by J P Barnaby
Kyle followed. “What are we going to do?”
“First we’re going to take a shower, and then we’re going to work. We’ll just take everything as it comes, but I’m going to ask Miss Edna and one of her rifles to hang out with us today.” Noah grabbed his hand and pulled him into the bathroom.
An hour later they were showered, fed, and piled into the truck with Jake, Miss Edna, and two of her handgun friends. Miss Edna said that rifles were good from a distance, but they weren’t practical for close-up defense. Noah nodded at her, wide-eyed.
“My Frank, rest his soul”—she crossed herself—“taught me how to defend myself. ‘You never know what could happen,’ he’d say. I had a kid or two try to break in over the years, but I’ve never had to use a gun on a person. Doesn’t mean I can’t.”
“Thank you for coming with us. God knows what we’re in for today if Kyle’s cult shows up. After Hope and her friend couldn’t grab him, they could already be on their way. We haven’t heard from them since the break-in. They may be hiding, but the news story could exacerbate a confrontation.”
“I know. Miss Norma has a couple of guys from the church comin’ to keep an eye out in shifts too. She cares a lot about you both.”
“This is a good little town,” Noah said, pulling up in front of the store, which was already crowded with people.
“What in the world?” Miss Edna asked, leaning forward in her seat.
“Maybe they’re here to buy books,” Noah offered.
“They’re here to see the freak,” Kyle said, finally joining the conversation.
Noah turned to look at him. He was facing the window with Jake half in his lap. The old dog snuggled against him, taking the brunt of Kyle’s frustration and anxiety in rubs and pets along his back. Such a trooper.
“You’re not a freak,” Noah said sharply, but Kyle just shrugged, his eyes still on the crowd.
“Make ’em pay for the privilege,” Miss Edna said. “Paying customers only.”
Noah laughed.
“I’m dead serious, Noah. I’ll man the register. I can keep my guns under the counter within reach. You tell anyone who wants to come in that they have to buy something. Coffee from Kyle, or a book. If they’re going to be stupid about gawking, use it as an opportunity to make some money to help save the store. Hell, we could even put up Save the Store signs and take donations at the door for entry.”
“You want me to charge a cover to get into a bookstore.” Noah’s eyebrows were nearly in his hairline.
“Look at them, Noah. They’re already lined up outside.”
Noah glanced over, and sure enough, for the first time in the bookstore’s long history, it had a line for entry down to the end of the block. He put his head down on the steering wheel.
“Dad would hate that,” he said.
“Your daddy ain’t here, son,” Miss Edna reminded him.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle said quietly. “I never meant for any of this to happen. I can leave—”
“No. We do this as a family,” Noah said firmly. Jake woofed in agreement, or because he wanted to go out and play with the people, it was hard to tell.
“I’m going to go unlock the door, relock it, and then head around back. Miss Edna, why don’t you pull the truck around to the alley and you guys come in the back. I don’t want you to have to deal with this mob, and if they’re focused on me, maybe they won’t go to the alley until y’all are inside,” Noah said, watching the milling people as they all stared at the truck. It was weird, like watching a zombie movie where they’re all after you.
“You ready?” Miss Edna asked.
Noah sighed. “As I’ll ever be.” He climbed down out of the truck, and Miss Edna did the same. After she came around the back, he took her hand and helped her into the driver’s seat. She used the lever to pull it forward and took a glance back at Kyle.
“I’ll be right there,” she said.
“Kyle, go ahead and stay in the office until I come back for you. Miss Edna’s right. If these people are going to be stupid about it, let’s make them pay for it. There’s got to be at least a hundred people, and those are just the ones waiting at the door.”
“Okay.”
Noah leaned in. “Hey, if you don’t want to do this, Miss Edna can take you home. There’s absolutely no reason for you to go in there. None at all.”
“No, I can’t run from it. It’s going to happen one way or another.”
“I love you,” Noah said. “If it turns into a thing, we can always leave. Just grab Jake and leave.”
“Leave the bookstore? But you’ve worked so hard to—” Kyle sat forward, and Miss Edna ducked to get out of the way of their heated conversation.
“You are my priority now. Being in love, being in a relationship, sometimes that means making choices,” he said quietly just above the din of the milling crowd. He didn’t mention the pending foreclosure—he couldn’t. It caught in his throat like a dead frog.
Okay, ew.
“That’s right, son. No matter what, family comes first,” Miss Edna chimed in. “Now, if you two are done, let’s get this shit show started.”
“Miss Edna!” Noah said with feigned shock.
“What else would you call it?”
Noah laughed and stepped onto the sidewalk as the big truck rolled backward. Then he turned toward the store and the people gathered in front of it. Steeling himself, he pulled the I Heart New York keychain from his pocket.
“I know why you are all here,” he said, stepping up onto the sidewalk, level with the gawkers. “And I’m sure that you all want to help him get back on his feet after such a terrible ordeal.” Noah saw a few heads bobbing up and down. “He sells coffee inside. If you want to help, grab a book and a cup. Are we clear?”
A few people nodded. Others said, “Yeah.” Some just looked at him like aliens were climbing out of his ears. God, he wished Henry were here.
Noah turned his back on them, praying none of them were there with weapons. He didn’t think to scan for them. What if someone had come to hurt Kyle? Miss Edna should work the coffee station with Kyle, he decided as he turned the key. People pressed in behind him, and he pushed them back with a step.
“We open at nine,” he called sharply, slipped in the door, and slammed it in their faces. He relocked it and disarmed the alarm. “Jesus,” he muttered.
The books welcomed him as he wandered down the first aisle. He ran his fingers along their spines. God, he’d miss this place. His whole life had been spent surrounded by books. It hurt in ways he didn’t even know he could hurt. They’d come up with half the money, but it still wasn’t enough. Noah laid his palm on the counter and took a centering breath.
Maybe he shouldn’t open the door.
Noah looked up at the crowd of people just past the glass. The bank had given him until the end of the month, which was the day after tomorrow. He was still over twenty-five thousand away from his goal with no way to make that kind of cash. The people outside wanted to stare at Kyle like he was an animal in a zoo. Noah thought of Henry, stuffed in his attic like garbage for over fifty years. Maybe he shouldn’t open. They should walk away.
He glanced at the door again and blanched. Hope was framed in the glass. Noah almost ran to the back to get Kyle and run, but when she stepped aside, he saw Yeira standing behind her. Surprise warred with fear—he thought she’d gone back to New York. The clock above the door said it was still a quarter of nine. If he opened the door, he might not be able to let them in without everyone else swarming through the door, and to be honest, he wasn’t sure he wanted to let them in at all.
Go around back to the alley, he told Yeira in a text.
As he watched, she glanced down at her phone and then took Hope by the arm. They disappeared into the small mass of humanity. Noah ran then, getting through the office to the back door. It nearly came off the hinges as he ripped it open. Miss Edna’s hand flew to her throat.
“Hurry,” he said as Jake bou
nded in through the door.
“What is it?” Kyle asked as Noah shut the door quickly.
“Your sister is here. She’s with Yeira. They’re coming around to the back now.”
Kyle paled. Miss Edna took his hand and led him into the office just as they heard a knock at the back door.
What the hell else?
Noah gave Jake’s head a quick rub and sent him off into the office before opening the door. Hope and Yeira scrambled inside, and Noah saw a couple of people running toward them from the mouth of the alley. Once they were over the threshold, he slammed the door behind them and locked it.
“What is she doing here?” Noah demanded of Yeira, who straightened and stood slightly in front of Hope as if shielding her from Noah’s accusations. She stretched to every bit of her five-foot-seven-inch height, her black hair pulled back into a hair tie and her flawless olive skin scrubbed clean.
“I was on my way here from the airport and found her on the side of the road next to a broken-down truck. A teenaged girl alone on the side of the road, of course I stopped to help. When I saw the truck had Montana plates, I figured out who she was. She recognized me from the news and was none too glad to see me but really didn’t have any better options. I told her I’d take her to her brother.” Yeira glanced at Hope, whose dark eyes were petulant. Her hair was like out of control flames on her head, clothes unkempt, and Noah couldn’t even guess the last time she’d eaten.
“So she could finish the job her and her friend started?” Noah took a step between them and the office.
“He’s not my friend,” Hope growled at him. “He’s my husband. Has been since I was twelve years old and my brother deserted me. Now, bookstore man, where is he?”
Noah watched the rage building in her and considered sending them both away, but Kyle and Hope needed to get past this. They were family. Whether they stayed family after today was another question.
“Let me ask him if he wants to see you. Stay right there,” he warned. “If you try to hurt anyone, Miss Edna has a gun.”
“The old woman?” Hope scoffed.
“I wouldn’t mess with gun-toting Southern women,” Yeira advised with eyebrows raised.
Damn straight.
Noah slipped into the office and wrapped his arms around Kyle. “She wants to see you. Do you want me to send her away?”
“No. I want to see her. I have to know.” Kyle’s anxiety spread to Noah, and his hands tingled from it. More than he didn’t want the misery in his own life right then, he didn’t want Kyle to be hurt by his sister or anyone else. He kissed Kyle gently to give him strength.
“You’re a sodomite?”
Noah turned to see Hope standing at the edge of the room with Yeira’s restraining hand on her arm. Kyle stiffened and stepped away, his face as red as his hair. Miss Edna rested a hand in her pocket, and Noah stepped back to stand next to her.
The siblings faced off in the middle of the room. Jake went to stand in front of Kyle. He didn’t growl or bare his teeth. He simply sat there to protect his new friend. Hope’s hands were fisted at her sides and her face was red as well, but for her, it seemed to be rage. She threw off Yeira’s hand.
They didn’t speak for a long moment but simply watched each other. Kyle regarded her warily but with a soft affection in his eyes. Hope stared back with pure hatred, and Noah knew it would not end well.
“Hey, little bit. Guess you’re not so little anymore,” Kyle said and tried to smile. His hands were clenched around the back of one of the dinette chairs, like he didn’t trust himself to stand on his own.
“You have no right to call me that anymore, Samuel,” Hope spat back. “You lost that right when you abandoned our family and stole those papers from mother!” Her voice had risen to a yell. Jake stood up and moved closer to Kyle.
“Mother put me on the bus with a box. She sent me to Aunt Mary’s in Chicago. I didn’t steal anything,” he said, like stealing was a cardinal sin. He rested a hand on Jake’s head to calm the old dog, let him know that everything was okay. Noah decided not to take the chance that it would be and slipped his phone out of his pocket.
“Where you gave yourself a systemite name and betrayed us,” she said, her voice like ice.
“I was fifteen and our mother told me to run. I didn’t know what to do. What was I supposed to do?” Kyle pleaded.
“You could have taken me with you, Samuel,” she cried. “You knew what would happen to me. You knew, and you did nothing.”
Kyle stayed quiet, and Noah saw the shame fill his face.
“Do you want to know what they did, Samuel? To me? To her?” She took a step forward, and Jake let out a low growl.
Hope just glared at the dog, then at her brother.
“No,” Kyle whispered.
“They knew she’d sent you with something that could hurt them. They didn’t know exactly what, not at first. Not until they tortured her. The entire camp heard her screaming. I covered my ears and Uncle Clive pulled me against him, into his lap, and held my hands so I had to hear. He said it was instructive. His member was hard against my back the whole time. He liked it when she screamed. He liked it when I struggled.” Tears ran down her cheeks, and she wiped them away angrily.
Kyle’s face was white, like the skin had come away and it was nothing but polished bone. He didn’t say anything and Noah wasn’t sure he even breathed. Noah finished typing the text to Cooper with slow movements that he hoped no one would notice. Then he hit Send.
Yeira closed her eyes and bowed her head. She’d told Noah of her own experiences in Syria before her mother had taken her and ran. They escaped to the United States, but not before paying their own price. Noah’s hands trembled on the phone. The world was a cruel place.
“And now I come to find that the brother who abandoned me to soulless men is now a sodomite whore.”
“Hope,” Yeira said, trying to deflect the girl’s rage.
“Don’t you speak to me. You and my heathen brother destroyed everything. I saw the news. I saw the government raided the camp. They have probably taken Father and locked him up somewhere. I have no home. I have no family. I have nothing.” She’d stopped crying, and the emptiness in her voice chilled Noah.
“You could stay here, with—” Kyle started, but she spat a laugh at him.
“What, with you? After everything you’ve done? I never want to see you again.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I hate you. You’re a sinner. A child of Satan. A blasphemer, and now a sodomite. I wanted to look upon you just once to remind myself what evil is.”
Kyle choked back a sob. Her cruelty was swift and sharp like a blade to the heart. Noah wondered if, out of that tirade, it was the sodomite that hurt him worst.
No one moved or spoke. Even Jake stood quietly between them, his growl dying in their silence.
It made the pounding on the back door even louder when it came.
They jumped, and Hope scrambled into a corner, cowering and throwing her arms up in defense. Yeira stared at her with dawning horror, recognizing the ingrained response. Noah turned for the door.
“Back away from this door now, or I swear to God, I’ll take you all to jail and let you sit there until you have some damn sense.”
Noah relaxed at the sound of Cooper’s angry voice through the door and unlocked it. He didn’t open it—he let Cooper decide that timing so the people who’d found the back door wouldn’t rush them all.
He stepped in and slammed the door behind him. The man was in uniform, but it looked disheveled, like someone had been grabbing at him.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Cooper Thompson!” Miss Edna cried from her place next to Kyle. She hadn’t spoken through Hope’s tirade, but she’d moved to take Kyle’s hand in hers.
Hope had both hands over her mouth and her eyes were wide. “Blasphemer,” she whispered when her hands fell away.
“I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly. �
��But these people out here are crazy. Literally insane. I have never seen anything like this. What the he—” He glanced at Miss Edna and caught himself. “What is happening?”
“It was the news last night. Those people are here to see Kyle,” Noah explained.
“Gawk at him,” Miss Edna said as Hope muttered the word Samuel.
“You have some things to answer for, Miss….” Cooper let it trail off so she could fill in the blank.
“Hope,” she said. “Just Hope.”
“Please be gentle with her,” Kyle pleaded. “She’s been through so much, and it was the man with her who set the fire. I guarantee it. Hope loves animals.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Hope spat at him.
“So you set the fire?” Cooper asked.
“Don’t say anything,” Yeira told her. “We need to get you a lawyer.”
“I didn’t set any fire. I didn’t know he’d set a fire. We just came to get Samuel and bring him home,” Hope said, and then a truly frightening smile lit up her face, her eyes—even her hair—seemed to be set aglow from it. “Father wanted to… speak with him.”
Kyle blanched and then turned a little green. Noah crossed the room and took his hand before he could fall.
“Noah, is this one of the individuals who broke into your store?” Cooper asked with a hard look at Hope.
“Yes, Officer Thompson, she is. I saw her trying to take Kyle, and then she fled.”
“You need to come with me,” Cooper told her and tried to take her arm. She jerked away violently.
“Officer, please. We’ll both come with you quietly. Just don’t touch her, and I wouldn’t try to restrain her either. She’s a traumatized victim of severe violence. She won’t try to run, will you, Hope?” Yeira asked gently.
“Where would I go?” Hope asked, all of the defiance and glee from the moment before draining from her like sewage on the floor.
“Hope,” Kyle said, and she didn’t even look at him.
“Can we go?” she asked Cooper, who nodded.
