by Cole McCade
“Uncle Wally? Uncle Wally.” She let out a choked, whimpering laugh. “I’m sorry I worried you. I’m sorry I—”
“Shh shh shhhh. Oh, child. Don’t you know no matter what happens, no matter what you do, I will always love you?”
“But Dad—Dad—”
“He loves you, too. He’s struggling right now—” He clasped Joseph’s hand, lifted it to his lips, kissed it, “—but in these weeks that have passed, nothing has ever been more evident than that he loves you.”
“He’s been letting you take care of him?”
Wally chuckled. “I had to wear him down a touch, but we’ve managed to find some common ground.”
“…that sounds weirdly suggestive.” Then she gasped, strangled and loud. “Uncle Wally!”
“Oh, you needn’t sound so terribly horrified. We are old men, not dead men.” And as he looked at Joseph, despite the pain threaded between them like wires linking heart to heart, he couldn’t help but smile, couldn’t help the burst of emotion that he hoped would never fade, never die. “I have loved your father since your mother first set eyes on him, my dearest weeping Willow. Yet I never thought he would care for me, as well.”
Joseph answered that smile in wan silence, but laced their fingers together and leaned against him, resting his head to Wally’s shoulder. Willow was quiet at first, but finally managed a quiet, toneless mumble.
“Oh.” Then, a bit stronger, “Well, that’s better than you two killing each other.”
“It is indeed.”
“I’m glad. I’m so glad. I won’t worry so much, knowing you have each other. I’m glad to know you’re both in good hands.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah. I am.” A certain softness threaded into her voice. “I wasn’t sure, when I first left. I was just…it was just…things you don’t want to talk about with your uncle. Wanting to explore those things. But I…I ended up exploring more than that. What was underneath the monster.” Her laughter was sweet, warm. “He told me how he knew you. I feel like…I feel like I’ve fallen in love with the Vin you knew.”
“The Vin I knew was a good man,” Wally said. “The Vin who took you was a good man, too. Simply one walking a dark path.”
“He’s taken up fishing. He and his friend sit on the deck of his boat for hours. Fishing.”
Wally let out a burst of startled laughter. “I find that mental image so dastardly amusing I can hardly contain myself.” He trailed into a sigh. “You do sound happy, my lovely.”
“I’m learning how to be.” She paused at a murmur of Vincent’s voice, then continued, “We shouldn’t stay on this call too much longer. Can…can I say goodbye to Dad?”
“Of course, my love,” Wally said. “Of course. But we should talk again, when we can. I’ve some things to tell you.”
“About what?”
“About us,” he said, and thought of Yvette and Martin, and how even in his mind’s eye he could see Martin’s clear green eyes in Willow’s face, and that particular tilt of Yvette’s head in Willow’s everyday gestures. “And where we come from.”
* * *
WHEN WALLY PASSED THE PHONE back, Joseph almost didn’t take it. He was still grappling with this, when part of him still wanted to see his daughter as a victim. This Vincent Manion had done something to her, gaslit her or brainwashed her or—
Or you just can’t accept that people aren’t who you want them to be. They’re who they need to be.
Even your own daughter.
Especially your own daughter.
And so when Wally offered the phone and said “It’s Willow again,” he couldn’t turn away.
“Dad?” she asked as he took the phone. “Are you okay?”
“No. How can you ask that?” He hated how bitter he sounded. He’d already lost her; he could at least not chase her away. “But…I’m better than I would have been for never hearing your voice again. Thank you. For letting me know you’re alive.”
“I’ll try. I’ll try to always reach out. Even if it takes months or years, wait for me. Please. Though I think it’s safe to clean out my room and put my stuff in storage. Don’t hold on to everything…don’t…keep it there like some kind of mausoleum. I can’t stand that idea.” Her sniffle came over the line. “Don’t tell anyone I called, okay? Not the police. Not even Dev. He wouldn’t understand.”
She still needed him, he realized. Because they were family. Because sometimes family leaned one way, sometimes the other, but in the end they always needed each other.
And if this was the only way he could protect her, then so be it.
“I’ll always keep your secrets, sweetheart,” he promised.
“Thank you. I love you, Dad.”
Another sniffle, and then the audible sound of her trying to control it, and were she here he’d brush his little girl’s hair back and wipe her tears and pull her into a crushing hug. But she wasn’t here. She wasn’t here, and she wasn’t a little girl anymore—and he only held Wally as close as possible, because that was the only way he could admit he might need that comfort, too.
“Have you been taking care of yourself?” Willow asked. “I mean…have you had any flare-ups?”
“A few, but that’s how it goes. It’s not going away, but I know how to live with it.”
“I’m sorry if I ever…I never meant to…” She broke off with a rough sound, and he smiled faintly.
“I know, sweetheart. It’s okay. I understand.”
Another of those sobbing sounds, a gulp, trailing into a strangled chuckle. “God. Oh God, I’m trying not to just go complete breakdown mode all over you. So…you and Uncle Wally, huh?”
Joseph rasped a laugh. “Yeah. Me and Uncle Wally. Try not to think about it too hard.”
“I…really didn’t see that one coming.”
“Neither did I.” He nudged Wally with his shoulder. “We had a lot to work through, but…he’s good for me. I’d like to think we’re good for each other.”
“Do you love him?”
“You and Maxi both, with that fucking question.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Asking that, now, when his heart was breaking, was bittersweet. But if his heart was a vessel lined with cracks, what seeped through those fractures and fissures wasn’t the dark rot of pain, but something bright and golden and ambrosial, so full inside him that it threatened to break that fragile container of his heart from within for all its bursting fire. It terrified him. He wasn’t ready for it. He wasn’t ready to trust that loving someone wouldn’t leave him ground under their heel, another twenty years lost tethered to emotions that would become an addiction, an obsession, a disease eating him apart from the inside out.
He wasn’t ready for it…but as he looked into Wally’s puzzled, questioning eyes…
He couldn’t deny it, either.
“Yeah,” he said thickly. “Yeah, I love the creepy weirdo. He keeps me warm when autumn gets a little too cold.”
“Dad!” Willow chastised with a laugh, but he hardly heard it when he was transfixed on Wally. On the transformation that came over his face: confusion at first, as if he doubted what he’d heard, then a slow widening of his eyes in disbelief, shock. Then that flush, that dusting of color that brought out the fine smooth softness of his skin and made his eyes gleam so dark and deep, and finally a smile: so dazzling it was nearly blinding. If the spectrum of Wally’s emotions was a rainbow, then that smile was every color of their light come together into something so joyous it was painful to look at directly, like staring into the white-gold light of the sun.
And that smile was all for him.
“Joseph?” Wally said mildly, still grinning from ear to ear.
“Hm?”
“You’re a fucking prick.” Then he laughed, tucking himself against Joseph, curling his fingers against his arm and resting his head to his shoulder. “But I love you too.”
“I know.” He nosed into Wally’s hair, breathing him in with a sigh.
“I’m glad.”
Willow made a pleased sound. “I like that. Hearing you two. You sound so much better than you used to, Dad.”
“I hate to admit it, but so do you. Though I still want to strangle that asshole.”
“He’d probably let you.”
“…what?”
“Nothing,” Willow said a little too quickly. “Don’t ask.” She cleared her throat, then paused at something from Vincent again, before she groaned—low, disappointed, resigned. “I have to go. It’s not safe to talk anymore. Don’t try to call this phone back; it won’t work.” From the thickness in her voice, he could tell she was trying not to cry any more. “This isn’t goodbye.”
“I know it’s not. I’ll believe it’s not.” A terrible tightness was building in his chest, a hissing demon that swore it was all a lie. That swore this was the end. He ignored it, ignored the awful things it wanted to say, and said the only thing that really mattered at all, in the end. “I love you, Willow. My sweet girl.”
“I love you too,” she whispered, before trailing into a whimper, her voice choking. “Soon, Dad. As soon as I can.”
“Soon,” he echoed. “Okay. I’ll hold you to that.”
Then the phone went dead in his hand.
* * *
WALLY HELD JOSEPH FOR AS long as he needed to be held, and then beyond: lying together in the fading light, quiet and still with the enormity of the things unsaid between them. Sometimes words couldn’t change what was. Sometimes the only way to accept was to take it in, then let it go. And Wally could live with the silence, while Joseph trembled in his arms and held him and told him without words, told him in the clutch of his hands and the desperation in his hold, just how much he needed Wally right now.
Just how much he loved him.
Only when Joseph’s tremors subsided and his breaths eased did Wally speak, cradling Joseph’s face in his palms and looking down into red-rimmed eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Better than I thought I’d be.” Joseph scratched his bearded cheek against Wally’s palm. “I don’t think I’m ready to clean her room out, though. Maybe I’ll think about it when we need a nursery. Even if…”
“It feels like replacing one child with another?” Wally guessed.
Joseph winced, then nodded. “Yeah.”
“It isn’t, darling dear.” Wally kissed him—because he could, because he wanted to, because Joseph needed him to, because he was loved and there was no single thing in this world more glorious. “Any more than this is replacing one love with another. It’s simply how life goes. It’s a cyclical thing, and with each cycle people move in and out of your life. Rather like the seasons, things always come around again.”
Joseph smiled, his sweetness and sadness and openness something Wally would always cherish. Before these days, Joseph never would have let him see his pain. His softness. His warmth. Yet they were given to him now as gifts, to be cherished and treasured as much as he cherished and treasured Joseph himself.
“I can get behind that,” Joseph said.
They sank together once more: sprawled on their backs on the bed, lying arm to arm and hand in hand, looking up at the silhouettes the setting sun made of the leaves and branches outside the window, dancing against the wall. The light was taking on a purple tinge by the time the first evening wind swept in, and those pointed silhouettes tore loose and tumbled, flitting across the wall like black butterflies. Wally turned his head to look out the window, watching as the rattling wind shed the trees in the yard of the first of their leaves, still green in the center but all fire and gold along the edges.
“Look,” he murmured, squeezing Joseph’s hand. “The leaves are finally turning.”
Joseph shifted to stretch out on his side, draping a heavy, possessive arm across Wally’s chest and propping his chin to his shoulder. “It’s just a beginning.” His eyes lidded, drifting to meet Wally’s, and Wally’s heart seized in that way he hoped would never stop. “But then that one leaf, that day, was just a beginning, too. And everything has to begin somewhere.”
“What now, then?”
“We’ll figure it out as we go.”
Joseph threaded his fingers into Wally’s hair, and drew him up for a kiss: a plea, a promise, asking him something without words. And yet, even without knowing the question, Wally already knew he would give him anything. Everything.
As he had always given him his love, for every day of twenty rocky, tumultuous years.
“Just stay with me, Walford,” Joseph whispered. “Promise you’ll stay.”
“Joseph, darling dear.” Wally drew Joseph down to him, drew him close to steal those lips that were his now and would be his tomorrow, so long as he kept that promise, answered that plea. “I’ll stay with you—forever and always.”
“Ah, Wally,” Joseph sighed, and claimed him for a deeper kiss. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted you to say.”
EPILOGUE
WILLOW FLIPPED THE PHONE CLOSED, then handed it to Vin. He dutifully snapped it in half, that brutal strength that at once entranced and unnerved her making his forearms ripple in twists of tanned sinew. The burner phone crackled into pieces. He let it drop to the coffee table, then gathered her into his arms, settling her against the breadth of his chest. It was his way of asking, she’d learned, if she was all right. He had many wordless ways, and one of those ways was to offer the comfort of his embrace as a way of asking if she even needed it at all.
She wasn’t sure if she did or not, right now. Relief and warmth struggled to find room inside her, when she was filled with the ache of loss and the barbed, cutting edges of guilt.
But those edges cut a little less when she fit herself into the curve of his arm and stretched out along the couch in their small, quiet apartment, with its view over Lake Pontchartrain and the faint smell of briny lake water reminding her, in some strange way, of home in Crow City.
“He’s fine,” she murmured, and curled her fingers against his chest. “They’re both fine. They’re going to be all right.”
“I am pleased to hear that.” Vin’s voice was a comforting rumble, shaking through her to melt the tension from her body, that liquid Italian accent rolling over her. “Is your mind more at ease now?”
“Yeah,” she said, then winced as a crash came from above, followed by shouting. So much for quiet; the upstairs neighbors were fucking at it again. “Or it would be if they’d shut up.”
“I could always—”
She pressed her fingers to his lips. “No.”
“But—”
“Don’t even think about it.”
He made a soft, piteous sound. “…but the gravel pit behind the levee—”
“I said no, Vincent. You promised.” When he only grinned, wide and wicked, she laughed helplessly and shifted to lay atop him, stretching out along the massive length of his tall, powerful body and folding her forearms on his chest. “Why are we even having this conversation?”
“Because.” His hands settled on her hips and drew her in closer, pressing her against him—and against that heated hardness she knew so well, rising against his jeans. He always seemed to be ready, the slightest touch rousing him and leaving her breathless with the intensity in his eyes. “I rather enjoy how you choose to divert me from my murderous intentions.”
He pushed himself up enough to kiss her—slow, deep, claiming her mouth with a sort of quietly vicious intensity that turned a simple kiss into a game of control and dominance. It was always control and dominance with him, until he spun her senses apart and she melted against him, that deep, needy pulse igniting in her core. She almost hated that he could do that to her so easily, but she didn’t want to fight it, not when every part of her needed him with every waking minute of the day. He’d turned her into an addict, her body so finely tuned to his every whim that he need only stroke his fingers up her spine for her flesh to turn supple and pliant and yielding to his command.
He could be cruel, sometimes, so cruel—and ye
t he’d changed so much, in a few short weeks. During the terrifying days of driving down back roads, staying in no-name motels that only took cash, searching for cover at the slightest hint of police sirens or helicopters, he’d been surprisingly stable, calm. She could chalk it up to blood loss sapping the fire from him, but in those days as she’d come to grips with what she’d done to herself and her life, he’d been not the twisted, amoral killer she’d once known but instead a quiet source of strength. Where she had been afraid, he had been steady. When she had broken down, shaking as she remembered the knife in her hands, the blood fountaining everywhere, he had held her, kissed her, stroked her hair.
And more than anything, he hadn’t judged her, because he was as stained in sin as she.
Maybe that was why it was easier to start over, together.
They were faceless people, now. Nameless people. The lost and forgotten, dwelling in the gutters and washed clean of their past lives. And even if there had been moments—tense moments, terror in the pit of her stomach while Vin listened to the sounds of police cars rushing past when any one could be coming for them, that violence in the lines of his body and turning him into a wild animal poised to strike—they’d somehow, in their own strange way, found peace. Peace settling into new identities; peace in the simplicity of daily life. Willow hadn’t found a job yet; she wanted, one day, to find work as a science teacher, but not yet. Her face was still too recognizable, flashed on the news now and then, even as far south as New Orleans. Vin worked under the table as a hauler at the gravel pit and quarry down by the river; it meant a pay cut, but cheap labor was usually a good incentive to make anyone look the other way and not ask too many questions.
She didn’t understand how they’d fallen into this: Vin coming home each day tired and dirty and going willingly into her arms, Willow spending her days with her nose buried in books and auditing edX classes online until she could work out a way to actually register with a new name, social, identity. Leigh was working on that, she promised. She knew a guy who knew a guy, but when it came to faking social security numbers and an entire legitimate history, that kind of work took time.
