“True,” Eve agreed. She caught Mark’s gaze. “Hurting a dog isn’t like hurting a person. Remember that, Mark.”
“That old man loves her like she’s a person,” Mark said.
“Not our problem,” Luke said.
“If we have to hurt a dog to show those kids and that old man that we mean business, then so be it,” Eve said. When Mark opened his mouth Eve said brusquely, “It’s the dog or Bowen. You choose.”
Mark closed his mouth and didn’t say anything.
Eve nodded. “So, use the dog. Matthew, be ready to get air involved. Mark, whatever Matthew does you should assume rain will be needed with him. This place looks deserted, but we can’t chance being seen, and we already know the old man is a pain in the ass. Even if the kids come willingly with us, we’re going to have to tie him up.” She gestured at the zip ties and rope her brothers were holding. “No one needs to witness that. Be ready to shield us from watchers. Okay, follow my lead. Oh, and Mark—tell that tropical storm it’s time to come to land.”
Standing straight and tall, Eve strode out from behind their concealment with her brothers following her.
Bastien
“Am I on speaker? Can both of you hear me?”
“Yes, Josie. We can both hear you,” Dickie replied, switching on his turn signal as he guided the Jeep onto Highway 87 East.
“And I’ll take that snippet of silence as Bastien telling me he can hear me, too.”
Dickie punched Bastien’s shoulder and Bastien let out a grunt.
“Good,” Josie continued. “Now, I told Richie last night, but he obviously didn’t listen, that you two cannot surf today.”
“We’re not,” Dickie grumbled, looking expectantly at Bastien.
“Yeah, no, just out for a drive, us.”
“For some reason I don’t believe you. Either of you.” Josie sighed. “It’s been downgraded to a tropical storm, but can intensify back to hurricane status in a blink. Come home, both of you. Bastien, you’re staying with us until this storm passes. I don’t want you out on the beach. It’s not safe.” Josie’s concern was audible, and Bastien was glad he didn’t have to lie to her face. “Promise me you’ll turn around right now and come home.”
“We promise, Josie,” Bastien said, reaching over and ending the call.
“What the hell, man? You can’t hang up on a woman, especially not my sister. Now she’s definitely going to freak out on us.”
“Here,” Bastien jabbed his finger against the windshield as they neared the exit to Cobb’s Cove. “Turn here.”
“Jesus!” Dickie hissed, the Jeep fishtailing slightly as he abruptly turned onto the sandy road. “A little notice next time would be good.”
But Bastien couldn’t have given Dickie notice any more than he could have predicted that on his eighteenth birthday he’d be bumping along the road to a nearly deserted beach parking lot next to a guy who still hadn’t figured out that his nickname stemmed from his dickhead personality.
Dickie pulled in a few car lengths away from the only other car in the lot. “You sure about this? Josie’s right. The storm is one thing now but,” he hiked his bony shoulders, “it could turn bad real quick. You can surf better than anyone I’ve seen, but…” Bastien followed Dickie’s gaze out the open window, to the thrashing, white-capped swells. “Those waves look brutal.”
“Don’t fret about me, no. Je nage comme les poissons.” I swim like the fishes. With a click of his tongue, Bastien hopped out of the Jeep and unstrapped his surfboard from the roof rack.
“It doesn’t make me feel any better when you switch languages like that,” Dickie called out.
Bastien rested his board against the car and leaned in through the window.
“You know, I didn’t much like you at first,” Dickie said, his long, skinny fingers picking at the Jeep emblem on the steering wheel. “But I guess I do now.”
“Aww, little Dickie’s sweet on me,” Bastien said with a wink.
Dickie extended his middle finger. “Fuck off.”
The phone rang, blaring through the speakers. “It’s Josie,” Dickie said, reaching down to silence it.
“Tell your sister I said thanks. For everything.”
Are you coming back? The unspoken question caught in the air between them.
“Nah,” Dickie ran his hand along the nape of his neck. “You tell her next time you see her.”
With a nod, Bastien tucked his board under his arm and slapped the roof of the Jeep. “I’ll be seeing you, podna.”
“Be safe out there, Bastien,” Dickie said, putting the Jeep into drive. “And make those waves your bitch!” With a final whoop and a few quick honks of the horn, Dickie peeled out of the parking lot.
Squinting against the wind, Bastien turned to face the ocean. Leaving Louisiana had been easy, so why was putting Dickie and Josie in the rearview so much harder? He barely knew them. Sand crunched between his teeth as his jaw tensed against a sudden memory.
“You’ll be back! This is your home! The only place anyone will ever love you!”
What his mother had said as he’d collected his board and walked out the door, it was wrong. She was wrong.
He dropped his board a few yards from the ocean’s wet stain on the shore and slipped off his shoes.
This city could be his home. People would love him here. But he couldn’t stay. The ocean wouldn’t let him. It had called him here, to this cove, the same way the indescribable wave-like crashing in his gut had called him to Galveston. It was the same feeling he’d had as a little boy, that his mother had called a grisgris—a curse, the moment in time that had ruined her life, his life, their lives, the moment that had called forth the slick and then the silence.
So Bastien had swallowed the feeling, the curse. He’d buried it down deep under self-hate and despair. He’d tried to hide his tie to the ocean and be a better son. But his mother saw the strangeness of him growing behind his eyes. She always saw it. He was the planned mistake that hadn’t saved her marriage, and had instead left them cursed.