A Desperate Man

by Tia Fielding

  Both men looked solemn, then nodded in unison.

  “What are you going to do?” Arthur asked.

  “Whatever she lets me.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “I need to get them out of town before things go to shit here.”

  Ian grunted. Arthur said nothing. They both knew something was coming. Whether it was an outlaw gang like Burned Skulls or something else, time would tell.

  “So, yesterday, Lennox got out of school in the middle of the day to chase after his grandpa who apparently wanders past the school sometimes when he’s high,” Quinn started, and then told the whole story to his uncles who were greatly entertained.

  “That Charlie is tough as nails,” Ian said, smiling slightly. “I wish I could make Benny see sense.”

  Quinn shrugged. “He’s way too far gone. She’s been taking care of him forever. He was practically naked yesterday. He’s skin and bones. There’s nothing anyone can do.” He sighed. “Lennox gives him money.”

  “What?” Arthur frowned.

  “Charlie said Lennox gives his allowance money to him so he won’t be so sick all the time.”

  Ian grunted in disgust. “That’s…”

  “Yeah. But what can anyone do? He’s a kid, apparently a kind, generous one.”

  “Reminds me of when you were a boy,” Arthur said quietly.

  “Unlike Jimmy,” Ian’s voice was even quieter. He took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Look, once I’m gone, the only way this ends is with one of you gone. Either you take over and he’ll come after you, or he does and you have to live with whatever he brings into this town.”

  “I know.” Quinn looked at Ian. “I can’t have Charlie and Lennox here, no matter what happens.” Or Aaron, but he couldn’t say that. “And if I live and watch Jimmy do his thing, I’ll never be his true ally.”

  “No, you won’t,” Arthur agreed. “You used to be friends because you had to be. Only blood cousins in the clan. But you’re very different.”

  “With the reputation you have, you could hold your own, but I’m not sure I want to put you through that,” Ian said, then coughed and kept doing it for a minute or two. In the end, he was red in the face and panting, trying to hide his embarrassment. “I fucking hate this disease,” he spat out the words.

  “Yeah.” Quinn hated it too. He hated that it took good people like Aaron’s mother, and fucked up the whole town like in Ian’s case. He knew Uncle Ian had blood on his hands, just like Quinn himself did, just not in this town, yet.

  The front door opened, and Arthur rolled his eyes. Quinn turned his head and saw Sheriff Henderson walk in.

  The man went to the bar and got himself a coffee from the bored girl behind the counter, and then ambled over to sit at the table across from the booth.

  “Morning,” Sheriff Henderson said, smirking a little.

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” Ian said in a pointedly neutral tone.

  Arthur nodded but said nothing.

  Quinn felt like this was a frequent occurrence. Then Henderson aimed his piercing gaze at Quinn.

  “Quinn MacGregor. Haven’t seen you in town in a while,” he said in a conversational tone.

  “That might be because I haven’t been back since my father was put away for killing your predecessor,” Quinn said in the same exact tone.

  Arthur snorted.

  Henderson’s face turned to stone. For a moment, Quinn thought he’d make the “I’m keeping an eye on you” gesture, but instead, he drank his coffee in silence.

  “So, are you coming over for dinner tonight?” Ian asked Quinn, ignoring the sheriff completely.

  “Might as well. I need to get some groceries and more cat food, maybe another bouquet for Aunt Karen,” Quinn joked, making his uncles laugh.

  Sheriff Henderson couldn’t hide the way his attention turned to them.

  “Don’t worry, Sheriff,” Quinn said lightly. “It’s not code for drugs. It means a bottle of wine.” He slid out of the booth and shook Arthur’s hand. “I’ll see you around, unless you’re coming to dinner too?”

  “No, I promised the missus I’ll take her to Vegas for the weekend. Something about seeing a show.” Arthur pretended like he wasn’t tickled to be going with his wife. Quinn saw the moment when he realized what him being out of town might mean if the rumors about the club changed for the worse during the weekend.

  “You go and have fun, Arthur,” Ian said firmly, clearly following the train of thought.

  Arthur nodded a bit stiffly. “Alright. We’ll be back on Sunday afternoon.”

  “Just after the church lets out,” Quinn teased, and made both of the men laugh again.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Arthur replied, rolling his eyes.

  None of the MacGregors had been avid churchgoers after Quinn’s grandpa and most of his men had passed away. It was an ongoing joke that they didn’t go to church even though most of the crew would’ve needed to confess every now and then.

  “Alright, well, I’m off. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Ian and Arthur both got to their feet.

  “We’ll walk you out. I have some work to do at home,” Ian said. Then he nodded politely to the sheriff. “Sheriff Henderson.”

  Henderson grunted.

  Once they were on the street, Ian turned to Quinn. “Look, I’m not happy that you’re back in town for the obvious reasons. I don’t like the situation we’re facing. But the thing with Charlie, that’s something I’m sure you’ll handle in the best way you know how.”

  “Yes,” Arthur added. “And if there’s anything we can do to help with that situation, let us know. We have experience in that fatherhood thing.”

  They both looked at him so warmly, smiling at him genuinely, that Quinn felt a bit choked up. He shook both of their hands and just nodded, before they all got into their vehicles.

  When Quinn turned his head to see if he could back out of the parking spot, he saw Jimmy standing across the road with a woman Quinn assumed was his current girlfriend. Jimmy didn’t look happy at all. Well fuck.

  Quinn lifted his hand to his cousin and got a tight nod in return. He wasn’t sure what Jimmy thought he’d just seen, but he had a pretty good idea. The problem was that if he’d stop and talk to his cousin, it would look more like a denial than the truth.

  Sometimes Quinn hated his fucking family.

  Chapter 8

  The diner looked exactly like Aaron remembered, down to the duct tape holding some of the old vinyl cushions in the booths together. It smelled the same too: oil and bacon grease and salt. It made his stomach growl. He wondered if the kids from the high school still hung out here every afternoon because there was fuck all else to do in Spruce Creek, but it was the middle of the day, so he had no way of knowing.

  He took a seat at a booth, catching Charlie’s eye as she worked the counter. She looked surprised to see him and, as soon as she was done ringing up some woman’s coffee, came walking over to him. She was wearing the same mint green dresses the waitresses had been wearing a decade ago, with a white apron tied around her waist.

  She handed Aaron a menu. “You finally got out of the house, huh?”

  “Yeah.” He glanced at the menu and then set it down on the cracked laminate tabletop. “Were you going to tell me you had a kid? With Quinn?”

  “No, and no,” she said, lifting her chin. “Who the hell told you anyway? Did Sheriff Henderson—” And then she snorted suddenly. “It was Quinn, wasn’t it? He came by to see you?”

  Aaron jerked his head in a nod.

  Charlie narrowed her eyes as she looked at him, as though she was searching for something in his expression. Aaron tried to keep his face expressionless, but Charlie widened her eyes and gasped. “Holy shit! You fucked him, didn’t you?”

  “Keep your voice down!” Aaron hissed, looking around the diner, but the place was practically empty and the only other customers, an elderly couple engaged in conversation, were seated on the other side of the dining area.


  “You did!”

  Aaron wanted to crawl under the table and die. “He said I was still hot.”

  Charlie squawked out a laugh, and then slapped her hands over her mouth. “God. You two! Nothing’s changed, has it? Not when it comes to him.”

  “If you mean I’m still a dumbass teenager who thinks with his dick when it comes to him, then, yeah.” Aaron rolled his eyes. “It was a mistake, and I’m a fucking idiot.”

  “Well,” Charlie said, “at least your dumb mistake with Quinn isn’t likely to leave you with an entirely new human being you have to raise, is it?”

  Aaron wondered at his sudden twinge of jealousy, as though Charlie had slept with Quinn yesterday and not a decade ago. “How the hell did that even happen?”

  “Tequila, mostly,” Charlie said. She glanced around the diner and then slid into the seat across from his. “I was lonely and angry, he was lonely and angry, and I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. He was still hung up on you, and I was trying to figure out if I was really missing out on what all the other girls were talking about, and it was a disaster from start to finish. But in the famous words of Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park, ‘life, uh, finds a way.’” She shrugged. “And then, a few weeks later, he and his mom left town as well. I didn’t even know I was pregnant until he was gone.”

  Aaron shook his head. “Jesus, Charlie. You had to deal with that all on your own?”

  She twisted her mouth. “My dad helped out at the start. He was actually pretty good when Lennox was born. It was the longest I’d seen him clean in years. So it was okay for a while, until he relapsed. But me and Lennox, we’re getting by.”

  Aaron was suddenly struck by the tragedy of those simple words. Getting by. Charlie had dreamed of the world once. She’d dreamed of going to Hollywood and being a famous actress, and Aaron had never doubted she could do it. She’d told him that she’d have millions of dollars and a house by the ocean, and another one in Vermont for the holidays. He thought of the postcard she used to carry around as a bookmark, with some pretty landscape on it—a lake surrounded by trees in autumnal shades of red and gold. Some place she remembered visiting as a kid, back before her dad had totally checked out thanks to his drug habit. He couldn’t remember the name of the town now, but Charlie had talked about it like it was magical.

  “Is he a good kid?” he asked.

  She smiled, and her eyes lit up. “He’s the best. I mean, obviously I’m biased, but he’s a great kid. He’s smart as a whip, and he’s mostly well behaved, and he’s kind, Aaron. He’s got the biggest heart, though God only knows who he inherited that from, right?”

  “From you.”

  She snorted.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “From you, Charlie. Who else would have spent a whole summer pretending to be Quinn’s girlfriend, just so you could cover for us?”

  “That was selfish as hell too, you know,” Charlie said, reaching out and putting her hand over his. “I was sick of the other girls thinking I was a freak for not wanting a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend, before you ask. I’m ace, Aaron. Quinn was as much my beard that summer as I was his. I just didn’t quite know it yet.”

  “Oh,” Aaron said, and then shook his head with a laugh. “Jesus. The gay kid, the bi kid, and the ace kid. We were almost a whole rainbow, weren’t we?”

  Charlie laughed as well. “I guess we were.”

  Aaron’s smile faded. “Quinn was pretty shaken up to hear about your son, I think,” he said at last, not knowing what else to say.

  Charlie raised her eyebrows. “Quinn was never supposed to find out. I don’t want him in my son’s life. Not with his family. It’s hard enough keeping Lennox away from most of my dad’s bullshit, without adding the MacGregors to it. He carries a gun, you know? Quinn?”

  Aaron wished he could be surprised.

  “Whatever he’s back in town for, I don’t want anything to do with it,” Charlie said. Her expression softened. “And neither should you.”

  “I don’t.” Aaron shook his head. “It was a mistake.”

  “I loved Quinn,” Charlie said, and smiled at Aaron’s look. “As a friend. But he’s not the guy he was, back when we were all kids. And I guess none of us are the same people anymore, but Quinn is…I don’t know. Maybe he’s still a good guy, under everything else, but I don’t want to be near the sort of person who lives the kind of life that he does. It’s too dangerous. And it’s wrong. The MacGregors make their money from other people’s misery. I might be poor as hell and working in a shithole diner in a dead-end town, but at least I can sleep at night.”

  “Yeah,” Aaron said softly. He wondered if Quinn could. He wondered what it would have felt like if Quinn had stayed last night, instead of leaving. They’d never woken up together, not even back when they were teenagers. They’d been too scared of getting caught back then, and now…Aaron didn’t know. He only knew it had been a mistake getting tangled up with Quinn again, because everything Charlie said about him was true.

  “You should come around and visit with me and Lennox,” Charlie said. “For dinner, or something. We live in the green duplex on Connor Street, you remember it?”

  “I think so.” Aaron wasn’t sure how he felt about being invited in Charlie’s life, the one she shared with her son, when she’d shut the door firmly in Quinn’s face. But it was like he’d told Quinn: Quinn wasn’t a dad, he was a sperm donor. And it’s not like he could blame Charlie for wanting nothing to do with Quinn. Not when Quinn had admitted he was back in town for family business.

  “So,” Charlie said, “you here for breakfast, or what?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Aaron picked up the menu and scanned it. “Bacon and eggs look great. And a black coffee.”

  “I’m on it,” Charlie said, and stood. “It’s good to have you back, Aaron, even if you’re not sticking around. I’ve missed you.”

  “Me too,” Aaron said, and watched her walk toward the kitchen out the back.

  He’d missed Quinn too though, and he didn’t know how to feel about that.

  * * * *

  Brody turned up at the house in the afternoon, in the rattling old truck that had announced his arrival from halfway down Main Street. Brody had barely changed since high school. He was still tall and gangly, with messy hair and a lazy smile. He still smelled of weed. And he was still as good-natured as he’d always been.

  “I don’t have a problem with the MacGregors,” he said as he helped Aaron strip the last wall in the den. Brody worked on the ladder, while Aaron took care of the bits he could reach. “I mean, you want to buy in this town, then you have to deal with them, you know? When weed became legal I was like, ‘Woah, I can go to a dispensary!’ but the closest one is in Fallon, you know, and who wants to drive that far every couple of days? So I still buy off the MacGregors.” He paused, and snorted. “Well, you know, I buy from a guy who still buys off the MacGregors.”

  “They’re bad people,” Aaron said, scraping a section of the wall and peeling a strip of wallpaper off. It curled into a spiral as it dropped to the floor.

  “I know they are,” Brody said. He chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “But they’re on the level too, you know? Like, you don’t fuck with them, and they won’t fuck with you.”

  “I guess my dad was just fucking with them, huh?” Aaron couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his tone.

  “Yeah, well Robert MacGregor was a fucking psychopath,” Brody said. “Still is, I’ll bet. The rest of them though, you don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.”

  Aaron thought of the way Brody had ignored the cliques in high school, and how he’d been friends with everyone, no matter who they were. In high school it had seemed like a virtue, and Aaron had admired it. Not so much anymore.

  Then again, Aaron wasn’t sure he had any grounds to be angry at Brody’s attitude. It wasn’t Brody that Quinn MacGregor had blown last night.

  “So, how’s the junkyard business going?” he asked to
change the subject, and Brody beamed and began to tell him.

  * * * *

  It was late and Brody had gone and Aaron had finished three beers on his own when he pushed the door to his parents’ bedroom open. He kept his eyes closed while he did it, and imagined it the way it had been before he and his mom had moved: the bed in the middle of the room, with the matching dressers on either side. The large armoire that had belonged to mom’s grandmother on the opposite wall, a mirror hanging beside it, and a bookshelf where Mom and Dad’s books had once jostled for space. Dad had loved classic sci-fi books, while Mom had loved historical novels. Aliens and heiresses had pushed up against one another on those shelves.

  Aaron felt up the wall for the light switch—it wasn’t as high up as he was expecting—and flicked it on. Then he opened his eyes.

  The room was empty now, except for the bed, the naked mattress, and the dressers. Aaron didn’t know why Mom hadn’t taken the bed and the dressers. Maybe she hadn’t been able to handle the thought of sleeping in the bed without Dad. The bed was old as hell and heavy though, so maybe it had been hard to take apart to get out of the doorway.

  Aaron leaned in the doorway and looked around the room.

  He’d thought it would hurt to step into this place again, but it was only a dull ache. The bedroom wasn’t some harsh, stark reminder of his parents, just another wave of loss, and Aaron had felt plenty of those before. The room was just empty. Just an empty space.

  He shuffled further inside, and sat down on the edge of the mattress.

  The pain in his stump eased, and Aaron rubbed his thigh and tried to remember how long he’d been wearing his prosthetic for today. He should take it off soon, and let his stump get some air, and give the rest of his body a break.

  Brody had rolled him a couple of joints before he left, and left them on the counter in the kitchen, alongside a lighter. Better than Percocet, he’d promised, and Aaron was tempted to try. Uncle Will might not like it but weed was legal now so there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do about it. Aaron just wasn’t sure he wanted to use anything that had come from the MacGregors, indirectly or not. He knew himself well enough to figure he’d change his mind though: fuck pride when there was the promise of pain relief on the line.