Whisky on My Mind (19 page)

There was a small utility room off the rear of the apartment and they’d packed away most of her father’s belongings
, storing them in there until they could figure out what to do with them. Until now, Whisky hadn’t really felt a need to look through it all, but something about today and spring cleaning gave her a renewed curiosity. Her father had packed most of the boxes himself…she supposed he’d had a while to come to terms with his illness…something she would have appreciated. There were times when she still felt bitter about that. Would she have acted differently had she known earlier that he was dying? Maybe not, she guessed. She’d been pretty angry at Johnny for suddenly barging into her life when he had. She’d thought she’d known what she wanted from life—who she wanted in her life, where she wanted to be—how wrong she had been.

She crossed to some boxes with her name on them. She’d assumed they had photo albums and family stuff in them and hadn’t been able to face that kind of emotional confrontation yet. There was still so much she had yet to deal with.

Cautiously she opened the box and peeked inside. The first box was filled with books. Her father had been a self-educated, clever man. He loved to read and could be pretty deep when he wanted to be. It was such a stark contrast to the man he was on the outside; tall, tough, powerful. Most people had feared him, and as a first impression it was a little hard to get past the tattoos and the long hair…the leather jacket and the fierce loyalty to his club that confronted a person when they looked at Johnny McKenna. But inside, she knew the real Johnny had a gentle, loving soul. He was her hero. He was her dad. The older Whisky could look deeper than the blind devotion of a little girl, though, and seeing her father from an adult perspective, she discovered a lot of things. Her father was a man. A man with faults who’d made his share of mistakes, but he was a good man. A fair and just man and he’d held tight to his beliefs in a time when change met with sometimes dangerous consequences, but he’d done it. He’d turn his club around and put an end to the festering disease that had been eating the club alive. Drugs, guns, and dirty money had threatened to drag his family down to a place where there was no coming back. He risked his life to save them all.

Whisky smiled sadly, and moved on to another box. Opening this one, she saw that it contained as she’d thought, some old photo albums and a heap of old video cassettes. She ran her finger down the spine of the cases and saw there were some labeled with the year before her birth.

She took the case from the box and tapped it on her palm as she looked around the room. How did one watch a video now days? Her recorder on the TV only took DVDs. She bit her lip as she considered the problem, then remembered she thought she’d seen one when they’d packed away her father’s belongings. Whisky had wondered at the lack of any modern technology in his apartment. He spend most of his evenings reading, Sawyer had told her when she’d asked at the lack of any big screen TV when they’d carried the smaller, old fashioned one away. There was little point trying to sell it and when they offered it as a giveaway no one had wanted it.

She began moving boxes from on top of furniture they hadn’t left out to use and gave a small triumphant grunt when she finally uncovered the
TV. It took a few minutes for her to drag it across to the nearest power point, but eventually she’d managed to plug in the wires and connect the player. With an exhausted sigh, she sat down on the floor and inserted the video.
This had better be worth it dad, after all the hassle of setting the damn thing up.

The sound of motorbikes filled the small room and Whisky saw her father, looking a lot younger, laughing and talking to a gathering of the club, many of the faces filling the screen just the way she remembered them looking as a kid. Smiling at the discovery, she was making a mental note to have a
n old video night and show the rest of the guys. Maybe it would be a morale booster that they all were desperately in need of at the moment.

She fast forwarded the tape and then hit play when a woman walked in front of the camera, toward her father.

Whisky swallowed painfully over a lump in her throat. Her mother looked so young and happy. She was obviously pregnant and it took a moment for the realization to hit her that the bump under her dress was
her.
Whisky’s eyes were glued to the woman on the screen. She had the same hair color as Whisky and wore it pulled back at the sides, so that it cascaded down her back in waves. Her father had always said she and her mother had looked like replicas of one another. She couldn’t see it herself, but she guessed it must be true—more than one person had commented on the fact since she’d returned to the club.

She watched as her mother rested a hand on her belly now and again, wondering if she’d felt that while inside. If only she’d known how precious little time she’d have with her mother after she was born…she’d have worked harder to remember what she looked like. The memories she had though, were very different to what she was seeing now. Here, her mother looked genuinely happy and relaxed. The way her parents looked at each other was so full of love. She didn’t remember them looking at each other like that as a small child. Her mother always seemed so sad…and distant. That of course would be because she’d always seemed to be constantly high on something…at the time she just thought it was how her mother was. It wasn’t until she’d left the club and been sent to live with her grandparents at eleven that she’d realized her mother had been a drug addict. A lot of things had changed her mind about how she’d felt about her mother. As a child, she’d felt confused and a little sad that her mother hadn’t really spent much time with her, but she’d always had plenty of others around to give out hugs. As she grew older, she began to resent the fact her mother hadn’t wanted her. That she’d wanted drugs more than her own child. She felt better when she could be angry at her mother for the choices she’d made in her life…but confronted with this and knowing there must have been a time when her mother
had
wanted her, was hard to process.

How had things changed so much?

She stopped the tape when it ended and went in search of some answers. She found Dog and Brick working out back on their bikes, arguing as usual. Some things never changed. These two constantly argued about everything.

“Hey darlin’
,” Dog said, looking up as she came across the gravel toward them.

“Hey guys.”

“You need somethin’?”

“I do actually,
” she smiled, watching them as they worked. “I need to pick your brains about something.”

“Fire away, sweetheart,” Brick said
, smiling and showing the wide gap in the space where his front teeth must have once been.

“It’s about my mother,” she said
, and hurried to finish before they could shut down. These men were not comfortable talking about emotional mumbo jumbo at the best of times, but there was no one else left who had known both her parents. “I found some old videos with her on it. Dad wouldn’t tell me much about her—he tried, but I guess it was just too hard for him to talk about her.”

“They were
somethin’, those two. Never seen two people with so much love,” Brick shook his head sadly.

“I have,” Dog added meaningfully.

Whisky smiled as the two men looked at her.

“You and Sawyer got the same thing they had.”

This somehow didn’t comfort her.

Her parents were a train wreck waiting to happen from all accounts…although that was apparently after she was born. She couldn’t help but feel responsible somehow.

“Your ma was…” Brick started, wiping his hands as he searched for the right words.

“A complex woman,” Dog put in.

“Yeah. Complex,” Brick nodded. “She came into the club with a lot of problems. Everyone had their baggage,” he conceded, “But your ma had come from a whole different way of life. She’d left her family behind for your dad. She came to us already disillusioned with life in general. For a while though, she was happy. She was happiest when she was havin’ you,” he said, and both men nodded.

“What happened to change her?”

Brick gave a shrug of his shoulder and wiped an arm across his forehead. “At the time no one really knew what to call it, but I’ve seen shit on TV about that postnatal depression…and that’s what your ma had. I’m no doctor, but if you ask me, that’s what it was.”

“Now you know I never agree with this idiot,” Dog said. “But on this I do. I mean, she was fine, and then after she had you, she just went into this funk…Johnny was beside himself. He had no idea what to do. He tried to get her out of it…begged her on more than one occasion to tell him what he could do to fix it…she just…couldn’t seem to pull herself out of it.”

Whisky lowered her gaze to the ground and blinked hard to keep from crying. This was nothing new, and she should be used to it by now, but it still hurt to think about.

“It destroyed them. She pushed everyone away in the end…and it just about killed Johnny.”

In the end the only one it killed was
her
. Maybe she thought she was doing everyone a favor. It was something Whisky would never understand. It was selfish and cruel to simply kill yourself. It may have been the easy way out for her mother—but for everyone left behind it just added to the guilt and pain and torment they would be forced to live with for the rest of their lives.

“She loved you, sweet thang,”
Dog said, and Whisky heard his gruff voice catch a little. “I remember how much she loved you.”

Whisky summoned a wobbly smile and hugged the two men before heading back into the apartment. She didn’t know what she thought she was going to learn
. Maybe secretly she hoped they’d reveal some long lost secret that would somehow explain it all, and she’d somehow miraculously be able to forgive her mother and everything would magically all be fine. The truth was there was probably no explanation that would ever make it all right.

Whisky sat back down in front of the
TV and pressed play. She soaked up the shots where her mother was laughing and smiling at the camera, her hand placed protectively, lovingly over her swollen stomach. Whisky hit rewind and play again and again, watching until her tears dried up.

Chapter 18

Whisky knocked on the apartment door and waited for Bella to open it.

“Why didn’t you
use your key?” she asked with a frown of her red-rimmed eyes.

“It’s your place now,” Whisky shrugged. “Besides—I didn’t want to walk in on anything in case Caleb was here. It just felt weird.”

“He’s not here,” she sniffed, and turned away, leaving Whisky to close the door behind her.

“So, what’s going on?”

“I told Caleb about the photos,” she said quietly.

Whisky stared at her friend speechlessly. Surely she could not have just said what she thought she’d said
, Whisky told herself, unable to close her mouth that she knew was probably gaping open in disbelief.

“I know,” Bella groaned, curling into the corner of the sofa miserably. “But it just came out. I’d had a rough session with the psychiatrist Dr
. Anu sent me to and he wouldn’t leave it alone. I can’t blame him, Sky, I was a mess. He was worried about me…and it just all came out. I’m sorry.”

“Bella…”
Whisky let the sentence trail off. She had no idea what to say. Thoughts began running through her head in a jumble of mixed emotions. She was concerned that her friend had been upset and obviously trying to get a handle on what had happened by seeking professional help, but then what did telling Caleb about this mean for the club? Finally he’d be able to fit all the missing pieces to the puzzle together and he’d know exactly what Sawyer and the boys had been doing with Paul that night. “What did he say?”

Bella shook her head miserably. “Nothing…he was angry at first—really angry…I wasn’t sure if it was at me or Paul…but after a while, he seemed to calm down and he sat with me a long time, letting me get everything off my chest.”

I just bet he did,
Whisky thought darkly to herself. “So when was all this?”

“Last night. When I woke up this morning he was already gone.” She lowered her head and Whisky saw her friend
’s shoulders shake.

“Oh,
Bell.” She put her arm around the other girl’s shoulders and held her tightly. “Come on. It’s all right.”