Hanging the Stars

by Rhys Ford

  “How would you say you guys left it? Okay? Bad? Good?”

  It’d been hard to get into his father’s van that early-fall evening. There hadn’t been time for more than a quick good-bye. He’d been over sixteen, or near enough for a court to count him as an adult if some asshole in a suit wanted to. There’d been tears for both of them, and he’d gotten one last sweet kiss before his dad grabbed him by the hair and threw him toward the car. Gutted and in pain, Angel snuck off the first chance he got and called West, only to be told in a cold, rigid voice he’d been nothing more than someone to fuck around with during a long, boring summer at the beach.

  Nothing had ever hurt Angel more than West hanging up on him that night. Not before and not since. He’d forgotten how much he hurt inside and was surprised to find himself bleeding still.

  “It wasn’t… great.” He sounded empty, an echoing vastness stretching inside his mind, but the sear of pain was oddly too intimate, still too raw to share with anyone, much less a cop. “There’s issues with the properties here, but he hasn’t been involved. Most of the time it’s a lawyer or one of his corporate guys… um, Washington or something. Where’d the accident happen?”

  “Washington was who’d mentioned you.” Montague sipped at his coffee, then put it down to take out his notebook and pen. “Considering it’s only a half an hour or so from where he got hit to Half Moon, the investigating officer asked me to chase you down and get back to him. Anything you want to tell me?”

  “Well, from about seven to noon, this place was crawling with cops. So I’ve got a stack of cards with names you can run down if you want. Just… hell, West.” Angel leaned back, his coffee forgotten under a storm of memories fueled by the mention of West’s name. “Between digging out bullets from the wall and trying to get my baker squared up before he headed to go use the pizza ovens over at Joey’s, I don’t think I was alone enough to do more than piss out the coffee I drank after I got up.”

  “I’ll just need someone’s name.” The detective tapped his pen against the edge of his pad. “What about this history you’ve got?”

  “Dead history. Been a long time since… well… seriously, is he okay?” Angel asked softly, then clarified when a frown creased Montague’s forehead. “Do you know what happened?”

  “Not a lot of details other than the car was T-boned when he was heading to a meeting. He and his driver were taken to the hospital with moderate injuries. From what I hear, he’ll be fine. Banged up a bit and maybe a broken bone or two,” Montague replied. “One of his management guys tossed your name into the pile of people to look into. Said you guys were butting heads over a property but nothing about anything personal. Want to talk to me about that?”

  “Pretty simple. I manage the Moonrise.”

  The detective gave Angel a blank look.

  “The motel behind the parking lot. His grandma used to own it and hired me to look after the place while I was trying to get the bakery going. She died, and West inherited the motel, but she sold me the Shack and the parking lot for cheap. He wants to build some condos because housing prices out here are insane, but he needs all of it—the motel, the bakery, and the parking lot—or his company won’t have enough land for the project.”

  “And you’re not willing to sell it?” Montague’s thick eyebrows rose at Angel’s nod. “Not enough money?”

  “Not enough everything.” The sofa’s velvet shone in places where it was rubbed down to the weave, shiny spots dotting the plush rich fabric. Angel ran his thumb around one of the spots, gathering his thoughts to explain to the cop why he’d never sell.

  “I know housing’s tight here. I’ve got lucky with a foreclosure, but I’m going through hell putting it back together.” Montague eased back, opening the space between them.

  It was an old trick, one Angel’d seen his father pull to draw people into conversations. The detective didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d use old con psychs, but like Frank said, cops lied all the time. Sometimes without even saying a word.

  “Okay, let me explain a few things. First, this bakery’s all I’ve got. Well, and I’ve got Roman. He needs stability, Detective. His life’s… our dad pretty much fucked it up. He’s on medication to help him deal with some of the shitty genetics we have, and it’s a damned struggle to get him to stay in school.

  “I’ve had him for not even two years, and shit’s gone from crap to worse since then, but I’m the best chance he’s got to make it out of the other side of puberty a halfway decent human being,” Angel explained. “He’s waiting for me to dump him. Just like our dad did. Just like his mom. Here he’s got his own room, and the price is right for me. I don’t pay to live there. I can dump any money I make into this place and him. And fuck, kids are expensive.”

  “Tell me about it.” Montague grinned at him from across the rim of his mug. “I’ve got kids of my own. Girl’s about to be a freshman in high school. Talk about expensive. You probably were offered a hell of a lot of money, right? Why not take it? You can set up the bakery anywhere.”

  “That goes to the second bit. A lot of us living there don’t have family, and we sure as hell don’t have enough money to live anywhere else. I made a deal with West’s grandmother to keep that place clean and open to people who need a safe place to get on their feet.” He didn’t want to scrape open all of the wounds the motel residents had when they arrived, but Angel’d seen the bone-numbing surrender in their eyes when a case worker or shelter employee dropped them off at Angel’s door. “She worked my employment contract so the asshole lawyers he’s got can’t push us out. There’s people who need the motel to stay open.

  “So, the Moonlight’s got a purpose, and I gave my word to keep it open.” Angel shook his head. “Bottom line is, I can’t yank my brother out of the only home he’s ever had, and I can’t shut down a place where people feel safe for the first time in their lives. Yeah, the money would be great, but I’d be selling my soul to the Devil.”

  “So that’s why Derry Washington coughed up your name? Do you think he called the cops down on you to force you into a corner?” Montague’s pencil flew across the page of his notebook, and Angel forced himself not to read the man’s upside down scribbles. “And let’s talk about what your angry friend said before he left.”

  “Frank says a lot of things.” He smirked into his coffee, then took a sip, washing away some of the bitterness on his tongue. “Oh, about Harris’s company shooting this place up? I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Do you often have a lot of violence around you, Angel?” Montague struggled with the pronunciation. The detective’s phone beeped at him before Angel could answer. “Hold on a second. This is the station.”

  “Not a problem.” Angel picked up his now empty cup. “Need more coffee. And I promised you a cupcake or something.”

  “Hold on that for a second,” Montague said sharply, then turned his attention back to his phone for a moment. Grunting a few times, he hung up, and every scrap of friendly cop bled from his face. “The kid who broke in here last night didn’t make it, so this is now an official murder investigation. So I’m going to have to ask you not to leave town for a while, Angel, because they found a recently fired gun tossed into the bushes by the motel about half an hour ago, and oddly enough, it’s registered to you.”

  Four

  “I DON’T see why you can’t stay with us.”

  Lang’s voice was thick with amusement, and West resisted the urge to smash his twin’s wide, bright smile in with the cane he was leaning on. As if expecting the hit, Lang stepped sideways to let West into the beach house, holding the door for his brother to walk through.

  “Watch your—”

  “I was walking before you were, Lang,” West snarled as he edged past his twin. “I think I know what I’m doing.”

  “He sounds like an old woman,” a less than cherubic voice muttered behind him. “Like he’s going to yell at me to get off his lawn.”

  “If I had
a lawn, brat,” West grumbled back. “I’d yell at you for even looking at it. And who dressed you this morning? You’re wearing every color known to mankind and possibly a few human beings can’t even see….”

  “The girls at school say I’m cool.” Zig preened at the cascade of pink and blue feathers in her caramel curls, then tugged at the red crinoline skirts she wore over her purple leggings. “Something you wouldn’t know about.”

  “Okay, you two,” Lang called out after them. “I can’t believe I’m breaking up a spat between my twin brother and my daughter. Zig, be nice to your rotten uncle.”

  “How come he gets to be a dick and I have to be nice, Dad?” She turned, walking backward a few steps and grumbled at Lang.

  “Because you’re ten, you know better, and West is hurt. People get pissy when they’re in pain.” Lang grabbed a case from Marzo’s hand, hefting it over the threshold. “Keep it up, though, and you’ll be picking up the whole neighborhood’s dog poop because—”

  “Yeah, rule number one. Sure. Got it.” Zig sniffed. “Yeah, I liked it better when we had the swear jar.”

  “I think we all do.” West’s ankle ached, twisting under him as he took a step. “Or I might have to get a very big dog that poops a hell of a lot. Grab that duffel, hellspawn. There might be something in it for you.”

  Five steps—painful steps—and West was into a house he never thought he’d come back to.

  Even though he’d had Agnes call ahead to have the house aired out, it smelled of stale air and canned fake citrus. There were streaks on the living space’s massive windows, wide foggy swaths blocking the view to the ocean below. Dust motes sparkled through the long streams of sunlight pouring into the high-ceilinged room, dancing on the heat-fueled air currents. The main room’s stuffed-to-the-gills poppy-red couches were slightly at odds with the house’s modern clean lines, soft curves blunting the structure’s cold white edges. The discordance continued in the space’s artwork: brash splashes of graffiti art painted on drywall sheets and hung from long black cords.

  At the time he’d picked everything out, West thought the bright colors would warm the harsh lines of the almost-too-stark house, but its icy depths remained frigid, untouched by even the splash of hot colors across its rooms.

  Perched on a cliff above the rocky beach below, he’d been drawn to the jut of hard white walls and glass expanses, an architectural quartz formation nestled into the wild, windblown California bluff. It was a fortress of sorts, one of solitude and quiet, and when that thought crossed his mind, he’d laughed, a bittersweet chuckle, thinking back to a lighthearted argument he’d had with Angel late one hot summer night about superheroes and dreams.

  Buying the house on the bluff had been irrational. West had no intention of ever living at Half Moon Bay. It was too full of memories—painful ones at that—but the house was… perfect. Even if he’d been the one who’d preferred a stately manor with a deep, dark cave in its bowels, the bright white crystalline house on the shore seemed like destiny.

  He’d thought it funny how dreams died quietly, their passing unmarked until the moment when he’d stood in the middle of a hard-angled castle, and it made him long for a gray-eyed, sweet-mouthed love he’d turned his back on.

  “What’d ya get me?” Zig plopped the bag on a backless couch set in front of the wall of windows. The sun flirted with the gold in her hair, teasing out the brightness in her curls. “Can I open it?”

  “Yes, you can open it, brat,” West murmured. “Just let me get settled. Forget someone tried to run my car over with their truck?”

  “Yeah, kinda.” Zig bared her teeth at him in a mockery of a smile. “I just figured you were moving slow ’cause you’re old.”

  “Nice. I’m sure Lang loves to be called old by someone younger than most of his socks,” he teased back.

  “Crap.” She grimaced. “You just don’t look alike. Kind of. You look different.”

  “Same face, same body,” West reminded her. “I just got more of the personality and brains.”

  “Says the person who regularly pisses enough people off he needs a bodyguard,” Lang shot back as he took off his jacket. “And Zig, you can’t just—West is….”

  “Take what’s offered and then take more when no one’s looking?” Zig parroted West back at her father. “What? He says that’s what you do.”

  “Good to know someone’s listening,” West drawled. “Leave her alone, Lang. She’s busy right now.”

  As much as he reluctantly liked Lang’s adopted daughter and mostly tolerated the grease monkey his brother’d married, their happy, all-smiles family was a little much to take. To be fair, it wasn’t all smiles. There were dark days, struggles when Zig fought with her fear of every adult in her life leaving her alone. Lang’s marriage hadn’t been a magic cure for that. Her changing her name to Zig Harris-Reid helped, but there were still times when the world pressed in too close for his niece, and from his point of view, spoiling the hell out of her seemed to make her smile.

  Her fathers were not so pleased about it, which made West even happier for some age-old sibling perverse reason.

  The couch seemed too far away, but West was going to be damned if he let anyone see how much it hurt to move. The painkillers he’d been given rattled about in one of the bags Marzo was carrying in, and his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth. The cushions collapsed around him when West finally eased onto one of the couches, and something sharp dug into his back, probably his wallet or phone in his pocket, but he didn’t care. He was off his feet, and the pounding in his head faded a bit as he closed his eyes and blocked out the sunlight.

  He didn’t know what the hell he’d been thinking buying a house made up mostly of windows. Everything was so damned bright, and the white walls burned lines into his vision. His head was beginning to pound again, and Zig’s curly hair grew sideways, then shrank back down when West blinked. Another dip of his lids, and the world splintered, pseudo-glass fractures forming across his eyesight.

  “Hey, so can I open it?” Zig plopped down next to him, her slender body barely denting the couch’s fluffy cushions, but the slight jostle made him nauseated. Her hair was everywhere, having escaped a woefully ambitious hair tie, but she smiled achingly sweet at West, turning on a charm she could only have learned from her once-uncle, now-father, Deacon. “Can I? Huh?”

  “Zig—” Lang’s less than subtle reprimand sounded far away, and for some reason, squeaky. “You’re killing me here, West.”

  “Lang, this has nothing to do with you,” West verbally poked back at his brother. “This is between Zig and I. You go do… whatever you and Marzo are up to. We’ll handle our own affairs here, thank you very much.”

  “He’s going to call you a dick later,” Zig whispered softly. “To Dad One. Deke. Just so you know.”

  “Yes, I know. And when he leaves, I’ll probably call him an asshole because that’s what brothers do.” West risked a nod but instantly regretted it when his world tilted forward, then to the side, leaving him unbalanced. “You really need to have better names for them. You can’t keep calling them Dad One and Dad Two. It makes them sound like failed Cat in the Hat characters.”

  Zig’s grin was evil and sly. “Does that make you the fish?”

  “As if I’d ever be a fish.” West snorted lightly at her. “Open the bag. It’s on top.”

  He could smell the leather as soon as she unzipped the duffel. Hell, anyone within a five-mile radius probably got a whiff of the finely tooled black leather biker jacket as soon as Zig opened the bag. She clutched the opening tightly in her small hands and gaped at West, her fawn eyes wide with excitement.

  “Are you perhaps waiting for it to crawl out on its own?” he prodded. “You’re going to have to hurry up. My pain pills are in there, and that thing’s in the way. It’s going to have to come out sooner or later.”

  He’d never understood the joy of giving someone something before. Or at least, not since… Angel. In the years since h
e’d first gotten a glimmer of sunshine and a tug of bright on his face at the sight of someone else’s glee, West hadn’t seen it since. Not until Lang insisted he bring something for Zig’s first Christmas at Half Moon Bay and he’d watched her go from wary to explosively delighted in a matter of seconds.

  He’d never known a five-foot-tall stuffed unicorn with a shimmery rainbow mane and golden horn could bring so much happiness. Or hugs. He’d gotten a lot of hugs from Zig that day, mostly sticky from too much candy but still adoring, tight embraces that’d been punctuated with a round of appreciative swear words so bawdy an aged-out prostitute would blush to hear them.

  Amid the sappy music and twinkling lights, West coughed up the two-dollar fine for the swear jar, gaining another hug and a whispered Thank you, Uncle West that nearly broke his heart in two.

  As she pulled the black leather biker jacket out, Zig whispered softly, “Oh—damn.”

  There was reverence in her young voice, a slither of disbelief West never experienced growing up. The little girl wasn’t used to presents, not yet. Maybe never, but West was going to give it his best try to change that.

  Because if anyone needed to know they deserved getting just-because presents, it was Zig Harris-Reid.

  Not long ago, there’d been tears in his twin’s eyes when Lang confessed to finding cans of food stashed in Zig’s closet, tins of corned beef hash and gelatinous pink meat the young girl and her uncle ate cold, much to Lang’s horror. It’d been an adjustment—a hard adjustment—as they all discovered ingrained prejudices about foods, clothing, and oddly enough, shampoos. His naïve, sweet brother’s shock at what his husband and now-daughter couldn’t live without amused West at the time. He and West grew up wanting nothing, and Lang was suddenly in love with a pair of people who’d dive for change under a couch cushion to buy an overboiled hot dog from a convenience store.