“Night, buddy.” An almost overwhelming urge to turn away pulled at Mick and he actually took a step back. Away from what he knew was to come and toward the cool night air.
Meg watched her son leave the room, then she held out her hand and opened her palm. “I found Mom’s wedding ring.”
“Meg.”
“She took it off and left it on her nightstand before she went to the bar that night. She never took it off.”
“I thought you weren’t going to go through her things anymore.”
“I wasn’t.” She closed her hand around the ring and bit her thumbnail. “It was packed away with Grandmother Loraine’s jewelry, and I found it when I was looking for her four leaf clover necklace. The one she used to wear all the time because it brought her luck. I wanted to wear it to work tomorrow.”
God, he hated when his sister got like this. He was five years younger than Meg, but he’d always felt like the older brother.
Her big green eyes looked across at him and her hand fell to her side. “Was Daddy really going to leave us?”
Hell, Mick didn’t know. No one knew but Loch, and he was long dead. Dead and gone and in the past. Why couldn’t Meg leave it alone?
Maybe because she’d just turned ten a few months before the night their mother had loaded a snub-nosed .38 and emptied five chambers into Mick’s father and a young waitress by the name of Alice Jones. Meg remembered a hell of a lot more about that night twenty-nine years ago when their mother had killed more than Loch and his latest lover. More about the night their mother had put the short barrel into her own mouth, pulled the trigger, and killed more than herself too. She’d blown apart the lives of her two children, and Meg had never really recovered.
“I don’t know, Meggie. Grandmother didn’t think so.” But that wasn’t saying anything. Loraine had always turned a blind eye and deaf ear to her own husband’s and son’s many affairs and offenses and later to everything Mick had done.
She lived her whole life in denial. It had been easier for her to pretend everything was wonderful. Especially when it wasn’t.
“But Grandmother didn’t live with us then. She didn’t know what it was like. You didn’t either. You were too little. You don’t remember.”
“I remember enough.” He raised his hands and scrubbed his face. They’d had this conversation before and it never resolved anything. “What does it matter now?”
“Did he stop loving us, Mick?”
He dropped his hands to his sides and felt the back of his skull get tight.
Please stop.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “If he still loved us, why did she shoot him? He’d had affairs before. According to everyone in town, he’d had lots of affairs.”
He walked to his sister and put his hands on the shoulders of her fuzzy pink robe. “Let it go.”
“I’ve tried. I’ve tried to be like you, and sometimes I can, but…why wasn’t she buried with her wedding ring?”
The bigger question was, why had she loaded the .38? Had she really meant to kill anyone or just scare the piss out of Loch and his young lover? Who knew? Thinking about it didn’t serve any purpose but to drive a person crazy. “It doesn’t matter now. Our life isn’t in the past, Meg.”
She took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’ll put the ring away and forget about it.” She shook her head. “It’s just that sometimes I can’t turn it off.”
He pulled her to his chest and held her tight. “I know.”
“I get so afraid.”
He got afraid too. Afraid that she’d fall into the downward spiral that had claimed their mother and that she’d never climb out. Mick had always wondered if his mother had given a second of thought to him and Meg. If she’d thought about the devastation and loss she was about to leave behind on a barroom floor. As she’d loaded the gun that night, had it crossed her mind that she was about to leave her children orphans or that her actions would force them to live within the horrible fallout? As she’d driven to Hennessy’s, had she thought about them and not cared? “Have you been taking your medicine?”
“It makes me tired.”
“You have to take it.” He pulled back and looked down into her face. “Travis depends on you. And I depend on you too.”
She sighed. “You do not, and Travis would probably be better off without me.”
“Meg.” He looked deep into her eyes. “You of all people know that isn’t true.”
“I know.” She pushed her hair out of her face. “I just meant that raising a boy is so hard.”
He hoped like hell that’s what she meant. “That’s why you have me.” He smiled, even though he felt ten years older than he had before walking into the house. “I’m not going anywhere. Even though you do make the world’s shittiest meatloaf.”
She smiled, and just like that, her mood changed. Like someone reached into her head and flipped a switch. “I like my meatloaf.”
“I know.” He dropped his hands and reached into his pocket for his keys. “But you like old-lady food.” Meg cooked like their grandmother had. Like she was baking a casserole for a potluck at the senior center.
“You’re evil and a bad influence on Travis.” She laughed and folded her arms across her chest. “But you always make me feel better.”
“Good night,” he said and headed for the door. Cool night air brushed across his face and neck as he walked to his truck, and he took a deep breath and let it out. He’d always made Meg feel better. Always. And afterward, he always felt like shit. She’d have a breakdown, and when it was over, she’d be fine. Never seeming to notice the broken bits and pieces she’d left in the wake of her unpredictable moods.
Having been gone for twelve years, he’d almost forgotten what those moods were like. Sometimes he wished he’d just stayed gone.
Chapter 5
Maddie reached for a bottle of Diet Coke sitting on her desk and unscrewed the cap. She took a long drink, then returned the cap. The instant she’d opened her eyes that morning, she’d known where the book had to open. In the past, she’d always opened each book with chilling facts.
This time she sat down and wrote:
“I promise it’s going to be different this time, Baby.” Alice Jones glanced at her young daughter, then returned her gaze to the road. “You’re going to love Truly. It’s a little like heaven, and it’s about damn time Jesus drop-kicked us into a better life.”
Baby didn’t say anything. She’d heard it before. The excitement in her mother’s voice and the promises of a better life. The only thing that ever changed was their address.
Like always, Baby wanted to believe her mother. Really she did, but she’d just turned five. Old enough to realize that nothing ever got better. Nothing ever changed.
“We’re going to live in a nice trailer house.”
She unfolded her arms from across her chest as she looked out the windshield at the pine trees whizzing by. A trailer house? She’d never lived in a house.
“And a swing set in the front yard.”
A swing set? She’d never had a swing set. She turned her gaze to her mother and the sunlight shining in her blond hair. Her mother looked like an angel on a Christmas card. Like she should be standing on top of a Christmas tree, and Baby let herself believe. She let herself believe in the dream of finding heaven. She let herself believe in a better life, and for five months it had been better—right up until the night an enraged wife pumped a set of .38 hollow points into Alice Jones’s young body and turned the dream into a nightmare.
Maddie pushed her chair back from her desk and stood. The sleeves of her cotton pajamas slid to her elbows as she raised her arms over her head and stretched. It was a little after noon and she hadn’t showered. Her good friend Clare showered and put on makeup every day before she sat down to write. Not Maddie. Of course, that meant that occasionally she got caught by FedEx looking like complete crap. Something she really didn’t worry about.