Summer by the River

by Debbie Burns

  There was no fixing this place, not from the outside and not by throwing money at it. It was Dante’s Inferno, and the way up and out was the journey itself. Kindnesses like Francie’s were life-sustaining and gave people the strength to keep going. But in the end, the decision to leave—to heal—came from within.

  “You could leave. You don’t have to stay here. It isn’t like this everywhere.”

  Nico pursed his lips. “True. But this is home. For years, it was the home where I’d been planted. But now it’s the home where I choose to put down roots.”

  Josie wasn’t surprised. She couldn’t imagine Nico anywhere but this part of LA.

  “You know,” he said, “that’s how I knew you and I couldn’t make it. You saw a way to get out even when we were kids, and I didn’t have the foresight to see beyond my fist. You with your calendars and your calculations and those books. You saw the way out, only you waited because you wanted to bring your brother with you. Me, too, when you weren’t too busy hating me.”

  “Sam said it took dying to understand he wanted to live.”

  “That sounds like something he’d be crazy enough to pull off.” He switched driving arms, draping his left wrist across the steering wheel and squeezing her hand with his other. “The thing is, what I learned in prison—thanks, I’m betting, to your brother helping put me there—is when you make hell a part of your life’s purpose, it doesn’t have the same hold anymore.”

  * * *

  The strip of beach Nico brought them to wasn’t one where Josie had ever been, back in a life that suddenly didn’t feel as distant as she’d believed. Halfway across the sand between the parking lot and the shore, she stopped to roll up her jeans and pull off her shoes. She started carrying them in one hand, but Nico reached for them without asking, balancing each shoe on the tip of a finger and reminding her of the boy who’d once done his best to carry loads that weren’t his to carry.

  They walked to the spot where the waves rolled over the sand and it was easiest to navigate. They headed south in the same comfortable silence they’d once known as Josie drew in breath after breath, savoring the briny smell of the saltwater and seagulls. She’d taken off the hat and glasses and left them in the car, and her hair whipped in the soft wind, so much so she needed to keep pulling strands from her mouth.

  “I forgot how calming the ocean is,” she said as a wave washed over her feet. It had taken a few rolling waves to get used to the chilly water, but now it was nothing but invigorating when a wave washed up on shore.

  “That town of yours, Galena, what’s it like besides unpopulated as shit, full of old people, and about as far in the States as you can be from an ocean?”

  “I see you looked at the census info,” Josie said, laughing. “It’s quiet. You can see the stars. Most everybody knows everybody, except we get a lot of tourists. Most of the buildings are on the historic register. And they’re almost all brick. And there’s a river. It’s a quiet one, as far as rivers go, but it’s still water.”

  “And the kid?”

  “Zoe?” She ran her tongue over the back of her teeth as she considered how best to describe her. She hadn’t been around Nico back then enough to know how involved he was in Zoe’s first year. She suspected he wasn’t very. “For starters, she’s the best thing in my life. She’s precocious and the light in the room. Always has been. I guess you could say she’s a better-adjusted version of Sam. She’s six now. She was just eleven months old when Sam dropped her in my arms. She doesn’t remember Jena. I’m the only mother she knows.”

  “Does she know about Sam?”

  “Being her father? Not yet. He doesn’t want to—well, in some ways, he’s still the Sam you knew, I guess. He says he doesn’t care if I ever tell her, but she needs to know.”

  “How’d your boyfriend like that technicality? You and Sam being mother and father, brother and sister?”

  Another wave came up, washing over their feet, joining them in water and sand. “He’s stepping up in ways Sam can’t.”

  Nico nodded and stopped walking, turning to face her. “Good, because I’m not in the habit of kicking ass anymore, Josie Pictures. Though I could take it up again if needed.”

  “No ass-kicking needed. And it’s not Josie Pictures anymore.”

  “You going to tell me what it is, or are you keeping me in the dark in case I decide to come after that nark of a brother of yours someday?”

  “Not funny, and it’s Josie Waterhill.”

  “Josie Waterhill? Huh. That sounds a lot more Midwestern than Josie Pictures.”

  “Technically, it is,” she said, smiling a little. “My turn. What about you? That clinic, that’s what you do? Full time?”

  “If that’s your polite way of checking if I’ve still got one foot in the street, I don’t. Not that way. I keep my head down to keep an eye on about a dozen boys skirting the life. And I still get guys trying to recruit me just about every week. But those twenty-two months in prison were enough. Now I spend my days trying to keep as many kids off the streets as I can. If I save a few from getting lost in these wars, then my life should count for something.”

  Josie’s heart twisted. “Nico.”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “What can I say? Losing you changed me. It just took a while for me to notice. In jail, I finally found Francie’s God she’d been ragging on me about forever, and I got a GED. And I’m thirteen credit hours away from a bachelor’s in social work.”

  “Wow, I’m impressed. Very impressed.” A few seagulls circled overhead, spying something in the break of the waves.

  “Enough to leave that skinny-ass New Yorker and stay with me?”

  Josie pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Nico…”

  “Just yanking your chain, Josie. I’ve got a real decent girl now. Went through a string of wrong ones, I’ll admit. We’ve been together almost a year. You’d like her. She likes math like you. She helps me keep my books straight.”

  “That’s great.”

  Nico closed a hand over her back. “Want to know one of the reasons I brought you here?”

  “I thought you wanted to talk?”

  “Yeah, but specifically, there’s something I never could tell you, and I thought you deserved to know.”

  “Okay.” She shrugged a shoulder. “What is it?”

  “Maybe a month before you came into my life, I saw this nature show on TV.”

  “I never knew you watched nature shows.”

  “Yeah, well, it wasn’t by choice. Nonna couldn’t pay the cable bill, and it was on the only channel with good reception.” He turned his back to the ocean as a wave broke over their feet, motioning toward the sandy beach. “There was this special about sea turtles, and this one turtle’s journey in particular. It showed her dig a nest, lay eggs, and head back into the ocean. Weeks later, the baby turtles hatched. Apparently that short trip from their nest in the sand across the beach until they make it to the water is the most dangerous of their lives. There were dozens of them, popping up from the nest and digging their little flippers into the sand to get moving. But there was this one albino one the narrator said was extremely rare. It had pure-white skin and blue eyes, and the cameraman panned in so close, its little face filled the screen. It had this upturned beak like a smile. More than anything I can remember, I wanted that little turtle to make it to the ocean.”

  “And did it?” Josie said, folding her hands together in anticipation.

  “Yeah, but barely. I’ll spare you the details, but the damn seagulls were everywhere. Because that turtle was so rare, the camera stayed panned in on it as it scrambled across the sand, sometimes a foot or less from one of those merciless gulls. When it made it to the water and started swimming, I cried like a baby.”

  Envisioning a stressed-out young Nico, Josie locked a hand over his arm.

  “I still thought
about it when you came to our school, and I knew right away with your fair skin, blue eyes, and that hair of yours, you were that sea turtle, Josie. And I knew your journey in that ghetto was going to be just as tough.”

  “So, you befriended me because I reminded you of an albino sea turtle?” She teared up and laughed at the same time. “That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. Absolutely the sweetest.”

  He stepped back a foot and she got the sense he wasn’t offended, just keeping a certain distance between them. “I’m not trying to be sweet. I just thought you needed to hear it.”

  “You did everything you could, didn’t you, to make sure I made it to the ocean?” She remembered so many times he tried to protect her, to keep her safe, that the tears brimming in her eyes spilled over.

  “Yeah, well I figured the ocean needed a creature like you in it.”

  Chapter 37

  The tension knotting Carter’s chest was so intense he was certain he’d lose it in the face of any additional triggers. The meticulously slow movements of the rental car salesperson, added to her whistly, nasal breathing, had Carter about to snap. Behind him, Sam’s continual pacing and muttering under his breath wasn’t helping.

  “Why don’t you go to the bathroom now, so we don’t have to stop until we find her.” It came out sounding far from a suggestion.

  “You aren’t my boss,” Sam said but headed there anyway, commenting on the giant Mountain Dew he’d chugged after landing.

  By the time he returned, Carter had turned down enough extra services in such a clipped voice that the woman finally went quiet and handed him the keys. Rather than relaying the aisle number of their rental, she pointed to the far corner of the parking garage with a slight roll of her eyes.

  “That went well,” Sam muttered under his breath as they head out the door. “Bet she saved us her finest with that attitude of yours.”

  “Shut it, will you?”

  Sam yanked the keys from his hand without asking. “I’m driving. I can get us where we’re going a lot faster than you, and you know it.”

  “So long as you don’t get us arrested along the way.”

  “I won’t.” Sam clicked the remote. Across the garage, a yellow Kia Soul blinked in reply. “We are so getting shot at in that,” he protested.

  A half hour, several rolling stops, two no-right-on-reds, and no tickets later, Sam pulled up in front of the house that was registered in Nico’s name. It was a small, square stucco ranch set into a gentle, sloping hillside.

  “This is near where you lived?” Carter asked.

  “We weren’t this lucky. This is 90210 compared to our place. We were a couple miles closer to hell. But don’t let that make you think you can’t still get shot at here. We’re in the ghetto. Don’t disillusion yourself there.”

  “Just so we’re on the same page, any chance you packed that knife of yours in your luggage?”

  Sam huffed. “That knife was for the defensive side of the court. Offensively, I’m willing to bet it’s better to walk into the lion’s den unarmed.”

  “And you really think the best plan is to just knock on this guy’s door?”

  “I’m hoping Nico had time to cool his jets. We were like brothers once. It wouldn’t be easy for him to kill me. Still,” he added, looking up at the house, “whatever happens, we should stay outside where there might be someone to call for help.”

  Carter followed Sam up to the porch but moved in front of him after Sam rang the bell.

  “I don’t need a bodyguard.”

  “There are scars from three bullets on your chest that make me think otherwise.”

  A shuffling could be heard inside, and Carter held his breath, suspecting they were being observed through the peephole. After a pause, the door opened slowly. A petite, older woman stood in the frame, looking past Carter, her eyes fixed on Sam.

  “Step aside so I can see him.” Her voice was barely a whisper and her eyes were welling with tears. “Let me touch you, piccolo. My eyes tell me you’re real, but my mind says this is a lie.”

  Carter stepped back. That look on her face wasn’t anger or anything close to it. It was love.

  “Francie,” Sam said huskily as she drew him in a tight embrace, the top of her gray head reaching his chest. Carter peered inside the half-open door. The main room seemed empty aside from a kid who was nearing his preteens.

  “You were too long in coming home.”

  “I’m sorry, Francie. I should’ve called you. I don’t know. I was afraid.”

  “Nico said he thought you were alive, but I never could believe it. Not until now. I held your hand and watched as they tried to revive you. You were lost to this world.” She let out something that was between a sob and a laugh. “God has plans for you; there’s no other way you could be standing here.”

  She brushed the tears from her cheeks and ushered them inside. When Sam didn’t object, Carter raised an eyebrow skeptically.

  “Just go with it.”

  It was dark inside. The blinds had all been drawn. Carter took in a picture of the Virgin Mary hung above a simple couch facing a TV. The kid, a sloppy-haired boy with big eyes, sat below it, barely acknowledging them, lost in a video game.

  “I want you to meet my great grandson. Enzo, stop your game and welcome our guests.”

  Enzo groaned but pulled his attention from the TV screen. “Hi.”

  “You’ve never met him, Enzo, but this young man here is like a grandson to me just as his sister is my granddaughter.” She squeezed Sam on the arm again. “His name is Sam.” Then, looking at Carter, “And you are?”

  “Carter O’Brien.”

  “My name is Francesca. If you are a friend of Sam’s, you may call me Francie. Enzo is my oldest great-grandchild, and the only one who lives with me. Or I live with him, I should say. He has been in my and my grandson’s custody since his mother died five years ago. He’s ten now.”

  “He’s Jena’s child?” Sam eyed up the boy. “I met you once. You were little.”

  “Her first child,” Francie said. “Her second, I was told, has a closer connection to you than any of us imagined when she entered this world.”

  Sam cleared his throat and nodded at the boy as he went back to playing his game. “Nice to meet you.” To Francie, he said, “I can see the resemblance.”

  “To Nico or Jena?” Francie asked, still holding Sam’s arm as if afraid he would disappear.

  “To both. And to Zoe.”

  “Me too,” Carter added. “To Zoe.”

  “Sit. Please. You must be tired. You both certainly look it. I’ll get you something to eat and drink. I know how my Sam likes my cooking.”

  “We can’t stay, Francie. We have to find Josie.”

  “Have a seat. I’ll call Nico and see if he’s found her.”

  “He’s looking for her?” Carter said, the tension thick in his voice.

  Francie frowned. “I don’t know you, and you don’t know my Nico, so I’ll forgive the accusation in your voice. If my Nico has found her, she’s safer than she would be with anyone else in this town, including the two of you.”

  “Call him, will you?” Sam asked. “She needs to know we’re here. She had my cell with her, but either the battery died, or she shut it off.”

  Carter kept standing as Sam headed over to the couch and planted himself next to the kid, asking what the kid was playing. As they started talking about video games, Carter shook his head. His thoughts were clouded with fatigue and another receding adrenaline rush. But one thing was for sure, this whole thing was more complicated than he’d assumed.

  * * *

  A garbage truck passing behind Nico’s car jerked Josie out of her doze. Before conscious thought kicked in, she was startled to find Nico in the driver’s seat next to her. They were in a parking lot and headstones dotted an expansive
cemetery, stretching out in three directions. Josie had asked him to drive her here but had dozed off on the way.

  “I fell asleep.” She cleared her throat. She needed a strong cup of coffee and a shower. And a bed tonight.

  “You pushed yourself, driving all that way without stopping.”

  “I napped a couple times.”

  “You know, you being here is bringing that day back for me. I kept seeing it as you slept.”

  “A lot of stuff has been coming up for me too.” She shifted, stretching her back. “I heard about the day from Sam, but if you want to share, I’m all ears.”

  He gave a one-shoulder shrug. “What can say? Play with fire, and eventually you’ll get burned. It fell apart so fast when it happened—like a grenade I forgot I was holding. Suddenly it exploded and everything was a wasted mess.”

  “Sam said it was guys from Jena’s brother’s gang, not your friends, who killed my mom and shot him. He said you took a bullet too.”

  “I wouldn’t have let it play out the way it did had I been conscious. I wouldn’t have let those guys take down your family like that. You have to know that.”

  Josie nodded and stared out at the graveyard. “I know. I think I always knew. I just didn’t trust myself enough to believe it.”

  “Francie would’ve been dead, too, had she gotten home fifteen minutes earlier. I’m not going to tell you I wouldn’t have put a cap in Sam’s ass myself, him disrespecting me like that, but I’d have died for him still, had I been there.”

  For the second time that morning, Josie found herself near tears.

  “Like I said, everything fell apart all at once,” he continued. “Everybody had their own agendas. I took a hit through the shoulder a couple miles from home. I passed out and someone took my gun. When I came to and made it home, there were cops and medics everywhere, and Francie was kneeling over Sam, crying like she was breaking in two.”