“But she’s…”
“Like your sister? Your kid? Sure, I’ll buy that.” He sounded truthful, staring steadily at Rooster until Rooster lost his nerve and turned away. “But I don’t think so,” he tacked on, quietly.
Rooster fixed his gaze on the goldfish pond and said nothing.
“Kid,” Jake said, kindly, “it’s not anything to be ashamed of.”
Rooster took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I’m supposed to have her back.” It was an admission, and he hated that he’d let it slip. He was too tired, too off his guard, too vulnerable. He should stop talking now.
“There any rule that says you can’t do that just because you’re in love with her?” Jake asked. “I love my wife more than anything. You think I don’t have her back?”
He swallowed, felt like he was choking.
“Okay,” Jack said, “I won’t push.” He took a swig of his beer. “You ready for dinner?”
*
There was a deep-bellied laundry sink in the garage, and Jack took him there first to scrub the grime from under his nails. “Boots gotta come off, too,” he said with a note of apology. “Vicki’s real particular about the cleanliness of her kitchen.”
Like his own mother, once upon a time, Rooster thought, and then immediately dismissed. Nostalgia wasn’t what he needed on top of his anxiety.
Red was setting the table when they walked in, and she glanced up, wide smile breaking across her face when she saw him.
His stomach turned over, and he fought the urge to divert his gaze.
“We made spaghetti,” she said by way of greeting, giddy. “With homemade meatballs.”
“Smells good,” he said, voice thin. Because it did. But also, she looked…
Pink-cheeked. Hair curled at the ends from the heat of the stove. She’d folded her jacket over the back of a chair, and rolled up the sleeves of her shirt – a washed-soft flannel that had once been his, and finally shrunk enough in the dryer that he’d passed it down to her.
He forced his eyes down to the table, just to pull them away from her.
“Did you boys get a lot done today?” Vicki asked, bustling up to the table with a giant bowl of salad. She smiled at Rooster like he wasn’t the scariest thing she’d ever had in her kitchen, warm and welcoming.
“I can’t take any credit,” Jack said, clapping Rooster on the shoulder. He flinched; old habit. Jack patted him and pulled his hand back. “It’s all this one. He’s a worker.”
“Wonderful!” Vicki said. “I bet you’re starving.”
“I could eat,” he said, though his stomach was in knots.
“Ruby’s been such a help today,” Vicki continued, either ignoring or not noticing the tension in him. “Couldn’t have done it without her.”
Red looked pleased, the food smelled wonderful, dusk was falling beyond the window above the sink. Jack and his wife moved around one another with an ease born of long years living together. There was no reason not to relax into the moment.
So he did.
*
They were almost back to the garage, walking in the cool dark of evening, before Red was able to name the sensation buoying her every step: hope.
She tipped her head back and smiled up at the stars; her breath plumed. Nights were cold out west, even in the summer, and fall was fast approaching. When she inhaled, she could smell the first faint hints of ripening grass that heralded the change of seasons.
To her surprise, Rooster seemed relaxed beside her – as relaxed as he was capable of being, anyway. He still scanned their surroundings, but his head was on a slow swivel, so it seemed accidental. His hands swung at his sides, relaxed and easy, and he radiated a tired sort of contentment that was nothing like his usual tightly-coiled tension after a day spent driving. A day of hard physical labor had been good for him, she decided, even if it meant he would burn through the power she’d given him faster.
“What are you looking at?” he asked, teasing, and she realized she was staring at him as they walked; at the moment, he was staring back. She caught the edge of a smile in the glow of a streetlight.
She felt her face warm, but she didn’t turn away, made bold by the fizzing hope in her chest. “You seem happy.”
“Yeah?” He did turn away then, ducking his face a little, hands going in his jacket pockets. Doubt in his voice.
“Yeah. I like them – Jack and Vicki. They seem…normal.”
He snorted. “Don’t get much of that, huh?”
“No,” she agreed.
There had been a moment, when she first stepped into Vicki’s kitchen, when the woman had turned to Red and said, “Well, hi there, aren’t you just precious,” when Red had wanted to bolt. It had been instinct, plain and simple. Women said that sort of thing to her here and there: waitresses in diners, shop owners wanting her to buy something – like the lady who’d sold her the fringed jacket. But beyond a shy smile and a murmured “thank you,” she hadn’t ever had to interact with someone like that. With any woman. She had no friends aside from Rooster; there was no warm, nurturing female presence in her life. She’d seen mothers on TV, had ached for one, though she’d never say so aloud and make Rooster think that he was inadequate, because he wasn’t. But she’d always wanted, had kept her longing to herself, and then, suddenly, she was being handed an apron and asked if she knew anything about pie crust, and it was overwhelming. She didn’t know how to be a woman in another woman’s kitchen. Surely it would show: her strangeness. The fact that she was an escaped lab rat who was maybe, sort of deep in love with the only stable presence in her life. Surely Vicki would take a good look at her and know that her hair was the wrong color, and that she lived out of duffel bags, and that men had died because of her.
Easier to run away than face any of that. It was what they did, after all, she and Rooster: they ran.
But Vicki had said, “I’ve already got some dough in the fridge, we’ll just roll it out.” She sprinkled flour over a wooden cutting board, and then Red was caught, ensnared by the lure of maternal comfort. She’d jumped willingly into the trap at that point.
“What’d y’all do all day?” Rooster asked.
She smiled. He’d tried to scrape it away, but his Southern accent came out when he was tired. “We made pies. And cookies. And banana bread. They’re having a bake sale day after tomorrow at the VA to raise money for a new pool, and Vicki and her friends are supplying all the stuff they’ll sell.”
She glanced over and found that his shoulders looked a little tight now, straining at the back of his jacket.
She said the next part slowly, braced against his inevitable reaction. “She invited me to come and help work the table. Said they could use an extra set of hands.”
A pebble went skittering across the asphalt, pinged off the toe of Rooster’s boot. She didn’t know if he’d kicked it on purpose, but when she glanced over she could see that he was frowning, brows drawn together over his eyes now, when before he’d been expressionless. “Probably a bad idea.”
He said that a lot. It was probably a bad idea to visit the same city twice. To blow their money on a hotel with a jacuzzi tub. To talk to strangers unless absolutely necessary. To let Deshawn keep tabs on them. Red never pushed back – but tonight she did.
“Why?”
He glanced over sharply, frown deepening. “Why?”
“People have already seen us around town. We’re stuck here. What would it hurt?” She asked it sweetly, with a smile.
He shook his head. “Being visible’s a risk.”