The Gambler

by Molly O'Keefe

  I grabbed my cell phone and called Miguel but didn’t get an answer.

  I called Patricia next, but she hadn’t seen the kids, either.

  I drove out to The Manor, but it was dark and empty.

  Finally, I called Nora to let her know what was going on.

  “Nora,” I said when the counselor answered the phone. “We’ve got a situation with Miguel and Louisa—”

  “I know,” Nora said. “We’re in the emergency room in Ellicott City.”

  “We?”

  “I’ve got the kids. Tyler called me when he couldn’t find you.”

  How many times, I wondered, could my world get rearranged? How many times could I be left sorting through Tyler O’Neill’s truths and lies, measuring the good he did against the destructive?

  “I’ll be right there,” I said, and hung up.

  TYLER

  * * *

  Hours later, I watched my brother blow into the holding cells like a cyclone. Contained, beautiful in a way, but capable of massive destruction.

  “Well, well,” Carter said, stopping in front of the bars I stood behind. His suit was perfect. Hair—perfect. His face looked like it belonged in profile on a coin somewhere.

  Carter was like royalty. If the Notorious O’Neills had such a thing.

  “Tyler in jail.” Carter glanced around the yellow walls and bars as if he could smell them and it wasn’t good. “Again.”

  “Hope I didn’t bother you,” I drawled, and Carter’s eyebrows arched. I wanted a fight. I needed to tear things apart, throw things against the wall and obliterate everything in my path.

  Luckily, Carter was always good for a fight. I just needed my brother to get me out of this cell so I could pick one with him.

  “Not at all. My date was boring.” Carter unbuttoned his blazer and loosened his tie. “I can assume you didn’t assault the man in question?”

  “I did not.”

  “And the boy?”

  “Miguel.”

  “Right. You know where he is?”

  “Community services,” I said, and handed him Nora Sullivan’s number. Miguel and Louisa should be with Juliette by now, and therefore safe. That was all that mattered.

  I tried to convince myself that my heart didn’t matter. The cold stone stare in Juliette’s eyes didn’t matter. The future stretching out grim and wasted—none of it mattered.

  If Miguel and Louisa could be with Juliette, then part of the night was a success.

  “What happened here, Tyler?”

  “The kid is a friend—”

  “Not your usual kind.”

  I thought of the attempted car theft and the extortion, the way Miguel had lied to get Richard to teach him cards. “He’s exactly the usual kind. He’s just sixteen and he was protecting his sister.”

  “It was self-defense?” Carter asked, taking the card. “And there’s proof?”

  “The little girl’s face is about all the proof you need. Nora will answer all your questions.”

  Carter tilted his head, his icy-blue eyes watching me carefully. “You okay?”

  Okay? I was so far from okay I was in a different time zone. A different hemisphere.

  “Sure,” I said, sitting on the bench in my cell.

  “You know, Ty,” Carter said, wrapping his hand around one of the bars. “You may have the rest of the world fooled, but I’m your brother.”

  It was about as close to a speech of brotherly love as Carter ever got.

  “Get me out of here, Carter,” I whispered.

  “Right,” Carter said, and then left to go show a cop he didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.

  I dropped my head back against the wall so hard I saw stars. The pain was cleansing. Real. Gave all my rage something to do.

  I was a fool to think you’d changed.

  Her words wrapped around my brain, squeezing until I couldn’t think of anything else. Anything but the fact that I had changed—but too late for it to mean anything.

  “There are no charges,” Carter said, coming back into the cell. “We’re free to go.”

  20

  “Richard did quite a number on Margot’s stock,” Carter said, reaching into the back of the liquor cabinet for a dusty bottle of Scotch.

  “I’ll replace it,” I said, staring out the kitchen window at the dark back courtyard. The moon hung low in the sky like a giant grapefruit.

  “You don’t have to keep cleaning up that guy’s mess,” Carter muttered.

  “Dad being found with the gem is going to cause problems for you, isn’t it?” I asked.

  Carter’s face was dark. “You have no idea.”

  The glass of the greenhouse gleamed silver in places, obsidian in others, and it was so beautiful, suddenly there was nowhere I would rather be than in Margot’s greenhouse.

  I opened the back door and crossed the dark courtyard. The grass under my feet, the air around me—everything seemed more alive than I felt.

  I’m empty. Half-dead.

  The greenhouse door opened with a slight push and inside the smell of earth and flowers was somehow both comforting and suffocating.

  I could go, I thought. It’s what people expected of me. Savannah. Juliette, hell, probably even Priscilla.

  I turned on the hose, trickling water into the hanging pots that were beginning to sprout.

  Carter stood in the doorway, the moon spreading his long shadow across my face and over my hands.

  “You’ve been taking care of them?” he asked, handing me a jam-jar glass of Scotch and taking a sip from his own.

  “Someone needed to.”

  “You always did spend a lot of time in here when you were a kid.”

  “It was quiet,” I said.

  Carter laughed. “You gonna pretend you weren’t hiding those dirty magazines behind the bags of soil?”

  “Nope.” I smiled as I took a sip from my jam glass. “Not going to pretend.”

  The silence between us soon turned uncomfortable and it raked over my already raw emotions.

  Carter was right—we were brothers, and that should count for something. But we stood there little better than strangers.

  “How come you haven’t been back?” I asked, drinking half my Scotch down in one go. The urge to fight was still bubbling through me.

  “I was back a month ago.”

  “For what? A few hours?”

  “You’re hardly one to talk, Tyler.”

  “I had Dad on me like a leech, Carter. You think I’m about to bring him back here?” That was only part of the reason. The least of my many. And frankly, the only noble one. “We agreed that we’d try to protect Savannah.”

  “Didn’t matter, did it? He still found his way in.”

  “Yeah, well, he should be out of the picture for good now.”

  Carter chuckled, staring down at his Scotch as if it was tea leaves divining his fortune. “Don’t be so sure,” he said. “If I had a nickel for every time I thought that about Mom…”

  “You’ve been in touch with her?” I asked, stunned. Angry. “And you didn’t bother to tell me?”

  “It was my business, Tyler.” Carter’s jaw was made out of stone and it made me want to break it. “Not yours.”

  “Ah, the O’Neill family motto. It’s no wonder we haven’t all been together in years.”

  “That’s not my fault,” Carter said, putting his glass down with a thunk as if he was ready to throw a punch.

  Finally, I thought with glee, cranking off the hose and tossing my own glass down on the table. The fight I’d been waiting for. I’d hate to bust up Margot’s greenhouse, but some things just couldn’t be helped.

  “You know what else isn’t my fault?” Carter asked. “You screwing it up with Juliette, again. That’s what you’re really mad about. You don’t care about me or the family, you’re just pissed that you couldn’t keep your shit together and now she’s gone. Again.”

  It was a wild low blow. Terrible. It made me r
egret even mentioning her name on the way back to The Manor, but the truth of what Carter said rippled through me like a shock wave.

  There was nothing for me to do but laugh. It was laugh or scream.

  The sound crawled up from my gut, scraped through my throat.

  “What’s so funny?” Carter asked, advancing around the center table, his eyes alight.

  “I feel bad for you, Carter. I do.”

  “Really? You feel bad for me? The man who left a third date that was no doubt going to end in sex to drive you home from jail? Again?”

  “You should get arrested once, Carter. It would do you good. Make you stop caring so goddamned much what people think of you. What are you hiding behind that perfect coat, that perfect hair?”

  The punch came out of nowhere, catching me right across the jaw and snapping my head back.

  I charged Carter, grabbing him by the shirt and pushing him out the door into the night. We tripped and Carter spilled backward, I followed and landed hard on my brother.

  “It’s hard being an O’Neill, isn’t it?” I asked, pressing Carter’s face into the dirt. “But it’s gotta be harder pretending you’re not one.”

  Carter got a knee up under my ribcage and I rolled backward. Carter might look prissy, but the guy was strong. Luckily, I fought dirty, but soon it didn’t matter.

  There was so much I was fighting against. Juliette. Jasper. My own stupid decision making. My brother. Every year I’d spent away from my sister. It all coalesced and imploded. My rage ate itself until suddenly there was nothing left to fight.

  It was just me and every mistake I’d ever made.

  The anger bottomed out. I let go of Carter and I flopped backward onto the grass. Carter gave me one last punch to the shoulder and did the same, breathing hard, his pristine shirt stained with blood and grass.

  That made me a little happy.

  “We should have come back more,” Carter panted. “For Savannah.”

  “I’m staying,” I said between breaths. Despite what had happened with Juliette, despite and maybe because of what everyone expected of me, I was going to stick around.

  Finally be the man I wanted to be.

  “For how long?” Carter asked, and immediately put up his hand. “It’s just a question. Don’t get pissy.”

  “I’m not putting a limit on it, Carter. I want a home and this one feels good.”

  “It’s not for Juliette, is it?”

  I shook my head, staring up at the stars while my lip started to swell. “I ruined it.”

  Carter smiled. “She kept you in that jail cell for hours with no charges. That is one pissed off woman, but I understand love can make fools of anyone. She may decide you’re not so bad after all.”

  “There are only so many times a man can break a woman’s heart before she gets wise.”

  Saying the words made the pain more bleak, cemented what I knew to be true. It didn’t matter whether I stayed—Juliette was done with me.

  So staying was for me. All for me. And it was still the right call.

  At least I had that, a small island to cling to.

  “Mom’s going to come back, you know,” Carter said, and there was something in his tone that made me turn to look at him. Something resigned. And scared. “Now that the diamond has been found, she won’t give up until she gets the ruby.”

  “It’s not here,” I said, wondering what was between Carter and our mother. “We looked. We looked everywhere. The diamond was in literally the last place we searched.”

  “Mom knows where it is.”

  “How?”

  “From what I’ve been able to put together, Mom dropped them here after the original heist and I think Margot found them.”

  “You having Mom followed or something?”

  “It’s my business, Ty.”

  “Fine, Carter. But if Margot had a fortune in gems, why in the world is this house falling down? Why hasn’t she—”

  “Everyone has secrets, Tyler. Everyone.”

  “I don’t,” I said, lying back down on the cold grass, staring up at the cold stars. “Not anymore.”

  JULIETTE

  * * *

  I pushed open the door to my spare bedroom. In the three days since the kids had moved in, I’d been working like a demon. I’d gotten rid of the old double bed and bookshelves and replaced them with two single beds and some dressers. I’d let Miguel and Louisa pick out decorations and now one half of the room was covered in basketball posters while the other half was a shrine to puppies.

  But tonight, as it had been for the past three, the bed with the pink sheets was empty.

  Louisa lay next to her brother, the two of them sleeping back to back, their knees pulled to their chests. Like twins in vitro.

  They’d spent a week in a small group home while my foster-parent application was approved, and the counselor there said Miguel and Louisa had slept that way every night.

  I pulled the door shut and pressed my forehead against the frame until the wood bit into my scalp.

  There was a war going on inside of me. A constant battle between joy and grief.

  The kids were here and they were safe. And against all odds, they seemed to be doing okay with the transition. Miguel was apologetic all the time, and Louisa was slowly returning to her old self, as long as Miguel was around.

  I’d taken the week off to help the kids adjust. I had some adjusting to do myself.

  My father had turned into a surprise ally. He’d helped me put together the furniture, and last night he’d cooked chili and then stuck around to play Rummikub with the kids.

  It had been one of the more surreal moments of my life.

  I didn’t forgive my father. And he knew that.

  It was as close to peaceful as I got these days, since I was fighting off a constant urge to call Tyler. To see him. To handcuff him to something and strip away every single layer of the man until there was nothing but the truth of him left. If there was any.

  It was a bloody fight, and I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out.

  I walked away from the kids’ room and into my dark living room. A family picture on my mantel caught the light from my kitchen and my parents’ faces, before Mom’s cancer, smiled up at me.

  You really don’t understand how someone can be torn in their loyalties? I asked myself.

  I tried to forget Tyler’s face as I’d left him in that cell, walking away with my father. It must have killed him.

  “Juliette?” Miguel whispered from behind me. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, turning with a smile for the boy. “What are you doing up?”

  Miguel wrapped the bottom of his T-shirt around his arm, a nervous habit of his I’d noticed. “I want to go to work for Tyler after school.”

  “Has he talked to you?” I asked, far too eagerly.

  “No, but I was supposed to start last Monday and…well, I didn’t.”

  “Right.” I licked my lips. “You want to go out to the build site tomorrow?”

  He nodded. “I sort of promised, you know?”

  I wanted to hug him, to pull the boy to me and tell him how proud I was of him. Of how, from the moment I’d met him, defiant and pissed, being brought into the station in handcuffs from that fight with his father in the grocery store, I’d felt that he would change my life.

  And that I’d hoped I could change his.

  “Okay then,” I said, knowing it was too soon, that my relationship with Miguel was fragile and too much pressure might destroy it somehow. “We’ll go see Tyler tomorrow.”

  “She’s sleeping so much,” Miguel said the next day after school as we bounced our way down the gravel road toward the build site.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror at Louisa, slouched and snoring in the backseat.

  “Is that normal?” Miguel asked.

  I smiled, my heart twisting in my chest. “I imagine she’s got a lot of catching up to do,” I said. “I doubt she’s slept we
ll in a long time. It’s kind of like you and eating.” I glanced sideways at the boy, who was systematically eating me out of house and home. I needed to keep up the chatter. The distraction. Because I was driving out to see Tyler. To talk to him.

  It felt as though my body might explode from my seething, battling emotions. From my worry that the second I saw him I’d collapse into tears, begging him to tell me why he’d lied. Begging him to take me back.

  But it would be a mistake. I knew that. He hadn’t changed; he might not be able to. Tyler O’Neill might just be the best bad boy out there. A heart full of good intentions, but a nature more prone to destruction.

  I hated to think it. Didn’t want to believe it. But it had been proven time and time again.

  “Juliette?” Miguel asked. “When do we go back to my dad?”

  “What? Why? Do you want to go back? Do you not like it at my house?”

  “No,” Miguel assured me quickly. “We love it there, but I figure we need to get ready for going back.”

  I pulled over to the side of the road, unaware that Miguel was so misinformed about his circumstances. “Your dad is in jail,” I told him. “Until the trial. And after that, I imagine the court will rule to take you two away from him.”

  “So, what happens when I’m eighteen?” he asked.

  “You can appeal to be made guardian of your sister or…” I stopped. I hadn’t really thought about this, and putting words to these very thin and delicate ideas seemed foolish. Too early.

  “What?”

  “Well, after the trial you’ll be a ward of the state, and as long as you like it there, and I like you there, and we keep passing the home inspections, you can stay at my house.”

  “That’s good.” Miguel seemed to be reading my hesitation the wrong way. “Isn’t it?”

  “It is, Miguel. It’s really good. I’m so happy you guys are in my house. But what are you going to do when you’re eighteen?”

  “I’ll get a job or something, I guess. An apartment for me and Louisa?”

  “What about college or learning some kind of trade? You can’t do that and take care of your sister at the same time. And what if one of you gets sick? You should have help, Miguel. Eighteen might seem like a grown-up, but you’re still a kid. And you should get to have the chance to be a kid.”