Hard Time (29 page)

Good God, a man old enough to be in grad school poaching from Kernsville High? But I could imagine Eric’s reply if he were watching me process the scandal.
Just how it goes, around here.

We thanked the bartender when the pitcher was delivered and Kristina sent her off with a twenty. She refilled our glasses, keeping her attention on her drink even after she’d set the pitcher aside. “My mom has all the photos of Danny in this special album—all baby-blue satin with a lacy border and shit. Separate from everything else. Drives me nuts, like he wasn’t a part of it all. All our lives, back then.”

Her eyes were soft and sad, and I thought maybe she was tipsy. I knew I was. If the options with Kris were angry-drunk or weepy-drunk, I was waving pom-poms for the latter. And I was starting to feel sentimental, myself. My posture was slumped and slack, my emotions loose and wide-open, dandelion fluff. It felt good. I hoped Kris wouldn’t turn on me, bat me hard and send all those vulnerable wisps flying.

“Maybe your mom needs to keep them separate,” I offered, “so she can visit those memories when she’s prepared to.”

She swallowed a deep slug of beer, nodding. “I know, I know . . . I get that. But it’s been forever. I mean, fuck. Danny’d be turning
nineteen
this March, if he’d lived. Nine
teen.
Older than I was when I had him. He’d be out of high school, but she still can’t remember him the way I do. You couldn’t keep that kid out of anything—wanted to be the center of it all.”

I smiled, her fond grin infectious.

“I wish she’d remember him that way,” Kristina said. “Folded in with the rest of our family’s memories. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we had good times. And that kid . . . He made me feel so goddamn rich, while he was around.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded, still not looking at me. “Yeah. Most beautiful thing I ever called mine. And sweet—don’t even know where he got that. Looked just like Eric, when Eric was little. You put their baby pictures side by side and you’d swear they were twins. Big brown eyes, mess of curly hair.” She laughed. “Big fucking heads. Walking around looking like lollipops, with those big heads on those skinny bodies.”

“Is that why you’re so . . . protective of your brother?” I asked. “Why you’re afraid of him taking up with some girl who’s not good enough for him . . .”

She finally met my eyes. “I got every reason to feel that way about my brother. ’Cause he reminds me of the son I lost? Maybe. ’Cause he held my baby more than any other man ever did, while Danny was with us—way more than my son’s father did, more than my own dad did. ’Cause he’s been the one man in my life who ever put me first, and the only one who stuck around.”

A shiver moved through me, like someone had cracked a window at my back. God help me, I finally understood her. I sipped my drink, let her go on.

“Maybe ’cause I half raised Eric,” she said thoughtfully, “the years when our mom worked two jobs. Maybe because he returned the favor, and stepped up as the father we hardly saw, when I needed him to. Maybe ’cause I was sick of watching everyone around us throwing their lives away on the wrong people. I couldn’t pinpoint it for you. But I got a hundred good guesses.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. A lot of sense . . . I’d take back some of the things I said to you last night, if I could. Knowing all that.”

She shrugged, evading my eye contact once more but looking as relaxed as I’d yet seen her. “I was hard on you.” She laughed softly, and for the brief moment, with her cheeks rounded and her eyes crinkling, her mean face was pretty. “I’m hard on everybody. And I know I hold on too tight to him, I do. It’s hard not to, when he’s the one reliable handhold I got, you know? Or maybe you don’t know.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But I can hear what you’re saying.”

“I’m
glad
you don’t know,” she said, meeting my eyes for just a second. “I want my brother to be with someone who wants him, but doesn’t
need
him. You know? Listen to me, sounding like a goddamn feminist. But yeah . . . someone who’s not so dependent on him that they can’t step back and see all the good in him, I guess. Fuck if I even know what I’m trying to say. Think I may be drunk.”

“Me, too. And I know what you mean. And I do see all that stuff in your brother. In fact, the things I’m the most uneasy about with him are probably the things those other girls might want him for. The protectiveness, I guess. The way he puts his loved ones almost
too
high above himself. And his freedom.”

She nodded, brow furrowed. “You mean me.”

“Not exclusively. He’s shown that side to me, too. It scares me so much, knowing if anything happened to me and he thought it was his job to go after somebody . . .” Knowing how for that bright, burning moment, face-to-face with Justin, I’d wanted to exploit that side of Eric. “Knowing how guilty I’d feel if he wound up back in prison, over me. He’s so black-and-white about some things. I wish I could make him understand that having him in my day-to-day life is so much more important to me than his payback. But he doesn’t want to hear that. He thinks it’s all he has to give.”

She smiled, looking guilty. “Can’t imagine who taught him that.”

I softened further. “I think it’s just who he is, too.” It was in his upbringing, in his genes, in his blood. In the water, around here. Like Kristina’s reliance and protectiveness, there was no single culprit to blame, merely a fact demanding acceptance.

“But you see other things,” she prompted.

I nodded. “I see lots. He’s maybe the gentlest man I’ve ever met . . . which sounds crazy, considering where we met, and how he got there. He’s the most romantic man I’ve ever known, by far.”

Her eyebrows rose at that, telling me that just as I’d envied their bond, feeling like it was out of my reach, there were facets to her brother that only I got to see.

“That’s plenty of information, right there,” she teased, halting my squishy inventory with a raised palm. But I sensed a pride in her, too, as she realized the man she’d helped raise had turned out that way—kind and romantic.

“He got me this, for Christmas.” I toyed with the end of my new scarf, silver strands glinting under the low lights.

She smiled. “It’s pretty. He’s got way better taste than me.”

I let the tail of the scarf fall away and took a deep breath. “I love your brother. A lot.”

Her lips pursed, but she nodded. “I believe that.”

“I want what’s best for him, too. Only the things I want for him look different than the things you want. You want to protect him from getting used by the wrong kind of women. I want to protect him from getting put away again, when he’s got so much to offer. Not just what he offers me, but what he can offer with his talents, and his hard work. What he could offer as a father someday, maybe. What he can offer you and your mom, as a free man—just his support and his company and his help. We’re both afraid of him wasting his potential. I think we can at least agree on that.”

“Yeah,” she said heavily. “Yeah, we can. But he’s a Collier. What you and I want won’t mean shit, if he’s got his mind made up.”

“Do you think you could let him go, though? Just on this one issue. Give him permission to stay out of this stuff with your . . . your ex, or your attacker, however you think of him.”

She stared into the middle distance beyond my shoulder. “That’s like asking me to face down a bull with no sword.”

“I bet.”

We went silent, sipping our beers, watching the people gathered before the bar. It was getting busy. I excused myself to use the ladies’ room, and Kris did the same after I returned. When she tried to give me a refill I covered my glass. “I think three’s plenty for me.”

She eyed her own glass and seemed to concur. She sat up tall and twisted in her seat to address the two men in the next booth. “Hey, Jim.”

The one named Jim turned, looking delighted when Kris handed them our half-full pitcher. That left just her glass to drain, and the conversation felt complete. We’d reached more than the truce I’d skeptically agreed to attempt. Not quite a bond, but maybe a seed capable of growing one. Maybe with a little nurturing—or the odd pitcher—every time I saw her, it could slowly blossom into something warm and sturdy.

“Shall I call Eric?” I asked, fishing out my phone. “Get us our ride home?”

She nodded and drained her glass. “Yeah, sounds good. I need a smoke. Feel free to wait inside.”

As she bundled up, I dialed Eric.

“Hey.” Man, one word and that voice had me as buzzed as those three pints.

“Hey. We’re ready to get picked up.”

“Cool. Give me twenty minutes? I’m trying to solve this thing with my mom’s DVD player for her.”

“Sure.”

“How’d it go? Any hair get pulled?”

I smiled. “No, we did real good. You should be proud of us both.”

“Hey, glad to hear it. I’ll see you in twenty. Don’t leave me for some dreamboat before then.”

I laughed. “Impossible.”

“See you soon.”

I hung up and got my layers on to join Kris outside. I found her standing a few feet from the front door.

“He’s going to be about twenty minutes,” I told her.

“Oh good. I’ll smoke another, then.”

I pulled my gloves from my coat pocket and tugged them on.

“Feel free to wait inside,” she said again.

“Nah. It feels good, actually.” The night had that rare crispness to it—nothing to do with the cold, just that state of mind where the world felt to be in the finest focus. I looked up into the black sky. “So many stars out he—”

Kris grabbed my upper arm through my coat. Her other hand flicked her cigarette to the pavement and the blue-gray smoke jetted out before us.

“What is it?”

“I dunno yet. Maybe nothing.” Her eyes were locked on a red truck with a white cap on its bed, pulling into a spot in the far corner. I studied her expression and the night went liquid-nitrogen cold.

“That’s not him, is it?” I didn’t even know
his
name. “The guy who . . . ?”

“I dunno,” she breathed. She seemed to remember she’d grabbed me, letting my arm go. “Looks too much like his goddamn truck.”

“Did he drink here a lot?”

She hissed a long,
“Shi-i-i-it.”

Across the lot, a man had exited the vehicle. Big guy, over six feet, round through the middle under his canvas bomber.

“Let’s go inside,” I told Kris. “He hasn’t seen you. Hide in the bathroom and I’ll tell you when—”

“No,” she said softly, eyes on the man. He moved slowly and unevenly, a sway in his step. Drunker than us, surely.

“What are you going to do?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Feel free to go inside.”

“No . . . He looks wasted. We could call the cops, if he’s driving drunk.”

“He’s not drunk. He’s got a limp, from what my brother did to him.”

Oh, Jesus. “We can’t start something that’s going to drag Eric in, when he gets—”

“Wes,” Kris called.

The floor dropped out of my stomach. He was close enough that I registered the surprise in his widening eyes. He stopped where he was, maybe ten paces from us.

He said simply, “Hey, Kris.”

I could hear her pounding heart in her voice. “What’re you doing here?”

He didn’t answer that question. “How you been?” His tone was uneasy. He wasn’t afraid of her, but he wasn’t sneering or cruel or threatening, either. Uncertain. I had to wonder how he might’ve felt about what he’d done to her, once he’d detoxed in the hospital or prison.

“I was doin’ just fine,” Kris said, “until I heard they were letting you out.”

“I got no beef with you.”

“That’s funny. I’ve still got one with you.” Her quavering voice undermined the tough words.

He changed the subject. “How’s your mom?” There was no threat implicit in the question, I didn’t think. No veiled,
Be a shame if anything happened to her.
I could guess the reply Kris held back, something to the tune of,
You mention my mother again and I’ll gut you.
But she didn’t give him the reaction, didn’t hand him the ammo. Didn’t say a word.

“You gonna sic your brother on me again?” Wes asked, shifting from foot to foot.

I held my breath, worried for what might come next from Kris’s lips.
He’s on his way now.
But no. Instead she simply said, “You know I could, but only if you give me a good reason. My brother wasted enough of his life on your sorry ass. What’re you doing in my town?”

“Meetin’ my cousin for a beer.” He looked to me. “Who’s your friend?”

“None of your business,” Kris said, and took a step forward, as though shielding me. She was doing a decent job of acting tough, but I wanted this guy to have every reason to keep being cool.

I kept my voice level, rational, like I was talking to a guy at Cousins. “What do your parole terms say about you going to bars?”

He stared at me a long beat, a hint of aggression in those eyes giving me pause. “Who the fuck wants to know?”

“Kris’s friend,” I said.

“It’s a goddamn good question,” Kris said, and she pulled out her cigarette pack and slid one between her lips. She spoke around it. “What
does
your parole have to say about that? ’Cause I got a dozen good friends in that bar who’d be happy to say they saw you drinkin’, tonight.”

“Well maybe they won’t see me drinkin’,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just order me a ginger ale and have a nice chat with my cousin, call it a night.”

“That sounds real smart,” Kris said smoothly. The fear had left her voice. She sounded oddly cocky, in fact.

“I got no issue with you,” Wes told her. “I ain’t here to get myself crippled by your goddamn psycho brother again. Just here to see my cousin, so I can borrow his power drill. Okay?”

“Good plan,” Kris said. “’Cause if I hear about anybody seein’ you around town after this, I’m not gonna be impressed. And if for any reason you get
any
ideas about coming around me, I got a gun, and I know how to use it.”

“You sound fucking crazy, you know that?”

“I barely told anybody what went down between you and me,” Kris said slowly. “But I could. I could tell every good friend of mine in this county what you did, and you’ll be lucky if they don’t put my brother’s justice to shame.”