Better (Stark Ink Book 2)

by Dahlia West

“How’s school?” he asked Ava as he pulled up his chair.

  “Fine.”

  Over the last few months her answers had grown shorter and shorter. He was probably annoying her by now. Dalton made a point to ask every time he saw her. Last year she’d been suspended and he hadn’t even known. She seemed to have her shit together this year, so now that he was capable of helping her there was nothing for him to do, of course.

  “How’s the shop?” he asked Jonah. “Any complaints?” He loved the kid, but Dalton would be damned if he’d let Jonah anywhere near him with a big-ass needle.

  Jonah grinned. “Nah. No more than usual, anyway.”

  “We’ve got a movie,” Calla said cheerfully. “Can you stay?”

  Dalton actually hated to disappoint her, but he shook his head slowly. “No, I can’t.”

  Adam frowned. “Back on the clock? Jesus, D, this job is killing you.”

  Dalton scooted his pasta back and forth on his plate having suddenly lost his appetite. “Not… not work. I’ve got somewhere I’ve got to be.”

  He wasn’t sure why he always worded it like that, except that maybe it was as simple as the fact that he was still ashamed.

  “Oh,” Adam said quietly. “No problem. Tomorrow night then.”

  Dalton nodded and hoped like hell they’d be able to knock off at sundown tomorrow. “Yeah,” he said, as if saying it out loud might make it come true. “Tomorrow night.”

  Chapter Three

  Dalton passed Calla and Adam, already settling down on the couch, as he headed out the door. He closed it quietly and made his way out to the truck. Sometimes he was as happy to leave the house as he was to visit it. If you’d asked him a few months ago what the hardest part of life would be, after the long, excruciating hours of near-constant puking, sweating, and shaking of course, he would have said opening the door to an empty fridge after a long, hard week of backbreaking work and then fighting the urge to head to the store. He hadn’t realized how awkward things would be when he got back, how everyone would forget, just for a few hours and it would be like old times again, but then suddenly they’d remember and look away for second. The hardest part wasn’t leaving, it was coming back. There wasn’t a book on how to do that part.

  It was a short trip, just around the corner, in fact. You could walk it in ten minutes, run it in five if you were late, which Dalton more often than not had been over the years. Two floodlights illuminated the surrounding darkness. One was directed at the large sign that said “Welcome Worshipers!” and the other on the white cross that looked down over everything. There was a bell in the steeple behind it, but it either didn’t work or just hadn’t been used for years. Dalton remembered running full tilt down the sidewalk as a kid, bell ringing, legs pumping, heart pounding, Adam just ahead of him shouting “Come on, D! We’re going to be late!” By that time Mom had long given up trying to physically usher her sons out the door on time, but the threat of her disapproving gaze always weighed heavy on their minds. She might have stopped trying, if only to save her sanity, but they never gave up trying to stave off her disappointment.

  Dalton parked the truck in the lot and got out. There was no point in locking it, it was still a good neighborhood and there was nothing to steal anyway. He passed by the large front doors, choosing instead to go around to the side. He wasn’t ready to walk through those front doors again, maybe he never would be. Dalton knew that some people couldn’t remember the last time they’d gone to church. There were people for whom Sunday service dwindled down to just Christmas Eve and Easter before eventually stopping altogether. Dalton had taken Sunday school here, asking inane questions in the basement that doubled as a classroom until he was old enough, or annoyed Mrs. Hunt enough, to attend Sunday service upstairs with Mom and Pop.

  Adam had long been banned from Sunday school by that time, so to Dalton being sent upstairs to sit in a pew with his older brother had felt like graduating. As an adult he, too, had found himself limiting his attendance to high holidays. It made Mom happy and so he’d shown up without complaint twice a year wearing khakis but no tie. He wouldn’t go that far.

  Unlike other people who’d eventually given up on attending altogether, Dalton remembered precisely the last time he’d gone through the front doors of Christ the Redeemer, though the details were a bit hazy in his memory.

  He sat at the kitchen table, swatted away the empty beer can in front of him, and popped the top on the second. The cold liquid hit his throat and, for a moment, soothed his roiling stomach. The two-day old pizza in the box in front of him wasn't helping matters. He flipped the lid closed so that he wouldn't have to look at it, at least.

  The garbage was full and there wasn't time to take it out. Laundry was stacked in tilting piles all over the living room. There wasn't time to do much with that, either. There never seemed to be time. Or too much of it, maybe, but not for cleaning.

  Over the last week he'd sat in his parents' living room, silent, next to Pop who looked about as close to death as Mom there at the end. Adam had taken over, thankfully. The eldest Stark brother had barely left her room. Dalton was grateful. Seeing Mom like that was unbearable.

  Dalton was used to fixing things, rebuilding things, making them better. He didn't do much of it these days, though, not with his gimpy hand, but injury or no, nothing could be done for Mom. That, it seemed, was the worst part of the whole thing. Not the agonizing two-day wait for the scans to come back or the look on the oncologist's face as he cleaned his glasses rather than look at all of them gathered in his office. Those things had been difficult on their own but not being able to do anything-- anything at all-- that was wholly unfamiliar to Dalton, and it didn't sit well. Now she was dead and there was nothing left to do but to put her in the ground, he supposed.

  He slammed down the can and reached up to his throat. He tugged hard at the crooked tie that hung too loosely around his neck. The thing was a nuisance, or a noose, or maybe both. He struggled with the knot, picking at it with his fingers, but he couldn't hold it very well. Fucking gimp hand.

  He shoved the chair back and stood up. His large framed nearly filled the entire tiny kitchen. He stalked to the counter, yanked a knife out of the block, and hefted its weight in his good hand. He eyed the blade, inspected it thoroughly. It might very well have been the only clean thing in the entire apartment. God knew it hadn't been cleaned since Zoey left.

  Zoey.

  His stomach rolled again. His chest burned anew. His good hand tightened on the handle of the knife. Good thing he wasn't suicidal, he supposed, as he brought the blade to his throat. He angled the glinting edge between himself and the offending garment.

  Freed from bondage, he yanked off the tie and looked down at it draped over his hand. The black fabric stood out against the white scar on his hand. Angrily, he fisted it and stuffed it into the garbage disposal without thinking. He tossed the knife on the counter and reached for the switch.

  The gears started out strong, loud and functional. A brute shredder. But the threads of the tie must have caught in the blades because it chugged, sputtered, emitted a high pitched whine. Cursing, Dalton turned off the power.

  He glared down at it. Now he'd spend the rest of the afternoon fixing the damn thing.

  After.

  Again without thinking, he reached up and opened a cabinet door. It was too early for whiskey. He knew that, of course, but this was no ordinary day and surely the rules didn't apply. He twisted off the cap and took a long, slow swing, enjoying the burn.

  On some days his chest felt hollow, like there wasn't enough whiskey in the world to fill it up. And it had been that way long before Mom had gotten her diagnosis. The good news was by about the third glass he was usually so numb that he no longer felt the pain. Dalton could almost laugh at the irony. The booze drove Zoey away but it was the booze he now relied on to ease the pain of missing her. And Mom.

  He took another sip and set the bottle down on the counter. He couldn't get through today wit
hout it. No way. Tomorrow he'd go back to beer, but today was a Whiskey Day, if there ever was one. He opened a drawer, rummaged into the back, and pulled out a silver flask.

  With his gimp hand he held it out over the sink while he carefully poured the brown liquid into the wide mouth. It splashed around, landed on part of the tie that hadn't made it into the disposal. The damn thing looked like snake crawling up from the drain.

  Dalton pushed the bottle away and replaced the flask's cap. The heavy weight of it in his pocket felt good. Like he had a friend to lean on. Abandoning the project of the garbage disposal, he snatched his keys off the counter and headed for the front door.

  Taking the stone steps of the church two at a time, he hauled open the large, oak doors but hesitated in the small lobby. The carpet under his feet was the same. The polished bench between the bathroom doors was still there. But place felt strange and foreign somehow. The sense of familiarity was gone. He'd never been here for a funeral.

  In front of him, the double doors to the sanctuary stood open. Dalton could see the throng of people in the pews, a sea of black and gray. Attendees were still standing in the aisle, trying to find seats. They blocked the view of the altar. To his left were the basement stairs that led to the Sunday school rooms. He wondered if the lower level was still the same. He suspected it was. Low ceilings and cracked linoleum, with an upright piano tucked against the far wall. If he closed his eyes he could still picture it. Behind the piano there might still be a handful of cotton balls glued to the wall.

  Mrs. Hunt had caught him pressing them into the wallpaper. Dalton had explained that if it really rained for forty days and forty nights, then there must have been forty clouds up in the sky. Mrs. Hunt hadn't been pleased. Or maybe she'd thought his math was faulty.

  Here, though, there were no cotton balls. Instead the sanctuary was decorated with a spray of white flowers. The crowd parted like the Red Sea (Dalton had questioned Mrs. Hunt at length about that one) and he caught a glimpse of shiny black wood and gleaming chrome. He looked away as his stomach turned.

  He put one foot in front of the other and barreled to the bathroom. He pole armed the door, launched himself at the toilet, and barely made it time. As the last of the cold pizza came up, he was relieved he wasn't wearing the tie. It would have just ended up in the bowl.

  He stood up on shaky legs and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. As he turned to face the mirror, he saw himself, ashen and gray, with tired eyes staring back at him. His hand felt the weight of the flask in his pocket and he pulled it out. The whiskey burned and he told himself it smelled better than puke. He took a longer swig and reluctantly replaced the cap.

  There was nothing for it now.

  He opened the bathroom door and swayed a bit on his feet. When the feeling passed, he slowly emerged and headed toward the sanctuary. Elaine and Lyle were standing off to the right. Dalton looked just long enough to confirm to himself that Zoey wasn't with them. She wasn't and he couldn't tell if he was relieved or disappointed. He didn't meet her parents' gazes.

  They probably hated him. God knew they'd never really liked him in the first place, and depending on what Zoey had told them, it was a wonder they were here at all. Only for Mom's sake, he guessed.

  Zoey and Dalton had spent one last Christmas together but hadn't made it to the new year. Eleven thirty-ish, actually, if Dalton recalled correctly, though there was some possibly he wasn't. He'd been trashed long before that and instead of finding Zoey for the countdown, he'd rung in the New Year with a big-titted blonde.

  He snuck another look at the Connors and figured Zoey hadn't spared them the gory details. Elaine looked disgusted. Surely she was relieved, though. The woman had probably lain awake at night horrified at the prospect of her only daughter walking down this aisle with him.

  Dodged a bullet there, he thought, and glanced back at the coffin looming in front of him. As he made his way up the aisle, he felt the comforting weight of the flask in his pocket. He'd give his arm for a drink right now, he thought, and then had to stifle a rueful laugh. Why not? He'd already given his hand.

  He gripped the pew as he faltered a bit. Voices hushed around him. They probably assumed he was overcome with grief. Well, he was, wasn't he? He slid into the pew beside Adam but didn't meet his gaze, either. His older brother leaned in anyway.

  "You okay?"

  Dalton just nodded, not wanting to speak. He could use a mint. And shower. And a new tie.

  Adam was about to say something else but the Pastor came to the front and moved behind the lectern.

  "Friends…" he began in a loud, clear voice that pierced Dalton's ears and sent a bolt through his aching head.

  Dalton closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see, at least.

  This time, he entered the church through the side door to avoid having to look down that aisle again, even though at this time of night it would be empty except for maybe the woman who vacuumed a couple of times a week. True to form he heard the muffled rumble of the church’s ancient Kirby somewhere off in the distance, in the direction of the chapel.

  Grasping the handrail, he headed down the stairs to the basement instead, following the hushed voices wafting up from below. He entered the Sunday school classroom, nodding to the heads that turned to watch his arrival while making his usual beeline for the coffee urn. This was more to have something to do with his hands then for the enjoyment. As he walked, he reached into his pocket, fingers sliding over the warm metal resting there. He found its solidity comforting, its roundness almost poetic in a weird way. Everything came full circle, he supposed, eventually. He scraped his thumbnail along the stamped face, out of habit rather than any kind of superstition. Then he dropped it and reached for a non-biodegradable Styrofoam cup.

  Apparently the church hadn’t gotten the message about going green. Either that or they had a closet full of these things and didn’t want to chuck them for the sake of the environment. Dalton wondered if there was a shelf full of cotton balls, too. Mrs. Hunt had never seemed to run out no matter how many Dalton had shoved up his nose.

  Jig handed him a packet of fake sweetener with a lopsided grin. Dalton usually took his coffee black, but this swill needed something to take the sharp edge off. He decided when it was his turn to provide the refreshments, he’d do a better job.

  “Short day?” Jig asked. Dalton nodded. Jig knew Dalton was working his fingers to the proverbial bone these days. Work was good, Jig had declared. It kept you busy and your mind focused. Too much work could be bad, though. Gotta watch out for depression. Churchill’s black dog, Jig called it. Dalton didn’t ask how a man with both ears pierced and a beard that rivaled any member of ZZ Top had read or even knew a thing about Winston Churchill.

  “Be done in a few weeks, though,” Dalton told Jig. “Then there’ll be a few weeks off.”

  They’d laid the foundation on that house in October, before the ground had frozen over. They wouldn’t start another until the spring thaw. After the holidays Dalton would take service calls, in the middle of the night most likely, for furnaces that had gone kaput, which was risky business in a South Dakota winter. In nicer neighborhoods, the Elaine and Lyle’s of Rapid City would give him cash tips for hauling his ass out of bed after Midnight. Every little bit helped.

  Jig nodded. He worked in a warehouse out past the rail yard. He seemed to know enough about construction, though, to hold a conversation. Dalton didn’t ask, but he thought maybe Jig had gotten his electrician training in prison. You couldn’t bond a felon, though, and so Jig drove a front loader off-book instead. Dalton wasn’t a felon, he’d just gotten behind on his union dues. He was locked out for a year. Two paths, same destination, both fueled by ‘Sinful Spirits’. Dalton never asked Jig where that quote was from.

  “Dog on the leash?” Jig asked.

  “Yep,” Dalton replied as he took a sip of coffee. It’d go better with whiskey, but you couldn’t think like that these days.

  Dalton had taken
a while to get used to all this talk about how he felt about things, how things were going. Mom had cared, Pop had, too, in his own way. Adam checked up these days, though he had never done so in the years before Dalton had crashed and burned so spectacularly. Dalton was so unused to such personal conversation that he often forgot to return the favor, but he supposed Jig didn’t mind. It was Jig’s job to keep Dalton on the straight and narrow, not the other way around.

  “How’s things?” Dalton asked anyway.

  Jig smiled. “George is good.”

  Dalton considered this. “Even in winter?”

  “Well, he’s not blooming now, but his stem is still green.”

  Dalton didn’t know enough about gardening to respond meaningfully. He’d nearly cut his thumb off but it was not now nor had it ever been green.

  “You need a plant,” Jig said.

  Dalton frowned. He didn’t want to get into that, either. “Maybe later,” he hedged.

  “You need something to look forward to,” Jig countered.

  Dalton didn’t know how to explain that right now he didn’t fucking care. So what if he was able to keep a plant alive for a whole year? What good would it do? Once the year was up, it wasn’t as though he gave a shit about dating again. He’d had a woman, the woman, and he’d fucking lost her. It didn’t matter that it was the right thing to do, the fact was, even though she was gone, even though he’d been the one to make her leave, he didn’t want anyone else.

  “Maybe,” he told Jig lamely, because an argument wasn’t going to solve anything. Especially not here.

  People around them started tossing their cups and choosing folding chairs lined up in crooked rows.

  “Tonight’s the night,” Jig declared quietly.

  Dalton frowned again.

  “You gotta go somewhere to get somewhere.”

  “Who said that?” Dalton asked.

  “I did, back when I was going to be a rock star,” Jig said with a grin.