by Jessie Evans
I nod, glancing up to find Danny already glaring at me from the far side of the lawn, where the three Cooney boys are kicking a soccer ball while Emmie scoots through the middle of their game on a plastic train.
“Well, maybe Morris Brothers burgers will change his mind.”
“You’re kidding.” Caitlin turns to me with wide eyes, glancing from me to the bag, smile spreading as she backs across the lawn. “I thought I smelled something more delicious than Dave’s Drive In. You went for the good stuff!”
“For you? Always,” I say, enjoying the way she looks both pleased and flustered by the compliment before she turns to shout—
“Food’s here! Rinse your hands in the hose if they’re muddy and come and get it!”
Moments later, I’m surrounded by hot, grass-and-sweat scented bodies pressing in close as I set the bag of food down on the picnic table and begin divvying up the goods. Ray slips onto the seat beside me on one side, Sean on the other, while Caitlin gets Emmie settled and starts handing out cups and pouring sweet tea. Danny is the last to join the group—settling onto the edge of the opposite seat, as far from me as he can get—but his glare fades as soon as he gets a cheeseburger in his mouth. He doesn’t join the conversation or ask to come along for the ride I promise to give Sean and Ray after dinner, but he’s civil, and even laughs when Caitlin teases him about having a tape worm, saying it’s the only explanation for how he can eat three times as much as anyone else in the family and stay so skinny.
The meal takes approximately fifteen minutes—about five times faster than any meal ever eaten in the Alexander home—and then the kids are up playing again and Caitlin and I are alone at the table, surrounded by ketchup-streaked burger wrappers and a few lone fries that escaped being devoured whole.
“Thanks for bringing dinner,” she says, resting her sweating glass of sweet tea against her cheek for a moment before taking a sip.
“You’re welcome.” I watch her throat work as she drinks, wondering how she can make even sipping tea look sexy. “It was fun.”
“It was.” She grins. “You’re good with the kids.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am, a little.” She lifts one bare, lightly freckled shoulder. “You don’t have any brothers or sisters. It’s not like you’ve had a lot of practice dealing with small people.”
“Small people are just people,” I say. “But smaller. With less bullshit to cut through to find out what they’re really about.”
“True,” she says, casting a glance in the kids’ direction before adding in a softer voice, “Speaking of bullshit, I’m supposed to have a conference with Pitt tomorrow. I don’t know how I’m going to keep from slapping him.”
“What’s the conference for?”
“Same thing they’ve been about all year—Danny’s lack of respect for his elders.” She rolls her eyes. “I mean, it’s no wonder. My mom and dad didn’t exactly instill a lot of confidence in the older generation. Danny’s other teachers have always understood that, and taken the time to work with Danny, earn his trust.” She shakes her head. “But I swear Mr. Pitt deliberately pushes Danny’s buttons. It’s like he wants to see him fail.”
“Maybe he does,” I say. “Seems like he enjoys tormenting the people he has under his thumb.”
Caitlin leans closer. “I was thinking about that today, that Pitt must have enjoyed what he did to his mother. Otherwise, why keep her alive for so many years? Why not ‘accidentally’ give her the wrong amount of medication right away?”
“I agree. If he was after the house and the inheritance, there was no reason to spend nearly a decade sliding meals through a slot in the door and emptying the pot he gave her to piss in.”
“What a fucking monster.” Caitlin’s eyes darken, and rage hardens her features, giving her beauty a cold edge that makes me want to kiss her even more. “I can’t believe he didn’t go to jail. Even if the jury was convinced the overdose was an accident, how did they excuse keeping an elderly woman with diabetes and mental problems locked in an attic for eight years just because Pitt didn’t want to pay for the kind of care she needed?”
I shrug. “Elder abuse is notoriously hard to prove. Almost no one gets convicted, which is why my father took the case in the first place. Even though he knew Pitt was a murderer.”
Caitlin shakes her head. “How does your dad sleep at night?”
“Very well,” I say, with a smile. “It’s my mother who’s addicted to sleeping pills.”
“No, seriously, Gabe,” she says. “Your dad seemed nice yesterday. Meeting him, you’d never think he was the kind of person who would defend all these horrible people.”
“I don’t know.” I grab Ray and Sean’s discarded burger wrappers and wad them into a ball before throwing them back into the bag. “I guess he’s done the mental gymnastics to make it acceptable.”
“That sounds familiar.” Caitlin sighs, eyes dropping to the graying wood of the picnic table. “I’ve been doing some mental gymnastics the past few days…”
I cover her hand with mine. “But our gymnastics are the right gymnastics.”
“Are they?” She threads her fingers through mine. “I mean, does robbing Mr. Pitt make anything better? It won’t undo what happened to his mom, or keep him from bullying his students, or send him to prison where he belongs.”
“You’re saying the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.” I nod, considering her point. “So you think we should revise our plan? Arrange to have Pitt trapped in a blazing hot room with only one tiny window to look out at the world for a month or two, give him a taste of his own medicine?”
Caitlin’s eyes flick sharply back to mine. “You’re not serious.”
“I could be,” I say. “I like the idea of hitting the guy where it hurts.”
She shakes her head as she detangles our fingers. “No, Gabe, I’m not—”
“Katydid, there you are!” a masculine voice booms from behind us, cutting Caitlin short.
As the color drains from her face, I turn to see an older man with salt and pepper hair, a nose with the same ski-slope shape as Caitlin’s—though larger, and redder—and bloodshot eyes stumbling down the back steps. His ample stomach bounces as he misjudges the distance between the final step and the ground and he staggers sharply to the left before regaining his balance. He’s wearing a stained blue tee shirt and khaki pants, paired with battered black dress shoes, and is about three spaghetti stains short of resembling the bums who gather outside my parents’ church on Wednesday mornings for free breakfast.
And I suspect he is Caitlin’s dad, a suspicion he confirms when he says in a slurred voice—
“Sweetheart, I have a problem. I need some help from my best girl.”
I dislike him immediately, even before I turn back to see the confident, laid back Caitlin who met me at the door tonight replaced by a pale, vulnerable-looking girl with panic written clearly on her features.
Chapter Eight
Caitlin
A man takes a drink; the drink takes a drink; the drink takes the man. –Irish proverb
I jump to my feet, making it around the picnic table and intercepting Dad before he gets close enough to realize there’s a stranger at the table. Chuck lost his last pair of glasses months ago and can’t see for shit at a distance. If I can keep him away from the table, give him whatever he wants, and send him on his way, this shouldn’t have to turn ugly in front of Gabe.
As long as Chuck’s not asking for money you don’t have…
“Please don’t be asking for money,” I mutter as I cross the yard.
“There you are.” Chuck grins down at me as I hook my arm through his and turn him toward the house. “There’s my best girl.”
“What’s up, Dad?” I lead him back across the grass, nose wrinkling at the sour, alcohol-and-garlic-infused smell rising from his clothes.
“Veronica kicked me out,” he says. “She says I can’t come back until I start paying room and boar
d. I think she’s serious this time. She had that look in her eye.”
I sigh. It’s about money. Of course it is.
What else does Chuck ever need from his “best girl?”
“Dad, I don’t have anything to loan you right now,” I say, though we both know this would be a gift, not a loan. For the past year, money has only flowed one way between Chuck and me—from me, to him. “After paying the taxes on the house, I’m strapped. And the kids are going to be out of school soon, and I’ll be paying for daycare… You know that’s crazy expensive.”
“Aw, come on, Kit Cat, you always have a little something stashed away,” Dad says, using one of his many pet names for me, the ones I used to love when I was little and thought that someone calling you a sweet name meant they loved you.
Now, I know better. Words from my dad mean less than nothing. Words are weapons Chuck uses to manipulate the people unlucky enough to be related to him.
“I really don’t this time, Dad,” I say, determined to stand firm. “I’m sorry.”
Gabe and I haven’t hit Mr. Pitt’s house yet, and we may still end up calling off the job. Robbery, I can stomach, but anything else is out of the question. I didn’t like the look in Gabe’s eye when he talked about the punishment fitting the crime.
I liked the fact that something deep inside of me agreed with him even less. I have no intention of becoming one of the monsters in Gabe’s dad’s files, but Gabe and I are standing on a slippery slope, and I have a feeling it would be easier than I can imagine to slide down into the muck.
“I can’t go back to sleeping on the damned couch,” Chuck says, anger creeping into his tone. He wrenches his arm from mine, refusing to let me lead him the rest of the way into the house. “I’ve got a plate in my shoulder and a bad back. I need a bed, Kitty Cat.”
I run a clawed hand through my hair, sneaking a glance back at the picnic table, grateful to see Gabe still sitting where I left him, though he’s watching my exchange with Chuck like a predator debating whether or not to pounce.
I need to get this handled. ASAP.
“Okay, Dad, fine.” I hate what I’m about to do, but I’ve got no other choice. The kids are already sharing rooms and I don’t want Chuck waking them up in the middle of the night when he comes stumbling home drunk.
“You can have your old room back,” I say, the words stinging on the way out. “I’ll set the bunk bed back up in Danny’s room, and Emmie and I can share. She’s old enough to sleep in a big bed, and…I don’t know, maybe I can sell the toddler bed for a few bucks.”
Chuck shakes his head so hard he stumbles before regaining his balance. “I can’t sleep here, Caitlin. It’s too damned hot.”
I open my mouth to tell him that I can turn on the air conditioning if he’s willing to hand over his VA check at the beginning of the month—that check would cover air conditioning and an entire month of daycare, and I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on it before Chuck can drink it away—but he rolls on before I can get a word in.
“I need my own space,” he says, folding his arms over his belly, which has gotten even rounder since he moved in with Veronica, and started eating her Italian home cooking. “I deserve my own space after raising kids for twenty-four damned years.”
I bite my lip, refusing to call him on his bullshit. Deep down, I think he knows that I’ve been doing the kid-raising around here for a long time, and Aoife was doing the heavy lifting before I was old enough, but he’d never admit it out loud. Gabe’s dad has his mental gymnastics, and my father has his. Chuck’s involve casting himself as the long-suffering, hard-working father, whose failures lie at the feet of the wife who left him, the children who never appreciated him, and the government who let him down.
His self-image relies on ignoring that by the time Ray and Sean were born, he was at the bar almost every night, and that for the past few years he’s only seen the kids when he was drunk off his ass.
“Well, I’m sorry, Dad,” I say in my Chuck voice, that calm, lulling tone good for talking down drunks and Gretchen, when she gets her apron in a twist at work. “I can offer you a bed here, but I don’t have any money to spare.”
He scowls, his thick brows shadowing his eyes, transforming his cheery elf face into something uglier, into that sneering mask I remember from watching my parents fight when I was little.
“You’re a liar,” he spits. “Just like your mother.”
“I’m nothing like Mom,” I say, though I know arguing with him is pointless. “I’ve helped you out every time I could afford to, and even sometimes when I couldn’t. The last time I bailed you out with Hal it almost cost me the house.”
“Cost me the house. It’s my house, little girl,” Chuck says, jabbing a finger in my face. “Don’t forget where your bread’s buttered.”
I laugh, a mean laugh I can’t seem to hold in. “Give me a break, Dad. I keep your bread buttered, not the other way around, and you know it.”
“Watch your mouth.” His blue eyes narrow. “I’m good to you, Caity May. Most fathers wouldn’t let a full-grown girl keep hanging around, sleeping under their roof. Most fathers would tell you to get off your ass, and get your own place.”
“Are you kidding me?” I sputter, fighting to keep my temper in check and losing. “You are so full of shit. You would have lost the house and the kids if it weren’t for me.”
Chuck shrugs, his mouth pulling down hard on the sides. “Well…maybe they’d be better off with the state. Maybe I should put in a call.”
I see stars—white hot stars bursting at the edges of my vision—and the next thing I know I’m lunging at Chuck. I’m half my father’s size, but I’m also less than half his age, stone cold sober, and angry. So fucking angry it feels like my chest is going to explode.
How dare he? How dare he threaten this family after all I’ve done to hold us together? It makes my bones vibrate with rage as I slam my palms into his barrel chest and shove.
I push him as hard as I can, but still, I don’t expect him to go reeling backward, tripping hard over the toy truck Sean left out in the grass, and landing flat on his back. Chuck’s cry of pain as he hits the ground makes me flinch and the wave of anger ebb a bit, but I’m still livid, so mad my voice shakes when I speak.
“Get out.” I point a finger around the side of the house. “Get off this property, don’t come back until you’re sober, and don’t you dare threaten this family again.”
“Bitch,” Chuck groans as he rolls onto his side, wincing as he moves.
“And I want the money you owe me for bailing you out with Hal,” I say, refusing to let Chuck’s name-calling hurt. He’s called me a bitch before, and he’s always sorry for it when he sobers up. He’ll probably be back here tomorrow begging forgiveness for the scene he’s causing today, but right now I don’t care. I just want him gone.
“Selfish little bitch,” he says, struggling to his feet. “You don’t care about those kids. You only care about yourself!”
“That may be one of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever heard.” Gabe sounds amused, and when he appears at my side, he looks as cool and collected as always, but I can see the tension simmering in his muscles as he steps in front of me, placing himself between me and Chuck.
I take his elbow and try to pull him back—getting in the middle of things will only make this worse—but it’s too late, Chuck has already smelled blood in the water.
“And who the holy fuck is this?” he asks, eyes widening as he looks from me to Gabe and back again. “You moved your boyfriend into my house? Is that why there’s suddenly no room for your own damned father?”
“She offered you a room,” Gabe says. “You turned it down.”
“Shut up, pretty boy,” Chuck says. “You may be fucking my daughter, but that doesn’t give you the right to—”
Chuck’s words end in a gurgle as Gabe grabs fistfuls of Dad’s spaghetti-sauce-speckled shirt, lifting my father off the ground as he spins and slams Chuck’s back a
gainst the house. I gasp, hand flying to cover my mouth as I stumble a few steps away, not knowing what’s more surprising—that Gabe is even stronger than he looks, or that, for the first time in my life, I can see fear on Chuck’s face.
Even when Hal was threatening to beat my father’s bar tab out of him if Chuck didn’t pay up, the fear in Chuck’s voice as he begged me to bail him out never reached his eyes. No matter how much shit he brings upon himself, my dad is the kind of person who always believes he’ll be able to slither out of trouble in the end.
And why shouldn’t he believe it? For fifty-three years, that’s always been the case.
The fact that Gabe is the first person I’ve ever seen frighten my dad makes the hair on my arms stand on end, even before Gabe says in a low, menacing voice—
“You don’t talk about Caitlin that way. You don’t comment on our relationship, you don’t critique her choices, and you don’t come back here unless you’ve got money in your hands and an apology on your lips. Do you understand?”
Dad pulls in a breath, wincing as he exhales. “Put me down.”
“Do you understand?” Gabe repeats, the muscles in his arms bunching tighter as he lifts my father higher up the side of the house.
“I’ve got a bad back!” Dad cries out, voice pinched.
“Do you—”
“Fuck you!” Chuck shouts, his words transforming into a howl of pain as Gabe pulls him away from the wall and slams him back into the paneling.
“Gabe stop, the kids,” I say, turning to check on my brothers and Emmie.
“Don’t stop because of us,” Danny says in a shaky voice. He stands not far behind me, hands balled into fists at his sides. His cheeks are pale, but his eyes glitter with a cruel satisfaction I don’t like seeing on his face. Not even a little bit.
“Get out of here, Danny,” I say, flinching as my dad’s back hits the wall a third time and his groan becomes a high-pitched yelp. “You don’t need to see this. Go check on the others.”
“The others are fine,” Danny says, eyes glued to Gabe’s back. “I’m staying.”
