Protecting Her: A Romance Bundle

by Mia Ford

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, kneeling beside him.

  “Won’t the fish’s family be sad that he’s gone?”

  I blinked at him, then looked at the fish. “I dunno, Kenny. Maybe.”

  “Can we let him go home, Shane?”

  “You wanna let him go?’

  Kenny nodded. “He needs to go home.”

  “Okay, let him go.”

  Kenny held the wiggling fish at arm’s length and walked to the edge of the dock, then got on his knees and gently lowered the fish into the water. He stared down at the murky surface for a moment. Without looking over his shoulder at me, he said, “He’s gone home now, Shane. We can’t hurt Mr. Fish anymore.”

  I exited the interstate and ten minutes later found myself on Main Street, the narrow two-lane that crept through the middle of Gulf Breeze like a scar on a dusty mule’s back. My parents lived on Dilbeck Street, on the seedy side of Gulf Breeze. In a town this small, the seedy side was separated from the uppity side by the Texas Railroad Company’s single tracks that ran through north and south through the direct center of town. If you lived on the eastern side of the tracks you were either a ranch hand or a day laborer or if you were lucky, a rigger on one of the oil wells that dotted the Gulf, sucking the crude oil from the ocean floor day and night. If you lived on the western side of the tracks, you were higher up food chain. And the further west from the tracks you lived, the higher up you went. That’s where the oil company execs lived. The town doctor and dentist. The more successful business owners.

  Annabel’s family lived on the uppity side of the tracks. Her daddy was a tough as nails, fifth-generation Texan who had fought his way up from working on the rigs to managing them for Gulf Oil, and her mama taught English at the high school. They weren’t rich, but they could afford better than my family could. Most of my old man’s take-home pay went for beer and cigarettes. He begrudgingly gave my mama grocery money once a week and expected food on the table every night when he got home. Me and Kenny always ate breakfast and lunch at school for free.

  I had not been here in over a decade, but the place hadn’t changed much. Most of the shops along Main Street were mom and pops: a barbershop, a beauty salon, several antique stores, and Miller’s Hardware, which had been there since I was a boy. Downtown Gulf Breeze was just a few blocks long, starting at the post office on the north end and ending at the Sheriff’s station on the south; a low-slung block building I knew all too well. I turned left at the only light in town and went across the railroad tracks at a crawl. The moment I felt the tires bounce over the tracks I felt a cold chill creeping up my spine, as if the ghosts that had been waiting for me had anticipated my arrival and were waiting for me just across the tracks.

  Ten minutes later I pulled up to the curb at 113 Dilbeck and put the gear into Park. I left the engine running and the AC on high as I let my eyes go over the place. The years had not been good to the little house where I grew up. My old man had kept the place up when he was alive but he’d been dead for years now and it showed. The grass—weeds mostly—were a foot tall in the little front yard. The roof looked rough and the paint was peeling from the clapboard siding. My mother used to keep flower beds along the front of the house. There were boxwoods at each corner that the old man would slave over for hours trying to get them perfectly matched. There was an older model Honda Civic parked under the carport. My mother’s car, I guessed. The license plate was from 2014. My old man’s thirty-year-old pickup truck was parked in the weeds next to the carport. The tires were flat on both vehicles.

  I picked up my cellphone from the console and called up Uncle Seth’s number. He answered on the tenth ring. He was out of breath. I could hear some kind of farm equipment running the background.

  He shouted into the phone. “Hey, Shane. You home?”

  “I’m at the house,” I said.

  “Okay, sit tight. I’m on my way.”

  It took Uncle Seth thirty minutes to get to the house from his place in the country. He let his old pickup truck coast to a stop at the curb and yelled at me through the open window. “Holy son of a bitch… Is that you, Shane Mavic?”

  I worked up a smile and held up a hand to greet him. I was standing next to the little front porch waiting for him to arrive. I’d walked around to the backyard and found it and the house in as bad a shape as the front. Peeling paint, windows cracked, siding falling off, shingles on the ground, weeds up to my knees. It was depressing, the amount of work the place was going to need to get it on the market. Maybe I’d just rent a bulldozer and call it a day.

  Uncle Seth tugged his straw cowboy hat onto his head as he got out of the truck and started toward me. He lived outside of town on a small farm where he raised crops and a few head of cattle. He’d obviously been in the field because a cloud of dust followed him as he came my way with his arms out. I leaned down so he could hug me. He grunted and slapped his hand on my back. He stank of dirt and sweat, but I didn’t mind. Uncle Seth was one of the few people who had ever tried to look out for me. He’d squared off with my old man more than once in an attempt to defend me. Sadly, it only made my old man madder and made things worse for me when Seth had to go home.

  He pulled back with his dirty hands on my shoulders and looked me up and down. “God damn boy, look at you,” he said, head going from side to side. “Last time I saw you, you were half this size. Looks like the Navy has made a man out of you.”

  “I reckon so,” I said with a smile, realizing the words had come out in a Texas twang that I thought I’d gotten way from.

  He blew out his cheeks and pushed up his bushy eyebrows. Seth was my mother’s brother, half Cherokee, and his features showed it. His hair was still black as coal and his skin looked like it was crafted out of boot leather. The Navy dermatologist would have had a field day with Uncle Seth. He’d spent every day of his sixty-some years working the land in the hot Texas sun. He used to say that he would have been a rich man if he had a nickel for every time he herded cattle on the back of a horse or walked behind a mule with a plow.

  I gave him a genuine smile and patted him on both shoulders. I was rarely happy to see anyone. It was an odd feeling. I asked, “How you been, Uncle Seth?”

  “Well, son, I’ve been better,” he said, the smile melting into a sad frown. “What with Irene passing and all. She was asking for you at the end.” He looked at me like he expected me to say that I was sorry that I wasn’t there for my mother’s death. If he was waiting on me to apologize, he was in for a long wait. When it was clear no apology was coming, he fished inside the pocket of his overalls and pulled out a key.

  “Here,” he said, holding out the key and nodding at the front door. “Let’s get inside out of this heat.”

  I took the key and a deep breath, then stepped across the little porch and pulled open the storm door. I pushed the key into the lock and held my breath. I could feel Uncle Seth behind me, watching, wondering why in hell it was taking me so long to open the door. It was hard to explain, but I was overcome by the same old feelings I used to get when I’d come home knowing that my old man was inside, probably drunk and pissed off, waiting for me to come inside and give him even the flimsiest excuse to beat the shit out of me. Even though I knew he was dead, the feeling was there. I had faced down and beaten men much bigger and stronger and even meaner than he was. Still, I felt like a little kid standing there with one hand on the key and the other on the doorknob.

  “You okay, son?” Seth asked, putting a rough hand softly on my back.

  I sucked in a quick breath and nodded without looking back at him.

  I gave the key a quick twist and pushed the door open.

  9

  Shane

  I stood in the doorway for a moment as the house belched a cloud of thick, hot dust in my face. It rolled over me on its way out the door like invisible inmates escaping from a prison, like demons fleeing Pandora’s box. I waved it away and stepped inside with Uncle Seth close at my heels.


  The house was pretty much just as I remembered it. The front door opened to a small living room that had just enough room for a ratty sofa and my old man’s recliner, which I’d made the mistake of sitting in one time when I was seven or eight years old. As I recall, he grabbed me by the hair of the head and dragged me to the front door and flung me out into the front yard and slammed the door. I never went near that recliner again.

  He’d come in most nights, eat his supper, slap the shit out of me, and drink himself into a stupor laying in that chair. He kept an old aluminum TV tray next to the chair for his TV remote and beer cans, which my mother kept supplied until he passed out. She probably thought that if he drank himself to sleep, at least we’d have peace until the next morning when he woke up.

  “Place has been closed up for a while,” Seth said, moving to stand next to me. He took off his hat and tugged a blue kerchief from his side pocket and mopped his face with it. “Hot as hell in here. Want me to turn the air conditioning on?”

  “Sure,” I said without getting out of his way. It was as if my feet had become glued to the floor and refused to go any further. Seth walked down the short hallway off the living room and fiddled with the thermostat until the air kicked on. It rattled through the vents under the house, sounding like a herd of rats tunneling their way in.

  I finally convinced my feet to move. “He’s not here,” the little voice in my head told my body, urging my feet to move and my heartbeat to slow down. “There’s nothing to be afraid of now. The old bastard is dead.”

  I walked through the living room and into the kitchen. There was a table in front of the window where we used to eat. There were stacks of papers and envelopes on the table, but the room was otherwise tidy, even though every surface sported a thick layer of dust.

  “Me and Wilma cleaned the place when we put your mama in the nursing home a few months ago,” he said, referring to his wife, my Aunt Wilma, who I hadn’t seen in years. I felt bad for not having asked how she was, but I didn’t say anything. Seth went to the door that opened into the back yard and twisted the lock. He had to tug it open because it was warped in the frame. It had always been that way.

  He said, “After your daddy died and her health went south, Irene wasn’t much of a housekeeper. We threw out all the food. Most of her clothes and all your daddy’s things are still here. I can help you move them out if you want. Or maybe have a yard sale. Wilma’s an expert on yard sales. Might make you a few hundred bucks.”

  “Do you want anything that’s here?” I asked.

  Deep lines ran across his forehead. His eyes narrowed to slits when he frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you want anything that’s here?” I repeated, holding out my hands like a game show model. “Clothes? Furniture? Appliances? The car? The truck? The house?”

  Seth shook his head like he thought he wasn’t hearing correctly. “Don’t you want them? Ain’t you gonna need them?”

  I shook my head and gave the room a look of disgust. “If it was up to me, Uncle Seth, I’d pour gasoline all over everything and set it on fire. Since the Gulf Breeze fire department and the neighbors would probably object, I just want everything gone so I could put the house on the market and get the fuck out of town.”

  “You’re not staying?”

  I snorted at him. “Why the fuck would I do that?”

  “Because this is your home, Shane,” he said. “This is where your family is. Your roots.”

  I gave him a sad smile and shook my head slowly. “You’re the only family I have left, Uncle Seth, and honestly, that’s not enough to keep me here. I plan on cleaning this place out and selling it to the first buyer that wants it. Then I’m gone.”

  “You’re gone?”

  “Gone.”

  Uncle Seth rubbed his chin, which was covered in stubble, and blew out a long breath. It sounded like sandpaper on concrete in a wind storm. “Well, I reckon me and Wilma can haul it all away and do something with it. You sure you don’t want your mama’s car or your daddy’s truck?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Why don’t we let Wilma have a yard sale?” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “Just open the doors and let people come inside. Whatever’s left you can haul away or I’ll rent a dumpster. Bottom line, I’d like it all gone by this time next week.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Seth leaned against the counter and folded his arms over his belly. I could feel his eyes on me. I refused to look back at him.

  He asked, “What about funeral arrangements?”

  “Shit, I hadn’t even thought about that.”

  “Your mama’s body is at the Gulf Breeze Funeral Home. The man there agreed to keep her safe till you could got home to tell him what you wanted to do far as a service goes. It’s my understanding that she had a burial policy to pay for everything; coffin, flowers, service.”

  I didn’t have to think about it. I shook my head and said firmly, “No service. I’ll call him and tell him to cremate her.”

  “Shit, son, are you sure that’s what your mama would want?” He stuck out his hands and frowned at me again. “I mean, she has a plot next to your daddy in the cemetery. I’m sure she’d want a service so people could come by and pay their respects. I mean, I know you didn’t have the best childhood, but, Shane, she was your mother.”

  “She’s dead, Uncle Seth,” I said. “She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about a service and people paying their respects. And I highly doubt she’d want to spend all eternity in a grave next to the man who beat the shit out of her every day of her life.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  I held up my hands. “You can have a service if you like. Hell, invite everybody in town that knew Clint and Irene Mavic and throw one hell of a party. Shit, I’ll even pay for it, but I will not be there.”

  Uncle Seth stared at me for a moment more, then the frown slowly faded from his forehead. He rubbed tears from his eyes and let his voice go quiet. “No, she was your mother. It’s up to you what to do.”

  “Then she’ll be cremated and that’ll be the end of that.”

  “What about her ashes?” he asked.

  “You want them?”

  He frowned at the floor. “No, I reckon not.”

  “Then that’s it then. I’ll have the funeral home dispose of them.”

  I started to go through the hallway door to look at the bedrooms when Seth asked, “But what about her dog?”

  I froze in my tracks and turned back toward him. “Dog? What dog?”

  “Biscuit,” he said. “Little white Maltese. Your mama’s dog.”

  “My mother had a dog?”

  “Yes.”

  “At the nursing home?”

  “Yes.”

  “They let them have dogs at the nursing home?”

  Seth smiled. “Yeah. They let the old folks have dogs and cats. Supposedly, it’s good therapy for them.”

  “I don’t want her dog,” I said.

  “Well I can’t take it,” Seth said, hands up, his head moving from side to side. “Wilma’s allergic.”

  “Well I can’t take a dog to Iraq, Uncle Seth.”

  “Well, maybe you can find it a good home.”

  “Shit,” I sighed, rubbing my eyes. I’d been up for two days and my exhaustion was catching up with me. “Where is this dog?”

  “When your mama died I boarded her at Doc Bates’ place.”

  “Doc Bates?”

  “The vet. Bought out old Doc Anderson a year or so ago.”

  “Okay, I’ll call them and deal with it.”

  “She’s a sweet dog,” Seth said. “Make you a good pet.”

  I ignored him and started down the hallway. There were three bedroom doors and a bathroom at the end. The door to mama’s room on the right was closed. So was the door to Kenny’s room on the left. My room was the last one on the left. I pushed open the door and looked inside. Nothing had changed. The same bed
and bedspread. The same posters on the wall. The same little desk in front of the window where I tried to do my homework in between getting the shit beat out of me.

  “I’m tired, Uncle Seth,” I said. “I’m gonna crash for a few hours. I’ll call you later.”

  “Okay, son,” he said, patting me on the back. “I’m glad you’re home.” He waited for me to say, “Me, too…” but I didn’t. I just went into the room and closed the door.

  10

  Shane

  When you’re a SEAL, you learn to sleep wherever and whenever you can. Some missions required us to stay awake for days, while others were over in just a few minutes and we were back on the choppers or in the boat heading back to camp. I’d slept in the back of Humvees as they rolled across the Iraqi desert, in troop transport planes flying over the ocean in the middle of the night, in speedboats skipping down the black surface of a Columbian river, in foxholes, burned out buildings, in trees, in ditches, and only occasionally, in a cot or a bed.

  I also had the ability to wake myself up on a dime and come up fighting if need be. You never knew when some asshole was gonna try to sneak up on you and blow your brains out or slit your throat while you slept. Sleeping with one eye open, they called it, so you didn’t die in your sleep of unnatural causes.

  I could usually sleep like a baby regardless of where I was and what dangers there might be. But not here. Not in this house. Not in this room. Not in this bed. Here, ghosts haunted my dreams.

  I could hear the sound of my father’s heavy footsteps as he stumbled down the hall toward my room.

  I could hear him cursing me under his breath, working himself into a rage before he kicked the door in and barreled inside.

  I could hear my mother’s muted screams, begging him not to hit me again.

  I could hear Kenny’s skull cracking open like a ripe melon as it hit the windshield of my mother’s Chrysler.