by Serena Bell
“Not well,” admitted Kincaid.
“Caid. I know how you feel.”
Kincaid couldn’t meet his eyes—too much pity there. And too many words in his own head: I don’t think you do. I don’t think you know what it’s like to discover that the woman who raised you is being hurt, and you didn’t have any idea. I don’t think you know what it’s like to be the only thing standing between someone you love and physical pain. I don’t think you know what it’s like to be at the heart of rage and frustration, to lash out and to wake up from that place to realize you’ve become what you hated.
I don’t think you know what it’s like to want even the feeblest semblance of justice more than you want sleep or food or sex.
He flashed on the sensation of Lily’s lithe body moving in the space between him and the brick wall, on the red suffusing her face as she’d watched him spill all over his fist.
More than you want sleep or food, he amended, and was angry at himself, not for the first time, for his weakness Friday night.
Grant was still talking. “I know how hard this must be for you. All of it. I know how much you’ve suffered. But you can’t throw away your freedom.”
“That’s not how she would have seen it,” Kincaid said. “If she knew she could do something that would help those kids, she wouldn’t talk about throwing anything away.”
He remembered one night when the shelter had been full and the volunteer manager had called his grandmother to ask what she should do about two kids—siblings—who’d just showed up. He and his grandmother had been sitting by the fire in their pajamas, drowsy and peaceful, with Brady the golden retriever stretched out beside him. When the call had come in, Nan had gotten dressed and driven to the shelter to pick up the kids, who’d spent the night sleeping on the pullout couch, by the fire, wearing Kincaid’s outgrown pj’s, with Brady curled up at their feet. Those kids had passed out of their lives the next day, but there had been others—kids she’d taken shopping for clothes, kids she’d tutored, kids she’d lectured, cajoled, disciplined, convinced not to give up on the idea of an education, a better life.
And yet, she’d never been too busy with those kids to spend time with him. To help him with his homework. To tuck him into bed.
Grant crossed his arms. “It’s too big a risk. You’re a free man—”
Something on Kincaid’s face made Grant retrace his steps. “I know it sucks not to be able to drink or hang out in bars or travel or go back to the town where you grew up—”
Kincaid shook his head. “It’s not that. It was me in Arnie’s house, me who grabbed that knife, me who threatened him, and me who cut him. I know I deserved to go to prison, no matter what you argued. And I know I’m lucky to be out. I’m lucky to get parole. You did good, best you could. It’s not that. But free? This isn’t freedom. Knowing he’s out there, gloating, that he hurt her and took everything away from her. Everything.”
There were times—so many times—in prison that he’d thought, I wish I’d killed him. And so many other times he’d thought, I wish I’d never gone there. That was the rest of his life, poised between those two regrets, and remembering the horror of what he’d become in those moments in Arnie Sinclair’s house.
Grant sighed. “You won’t be free if you go back to prison. You’ll be the opposite of free.”
Kincaid shrugged. “There are all different kinds of free. I won’t let him take away what belongs to those kids.”
Because I owe her that much. I couldn’t help her, but I can do this.
Grant turned away, and for a second Kincaid thought he was finally going to wash his hands of him. But then Grant sighed. “I get it. Just—do only what you absolutely have to. Keep your nose clean otherwise. And if it’s illegal, don’t tell me about it, okay?”
Kincaid nodded, feeling something loosen in his chest. Grant was the closest thing he had to a friend these days, and it meant a lot to have his support, even grudgingly given. Even with all those warnings attached.
“And for fuck’s sake,” Grant said, “be careful.”
—
“Who are you looking for?”
That was Lily’s sister, Sierra, and there was no putting anything past her. She and her husband, Reg, and their kids, Alana, Joelle, and Ben, had come into the diner for brunch. It was Saturday morning, eight days past Lily’s fateful alleyway encounter, and she was still looking up hopefully every time someone entered. For the first few days, she told herself Kincaid’s absence could be coincidence—he’d missed a day or two, they’d missed each other when she was doing a brunch shift and he’d come for dinner—but by Thursday she’d had to admit that it was much more likely that he was avoiding her.
That didn’t stop her from jumping a foot every time the door opened.
And Sierra had noticed.
Lily set down the plates she was carrying—scrambled eggs and bacon for the kids, an avocado, bacon, and cheddar omelet for Reg, and French toast for Sierra—and ignored her sister’s question.
“Can I get anyone anything else?”
Her nieces and nephew shook their heads, and Reg smiled at her. She was glad her sister had married such a nice guy, a towhead with a perpetual smile and a personality to match.
“I think we’re set. Don’t play and eat,” Sierra said absently to her youngest, Ben, who was tapping on the screen of an aging iPod touch with his right hand and shoveling eggs into his mouth with his left.
“I’m making a pig volcano,” Ben said, proudly.
“What’s a pig volcano?” Lily asked.
Blond-haired, angelic Ben and his equally blond sisters, Alana and Joelle, all began talking at once. Alana, the oldest at ten, won out and explained. A pig volcano, she said, was when you mined a hole in the ground, filled it with pigs, and pumped it full of water. Because the hole was already chock-full of pigs, it could accept only so much water before it would erupt, shooting pigs skyward.
“Of course. Didn’t you tell me Minecraft was educational?” Lily inquired of her sister.
“It is,” Sierra said. “They have to solve problems. In order to make a pig volcano, first they need stone, and in order to get stone, they need a pickaxe, and in order to get a pickaxe they have to get wood and craft it—”
“Excellent preparation for real life,” Lily said dryly. “Pig volcanos are very important for survival.”
Alana crossed her arms. “You’re supposed to take our side. You’re our auntie. If you tell her it’s not educational, she won’t let us play.”
“I said it was excellent preparation for real life,” Lily said.
“You were being sarcastic,” Alana said, but she leaned her head against Lily. She smelled like sunscreen and breakfast and child, and when Lily bent to kiss her, her blond hair was soft and silky against Lily’s cheek.
“You can play Minecraft after you’ve finished,” Sierra said. “Just don’t fight over the iPod. Take turns nicely. Use the timer.”
“We always take turns nicely,” Ben said.
Lily turned to go back to the kitchen.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Sierra said. “Don’t think I didn’t notice.”
Lily pretended not to hear, but she knew Sierra saw right through her.
Later that evening, Lily joined Sierra on the couch with two glasses of red wine, knowing it was time to pay the piper.
“I’m still waiting,” Sierra said, accepting a glass.
Lily sighed. “Maybe I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Maybe you do.”
She did and she didn’t. She wanted fiercely to talk about him, to make him real again in some way, if only by putting words to him. She’d tried all week to stalk him online, but no dice—no Facebook profile, and even though she didn’t use Twitter or Instagram or Google+ or Pinterest, she’d searched for him there, too, just in case. Nada. Well, she couldn’t blame him; she wasn’t too keen on social media herself, only used Facebook to keep up with old friends and rarely posted�
��he was probably just a private type.
“Remember I told you there was a guy? The weird mysterious one at the diner?” Lily spoke in a hush. The kids were reading in bed down the hall, and Reg was in the kitchen, working at his laptop.
“With the light blue eyes and the tattoos?”
Lily nodded.
“I remember.”
“I kissed him.”
She wasn’t lying exactly, just editing.
Sierra whistled. “How exactly did that come about?”
Lily told the story of her brief stint in the kitchen, Markos’s rage, and the gauntlet Kincaid had thrown down on her behalf. “And then he stuck around to help me clean up, which was really nice of him. And then he carried out the trash, and I—I just kissed him to thank him, and then we were kissing.”
“Just kissing?”
Lily ducked her head.
Sierra sighed. “I’m supposed to tell you this is a terrible idea. I’m supposed to tell you you need to stay focused.”
“I know. It’s a terrible idea. I’m supposed to stay focused.” Lily recited it like a robot. “It was stupid, okay? But the thing is, it was also—amazing.” He was rough. I liked it. She wouldn’t say that, not even to Sierra, who knew the skeleton of Lily’s story with Fallon—dumpage, humiliation—but not the sordid details.
“He’s who you were looking for this morning.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.”
“Have you seen him, since last Friday?”
“No. And—”
“And that bums you out more than you thought it would,” Sierra observed, her eyes warm with sympathy.
Tears pricked Lily’s eyes as she nodded.
“Do you know anything about him?”
“I think he’s a law student. He was reading some hard-core textbook. And he’s friends with that guy Reg went fishing with last weekend. With the frizzy gray hair and beard.”
“Grant?”
“Yeah.”
“That makes sense. Grant’s a lawyer. Grant used to be married to Jeannie.”
“Really?” Jeannie was one of Tierney Bay’s two dentists, and Sierra, who was a dental hygienist, worked for her.
“Yeah. She left because he was a workaholic. But if you know both of them you have to kind of wonder. Jeannie’s such a dominatrix and Grant’s so mild, I think there has to be more to the story. Anyway, Grant’s a good guy,” Sierra said. “So this guy is friends with Grant? I’ll ask Reg to ask Grant about him.”
“Really? Are we in seventh grade?”
“Just to, you know, make sure he’s on the up-and-up.”
“I think it’s moot. Not so much as a peep out of him, since—he hasn’t even come into the diner.”
Sierra sighed. “Maybe it’s for the best. You’re not going to be here long, anyway.”
Of course it was for the best. Lily knew that perfectly well. And if she told Sierra more about the “kissing” she’d done with Kincaid, that would only reinforce Sierra’s conviction. Because she’d told Sierra she’d sworn off sex, vanilla or otherwise.
Which theoretically should also include stand-up groping to orgasm with near-strangers in alleyways, of course.
One. Two. Three.
“Lily?” Sierra asked.
She’d been a million miles away, in that alley, deep in joy.
“I’m okay,” she said, but she wasn’t, exactly. She’d been so hopeful, in the alley. That was what she had to admit to herself. When he’d grabbed her wrists, she’d thought, Yes. She’d felt, for only the second time in her life, like herself, deep in that unfolding part of her that was freed by being confined.
But then he’d disappeared, too.
Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference at all if he’d showed up in the diner and smiled at her. Maybe it would have felt like just crumbs. But she thought it might have helped. His disappearing felt too much like judgment.
It felt like Fallon.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, to an imaginary Fallon. To Sierra, who looked unconvinced.
To herself.
“It’s not going to happen again.”
Chapter 7
Kincaid knelt in the thick layer of needles. He was working today on a long road that snaked along the bluffs, close enough to the Pacific that although he couldn’t see it from here, he could hear its roar. There were three or four houses planted at intervals. He didn’t know the owners, only that they were rich Californians, come north to get more bang for their buck and to escape the creep of Silicon Valley.
The Oregon coast was a strange beast, with towns poor as dirt and rich as sin strung out all along it. Tierney Bay had once upon a time been a well-known tourist destination, but about fifty years ago Cannon Beach had stolen its thunder, and Tierney Bay had slowly dried up until there was not much left of its former glory. Markos’s diner. A bakery, a market, a hardware store. The stores that had once appealed to tourists—the bike shop, the kite shop, the ice cream shop, the toy store, the women’s clothing boutiques—were open fewer and fewer hours, and some had shuttered for good, leaving empty storefronts.
But dotted here and there, mostly along the shore, were pockets of old wealth, owners of homes on cliff and beach who’d been unwilling to sell even as the town had shrunk, and it was these houses that Kincaid’s boss’s landscaping company mostly served. Some owners were rarely—or never—home, and Green Thumb did all the gardening and upkeep. These were the best jobs, because you could work in solitude.
Kincaid would never have guessed how much he’d like working with plants. Despite how at home he felt in the woods—despite the forest tattoo on his right arm and the moss tattoo on his left—he’d never thought of himself as a guy with a green thumb, or even someone remotely sentimental about nature’s soothing qualities. But he liked landscaping, liked driving the powerful lawn tractor, liked the soothing repetition of pruning, the artistry of deciding which branches to take out of a tree. He even liked weeding, grubbing in the sandy dirt, yanking out interlopers and giving ground back to the flowers. He liked that it felt like tricking evolution, messing with survival of the fittest. Man dictating his terms to nature.
The soil here didn’t smell quite like the forest on his grandmother’s land. This land smelled of bark and loam, the scent of expensive materials ordered in trucks and spread from wheelbarrows by men like him who were lucky to have the work. The other men on the crew today were all immigrants from El Salvador and Guatemala, who mostly spoke amongst themselves in Spanish, occasionally casting him a glance that lingered somewhere between guilt at excluding him and resentment at being put in the position of having to feel guilty. Kincaid was pretty sure most of them were illegal. Rodney, Green Thumb’s owner, didn’t ask questions, which is why Kincaid worked for him.
Not that it mattered, not that thinking about the past offered anything but nostalgia and loss, but pre-prison, Kincaid had worked for Yeowing’s Board of Health. He’d planned to go to the police academy and become the town’s sheriff. He’d loved the town that much, enough to become its protector and enforcer—
And wasn’t it ironic that now he was its villain?
In OSP—the Oregon State pen—he’d had a job, too. Jailhouse lawyer, best there was. It was crazy to say he missed anything about those days, but he did. He missed being good at what he did, and he missed the way men came to him with their problems. He missed law itself, how it could be simple and tangled at the same time, how you could tease it apart and figure out which buttons to push and get justice out of it.
He had this crazy idea that maybe he’d keep studying. So if circumstances ever aligned, he could finish college and go to law school. He’d do environmental law, bring it all together.
The only person he’d told was Grant, and Grant had given him a look. Don’t get too attached to that dream, Grant’s expression said. The words he’d said aloud were: “In Oregon, there’s no law that says an ex-con can’t sit for the bar,” but Kincaid could see how deep his
doubt was.
And that was Grant. Grant, who’d believed in Kincaid enough to represent him, who’d argued publicly that he’d done what he’d done “in defense of others.” He’d fought a second battle to keep Kincaid out of maximum security. And then, when that had failed, Grant had watched his own marriage fall apart while he gave Kincaid a crash course in jailhouse law so he could make himself useful instead of dead in prison.
So if Grant didn’t think Kincaid could do it, the chances probably weren’t too good. Still, Kincaid wasn’t ready to give up the dream. In the meantime, he’d plant gardens—not such a bad lot in life, if it came to that.
Several yards away from where Kincaid worked now, an ornamental iron fence defined the edge of this property, and beyond that was the road. Inside the fence, these owners had planted a grove of true cedars—the trees responsible for the blanket of needles—and Japanese maples to hide themselves from the rest of the world. In the shade underneath, ferns, hostas, bleeding heart, marsh marigolds, and violets grew in thick bunches. At least these people had been wise enough to choose sturdy, native shade lovers. Some people planted expensive, delicate flowers, then hired Rodney and his crews to keep them alive against all odds. It might have given Kincaid a rush to beat natural selection, but it was damn hard work.
There was a lone jogger coming up the road. He could see only that she was female, with breasts that bounced under her sports top and a ponytail that swung. As she got closer, he allowed himself to admire both those things. What had happened in the alleyway with the waitress should have taken the edge off the sexual need that had dogged him, sometimes painfully, during his captivity, but it had honed it, instead. Now, instead of being an abstract longing, it was a specific one: her, at the borderline between civil and unruly, all the way.
Of course, Murphy’s Law being what it was, as the lone jogger came into more vivid view, it was her.
Her. The waitress. He knew her name, of course, but saying it out loud, even in his own head, unsettled him. It made her seem real, and important, and the only way he could have done what he’d done the other night was if it was a one-off thing. A mistake he could pretend had never happened. That was why he hadn’t been back to the diner since then, because it made it easier to pretend it hadn’t happened.
