by Cora Brent
“ERIN!” Conway screamed.
Gaps put a kindly arm around the kid’s shoulder. We were close enough to hear him say, “I told you, son. She’s gone. I’m sorry.”
Conway Gentry just broke. He dropped right down to his knees and even though he didn’t let out a sound, the sight of the way he just crumpled would have singed even a frozen heart.
Several in the crowd murmured with sympathy and turned away, a few wiping tears from their cheeks. Emblem wasn’t that big of a place and tragedies were always just a little more tragic in small towns. Many of those flanking Main Street likely knew the Gentry brothers, and they likely knew Erin as well. Maybe their kids went to school with these kids or maybe they picked up their prescriptions from Conway’s mother at the pharmacy or shot pool with Erin’s father. This would manage to reach them all in some way.
Chase knelt beside Conway and gathered him into his arms as if Con was a small child instead of a nearly grown man. The boy wept on my brother’s shoulder and then slowly raised his head, looking around with anguished, red eyes.
“Where the hell is Stone?” he demanded.
Gaps leaned down and rested a hand on his shoulder. He met my eyes. “I haven’t told him yet,” he explained quietly.
Con threw Gaps’s hand aside and stood. “Where the hell is he?”
“Stone isn’t hurt,” Chase assured him.
Conway stared right at him. There was so much warring emotion in his face. Heartbreak for sure. And something else. Anger. “Of course he’s not. He’s never fucking hurt. So where the fuck is he?”
“Your brother was the driver,” Gaps told him. It was another hard piece of news to take but there was no point in avoiding it. “He was behind the wheel of that stolen Chevy and the girl, Erin, was in the passenger seat.”
Conway blinked at him. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.
Gaps shifted his weight and cleared his throat. “Your brother was arrested at the scene and is being booked at the station.”
“Stone was the driver,” Conway muttered as he raked a shaking hand through his hair. “Stone was the driver.”
Chase reached for him but Con suddenly hit a boiling point, pacing back and forth and breathing in gasps. His hands went to his shaggy dark blonde hair, the same hair that my brothers and I had if we ever decided to let it grow long. He pulled at the roots hard, as if he was trying in vain to substitute one small pain for another much larger one. I didn’t know if it was kinder to stand back and let him blow or try to yank him back our way to be wrapped with sympathy.
Then without warning he stopped, drew back and punched a solid metal light pole. The sound of bone meeting metal was terrible.
“Conway,” I called sharply.
He hadn’t cried out although the hit must have been agony. He held his hand out in front of him and stared at it dumbly as if he couldn’t guess the reason the knuckles were split and the skin was turning purple.
“He took her before he took her,” he said blankly and I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. It must have been the grief and the shock of losing his girl and then moments later finding out his brother was responsible for her death. Although there was something strange about it. No one had yet answered the question as to why Stone had chosen to take his brother’s girlfriend on a crazy joyride in a stolen car.
Chase got a firm arm around Conway and led him to a nearby bench. The kid just sat there kind of dazed and silently allowed Chase to take a closer look at his hand.
“That’ll mean a trip to the hospital,” Chase said, wincing as he gently turned the hand over. Conway didn’t make a sound or even acknowledge that he’d heard.
Cord came to my side. Our eyes met and he nodded tiredly. Of course there was no way we could just take off now and leave our young cousin sitting here on Main Street with his shock and his broken hand.
As for his brother, even I had to admit that there was nothing we could do for Stone at this point. I recalled the night we drove down here to rescue the brothers from petty trouble that landed them in a jail cell. The last thought I’d had as we left them behind was a hope that they’d step back from the ledge that straddled the good world and the bad. I was sorry that Stone hadn’t been able to find his way. His reckless actions had cost a young girl her life and would change the course of his.
“Want me to take a quick look at that hand?”
A female paramedic with smile lines around her eyes and white blonde hair coiled atop her head had appeared out of nowhere. She had a very maternal look about her. Conway stared at her dully as she gently prodded his swollen hand.
“That has to hurt something fierce,” she clucked but there was soft kindness in her voice. She opened up a black bag that had been slung around her shoulder and removed a tan elastic bandage. “I can at least get it immobilized and protected until you can get to the ER.”
She wrapped the hand up carefully while Conway continued to stare at nothing.
“You think he’s all right?” I asked Cord in a whisper.
Cord looked at me like I was cracked. I winced.
“I mean, I know he’s not fucking all right. But you don’t think he’s going to go run in front of a bus or something, right?”
Cord shook his head. “We won’t let him.”
I glanced around and noticed the cops were starting to shoo everyone away. After all, this was the scene of a fatal car accident. I avoided looking too closely at the wreck site, trying not to imagine that poor girl spending her final moments there. I hoped it was over before she had a chance to realize it was coming.
Conway was slumped on the bench, awkwardly holding onto his bandaged hand while Chase kept trying to comfort him.
“We should probably ask if anyone’s called his mother,” I said.
Cord nodded. “If they did she might have decided to go to the police station first.”
“At any rate we ought to get him off the street. Maybe take him home and wait around there until his mom shows up.”
“Not a bad idea. He doesn’t need to be sitting here looking at this all night.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Guess we should tell our wives not to expect us home real soon.”
My brother’s mouth was a tight line. “No, we won’t be home soon.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHASE
If I could pick him up and cradle him against my shoulder until he stopped shaking then I would.
If I could soothe him with promises that everything would be okay then I would do that too.
But it all would be a lie. And it would cheat him out of the chance to feel what he needed to feel.
I knew from the harsh master of experience that the only way to handle pain was to let it run its course. Numbing it, dulling it, hiding from it, all of that only lead to a volcanic buildup.
Conway refused to call his mother and he refused to go home, becoming even more agitated every time we mentioned it. From what little I’d gathered of Tracy Gentry, she wasn’t close to her sons but even a distant mother was probably better than none right now
“I told you,” grumbled Conway. “She won’t give a shit.”
Most of the onlookers had dispersed. A few had paused, watching us on the bench we’d been sitting on since Con hammered his hand into a metal light pole. They looked like they wanted to say something to Conway. If he knew any of them personally he gave no indication. There was one strange moment where I locked eyes with a thin, attractive woman who was probably in her mid forties. She seemed very familiar but it wasn’t until she sneered and turned deliberately away that I realized I was looking at Saylor’s estranged mother. I glanced over at Cord to see if he’d noticed her but he hadn’t. He stood on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, consulting quietly with Creed.
“We’ll wait with you,” I told Conway, again trying to convince him that a bench on Main Street was not the best place for him right now. “We’ll stay there with you as long as you want.
You don’t have to be alone.”
The kid just shook his head. “She’ll be done with us. She said so.”
“Conway. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
He frowned. “Didn’t I?” His voice was vague, like he honestly couldn’t remember.
His hand was sitting there useless on his knee. Even through the bandages I could tell it was horribly swollen. There are dozens of bones in the human hand and that raging assault on a street pole had likely shattered a few of them.
“At least let us take you to the hospital,” I said. “Get that hand taken care of.”
Conway looked at his hand. He lifted it, trying to flex the fingers and winced over the pain.
“It’s probably broken,” I said. “It won’t heal right if you don’t get it set.”
Cord and Creed were looking our way and I realized they were hanging back on purpose, figuring I had the best shot at getting through to him.
“Come on,” I tried again, trying to lift him up by the elbow.
Surprisingly, he allowed it. He kept his head down and his damaged hand close as he followed me to Creed’s truck.
“Emblem Medical Center?” Creed asked me once I’d loaded Conway into the passenger seat.
“I guess,” I shrugged. “We can try and track down his mom while we’re waiting.”
Cord sat beside me in the back and Creed started the truck, taking care to turn the stereo volume to mute before he did. This was not a moment that needed a soundtrack.
The medical center was still fairly new. It hadn’t been built until after we’d been out of Emblem for a few years. It was small, but a good addition to the town. Before it came along everyone had to drive a good thirty miles away just to get an infected hangnail treated.
Luckily the woman behind the front desk recognized Conway so she helped him get all the paperwork filled out. There were some insurance questions that none of us knew how to answer but when it looked like it was going to be a problem Cord grabbed the clipboard and signed it, agreeing to be the responsible party.
The waiting room was nearly empty. An unwashed drunk slept in a corner, exhaling eighty proof with every wheezing breath. I stayed close to Conway although he waved me off when the nurse arrived to bring him back for x-rays.
Reluctantly I sat down and watched him go, feeling protective and sad. There was no way to have a good outcome to this night. And a kid that age wouldn’t really know how to quiet all the raging conflicts tearing apart his soul. Once upon a time things went really dark for me. I had a ticket to the same terrible place that had captured my mother. But my brothers had put their arms around me and pulled me back.
“Don’t crawl into the hole, Chasyn,” Creed whispered. “But even if you do we’re coming in after you.”
“Every goddamn time,” Cord said, hugging me. “Always.”
If Conway Gentry found himself sinking, who was left to go after him?
Cord must have read my thoughts. “We’ll help him, Chase,” he said soberly. “We will.”
I sighed. “Maybe we can talk to Tracy. Ask her to let him spend a chunk of the summer with us. She might go for it. It’ll be tough for him to be here right now.”
“Yeah,” Creed nodded, stretching. “Let’s just hope she doesn’t remember the time I pissed in her ceramic birdbath.”
“Why the hell did you do that?”
He shrugged. “I had to go. It was there.”
“Creedence logic at its finest.”
He was staring at me thoughtfully. “I got the feeling Con was all kinds of angry at his brother even before Gaps told him that Stone was the driver.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
Creed continued to stare at me. It was like being on the receiving end of an alien mind probe. Creed always knew when something was up. He knew when I was using, when I was lying, and when I was hiding something.
“I saw them,” I said, lowering my voice to nearly a whisper since Emblem had busybodies in every crevice of the town limits. “As we were driving away from the house this afternoon I saw Erin come out of the house and ah, let’s just say she and Stone seemed to be inappropriately cozy in a ‘I hate you but I love you’ kind of way.”
Cord’s eyebrows shot up and let he let out a low whistle.
“You think he knew?” asked Creed, gesturing to the door Conway had disappeared behind.
“I don’t know. I’m not going to ask.”
Creed nodded. “Right.”
The drunk in the corner kept snoring and the minutes marched right on past.
When an hour went by without anything changing but the hands on the clock I got heavily to my feet and approached the front desk. The woman who’d helped Conway check in had been replaced by one who was decidedly less patient. She was making a mess by cutting out little squares and it took me a minute to realize they were coupons.
“Just go on back,” she scowled with a wave of her scissors when I asked her to check into Con’s status.
I hoped my brothers wouldn’t follow me and they didn’t. I found Conway lying down on a bed in the triage area. His eyes were closed and his hand had a fresh bandage. I grabbed a nearby metal folding chair and parked it next to the bed.
“You’re still here,” said Con. His eyes remained closed.
“Of course I’m still here. Cord and Creed are too. We’re your cousins. We weren’t just going to dump you off and leave you here alone.”
His eyes opened. They were blue. Like mine. Like my brothers. He stared at me with all the wounded confusion of a boy who’d just lost everything. Then he closed them again.
“I am alone now.”
I patted his shoulder, an inadequate gesture.
Then he suddenly shot upright and sat on the edge of the cot. “I can’t even be fucking mad, Chase. At them. For what they did. I can’t be fucking mad because she’s dead and he’s going to fucking prison.”
“You have the right to be angry, Con.”
He coughed, looked away. “You don’t even know.”
“I have an idea.”
“You have a girlfriend, Chase?”
“A fiancé.”
“And you love her?”
“More than anything.”
“As much as you love your brothers?”
I was slow to answer. “Yes. I don’t know what I’d do without any of them.”
Conway’s shoulders slumped and a tear rolled down his cheek. “We were together for a long time. Two years. Of course, she grew up next door so she was in my life long before that. When we were kids the three of us would hang out together but then Stone and I started hanging around with a rougher crowd so she wasn’t around much. That all changed two summers ago. She was the only girl I’ve ever loved.” His voice cracked and he grimaced. “And Stone, he’s the only brother I’ll ever have.”
There were things I could have told him, about how one mistake can reverberate for eternity in ways that nobody could have foreseen. But it would have sounded shallow right now in the face of such treachery and loss. I couldn’t imagine what reasons there could be for one brother to betray another, or for a girl who was clearly in love to turn toward the last person on earth she could have.
Maybe there was more to the story. But all we had right now were the broken shards of its aftermath.
“Conway? Is there anyone I can call for you, anyone you want to see right now?”
He shook his head. “No. Stone was my best friend. And Erin was my heart.”
I put my hand on his head. “We’re here, kid.”
He looked at me with lost, haunted eyes. He didn’t say anything.
A nurse dressed in scrubs printed with pink teddy bears wheeled over a silver cart full of medical stuff and announced it was time to wrap Conway’s hand. Apparently the breaks were simple ones and six weeks in a cast would be enough. The other wounds would take much longer to heal, if they ever did.
The nurse started her efficient business of wrapping Conway’s hand up
. He looked a little glassy-eyed and I wondered if they’d given him something for the pain.
“You’ll just have to wait here for a little while longer while it sets,” she told him, gently placing his mummified hand in his lap.
“Conway,” I said, “I’m just going to go talk to the boys for a few minutes. I’ll be right back.”
As soon as I returned to the lobby I noticed two things immediately.
Cord wasn’t anywhere in sight.
And Creed looked tense. Downright grim. This hadn’t exactly been the most cheerful day ever but he definitely seemed more disturbed than he was the last time I saw him.
“What did I miss?” I asked, sinking into a plastic chair with a grunt.
Creed gave me a tight smile. “We had a visitor.”
“Oh yeah?”
“The kid’s mother heard he was here.”
I looked around. “Well, she obviously didn’t stay long.”
“No. She didn’t.”
“You two must have had a nice chat.”
“Yeah. She knew who I was right away. Well, actually she called me Chase, but whatever. I told her I was sorry about Stone and that Con was getting treated for the hand he’d broken fighting a Main Street pole. She told me that Conway could pick up his stuff at the Mitchells’ house. She told me to tell him that.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“That’s exactly what I said. Tracy crossed her arms and said she was done with all things Gentry and that those two little punks were on their own. I reminded her that Conway was under eighteen and she should think twice before just kicking him to the curb. She told me if I cared so much then I could keep him.”
“Holy shit.” I shook my head. “What a piece of work.”
“No kidding. When it seemed like she was heading back there to wring him out I stopped her. I asked her not to. I was completely polite about it too. Only used four letter words about sixty times.”
“What did she say?”
