After You Were Gone

by Alexis Harrington

  “I made a big fuss—”

  “It’s okay.” There was a long pause; then he said, “Anyway, I found another job.”

  “I’m sure Benavente’s paid better than I do.”

  “I wasn’t going to tell you this—I wasn’t going to tell anyone. This has to stay between us.”

  She turned her head to look at his profile. “What?”

  “I have a part-time job in Alpine. I’m coaching baseball for a little team there. It doesn’t pay much—those spots are usually volunteer, but they needed someone to help out.”

  “Why is that a secret?”

  “Do you think I could have gotten within a mile of that baseball diamond if anyone knew about my past?”

  “No, I suppose not. You still have a thing for baseball after all these years?”

  “Didn’t you ever want to do something that made you feel good about yourself? Or at least better? When I’m standing out on that field in the sun and clear air, sometimes I’m able to forget that I screwed up nine years ago. I had a chance and let it slide through my hands like water. I’ll never get a full-time job doing this, but this little taste of it is good.”

  “Of course, I understand.” That he trusted her with the information said a lot about his opinion of her. “No one will hear about it from me. Thank you for telling me, Mitchell.”

  He put his hand on her hip. “Juli, look—we’re dragging years’ worth of junk around with us. A lot has happened, to both of us. We aren’t the same people we were back then.” He took her hand in his and rolled toward her. “But we still care as much about each other. Can we just start over? Tonight—right now. It can be a clean beginning for us. I want to make a life with you. And we won’t look back, ever again. All right?”

  In the quiet darkness, Julianne’s eyes stung. He was right. There was nowhere to go if they let the past drag at them. They’d be stuck in this limbo of rejection and painful memories. “Mitchell—”

  “All right?” he asked again, pressing her hand.

  She nodded and kissed him. “Yes,” she choked out, emotion squeezing her throat.

  He brushed at a tear that ran down her cheek, then let out a big sigh. “Thank you,” he whispered, and she laid her head against his shoulder.

  “What will—”

  A thud against the building and an explosion of breaking glass stopped her cold. They both jumped; then Mitchell grabbed for his jeans and boots. The alarm shrieked, and Jack’s wild barking only added to the chaos. Julianne pulled on a sleepshirt and clutched Mitchell’s forearm.

  “Dear God, what was that?” Julianne called over the racket.

  “I’m not sure, but I’m going to find out.”

  The dog stood at the closed door, hackles stiff down the length of his spine, and he pawed at the panel to open it and charge down the stairs.

  From the street below came the sound of squealing tires and an engine throaty with a glasspack muffler, growing fainter as it sped down the street.

  “The police,” she said. “The security company told me they’re notified first. Then they’ll call me.” Just then the phone began ringing, but Mitchell pulled open the door—both he and Jack disappeared down the stairs.

  “Wait! The police will be here.” But he didn’t turn around, so she shut off the alarm, then grabbed the Remington from its spot next to the door and followed him.

  When they reached the first floor, the scent of latex paint, fresh from the can, blew through the striped curtains that separated the back office from the store. The night lighting that Julianne left on for security didn’t reveal a great detail, but even from here, she could see a dark puddle spreading across the floor. Faint streetlight lanced the walls and highlighted glittering pebbles of what looked like crystals that were strewn everywhere. Only a jagged frame of glass daggers remained of one display window.

  The dog struggled to break loose from Mitchell’s grip on his collar. “Jack, no—you’ll just make it worse.”

  He flipped on all the lights to reveal the extent of the damage.

  “Damn it!” she snapped, and pushed past Mitchell with the rifle raised.

  “Juli, don’t go in there—you’re barefoot,” he warned. But she charged ahead.

  A one-gallon paint bucket lay where it had come to rest against a table filled with shabby chic table linens and coffee cups. Shattered knickknacks lay in red paint that had splashed most of everything and created a scene that made Julianne think of a Jackson Pollock painting she’d once seen on TV. It made her think of blood. She uttered a small, anguished cry.

  “Who did this?” she demanded, looking at Mitchell, and her voice rose to a wail. “Who did this?”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. “I don’t know. Not for sure, anyway.”

  A patrol car pulled up then, its red-and-blue light bar flashing. Deputy Joe Porter emerged, his sidearm drawn, and he surveyed the wreckage. Jack directed his yapping at him. Stepping through the broken window and around the paint puddles, he made his way to Julianne and Mitchell.

  All formality in the moment, he gestured at her weapon. “Please put down the rifle, ma’am.” She did as he asked, and the deputy gave Mitchell a cursory once-over, apparently noting his shirtless torso. “Well—you’ve got yourself a hell of a mess here, Julianne.”

  His obvious double entendre made her back stiffen, and it was all she could do to keep from screeching at him. “Joe, this isn’t just a prank. It’s vandalism and it’s getting worse. It must be a—a felony or some other kind of crime! Hasn’t your office figured this out yet? I called earlier tonight—someone tried to run us off the road between here and Marfa.”

  “I heard. Is anyone else here?” The deputy glanced at Mitchell again with a dry expression.

  “No!” Then she glanced toward the back office and thought of The Tomb and the downstairs half bath. Anyone could hide in those places. Her voice quavered as her throat clenched. “At least I don’t think so.” Why wouldn’t any of these lawmen take her seriously? Would they finally rouse themselves from their apathy when she was dead? That thought alone shook her, and she pulled her mind away from it.

  “I’ll take a look around.” He lumbered off, still clutching his service revolver.

  Mitchell let go of Jack. “There’s an old sheet of plywood out in the shed. We’ve got to cover that window until you can get it fixed tomorrow.” He nodded toward the back. “I hope Sheriff Andy doesn’t shoot me out there—maybe even in the back, with the way things go these days.”

  “Don’t make jokes like that now. Take this.” She handed him the rifle.

  He grinned briefly. “Okay. Trade you for the dog.”

  Julianne took Jack upstairs and put on jeans and shoes, then helped Mitchell cover the gaping wound of a window. Deputy Porter found no one else on the property and dutifully took her statement. She made a copy of her surveillance file with the DVD burner and gave it to him. He didn’t think it showed enough to be helpful, but he said he’d file a report.

  With a mop and a bucket, Julianne did her best to clean up the paint mess and thought the one, tiny saving grace was that it was latex and not oil-based. There was more glass to sweep up, but it would have to wait until she had daylight to see it all.

  By the time she and Mitchell dragged themselves up to the apartment, it was almost midnight. She’d rearmed the alarm system but didn’t turn on the lights. It seemed safer to sit in the darkness, broken only by the full moon and a flickering streetlight. Mitchell was unusually pensive, but she didn’t feel like talking, either. A heavy drape of gloom hung over Bickham’s. Every time she thought things were looking up, something slapped her down.

  She poured both of them a drink, and they sat side by side on the sofa, like two mannequins, not touching. Sleep didn’t register in her mind as a possibility.

  So much for their new start.

  After several moments of silence, she said, “Your brothers did this, didn’t they?”

  He rubbed his forehead, a weary
gesture. “God, I suppose they did, Juli. I think they’re trying to get back at both of us now. And I promised you I wouldn’t let that happen.”

  Julianne swallowed hard. “Maybe that feud is branded on us, and we’ll never get rid of it. We let it come between us years ago, and now it’s back. We can say we won’t let the past strand us here, that we’re starting fresh, but what can we do about everyone else? They’re getting their mail delivered to those old days. Talk about stuck.”

  He uttered a vicious obscenity, then sat up and groped around in the dark. “Yeah, maybe,” he agreed. “But I’m not going through that crap again. They don’t have the right to steal my future, or yours, either.”

  “What are you doing?” she said, startled by his actions.

  “I’m going to settle this once and for all.”

  “What? How? We don’t actually have proof.” She turned on the table lamp beside her and watched him gather the rest of his clothes. In just a few hours, he’d gone from a nicely dressed date to an angry, harassed-looking man with his shirttails flapping and his hair going in all directions. “Mitchell, are you leaving? Now?”

  He jammed his bolo tie into his pants pocket and grabbed his jacket. “Yeah, I’m fed up with this feud bullshit. We can’t even make love without it lying there like roadkill in the bed with us. Talk about getting a turd instead of a Tootsie Roll.”

  She followed him to the door, baffled and furious that he was going, unable to believe that he was leaving her here alone and putting himself in more danger. “Mitchell!”

  He turned and grabbed her by the shoulders, then kissed her with an agonized desperation. “I love you, but we can’t have this thing between us. I told Earl, and now I’m telling you, I won’t drag that bad blood around with me anymore. I’m sick of this.”

  “But what are you going to do?” she asked again, worried about him starting an all-out war. “Don’t go stirring up your father and brothers!”

  He went out the door and down the stairs. “You’d better turn off the alarm, or you’ll have cops all over you in a minute,” he called. “Keep the rifle and Jack with you. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  Hot-wired nerves and fear for the two of them came out as anger. She punched in the code to disable the alarm on the control unit in the apartment. She didn’t want to admit that she was afraid to be alone. “All right, go! Just go! I don’t need—”

  But the door slammed behind him before she could finish what she was saying. After she reset the alarm, she went to the bed and slumped on the edge. “I-I don’t need you or any man,” she lied aloud and sobbed.

  Then she called the police. Again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A late-night visitor pulled up to Cherry Claxton’s apartment and killed the headlights. His rumbling muffler must have tipped her off, because her door opened immediately, and the glow of the television behind her silhouetted her figure. She came outside, dressed in some filmy thing but still teetering in heels despite the hour. He had to hand it to her—she was always ready. She made a cranking motion with her hand, and he rolled down his window.

  “How did it go?” she asked, leaning in, her forearms resting on the window frame. Her perfume filled the cab like a cloud.

  “Better than I expected. Easy as pie.”

  “Julianne is bound to get tired of this sooner or later. She’s pretty stubborn, but she’ll cut her losses and go back to that pig farm, or wherever. And not a minute too soon for me.”

  “I don’t think we’re the only ones twisting her tail, either. I’ve seen the cops coming and going around there.”

  She smirked and gave him an offhanded wave. “Hell, bring them on. We can use the help, and I don’t care what it takes. I just want her gone and out of Mitchell’s mind.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what women see in him, but they seem to follow him like teenagers after a shoe sale. What’s so great about him?”

  Cherry laughed. “Sometimes we want the peach on the branch that’s hardest to reach. Anyway, honey, I think you’re great at all sorts of things, too.”

  How did she do that, make that sound like a purring cat when she spoke? “You’d be surprised.” He grinned in darkness, and she smiled back.

  She straightened. “Well, it’s getting late and I have to open at 5:30 in the morning. The Captain Gas waits for no one. You come around one of these days and I’ll give you a personal tour—behind-the-scenes stuff.”

  He chuckled. “I just might do that.”

  He turned the ignition key, and the engine came to with that low thunder as he pulled away.

  Mitchell pulled up to the trailer by the arroyo. It was one in the morning, but he knew everyone inside would still be up. He climbed the narrow wooden stairs and pulled open the screenless screen door, then turned the knob. Of course, it wasn’t locked. They never locked this door. He walked in, and the room was mostly dark, except for the flashing TV picture that periodically lit and dimmed everything. The old air-conditioning unit still wheezed along.

  Darcy sat on the disgorging sofa, looking at pictures in an old issue of the National Enquirer. His head jerked up. “What the hell are you doing here, you backstabber?” he demanded.

  James lay on the other end with his head pillowed on a pile of clothes and a T-shirt thrown over his eyes.

  God, it was disgusting here.

  “I came to see the old man, not you.” The response to that was a snore deep within the recliner. Mitchell stepped over and spun the chair around, startling his father awake.

  Earl snorted. “What, what? Mitchell, don’t bother me now.” He’d taken out his dentures, and his face had a collapsed look to it.

  “Earl, I want to talk to you.”

  The Tucker patriarch peered up at him and gave him a dismissive wave. “Now? Forget it. It’s late, and no, you ain’t moving back here.”

  Mitchell looked around at the horror show that was this dwelling. “I don’t want to move back in.”

  “Then what are you doing here? We’ve already said everything there was to say. You’ve gone over to the enemy.”

  “Yeah, and that attitude ends now. I don’t care if you all want to live here, rotting away in your own hate, but I’m done. You, though”—he pointed at his brothers—“you leave me the hell out of it. And leave Julianne alone. Tonight—man, you’ll get arrested for that. She has security cameras, in case you don’t know.” She had glanced at the images and hadn’t seen anything, but they didn’t know that, either.

  Darcy launched his rawboned frame from the sofa, all twitchy moves and defensive swagger. “Arrested for what? We didn’t do anything! We’ve all been here the whole night.”

  “Give it up, Darcy; that dog won’t hunt. I don’t know if James helped, but you were there. I’m telling you, it ends now.”

  “I didn’t do anything, either,” James muttered from his spot on the sofa.

  Darcy danced around like a boxer in the ring. “Are you threatening me, man? Don’t you threaten me!” That edgy restlessness he often displayed had its high beams on.

  Mitchell leaned over him—he and James were taller than the middle Tucker brother. “Don’t forget where I spent seven years, Darcy,” he said. “I learned more on the inside about fighting and killing than you’ll know in your lifetime, even if you make it to old age. Those guys make you look like a little girl. I saw a man killed over stolen tater tots!”

  “Yeah, well, they ain’t here now!” Faster than Mitchell would have guessed, Darcy landed two rapid-fire punches in the center of his face. Lights exploded behind his eyes, and his neck made a snapping sound like a cracking knuckle. He felt blood begin to stream down his upper lip and drip from his chin.

  “Darcy, damn it!” James said. “Will you all pipe down? Some of us are trying to sleep.”

  “Go to bed, then!” Darcy barked.

  James wadded up his pillow of dirty clothes and stayed put.

  “You two take that shit outside!” Earl threw in. “I don’t wa
nt things getting broken in here.”

  “You lousy bastard!” Mitchell raged. Equally swift, he grabbed Darcy by his skinny throat and shoved him hard against the ancient, brittle paneling that lined the walls. He saw hate in his brother’s eyes. He saw fear, too. He smelled it on him. A red veil dropped over Mitchell’s vision, and his fury grew. He dug his fingers in and felt sinew and bone. Darcy struggled in earnest and began to make strangled noises.

  “Mitchell, you’re gonna kill him,” Earl observed with no great concern, but Mitchell barely heard the comment.

  “Jeezum, Mitchell, let him go!” He felt James pulling at him.

  “Don’t you ever raise a hand to me again,” Mitchell warned Darcy. “You do, and I’ll snap that hand like a pencil. And work up from there.”

  Darcy swallowed under his tight grip, and Mitchell released him.

  Darcy coughed and rubbed his throat. “Damn mofo ex-con! I’m not afraid of you!” he jeered, but with less gas.

  “Seven years,” Mitchell repeated, letting the insults slide, “and I remember every single day of it.” He turned to include James in this conversation. He grabbed a towel from the sofa and swiped at the blood streaming from his nose. “Haven’t you ever wondered what started all these years of bitterness with the Emersons? Did you ever bother to ask why we were raised to hate that family, or why they hated us?” No one answered. “Don’t you want to know what you’re wasting your lives on?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” James threw in. “They did us wrong, and that’s plenty.”

  “Earl, why don’t you tell the boys what’s behind the legacy you left us? Do you even remember?”

  Earl narrowed his eyes and scowled. “I remember just fine.”

  “It was about Tammy Lindgren, wasn’t it?” Mitchell knew this topic was a potential powder keg. If emotions ran hot enough, the whole damn trailer might as well explode.

  “By God, boy, you don’t know how to leave something alone, do you?” Earl struggled to climb to his feet from the rocker, but he couldn’t manage it and flopped back against the grimy cushions. “That story is none of your business.”