Authors: Lauren Gilley
She shivered, pulling the covers up tight to her chest.
“We’re about to have church,” he continued. She heard regret in his voice: “Your old man isn’t an entrepreneur, honey. He works for someone very powerful who Ghost doesn’t wanna piss off.”
“Okay.” She wet her lips, felt them quivering against her tongue. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing, really. I might be in more trouble than I thought I’d be, but it doesn’t change anything.”
She closed her eyes, overwhelmed with love and gratitude and terrible tenderness for this man who had no reason to put himself at risk for her. “Michael–”
“Look, I gotta go.” His voice was gruff and thick. “Tell Uncle Wynn you want some of his famous pancakes for breakfast. And if you go out of the house, take your gun. Everywhere, Hol. I mean that.”
She nodded though he couldn’t see it. “Okay.”
“Be safe,” he said, and the line disconnected.
A man of few words, and those few difficult at that.
“I love you,” she whispered to the droning dial tone, then pressed End and let the phone fall on the bed.
Fifteen minutes later, after she’d dressed and made herself presentable, she encountered the rich smell of breakfast halfway down the staircase. She paused, hand on the rough-cut wood of the banister, and listened to the hiss of the skillet around the corner, Wynn’s cheerful humming, the clink of plates.
She took a deep breath and descended the rest of the way, went into the kitchen. She smiled.
Wynn was wearing heavy tan Carhartt overalls, but had removed his boots. His flannel shirt was buffalo plaid; his hair was mashed to his head, the imprint of a hat band left behind on his forehead. Delilah and Cassius lay on the floor, one on either side of him, watching the bacon with rapt attention, hoping for a handout.
He glanced up at the sound of her entry and sent her a beaming smile. His face was one totally transformed by a smile: eyes crinkling to slits, deep grooves bracketing mouth and nose. A true smile. A smile with nothing hiding behind it.
“Good morning,” he greeted, and the dogs spared her a fast look before returning to bacon-watch.
“Morning. Do you want help? I like to cook.”
“Michael says you oughta be a chef,” he said, still smiling, and gestured toward the rectangular table with his fork. Two glasses of juice were already set out. “But right now, all you need to do is sit.”
“Are you sure?”
“You bet. Sit down, darlin’, and I’ll have it ready in a jiff.”
She complied, settling in one of the distressed green and white kitchen chairs, taking the chance to survey the room more completely.
It was a large kitchen, with French doors at the far end, letting in lots of light. The appliances were outdated, probably as old as she was. The lower cabinets were painted a soft, mossy green. Row after row of open shelves took the place of upper cabinets, stacked with dishes, bowls, glasses, pots and cast iron pans. The sink was an old porcelain farmhouse number, with a gingham curtain hiding what was underneath. It looked more like the kitchen of a hunting cabin than anyone’s home, but it suited the man working in it, as he heaped plates with bacon, hash browns, and the largest pancakes Holly had ever seen.
“These are famous, you know,” he said, setting a steaming plate before her and reaching back on the butcher block counter for the syrup. “I sold a dog to a cookbook author once, and she asked me for the recipe, said she’d put it in her next book.” He sat down across from her with his own plate and saluted her with his juice glass. “Famous.”
His smile was infectious. “I can’t wait to try them.”
“I still don’t see why I had to be here,” Troy grumbled as he shuffled around the table to get to his seat.
Ghost stood behind his presidential chair, hands resting on its back, frowning as he watched the oldest, crankiest member of the club wince and groan and finally sit down with a dramatic sigh. “You still ride, don’t you?”
Troy shot him a petulant look. He’d reached that age when maturity slid backward. It would be no noble decline for him, no. He’d be a ninety-year-old toddler before he met his maker. “Barely.”
“Then you still vote. When it counts,” Ghost amended. “And believe me this counts.” His eyes came to Michael, again, another of those unreadable glances that Michael knew held unspoken blame.
Fuck it. He didn’t care.
God, look at him. He’d become an outlaw among his outlaw brethren, an insolent brat with his own agenda.
He shot a glance down the table to Mercy, who was crammed into his usual space at the foot thanks to the addition of an extra chair – Candyman was still in town with his four prospects, and had decided to sit in, wanting to take news back to Texas when he went.
It had been such a short time ago that Michael had held Mercy in contempt for jeopardizing the fabric of the club for the sake of a woman. And here he was doing the same thing. He wanted to argue that his case was different, because Holly’s past was so devastating, and because she had no family support system the way Ava always had. But his sentiment was the same, and that was what counted, didn’t it? The disregard for the rules on account of his own needs.
Rules. This anarchistic society of rebels was based, at its core, on a codex of rules and inflexible laws.
The irony.
“Prospects are on watchdog duty,” Walsh said as he entered the chapel and took his chair.
Ghost nodded.
Hound and Rottie had their heads together, talking in muffled whispers.
Michael ignored the way Aidan and Tango kept looking at him.
For the first time, he was the subject of the entire table, and he didn’t like it, but it was too late to do anything about it.
RJ, his face still dark and blotchy with bruising, one eye socket still swollen, was the last to enter, and he shut the doors with a click of the latch. He kept his head down as he took his seat; he didn’t make eye contact with Michael.
The scrape of Ghost’s chair signaled the beginning of church, and everyone fell silent at once. The hiss and click of lighters; deep breaths as cigarettes were puffed.
Ghost said, “In case nobody noticed, Michael’s got a girlfriend these days.”
Dark chuckles.
“And she – Holly” – hearing her name come out of someone else’s mouth, someone who didn’t care about her, tightened Michael’s nerves, cramped his stomach – “happens to be Abraham Jessup’s daughter.”
Collective awed inhales. Huffs of surprise.
“Who the hell’s Abraham Jessup?” Troy asked, and Tango leaned over to whisper the answer.
“Now, I don’t know any of the backstory,” Ghost continued. “But I get the impression Holly wasn’t…
allowed
to leave home.”
Michael nodded in response to the look directed his way.
“Jessup found out she’s in Knoxville, and he wants her back. He wants us to
hand her over
to him.”
A beat, as they absorbed the idea, tasted its vileness.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Mercy said brightly. “How ‘bout we gut those retards like deer, and then nobody has to worry about any of this ever again.”
“You need a hand with that, brother?” Candyman asked. “I brought my good knife, just in case.”
Mercy smiled at him. “I’ll do one, you do the other?”
“Hey,” Ghost said, drawing them back in. “Pay attention, shitheads. There’s a problem with that idea.”
Mercy’s black brows went up.
“Shaman.”
The big Cajun shrugged and made an unimpressed face. “We keep talking about him, but who the hell is he? What does he want? We’re gonna let Collier’s prison rumors and the word of a couple jackoffs have some kinda sway over us? Tell Shaman to ‘bring it’ and see what happens.”
“Awful cocky for someone having a coronary over a brick,” Ghost shot back, quieting him.
Mercy frowned. “You were upset about that brick, too.”
“Yeah, I was. So maybe we oughta find out if Shaman’s capable of throwing semi trucks through windows before we piss him off too bad, hmm?”
He turned to Ratchet. “What did you dig up?”
The overhead lamp glinted off the secretary’s shaved head as he consulted his zippered folder. His “Trapper Keeper” Dublin called it with a smile. He shrugged. “Not a lot, actually. From what I got from the chatrooms–”
“There’s chatrooms?” Aidan asked, incredulous.
“Oh, yeah.” Ratchet glanced down the table at him with comical sincerity. “There’s this one, Outlaw Town–”
“Jesus,” Walsh said.
Tango laughed. “You’ve
got
to be shitting me.”
“That’s just the one for outlaws talking to outlaws. You should see some of the other ones. There’s this group called the Feminicks – it’s for women who want to talk about hooking up with bad boys. Bikers, gangsters, inmates–”
“Can we
please
get on with this?” Ghost said.
“Right.” Ratchet shuffled through his printouts. “Nobody seems to
know
anything about Shaman. There’s lots of fear, lots of rumors, lots of speculation, but from what I’ve seen, people are so afraid of him, they don’t want to talk too much or too long.”
“Nobody gets a reputation like that based on internet rumors,” Rottie said. “If people are scared of him – so scared they don’t want to gossip about him – there’s a reason for it.”
Ghost nodded in agreement. “Right. So that’s what we’re voting on. As it stands now, we’ve got two options. Go into the meeting with the guy, and try to make some kinda peace. Or…” He looked at Michael. “We give the girl back to her father.”
Michal bristled. “I won’t–”
“You won’t,” Ghost said in a quiet voice. “But I might.”
Utter silence. Cigarettes smoldered forgotten between fingers. The bulb in the lamp droned.
Briscoe said, “I didn’t know we used women for currency,” and Michael was grateful for the anger in his voice.
“You’re not serious,” RJ said, irregularly swollen brows trying to pull low.
“I’m
serious
,” Ghost said, “about protecting this club. And if we get culled by some kingpin, more than one girl will end up dead.” His expression darkened when he was met by more shock and doubt. “Let’s not forget, boys, that this isn’t Eagle Scouts. I don’t want to hurt a woman, no, but unless she’s my wife or daughter, I’ve got no interest in protecting anyone if it puts the club in jeopardy.”
He sat back, arms folding. “But I’ll leave that up to all of you. If you want to take the chance, then take it.”
It was quiet a long moment.
Finally, Aidan said, “Dad, this Shaman guy’s gonna be a problem down the road eventually. Let’s just deal with it now. Get it over with.”
“I second that,” RJ said.
Briscoe: “Third.”
Mercy glanced at Michael, holding contact while he said it: “It’s just a meeting. That doesn’t put anybody in the crosshairs. I’m on board.”
One by one, all them voted in favor of Holly.
Michael felt the sudden release of tension, all his muscles going slack in the wake of an adrenaline high. He was so weak he wanted to put his head down on the table, and called on every reserve of composure to stay upright, spine stiff.
Ghost heaved a deep sigh. “Alright.” He looked at Ratchet. “Make contact.”
Twenty-Two
Chaceaway Farm, Holly decided, was an undiscovered slice of heaven. In the daylight, she had a view of winter-browned rolling hills and thick patches of forest. Walking trails snaked as thin pale ribbons, leading away from the barn and into the trees. The barn itself was of the hulking, old fashioned variety, with soaring beams overhead and irregularly-sized stalls.
She spent the afternoon meeting the animals. The two donkeys, a jack and a jenny, Cletus and Maude. Maude was pregnant, and due in March. Holly scratched their long tapered ears and the fluffy poofs of gray hair on their foreheads. They rooted at her jacket pockets for carrots, nibbling at her sleeves until Wynn apologized for their bad manners.
Daisy was a brown Jersey milk cow, with the biggest, brownest eyes Holly had ever seen, set in her petite, dished face. Holly spent long moments stroking her jaw, marveling that a cow could be so pretty.
The barnyard was crawling with black and white chickens and two white domestic turkeys.
They progressed over to the dog kennels, a low-slung building with a tin roof and dozens of chain link enclosures sprouting off to the side. Each dog had an indoor and outdoor space, separated by a doggie door. Wynn took her inside the building, which looked a lot like a barn, with chain link doors for each run. Blueticks on the left, Danes on the right. Each had thick beds, food, water, toys. Wynn let them out to run every day in the fields, he explained, and took them on long walks down the trails. Now that Michael was gone, and he was getting on in years, a young man named Terry came to help with the training, though most of the dogs he sold these days were untrained pups, weaned from their dams and sent off to their new homes.
Wynn was easy, undemanding company, his conversation unhurried, but constant, leaving no time for awkward pauses. He lived alone out here, and was clearly lonely. He was enjoying having someone besides the dogs to talk to.
Holly helped him milk Daisy – he didn’t have a milking machine, he explained – and carry the milk into the house, pour it from the steel bucket into glass bottles to stock in the fridge. They took the dogs for their walks in the field, and she laughed at the Blueticks’ exuberance, the way they surrounded her and sniffed and licked at her hands. Beautiful dogs, all of them.
As the afternoon wore on, the sky darkened, clouds unrolling across the heavens, gray and fat with moisture.
“More snow coming, it looks like,” Wynn said, and sure enough, the first flakes sifted down like powdered sugar a little after four.
When Wynn told her he had some chicken thighs in the freezer, she insisted on making dinner for him. He protested at first.
“I love cooking for Michael. Let me thank you for being such a gracious host,” and he relinquished the kitchen into her capable hands.
“How did you and Michael meet?” he asked from his seat at the table.
Holly ran a knife through a large yellow onion and felt her brow crimp as she thought about how to venture down this conversational road. Naturally, Michael’s uncle would be curious about the woman who’d inspired a call for help. But she knew there were things she couldn’t say.
“I work” –
worked
, past tense; she had three voicemails on her phone from Jeff at Bell Bar, asking her to come in, no doubt so he could fire her – “at a bar in Knoxville. The Dogs come in there a lot, and Michael always has dinner by himself, in one of the back booths.” She smiled, sadly. “He always looked so angry and lonely, reading his books and eating crappy Salisbury steak.”
Wynn snorted. “That sounds about right. So you were the one making eyes at him?”
She sliced the onion into tidy rings and felt a blush warm her cheeks. “Well, I mean…it’s not like I was…I didn’t throw myself at him…”
Except that’s exactly what she’d done.
“No, no, I don’t mean that,” Wynn said, laughing. “I meant he’s not got the manners of that jackass out there, not even when it comes to the ladies.”
Holly laughed, too, her mind flashing up a side-by-side of Michael’s surly expression alongside Cletus with his ears laid back. Dead ringers.
“I always hoped a pretty sweet thing would convince him it pays to be polite every now and then. I want him to be happy.” His smile fell away and he sighed, shoulders slumping. “I ain’t sure he’s ever been happy.”
Holly scooped the onions into the hot, buttery skillet on the stove and cranked the heat another notch before she reached for the head of garlic. “He wasn’t happy here? I know he’s not now, but growing up on the farm…” She gestured with the knife, at a loss to describe the peace and wholesomeness of this simple, connected-to-the-earth life.
Wynn shook his head. “After what happened to his mama – nah, not really. That changed him. He was a quiet boy anyway, I think, but that–”
He clamped his lips together with a sudden start, like he was shocked he’d said what he had. “Ah, don’t listen to me,” he said with an unconvincing chuckle. “I’m rambling on like an old man.”
But Holly was snared. She scraped the minced garlic into a little pile on the cutting board and turned to face him fully, the onions hissing and sweating in the skillet behind her. “What happened to his mom?”
Her heart was thumping slow and hard at the base of her throat. Her mind was hit with kaleidoscope memories of her own mother. Her belly filled up with the old pain of loss, still raw after all these years.
Wynn traced a crack in the table with his thumb and his face worked silently, compressing and relaxing. “I figure if he wanted you to know, he’d have told you.” There was a strain in his voice, like he didn’t like keeping the secret.
“Mr. Chace,” Holly said, softly.
“Wynn,” he corrected.
“Wynn, Michael knows…everything about me. And he accepts me. Sometimes…” Her chest ached, tenderness and hope and despair crowding her lungs. “Sometimes I even think he loves me. And I wonder all the time what it is about him that could make him love someone like me.”
Wynn’s head lifted, his eyes wet and tired as they fixed to her face. “Sweetheart,” he said, and there was a wealth of sympathy, and kindness, and goodness wrapped up in the word.
“What happened to his mother?” she asked again.
Wynn took a deep breath and glanced away, toward the stove.
Hurriedly, Holly spun and dumped the garlic in the pan, turned down the heat, and added in the chicken thighs to brown. When she turned back, the old farmer was watching her without seeing her, his eyes faraway.
“She died,” he said. “Michael was only nine.”
“Oh no,” she breathed.
“Camilla was my baby sister. Little tiny thing, like a fairy. Like
you
. You remind me a lot of her.”
A lump swelled up in her throat.
“She was young, but she was a good mama. She loved her baby, doted on him with her time, because she couldn’t with money.”
An image began to form in Holly’s mind: a brown-haired young woman with a beaming smile, kissing Michael’s baby-soft nine-year-old cheek, smoothing down his dark hair with a loving hand. She could see the love, and the loss. There was never loss without love first. Michael would never have been as lonely as he was without incredible love, and the incredible snatching away of it.
“Her husband,” Wynn said, “Michael’s daddy.” He frowned, gaze distant, seeing the man in his memories. “He wasn’t good for nothin’ save drinkin’ and whorein’ and slappin’ women and children. I hated that sonovabitch. I don’t care if it ain’t Christian. I hated him.
“He killed Cami. It wasn’t sickness or an act of God that killed my sister. It was her damned evil husband, and the lamp he bashed her head in with.”
Holly pressed her knuckles to her lips and bit back the sudden rally of nausea.
The bed. The fresh light in the windows, shining silver on her mama’s pearly, white dead skin. The ropes. The dried blood smeared on the pillowcase. Lila’s sightless eyes staring up at her, one last unheard cry for help.
“Holly.” Wynn was on his feet suddenly, standing in front of her, hands on her shoulders, wrinkled face full of concern. “You alright? You okay?” His fingers squeezed lightly, questioning.
She shook her head, willing the mental image away. “I’m fine,” she said, but it sounded more like a gasp, like she was gulping air.
“You got real pale,” he said. “Do you feel alright? Do you need to sit down? Gosh damn it, I shouldna told you any of that.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated. She swallowed and her voice came out stronger. She was in a cold sweat, and her scalp prickled, but she forced a smile. “Really I am. I’m glad you told me.” She touched his forearms, reassuring. They were strong and thick. “I just was remembering something. Hearing about Michael’s mom triggered–” She swallowed again; she wouldn’t say it.
When he didn’t release her, expression unconvinced, she pulled away, forcing his hands open. Holly put her back to him, blinking the film of tears from her eyes. She had to turn the chicken thighs; she reached for the tongs, dragging in a deep breath.
Wynn turned and put his back to the counter on the other side of the stove. He watched her as she worked, and battled her emotions.
“I won’t tell anyone what you told me,” she assured, rooting the chicken down into the fragrant grease at the bottom of the skillet. “Don’t worry. His secret’s safe with me.”
Wynn’s voice was soft, and sorry, the gentle aging voice of the grandfather she’d never had. “And your secrets are safe with him, darlin’. But I think you already know that.”
She nodded, lips pressed together tight against the sob rising in her throat.
He retreated to the table and let her work in the silence she needed. By the time she’d added fresh milk and a bevy of spices, was shaking in dried parsley flakes, she was calmer. Less likely to burst into noisy tears.
She added the pasta and gave the dish one last toss with the tongs.
“It sure smells good,” Wynn said from the table.
“Let’s hope it tastes that way.” She forced herself to smile as she carried the steaming skillet to the table.
“Have I told you about the horse I got rid of yet?” he asked, and Holly felt the tension bleed out of the room. He was giving her a chance to change the subject, and she jumped on it.
“No. What happened?”
“Well, a meaner nag I ain’t sure I’ve ever known…”
In Michael’s old room, Holly looked at the framed photos again after dinner, more closely this time. Michael as a boy with the dogs. Michael as a teenager behind the wheel of a truck. Unsmiling and serious always. It many ways it was a relief to see it, because she understood that he was never closed-off and cold because of her, but because of something inside him. But it broke her heart for him, because he was so precious to her now, and she didn’t want to think about him hurting.
She found the photo she was looking for beside the closet door, in a cheap brown frame. She plucked it carefully off the wall and walked to the bed, sat and tilted the picture beneath the lamp so she could see it better.
There was Wynn, younger and thinner, but his cheerful face unmistakable. And scrawny little Michael, in the grips of boyhood. Alongside them, one pale hand on Michael’s shoulder, was a woman. A petite brunette. There was a plainness to her face, but the symmetry was near-perfect. Like Michael’s. This was his mother. She was in cutoffs and a knotted flannel shirt that revealed a physical delicacy.
She was beautiful. And unlike her son, she was smiling broadly.
Had Michael ever smiled like that? Had his face ever hurt from the stretching of a huge, sincere smile?
Holly didn’t know.
She didn’t even know if she’d get the chance to find out.
She set the photo on the nightstand and was swamped with the held-back awareness of what was happening. This wasn’t a vacation for her, it was a refuge, while Michael fought for the right to kill her family.
She shivered and slid beneath the covers. She closed her eyes, pressed her face into the pillow, and imagined it still smelled like Michael.