by A. J. Downey
He missed the part where I’d been sent to an all girl’s boarding school. One that actually educated its girls that it was never our fault. It just went to show, rape really wasn’t about sex, it was about power… Well, newsflash, I wasn’t giving mine up under any circumstances. I stared across the table at my mother’s tear stained face and not for the first time had to wonder about her and why she would allow half of the things she had under her roof. Of course the short answer was, because of my father.
Scary.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am… but your son is what, two, three years older than Bales here?” My mother’s attention went right to Rush who had spoken. His voice, likewise, snapping me out of the deep well of thought I’d fallen into.
“Yes.”
“That makes him what? Thirty, thirty-one?”
“Yes, I don’t understand what that has to do with anything, though.”
“Well ma’am, if your boy is thirty to thirty-one years of age and don’t know what he’s doing is wrong, I don’t think there’s a parenting tactic in the world been invented to handle that kind of wrong. He’s old enough to know better, he just don’t care.”
“There’s a word for that, Trudy,” Dragon said and my mother turned her tear stained face to him.
“Sociopath,” Dray supplied when it was clear she wasn’t getting it.
“I don’t know if there’s any help for ‘im if that’s the case,” Dragon said. “But we can sure try.”
“How do you propose we do that?” she asked, squaring her shoulders.
“Fire with fire?” Rush asked looking grim.
“Not quite ready to turn Reave or Cell loose on ‘im just yet,” Dragon said leaning back in his chair.
“There is one more possibility,” Dray said.
“What?” I asked.
“Could just have a really bad fuckin’ case of that affluenza goin’ around the country.”
I made a face, “Spoiled little asshole is way more my brother’s speed. I’m pretty shocked he would go so far, I mean, are you sure Ken wasn’t saying just anything to get away from you?”
“That could be, too.”
“Because it’s family, let’s error on the side of desperation. What would make Philip so fuckin’ desperate he would stoop so damn low?” Rush put out there gently and my mother looked positively grateful for him casting the line of hope out there that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t completely to blame.
“Only one man’s gonna have the answer to that question,” Dragon said.
“Data.” Rush and Dray said in unison.
“Where’s he at?” Rush asked.
“I told you, he was finishing up rigging security gear at Blue Hills. I imagine he’s still there with Trig and Reave. I know the farm hands fixed up a new door frame for Bailey’s front door.
Rush grimaced, “Gonna have to buy one to put in it for now. I ain’t finished with the one I’m makin’.”
“That’s fine,” I said with a smile. It was sweet he had tried to make me a new front door rather than just going down to the local home improvement depot and picking up a new one.
“Only one thing for it, let’s take a ride.” Dragon said pushing to his feet.
“I’ll grab my spare helmet and be right back,” Rush said and leaned in and kissed me quickly on the lips before I could say or do anything. My gaze immediately went to my mother’s whose dark eyes I’d inherited remained shuttered.
“Let’s take a walk, son,” Dragon got up from the table and Dray echoed the movement. I swallowed hard and they left out the front door.
“Dray’s girlfriend is pregnant,” I said, and immediately followed up with, “I don’t know why I just said that.” Actually, I did. I was so nervous about the ass chewing that was likely to come from my mother’s mouth that I would say just about anything that could and would draw fire. Unfortunately for me, it put her on the wrong track when it came to her train of thought.
“Are you pregnant?” she asked and I blinked wide eyed.
“No!” I said startled, which wasn’t precisely true. I was on one of the birth control shots, but Rush and I had been having a lot of unprotected sex. Still, my damn period was ridiculously fickle before the shot. After, it was really hit or miss. I hadn’t had one yet, but that wasn’t too surprising with all the stress… still, I was reminded, I needed to get checked up or take a test, just to be sure.
My mother searched my face, decided I wasn’t lying, and sighed. She turned her face to look anywhere but at me and said, “I was always so jealous of my sister. Hated her, in fact, for a long time.”
“What?” The change of subject was so abrupt I almost couldn’t follow.
“She had the courage to follow her dreams, to do what made her happy. While me? I always tried to do what was right.” She raised her hands and put the word ‘right’ into air quotes.
She laughed, a short, self-deprecating sort of sound and said, “I used to tell her how my children would grow up to be healthy, happy, productive members of society. That I was giving them a better life than she was providing for herself and Dray. I used to tell her I worried about how Dray would turn out, living around such a criminal element. I’m ashamed of that now, but I wholeheartedly believed that I was doing the right thing.”
I swallowed hard. “And now?”
“Now, I feel the fool, but at least I am an honest one with the best of intentions.”
Silence stretched between us for a span of heartbeats while I tried to decipher what my mother was trying to tell me. Finally, I ventured out hesitantly with, “So you’re not mad about Rush and me?”
“I’m not happy, but I’m not angry, no.”
Why!? Why is the fact you aren’t happy with me so absolutely soul crushing? I wanted to demand to know, but instead I just sat there, still, silent, and trying not to let my eyes mist too hard.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Bailey! What am I supposed to think? My sister’s involvement with this club is what eventually ended her life! I don’t want that for my only daughter.”
“No, I get it…” I said quietly the first tear sliding free.
“I’m not angry, Bailey. I’m scared. Scared that in my desperation I’ve put you on a path that you can never come back from.”
“Mom, you need to stop. It’s not all on you! God, Rush was right – Philip and I both are old enough to know better and right now, I know that Rush, Uncle Dragon and Cousin Dray have my best interests at heart, just like you. I have to make my own decisions now. That’s part of being an adult.”
“I understand that, Bailey Lynn Berling!” my mother snapped and I felt about five inches tall when she used all three of my names like that. “What you need to understand is no matter how old you are or how big you get, you will always be my little girl.”
Okay, well, point well taken…
“Right,” I said and hugged myself a little.
“I love you.” She said and she sniffed, her own tears spilling over. I blinked, taken aback. My mom rarely, if ever, uttered those three words. It always took me by surprise when she did, and worse? I always had this little internal voice crop up that said, “Yeah, right,” because I knew in the front of my head, even if the back of my head didn’t get the message, that you didn’t treat people you really loved like cast off objects. I’d always been an afterthought to my family unless they needed me for a photo op, or to make them look good… and I always, always, did stellar at it because I craved their approval over everything else… their love… and of course, never felt like I had it or got it.
“I love you, too, Mom,” I said and I meant it… even if it did feel wooden coming out of my mouth.
It was a picture perfect family moment after that. We got up and hugged each other and that was how Rush found us. Hugging and crying, just generally being a couple of girls, but it felt so incredibly fake now. Especially considering I was sure I’d finally experienced the real thing and he was standing right there, waiting u
s out. When we broke apart, he cleared his throat to let us know he was there in the gentlest way possible. I knew, but my mother startled. She hadn’t and it was then that it hit me, she meant everything she was saying… there wasn’t anything fake about it and with all of the baggage of my childhood and growing up the way I had? I nearly missed it.
Thank god for Rush… if he only knew.
“Come on, let’s go see what we can find out,” he said holding out his hand to me. I frowned and took it, wondering where his spare helmet was.
My mother stared at our hands for several moments, but said nothing. We went outside to where my mother’s car and driver waited, Dragon and Dray leaning against their bikes, smoking and talking to him.
The driver snapped to and scurried to open my mother’s door for her. Rush got on his bike and tied a red bandana onto his head. Dray did likewise, tying a black bandana over his raven locks. He handed me his spare helmet out of his storage container on the side of his bike and winked at me and I felt my shoulders drop. I tilted my head to the side with a silent ‘really?’ and he chuckled quietly. I mean, I could see it but couldn’t hear it over the bikes.
I got on behind Rush, buckling the helmet on, my mother’s silver Jag pulling smoothly past us, her face worried as she stared at me through the glass.
I wished she wouldn’t, knew she would, and held onto Rush tightly as he started the bike, hating the clash of confusing emotions, my heard squaring off against my head once more. The wind was a soothing thing, the fierce wildness of it stripping off some of the insecurities, infusing me with a bit more confidence. I was beginning to realize things were all much more clearer-cut when I was with Rush, my uncle, and my cousin. They didn’t say one thing and then do another like my mother, brother, and father did.
Everything was much clearer, and there was something to be said for having the ability to take things at face value. Something you could never do in the circles I had been raised in. I was quickly starting to prefer and enjoy who I was and how things were with Rush, over who I was and the constant checking over my shoulder that I needed to do with my family, and anyone I had been raised around. I knew in the front of my head, this wasn’t supposed to be how things worked. It was how I was certainly raised, too… but it wasn’t at the same time. There were the rules on the surface, then there were the rules underneath, and they rarely, if ever, were the same rules… I was really enjoying the fact that my cousin and his people lived by one set of rules, even if those rules were simply just theirs, and that they adhered to them so strongly…
There were three Sacred Hearts on my front porch when we arrived. Data with his laptop out at my table, a cord running through my window which had been lifted a crack to allow it to run to a power source inside. Then there was the man with the bright blue eyes who had congratulated my uncle on becoming a grandfather. Finally, there was a huge mountain of a man with a blond ponytail. I didn’t know him, either.
The man with the blue eyes was helping some of my men finish up installing a new front door and he looked like he knew what he was doing. We pulled up, and I got down, Rush, Dragon, and Dray backing their bikes into line with the other three already present in front of one of my porch railings.
“Was wondering when y’all were gonna get here,” the big blond guy said. “Data’s already got something.”
“Seriously?” Rush asked.
“Fuck, like you’re surprised!” The blue eyed man said.
My mother and I were given the right of way to mount the steps and Uncle Dragon gave the introductions.
“Bailey, Trudy, these here are my men, Trigger and Reaver. You’ve already met Data.”
“Hello,” I murmured, my mother simply giving an elegant nod.
“Hey, darlin’; nice to meet you,” Trigger said to me.
“Man, you gonna tag me in? I really wish you’d tag me in,” Reaver said to Dragon, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
Dragon eyed him and said, “After the shit went down with you, Cell, an’ that little fuckwit? I’d be lyin’ if I said I wasn’t more ‘n a little reluctant.”
The man pouted. Like actually stuck out his lower lip and made a sad faced pout like a little kid before he whipped around and started working on my door again saying, “That was all Cell, man. We aren’t even the same type of crazy.”
Trigger, Rush, and Dray laughed and I could tell Uncle Dragon was trying really hard not to. He shook his head and I sighed, “There’s more room inside at the dining room table. Are we good to go through that door?” I asked.
“Yeah,” the man, Reaver, said and his tone was dejected. He opened up the door and ushered us all through. I immediately went to my kitchen to raid the fridge for cold drinks while everyone settled around the table. That done, I settled in to hear what Data had to say.
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like your nephew is in deep with this development group on a few projects. This one being only one of them.”
“What?” my mother asked and tried to peek at Data’s laptop screen. He turned it so that she could see and her expression became grim.
“I don’t follow,” Dragon said, “real estate ain’t never been my thing.”
Cue a bunch of long explanations about loans, and flipping properties, and budget overages, and a bunch of contractor mumbo jumbo that I could barely follow. It seemed that my brother owed this development group a lot of money and in exchange for some forgiveness on some of those loans, they wanted his help in acquiring Blue Hills for their development plans for the area. My mother looked crushed, meanwhile, I was just mad. I shook my head and scrubbed my face with my hands.
“There’s more, and I’m not sure what y’all are going to want to do with this…” Data trailed off and looked like he really regretted what he was about to say.
“Out with it, dude,” Rush told him, tone encouraging rather than impatient.
“I managed to hack into some emails that went back and forth between your brother and the lead developer. They already know his attempts to sway you into their corner didn’t work. They sent back a one line email that’s concerning. It reads: ‘Fine, I’ll handle it.’”
“Shit,” Dray swore and my mother looked at me pointedly.
“Your meeting with Marion Cranston, how did that go?” she asked.
I swallowed and said, “I went to her home just yesterday… or was it the day before?” It was the reason why Rush had had the time to play in his woodshop. I’d completely forgotten about the results of that meeting given everything that’d happened since. I also had completely lost all track of time.
“And?” my mother pressed.
“And I think that I need to call her and that I definitely need to do what she suggested.”
“Which was?” Dray demanded, arching a brow.
I shook my head and looked pointedly around the room. Data looked startled and said, “Oh, yeah!” He reached into his pocket and tossed a handful of small circuit boards and bits of wire onto the table.
“What are those?” my mother demanded.
“Bugs,” Dragon told her.
“What?”
“Listening devices, Mom.”
“I know what a bug is, Bailey… I just never thought –“
“That’s why Marion Cranston wanted me to go to her place to discuss business,” I said.
I told them what she’d told me. One, that she was sick of the way the south treated it’s women in regards to business and horses, and two, that her informational sources had told her that things weren’t going well at Blue Hills and that she’d like to help. Up to and including housing the horses kept here in case of an emergency. I was sure this qualified at this point.
“You and Rush can do it on yer own?” Dragon asked.
“Yes, shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Need to do it by cover of night and you need to start tonight; there’s no tellin’ when these fellas are going to show.”
“How do we know they aren�
��t watching?” Rush asked.
“We don’t,” Trig said.
“Right, tag Reave in. Go find ‘em and do what you do,” Dragon said.
“On it, P.” Trigger got up from the table and opened up the front door, he said to Reaver outside, “Nice work, you’ve been tagged in. Let’s go.”
“Woo hoo!” Reaver responded and the door shut on the rest of their conversation.
“You okay, Bailey?” I startled and looked at Rush who was looking at me, concern written all over his face.
“I, uh, yeah?”
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Dragon asked.
I shook my head and said, “This stuff just doesn’t happen in the real world… this is the kind of thing that happens in movies and on TV. This isn’t life.”
The men around the table shared a laugh and I frowned, perplexed. Data leaned forward and said, “Where do you think they get the idea to put this shit in movies and on TV?”
I thought about that, and the answer came from Dray, “Its art imitating life more often than not, Bales.”
I sat there and spent the rest of the conversation quiet, not knowing what to say after that. Not realizing how naïve I’d really been until the veil had been unceremoniously snatched off my eyes. I guess I now really understood the phrase ignorance is bliss. It really was. I mean, I didn’t know what to do with myself now that I could really see.
Rush reached over and took my hand under the table and threaded his fingers through mine, giving it a reassuring squeeze. I looked to him, and sighed and he gave me a warm smile that said “We’ve got this.”
Yeah. It was overwhelming, sure, but I’m sure he was right… we had this.
Chapter 25
