But instead, I find myself pulling Ivan’s business card out of the Virkin PETA gifted me with a few years ago. “Here,” I tell him.
He lets go of my suitcase handle and takes the card from me. “Ivan Rustanov. Who’s this?”
“My best friend’s husband. He’s part of a powerful Russian family. If anyone can help you with fallout control, it’s him.”
His eyes flick from the card back up to me. “You still worrying about me?”
I put a lot of effort into not letting him trap me in his gaze again. We’re no longer those strangers who met in West Virginia. “I don’t want you hurt or dead, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No, Doc, that ain’t what I’m asking.”
He looks at me and I can’t help but look back at him while tension that should no longer be there crackles between us.
But…
“You really remember?” I ask him, voice so faint, I wonder if it won’t be drowned out by the birds chirping over head.
He looks down, then seems to decide to meet my eyes. “Yeah. Not at first. They took me back to Tennessee. Back to our family farm. Couple of days in, I was drinking a Shiner Bock and cleaning my bike and it all just came back to me. The deal with the New Rebels, the accident, everything before it.”
“Spontaneous recovery,” I say, unable to stop myself from labeling what happened to him. Back when I’d been trying to help the John Doe in the hospital, I’d read how the reminder effect often didn’t help with retrograde amnesia, but sometimes classic association did. The act of doing something you’d done a million times before—like drinking a local beer while you clean your bike—bringing back a flood of memories in a way that simply being shown or told something hadn’t.
“Yeah, I guess that’s what you’d call it.”
“So you remember saying those things in the video now?”
Again he looks downs, jaw ticking before he admits, “Yeah, I do. I don’t know what to say to you about that now.”
He looks back up at me then. Eyes still so honest. But clear and no longer those of my innocent John Doe. “I’m trying to fix this. Trying to fix it the best I can.”
I can see that, and I release the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “Okay,” I say. “Call Ivan. He can help you fix it, and keep it fixed.”
Dixon nods. “If that’s what you want me to do, then that’s what I’ll do.”
I’ll do anything you want me to do. You know that, right?
His words from just a few weeks ago float into my mind. Hurting me more than getting thrown into the water.
I want to touch him. I want to knuckle his face like he used to knuckle mine.
Instead I grab the handle of my suitcase. “I should go,” I tell him.
Because I really should before I add one more ill-advised thing to the list of “Dumb Shit I’ve Done Since Meeting Dixon Fairgood.”
Dixon runs a hand over his face. And he’s still so handsome, but there are dark circles under his eyes now. Like me, he now reads a few years older than when the biggest secret between us was some silly reality show.
Still, he smiles at me. “Don’t worry, Doc. I’m going to make sure you’re safe. And thanks for this,” he says, waving the card.
He’s no longer a John Doe.
He’s the president of a white supremacist motorcycle gang.
He remembers everything now.
He had to have me kidnapped and thrown into the ocean to protect me from all the people who want to hurt me because of the baby inside my womb.
Yet, it feels like I’m at the door of his hospital room again, heart beating fast, because I know I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be.
But this time, I don’t come in and take a seat. This time, I take my suitcase and rush into the guest house without saying good-bye. For fear of what will come out of my mouth if I let myself stay there even a moment longer.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I wasn’t trying to assuage Dixon when I told him I thought I was okay. Knock-out drugs withstanding, I can sense the baby inside my body will be fine after this. And when I walk back into the guest house, it feels like I’ve taken a very scary dip in the water. Ultimately not harmful, but emotionally exhausting.
I end up falling back into Sola’s bed for a very long time, and this time when I wake up, I’m still in it. It’s also morning again.
If not for the fact that I’m dressed in an entirely new outfit, the same yoga pants and long-sleeved top I put on in the tugboat’s cabin, I would have thought the whole thing a nightmare.
But it wasn’t. If I didn’t know that for sure before I take a shower and repack the few things I took out of my suitcase, then I definitely know it when I walk out to the living room…
And find Mason sitting on the couch, flipping through an old issue of Vanidades magazine. He’s once again dressed in dark jeans. But this morning he’s paired them with a simple waffle shirt. Unlike the last time I saw him, he’s not dripping wet, and his Southern Freedom Knights jacket is nowhere to be seen.
“How did you get in here?’ I demand.
Mason grunts and throws the magazine back down on the coffee table. “You ready to go?”
Seriously, why is he in Sola’s living room? But I also feel compelled to ask, “You know Spanish?”
“A little,” he admits with a frown. “Enough to do deals with the wet—”
He stops himself and replaces it with the word, “Hispanics. Dixon couldn’t be seen doing deals with them. He was the one they sent to do deals with our kind without attracting too much attention. I’m the one they used for the people they didn’t want to be associated with.”
“Okay, well thanks for that disturbing bit of information. And for looking out for me while I slept, I guess.” I start toward the door. “I’m going now, so you can also be on your way.
“Ain’t good-bye yet,” he informs me, standing up and blocking my path to door. “Not ‘til we get to Seattle.”
I shake my head. “I can get my own self to Seattle.”
“Probably,” Mason agrees. “But D. told me to take you, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Seriously, I’d rather drive myself. And no offense, but the thought of spending a day-and-a-half in a car with a virulent racist murderer really doesn’t appeal to me.”
“No offense back, I don’t give two fucks how you feel about being in a car with me. D. said I was taking you, so that’s what I’m going to do. Now, you can stand here and flap your mouth some more or hand over your keys, unless you want to do this the hard way.”
Against my better judgment I ask, “And the hard way is?”
His mouth hitches into a lazy smile, just the same as Dixon’s. “I don’t know for sure how you’re going to like spending a day and a half on the back of my bike with your arms handcuffed around my waist, but I suspect it ain’t going to appeal to you. Plus, we’d have to leave your suitcase behind. But if that’s how you want to do it…”
So that’s how I end up spending the next several hours in the passenger seat of my own car. Arms crossed in grudging silence, until we get to San Francisco.
Mason scans the horizon, his light blue eyes taking in the city. “Guess we’ll stop here for the night,” he doesn’t sound at all happy about the prospect. “Have to check in with Dixon and tell him we got here safe.”
“Are you afraid your gang will come after us in San Francisco?” I ask him.
“No, the board hasn’t been missing long enough for them to worry yet. And they don’t have the resources. D. emptied the accounts, and most of them don’t have two nickels to rub together without the club. I just hate cities, that’s all.”
“I think Dixon hates them, too,” I say, thinking back to how he spent his time during the month he lived with me. “He really likes being outside.”
“Yeah, his old man was a piece of work, and he only got worse after D’s mom died. Drank a bunch. Me and D. would meet up and camp out for days. A lot of ti
mes, outside was the safest place to be.”
“Did his father smoke,” I ask, remembering the episode with the neuro res and the cane.
“Three packs a day and sometimes he used D. to put them out. D. sure wasn’t crying at the funeral after the bastard’s liver finally gave out.”
“And you?” I find myself asking.
“And me what?”
“Was your dad a piece of work, too?” The memory of Dixon’s uncle, dead on the deck floats into my mind. Of hearing Mason say at one point during the clean-up, “Well, my old man was right about this being a good place to dump a body.” With no emotion whatsoever.
“I ain’t sad D. killed him if that’s what you’re asking.”
I think back to Dixon’s response to my similar feint yesterday. No, Doc, that ain’t what I’m asking.
And I wonder how many old broken bones an x-ray scan would find under Mason’s otherwise massive body.
“Is that why you’re going against everything you know to help Dixon?” I ask him. “Because your father was abusive?”
“Yeah, sure, I guess. Let’s go with that and stop talking about it,” Mason answers in a way that tells me that’s all I’m going to get from him on the subject. Then he pulls into the garage of the first hotel he sees.
I think about running away in the night. But Mason still has my keys and I’m not even sure the hotel will let me have my own car back since Mason checked us in with the valet.
So instead, I end up sharing continental breakfast with a much less chatty Fairgood. One who answers every question I have with little more than monosyllabic words and grunts.
I’m almost happy when we get back on the road, because it means I’m that much closer to not having to spend any more time with Mason.
Still, I find myself peeping over at him. Unable to resist the temptation to diagnose his behavior despite how very little he’s given me to go on.
“So you just do whatever Dixon tells you?” I ask, trying a different tact. “Up to and including driving his black baby mama to Seattle?”
Mason grips and ungrips the steering wheel. “You’re more to him than that,” he eventually answers. “Maybe you ain’t as smart as he says you are, because you ought to have figured that much out after seeing all them dead bodies on the boat.”
I shift in my seat, not wanting to believe, but having to ask. “So you’re saying he still has feelings for me. Even though I’m black?”
“Yeah, even though. Or maybe because of it. Hell, I don’t know.” He grunts and refocuses on the road. “You grow up all your life being told you can’t have a thing, it’s going to make you wonder. Then you take a bad hit to the head? I dunno, shit happens, I guess.”
I can tell he more than wants to be done with this conversation. But my now inherent sixth sense for latent drama detection won’t let me let it be.
“This isn’t about Dixon and me, is it?” I guess out loud.
Now he looks over at me like I’m an idiot. “Of course it’s about you and Dixon. Who else would it be about? You think I’d be driving you around in this fucking golf cart disguised as a real car if it wasn’t about you and him?”
He’s trying to make me feel dumb, intimidate me into shutting up. But at the end of the day, he’s unwittingly made an appearance on exactly one episode of a drama-filled reality show, while I’ve been contracted for over one hundred—not including reunion specials. I’m just plain old better at uncovering drama than he is at keeping it hidden.
“No,” I answer after carefully considering his words. “I really don’t. It’s taken me seven years to outgrow my reality show values, and I didn’t even start off on Rap Star Wives. You and Dixon were born into this. So no, I don’t think you’d let him kill your father and explode your legacy just because he asked you to…not unless there was something else in it for you. Or…”
My drama sensor finally goes off like it’s hit pay dirt as I realize out loud, “Or someone else.”
Mason doesn’t answer, but his hands are gripping my Prius’s steering wheel so tight, I can tell I hit a nerve. And that sends my mind down all sorts of different paths. Wondering what girl could have caused Mason to reconsider his value system after all this time. Who is she? And perhaps more importantly, what will he do now that he’s no longer a Southern Freedom Knight?
But then Mason explodes. “You know what? Me and Dixon have been through a lot together! We were born the same exact week, so we’re more like brothers than cousins. So if he says it’s time to dismantle the SFK, I do it. If he says he needs me to drive his big-mouthed girl to Seattle, I do it. That’s the whole story. The end of the story. Now shut the fuck up!”
Oooh, I’ve made someone very mad! I waggle my eyebrows, Nitra Mello on total fleek, even as I agree with an easy going tone, “Okay, I’ll be quiet, but if you ever want to talk about this girl with somebody…”
“I swear to fucking God, I will put you in the trunk of this car and duct tape your mouth shut,” he threatens. “D. just said I had to drive you. He didn’t say how.”
I don’t think Mason would really do it. But there’s a rather thin line between think and know. So I clamp my mouth shut on a smile, and settle for silently knowing what I’m pretty sure I now know.
This goes on for a few minutes before Mason cuts into my thoughts with a growled, “Fuck, we need gas.”
He pulls into the first gas station he sees. “Fucking take a piss now, because I ain’t stopping again until we get to Seattle.”
Again I decide to err on the side of preventative belief.
“May I give you money for gas?” I ask when I come back from the bathroom and find him at the pump.
His eyes narrow. “Funny, you don’t sound anything like you did on TV.”
I look at him, thinking that’s why I liked his cousin. He’s the only real life love interest I’ve ever had who hasn’t expressed surprise that I don’t actually sound like a reality show stereotype in real life.
“I’m not Nitra Mello anymore. I’m Dr. Anitra Dunhill full time from now on,” I tell Mason.
“Well, I don’t need your money, Dr. Dunhill,” Mason informs me. “But as long as you’re on this side of the car…”
He opens the Prius’s back door and half his body disappears inside.
When he re-emerges, he has a manila envelope in his hand. “Here, read this instead of bothering me for the rest of the trip.”
“What is this—?” I start to ask.
But he turns away, walking toward the station’s restrooms before I can finish my question. “Gonna take a piss,” he calls back to me as if I need to know that.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Back inside the car, I open the envelope and find…
A brown craft paper journal, with the words UWV/Mercy Mental Health Services emblazoned across the front. I pull it out along with several pages that have obviously been torn out of an indexed notebook. A letter, I realize when I see the words written at the top of the first page.
Dear Doc,
I’m known in my circles to be eloquent with my words. But I guess that’s a lie, because standing outside that van with you, I still didn’t have the words to explain who I used to be. So I’m doing what the head doctor said I should back when I was a patient at your hospital. I’m writing everything down in the hopes I can make sense of it.
I could tell you I was born into this. As was my father, and his father before him. My father was an angry drunk who beat on anything stupid enough to love him, including my mom, but they agreed on one thing: that the races should stay separate. That we were superior. But I guess you already know that.
I grew up on a compound with people who believed the same as my parents did. In my whole life, I’d never said more than five or ten words to someone who didn’t have the same skin color as me. We weren’t allowed to watch TV. We weren’t allowed to listen to anything but white country and Christian music. I play the guitar, but country and Christian is all I play. I al
so know a few things about doctoring, because my mother was the club’s nurse. As the daughter of the Prez, part of her job was to patch up our club members, and sometimes I helped with that. I think that’s part of the reason I was attracted to you in the first place. Because you remind me of the better aspects of her. The best ones.
I know that’s a strange thing to say with you being black and all. But you have to understand, without these memories, without this carefully cultivated hate inside of me, black ain’t what I saw when I first laid eyes on you.
I saw you. The real you. Not that girl on TV. But the doctor I had mistaken for a nurse, teaching dying kids to sing. I can’t begin to explain how beautiful I found you from the first moment I laid eyes on you. Skin color didn’t have nothing to do with it.
As for the things I said. I can remember saying them now. And even worse, I can remember believing those words. But now…now I know you. Now you’re carrying my baby. A little life we made together with love, not hate.
And when I watch myself saying those words I had memorized by heart, even though I remember giving those speeches, it feels like I’m watching someone else. Somebody young and ignorant, even though that was me just a few months ago.
So now I’m doing what needs to be done to keep you safe. To keep what we made together safe. I’m disbanding Southern Freedom Knights, and doing a few other things to ensure they never ride again. The Feds approached me and Mason a couple of times before my accident, and I turned them down. A few weeks ago, Mason and me had a long discussion, and we decided to approach them this time.
I know your father has a helluva lot of things to say about snitches, but in this case, I think he’ll forgive me for working with the authorities to make sure our club never hurts an innocent again.
I signed our land over to the state, suggested they do something good with it.
His Revenge Baby: 50 Loving States, Washington Page 46
