The Best of Me (36 page)

Candy held the phone as she sat in the parking lot of the Tidewater. Two calls from Abee. Two unanswered and so far unreturned calls. The sight of them made her nervous, and she knew she should call him back. Just do a little purring and say all the right things, but then he might get it into his head to come and visit her while she was at work, and that was the last thing she wanted. He’d probably notice her packed car in the parking lot, figure out that she was planning on clearing out, and who knew what that psycho would do.

She should have packed up later, after work, and left from home. But she hadn’t been thinking, and her shift was about to start. And while she could cover maybe a week in a motel and the food, she really needed tonight’s tips for gas.

There was no way she could park out front—not where Abee could see the car. Slipping into reverse, she pulled out of the lot and rounded the highway curve, back toward downtown Oriental. Behind one of the antiques stores at the edge of town was a small lot, and there she turned in and parked out of sight. Better. Even if that did mean she had to walk a bit.

But what if Abee showed up and
didn’t
see her car? That might be a problem, too. She didn’t want him asking too many questions. She thought about it, deciding that if he called again she’d answer and maybe mention in an offhand way that she’d had car trouble and had been dealing with that all day. It was troublesome, but she tried to console herself with the fact that she had only five hours to go. By tonight, she’d be able to put this whole thing behind her.

Jared was still sleeping at quarter past five, when his cell phone began to ring. Rolling over, he reached for it, wondering why his dad was calling.

Except it wasn’t his dad. It was his dad’s golf buddy, Roger, asking him to come and pick up his dad at the country club. Because his dad had been drinking and shouldn’t be driving.

Gee, really?
he thought.
My dad? Drinking?

Jared didn’t say that, even if he’d wanted to. Instead, he promised to be there in about twenty minutes. Getting out of bed, he threw on the shorts and T-shirt he’d been wearing earlier, then slid into his flip-flops. He collected his keys and wallet from the bureau. Yawning, he descended the steps, already thinking about calling Melody.

Abee didn’t bother to hide the truck on the road outside Tuck’s and hike through the woods like he’d done the night before. Instead, he sped up the uneven drive and came to a gravel-spraying halt directly in front of the house, driving like a SWAT team leader on a mission. He was out of the truck with his gun drawn before Ted, but his brother clambered out of the truck with surprising agility, especially considering the way he looked. The bruises beneath his eyes had already turned blackish purple. The guy was a human raccoon.

No one was around, just like Abee had expected. The house was deserted, and there was no sign of Dawson in the garage, either. His cousin certainly was a slippery bastard. It was a shame he hadn’t stuck around all these years. Abee could have found good use for him, even if Ted would have had a fit.

Ted wasn’t all that surprised that Dawson was gone, either, but that didn’t mean he was any less angry about it. Abee could see Ted’s jaw muscles clenching in sporadic rhythm, his finger stroking the Glock trigger. After a minute of seething in the driveway, he marched toward Tuck’s house and kicked in the door.

Abee leaned against the truck, deciding to let him be. He could hear Ted cursing and shouting and tossing crap around inside the house. While Ted was throwing his tantrum, an old
chair came crashing through the window, the glass exploding into a thousand shards. Ted finally appeared in the doorway but barely broke stride, walking furiously toward the old garage.

A classic Stingray was housed inside. It hadn’t been there last night, another indication that Dawson had come and gone. Abee wasn’t sure whether Ted had figured that out yet, but he supposed it didn’t matter. Let Ted get this fit out of his system. The sooner it passed, the sooner things would return to normal around here. He needed Ted to start focusing less on what he wanted and more on what Abee told him to do.

He watched as Ted grabbed a tire iron from the workbench. Heaving it high above his head, he brought the tire iron down on the front windshield of the car with a scream. Then he began hammering the hood, denting it immediately. He smashed the tire iron into the headlights and knocked off the mirrors, but he was just getting started.

For the next fifteen minutes, Ted tore the car apart, using every tool at his disposal. The engine, the tires, the upholstery, and the dashboard were crushed and slashed to pieces, Ted venting his fury at Dawson with manic intensity.

A shame, Abee reflected. The car was a beauty, a serious classic. But the car wasn’t his, and it made Ted feel better, so Abee supposed it was for the best.

When Ted was finally finished, he started back toward Abee. He was less wobbly on his feet than Abee expected and was breathing hard, his eyes still a little wild. It occurred to him that Ted might just point the gun and shoot him out of sheer rage.

But Abee hadn’t become head of the family by backing down, even when his brother was at his worst. He continued to lean against the truck with studied nonchalance as Ted approached. Abee picked at his teeth. He examined his finger when he was done, knowing Ted was right there.

“You done?”

Dawson was on the dock behind the hotel in New Bern, boats in the slips on either side of him. He’d driven here straight from the cemetery, sitting at the water’s edge as the sun began its descent.

It was the fourth place he’d stayed in the last four days and the weekend had left him both physically exhausted and emotionally spent. Try as he might, he couldn’t envision his future. Tomorrow, and the day after that, and the endless stretch of weeks and years seemed to hold no purpose at all. He’d lived a specific life for specific reasons, and now those reasons were gone. Amanda, and now Marilyn Bonner, had released him forever; Tuck was dead. What should he do next? Move? Stay where he was? Keep his job? Try something new? What was his purpose now that the compass points of his life were gone?

He knew he wouldn’t find the answers here. Rising from his spot, he trudged back to the lobby. He had an early flight on Monday and knew he’d be up long before the sun so he could drop off the rental car and check in. According to his itinerary, he’d be back in New Orleans before noon, and home not long after that.

When he reached his room, he lay down on his bed fully clothed, as adrift as he’d ever been in his life and reliving the feel of Amanda’s lips against his.
She might need time
, Tuck had written, and before slipping into a fitful sleep he clung to the hope that Tuck was somehow right.

Stopped at a red light, Jared regarded his dad in the rearview mirror. He must have been trying to pickle himself, Jared decided. When he’d pulled up to the country club a few minutes earlier, his dad had been leaning against one of the columns, his eyes bleary and unfocused, and his breath alone could have fueled the gas grill in the backyard. Which was probably the reason he
wasn’t talking. No doubt he wanted to hide how drunk he actually was.

Jared had gotten used to these kinds of situations. He wasn’t as angry about his dad’s problem as he was sad. His mom would end up in one of her moods, though—trying to act completely normal while her husband lurched around the house dead drunk. It wasn’t worth the energy to get angry, but he knew that beneath the surface, she’d be boiling. She’d do her best to keep her tone civil, but no matter where his dad ended up sitting, she’d settle herself in a different room, like that was a perfectly ordinary thing for couples to do.

Things weren’t going to be pretty tonight, but he’d let Lynn deal with that, assuming she got home before his dad passed out. As for him, he’d already called Melody and they were going over to a friend’s to go swimming.

The stoplight finally turned green, and Jared, preoccupied by the image of Melody in a bikini, pressed down on the accelerator, unaware that another car was still speeding through the intersection.

The car slammed into his with an ear-shattering crash, spraying glass and metal shards everywhere. Part of the door frame, mangled and bent, exploded inward toward his chest in the same instant that the air bag inflated. Jared jerked against the restraints of the seat belt, his head whipping around as the car began to spin through the intersection.
I’m going to die
, he thought, but he couldn’t draw enough breath to make a sound.

When the car finally stopped moving, it took a moment for Jared to understand he was still breathing. His chest hurt, he could barely move his neck, and he thought he was going to choke on the overwhelming odor of gunpowder from the air bag’s deployment.

He tried to move but was hit with searing pain in his chest. The door frame and steering wheel were wedged against him and he struggled to free himself. Squirming to the right, he was suddenly released from the weight pressing down on him.

Outside, he caught sight of other cars that had stopped in the intersection. People were getting out, some of them already calling 911 on their cell phones. Through the jagged web of glass, he noticed that the hood of his car was pitched like a small tent.

As if from a great distance, he heard people shouting at him not to move. He turned his head anyway, thinking suddenly of his dad, and saw the mask of blood covering his father’s face. Only then did he begin to scream.