by M. O'Keefe
Joan was a big girl. She could figure it out. She’d figured out harder things.
But still, I didn’t fall asleep.
And I didn’t leave.
Don’t trust me. Don’t care about me. Don’t even like me.
I stayed because it was too damn late.
I cared.
Finally, once the birds started making a racket, I got out of bed. I slipped on my swim trunks and a T-shirt and went into the other room.
She was so tiny on that love seat. Smaller with all her attitude turned off while she slept. I knew how attitude could work to make a person seem bigger. Tougher. But she was just a woman. Human and fragile in the end.
And unbearably alone.
Fuck.
I picked her up from where she was curled on the love seat. My ribs made it uncomfortable, but she was small. She curled up even tighter in my arms, as if even in sleep, she was trying to minimize how much we touched.
I had to give her credit—Joan was Joan, no matter what. And I don’t know why I liked that. Why it turned me on and intrigued me while at the same time had me worried.
It just did.
I set her down on the bed and she rolled away from my arms, over on her other side. She must have slept like shit out there on the love seat. I pulled the blanket over her and headed out to the kitchen.
I was going to have to work fast.
On the counter were our phones. She wouldn’t leave without hers. And she probably intended to steal mine. Which, again, Joan being Joan was pretty easy to predict. I was going to have to start hiding my phone.
There were plenty of good and valid reasons to not do what I was planning, but I didn’t listen to them.
I grabbed the phones off the counter and went down one floor to find Fern.
It was quiet this early in the morning, but I could hear morning news broadcasts turned up extra loud behind all the doors. The smell of coffee filled the hallway and made every single vein in my body crave some caffeine.
I stopped in front of the condo that was exactly beneath ours and wasn’t shy about pounding on the door.
Fern, wearing a bright green robe and no makeup, opened up right away.
“What are you doing?” she asked, all furrowed brow. She glanced up and down the hallway as if people might be watching us.
“Can I come in?”
She pulled the belt on her robe a little tighter, her eyes wary. Got it. Not welcome.
I lifted my hands, the phones in each. “I just need the name of the guy who cracked my phone.”
“Why?”
God, suspicion ran deep in this family.
“I’m trying to keep your niece from doing something stupid.”
“Good luck,” she said, the sarcasm apparently a habit.
I blew a hard breath out my nose. I did not have time for this. “Look, you want to pretend you don’t give a shit, great. Keep up the good work. But in the meantime, why don’t you lend a hand to the people who do give a shit?”
She tucked her robe again, a nervous tick. A tell. But she was silent.
She didn’t want to help. Fine. Fuck her.
I stepped back into the hallway away from the door, my eyes still locked on hers so she knew whatever was about to happen was—in part—her fault.
“Help!” I yelled. “I could use some help!”
“Stop it!” she cried and reached forward, grabbing the front of my shirt. She yanked me inside her condo and shut the door behind us. “What are you doing?”
“What needs to be done.”
She eyed me for a long time, like she had a chance of making me back down. I just crossed my arms over my chest and waited for her to realize she wasn’t going to win. Not with me. I got what I wanted. Part of the perks of being a conscienceless outlaw.
“Wait here,” she finally sighed. “Just let me get dressed.”
“I don’t need you to come with me. Just give me the guy’s condo number.”
“Right. Like I’m going to let you go alone,” she scoffed. “I’ll be back in a second. Don’t…” She glanced around her condo as if seeing it with new eyes. As if cataloging all the things I might see or touch or take. I almost told her I didn’t care about her shit, but she spoke up first. “Just…don’t go anywhere.”
She turned and walked across the carpeted living room to the shadowed hallway, and from there, back into the shadowed bedrooms. Just off the foyer was her kitchen. It was a little bigger than the one we had with some nicer appliances.
The coffee pot hissed and gurgled and I went in to help myself, opening her cupboards until I found a mug. Making no effort to stay quiet.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was muffled through the heavy concrete walls.
“Drinking your coffee,” I said.
It was flavored with something sweet, but I drank it anyway. Her fridge was covered with coupons and pictures and I leaned in to look at them, wondering what kinds of things a woman like Fern took pictures of.
They were old, but the face in most of the pictures was unmistakable.
Apparently, Fern had taken pictures of Joan. A teenage Joan, in baggy clothes with a petulant sneer on her mouth.
Her natural hair color was red. Not bright. But dark. It suited her.
There was another girl in the picture, who hadn’t quite learned the petulant sneer and smiled widely at the camera.
Jennifer.
I leaned in closer, as if I could tell from some old picture whether or not the girl was worth saving. There was another picture, the edge curled up and I pressed it flat. A Christmas or birthday. There were presents and Jennifer had a ribbon around her neck. Joan was looking down at a box in her lap.
“I gave them phones.” I jumped slightly at Fern’s voice.
“They didn’t have phones before?” Teenagers had phones. Fuck, grade school kids had phones. It was so commonplace it was weird when they didn’t.
“They didn’t have anything when they came to me.”
Finally I looked over at Fern, her face locked down tight as if she kept every emotion behind high high walls. And razor wire.
“If you want to know more, you have to ask her,” Fern said, because apparently I wasn’t as good at hiding my thoughts. “But,” she pointed at the picture, “I could tell Ol—Joan was thinking of leaving. Jennifer was going to turn eighteen and graduate. She’d been accepted into Florida State and I knew the second Jennifer was gone, Joan would drop out of community college and she’d leave, too. I felt like there was nothing I could do, so I got them phones, thinking if they were ever in trouble, at least they could call me.”
“Did you bug the phones?”
“I didn’t go that far.” Fern’s laugh was dry—the sound of stone rubbing against stone. “I guess I should have. But I thought they’d keep in touch with me. That they would…try.”
“I’m guessing they didn’t.”
“Joan and I drove Jennifer down to school. We got her unpacked and settled. We drove back here, and when I woke up in the morning Joan was gone. No note. No nothing. I called, I texted, and I never heard anything. But I never changed my number, in case they needed to reach me. And once a year I emailed the two of them, just to let them know I was still here. If they wanted—”
“To come back?”
She nodded; I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye.
“I never thought it would be like this,” she said. “But I probably should have guessed. Joan and me…we’re a lot alike.”
“No shit.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “I did the same thing to my family. When I left them…I left. I never looked back. Joan was doing what the women in my family have been doing for years. But Jennifer wasn’t like that. She was a sweet girl. Trusting. So smart.”
She swallowed hard. And then again. And I stepped back like Fern was some kind of bomb about to explode all over me. “Do you…do you know where Jennifer is?” she asked.
“You’ll have to a
sk Joan.” I wasn’t stepping into that mess. No way. In fact, looking at these pictures, hearing Fern’s side of the story, I was beginning to see how fucking pointless what I was doing might be.
Joan was Joan.
And apparently Joan left.
“You ready?” she asked. I drank the last of my coffee, wincing at the taste. Irish cream, that was it.
Fern grabbed a Tupperware container from the counter.
“You really play tennis every day?” I asked, checking out the new tennis outfit. Black and a kind of silvery gray. She was like a super-hero tennis player.
“No,” she said. And that was all.
“You just like the look?”
“Something like that.”
Yeah, she wasn’t going to tell me anything I didn’t need to know. Fair enough. But I did wonder what was in the Tupperware and what it was for.
“So? What do you need with Eric?”
“Eric’s the phone guy?”
She nodded and locked her door behind us after we stepped into the hot concrete hallway. The smell of coffee had been joined by bacon and my stomach roared.
“I’m going to have him put some tracking spyware on her phone so I know where she is.”
She glanced up at me again, every thought, every feeling on lockdown. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or sad or worried or scared. She gave away nothing. “Because she’s going to leave?”
“Apparently, that’s what she does.”
We walked down the hallway silently.
“She’s in trouble, isn’t she? Bad trouble. Jennifer, too?”
“Look, Fern, you gave her the cash. The place to stay. You fixed me up. You don’t have to care anymore if you don’t want to.”
She pushed open the door to the stairwell, and I held it open so she could go in first.
“She doesn’t want me to care,” she said quietly, but the concrete stairwell made her voice echo.
Yeah, I could get how that might be easy to believe. I mean, Joan was good, real good at the “I am an Island” act. But she was ready to get herself killed for her sister. She’d saved my miserable ass. Called my brother so he wouldn’t be scared. That woman she fucked—Sarah—the tenderness and care Joan gave her. Fuck, the way she sucked me down last night. It told a different story. About a different kind of woman.
Even the way she pushed me away when my fingers were deep inside her—coming all alone on that bed—because that was safe or some shit. Because she thought alone was better.
Yet, she wanted to go to the damn cocktail hour with a bunch of old folks she didn’t even know.
And she wanted to be a nurse. A fucking nurse!
So, yeah I wasn’t buying the idea that Joan didn’t care about anyone and didn’t want anyone to care about her.
We got to the next floor and I opened the door for her, and when she walked by I said, “Yeah, I think that’s bullshit and you know it. I think you tell yourself she doesn’t want you to care so you can feel better.”
She turned and glared at me, standing right in front of me so I had to deal with her or knock her over.
“No, she told me she didn’t want me to care. Over and over again. And I ignored her, I did. I just kept caring and I just kept trying. I got her to finish high school. To stay in community college—”
“I don’t think that’s the care she needed,” I told her. Education was nice, but Joan needed something more. Something serious to fill up the holes in her life.
“Maybe you’re right,” Fern said with a hard nod and a chin that was trembling. She sucked in a breath. Another one. “You probably are. But I’ve spent seven years trying not to care, lying in bed at night, telling myself not to imagine them dead. Or in jail. Or any horrible nightmare in between, because Joan couldn’t bother to call me to let me know they were okay. So don’t you dare tell me I don’t care.”
Well, she wasn’t on lockdown anymore. Her red hair was practically vibrating. Her hands around that Tupperware container were shaking.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“Okay, I won’t. You clearly care. You’re up to your eyeballs in giving a fuck.”
I went to step around her but Fern got in my way.
“Is this a joke?”
“I ain’t laughing.”
I stepped past her and she let me. She was behind me now, walking fast to keep up with my long, limping strides.
“You care, too,” she said.
Fuck you, Fern. That’s what I wanted to say. But instead I said nothing.
Because clearly, somehow it was true.
We stopped in front of a shut door that looked exactly like every other shut door. Fern blew out a long breath and put her shoulders back. She glanced down and checked her cleavage before knocking on the door.
I lifted my eyebrows when she looked at me.
“Shut up,” she muttered. “He’s former military so don’t be a smart ass.”
“Or what?”
“Or he’ll break your nose.”
Oh, this was going to be good. Because we needed more hardheads around this place.
Fern knocked and a few minutes later, a good-looking, older black man wearing plaid pajama pants and a gray T-shirt answered the door.
We got a lot of soldiers in the club. Guys who came back from the Middle East, looking for the kind of brotherhood they had in the army or whatever. A lot of them with PTSD and shit, and we exploited the fuck out of that. Violent guys with no boundaries were good soldiers for us, and we told ourselves we were watching out for them.
And we believed that because we were selfish. And small.
But the guy opening the door to us, he was different. He had the kind of military bearing that pushed the walls out of the room. You did not fuck with this guy.
Which of course made me want to fuck with him. An instinct I squashed because I did need his help.
And crap! I recognized him. He was the guy from the pool deck. The one who recognized my tattoos. Who looked at me with such disapproval.
That was probably going to complicate things.
Former military, computer man Eric was six feet tall and built like a stone wall with an equally stony expressionless face, but one look at Fern and the man was all smiles. And Fern, the battle-ax, was blushing.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“Hello, Fern,” he said, in a low, smooth voice that was full of a certain kind of appreciation. I could practically see Fern’s panties fall to her ankles.
“Eric,” she said and that was it. Just Eric. And she might be blushing, but she wasn’t smiling. Wow. Aunt Fern had no game.
“You come bearing gifts,” he said giving me some side-eye.
“Muffins,” Fern said, holding out the Tupperware. “The pumpkin ones you like.”
“Pumpkin muffins and this guy.”
“I’m Max,” I said.
“Yeah, I saw you at the pool yesterday.” His eyes read all of my tattoos, the ones visible under the sleeves of my shirt and what was tattooed on my hands.
And dude was not impressed.
“He needs your help,” Fern said.
He shook his head. “I’m not in the business of helping criminal bikers. Not even for you, Fern.”
I let out a long, slow breath. Controlling myself in the face of insults wasn’t something I was used to. No, I was used to breaking bottles over the heads of guys who talked to me like that.
And Eric eyed me like he knew that about me, and he was waiting for me to take a swing. Like he wanted me to take a swing.
Old or not, Eric had some stones.
“It’s for my niece,” Fern said into the sizzling air between us.
Eric looked over at Fern for a moment and I could see him wavering. Whatever he felt for Fern was significant enough for him to consider helping a criminal biker.
“The one who’s here on her honeymoon?” He looked over at me. “With you?”
“Yes,” Fern said.
He
seemed to be wavering a little more. “What do you need?” he asked.
“I need you to put a spyware app or a tracking feature on her phone,” I said.
Eric held up his hand. “Yeah, I want no part of that. Thanks, Fern, for the muffins.” Eric just about shut the door on us but I got my foot in the way and Eric did not like that.
Fern swore under her breath.
“You want to be moving that foot, son, before I break it off at the ankle.”
It was a well-worn path between me and forcing myself inside. Doing something stupid, hurting Eric. Probably getting hurt worse in return. I had a past full of those stupid decisions.
Do the opposite, I reminded myself. Work backward from what you know.
I thought of what Dylan would do. Dylan, who couldn’t lie for shit, and somehow managed to have a crew of people around him who would give him everything they had if he needed it.
I had to believe that being honest was part of that.
“Me and Joan, we’re not married,” I said. Fern made a strangled gasping sound in her throat.
“You lied?” Eric asked Fern, and I could see this was some kind of deal breaker between the two of them.
“She didn’t have a choice,” I said. “Not…really.”
“Yeah? Why is that?”
“Because she’s just trying to keep Joan safe. And Joan can make that real hard to do. I don’t know if you have family—”
“I do.”
“Then maybe you understand doing things you wouldn’t normally do to try to help a person who can’t seem to help themselves.”
“Yeah, I got one of them. Damn fool grandson.”
“Then you understand where we’re at. Her niece is going to leave and get herself into serious trouble. I just want to be able to find her when she does.”
“You can’t make her stay?” Eric asked. Fern and I must have made similar faces because he laughed—a dry humph in his chest.
“My grandson is the same way.” He took a deep breath and looked from me to Fern and then back again.
“This is legit?” he asked Fern. “He’s not some shitty boyfriend with stalker tendencies?”
“It’s legit,” she said and then he opened his door a little wider.
“Then I guess you better come on in,” he said.
His condo was filled with pictures of a huge family, including a wife who clearly wasn’t around anymore. Instead of a TV, he had a setup of three computer monitors hooked to a shit-ton of equipment. He was watching foreign news on one, playing chess on the other and—from what it looked like—monitoring the entrances and exits of the condo building. Including the parking garage.
