Home Forever

by Cee Bowerman

  “The cat scared you. Because it killed a bird. Really. You are such a total bad ass.” Now she was smiling.

  “It’s not a cat. Swear to God.” Sam was serious. They just didn’t get it.

  “Since when do you like cats? You fucking hate cats, Clairee.” Uncle Joe put his two cents in.

  “It’s Carlie, Uncle Joe. Remember?” I said quietly.

  “Fuck. My bad.” He looked up at Sam. “A cat, man. Come on. Little bit over there got two of them.”

  Sam looked down to the side at Joe. He put his hand out.

  “Carl. Man. Good to see you.” Joe reached up to shake his hand.

  “It’s Joe now son, but I’ll answer to Carl if you slip up.” Joe looked over to Sam’s siblings. “Carlie will spell it all out for ya, and I don’t want to be here for that shit, so I am gonna go then. Good to see all of ya’ll. Damn good.” he pulled himself out of the chair and put his hand out to the rail. After a second to get himself steady he let go and started for the steps, headed across the grass to his apartment.

  Sam let go of my hand and walked to the table on the porch. He grabbed two coffees and stepped back to give one to me. He went back to the table and opened the box to pick out a bagel. He put it towards me and raised a brow. I shook my head.

  “Thanks for the coffee.” I again looked at Kari.

  “Not here to feed you or make you happy. I’m here to check on my brother.” There it is. The anger. It looked like Kari was about to have it bubble right out of her. I saw Zeke reach over and squeeze her hand. Jace did the same on the other side.

  Sam walked toward the lounge chair we had sat together in the night before. He set his coffee down to the side as he had done his beer the night before. He scooted himself back and put a leg on each side. He reached down and grabbed his coffee and with one hand patted the cushion in front of him.

  “C’mere babe.” he put his hand out for me. I sat down and scooted into him, bending my knees so I could rest on his chest without pulling my side. I held my coffee in front of my chest with both hands, taking careful sips. I did this avoiding Kari’s eyes.

  “You guys have a seat. Make yourselves comfortable. We’ve got to have some words.” Sam said this and only Zeke moved to a chair. “Kari, you can stand there and make bitchy faces at Carlie or you can calm the fuck down and have a seat like I asked. Up to you.”

  Kari and Jace separated and each took a chair. Kari reached to the table for her coffee and took a sip.

  “So, we hit the delete button and all the shit she caused is just poof? Yeah, I helped Zeke try and find her yesterday but that didn’t mean I expected you to crawl straight into her bed. Thought you had more sense than that, Sam.” The bitchy faces had intensified with this comment.

  “Where I spend my nights is none of your business, Kar. Don’t be catty. I found her last night and asked her not to ruin it with stress and drama. What happened, well it happened. And none of us can do shit about it now after the fact. Yeah. I wanna know what went down and why, but even if I never know I do know this. She is here. All I ever wanted is back here now and sitting in this chair with me. I’d think you would understand me.” I couldn’t see Sam’s face, but I could feel his rigid body and the intensity coming off of him in waves. His words melted me.

  “Big brother. I feel you. I see it’s like a weight has been lifted off you. And Carlie, yeah, I am glad to see that in him. But you gotta know. It was hard on all of us, but we damn near lost him because of you. I’m not trying to be ugly here. I swear, I’m not. But you left, and he went with you. Now, he has you back and he is here too. My worry is what if this shit happens again?” Jace took a breath and Sam started to interrupt. “Let me finish, Sam. Carlie. Just need your promise, from down deep, that you won’t hurt him like that again.”

  “I won’t, Jace. I swear. What took me away will never come back. It is gone. Finished. I am here to stay, for as long as Sam will have me, I am here.” I looked into Jace’s eyes, so much like my Sam’s, and made that promise to him. I just needed a little give here, just a little belief.

  “Then that’s all I need. Glad to you have you back, babe.” Jace finally smiled at me.

  “That’s all it takes for the three of you. She comes back, smiling and flipping her fucking hair and you guys let her lead you around by your dicks? Seriously.” Kari started in but all three brothers interrupted her at once.

  “Don’t pull this shit, Kari.” this from Sam.

  “Kari. Come on.” this from Jace.

  “Sister, no!” from Zeke.

  “No, fuck that. I get my say. You take off on a goddamn whim and break the heart of every single fucking man in my life. Every one of them. My Dad included. He not only lost you, he lost Sam and didn’t get him back before he fucking died. You did that. You fucked that up for all of us. We lost years because of your selfish ass. Years! You pranced away like he was nothing and now you prance back and buy your little house with your perfect lawn, smile your pretty smile and they fall. When you left things went to shit and now all the sudden you’re back and all is golden. Well no it is fucking not golden. Not at all!” Kari was on a roll now, sitting on the edge of her chair, pointing her finger at me. “There is not one reason fucking good enough for you to do that shit to my family. Not one fucking reason, Carlie.”

  I felt Sam start to get up, but I pushed him back with my chest. I scooted to the edge of the lounge chair and turned to him.

  I was going to hear them out calmly. I could absorb the words they needed to throw at me to make this better, get it all out.

  “You let her have her say. That’s her right. But now I get to have mine.” I scooted closer to the end of the chair, putting me closer to the middle of our circle.

  “I get that you’re angry, but my life is far from perfect. I lived with the pain of leaving him, leaving you, all of you. It hurt me every damn day, but I had no choice in the matter. You come up here pointing your finger at me and look at me like I am shit. I felt like shit when I left but I had reasons, Kari. Big ones that none of you knew about. It hurt me, scarred me forever, knowing I left all of you wondering. I did it to protect you.” I was trying so hard to keep my voice level, but it broke as I told them, “I did it because I loved you.”

  “Oh yeah, bring on the tears. There ya go, reel ‘em in. That’s bullshit. You didn’t do shit to protect us, you wouldn’t know hurt, or pain. You don’t know anything.” Kari fumed. “I know what pain is, I know scarred forever and you aren’t capable of that by looking at you. Bullshit.” She flicked her hand like I was a piece of dirt on her sleeve.

  I forgot about the calm. Now I was pissed and unfortunately that always caused me to get loud, overreact and spout words I couldn’t take back.

  “You think you’re a badass with that scar on your face?” I heard Jace gasp, and Kari snapped back in her chair. I raised my shirt on the right side. “Wanna compare badass?”

  Kari’s mouth dropped open. I hear Jace hiss through his teeth. Zeke was silent. Sam was behind me and couldn’t see so I turned to him with my shirt up. Sam’s eyes were wide on my stomach and then he looked up at my face. I spun back to Kari and dropped my shirt back down.

  “I got this scar for you Kari. For you and Steph and ‘Drea and their mom’s and their Grans. I could have stayed and maybe it would have played out okay. But I wasn’t willing to risk any of you. Or any of the guys. Anyone who was close to me. I had to risk Joe and he walks with a limp to this day because of it. But you, you don’t. I risked Sheila and she is dead. I watched her die. You are alive and well because I fucking left so you could be. You can be fucking pissed at me all you want to but know this. I didn’t come out of this unscathed. I took my shit too and you say it almost killed Sam, well let me tell you, sister, it did kill me. Twice. But they brought me back and I am here now. And I’m fucking staying and your bullshit is not going to run me the fuck off. I am done running and you can like it or not. Not gonna hurt me either way.”

  I sa
t back down on the lounge chair and leaned into Sam. Both of his arms went around me, but I noticed he was careful to keep his arm off the spot above my hip.

  Sam’s put one hand up to move my hair to one side of my neck. He put his arm back around me and pulled me closer in to him. He kissed me on my shoulder and whispered, “Oh baby, who did that to you? Tell me.”

  My anger drained out of me. Kari, Jace and Zeke were looking at me, but not in my eyes. They were looking at everything but my eyes.

  “How did you take that instead of me? What do you mean?” Kari asked quietly.

  11.

  “To answer that I have to start in the middle. Then I can go to the beginning and make it to the end. I don’t remember some parts of the end, but Lisa can put in the details from there. She was there just minutes after it happened and actually held me together until the paramedics arrived.” I started to tell my story. Tuff, like he could feel my tension, came out his doggy door and moved to my chair. He hefted himself up on the end of the lounger between my legs and laid his big head on my thigh.

  Jace and Kari stopped staring at me and started staring at the huge animal that crawled up in my lap like he was a delicate little thing, not an 80-pound beast of a dog.

  “Is that the thing that killed the bird?” Jace asked.

  “No. This is my king, Tuff. My cat killed the bird and brought it in as a gift.” I answered him.

  “If your fucking cat is anything nearly as ugly as your dog no wonder my brother screamed like that. That big bastard looks mean as shit.” Jace laughed and Kari joined him. I didn’t feel any movement from Sam behind me, so I wasn’t sure he liked our humor. I slowly stroked Tuff’s ears and began again.

  “Remember the last night I was here, your Dad had a cookout? Right before you got there, Steph mentioned that her Mom got flowers and didn’t know who sent them. ‘Drea’s Mom and Gran both got flowers too. All anonymous. Weird, right?” Jace nodded his head and I looked at Kari.

  “That guy gave me flowers. I was just walking along and he handed me flowers, said something in Spanish and when I looked down at the flowers he disappeared before I could even thank him. That was the first time anyone had given me flowers and I thought it was cool.” Kari was looking at me intensely but tilted her head in confusion. “That is weird though, looking back as an adult I see why it upset my Dad.”

  “The man was not Spanish, Kari, he was Italian. His name was Sinclair. He told you, ‘A Rose from Sicily.’ Flowers were the gift he left with every single person he killed. After he killed my Mom I watched him throw a rosebud on her body.” Kari leaned back with a gasp. “Then, just a few years later I hear about anonymous deliveries and watched you talking about the man that gave them to you. I knew he had found me and was sending a message. For all I knew he was out in the dark watching us talk at the bonfire. Almost everyone I loved was at the club that night. All of you were in danger.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me, baby? I could have spoken to my Dad. The Knights, all of us, we could have protected you.” Sam whispered. “You didn’t have to run away.”

  “The government, people who are trained in that, couldn’t help me. They are how I got here and found you in the first place. He found me. He always found me. Sinclair was a monster and would have decimated your family just like he did mine. I heard him kill my father, then watched from my closet as he shot my mother in the forehead and her body landed just feet from where I was sitting.

  He was coming for me, in the closet, but the cops were too quick.” I looked down at Tuff as I traced patterns in the short fur at his side.

  “He dropped the rose, motioned for me to hush, and disappeared. I didn’t hush. I told them what he looked like, the color of his eyes, how he was dressed, the scar on his face, details about his hand. All of it.” I twisted in Sam’s arms so I could look up in his face. “Everyone I loved was dead in just a few minutes. And that night here with you guys, everyone I loved was in danger and I had to avoid every one of you getting dead. I did what the feds and my handler had trained us to do. I ran.”

  “The bag in your car. The one you couldn’t be without.” Sam stated. He remembered my freak out on the way to the lake. Then, I tried to not make a big deal out of it, but I could see now how that would have been odd.

  “That bag held a set of clothes, a necklace from my mother, money and identifications. Joe had one for himself, and he had one for Sheila. He had clearance to take her with us because she had no family. I never even asked them about you, Sam. You had family that loved you so much they would never accept your disappearance. My plan was to tell you the truth about me that night because I had spoken to Joe and told him I was never going to leave you.” I twisted back to look at Jace, then Kari. “I could never take Sam away from his family. I never would have even tried. Zeke, you would have been missing half of yourself if I took you brother. He would have been with me but would have felt the same pain.”

  “How did you leave?” Jace asked. “No one saw you leave.”

  “Sandra was rounding up her kids to take them home. I used the phone in the shop to call Uncle Joe...I mean Carl with the code message we had so he could move. I crawled into the very back of her minivan and hid behind the seat. She was parked close to the garage, and the back was in the shadows. I snuck in and waited for her to leave. Just a few minutes. When she parked at her house I waited there in the dark for probably 10 minutes to make sure she wasn’t followed. I knew he had eyes on the party but not how many, so I didn’t know if someone had followed Sandra home. I

  hopped out and ran to y’alls house where Betty was parked. I made sure no one was watching and then I took off.” I was fiddling with the hem of my shirt. Waiting for one of them to say anything at all.

  “You were only 19. That was your age, wasn’t it?” Kari asked. I nodded. “At 19 I wasn’t smart enough to make a decision about breakfast cereal and you were on the run thinking about life and death.”

  “Kari. You are not going to add her to your stable of girls.” Sam squeezed my arm from behind me. “Let me up, sweetheart. Gotta go to the john.”

  I shifted up and felt Sam move from behind me.

  “You have a stable of girls,” I raised an eyebrow and looked closely at Kari. “Do tell.”

  Jace laughed and so did I. Kari rubbed her hands on her thighs and leaned over to touch my leg. “That’s a whole different story for a different day. Short and sweet is that I help woman who are running, a little like you did. They have people that are looking for them, husbands or boyfriends, crazies. Nothing like some serial killer mobster as far as I know.” She smiled and shook her head. “I pull my brothers in to help with all sorts of things. That’s what Sam meant.”

  I put my hand down and grabbed Kari’s.

  “I’m sorry I said that about your face. You’re still one of the most beautiful people I know. It’s like that scar enhances it. Look, I’m so beautiful that I need this little imperfection to show the world I am real.” I smiled at her. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  Kari moved her butt over the the end of the lounge chair to sit closer to me.

  “Sisters hurt each other. But they get over it. I looked up to you and loved you so much then, that’s the reason it hurt so bad. I can have you back now but the bitter part of me wants to be ready for you to bolt again.” Kari was whispering this, looking down at our joined hands. “My Dad would be so happy to see you. I want to hear more details about your running. Where you went, how you hid so well, details that I might be able to teach some of my girls to help them get away and stay gone.”

  “I would be proud to help you and help others with my experiences. I was running but not the way they are. Not to give away secrets but there are things that Lisa could teach people too.” I wanted details, but I knew that Kari was right. A story for another day. I looked at the door, wondering why Sam was taking so long. Zeke’s eyes followed mine. He got up and walked to the door.

  “Gonna check and see if Sam fell
in. Be back.” and he walked into the house.

  ~*~

  “That scar you’ve got must making swimsuits interesting.” Jace tried to joke.

  “Well, actually, that’s not the only one. Between the tattoo on my back, the scar on my stomach and the smaller ones on my legs I make little children cry and even blind people flinch.” I was not comfortable with my body anymore, and only in a fit of anger had I shown them my scar. They were the first to see it other than medical professionals and Lisa. I even shocked myself that I had shown them.

  Lisa came out of the house carrying a kitten. She avoided Jace’s eyes and barely looked at Kari.

  “I’m gonna head home for a few, honey. Y’all stay out here. There’s an intense conversation going on inside and I don’t want to eavesdrop.” She started for the steps.

  “Wait, Lees, don’t go. Sit with us.” I grabbed her hand. “I showed them my belly.” Her mouth opened and her eyes got wide.

  “She had to one up me.” Kari rolled her eyes and pointed to her face. Then she laughed, and I watched it transform her. Lisa’s face got serious and she leaned toward Kari.

  “I think you’re beautiful. You shine. There’s a light in you. It’s not bright yet, but if you open the door just a little more it could be.” Lisa held Kari’s eyes. “These things are good: ice cream and cake, a ride on a Harley, seeing monkeys in the trees, the rain on my tongue, and the sun shining on my face. Scars on the outside are there sometimes so people have to work to find what’s inside.”

  “Rocky Dennis.” Jace whispered. “Girl, I like you.”

  “Well, I like Sam Elliott.” Lisa stated blandly. The three of us laughed at her tone.

  “What are they talking about in there? Should I go in?” I asked.

  “Leave them be. Enjoy the sun shining on your face.” Lisa let go of my hand and walked down the steps to head to her apartment. “I’ll be back in a bit to make lunch for everyone. Stay put.”

  ~*~

  Sam stood in the bathroom, his hands on the sink gripping the edge. He wanted to rip it out of the wall and slam it down again. Listening to Carlie talk hurt him. It burned him. It made his chest hurt trying to hold everything back. Tears, rage, questions. She left to save him and his family and for years his anger was all she had from him. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned his head.