by Nicole Fox
“I don’t know what we’re gonna find when we bust in there,” I tell the men. “But I’m done trusting Jackson. He told me they were meetin’ here as a way to let me know that Big Loco might be here, but for all I know it’s a trap and there are a hundred Lady’s Death in there waiting for war. All we can do, fellas, is go in there and fight hard. How many of you’ve been on a raid like this before?”
Three-quarters of the men raise their hands.
“Good.” I turn to Butcher. “Divide the men up. A third through the front, a third through the back, and the rest surrounding the place, ready to pick up any strays.”
Butcher nods and starts dividing up the men. As he’s doing that, my cell phone rings.
“Yeah?”
“It’s me,” Gloria says. “The number was on the packaging.”
“All right …”
“Is it—is something happening?”
“I’m workin’, yeah.”
“Do you have a lead?”
I think about telling her that yeah, I’ve got a lead. But then all that’d do is get her hopes up, just like her hopes were up last time when Big Loco pulled that bullshit on us. “Sort of,” I say, not wanting to lie. “I ain’t too sure about it, though. It might be nothing and it might be—”
“Everything.”
“Exactly.”
“Just be careful, okay? Come back to me. I’m going crazy here, just thinking and overthinking about what’s going on. It’s horrible. I wish you’d let me come.”
“Not this time,” I say. “Not after that shit Big Loco pulled.”
“I know,” she whispers. “I just don’t like it.”
“Fury,” Butcher says. “It’s time.”
“I’ve gotta go.”
“Okay.” She hesitates, and then says, “Good luck.”
I hang up the phone and join Butcher. Together we head toward the front of the warehouse as men spread out around us, some of them skirting around the building and others going around the back, as ordered. I’ve got my pistol raised, ready for quick shooting, and next to me, Butcher hefts a mid-range rifle with a scope. We stop on either side of the double doors, nod to each other in wordless agreement, and then Butcher cracks the glass in the door with his elbow and opens it quickly. We all charge in, around twelve of us, guns raised and ready for war.
But all we find in the center of the room is a little boy with a note taped to his forehead. I drop my gun and run over to Jimmy, kneeling down as Butcher spreads the men out and secures the area. But I know what’s going on. Jackson and Big Loco are long gone. The note on Jimmy’s forehead reads: This is a peace offering. Leave the state and we’ll let you live. I remove the tape from his head slowly, not wanting to hurt him. But even so he cries, staring up at me like I’m a stranger. Hell, I am a stranger. I lift him up, still finding it awkward, and carry him outside.
I stand outside for a few minutes while Butcher combs the building.
“It’s okay,” I tell Jimmy, rocking him up and down. I’m still certain that I’ll break him if I rock him too hard, he’s so small. “You’ll be with your mommy soon. Don’t worry.”
“Momma,” he whispers. “Momma, Momma.”
“Exactly.” I smile down at him. “That’s right.”
And then something amazing happens. He smiles right back up at me, and for a moment it’s like we’re the same person. It’s the weirdest damn thing I’ve ever experienced. I’m looking into his eyes and he’s looking into mine and it’s like we’re both the kid and both the grownup. I feel him, in an odd way, and I sense that he feels me too. He’s my kid, there’s no doubt about it. It’s not like I didn’t believe Gloria but now I can never question it again. I only realize I’m breathing like a man after a gunfight when Butcher walks up behind me.
“You all right?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I …”
He pats me on the arm. “I get it, boss. There ain’t nothing like it. Might be you feel like a father, eh?”
“Might be,” I agree. “Wait … boss?”
I turn, and all the Devil’s Kin are holding their jackets up to me, sigils facing my way. I nod shortly. “Take all the guns and ammo from the warehouse and bring it to the clubhouse, and then secure the clubhouse. And somebody bring me a car with a high seat in it. I’ve gotta get this kid to his mother and I ain’t takin’ him on the bike.”
“Boss,” the men say as a chorus.
“Are you gonna call her?” Butcher asks.
“It sounds stupid, but I don’t wanna get her hopes up.”
Butcher tilts his head at me. “I reckon there’s not much danger in that now. But,” and when he smiles at me, he’s just Andy Abrahams for a second, “you’re the boss, boss.”
One of the men brings me a car with a high seat, like I asked. I get Butcher to make sure Jimmy’s buckled in correctly, since I ain’t got much experience in that direction, and then I get into the driver’s seat and head back toward my apartment. I’ve got a strange feeling in my belly, a feeling like I imagine teenagers get: normal teenagers, not the fucked-up one I was.
I get Jimmy from the high seat and carry him up to my apartment. Then I knock on the door with my foot. Now that the situation is secure, I feel like I can smile. And I do. I smile widely. I smile like a fool.
Then Gloria opens the door and my smile fades. She has her bag over her shoulder and a grim look on her face. She reaches over calmly—too calmly, it seems, like she’s repressing her emotions—and takes Jimmy from me. Then she looks me dead in the face, and she is dead, everything about her is dead, especially her feelings toward me.
“Stay away from us,” she says. “We can’t have you around, Fury. You’re too dangerous.”
She pushes past me and marches down the stairs, her footsteps echoing as I stand there, dumbstruck. I expected love, laughter, kissing, a goddamn parade. I think about going after her but it’s too late. Her car is long gone. She is long gone. Instead I go into the apartment and get myself a whisky and drop onto the couch.
Chapter Nineteen
Gloria
“I have, my angel, finally completed a first draft.”
“Congratulations, Mother.” I grin at her when her cheeks turn red. She’s changed her style now, wearing ripped jeans and tank tops and chokers, and her hair is chopped and jagged. She doesn’t look motherly at all anymore, which is why it’s all the funnier to call her Mother. “Oh, relax. I’m proud of you. I really am.”
We sit at my small table in my apartment, eating sweet and sour chicken, Jimmy napping in the other room. I smile with Alexis and laugh with her, as I have smiled and laughed for the past six weeks, but just looking at her, I can tell that she knows.
“Something’s up,” she says.
“You must’ve used that exact phrase about a hundred times by now,” I tell her. “Aren’t you getting tired of it?”
“Let me throw that right back at you,” she counters. “Aren’t you getting tired of moping around so much?”
“Moping around.” I snigger. “I’m working more than ever. I’m actually making money now!”
“There’s more than one way to mope around,” she mutters.
“The last time I checked, getting up at half past six and working until two and then running errands and keeping the place clean and even trying to learn French because why the hell not—the last time I checked, Mother, that doesn’t qualify as moping around.”
“Fine, maybe moping around is the wrong way to phrase it, you disgusting editor, but it definitely qualifies as not giving yourself time to think about something. But I know you, Gloria, and I know you’ve been thinking about it almost nonstop anyway.”
“Are you a mind reader now?” I snap. I don’t mean to snap but I don’t feel like cracking my skull open and letting her poke around.
“Wow.” She smiles at me. “And now you hope that by getting angry you’ll get my ego going, and I’ll make the whole conversation about how you don’t talk to me like tha
t! But no, I’m above such mere mortal concerns.”
“Are you a Buddhist now or something?” I sigh, shoving rice and chicken into my mouth.
“No, I’ve just made a pledge not to let myself be petty.”
“Wow, great.” I smile sarcastically. “I’m really happy for you, especially since it will make being your friend that much easier.”
She rolls her eyes. Then her face grows serious. “You know you can talk to me, right? You don’t have to be so strong all the time.”
“I’m not being strong and I’m not being weak. I’m just … I’m just chilling.”
“Absolutely not,” Alexis says. “When you say ‘chilling,’ I cringe one thousand times in the space of a blink. Please never say that again.”
“Fine, but it’s the truth. Things are going well for me, better than they were a few months ago. You can’t deny that.” What I don’t say is that one of the reasons things have improved is the money that Jack gave me, which will cover the rent and bits and bobs for a few months yet. “I don’t know what you want from me to be honest.”
“I want you to do just that: to be honest.”
“Okay, here’s something honest. I’m glad I’m getting more work and I’m glad Jimmy is healthy and je suis content. Okay? So there, I don’t need to play this game of Therapist with you.”
We don’t talk for the next five minutes as we finish our food. I look stubbornly down at my plate, shoveling the food into my mouth and ignoring her caring expression, an expression which looks hungry for my emotions. She’s like those things from Harry Potter. She wants my essence!
“What about all this stuff in the news?” she murmurs when I bring out dessert.
“What stuff?” I ask, though I know exactly what she’s talking about.
She just stares at me. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” I flinch, and she sees me flinch and leaps on it. “See!” she exclaims. “There’s no way you haven’t been following it. All these gunfights, those two dead Mexican bikers they found out near the highway. The arson down at the warehouse in town. Something’s happening with him, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. You know I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him since—”
“Since you walked out on him,” she finishes for me, carefully cutting the end of her cheesecake with her fork. “Right?”
I bristle. “Why do you have to say it like that, like I did something wrong by leaving? It was the right thing to do!” I raise my voice. I can’t stop myself. “What would you rather have me do? Maybe you’d prefer it if I stayed with him and waited for somebody else to come along and use Jimmy as a pawn in their sick fucking games! Is that it, huh? Maybe you’d prefer me to get drunk on his whisky, not knowing if my son is dead or alive!” I’m on my feet, plate in hand. The cheesecake slides off and lands on the floor.
Alexis leans back, no anger on her face, just pity. Then she stands up and cleans the cheesecake off the floor, takes the plate from me and sets it on the table and then leads me into the living room. She sits me on the couch and goes into the kitchen. When she returns, she’s holding two glasses of rosé.
“Drink,” she commands. “It’s much better than whisky.”
I take a long sip and then place the glass on the coffee table. I sit with my knees to my chin, staring at the TV. I look small sat next to Alexis, small and vulnerable. Looking at us as though we are just two people, two strangers I’ve never met before, I find Alexis the far more capable-looking one. She’s the one poised to go out into the world and kick ass and take names. And this woman, the smaller one, she looks like she’d be scared of her own shadow. I turn on the TV, putting it on mute, chasing the morbid thoughts away.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” she says. “I’m sorry I tried to make you.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I’m sorry I shouted.”
She laughs. “Don’t worry about it. Really, I’m sort of glad you shouted in a sick, twisted way. At least it proves there’s somebody in there still, that you’re not just a robot. I swear, Gloria, these past few weeks you’ve been fine and all. I mean, you haven’t been doing anything self-destructive or anything like that. But it’s like you’re on autopilot. I know it annoys you that I keep bringing this stuff up, but if I don’t, who will—you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” I mutter. “And you’re right.” I take another sip of my wine. “I have been on autopilot. I’ve put myself on autopilot. Because if I let myself think about everything, I’ll go crazy.” I laugh bitterly. “Not that I don’t think about it all the time anyway.”
“Jack?” she offers.
“Jack,” I confirm, and just saying his name brings a lump to my throat. I swallow it away. “We don’t have to talk about this.”
“Not if you don’t want to.” She stretches her legs out. “We can talk about fairies instead. Did you know that fairies are polyamorous? I was talking to one the other day who particularly enjoys five-ways.”
“You’re the strangest, sickest woman I have ever met.”
“Isn’t it interesting how those two things go together?”
“Sure, Mother, it sure is.”
She slaps me on the arm.
“The truth is,” I go on, without meaning to, “I don’t know if I made the right decision with Jack. I mean, I know it was the right decision at the time. At least it felt that way. I couldn’t stand the idea of them taking Jimmy away again. But ever since I left his apartment, I can’t get his face out of my head. He was smiling when he opened the door, smiling like a real fool, a big ear-to-ear grin I’d never seen on his face. He’s a serious-looking guy, you know. I keep going over that smile. You know what I’m like. I keep trying to figure out what he must’ve been thinking and feeling to make him smile like that. I think I have it now. He was excited to start a life with us. I’m almost certain that was it. He was standing there thinking about how he’d walk in and be the hero and I’d kiss him and he’d get to know Jimmy and it would all work out okay.”
“But you can’t know that,” she says. “You’re just guessing.”
“Maybe, but it doesn’t feel that way. You should’ve seen the way his face dropped when I snatched Jimmy from him. It took everything I had not to break in that moment, but I’d convinced myself that I had to be cold, ice-cold, so I was ice-cold. And you’re right, about the news. I’ve been checking the TV every hour of every day, looking for news of Jack’s death. He could be dead now, for all I know. Why hasn’t he contacted me, otherwise? I keep thinking I should go to his apartment and check, but then I remember how it felt when Jimmy was missing, and—”
“You’re in limbo,” she says, going into the kitchen and returning with a fresh bottle of wine. “It can’t be easy.”
“I guess it isn’t.” I shrug. “I don’t want to self-pity or anything, but no, I guess it isn’t.”
“And there’s Jimmy to think of as well?” She raises her eyebrows, making it a question.
“Yeah.” She’s hit the nail on the head. “The whole reason—apart from the money, I mean—the whole reason for going over there was so that Jimmy could get to know his father, but I’ve ruined any chance he had of that. Now when I look to the future it’s like a long road, a long, depressing road for Jimmy. Doesn’t a boy need a father? And maybe it’d be okay if Jack was a drunk or abusive or something like that, because I could feel good about pushing him away. But he would be a good father to him. That’s the horrible part.” I let my head fall back, staring at the ceiling. “But I’m ranting. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry!” she exclaims. “It’s good to have you back, finally.”
“But I can’t give into the urge to see him again. I just can’t. Because even if it’s true that he’d be a good father in a different life, we don’t have a different life. When I think about him being a good dad, it’s always in some make-believe land. Like we’ll be in the suburbs and he’ll be mowing the lawn and then he’ll come over to us and lift Jimmy up and ru
ffle his hair and everything is perfect. But it isn’t real, it can’t be real. I have to keep reminding myself of that. He is the man I want him to be, he really is, but he isn’t in the life I want him to be in. And I can’t have one without the other.”
“Maybe you could organize a way to have both?” she offers. “Visitations or something like that? You wouldn’t have to be in the life. You could be on the fringes of it.”
“On the fringes would be bad enough, though. Those horrible men who took Jimmy have let me be, and I’m guessing it’s because they think that Jack and I are done and there’s no benefit to taking him again. But if they see him coming around here every weekend, they’ll know he has a weakness, and they’ll go after it. No.” I shake my head firmly. “Whatever I feel, I can’t let that happen.”
