Finding Serenity

by Eden Butler

  “Easy now, son, calm yourself. Autumn is fine.” At this, Declan looks into the old man’s eyes, seeming to try to see if he’s telling him the truth. “Just a bitty gash, son. She’s right as rain.”

  Mollie tries going after the men as they head toward the door, she even calls Declan’s name, but he only shoots his hand in the air, dismissing her without so much as a backward glance.

  Declan fusses over Autumn as Mollie peeks her head into the room, sees the way Autumn slaps her boyfriend’s hand back, she can only smile, relieved, that the redheaded is undamaged.

  “I said I’m fine,” she tells Declan as he tries pulling a blanket over her legs.

  “McShane, you have chills. It’s cold in here.” He grunts when she pulls off the wool blanket, but the frustration disappears when he sits next to her, kissing her bandaged forehead. “Is it ‘sometime’ yet?” Mollie smiles. Declan’s been asking that same question for months now. A proposal that Autumn keeps putting off.

  “Not yet.” Her face lights up when he leans in to kiss her proper.

  It’s then that Mollie decides to interrupt. Knuckles on the side of the wall twice and both Autumn and Declan shoot their gazes to her. For his part, Declan plasters a sheepish smile onto his face and meets Mollie as she enters the room.

  “I’m an arshole.” He holds onto her elbow when she stands next to Autumn’s bed. “This wasn’t your fault. What I mean is that—” he stops speaking, biting the inside of his cheek. His expression is sincere, honest and Mollie knows he’s sorry.

  “Deco, I get it,” she starts, but then Vaughn slips in behind her and both men stare at each other. Mollie catches Autumn’s hand as she reaches for her and they watch Declan and Vaughn size each other up.

  Any tension she thought might be coming, disappears when Declan extends a hand to Vaughn. “Sorry, mate.” Declan rubs the back of his head, and he relaxes when Vaughn nods, taking his hand. “I was a bit barmy there for a bit not knowing how she was.”

  “Not a problem, man. I get it.”

  “So, what did the doctor say?” Mollie sits next to Autumn who is bouncing a bit on the hard bed. She knows her friend’s nervous ticks. This is Autumn impatient.

  “Just what I suspect. Everything’s fine.” The redhead takes the water Declan offers her, but doesn’t drink. “We’re just waiting on the release papers but Joe ran off to make sure the doctor ‘checked over the barmy X-rays proper-like.’” Mollie smiles at Autumn’s imitation of her father’s brogue.

  “He’s a bit nervous,” Declan says, leaning against the metal counter next to the window. “You should have seen him when I busted my collarbone at seventeen. Thought he’d drive the doctors mental.”

  Mollie laughs along with Autumn at the image and smiles wider at the confounded frown that has taken over Vaughn’s mouth. He must be confused by Autumn and Declan’s family dynamic, and so she shakes her head, telling him silently that she’d fill in the details later.

  “Listen, Autumn, that guy—” Vaughn’s voice is level, but Mollie can hear the underlined concern. He wants information, she understands that, but she knows he is being cautious, as though he doesn’t want to seem like a nuisance.

  “I didn’t get a good look at him.”

  “We’ve got it handled, mate.” Declan moves away from the counter to stand next to Autumn, eyes centered on Vaughn and though his apology seemed sincere, Mollie knows it’s just Declan’s nature to be mistrustful of strangers.

  “I know it’s not my place to pry.” Vaughn steps more fully into the room, adjusting the sling around his shoulder. “I just happen to think that these incidences are related.”

  Declan nods. “Agreed. That’s why I’m handling it.”

  Vaughn flashes a glance at Mollie, then back to Declan. “Can I help? My family, my sister, has resources.”

  “Here in Cavanagh?” The Irishman steps forward, but his tone isn’t harsh. Mollie can tell he is just trying to figure out Vaughn’s angle.

  “Not as many as we do back home.”

  “Ah, well, the perks of being a popular player in Cavanagh means that some very influential folk like to offer favors.” He sits down next to Autumn and rests his hand on her back. “Investigators are involved and the alumni have agreed that the safety of the students is important enough to warrant a bit of security.”

  Vaughn’s jaws works slowly, moving as though he is grinding his teeth and Mollie isn’t sure if he’s thinking or just trying to work out how to best respond. Instead of saying anything, he simply nods, a silent agreement not to interfere. “Well,” he says, adjusting his feet, “I do have training, experience if I’m needed.”

  “Thanks, mate.” Mollie notices the look Autumn and Declan exchange, then the slow shrug the redhead gives her boyfriend as though they’re trying to decide to broach a touchy subject. Finally, after Autumn warns him with a glare, Declan looks at Mollie. “Listen, love, I don’t want to point fingers.”

  “Then don’t,” Vaughn says and Mollie is equal parts appreciative and annoyed that he’s speaking for her.

  Declan disregards Vaughn’s suggestion. “We know that none of this is your fault.” Again, he looks at Autumn, seeking permission or hedging her reaction. “I just think that things have gone a bit stupid and I was wondering—”

  “Yes, he was wondering,” Autumn offers, another glare flashed to her boyfriend.

  Declan takes to rubbing his neck, but then he stands, crosses his arms as though he wants to put space between him and Autumn should she decide he needs slapping.

  “As I say, I’m not blaming you a’tall, love. But has your da said anything to you?”

  Mollie had prepared for this. Or at least, she knew to be ready when the question came. She didn’t often talk about her father to her friends, not about his life now. They’d ask questions, especially in the beginning when their friendships were new, when they were astounded, noisy young girls fascinated and frightened by the idea that they knew someone whose father was in a real prison. Now, they asked after his well-being or how her yearly trips to Jackson had gone. They didn’t ask if her father was still participating in criminal activity and for that, Mollie was glad. But if these attacks continued to escalate, she knew she’d either have to warn her friends by giving them details, or stay clear of them for their own safety.

  “I tried calling, several times,” Mollie tells Declan and she notices how Autumn’s eyebrows lift in surprise, how her friend instantly covers that shock by squeezing her hand. “He’s been in solitary for a couple of weeks.” She answers Autumn’s unasked question with a quick shake of her head. “I don’t know why. The guards aren’t telling me anything.” Again, Autumn squeezes her hand and Mollie appreciates the gesture, appreciates more that there is no pity in her friend’s expression. “He should be out either tomorrow or Monday. When he is, I’ll speak to him. But I’m worried too. Something I don’t know about is going on here and it’s killing me that you guys have gotten caught in the middle of whatever this is. If anything happens to any of you…”

  Autumn won’t let her finish that thought. She pulls Mollie into a hug, soothing, calming. “We’ll be fine, honey.” The redhead pulls back, gives her a smile that Mollie knows isn’t forced. “It’s going to be fine.”

  Declan seems satisfied with that, nodding to Mollie and exchanging a glance with Vaughn that is polite, if not friendly. “In the meantime, I don’t think it would be wise for you to go back to your apartment. Not until the locks are changed again.”

  “No.” Mollie wouldn’t waver on this point. She’d spent weeks waiting for the Super to handle the damage left by the burglary. She’s slept next to Layla, listening to her low snore, to the little whines Honey made as he slept between them. She wanted her own bed, her own space so she could relax, so she could sort out all the drama that had occurred in her own head without any interruptions.

  “Mollie…” Autumn’s voice holds a warning, but Mollie knows she is not angry; she knows that her frien
d’s concern is only for her safety.

  She cuts the redhead off with one nod. “I know what you’re going to say and I appreciate the concern. I do.” She stands, feeling like she needs to look at all of them to be heard. “My dad didn’t raise a coward and I’m not going to let some punk run me out of my home.” When Declan opens his mouth to protest, she waves him off. “There’s a 40 cal under my pillow and I know how to use it. I’ve got a bat under the cushions in my sofa and cans of mace in every drawer of my apartment. When I say I know how to take care of myself, that isn’t me making claims I can’t back up. I’m a biker’s kid. I didn’t spend my childhood selling Girl Scout cookies and playing with Barbies.”

  “That may be, Mollie, but they got to you once before.” Mollie whips her head to Vaughn at his words, tamping down the instinct to lash out at him.

  “I was caught off guard. There were two of them and I wasn’t prepared.” She lifts her chin, determined. “I am now.”

  “Fine.” Declan’s frown tells Mollie that he isn’t pleased with her stubbornness. “But would you at least let us take you home? Maybe pick you up in the morning?” He walks in front of her and when he speaks, his voice is soft, cautious. “I’d feel a bit better if someone was with you.”

  “I can stay,” Vaughn says and despite their brief interlude in the lobby, Mollie isn’t sure she wants to be alone with him. Not under the present circumstance.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Why are you being stubborn?” Vaughn asks.

  Seeming to sense the looming fight, Declan cuts Vaughn off with a wave of his hand. “It’s fine. We’ll take care of her, mate. Don’t worry.” He looks back at Mollie. “The alumni’s security will be on campus in the morning. You try to get hold of your da and McShane and I will come round when you need to go somewhere. That alright with you?” Mollie doesn’t immediately answer, thinking that her friends are already in enough danger just by being with her. One look at Autumn, though, squashes any thoughts she might have about leaving town and putting space between them. “Fine. But I don’t want you disrupting your lives because of me.” Declan’s smile is wide and mirrors the one on Autumn’s face. They are impossibly smug when they get their way.

  Whistling down the hall echoes and Joe enters the room, his mood decidedly improved. “Mollie, my love, how are you?” He moves around Vaughn to kiss her cheek.

  “Can we go now?” Autumn asks her dad and he begins detailing the instructions he received from the doctors.

  Mollie barely notices when Vaughn excuses himself from the room, but she catches the expression on Declan’s face and the way the Irishman stares at Vaughn as he lingers in the hall and pulls out his phone. His gaze meets hers and he stands at her side, his voice low, concerned.

  “Be careful of that one, love.” He looks over his shoulder, eyes narrowed at Vaughn’s back before he returns his attention to Mollie. “Something tells me he’s keeping things to himself. I don’t like it.”

  “Mississippi State Penitentiary. You are receiving a call from a convicted felon. Do you accept the call?”

  “Yes.” Mollie thinks the guards love playing that message, as though she wouldn’t know who was calling her from “Parchman Farm.” From what she knows of them, they like to rub salt into gapping, festering wounds and treat the inmates worse than day laborers. “Daddy?”

  “I’m here, Mimi. How’s my girl?”

  Hearing his voice, though it is rough, gravely, is always a pleasure; it’s like she’d been holding something weighted, crushing on her shoulders until she heard “How’s my girl?” coming from the other line. Two seconds after hearing his voice, the weight wasn’t quite so heavy.

  “I’m good. I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, sugar. You okay?”

  She wished she had the time to simply chat with him; tell him how beautiful the mountains were this time of year, how the sound of the lake running the length of the campus could still manage to ease her mind; how loudly Layla screamed when Donovan doused her as she lay sunbathing with ice water and flour; how sometimes she misses the sound of the porch swing moving in the wind at the Compound, the easy, constant drone of the chain holding the swing up singing to her like a lullaby. Most of all, she wants to tell him how she loved falling asleep to the sound of him playing his acoustic Gibson and the low, smooth melody of his tenor voice in the dark silence of her childhood home. But there isn’t time. There was never enough time, not when they spoke, not when she visited him.

  Mollie leans against the back of her sofa, the thick tufts of the cushions holding a perfect outline of her body. “I got an abscess. It’s getting worse.” She immediately falls into the coded language they’d invented when they needed to discuss things that nosey guards shouldn’t hear.

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “You did, huh?”

  He takes a breath and Mollie doesn’t like the wheeze she hears in his inhale.

  “You know I’ve got my eyes on you, Mimi. Don’t ever think that your Daddy ain’t looking out for you.”

  “I know, Daddy. I know it.”

  “Good. Now, tell me about this abscess. Is it just yours?”

  “It is, but you know the girls. You know how they like their sweets. Lately, when they’ve been coming around, they wind up with a few abscesses of their own.”

  He takes another labored breath, this time releasing a cough that sounds thick. “I’m gonna see about fixing this.”

  “Daddy…”

  “It’s okay, baby. I can get this straightened out.”

  “How are you gonna do that?” He doesn’t speak and she knows it means someone in the MC will be showing up. “You got one of your own? One that maybe makes mine worse?”

  “I might have one, but now is not the time to discuss what’s ailing me. I just want you to take care of yourself and your girls. I can help. In fact, I’m sending you something.”

  Mollie closes her eyes, trying hard not to get worked up. She knows that sending her something, really means someone from her father’s club will soon be making an appearance. They were kind men, fiercely protective, but when they drove into town, they brought complications with them. Last time it happened when Mollie was sixteen and her mother’s domineering, meddlesome then-boyfriend decided he could take up the mantle of telling her what to do. When she broke curfew by twenty minutes, he locked her in her closet for two days. Layla managed to sneak in, to slip Mollie a cell that she used to contact her father. Then, hell broke loose in Cavanagh. Bloody, “I don’t know where your boyfriend ran off to” hell. Mollie didn’t like to think of what had really happened to him.

  “The last time I had an abscess, you sent me that puppy. It pissed and shit all over the place, remember that?”

  Her father’s chuckle is deep and she hears the faint sound of a full laugh that he lets die off. “Yeah, well, that’s because your mama is allergic. To every damn thing.”

  Mollie smiles, knowing that her father means that her mother doesn’t like complications. She doesn’t like anyone who doesn’t conform and she especially doesn’t like anything that reminds her of her father. Mollie is a daily, constant reminder of the life her mother pretends she never lived.

  “She doesn’t like mess, but this isn’t her problem.”

  “I want you to go see her.” The humor is gone from his voice and Mollie worries that things have escalated. That had to be the case, or her father wouldn’t insist that she warn her mother. He knows how little they see each other and why Mollie made the conscious choice to stay away from the woman. “I want you to stay with her. In fact, it might be a good idea to give the package to your mama.”

  “Daddy, you know that’s not going to work.”

  “It will if you tell her how bad that abscess is, sugar.” His voice has grown deeper, the inflection somber enough to make Mollie’s heart stammer. “She’s your mama.”

  “She’s Katie’s mama.”

  He sighs. “I know, baby, but I want
you to try to get her to help you take care of it. I want you to try real hard. If that abscess gets infected…” He doesn’t finish his thought, but she knows what he’s trying to say. He couldn’t bear it if something happened to Mollie. He’s said that many, many times over the years.

  “It won’t. I can take care of it.”

  “You can, I’m sure, but I’d feel better once that package heads your way. And Mimi?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Don’t try to throw it out.” That’s code for ‘don’t be a brat and get mad and kick the guy out.’ “You’re not a kid anymore and I really don’t have say so over what you do, but for me, please, you hold onto that package until I tell you. You hear me?”

  He wouldn’t let this go, no matter how hard Mollie tried to reason with him. She did, after all, get her stubbornness from him. Whoever he was sending would take direction from her father, no matter how angry or frustrated she got. Mollie knew that was inevitable. They would shadow her like a stalker. They would make her daily routine difficult and she knew they’d try to limit the time she spent with her friends. That wouldn’t be fun to explain. Her father wanted her camping out at her mother’s place, supposedly secure behind the walls of the gated community. But there was no way in hell her mother would ever agree to some crusty biker defiling her pristine home.

  “When are you sending it?” She needed to prepare, to try her best to soften her mother up to the idea of another biker invading their lives.

  “Should be there now, actually.”

  That was unexpected. Her father had never sent anyone in without a warning. That he’d already had the package delivered, told her that things were worse than she thought. Mollie moves her hair around her pinky, nervous about how disruptive her life would soon become and she was just about to tell her father that she needed time, but then three knocks beat on her door and she knows it’s already too late. But when she looks through the peep hole and sees Vaughn standing there, duffle bag held firm in his large fist, a quick lick of dread and suspicion flashes into her mind.