“Who? Abe?”
Her head shakes back and forth lazily. “I don’t deserve to be chief, but it was one heck of a carrot. Better than the stick. Abe . . . he got the stick. He couldn’t be bought. He was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Because of me.”
“You’re not making sense.”
Her jaw sets, and her eyes fix on a point behind my head. “What I let happen . . . I may as well have pulled the trigger.” She barely has the cigarette lit when she mashes it into the pile of ashes. “I sold my soul is what I did, and there ain’t no coming back from that.”
“What—”
“?’Course I should have known he’d be waiting like a wily fox in the thicket to use it against me.”
“Who—”
“Just remember I meant to do good. And he promised me he didn’t know her age. He promised he’d never do it again.” She snorts. “I need you to know, Abe was a good man.” A tear slips down her cheek, and her gaze locks on mine. “I tried to make it right. But I couldn’t face her. After all this time, I couldn’t face what I’d done to her. I’m a coward. Not a chief. A coward.”
A shiver runs down my back. “Who are you talking about, Mom?”
She shakes her head. “She must hate her daddy. She don’t know any better. But I need her to know. Tell Gracie he was a good man. You’ll do that, right?”
I’m speechless, trying to decipher the meaning behind her jumbled words. “Mom . . . what are you trying to tell me?” It sounds a hell of a lot like a confession. But for what?
She opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out as she stares at me, her blue eyes—the same cornflower shade as mine—cast with a haunted shadow. I wait for her to explain herself.
Finally she flicks her lighter, letting the tiny flame dance for a moment before pulling her thumb away to extinguish it. “Go on to bed, and let sleeping dogs lie. They’re less likely to bite.” She chuckles. “He always liked that saying, every time I pushed him, every time I told him they were up to no good.”
As if I could sleep after this. “Mom . . .”
“You remember Hal Fulcher?”
“Your lawyer?”
“Make sure you pay him a visit. Don’t wait too long. They don’t have much time.”
What? Why?
“Go and grab that shower.” She finishes the first glass of water, then chugs the second. I’m not going to get any coherent answers from her tonight. This conversation will have to continue in the morning, though I can’t imagine how to start it.
I lean down to place a kiss on her forehead, and she reaches up, her palm cupping my stubbled jaw in an affectionate gesture. “I love you so much. Always remember that.”
“Love you, too. And if you’re not in bed by the time I’m done, I’ll throw you over my shoulder.” She knows it’s not an idle threat. I’ve done it before.
She responds with hollow laughter, then turns up the dial on the police radio, her eyes beginning to shutter. Another five minutes and she’ll be passed out, right there on the table.
The dispatcher’s voice doesn’t quite muffle her heavy sigh. “You’re gonna be fine.”
* * *
I peel off my clothes and throw them in a corner. I’ll deal with them later. Just like I’ll deal with the scruff covering my jaw. Or not. We’re going to Rainey Street tomorrow night for drinks and Jenson’s girlfriend is bringing her friend Dana, the one I hooked up with last week. I forgot to shave then, too, and she seemed to like it.
I simply stand under the hot stream of water for a moment, letting it rivulet over my skin, hoping it’ll melt away the unease that’s settled onto my shoulders. Mom was acting different tonight. Almost . . . crazy. The fact that she brought up Abe has thrown me for a loop. She took his death hard. That’s when she started really drinking the first time.
And what the hell was all that talk of carrots and sticks and selling her soul?
I inhale the spicy scent of my shampoo as I scrub away at my scalp. Fucking dramatic drunken rambling. I can’t imagine what my mother thinks she’s guilty of. She’s a highly decorated police chief. She’s well respected in the community. She’s smart and funny. When she’s not drunk.
She’s my mom.
The blast of a gunshot tears through the house.
CHAPTER 2
Noah
My uncle Silas walks with a limp.
I was five when I first recognized that he didn’t walk like everyone else, when I mentioned his funny gait. He pulled me onto his knee and asked me if I knew what a ninja was. I laughed at him and held up my Raphael Ninja Turtle figurine. That’s when he told me how he once fought a real ninja. He said he won, but in its last moments, the ninja gouged his leg with a blade. He rolled up his pant leg and showed me the five-inch scar to prove it.
Every time we visited, I would ask him to tell me the story again and he would, each version more detailed and far-fetched than the last. He told it so convincingly that I believed him, consuming every grand detail with a stupid grin on my face.
I got older. Soon, I was too big to be pulled onto his lap and too wise to buy into the tall tale. I’d still ask, though, with the smart-ass tone and that doubtful gaze of a boy growing into adolescence. But he’d hold fast to his story of the ninja’s blade, capping it off with a wink.
I was nine when my mom finally told me the truth—that twelve-year-old Silas fell out of a tree while saving her from falling, and suffered a bad break that never set properly. My grandmother refused to let the doctors rebreak the bone, leaving her son with a mild limp.
Even though I had already figured out that the ninja story wasn’t real, I remember feeling completely disenchanted. I guess that tiny flame of childhood hope for the impossible had still been burning, buried somewhere deep.
Now, I watch the silhouette of a man with a limp approach the front porch where I sit, his face obscured by the night and countless flashing lights that fill our cul-de-sac, and all I want is for him to tell me another story.
One where my mother is still alive.
Silas is fifty-seven and anything but an old man, yet he climbs the steps like one, his movements slow and wooden, his shoulders hunched, his hand on the wrought-iron rail to support him to the landing. I’m guessing he’s stuck in the same surreal fog as I am.
He sounds out of breath by the time he reaches the landing. “I had my phone on silent. And Judy must have turned off the ringer to the house line while she was dusting today.”
“It’s okay.” I tried calling his numbers three times each before the cops dispatched a car to his place.
He hovers near the front door.
“They might not let you inside,” I warn him, my voice hollow. He’s the district attorney for Travis County, but he’s also the deceased’s brother. What is the protocol in situations like this?
“I don’t want to go inside.” He fumbles absently with a set of keys inside his cardigan pocket. All he has on underneath is a white V-neck T-shirt, the kind you wear as an undershirt. The kind you pick out of the hamper at one in the morning, when the police have woken you to tell you that your little sister shot herself in the head.
I can’t remember the last time I saw Silas looking so disheveled, but I’m not one to comment. Up until an hour ago I was wearing nothing but a blood-soaked towel hastily wrapped around my hips. My hair is still coated with shampoo suds.