are you kidding?  My mother wouldn’t give me a glass of water at this point.” 

“Wait for me,” I said and walked out the door. 

Stone followed.  “Where are you going?”

“Home.  I’ll be back.” 

My house was silent but my father’s car was in the driveway.  I was glad my sisters weren’t home because I couldn’t handle explaining anything at the moment.  

I found my father on the couch again, asleep, still in his uniform.  He’d probably fallen asleep there a thousand times since the bleak day of my mother’s suicide.   I watched him breathe and allowed myself to think about a terrible time I’d been mentally running from since it happened.   

It had been all over by the time I got home from school.  A neighbor had walked his dog past our house and smelled gas so he called the fire department.   They found her there in the kitchen, the same kitchen where we’d made cookies and laughed through family dinners.  The coroner’s report said she’d died around eleven a.m.  When I found that out it seemed important to remember where I’d been at the moment she gave up.  I’d been in gym, standing out in left field with my softball glove and hoping no one hit a ball out that way.  Eleven a.m.  I only knew that because I’d heard my father talking to Aunt Bonnie.   To us girls he didn’t say much, just trying to make it from day to day the best he could. He called it an ‘accident’.  I understood.  I never corrected him.  The man just wanted to go on with the business of healing and bypass the chore of grief.  I couldn’t blame him for that. 

My father snored lightly, looking younger in sleep than he ever did when he was awake.  I took the soft afghan from the reclining chair and covered him gently with it. 

“I love you, Daddy,” I whispered and felt a surge of tenderness and he smiled briefly in his sleep. Then I pocketed the car keys that were sitting on the coffee table. 

Stone waited on his front stoop.  He was hunched down with his head bowed.  It was the first time in a long time he seemed like a boy.   He looked up when he heard me approach. 

I held up the keys.  “Let’s go find him.” 

“Whose are those?”

“My dad’s.  Can you drive?  I don’t feel well.” 

He nodded and went straight to the silver Camry in my driveway.   We didn’t have much to say to each other as we drove through the streets of Emblem.  For once we were both united with the same purpose. 

Find Conway.  Make him understand the truth. 

Stone thought there was a chance Con was at the old bridge but he wasn’t.  When we stopped by the pool we saw a few kids from school and asked if they’d seen him but they all shook their heads. 

“Think he’d climb the butte?” I asked.  The butte was a tiny mountain that sat right outside town.  There was crypt at the top in the shape of a pyramid.  It was a place people went to hang out, or drink, or fuck, or just ponder the miserable state of the world. 

Stone considered.  “Maybe.  I’ll turn around when we get to the end of Main Street and we can swing by there.” 

“Okay,” I said.  I was tired, so tired.  But there wouldn’t be any rest until we’d found Conway.  I wouldn’t sleep until I’d extinguished that agonized look in his eyes.  

Just last year the town installed a new park just west of Main Street.  It was little more than a wilting patch of grass with a few lonely swings.  As we passed by it was empty.  The only movement came from the sprinklers, which simultaneously rose from the ground and sprayed the grass with a fine mist of water.  The harsh sunlight was softening.  It would disappear soon.  But the lingering rays dallied in the Main Street park, playing in the gentle spray of water.  Together they formed small rainbows. 

Stone glanced at me curiously when I opened the window and extended my hand.  Silly though it was, I reached for those rainbows.  I unbuckled my seat belt so that I could reach further.  Roe had told me that if I ever had a chance to catch a rainbow then I should.  As my hand closed I imagined I succeeded and a feeling of utter peace washed over me as I shut my eyes. 

“Ah, shit,” Stone cursed as he sped up. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Can’t shake this fucker.”  He pointed to the old Chevy that surged beside us.

Benny Cortez’s goofy face was behind the wheel.  He was a year younger than us, the brother of Tony Cortez.   “C’mon Gentry,” he shouted cheerfully.  “Let’s race.”

“Fuck off!” Stone yelled.

“First one to the light ain’t a chicken shit!” 

“Not tonight, man.” 

Benny didn’t hear or wasn’t listening.  He gunned the engine and sped up, cutting us off.  Stone cursed and slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding slamming into the Chevy.  Benny switched lanes, fell back beside us. He laughed as Stone shouted a slew of curses and cut the wheel sharply to the right.

Looking down, I noticed my hand was still closed in a fist.  I slowly opened my fingers, staring. A light, a brilliant light, came from the center of my open palm and it gave me such joy because I had done the impossible.  I had captured a rainbow.  I couldn’t wait to tell Roe. 

Then there was a terrible sound, unnatural, like a tree screaming. 

Then a voice, Stone’s voice, saying my name again and again. 

Then…nothing.