“Yep.” He dipped his head. Pushing himself up, he started toward the house. “Meetin’ Curtis this mornin’. You need anything?”
I weighed what I’d had with Palmer against what I might-could have with Reardon. “Wait!”
I flung myself at him, held onto his long silky hair, kissing him, feeling his mouth under mine
,
wanting to feel something. Our lips moved as of old, so familiar, recognizable
.
But there was no heat, just…
Compassion instead of passion.
I stroked his face, so used to his rugged features I saw them with my eyes closed. I shut them now and sighed, “Goodbye, Palmer.”
One of these damn days, I’d break for sure.
But not today, not tomorrow.
* * * *
That processing shit didn’t last long. I opted for drinking instead, with Momma, who roped me into completing her foursome for the weekly Bunko blowout.
My idea of a foursome didn’t include her chatty card circle.
Maybe Whistler, Badger, and Reardon.
Definitely not Momma, Babs, and Madge. I fully believed Madge and Babs were totally bunk made-up Bunko names, too.
Highlights of the night were the endless rounds of frozen margaritas–the old gals sure could knock it back–and a conversation about Mimi Flossie’s
still standing
house.
“I’m tellin’ y’all, this Old Village Historic Commission bullshit is springin’ a leak in my bank account.” Momma clapped a hand over her mouth, offering a muffled, “Sorry for swearin’.”
Madge paid no never mind. “Don’t you be concerned about that. Me and the Mister been known to cuss when it’s called for.”
“They still insist on ceasin’ demolition of houses over fifty years old.”
Gasps went up all around.
Momma swigged back like a sailor. “I know.”
“Your planning permit?”
“On hold again.” Momma spat, figuratively only. She continued in a rushed hush, “So, this is what I did. I went on up to my man in North Charleston–”
“By yo’self?” Babs clutched her heart.
Looking her in the eye, Momma nodded once. “Alone. I sat myself down and asked my financial advisor what to do about this nonsense.” Her voice dropped even lower. “He told me about the Saint Joseph.”
“Saint Joseph, oh my sakes! Is that a Catholic being?”
Holy fuckin’ hen’s clucking.
I tried very, very hard not to laugh.
“Keep a lid on it, Shay. Else you won’t get asked back.” Momma stabbed me with her no-way-no-how glare.
“That’s what I thought too.” Momma got back to Babs. “Or worse yet, The Voodoo
.
”
“Say a prayer, Madge.”
“You know what he told me?”
All heads wagged left and right like the devout dogs to gods we were.
“Get me a Saint Joseph statue from the Catholic bookstore, downtown
.
”
Another round of
Good-Lordys
met the air.
“Then! Then he advised me to dig a hole under my momma’s old oak, and lower the icon in,
head first
.
”
“Oh, the blackness.” Madge found her family Bible in her knitting bag, fanning herself with the well-thumbed pages. “Letha, did you do it?”
“Mmm hmm
,
I most certainly did,” Momma said, as if she’d stood her ground with Lucifer himself. “But I kept an eye on the sky the whole time, expectin’ a lightnin’ strike.”
* * * *
Reardon squeezed me in on Friday. A quickie at his office downtown.
My hoo-ha came off hiatus to lick her lips in anticipation.
Entering the offices at the top of Radamanthus Place in prime position on Calhoun Street, downtown Charleston, I motored past the spectacularly bosomed She-Ra receptionist. Not even the Princess of Power could keep me from the sleek double doors facing her desk.
I swept into Reardon’s office, tempted to stick my foot out to trip what’s-her-name when she followed hot on my heels.
Lucky for her, she was saved from her face-plant fate by Reardon’s curt, “Cheryl, please make sure we’re not disturbed.” Cheryl, huh? She-Ra was close enough
.
His sweet hug made even sweeter when he lowered his hands to my bottom, Reardon gave me a long, light kiss.
“What’ve you been up to this week?”
I told him all about Bunko, including Momma’s diatribe about the dreaded upside-down St. Joe statue. His shoulders shook and amusement played on his lips.
Yeah, yuck it up.
My life was sooo entertainin’, least I had the intrigue part down.
“Didn’t you see Jane yesterday?”
Stalling for time, I straightened his perfect tie before answering, “Yeah.”
“How’d it go?”
“Awkward.” I focused on an irritating particle of lint on the left shoulder of his shirt.
“Sorry about that, darlin’.”
“Y’all need to stop apologizing. Besides, Jane and me are still gonna be friends. We had make-up sex and everything.”
His eyes flipped wide open.
I patted his chest. “Figure of speech, baby. I’m savin’ the real make-up sex for you.”
“Really,” he murmured, dragging a forefinger over his lips.
“Uh huh.”
He perched on the desk. “Much as I can’t wait for that, we need to talk.”
“Talk?” What was this foreign language he spoke in?
“Yes.”
“Then I wanna know about Slaughter, for starters. You said he gave you time you can’t repay, but he’s a total jackass. What’s he got over you?”
He drummed his fingers over his laptop, his anxiety clear with the usual nervous notes. “Sometimes a person does something so enormous, it can never be repaid. It makes him redeemable–no matter how reprehensible he appears–by the laws of human nature.” There was no joking here. His face was sharp, his eyes bleak, his mouth a straight line.
“Slaughter has a Get-out-of-Jail-Free card.”
“Quoting Monopoly to me, Miss Shay?”
“You do like to play, don’t you, Mr. Boone?”
Reverting to his habit of fuck or flee, he started toward me, sexual heat radiating from his taut muscles and darkened eyes.
I halted him. “Uh-uh, babe. Sit your fine ass back down. I ain’t done with you yet.”
To my astonishment, Reardon did as told. Awesome. I was so getting a boardroom of my own. Forget this bedroom business.
“Whatever went down with Slaughter, it wasn’t about the company, was it?” I asked.
“You could say that.”
Yeah, right. So much for the truth the whole truth, and nothin’ but the truth. This talking thing was like pulling teeth, a maneuver which would probably be easier with nothin’ but a doorknob and a string, minus the painkiller.
“You talked about Ransome a couple weeks ago, then Badger mentioned y’all always got together the same day every year like it was a commemoration of some sort.”
The color drained from Reardon’s face.
“Is it to do with your brother?”
He rubbed the left side of his chest. “Not exactly.” A film of sweat broke across his forehead, and when I touched his cheek his skin was clammy. “Badger talks too damn much.”
I withdrew my hand. “And you don’t talk enough.”
“I’m trying to make amends here, Shay.” On his feet, he paced. “Ransome got what he wanted. To be of service, to be in the service. He never went through the Citadel, but enlisted as soon as he could. You see…” He looked at me, but he wasn’t seeing me. “He always was the type to be a hero. Taking on bullies, looking out for the underdog. He’d be just the leader who’d take a bullet for his team if he went overseas.”
Walking a straight line to the corner, he pivoted forward with military precision. “Don’t get me wrong, the guy was a little shit. He always played pranks on me, trying to get one over on his older brother.” He grinned. “God, he screwed with me. Stupid practical jokes. Turning all my furniture over one night when I was on a date so I came back to a room that looked like an M.C. Escher etching. ’Course I’d been drinking, so that didn’t help.” He laughed, remembering. “Instead of righting my bed, I stumbled into his room, shoved him into a corner of the mattress and passed out right beside him. But he was considerate too. I’d woken up, wondering what the hell I was doing in his room–feeling like shit–and I found a tall glass of the hangover cure I’d taught him. He left a note too. It read something like…” He tilted his head. “What did it say? ‘Told Ma you got the flu.’ She didn’t believe him for a second, but he meant well.
“First in the fray, a quick thinker, always honorable, he did well his first tour with the Navy. He wasn’t satisfied with being on a battleship for the remainder of the Iraq war, though. Seemed Ransome was a prime candidate for SEALs.” Reardon sat down and traced an invisible line across the desk. “Turns out we had a couple things in common. Killer instincts.”
Intense energy gathered inside of him, crackling as the atmospheric electricity before a thunderstorm, his memories a conduit. “He had ’em too. Similar to the way I conduct business. Infiltration, hostile takeovers kept out of the public eye.”
The voltage increased. “It should have been me. I was the oldest, I should have been the Boone to go off to war.” His body vibrating with velocity, he exploded. “Instead I sat behind my fucking desk!” He punched his fist into the thing with a crashing blow.
“He’s still alive. Please tell me he’s still alive, Reardon,” I whispered in the quiet reverberating so loudly with loss.
He talked to the windows, dredging each memory. “One year ago, at the age of thirty-five, Ransome Boyd Boone came back stateside with a traumatic brain injury. His mind trapped in a holding pattern. Legs? Useless.” He turned to me. “They think he might become stabilized, mentally. Not sure if he’ll walk again. He’s trying. I hate seeing him like this, Shay. He was built to be in command, not in the command of a body that doesn’t work.”
I stroked his arm, but he didn’t feel me.
“
The only easy day was yesterday
.” He curled his fist against the window. “That’s the SEALs motto.
“You know.” He waged war with his hair, slicing fingers through black ruffles. “They don’t send telegrams anymore. The doorbell rang, and Temperance answered it. I came into the foyer to see Ellegee. He looked grim. All he could say was, ‘He’s still alive.’ I think it’s worse, when someone familiar brings you bad news instead of impersonal black words on a piece of paper.”
I remembered the telltale knock on our cottage. Daddy’s supervisor with his own bad news. “I know.”
“We drove to McLellanville, but we weren’t fast enough. The chaplain and Casualty Notification Officer were on their way out. Seeing Mom.” Reardon sagged. “She was crying without making a sound, grabbing Dad’s hand. He just stood rigid, holding her up. His face was a mask, containing everything, making sure Mom didn’t know how worried he was. I knew that look. I’d seen it before.
“‘Bring him home to me.’ Mom made me promise. ‘Reardon, you make sure your brother gets home.’ He was her baby boy, damn sure she wasn’t going to let him die alone. Felt like time should’ve stopped while I held my mom as the rug was pulled from under us one more time. But time doesn’t slow down, it never does.”
The cloud of bad memories lifted. “Most days he remembers an awful lot.” Reardon chuckled. “Not even a wheelchair can stop him from getting out. I don’t know how many times Ma’s told him to lay off the weight lifting. But then, it’s hard, Shay.” His fingers slid down my cheeks. “The days he thinks he’s leaving for his first deployment. With everyone there to see him off. Makes us all remember. Makes us all wonder why we didn’t stop him.”
I pressed his hands to my lips. “Because you couldn’t.”
“Doesn’t help. But the good days, they’re worth the bad ones.”
“He’s with your mom?”
He nodded.
“He’s why you’re so driven.”
“In part. Ransome has a lot of needs. I wouldn’t be his big brother if I didn’t take care of him, at least this time.”