The Davis Years (Indigo)

by Green, Nicole

  He settled into the couch and pulled her afghan over him. Why had he come up here and just dumped on her? She wanted to help and he was hurting her by making it impossible. Why did she put up with him? He closed his eyes, trying to think of ways to be a better friend to Codie and of ways to forget about Jemma.

  Davis woke up early that afternoon to the sound of his cell phone vibrating against the coffee table. He squinted at it, head pounding, before making a swipe at the thing.

  He almost fell off the couch in the process of reaching for it. Groaning at the sight of Cole’s number on the caller ID, he put the phone to his ear. He hadn’t thought about Cole since that day he’d run into Seth at the post office. Seth had told him his brothers would call, but Davis forgot about it up until that moment. “What?”

  “Nice to finally talk to you, bro,” Cole said.

  “What?” Davis repeated.

  “We need to talk about the house.”

  “You can’t kick me out. The house is mine, too.”

  “We have a proposition for you. That’s all I’ll say over the phone. We’re staying at the Red Roof near the interstate. We went by your house, but nobody was home. Your car’s missing. Neighbor said you hadn’t been home in a couple days. I think her name’s Ayn? Where are you anyway?”

  “Out of town,” Davis said flatly.

  “Well, when can you be back in town? This is urgent.”

  “Just tell me what you want.”

  There was a short pause before Cole said, “This isn’t the sort of thing that can be discussed over the phone. But I will tell you this. If you can’t get your butt back here by tomorrow, you won’t be happy. We have an appointment with Seth.”

  “You can’t talk to my lawyer without me.”

  “All three of us, dummy. And we’ll get our lawyers involved if you don’t play nice. Don’t make me drag you into court for something this stupid, Davis. I’ll do it if I have to.”

  Davis winced. Maybe he should have listened to those voice mails from Seth before deleting them. “All right. I’ll be there by tonight. What room are you staying in?”

  “Three thirty-six.”

  Davis hung up and slipped his phone into his pocket.

  “Your brother?” Codie asked. She must have walked into the room some time while he was on the phone. She wore jeans and a cream colored blouse. It looked cleaner in there, too. She’d been productive while he was conked out. Always the considerate type, she’d probably tip-toed around him while he slept.

  Davis nodded. “Both of them. In Derring. I guess it’s time for the final showdown.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “You have to work.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder, sinking down next to him on the couch. “You’re more important than work.”

  “No. This is between me and them. Thanks for being a good friend, though. Always.”

  Codie wrapped her arms around him. “I’m always gonna be here for you when you need me.”

  “Thanks,” Davis said. He didn’t deserve anyone being so good to him, but it was sure nice to have Codie in his life.

  He limped to the front door and she followed.

  “I’ll call you when I get back,” he said.

  “Okay.” She nodded. She stood in the doorway and he walked into the hallway.

  He turned at the end of the hall to wave to her and caught her swiping her sleeve across her eyes. His heart broke a little more. Being friends with him couldn’t be an easy thing. All he could ever seem to do was hurt people. Maybe he just needed to stay away from everybody.

  Chapter 26

  Davis grabbed a cup of coffee and drove back to Virginia with only two bathroom breaks. Traffic wasn’t too bad, and he got back earlier than he’d expected to. He went to Room 336 at the Red Roof and knocked on the door. When it opened, he started to say something, but then closed his mouth. The shock of seeing an unexpected face had made him forget what he wanted to say. He stared back into his own eyes on a slender brunette who appeared to be in her mid-forties.

  Davis stumbled back a few steps. It couldn’t be.

  “Oh, Davis.” She let out a choked sob and reached for him. “You’ve grown into such a handsome young man. You’ve grown so much.”

  Davis guessed she would be shocked. After all, the last time she’d seen him, he’d been four. Of course he would have grown a little in twenty-one years.

  Davis looked up to see Cole and Ashby standing further back in the room.

  “Your brothers brought me to you,” she said, flipping her hair over her shoulders.

  So his brothers still talked to his mother. She really had abandoned Davis. Just him. Really had thrown him away.

  “This is what we couldn’t tell you about on the phone,” Cole said from somewhere inside the room. “Mom.”

  “Oh, Davis. We can finally be a family.” She clasped her hands together. Tears shone in her eyes.

  “Looks like you already have one of those,” Davis said, spying the wedding ring on her finger as she stretched her arms out to him again.

  She pulled back and twisted the ring around her finger a couple of times. “There’s so much you don’t understand.”

  “I’m sure. Right now, though, I need to talk to my brothers,” Davis said. He walked into the hotel room. His mother followed him.

  Davis stood in the center of the room, facing Ashby and Cole. Lydia cowered in the corner, watching all three of them.

  “So what is this? Why did you bring her here?” Davis repeatedly clenched and unclenched his fists. He trembled with rage he fought to control. It was a losing battle.

  “Like I said, we need to talk about the house,” Cole said, giving Ashby a nervous glance. Ashby gave him a slight nod.

  Davis glared at his brothers. “What about my house?”

  “We want you to let her stay there.” Cole looked at Ashby, but spoke to Davis. “It belongs to all three of us. You know that.”

  “What? No, no, no. First, you dump Dad on me and now this? Hell no.” They should have known they had no right to ask something like that.

  Cole sighed and pushed his hands through his hair. “She has nowhere else to go. When she came to Ashby and me, she was living on the street.”

  “Why can’t one of you take her in? You’re the ones with the fancy jobs and all the money.” Davis shook his head, still trying to wrap his mind around what Cole was suggesting.

  “You know we have families. We have kids. There’s not really room. You have that whole empty house.”

  “Kids I never see. You cut me out of my nieces’ and nephews’ lives.”

  “You never ask to see them, Davis. You never even call.” Cole looked down at his tanned hands. He’d always tanned easily, unlike Davis.

  “What’s the point? I know you don’t want me in their lives. Uncle Davis, the loser black sheep of the family. And you’re not done screwing me over yet, huh? You’re going to rub it in that you all have real lives? The kind you stole from me?” Davis moved over to the table near the windows at the front of the room, leaning against it for support. Cole looked so smug and stupid, standing there in his standard sports coat and khakis.

  “Stole from you? What?” Cole’s eyes flashed as he turned to Davis.

  “You took my lacrosse scholarship from me. You threw me back in that house with Dad and let me rot there.”

  “So you still blame me for you messing up your knee, huh? You jumped out of a moving car to try and impress some girl and it’s my fault?”

  “You let me drink way too much that night. You were egging me on to do it. ‘C’mon Davis, have one more shot,’ you said.”

  “I didn’t know you’d jump out of that car like a damned fool. It’s always someone else’s fault. Why don’t you ever take responsibility for anything in life? That’s your damn problem.” Cole slammed his fist against his thigh.

  “It’s not about me taking responsibility. You should have never let me get in that c
ar after you let me drink like that.”

  “Oh. So it’s my responsibility to tell you when you’ve had enough to drink?”

  “Then you threw me out of your house while I was still recovering.”

  “I wanted you to stay, but you spent all your time fighting with my wife, cussing in front of my baby, and you stayed drunk and glued to my couch.”

  “You never tried to help me find a job or get back in school or anything. You wanted me to fail. You wanted me back here so you wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore.”

  “Such a screw-up, Davis. Always have been. Always will be. You threw away the kind of life people dream about.”

  “Yeah, well, I had such great role models to learn from, huh? Brothers who told me it was better if I didn’t tell anybody Dad beat the shit out of me ’cause they’d split our family up if I told. Well, you two left me as soon as you could anyway.” Davis threw an ugly look into the corner where Lydia still cowered. “A mom who didn’t want me to the extreme that she legally severed herself from me. Yeah, so I screwed up. Is that really a surprise?”

  Lydia stood. “I never wanted to leave you.”

  Davis ignored her, turning his attention back to Cole. “She is not coming to live in that house with me. She made her decision over twenty years ago. She doesn’t get to come back now.”

  Cole turned to Ashby. “I can’t talk to him. I’m gonna punch him in the face if I say one more word. I’m going out for a smoke.” He walked out of the room.

  Ashby turned to Davis with a sigh. “We’ve come to a decision. You either let Lydia move in, or we’re going to force you to buy us out.”

  “You know I can’t afford that.” And his credit was trashed—no way he could get a loan to do it.

  “Take it or leave it. Those are the only two alternatives you have.”

  “You’d really force me out of the house if I don’t let this traitor move in with me? You two really hate me that much?”

  “She just needs a place to stay for a few months. This is best for everybody.” Ashby wouldn’t look at Davis as he spoke.

  “Wrong. All you care about is money. You two have wanted to sell that house out from under me since the funeral. And then she dropped the perfect excuse into your laps. You knew I wouldn’t agree to this. You’re trying to force me out of there.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  Lydia said, “Please. Let me explain.”

  Davis turned to her. “I don’t have to let you stay. You gave up your rights to everything, remember? Including me.”

  Lydia’s face seemed to cave in. “I know, Davis. And I’m sorry.”

  “So you couldn’t come back for the funeral, but you can come back for a free place to live, huh?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t ready for kids. Taking care of the three of you . . . putting up with his neanderthal ideas of what a wife should be . . . I was twenty-three. He was twice my age. But I didn’t have any other choice. I was broke. I thought he loved me. I thought I could learn to love him. I was wrong.” She walked toward him and he backed away. “I’m not expecting forgiveness. Not right away.”

  She shouldn’t have been expecting it at all. He took a step toward the door.

  She wrung her hands. “I hated my life with him. I thought that if I left you and your brothers behind, he’d let me go without a fight. He always seemed to love you kids more than me. I’ll never be able to tell you how sorry I am.”

  “That doesn’t change anything,” Davis said, but he didn’t stop her when she came up and threw her arms around him.

  “If I’d known, Davis. If I’d had any idea. I tried to call, but he changed the number. He wouldn’t let me have anything to do with you all. The last time I called before he changed the number, he told me you all hated me.”

  “I learned to hate you. Every time he laid his fist into me, I learned to hate you a little more.”

  She sobbed into his chest. “I screwed up. I admit that. I want us to be able to start over now. Please.”

  Davis pulled away from her. “I can’t do this today.”

  “Davis,” Ashby said in a warning tone.

  “Come to the house tomorrow morning. I need some time to think.”

  “Would you really rather be homeless than live with her?” Ashby called to him as he crossed the room.

  “Maybe,” Davis said as he exited the room.

  Davis spotted Cole out in the parking lot, shoulders hunched over, sucking on a cigarette. He walked up to his brother and stood there, not knowing what to say.

  His brothers would never be sorry for anything. Especially Cole. Not for Davis getting in that car. Not for his wasted life. They would never be sorry because they would never care.

  “I wonder how we ended up like this.” Davis wasn’t expecting a reply and he was surprised when he got one.

  “Ended up like what?” Cole took a long drag, and Davis fought the urge to bum a cigarette. That was the one bad habit he hadn’t started back up in the past few days.

  “A family of traitors who hate each other.”

  Cole exhaled, nostrils flaring. He looked down at his cigarette. “Him. He caused all of this.”

  Davis stared at his brother a long time. Cole didn’t back down from the stare. “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “Oh?” Cole dropped his cigarette butt to the asphalt and crushed it out with an expensive-looking brown leather shoe.

  “He didn’t ruin everything all by himself.”

  Cole stared across the parking lot. “You woulda done the same thing if you’d been the oldest. Gotten yourself the hell out of there.”

  “Oh? So you and Ashby get away and I get forgotten.”

  “We tried to get you out. You sent yourself right back to him after the accident.”

  “I could tell you didn’t want me at your house. So I left.”

  “What? I never said—or thought—anything like that. You’re my brother. Of course I wanted you there.” Cole took a deep breath. “But I also wanted you to treat my family with respect. Did I want you lying on the couch all day, destroying your liver, and generally turning into Dad? No. But when I tried to talk to you about it, you wouldn’t hear it. All you wanted to do was shout and throw things. Act unreasonable. Just like him.”

  “I’m nothing like him.” Davis’s jaw clenched.

  “Really? You’re not a belligerent drunk who alienates everyone who tries to love him?” Cole lifted his eyebrows in mock surprise.

  Davis drew back his fist. Cole didn’t flinch.

  “Go ahead. Prove my point.” He didn’t back off from Davis one inch.

  Davis muttered that he wasn’t worth the effort and walked off.

  “That’s the other thing he was good at. Running away from his problems,” Cole called after him. Davis didn’t break his pace, but the irony wasn’t lost on him as his mind went back to his last words to Jemma.

  ***

  Jemma sat forward in the hard plastic chair and kept her face set in an emotionless mask. Seeing Smooth again wasn’t as hard as she’d expected it to be. She was ready to tell him everything she’d always meant to.

  She said, “I don’t know why you wanted to see me today, but I would never do anything to help you get out of here. You were wrong for what you did. If you rot in here, you deserve it.”

  “You’re probably right,” Smooth said.

  Jemma was shocked into silence because when she’d pictured this meeting in her head, she’d told him off without him saying so much as a word. She certainly hadn’t expected him to agree with her.

  “Yes, I deserve what I got. You were right when you screamed it at me that day outside of the courthouse at the end of the trial. I always remembered how you looked when they dragged you away that day.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Really?”

  He nodded. “I think I started growing a conscience right then and there.” He smiled. “Don’t you know I never tried to appeal my conv
iction? Lawyer said we had a good chance of winning on some kind of evidence technicality. If I had any sense, I would have taken a plea bargain from the start. I made life harder than it had to be for so many people. I’m done with doing that.”

  Jemma realized that he was different. His demeanor, his tone of voice, his eyes. Nothing seemed the same about him. “Smooth . . .”

  “My name is Larry, Jemma. I’m not that person anymore. I go to chapel here every Sunday. I really want to change. Whether you believe it or not, what I did to your family was the most horrible thing I’ve ever done and being in here . . . has made me want to be different. Now, there are a lot of knuckleheads here who can’t see the light, and I don’t know if they ever will. Not that I blame them. I don’t think there are any really bad people. Just people, some of them in worse situations than others. And some of those people make bad decisions, but no. No bad people.”

  Jemma sat back in her seat, still eyeing him warily. No bad people, huh?

  He spread his hands on the table in front of him and continued. “I blame the system more than anything. Broken system, broken people. It’s hard for a man to really be a man when everything’s set up against him. But the point is I was a part of the problem for too long.” He gave her a small smile. His eyes were full of sincerity. “Now, I’m trying to be part of the solution.” He chuckled. “I lead a book discussion group. Me, Jemma. I bet you thought I didn’t know how to read.”

  She knew it was supposed to be a joke, but she was too busy trying to wrap her head around all he was saying to force a laugh.

  “We’ve read a lot of Harris, but now we’re starting The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Way better than the movie. But what am I saying? You’ve probably already read it. Probably read way more books than I ever will before I met you. You’ve always been so smart.”

  “That’s great, Larry. The book club and . . . all of it.” Jemma wanted to say something that really captured how she felt inside, but her vocabulary eluded her.

  He leaned forward and clasped his hands together. “One thing I learned in here is the past is for learning. It’s not for punishing others or yourself. It’s not for dwelling on and getting angry about things you can’t change. It’s for learning how to do better in the rest of your life. And being grateful you get another chance to try and do better.” He held up a hand and shook his head the moment she tried to say something. Then, he said, “I’m not expecting instant forgiveness or for you to run down to the parole board and sing my praises. And maybe you can never forgive what I did. I just wanted you to hear those things. From me. There are just some things that can’t be expressed the right way in letters.”