The Wallace Girl: The Feud Series

by Scott, Eliot

  But based on my brother’s behavior, it’s best he doesn’t have everything at his disposal. I’m where I need to be right now. I need to make him believe that I mean to carry on Father’s legacy to the letter to protect Jojo, because after reading Michael Sinclair’s plans to empty the aquifer—including my lake—just so he can have access to the oil underneath our feet, I’m going to need to stay head of this family while I try to figure out how to reverse the horrible wheels that are already turning at Sinclair Enterprises to make that happen.

  “Just do your Goddamned job and be a good Sinclair, would you?” I finish with familiar words.

  He glares up at me. “You might be the smart one, Alex. But I’ve always been the better Sinclair, no matter what your new job title might be. I am, and always have been, the best Sinclair son.” He smirks.

  I hate that he’s not as submissive as I’d hoped. Yes, Grady is, and was, the better Sinclair. The fact that he’s still proud of that after what he’s just done to a 125-pound girl—after how I thought maybe he’d listen and try to change—triggers me even more.

  It takes only one more punch to finally knock my asshole brother out cold.

  Fuck me.

  Fuck my life, and fuck my damn fucked up family.

  * * *

  After I’m sure Grady’s truly out and no longer a threat, I get to Jojo’s side and try to rouse her. “Jojo. Jojo…you’re safe,” I say again and again when she doesn’t wake up. She only moans more.

  “Safe…okay? No one is going to hurt you. Safe,” I repeat, hoping that somehow my words are getting to her. I try to speak softly, but I swear she still winces.

  I wipe a small trail of blood from the wound on her temple where the gun broke the skin, then I pause to move her bag under her head. I still have things to do before I can pick her up, and I can’t bear to see her cheek ground into the dirt. I also can’t focus as I look at her tattered blouse, or note the way the shredded bra she’s wearing was once more lace.

  Feeling guilty for even having that thought inside my head, I quickly peel off my shirt and cover her with it. “Hang on, Jojo. Hang on, you’re safe…safe,” I whisper again.

  Looking around, I first pocket the gun, vowing to throw it in the lake so neither of these two idiots can ever use it again. Then I carefully pick up all of JoJo’s belongings that had scattered out of her bag. A lipstick. A whole mess of different colored hairbands. A small pack of tissues. What looks like a tiny photo album. Her phone and the deed papers she just worked so hard to find. It all goes into a pile and then back into her bag.

  Scooping up the rental car keys, I think I have everything, until I catch a glint of metal out of the corner of my eye that’s attached to a scrap of Jojo’s pink blouse fabric.

  I reach for it, but instead of it being lightweight like I’d expected, the thing has weight to it. A weight I recognize.

  It’s the lure. The sight of it makes me break out into a cold sweat.

  It’s the wing-shaped, engraved lure I gave her for a homecoming gift sophomore year. It’s the lure I gave to her on that last day—that last day before I knew what Father had been planning, before I was brought in to it all against my will. This old piece of metal symbolizes the last day she and I were truly in love, the last day my love for her was innocent and so beautiful. I flip it over and read the word FOREVER engraved on the back of it along with our initials.

  Forever.

  I’d made one for her and one for me. I pinned this one on her corsage and gave it to her just before the dance. God…how fucking free and happy and in love I was that day. How stupid I’d been…with father and even Grady laughing at me behind my back for two years. They were just toying with Jojo, and all the while laughing at me.

  She was wearing this. She’s been wearing this, but how? It’s been tied onto our old fishing rods for years.

  To get it, she must have gone to my father’s boathouse, because this lure is something I have stared at, at least once a month since she left.

  My heart slams more pain into my chest as I place the lure into her purse then stand to pop her trunk, my heart nearly stopping at the sight of our fishing rods bent and intertwined together inside.

  She stole these. She went to my father’s boathouse, and took this part of our past. Somehow she did this and I didn’t see. Why would she go there? And why didn’t I know about?

  Will’s accusations come back into my mind. If she could sneak up to my parents’ house and take these, she could have easily snuck up to my father on a Tacoma street.

  Did she show up here to pop a bullet in my father’s head? Is Jojo as much of a monster now as the rest of us? Has she changed that much?

  Would I care if she had?

  Slamming the trunk closed, I toss her purse in the back seat and hurry to scoop up the woman I love with shaking arms to hold her close to me. For a moment I just stand there with her, waiting for my warmth to sink into her cold—waiting to feel her heartbeat next to my skin. With my brother now starting to move and the desolation of her family’s farm behind me, I place her gingerly in the backseat of her rental car and her head lolls back on the seat. “Alex?” she whispers and I nearly start crying with relief that she’s talking. That she knows it’s me. “You came.”

  “Shh. Hell yes, I came. Did you think I could stay away. I’m just glad I came in time…” I place one of her slim arms into the arm of my shirt, lean her forward, drag the shirt around her back, and get her other arm in. I pull it tight over her front.

  “Grady. He tried…he was going to…”

  “I know. He won’t do it again. Lie down,” I command. “I’m going to drive you home.”

  She complies, closing her eyes and curling onto her side.

  Just before I drive away, I yank Grady’s wallet out of his back pocket and shove it in my pants next to the gun. Then, I dial 911 on Grady's phone and throw it in the dirt next to my brother who’s only just coming to as a woman on the other end says, “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

  I make my voice low, scratchy and unidentifiable, as I utter toward the phone, “This is Grady Sinclair. I’ve been robbed, out at the old Wallace place…some vagrants beat me up.”

  I figure that’s enough. The Tacoma police will know where to go. Everyone knows the old Wallace place. I know Grady will make up a good lie about what happened—how he got the bruises. I also know he won't say it was me.

  We Sinclairs don’t rat each other out.

  We just kill each other.

  Pain for pain…

  21.

  Alex, Present Day.

  I drive Jojo to my house—to the lake.

  Our house. Our lake.

  I built the whole thing for her next to our lake while picturing her reactions to it. She was behind every choice I made, from the all-glass front with self-tinting windows, to the angle of the views. She was in every damn detail, like the hand-wrought iron door knobs I ordered from a local welder because Jojo had once told me she wished the world still had a blacksmith in every town.

  I chose black for the marble slabs on the floor because it was so reflective that depending on the light, the branches from the trees outside look like they’re inside the house. I knew Jojo would have loved that.

  The granite I picked for what Jojo and her mother had called the heart of a house—the kitchen—was called Black Taurus. It’s a rare, dark shining stone that reminded me of Jojo’s hair when it was wet while swimming in the lake. It has these deep, brown ribbons streaking through the black. Like her…it’s beautiful.

  The heart of this house had to remind me of the happiest moments of my life, and because I’d wanted it to have parts of the happiest times of her life as well, I painstakingly went to the Wallace farm, the burnt out Wallace farm, and secretly took out any shiplap and bead board that had been in Mrs. Wallace’s kitchen. Every little piece that still looked like wood came back here. I had someone sand and repaint the parts that could be salvaged back to the original we
athered white, and then I attached them together onto one big display wall.

  It’s a constant reminder of what I’d been a part of, and maybe a very sadistic way to torture myself daily about my guilt, but I knew that if she could have been here and if she could have sorted through the ruble herself, she would have taken each and every piece that I took. She’d have done something with it, too.

  The marble tub off of my bathroom is white—a stark contrast to all of the black. I had it built for two. I placed it so it faces my huge back porch, overlooking our favorite rock and the swimming hole. The wall behind that tub is a fine inlaid mosaic work of aquamarine, blue and clear glass with sterling silver overlaid with a few genuine turquoise stones.

  Not one mosaic tile is bigger than the top of a pencil eraser, and it took almost a full week to lay them out just right. I’d overseen the placement of each tile, and nearly drove the artist insane. This collective combination of blues, greens and hints of silver and clear glass was as close as I could get to matching the color of Jojo’s eyes. That wall is one of my few secret pleasures, and I love being inside that tub, floating and remembering our happiest times.

  Those eyes flicker open and then close again when I place her gently on the king-sized bed. “You okay?” I whisper? She doesn’t answer, only scrunches her face. I can hardly believe she’s here—in my home—on my bed, and hurt again. Hurt again, because of me.

  Inside and out…ever wounded. All at the hands of a Sinclair.

  I hit the button on my bedside that darkens the windows. The smoked-opaque color allows those inside to still look out but makes it so no one who might be lurking outside could ever see inside.

  I leave the room to make a quick call to my friend who is a doctor to ask him questions about head injuries, then I persuade him to be on call for me personally should Jojo have a turn for the worse. I can sense he thinks it’s me that has the injury, and he’s itching to ask more questions, but that’s the beauty of being a Sinclair. People are curious, yes, but they actually don’t want to know too much or be too involved, so he holds quiet.

  When I return to the room, despite her closed eyes, I can tell she’s awake. She’s lying there, breathing like she’s trying so hard to get herself together. So am I.

  There is no going back now. Lines have been crossed, and re-crossed. Fuck, lines have been obliterated. I don’t know who to be right now. Am I the man who pushed her away, who’s supposed to hate her and who still needs her to leave town as soon as possible, or the man who loves her so much he can hardly breathe, who desperately wants her to stay?

  I think of the lure: forever…forever…forever.

  When she still doesn’t talk, I go sit next to her, testing the spot on her temple that’s the most bruised. I’m unable to resist smoothing back the curling edges of her hair. I shiver because the softness is so achingly familiar.

  “Ouch. That hurts.”

  I startle and leap back. “Sorry.” My hand flexes not sure what to do now. I want to touch her more. I don’t want to hurt her.

  “Don’t be. Please. You only startled me.” Her voice is thick and gravelly.

  I gently move back to the bed, but I resist touching her again. “I’ll ask you again. Are you…okay? Say something…let me know.”

  “I don’t know what to say, past thanking you for saving me, which is obvious probably.” She rolls on to her side to look at me, and her face is ghost-white pale, her skin broken, scratched with little bits of dried blood everywhere. “I know you well enough to know it’s only going to make you worry if I tell you I’m not really okay right now. But…I’m not going to lie. I’m sort of not…okay.” One tear sneaks out and rolls down her pale cheek.

  Fuck.

  I keep my face straight. My heart cracks wide open. I manage to point a finger at the airspace over all of her injuries. “Would you let me clean you up some?”

  She nods.

  I swallow, then watch her wince as she moves. “How bad does it hurt?” I ask.

  “My pride, or my head? Or my heart? Or my whole body? It all aches too bad for me to own up to how much. But I’ll survive.” She breathes out a laugh, but it’s short-lived and catching like it hurts to even do that.

  Fuck. Fuck!

  My throat is closing. My world is turned upside down. I do not know what to do here. Just keep loving her, I think, but damn, my defenses are too lowered. I can’t love her how I do and not let her see how I feel. It’s still so dangerous.

  I turn my face away from her probing, questioning stare and stalk away to my adjoining bathroom. “I’ve got something to help. Might help some of the head pain at least.” I pull out the bottle of Tylenol mixed with Codeine that I stockpile from Canada. Taking out one extra above the recommended dose, I then walk to the kitchen to fill a glass full of cold water for her. I also pour some of the good, 60-year-old scotch into a glass before I return to her side.

  To her…waiting for me, in my bed…in our house. Fuck…it’s a dream; it’s a nightmare; it’s all I ever wanted.

  When I return, she lets me help prop her back against some stacked pillows and utters a small thank you, like she understands I need to physically be part of making her better right now.

  I take a swig of the scotch and hand her the pills as well as the glass of water. “Take them. They’ll help with swelling.”

  She pulls the drink out of my hand. “Okay.” She takes the pills without even looking at them, coughing some at the strength of the scotch before handing it back.

  I’m instantly, irrationally annoyed and worried, catapulted into the past. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I just gave you? Christ, JoJo, I could have fed you poison just now and—and you shouldn’t take those with alcohol.”

  “Alex.” She starts up again, after drinking half of the water to pacify me. “It feels like lifetimes have passed us by.” I nod as she continues. “But I think I still might know you better than anyone ever did.” She settles back against the pillows and sighs. “You…don’t hurt me on purpose. Not then…not now. Not you.”

  Her eyelids flutter closed, and I move close again to stare at her wan, exhausted face. I notice the dark circles that tell me she probably hasn’t slept much since the funeral. The deep crease between her eyes and the way her nose is pinched in tells me her head is hurting more than she’s letting on, and that I should have given her pills sooner.

  “Back then you never knew the real me,” I protest. “And considering these past few days you can’t say that anymore. I do hurt you on purpose. It’s what I am and what I am born to do and what I have done. It’s what I will do more of if you stay here.” The words have burned their way up my throat, and the moment they’re said, I feel the thud of the lie hammering my chest.

  Like she’s calling me out on it, Jojo answers in a whisper, eyes still closed. “Shut up, Alex. I already have a headache.”

  Her familiarity, talking like we don’t have walls between us at all has me wavering hard. I want to drop on my knees and pull her into my arms and tell her just how much I’ve missed her. I push toward my ultimate goal. “I’m serious. If you stay here in Tacoma, it will be impossible for me not to do it again. I know you found the documents—I know you now understand just how fucked up the relationship between your mom and my father truly was. You can have no reason to stay here any longer. None. I’m asking you to go. Ordering it! If you stay, you’ll only find out more and be hurt worse.”

  My body continues to react to her. It’s electric with indecision—hold her close and keep her safe, or push her far away right now.

  She doesn’t answer to what I’ve said. She just opens her kaleidoscope eyes, drawing me in to her blue—her silver—her beauty, her clarity—her truths, not mine.

  I also know her better than anyone ever did. I can read her thoughts. She never could hide her expressions.

  She’s saying what she’s always said to me with that dead-set chin, her straight shoulders, and that penetrating stare. She’s trying to
reassure me that I’m not a monster. She’s silently telling me that I’m not my father.

  I can hardly breathe as tears sneak from her eyes. I feel frozen, watching her blink them away, and I swear I can taste the salt of them on my own tongue and feel my own tears threatening at the edges of my eyes.

  Damn her for being able to strip me raw like this. She’s looking at me like she still loves me.

  Her small hand clamps around mine as I try to bolt, and it’s ice cold. My gaze drifts down to where my hand, my heat, is already warming her skin.

  “Will you stay—close? Sit here with me. At least until the pills start working? Please.”

  * * *

  I’ve stepped away to pour another scotch because if she gets to be in a stupor during this reunion, or whatever it is, then I deserve the same.

  I also grab a small bowl of warm water and a stack of fresh soft towels before sitting next to her again and reaching for her outstretched hand to give it a squeeze to alert her that I’ve returned, as promised.

  Right away I know this is a mistake.

  I try get my hand out of hers again but her fingers have twined to latch only around my thumb—her special way of holding my hand since the first day we rode the bus together in high school. Every bit of ice I’ve tried to keep around my heart is instantly melted.

  “Thank you,” she says. “I can’t stomach being alone right now.”

  “Yeah….sure,” I manage to speak. My hand involuntarily covers the top of hers to tuck her delicate fingers into my palm.

  When she squeezes back and breathes out a deep sigh like she’s relaxing, I’m struck by how this simple handhold was so damn easy. Too familiar. Maybe our minds are fighting this, but our bodies obviously know this feels right.

  “What if I hadn’t been there?” I whisper my thoughts out loud as I start to relax enough to replay what went down with Grady.