by M. O'Keefe
Layla: I was at a party 2! There were buckets of booze. And I dyed my hair.
He wondered briefly what color her hair was. What she looked like. But as the reality didn’t matter, he pushed those thoughts aside as useless and irrelevant.
Dylan: Sounds like a much better party than this one.
Layla: What kind of party is it?
DON’T. The word was loud and clear in Dylan’s brain. Do not do this thing.
But in the end, because he was bored, because of the way the people at that party made him feel like an animal and not a man—and because somehow she’d cracked a hole in his life that he kept trying to stuff more work into, more deals, more money—his warnings were to no avail. He turned the phone around and snapped a picture of himself. From the chin down.
And sent it to her.
Her response came back fast and in all caps.
Layla: IS THAT YOU?
Such a fucking mistake. What happened to cross-contamination? What happened to the rules? His life worked because everything was controlled. He knew this, but it didn’t seem to matter.
Dylan: Me and my monkey suit.
Layla: send me another
Dylan: Can’t. Have to go. Call me tomorrow night.
Layla: boooooooo
Dylan: tomorrow night.
Dylan put his phone back in his pocket. The rules he was breaking were piling up around his feet like metal shavings, razor sharp and about to cut the both of them.
Inevitably, someone was going to get hurt.
—
An hour later he managed to make his goodbyes and leave the party. He ignored the valet and went to get his own car. His F-150, the same truck they used to tow the 989 trailer, looked like a giant beast among all the sleek European cars and the refurbished American muscle cars that surrounded it.
This parking area was a gearhead’s wet dream.
He climbed into his bare-bones pickup and pulled off his tie. The engine, one he’d rebuilt himself, roared like it couldn’t wait to get off this damn property too.
The back roads leading from the house to the highway were dark and still. He was alone on the road, except for the sound of the engine on a distant motorcycle.
A Harley Fat Boy, if he heard it right.
A Harley Fat Boy that needed a tune-up.
It was the sound of his youth, one that used to wake him up in his bed at night. It was the sound of his father and his brother, coming home or leaving.
Outside the dark trees blurred and he kept his speed, enjoying the night and the open road. He unrolled the window, and the smell of the road and the forest filled the cab. He’d be home soon and then…Layla.
The motorcycle showed up in his rearview and Dylan put his hand out the window, indicating the guy could pass if he wanted.
The biker flashed his lights.
And then again.
The fuck?
They were entering the suburbs, and Dylan slowed down for a stop sign at an intersection and the motorcycle pulled up alongside him.
Out in this neighborhood he wasn’t much worried about being mugged. Probably a guy looking for the highway.
“You need something?” Dylan asked. The murky light from a distant street lamp picked up the flash of a dirty white badge on black leather.
A cut.
The rider was in an MC.
“I guess you could say that.” The guy rolled forward until his face was in the light.
It took Dylan a second to place the man, who seemed vaguely familiar. And then the guy grinned, revealing the two, rotting front teeth that bent inward, tilting toward each other.
“Rabbit?”
“Hey there, son.”
“Holy…” He couldn’t deny the fact that for a heartbeat he was happy to see the man. Rabbit had gotten Dylan started in racing, supported him, found him races. Illegal backwoods races, but it was a start. He’d also fed Dylan to the dogs when the time came.
The heartbeat of happiness stopped. Immediately.
“I tell you what,” Rabbit said with that crooked grin and his dark eyes. “You don’t come down off that mountain of yours very often, do you?”
“You’ve been looking for me?”
“Fuck. No one needs to look for Dylan Daniels, we just need to wait for him to show his face—” Rabbit blanched a little in the strange light. The guy always had been a little squeamish.
And his face was exactly why Dylan didn’t come down off his mountain.
“What do you want, Rabbit?”
“I need you to talk to your brother.”
Dylan laughed and began to roll up his window.
“Hear me out,” Rabbit said, putting his hand over the escalating glass. Dylan could ignore the guy’s hand. Close the window on it and drag the guy behind him for as long as it took for Rabbit to pull himself free.
And once upon a time that was exactly what he would have done.
He lifted his finger from the window button.
“I haven’t talked to my brother in years.” Nine to be exact. He remembered the day in absolute clarity. “If the club is having trouble with how Max is leading it—”
“He’s gonna get us all killed.”
Dylan shook his head.
“You don’t believe me?” Rabbit asked, those dark eyes getting sly. Mean.
“No,” he said. “I believe you. There’s just nothing I can do to help you. Max has been trying to get himself killed since the day he was born.”
Dylan rolled up the window and roared away, leaving Rabbit and the past in his rearview mirror.
ANNIE
When I was little, Smith had a dog. A pretty shepherd with one blue eye and one dark one. And that dog loved dead things. If there was a rabbit or a squirrel or a bird that died somewhere on the property, Queenie would find that thing and roll around in it. She’d roll around in it in ecstasy. Like her dog life was made. And then she’d eat it.
She’d eat the dead thing.
And then she’d throw it up and then, if Smith wasn’t around to shout her name in the serious threatening way he had, she’d roll around in that.
On Friday morning I couldn’t tell if I was Queenie, or the dead thing she’d rolled around in, eaten, and thrown up.
That’s how bad I felt.
I made my way, hours past dawn, in the bright, sticky heat of the day toward the field, unsure if I was going to be able to work. Or if I would even really survive the day.
Stepping across the bridge, I caught sight of the tractor in the far corner where it had broken down yesterday.
Shit. I’d forgotten.
I was supposed to ask Ben if he could fix it.
Ben.
Forget it. Forget all of it. I turned around, ready to head back to my trailer, where I could pull the blankets up over my head and die in peace.
But there, like he’d been summoned. Standing on the bridge, in a gray tee shirt and a pair of khaki pants, toolbox in hand. Like a regular guy. Just a regular guy who’d never planned to kill two men and accidentally killed a little girl, was Ben.
He looked old. And frail. His skin was nearly gray. White around his mouth.
He was a sick old man who’d been kind to me. Very kind.
And I was scared of him.
I couldn’t stop myself from stepping back. Reeling back, actually, I was so startled. So off balance.
And all I could think of was this guy tying two men to a chair, leaving them helpless, and then starting a fire for them to die in.
Did you know about the girl? The question surged, angry and righteous, to my lips—but I swallowed it back, where it smoldered in my belly.
Was Dylan somehow related to the little girl? Was that how this man fucked up his life?
“Hey, girly,” Ben said. He was smiling. Actually smiling. And it somehow made him even more menacing. “You all right?”
“Hung over,” I said, grateful for the rock-star sunglasses so he couldn’t really see my eyes.
“I like your h
air.”
I’d forgotten. I lifted my hand to my hair, which felt unbelievably dry and stiff. Like a head full of hay. “Tiffany thought it would be a good idea.”
“It’s better than the black.”
I was silent. Lost and shaky in the hangover and what I knew about him. What I thought about him now and what I’d thought about him yesterday morning.
“This is where you say thank you,” he said.
“Thank you.”
He walked past me toward the tractor. “Come on, now show me what’s wrong with the engine.”
I shouldn’t, I thought, standing still, unable to move. Dylan…that article…even Joan had said stay away. My gut was screaming stay away, now.
And I had to listen to my gut.
“Annie?” he asked. “You coming?”
“No,” I said. “I’m taking the day off. I can’t…”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “I can see that. I’ll see what I can do about getting your tractor fixed.”
And then he was gone and I…Christ, I was in ruins.
There was no chance of my going to the strip club that night. All I could do was lie in bed, eat chocolate chips by the handful, and look at that picture of Dylan in a tux. I could just see a slice of his chin, pink skin with a shadow of darker scruff. But the chest beneath that white shirt with the small black buttons looked wide. Solid.
The fact that Dylan went to parties in tuxes was mind-blowing in about a million different ways.
He goes to parties in tuxes and I go to parties in double-wides.
But he sent me that picture and that seemed…like something. Like…trust. I didn’t know. I didn’t have any kind of context for this fucked-up relationship. All I had were a million questions.
Starting with who the hell was Dylan?
When the phone rang, I was dozing but I woke up in a heartbeat, reaching for the phone.
“Layla?” Oh that voice, that eager jump in my heart, in my body at the sound of it.
“Hey.”
“You okay?”
I smiled at his familiar opener. “Why do you always ask that?”
“Because that’s the only thing that matters. Did I wake you up?”
“Not really. What about you?”
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t get to the strip club.”
“I guessed. Too hung over?”
“I feel like part of my soul is dying.”
He laughed. “You’ll get over it. Was that your first hangover?”
“No, actually.” I shifted on the bed, pushing the chocolate chips away. Who needed chocolate when I had him on the other line? “I got very drunk at a wedding when I was a kid. While everyone was dancing I drank all the half-full glasses on the table. Amaretto stone sours were big.”
“You barf?”
“Big time. What about you?”
“I don’t drink much anymore,” he said. “I used to.”
“When you were wild?”
“When I was the wildest. Too many mornings with my head in a toilet.”
“Now you’re a man who goes to parties in tuxes.”
He was silent for a minute. “I guess so.”
The silence was thick. Telling. He did not want to talk about this. But I didn’t really care.
“What do you do? Like for a job?”
“Something kind of stupid that people pay me a lot of money for.”
“What—”
“Look, Layla, I told you I’d never lie to you. And I won’t, but I can’t tell you this.”
“Are you a spy?” I tried to joke. “Is that it? You’d tell me but then you’d have to kill me?”
“I’d tell you and…shit would change.”
“Because you’re rich?”
“Because a lot of things, Layla. A lot of weird, shitty things that I really don’t want to talk about.”
It’s not like I didn’t understand; there were things that if I were to tell him would blow everything apart.
“Okay,” I said.
“Did you see Ben today?”
“He’s fixing something for me.”
“Jesus Christ, Layla! What do I have to do to convince you?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I’m convinced. I didn’t help him. I walked away.”
“Good.”
I put my head in my hands.
“But…he made me cornbread, Dylan.” How does a guy kill two men and make cornbread?
He sighed. “Just because someone can be cruel doesn’t mean they are incapable of kindness.”
“Yes, it does,” I said. The words were out before I could stop them. I didn’t want to talk about Hoyt. I didn’t want to even think about him. His cruelty had left no room for kindness. And the basic decency he’d shown, combined with his calculation, had, in my lowest moments, convinced me he’d been kind. And it had been so easy for him, so easy, because I’d been so starved, so impossibly void of kindness.
I’d been a fool. An easy mark.
Dylan was silent for a long time. “Who hurt you, Layla?”
I stared up at the pocked ceiling of this trailer I’d claimed as my own and the words, the real words—my husband, my husband hurt me—didn’t come. But it’s not like Hoyt was the only one who’d hurt me. My mom had unknowingly spent years tenderizing me for Hoyt. Teaching me to be small and to be scared.
“My mom was…not well. Mentally. Not really.”
“Like what?”
“You don’t want to talk about this—”
“Let me be the judge of that. What was wrong with your mom?”
“I’m not sure. It’s not like she went to the doctor. Or like we ever really talked about it. She was real paranoid and she’d go through these weeks when she’d be…just furious. The world wasn’t right. And everyone was coming after her. And then it would go away and she’d be…sad. Hard to get out of bed some days.”
“Jesus.”
“It was what it was, you know? I learned how to stay out of her way when she was mad, and how to try and cheer her up when she was sad, and I learned how to work…like so fucking hard all the time in the hopes that she wouldn’t be either. It never worked, but I kept trying.”
“Where was your dad?”
“Not around and not talked about. Not ever.” I closed my eyes, the past, its mistakes, so close I could touch them. I could hold them in my hand where they burned and hurt. I deserved this…the pain over this was one I shouldn’t have been shoving away.
“There…there was one man, Smith.”
And suddenly, I felt tears burning behind my eyes.
Oh, I wasn’t sure I could talk about this. I’d never talked about Smith and what I’d done to him. I’d actually managed to stop thinking about him; in the constant triage of my life, I’d been able to push this awful thing out of my mind, but now it was here.
From the moment I’d met Ben, Smith had started to haunt me.
“Layla?”
My hands were shaking and my stomach hurt and the regrets on my shoulders were so big and so awful I couldn’t pretend anymore. What I did to him, I could no longer hide from.
“He worked on the ranch most of my life and he was kind of a father to me. Taught me how to change tires and shoot a gun. We used to play chess at night on the porch in the summer and he’d never let me win. Not ever. So when I finally beat him, it was like…” I smiled, remembering how I’d done this victory lap around the porch and Mom and Smith had laughed. “A big deal.”
“Sounds like a good guy.”
“He was the best. The best guy. And I think my mother loved him. As much as she was capable of that stuff.”
That was my best guess. My best understanding through the filter of my strange childhood. Mom loved him, this virile cowboy, a former marine.
There were rumors in town that he used to drink, or that he’d had some dark past, and every once in a while some woman at church would get brave and ask Mom if she thought it was such a good idea to have a man like Smi
th out at the farm where we were so isolated. So alone.
Mom ignored those women.
I, of course, had no idea what those women were talking about. Smith was…Smith. With the rusty teasing and the broken-up hand and the up-at-dawn work ethic.
He was silent and steady.
He would never have hurt me. Hurt us.
And I crushed him. Kicked him out of that house, out of the only home he’d ever known.
“Did he love her?”
“I don’t know. He must have felt something for her to stick around…”
“Maybe he loved you. Thought of you like a daughter.”
My breath was broken and sharp and hurt inside my body.
“I think…I think you’re right.”
Smith had stood behind me at Mom’s funeral, his hand on my shoulder. Holding me up when I wanted to fall down.
Don’t marry that boy, he’d said when Hoyt and I announced our engagement.
It’s fine, I’d said. We’re in love, I’d said. Hoyt’s a good man, I’d said.
“He’s the man I fired,” I told Dylan. “After Mom died, there was another…person who started helping me with the farm and I…I was convinced I had to fire Smith.”
Oh, it was awful to remember. A sickening day.
Hoyt convinced me—I don’t remember what words he used, what argument he could offer that would turn me against the one person in my entire life I could count on. My only friend. All I remembered was his hands around my wrist, holding me so hard I thought the bones would break. Like he’d just grind them to dust.
“Annie,” Smith said. “I can’t leave you here alone. I can’t.”
“I’m not alone, Smith. I’m married, and my husband and I are making some changes.”
“You regret it?” Dylan asked.
Regret, God. What a tame word. What a silly cage for all the awfulness I felt about Smith.
“When I think about it, I want to throw up,” I said.
Who knows how different my life would have been if I hadn’t fired Smith? I would have had help. Support. Hoyt would never have been able to sell that land. To hurt me.
And that’s why Hoyt convinced me that Smith had to leave. Because he knew.
“Do you know where he is?” Dylan asked.
“He had a sister in Wyoming. That’s all I knew. I…I made a point of not knowing.” Because I was a coward.
