Bad Moon On The Rise (36 page)

I thanked Marcus and trudged back to
the truck, feeling the weight of what was to come on my shoulders.
Sometimes life gives you an awful lot of power over others and I
wasn’t the type of person who liked that. I barely wanted
responsibility for myself.

“
Where’s my dozen?” I
asked as we climbed back into the truck. Ramsey started laughing,
but Trey looked alarmed. “Relax, kid,” I told him. “All that prison
starch went straight to my ass. I’m going to restrain myself and
only eat three.”

Good thing they’d bought two dozen.
The kid wolfed those doughnuts down like he hadn’t eaten in months.
I don’t know why, but seeing him eat like that made me feel like he
had a shot at a normal life one day soon after all.

“
Will my father be at the
hospice?” he asked me once he’d finished polishing off thousands of
Krispy Kreme calories.

“
Probably,” I said,
knowing Marcus would have called Burly the second he hung up from
talking to me. For all I knew, Marcus had also called in the FBI
and the National Guard. The truth was, I had no more idea of what I
was walking into than Trey did. I just knew more about the
possibilities that awaited us.

An hour later we entered a crowded
waiting room in the Good Shepherd Hospice of Wake County to find a
good chunk of my life waiting for me. Marcus. Burly. Bill Butler.
Thank god Ramsey had stayed in the truck to await further
instructions. It was weird enough as it was.

In the early morning hours, no one
looked good. No one looked happy, either. In fact, no one even
looked awake. They were sprawled out in the chairs of the visitor’s
room, snoring together like a cave full of hibernating
bears.

My god, I thought. These are the men
in my life?

Marcus had claimed a loveseat that was
too short for his lanky frame. His legs were draped over one arm of
it and he was emitting a cacophony of snorts as loud as a Hell’s
Angels gang roaring past. Bill Butler had propped his feet up on a
chair across from the one he lolled in. He had his head thrown back
and his arms sprawled to each side like he was waiting to be nailed
to a cross. His snores were loud enough to shake the photos on the
wall. Burly, in contrast, sat upright in his wheelchair, eyes
closed, face still, his snores positively delicate in comparison.
My heart did a little fandango when I saw him. I was bringing him a
son.

“
Is that one my father?”
Trey whispered as he stared at Burly.

“
Yes. Fortunately for
you,” I added after Marcus gave a snort that sounded like a wart
hog mating and Bill Butler answered with an asthmatic
wheeze.

“
He’s younger than I
thought,” Trey said, voice trembling. “He looks pretty cool.” He
was putting off the moment of meeting him, I knew.

“
You have his smile and
features, for sure. Look at that beautiful face.” The words were
out before I could stop them—but they were true. Burly was still
beautiful to me and I knew time would never change that.

He felt me thinking of him. Without so
much as another muscle twitching, Burly opened his eyes and stared
straight at me. I felt the shock in the core of my heart. Then he
turned his gaze to his son and it was as if heaven itself had
illuminated his face from within. This is what joy looks like, I
thought.

 
Burly was used to
his body’s stillness and had long since adapted to it. I think he
sought refuge in it at that moment, as he processed whatever he was
feeling.

Trey stared back, unsure of what to
say and probably even more unsure of how he felt. The two men,
father and son, gazed at one another with a look so raw I felt that
it was not mine to witness. I turned away to give them privacy,
turning back only when I heard Burly speak.

 “
Come here, kid,” he
said. “Let me look at you.” Trey inched closer and Burly took his
hand. “I’m so sorry about your mother,” he told Trey quietly. “She
was a beautiful woman, inside and out.”

“
Sometimes,” Trey
whispered. You could barely hear him.

“
I didn’t know about you,”
Burly said. “I would have been there for you if I had.”

As Trey pulled his hand away, nodding
his understanding, I saw the tattoo: a black ploughshare and sword
carved into the skin above his wrist. He’d have a reminder of what
had happened to him for the rest of his life.

Trey stared at the rug, unsure of what
to say to his father. I ached for the boy. Despite his get-tough
training among self-styled commandos, I could tell he had no
confidence in the moment, that he didn’t want to say anything for
fear he’d say the wrong thing and lose what he’d just
gained.

“
We’ll catch up later,”
Burly promised, knowing to let the moment go. “Right now, your
grandmother needs to see you. Your aunt will take you to
her.”

I realized that Tonya’s seemingly
perfect sister, Alicia, had been watching from the doorway. She
seemed different somehow, less severe. A little beaten down by the
circumstances, perhaps. Fatigue had wiped her of her brittleness. I
almost felt sorry for her.

“
Hello, Trey,” she said,
making just enough eye contact with Burly to tell me she’d been
seduced by his charms or, more likely, the charms of his money.
“Meemaw’s waiting to see you. I’ll take you to her.”

They left and I sat down next to
Burly, wondering what would happen to me once Marcus and Bull
Butler awoke and the wheels of justice started turning. I also
wondered if being arrested could possibly be worse than sitting
there listening to their godawful snoring.

“
Lord,” I said to Burly.
“Thank god I don’t sleep with either one of them.”

Burly’s mouth twitched as he fought
back a smile. “You’re one to talk. You should hear yourself when
you get going.”

I punched him on his shoulder. “I do
not snore.”

“
Only when you sleep,” he
conceded. Then he looked at me and said one of the most important
things a man has ever said to me. “I’m sorry, Casey,” Burly said.
“I always loved you for being you, but I’m not sure I ever made it
easy for you to be you. You were always so far away from me. You
were always going places I couldn’t go.” He tapped the side of his
wheelchair. But then he left his regret behind. Burly had never
wasted time on things he could not change.

“
Thank you for bringing my
son home to me,” he said. “I will never be able to thank you
enough. And I will never forget it. I hope you know that, no matter
how far apart our lives take us, I will always love you more than
anyone else I know, Casey. You have to believe me when I say that,
because it’s true.”

Then he kissed me—and I knew it was a
final good-bye. And it was okay. He had a son to worry about, a new
life ahead of him that was full enough without me. Besides, I’d
felt something shift between us when I brought him Trey, a
balancing out of grudges and hurts and joys and triumphs, the
beginning of something new that was more about respect than love.
It was all I needed to let go.

I didn’t say anything back to him,
though I knew I’d always love Burly in return. I can’t say things
like that. I might feel them, but the words don’t come out. I was
spared the humiliation of responding with a lame, “Me, too,” when
Ramsey interrupted us. I guess his concern for Trey had
countermanded his fear that he might be arrested if he left his
truck.

Ramsey stopped in the doorway and
stared in open-mouthed horror at Bill Butler and Marcus. “Good
god,” he proclaimed as he kicked Marcus’s feet to the floor,
sending him struggling sleepily upright. “Those sounds are not
natural.” Then he kicked Bill’s trademark cowboy boots, causing
Bill to jump up and reach for a gun that wasn’t there.

“
What the hell?” Bill
complained.

“
You don’t want to know,
man,” Ramsey told him. “And I’m pretty sure you need to get that
deviated septum checked.”

Ramsey glanced at me. “How’s the
kid?”

“
He’s going to be okay,” I
promised.

He walked across the room in that
long-legged stride of his and shook Burly’s hand. “Good to see you,
man. You’ve got a great kid in that boy.”

Burly’s face came alive. “Thanks for
all you did,” he said to Ramsey. “For taking care of Trey and Casey
like that.”

“
Casey?” Ramsey laughed.
“I didn’t do a damn thing for her. She saved my ass, in fact. You
know that girl. Stubborn as a dead mule. She’s got to do it all by
her own self or she’s not going to do it at all.”

What a liar—but I loved him for
it.

“
Miss Jones?” Alicia McCoy
stood in the doorway. “Could I talk to you alone for a moment?” A
hint of her brittleness was back. She was probably going to bitch
about my fee or something. Well, I’d be damned if I’d accept a
penny from her money-grubbing ass.

I followed her down the hall until we
reached a private spot. The hospice was a lot like a hospital in
the common areas. It was white, scrubbed and foreboding, the
bedroom doors closed against the inevitable noise of funeral home
directors coming and going in the night. I knew the rooms were
filled with love and families and personal belongings and reminders
of lives that were soon to be left behind. But the public areas
were reminders that failing human bodies were nearby. And maybe it
was kinder that way.

Alicia surprised me. Her back was
stiff, her jaw looked like it might crack from the effort of
managing a meager smile and her conciliatory tone was more than a
little patronizing. But she was clearly attempting an apology. “I’m
sorry if I misjudged you before,” she said. “And I thank you for
bringing Trey home to us. If I seemed cold and uncaring, it’s just
that I’ve spent a lifetime watching Tonya let my mother down. I
have seen my mother filled with hope that things might be
different, that my sister might change, only to go to a place as
dark as any she ever had to visit once Tonya let her down again. My
sister told so many lies, took so many years off my parent’s lives,
and for what? Getting high? She died before I could forgive her and
I’m not sure I ever can.”

“
It doesn’t matter,” I
said. “It doesn’t matter to Tonya anymore whether you forgive her
or not. And trust me, it doesn’t matter to me how you choose to go
through life. If you want to hold on to that, it’s your shoulders
carrying the weight, not mine and certainly not Tonya’s. But I will
remind you of one thing—Trey is not his mother.”

“
I know that,” she said
quickly.

“
You have no children of
your own?” I guessed.

She looked away, not meeting my
eyes.

“
Don’t worry,” I said.
“You won’t have to take care of him. He’s got the best father a boy
could ever have and he’ll never want for anything for the rest of
his life. You could even keep all that money Tonya sent to you over
the last year, the money she told you to put away for Trey’s
college tuition. He won’t need it now.”

Alicia looked up, surprised. I had
guessed right. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t tell anyone. Not
even Trey, who deserves to know how much his mother cared about
him.”

“
That’s not fair,” Alicia
said. “I love that boy. I would never have taken his money. I would
have said something.”

Yeah, right. She’d be buried in a
coffin lined with dollar bills, diamond rings on her fingers and
gold wound round her neck. And it wouldn’t take her any closer to
heaven.

“
It’s not about the
money,” I explained. “It’s about family. If you love Trey, then
you’d better start showing it. You’re the only one who can give him
part of his mother back. You’re the closest thing left on this
earth like her.”

“
Tonya and I had nothing
in common,” she snapped.

“
I doubt that very much.
And if you love Trey, you’ll find the part of you that bound you to
your sister and make sure he gets a chance to see it.”

She was silent and that was fine with
me. I’d had enough. I’m not one to judge people, at least not for
more than a passing moment of entertainment. I had never been
prepared to judge Tonya Blackburn and the way she chose to numb her
life with drugs. I hadn’t walked in her shoes and I wasn’t going to
condemn her for the path she’d taken. We all have our demons and
not all of us are strong enough to kick the demon’s ass. I thought
Tonya had done pretty good, considering, especially at the end when
the odds were stacked against her and she had tried to protect her
son. So I did want to defend her to this rigid, unforgiving woman
beside me—but when I saw that Alicia’s eyes had filled with tears,
I realized that she had tried to confront her demons in a different
way, burying them under a mountain of money and houses and clothes
and cars. And she was only now figuring out that all of that wasn’t
going to be enough to keep her particular demons at bay.

“
Look,” I said more
kindly. “Forget forgiving Tonya. She’s gone. Maybe what you really
need to do is forgive yourself and stop trying to pretend the two
of you weren’t connected. I’ve lost family, too. When they die, a
little piece of you goes with them. You can’t will that feeling
away. You have to go through it and learn to live with
it.”