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  I crossed my legs, feeling vaguely irritable. Deck still seemed like a dream, a dream I couldn’t quite awaken from. I wasn’t up to the task of explaining that to anyone though. Not to Rachel, not even to Promise.

  “It’s nothing.” I insisted. “He’s just some guy who let me sit on the back of his bike for a few hours.”

  Rachel wasn’t about to let it go so easily. “Are you really going to swear that’s all there is to it?” she asked with a teasing grin. Rachel was one of those women whose beauty deepened every year. Looking at her, you had to believe she knew everything in the world about men. She would have been able to make more sense out of Deck Gentry than I could. But I wasn’t in the mood to share what little I knew of him, particularly because I was trying to push away the miserable feeling that I had already lost something I had just found.

  “That’s all,” I shrugged and met her gaze stubbornly.

  She didn’t believe me but she nodded and mercifully changed the subject. A few minutes later Promise called us in for a quick meal of hamburgers and salad. I was startled to see myself when I passed a mirror in the hallway. I didn’t like what I saw.

  “Hey, Rach?” I asked my cousin when she hugged me before departing.

  “Yeah, baby?”

  I touched my hair and bit my lip. “You think you could help me correct a mistake?”

  She smiled. It was the smile that had won her dozens of beauty contests as she clawed her way to survival after leaving the Faithful. “Of course. You come over tomorrow morning and I swear to god we’ll have you looking like Jenny again before lunch.”

  “Thanks,” I whispered, thinking that Rachel had summed up my problem without even realizing it. I’d been trying so hard to get away from myself by looking different, by being different. Deck had certainly realized that about me. That was why he had backed off even when he was crazy with lust and obviously used to getting what he wanted out of women. I remembered the way he had grabbed me, touched me, told me how much he wanted me but wouldn’t do anything about it, at least not then.

  “Ask me any other night and I will.”

  Deck had caught me by surprise when he offered me a ride to Quartzsite and now I wished I’d thought to run up to my dorm room and grab more clothes. I only had a few spare items in my backpack. Promise lent me a pair of yoga pants and a soft velour shirt. I felt better as soon as I put them on. My sister didn’t attempt to grill me about current events any further as twilight settled. I relaxed and enjoyed watching my nephew caper about, excitedly showing me everything he owned. I still hadn’t sorted out what I was going to tell my sister because I couldn’t properly explain the source of my own agitation. Maybe I had no excuse. I’d been handed a happy ending on a silver platter and I should have been able to accept it.

  Promise kept shooting me curious glances and I knew she was anxious to talk to me alone so I was surprised that when I retreated outdoors for a few minutes my sister wasn’t the one who followed me. Grayson was.

  “It was a lot colder last night,” he said, standing beside me in the darkness.

  I crossed my arms. The temperature wasn’t freezing but it was still chilly. “You guys get some snow out here?”

  He nodded. “If you could call it that. About a half hour of light flurries and a dusting that didn’t even stick until morning.” My brother-in-law cleared his throat and I glanced up at his profile. When Promise had first introduced me to Grayson Mercado I’d been shy around him. He was so different from the men I was used to. It didn’t take me long to realize that was a good thing.

  “You got something you need to say to me, Gray?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. I figured I was in for a lecture and felt defensive before he even opened his mouth. Gray wasn’t going to lecture me though.

  “You’re not lost,” he said with confidence.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  I smoothed my hair over my ears. They were cold. “I know exactly where I am, Grayson.”

  “Yeah, you do. That’s what I’m trying to say, Jenny. It’s okay to have some anger, even after all this time.”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “Aren’t you?” he said quietly. “You’ll never be able to get back the innocence that was stolen. And you’ll always know that the thieves were the ones who were supposed to cherish you the most. I have my share of burdens, Jen. I lost six years of my freedom because of other men’s lies. But the things you have to live with - you and Promise - are almost beyond comprehension.”

  My mind’s eye flashed back to the woman in the department store, to the way she neatly folded clothes with a small smile on her face. She had a new life now. She had no cares deeper than folding a stack of perfect goddamn polo shirts. Yes, I was angry.

  Gray waited beside me in silence. We were standing near the window of the children’s bedroom and Promise was humming a lullaby. I could hear it even through the closed window. I knew Gray was waiting to listen to whatever I wanted to say. I could have told him about Reese. It made my story even more terrible than it already was and it would have hurt Gray to hear it. It would have hurt Promise even more when he repeated it to her.

  “You don’t need to worry about me,” I told him, this man who was as much a brother to me as a brother of my own blood. I knew Gray had a sister somewhere and that she wanted nothing to do with him after he’d been sent to prison. She was a fool.

  Gray squeezed my shoulder and then opened the back door. “Don’t stay out here too long,” he said and he meant the words as figuratively as literally. He was telling me not to stay away, not to close my heart to all the possibilities the world still offered.

  “I won’t,” I assured him.

  I kept my word to Grayson. I didn’t linger in the dark for very long. I stood out there for only a few more minutes and listened to the distant yips of coyotes.

  It was an odd time to remember that I had not returned Deck’s cell phone to him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DECK

  On my way back through the valley I almost dropped by the tattoo shop where Cordero worked. Some fresh ink sounded good, maybe on the inside of my right arm where there was a naked patch of skin waiting to be screwed with. The sting of the needle would feel nice right now. In the end though I didn’t feel like explaining to my cousin what the hell I was doing up in Tempe again today. Cord wouldn’t have prodded too hard – he was cool like that – but he would have wondered. And if I got to talking about Jenny I would start thinking about her. I was done thinking about her.

  So instead I bypassed Tempe and headed down to Emblem. I picked up a bag of burgers at the town’s lone fast food joint and ate them while idling at a red light. A pickup stuffed with teenage girls paused next to me and a few of them let out wolf whistles in my direction, which was annoying as shit. I ignored them and sped into the Gentry section of the desert.

  There was a time when there were more of us crawling all over this landscape. Ranks had thinned. Now, besides me and Benton and Maggie, there was old Uncle Foster who lived a ways further off the road. He was half blind, completely crazy, and took pot shots at any would-be visitors with a double barrel shotgun. I didn’t know how the fuck he was still alive. Sometimes various cousins showed up to squat for a few months or a year when they were in between legal troubles. No one stopped them from parking on whatever section of dirt they wanted, probably because no one else had any use for the crappy land. To those of us with Gentry blood, this desolate place had a magnetic pull. After all, I had come back. I was afraid that one day Cord, Creed and Chase would come back too. They shouldn’t.

  Benton was waiting for me. He’d broken the lock on my door again and yanked my lone kitchen chair outside. He was perched there like an evil overlord with his ugly belly hanging out. I had the urge to ride right the fuck over him. Instead I stopped with the wheel of my bike six inches from his leg. He smiled at me.

  “You peeled out of here early. Woke up me and Ma
gs.”

  He was a goddamn liar. I’d coasted out quietly and Aunt Maggie hardly ever emerged from her drug zombie coma. Benton crossed his arms and waited for me to uncover a few twenties or maybe dig up a bottle by way of apology but it wasn’t a good day for him to try my patience.

  “You’re gonna break my fucking chair,” I grumbled, climbing off the bike. Benton had been helping himself to my place more and more. After he’d messed up his leg falling off a roof while drunk and had to let his painting business go, he’d been squeaking by with disability checks and state charity. If I thought the asshole had two nickels of intelligence to rub together I might have been afraid he would find where I’d hidden a safe full of cash. But then, if I’d had those same two nickels I would probably have used a bank instead of the bowels of a dirty trailer.

  Benton chose to let the insult slide. He didn’t get out of the chair though. His blue eyes watched me and I was shaken by the distinct resemblance he bore to all three of his sons.

  “You saw the boys,” he nodded.

  It wasn’t a question. He knew I was in contact with my cousins. But after so many years of abuse and neglect they didn’t have an ounce of love for their father. Rightfully so.

  “Yeah,” I shrugged. “I saw them yesterday.”

  Benton spat in the dirt. “They forget the way home to visit their mother? Nearly broke her heart when Cordero married that McCann girl and didn’t so much as pick up the fucking phone. I had to hear about that shit in town.”

  “Cord and Saylor eloped anyway. Wasn’t a big deal.”

  “Bullshit. I know goddamn well John McCann paid for some fancy party in Vegas. No invites here. And then that fucking kid didn’t even bother to tell us we’re gonna be grandparents. Something else I had to hear about around town. So Deck, why don’t you tell me what else there is that I don’t know about?”

  I was wary. Benton wasn’t hurt that his sons had cut him out of their lives. He was fishing for information. There weren’t many things left that I still feared, but at the top of the list was the worry that Benton would search out the boys and try to see what he could get out of them. He would use manipulation and guilt to do it. He would use their mother, Maggie. But Benton was lazy and as long as he was still being bankrolled by me he would probably stay put.

  “Calm down,” I muttered, searching my pocket for my wallet. It was there and there was plenty of cash I could hand out to quiet the jackass down for a little while. As I pulled out some green I noticed Benton’s expression turn to greedy triumph but I didn’t care. What I did care about was that my other pocket, the one I usually kept my cell phone in, was empty. It was empty because I’d given the damn thing to Jenny as a weird sort of security blanket and I’d forgotten to get it back.

  Benton snatched at the cash. I let him. It would keep him from bringing up the boys again, at least for now. That was our silent deal. However it didn’t stop him from licking the corner of his mouth and going for another topic. “Cute little cherry you had here last night.”

  It creeped me the fuck out that he’d been staring out of the dark windows of his hellish excuse of a home, spying on me and probably getting a fat boner over the sight of Jenny. Then I remembered how dark it had been outside and had to wonder if he’d ventured out of his cave for a better look, prowling around and peering through the window to catch a glimpse of that girl’s tits. It wasn’t the first time in my life I was tempted to reach out and crush his windpipe with my bare hands.

  “She’s gone now,” I told him.

  My disgusting uncle, the closest living genetic link to my own father, heaved himself out of the chair and stretched. He’d stuck the cash in the waistband of his pants and it flapped there like a loose dick. “You got the right idea, boy. Get what you need and then kick ‘em to the curb.”

  I looked away. “If you say so.”

  A crash and then the eerie sound of womanly wailing came from the direction of Benton and Maggie’s house. I started to head that way but my uncle stepped in front of me. “It’s just Mags. She wakes up and doesn’t know where the fuck she is.”

  “Maybe you ought to get her in the program again.”

  He waved me away and started shuffling back to his own door. “No program works on that woman. She’s too goddamn stubborn. Looks are shot, children are gone, all she’s got is me.”

  There were probably women out there who would still have looked at Benton Gentry and seen a handsome man, or at least the remnants of one. But all I saw was an animal on two legs. I watched him lumber back to his own shithole. He opened the door, shouted something profane to his wife and she stopped howling incoherently. I was glad I couldn’t see her. Every time I saw Maggie Gentry these days was a moment I wish I could erase.

  When I was sure Benton was securely in his own den and unable to see what I was doing, I went indoors and headed straight for the tiny bedroom. There was a small cabinet that had once been fixed to the floor. It looked as if it still was but I had removed its anchors some time back and cut a hole in the floor beneath it. Now I carefully moved the cabinet aside and reached into that hole, my hand instantly connecting with a fireproof safe holding approximately sixty grand in large bills. I took it out and counted it, as I sometimes did. I’d come by most of it honestly, or dishonestly, depending on which side of the law you root for. Let’s just say I used honest means to succeed at dishonest lines of work. Gambling, weapons trading, shoplifting rings; all these had been within my sphere over the last few years, along with a few legitimate investments to even things out. I stayed the fuck away from drugs though. Prostitution too. Some things just had too much rotten karma attached.

  Carefully I replaced the money and moved the cabinet back to cover the hole in the floor. I sat on my bed and only then noticed that Jenny had taken the time to remake it neatly, even turning back a corner of the top blanket. I had no plans for that money. I’d assured Creedence that a cash shortage wasn’t my reason for sticking around Emblem and that was true. I had the means to go anywhere, do anything, at least for a while. If I started to run short I had enough contacts to know how I could come by more. There just didn’t seem to be anything worth doing.

  After I graduated from high school I couldn’t tumble out of here fast enough and even my own mother hadn’t seemed sorry to see me go. Maybe she figured the world would make a better man out of me than she could. My father was proud. He’d said so enough times and he’d even made an effort to be around more in the days before I left for boot camp. The only people who were visibly bothered by my departure were Cord, Creed and Chase. My mother hosted a big dinner the night before I left and my three cousins were there. Chase had a black eye that was the standard badge of a thirteen-year-old boy, except I knew he hadn’t gotten it in any schoolyard brawl. I watched the triplets as they sat apart, quietly eating the tamales my mother kept serving them. Cordero had already wistfully asked if the Marines might take kids who were under eighteen. His shoulders slumped when I told him I didn’t think so. They were good looking boys and they would obviously grow into impressively strong men, but they had a long way to go, such a goddamn long way. They still weren’t a match for Benton, not yet. They were the last to leave that night and clung to me fiercely one last time. I kissed the tops of their blonde heads, the first time I had done so since they were babies. The day I’d met them, so long ago, I’d claimed them as mine. They were mine to protect, to defend, and I’d done the best I could more times than they knew. Now I was leaving them. I would do one last thing for these kids first.

  Benton hadn’t come to dinner that night. He didn’t give a shit about saying goodbye to his brother’s son. He didn’t even give a shit about his own sons. Later, I crouched outside and listened to his snoring for a while before I crawled through the window of his bedroom. He was splayed out nude beside his wife, lying on his back with his mouth open, exhaling a hundred proof with each breath. I’d warned him before. I’d even come to blows with him a few times. Now I needed to get my
point across in a way that he couldn’t fail to understand. The knife was six inches long and I took it from my back pocket, pressing it against his throat. His eyelids fluttered. I remembered exactly what I said.

  “I’ll be coming back. You hear me you fucker? I told you once if anything happened to Cordero, Creedence or Chasyn that I would hurt you. Well I lied about that. I will fucking kill you Uncle Benton if those boys aren’t in one piece when I come back. Believe it.”

  He made a gurgling noise when I flicked the knife against his throat, cutting him slightly. I’d been so intent on my uncle I hadn’t noticed Maggie sitting up in the darkness. She watched me mutely and blinked but I had no idea if she understood anything that had just happened. Later, I liked to think that she did, that she recognized her sons’ defender and approved. Benton was still half drunk and mostly asleep though. He might have told himself it was a dream but not been entirely sure. In any case, the boys survived and Benton never mentioned any of it to me.

  Memories feed off one another. Let one have a voice and the rest start screaming to be heard as well. I got up off the floor and went to the kitchen. There wasn’t much in there so I stood against the sink and finished the jerky and crackers I’d shared with Jenny last night.

  After I’d gotten out of the Marines and felt the usual loss of purpose that plagues so many of the former military, Emblem seemed like the logical place to get my shit together and decide what to do next. I was still young, women were all over my cock, and it seemed I was one of those lucky men who could make money rain from the goddamn sky. But by that time I was also wearing the scars of my own carelessness.

  “No nineteen year old knows shit about what they want.”

  I’d said that to Jenny but she couldn’t have understood what I really meant. She figured I was being vulgar and she’d faced me boldly, daring me to turn down what she’d made up her mind to offer.

  No baby, I wasn’t talking about you at all. I was talking about me.