After You Were Gone

by Alexis Harrington

  “None of our business! You made it our business from the day we were born. You even made it Mom’s business.” Mitchell could feel his temper climbing and took a deep breath, hoping to settle it some.

  “It was all a long time ago,” was Earl’s feeble defense. “Water under the bridge.”

  “Except it wasn’t. It isn’t. That living, breathing thing dragged at all of us—”

  “What are you two talking about?” James repeated, sitting up.

  “Are you going to tell them now, or shall I?” Mitchell asked.

  The old man remained silent and gnashed his gums.

  So Mitchell repeated the story Julianne had shared with him, including the evidence in her mother’s journal.

  “That’s what this was about? Some woman?” Darcy asked, apparently stupefied.

  “So long ago?” James added. “We weren’t even born.”

  “There was more than that,” Earl said, but didn’t go on.

  “Figures,” Darcy muttered. “Some woman.” Then he stuck out his chest and chin. “It don’t matter; it’s too late to change things now. You didn’t defend the family honor and you’re still a traitor.”

  The family honor. Mitchell’s head and face throbbed as if a locomotive had rolled over it. Sweating like a prison fish, he sank into a hardback chair beside the TV after shoving away an empty pizza box. He didn’t think his nose was broken, but he wasn’t sure. Whenever someone got their nose hit in the ballfield, the coach would jam tampons into their nostrils. It worked, but he wasn’t about to find any here. Bloodstains soaked the top half of his shirt. But if he’d felt better, he would have laughed the ironic laughter of the damned.

  “Family honor! Darcy, does that balloon you’re riding in ever land? What honor is there in any of us? Earl, here, carried a grudge all this time because some girl he wanted got pregnant by Paul Boyce. So he taught us to hate the Boyces. We burned a man to death in his barn because of it. How honorable is that? I guess since I took the blame for the whole thing, there was some kind of twisted virtue there.” And he’d lost his baby girl in the bargain. Wearily, he stood up.

  “I’m going to marry Julianne, if she’ll have me. That’s the way it should have been from the beginning.”

  “The Boyce female?” James hooted. “You’re going to marry her? Well, give him your blessing, Earl.”

  His father scowled. “I’m not giving you anything. You’re no son of mine. My kid wouldn’t marry the enemy’s brat.”

  Darcy added, “You tell him, Earl. I didn’t get anywhere with him.”

  “I’m not going to argue about this,” Mitchell said. He had better luck talking to Jack, and he was a dog.

  “Then get out. You said yourself that you don’t belong here anymore, and you were right. Your name might still be Tucker because I can’t do anything about that, but you aren’t one of us anymore.”

  Damn, wasn’t that a shame, Mitchell thought, but in a way he was relieved. The break would be clean, or at least as clean as possible with this bunch. “You’re right. I’m not one of you. Maybe my bad luck will end now that I’m free of this bad-luck family.”

  “Are you going to take that?” Darcy demanded, his hard-ass facade quivering. “I’m not!”

  “Shove it, Darcy!” Mitchell barked. “And leave us the hell alone, because if you don’t, you’ll answer to me this time. You two should do yourselves a favor and learn to think with your own minds. But I have no reason to protect either of you anymore. I’ll kick your head so hard you’ll be looking at the world through your ass.” Mitchell walked out, not bothering to close the door. Fury coursed through him like a jolt of electricity, giving him a sensation of unnatural power and life—one that would be hard to control if he didn’t get away from here.

  Cranking over the Skylark, he realized that now neither he nor Julianne had anyone to block their way. They’d make their own family. Bouncing over the deep ruts on the car’s bad shocks, he recognized that he’d let his father run over him just to keep the peace, and he’d helped perpetuate that hate for a long time. He couldn’t change their thinking, but he sure as hell could let them know what they were in for if they gave him or Juli any more trouble. He felt bad about leaving her—he shouldn’t have walked out the way he had. But he hadn’t been willing to let this go any longer. And maybe he’d finally settled the problem with his own loser family. At least he’d spoken his piece.

  Driving toward Highway 90, he decided he wouldn’t pester Julianne tonight. She had Jack to look after her and the security system. After a glance in the rearview mirror, he knew he’d scare the hell out of her if she saw his blood-soaked shirt. His face was swelling, too, and in an hour or two he’d look like a boxer who’d gone fifteen rounds and lost. He hoped his eyes didn’t turn black, but that was a real possibility.

  While he sat at a railroad crossing waiting for the eastbound freight train to pass, he examined his face in the vanity mirror. The red lights on the crossing gates competed with the glare flashing between the railcars, but neither let him see much, and the dome light wasn’t at all kind. Goddamn that Darcy, he’d really done a number on him. Very gingerly, he placed his thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose and wiggled it. The knifing pain made him swear the worst string of words he knew, but nothing moved, so he hoped it wasn’t broken. Groping around on the floor of the backseat, he found another towel and did his best to scrub the blood off his upper lip and chin.

  When the train had passed and the gates began to rise, he saw a Presidio County Sheriff’s car waiting on the opposite side of the tracks, headlights glaring. He held his breath as they passed each other, bouncing over the tracks. He followed the cop’s taillights in the rearview mirror until they grew distant and turned down the road that led to the arroyo and the only dwelling there. He let out a deep breath. That scene would get ugly.

  At least the Satellite Motel had an ice machine—he’d hit that before heading to his room. Maybe in the shower he’d be able to wash off the blood and the smell of stale beer and bacon grease.

  Julianne didn’t really sleep that night; she napped. Her anger at Mitchell’s reckless confrontation with his family had fizzled away, and now she only worried. If he would just call and tell her that he was all right. She flitted in and out of one doze after another, several of which were long enough to feature chaotic, disturbing dreams.

  Every creak and groan in the old building made her eyes snap open. At one point she woke to what Mark Twain had called the ticking of a death-watch in the wall—the expansion and contraction of dry wood after a day under hot sun. SAF-T Security Service called and assured her that the motion detectors on the first floor still worked. But with a sheet of old plywood nailed over the gaping hole that had been a window, and after Mitchell’s abrupt departure, she felt very alone. Even Jack couldn’t fill the emptiness, and finally he got so tired of her tossing and turning, he jumped off the bed and went to his own.

  Lying there in the darkness, she thought of Mitchell beside her a few hours earlier, and she could barely believe everything that had transpired in the past few months. She still detected the faint scent of him in her bed, and that gave her comfort. To think that the man she’d loved, then hated for so long, she now loved again. Had always loved. But nothing to do with him had ever been easy or uncomplicated. He brought a hurricane with him—a storm of serious trouble and longing and joy. She had only to consider all the events of tonight alone to remember that. In some ways, that was part of his appeal.

  And that he loved her.

  Julianne was already up by the time the sun finally crept over the horizon and cast slats of light across her bedroom wall. In late August, the sun rose around 7:30, but she had enough work and worry to keep her busy and sleepless. After a shower and a jolt of hot coffee, she fed the dog, and made some phone calls to get the repairs underway. A rep from her insurance company was coming by in an hour. Then she went downstairs to look at her store.

  With a box of black garb
age bags tucked under one arm, she walked around the floor searching for anything that was out of place, covered with glass, or paint-splattered. The damage was fairly contained, and she’d worked hard to get the worst of it mopped up the night before. Where the paint had splashed and dried, though, it was bad. A pretty Belleek cup and saucer wore a gory spray of red paint. A stack of hand-embroidered, linen dinner napkins had been soaked with it. Disgusted, she yanked them from the display and shoved them into a garbage bag to catalog later. After pulling out other ruined things, she swept up all the glass she could find, then went over it again with a shop vac. The floor would have to be refinished again. It would be great if only the damaged part could be done instead of the whole thing, but she didn’t know if that was possible.

  Some other inventory and display items had to be tossed, and her insurance should cover those. All of it could be replaced and yet—and yet . . . Each of these events—the vandalism, the dead chicken in her mailbox, the destruction of her property—chipped away at her courage. Determination and the will to succeed still drove her, but how much could one person take?

  The sheriff’s department hadn’t gotten in touch with her to say if they had discovered anything at the mobile home. And she still hadn’t heard from Mitchell. She had no idea what had happened after he’d left here last night. But she remembered very well what had occurred between the trip home and this catastrophe surrounding her now.

  In that brief spell between troubles, she and Mitchell had made love. They had been able to lock out the world. Her body and heart had been one again at last, joined with his.

  Then real life had come calling again with a bucket of red paint.

  She sighed and lifted her chin. She had no choice. She had to keep moving forward.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Julianne screamed. The installers from Marfa Door and Window nearly dropped the pane of plate glass they were carrying, and gabbled a panicked burst of profanity. She’d been on the sidewalk outside Bickham’s, watching them maneuver her new window with suction cups when she glanced to her left and saw Mitchell standing there. He’d turned his back to the street and to the men, then lifted his sunglasses to show her a face that looked sort of mashed, like it had been whacked with a skillet. She felt the pavement tilt beneath her for a second.

  She clapped both hands to her mouth. Pulling them back, she uttered, “Mitchell! Dear God, what happened?” One eye was black, bloodshot, and nearly closed, and a raw-looking gash marked his left cheek bone. He had bruises the size of continents on a world globe. Even the window guys were staring.

  “I went to the trailer, like I said I was going to.” He tried to smile, then winced, then shook his head. “I think I made my point, but not before Darcy got in a good sucker punch.”

  “With what, a hammer?” She grabbed his arm and pulled on him. “Come on, come on, I need to take care of this.” To the installers she called, “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.” He let her lead him into the cool dimness of the store.

  “At least you didn’t get the train-wreck version from last night. My nose bled like a faucet. I threw my shirt away—I didn’t think it would ever come clean.” He glanced around and gestured at the general mess. “Damn, this place looks pretty bad, too, Juli. Did you call your insurance guy?”

  “You look worse. And yes, he came by first thing. He says I’m covered, especially because of the surveillance equipment I had installed.” If this was some kind of karmic endurance test sending one problem after another, she was sick of it.

  “That’s something anyway, I guess.”

  Fortunately, she’d gotten rid of the old refrigerator that she had inherited with this apartment and had a new one installed. This one had an ice maker with a door dispenser. That had been a big leap forward in technology; the one on the farm still had stubborn metal ice trays that generally refused to work for anyone. She grabbed a towel and a plastic Ziploc bag from a drawer and made an ice pack.

  “Sit, sit,” she directed, and pointed him to the kitchen table. “Did you go to the hospital or see a doctor?” She set a glass of iced tea in front of him and gave him a straw.

  He touched careful fingertips to his cheekbone. “Who, me?”

  She made an impatient noise. “You could have a broken bone in there someplace. You should have at least called me.” Standing over him, she tipped his face up to hers to inspect the damage, and her heart actually hurt in her chest. Those puffy bruises and cuts looked so painful. “Oh, Mitchell,” she whispered. With difficulty, she pushed down tears. She’d never wanted to be a woman who cried over every broken nail or greeting card commercial on TV. But this was hard. Catastrophes were always hard.

  “I put ice on it for an hour or so when I got back to the motel. If anyone had seen me digging through the ice machine near the office, they probably would have called the cops.”

  “Did you hit him, too?” Turning back to the cupboards, she found her first aid kit.

  “Sort of—those jackasses seem to bring out the worst in me. He swore he was home all last night and didn’t break the window. James said the same thing.” He flinched when she touched the ice pack to his eye and cheek. “How can I believe them? They’re fixed on a single target, like dogs being trained for the fight pit.”

  That image sent a quiver of revulsion through her. “I’m the target?”

  “Not exactly, but they have pretty narrow lives. I did tell James and Darcy about Tammy Lindgren, though.” He went on to tell her what had happened after he left her.

  She took his hand and raised it to the ice. “Hold this right here. What did Earl say when you told them about Cade’s mother?”

  “He said it was no one’s business and that it happened years ago. I told him that was bullshit—he made it everyone’s business, and ‘years ago’ has always been ‘now.’”

  In the first aid kit she searched out antibiotic ointment and butterfly strips. “So they’re going to hound us to our graves?”

  “I told them this has to be the end of it or they’ll answer to me. I think I actually scared Darcy.” He let out a huff of a laugh. “Maybe it was when I had my hand around his throat. His eyes were about to pop out. When I left, I passed a cop car headed that way. You called them, I hope.”

  Her brows shot up. “Of course, but I didn’t expect them to really do much about it. I haven’t heard anything from them yet. If I’m going to.” Pushing away the ice pack, she dabbed the ointment on the gash over his cheekbone. All the muscles in his jaw jumped at her touch. “Sorry. I’m trying to be careful.”

  They were quiet for a moment while she tended to him. From downstairs came occasional pounding sounds and a conversation in Spanish between the installers.

  “You look pretty cute in those white coveralls,” he said. “I wanted to tell you that the first time I saw you in them, but you were cranky.”

  She managed a faint smile. “I had the right to be cranky. Think about what you’ve learned about me since that day. Anyway, you had a chip on your shoulder, too.”

  His sigh made him sound world-weary. “Yeah. I still do sometimes. The world is a hard place. Believe me, I’ve seen the worst of it.”

  A question that had nagged at her for a while now came to mind again. It felt like an awkward one to ask, seeming as clumsy as inquiring about someone’s bathroom habits or their private spiritual beliefs. But Mitchell had touched on the subject now. “Is—is prison really bad?”

  A chasm of silence opened between them, and she thought he might not answer.

  He cut her a sidelong look. “Just want to make sure I got what was coming to me?”

  “N-no, of course not.” Her face grew hot, and from past experience, she knew she probably looked blotchy. “It was a rude question. I’m sor—”

  He pulled her hands away from his face and took them into his own. “How can I describe it to someone who’s never seen it?” It sounded as if he were asking himself the question. “It’s not like what they show on TV. Life in
a correctional institution is constant chaos and noise. Slamming doors that rattle your teeth and the rooms, loud music, yelling inmates, fights between cliques and gangs, between individuals—like I told Darcy last night: I saw a man killed over stolen tater tots at breakfast. People get beaten or raped.”

  Her breath rushed out of her in a soft cat’s-paw.

  “A lot of the inmates are damned scary-looking, with so much ink on their faces and bodies, they’re like monsters from a nightmare. Prison is zero privacy, constant danger, and small-minded, unpredictable corrections officers who like to yank inmates’ chains just for the hell of it. It’s easy to get into trouble over some rule made up on the spot, one that didn’t exist the day before, or even the hour before. Some of those COs—the only real difference between the inmates and them is the uniform. It’s lonely and boring. It’s the loss of everything except your own thoughts. Sometimes even those are up for grabs. And that’s on a good day.” He let go of her and put the ice pack back on his eye. “On a bad day, someone gets killed, beaten to a pulp, or there’s a lockdown. Another inmate decides he’s going to challenge you or doesn’t like the way you look—just because. Sociopaths make up about a quarter of the population. That only makes things harder. And the nights—sometimes the nights are endless.” He stopped talking and gazed at the litter of cotton swabs and bandages in front of him on the table.

  “I shouldn’t have asked,” she fumbled, her face now blazing. He got what he deserved, she told herself feverishly. It wouldn’t have happened if not for Wes. But—

  “Most people there will tell you either that they’re innocent, or yeah, they’re guilty but it’s someone else’s fault—someone made them do what they did. And I suppose that’s true once in a while.” He lifted his eyes to hers again. “But for the most part, we all got there under our own steam, because of bad decisions and bad choices. I sure did. And considering what those choices led me to do, you have the right to ask.”