The place was called Malvern, a name that struck fear into my heart. Malvern cometh of the Welsh moel bryn, meaning a bald hill, and in my mind I saw Bryn Carreg, its stones tumbled down to strip the hill bare. I saw my dreams turned to rubble and dust.
CHAPTER 52
Zee
The City of Wichita used a Bobcat to clear Mom’s front yard, while she stood on the porch, screaming and crying. When they were done, there were no waterlogged china cabinets, no boxes, no books, not even any grass left. Just a patch of dirt with a few broken bits of china here and there.
Mom didn’t speak to me for a month.
I went back to waiting tables at the Cantonese place, and I picked up some shifts at a biker bar, where I got my ass grabbed ten times a night. With both of those, I could keep Mom and me afloat without dipping into the money from Uncle Alva. I moved that, a hundred a week, into a savings account for Marcus. Not enough to make anybody suspicious, but it would add up to fifty thousand dollars by the time he was eighteen.
I hired a lawyer, who took my retainer in cash and started filing paperwork to get me visitation with Marcus. Because the Gills and I were all nonparental relatives, the lawyer thought I had a good chance.
I rented a house off Craigslist. A little run-down bungalow on Seneca with scuffed wood floors, a pink-tile bathroom, and a fenced yard for Leon. I furnished it with a bed, a dresser, and a coffeemaker. When I wasn’t working or sleeping, I laid in bed and read, so that was all the furniture I needed. I wondered if this was what prison was like. It was what I deserved.
I still had Gentry’s Yvain book, but I put it away after I got to the part where Yvain overstayed his year and a day, just like I knew he would. Laudine had given him a magical ring to protect him, but she sent a servant to get the ring, and to tell Yvain not to come back. After he realized how badly he’d screwed up, Yvain wandered off into the woods like a crazy person. A whirlwind broke loose in his brain, so violent that he went insane. If I let myself think too much about what I’d done, I might go insane. He hated himself above all else, the book said, and that was how I felt. I drank too much and smoked too much, trying not to think about it.
I’d never lived alone before, and sometimes it felt like being the last person on earth. At night it was worse. I started taking Leon for walks along the river when I came home from the bar shift at three o’clock in the morning. Leon helped me remember that I had obligations, that I couldn’t wander off into the woods like a crazy woman.
I thought I might go on that way forever, until the social worker, Ms. Alvarez, called to schedule my home visit. She gave me a list of what she wanted to see, including where the minor child will sleep. So I bought a bed, a dresser, and some toys for Marcus’ bedroom. Plus a table, two chairs, a couch, and a coffee table. By the time I was done, it looked like a house instead of a prison cell.
Ms. Alvarez looked at everything, marking stuff off a checklist on her clipboard. She even opened the kitchen cabinets to see what kind of food I had. When she finally came back to the front room, I shooed Leon off the couch, so she could sit down.
“The dog is yours? He lives here?” she said.
“Yeah. This is Leon.”
I snapped my fingers at him and he came slinking over to me. When I squatted down to pet him, he rolled onto his back. The Internet said that was a submissive display.
“Is he good with children?”
“Yeah, I mean, you can see he’s— Somebody used him as a fighting dog, but he’s really a big baby.”
I rubbed his belly while he laid there looking sheepish and pathetic. Right then I realized that Leon was the dog equivalent of me: shabby and broke down and ugly with his hacked-off ears. The kind of dog you pay fifty bucks for and chain out in your yard. Why would a judge ever give me visitation?
“Is everything okay, Ms. Trego?” the social worker said.
I’d worried so much about not looking like a stoner and the house being clean, but I’d never even thought about Leon.
“If it’s a problem for me to have him, for Marcus to come visit—” I couldn’t say it without crying. “I can get rid of the dog.”
“Oh, no. I don’t think that’s necessary. He seems very docile. And as long as you’re supervising properly, there’s shouldn’t be any trouble over you having a dog in the home.”
When she reached for her briefcase, Leon jumped up and slunk away behind the couch.
Two weeks later, my lawyer called to tell me I had a date for family court. I thanked him and told him how happy I was, but after I got off the phone, I was so shaky I had to lie down on the floor where I was standing.
Nothing good had ever happened to me in a courtroom. Just the idea of going to court, and having a judge look down on me, made me feel sick. It made me want to go to bed and never get up. The only thing worse than thinking about going to court was thinking about the judge saying no, because what I couldn’t stand was the thought of never seeing Marcus again.
By the day of my family court hearing, Mom was back to speaking to me, and I wished she wasn’t. She called me first thing in the morning and asked me to come over and help her with something. She wouldn’t tell me what, and the only way to stop her calling was to go.
I went, expecting some kind of crisis, but she was in her recliner, watching TV. When I leaned down to hug her, she said, “Honey, is this what you’re wearing to court?”
The whole thing felt like a trap. Like I was Leon exposing my belly. I straightened up while she was kissing my cheek.
“Yeah, this is what I’m wearing. Why?” Why did I ask?
“Just those pants are awfully tight and you’ve got pills on your sweater.”
I’d tried. I used actual bobby pins to put my hair up, and I’d put on lipstick, but I guess neither of those things outweighed my fat ass or my Goodwill sweater.
“What do you need help with?” I said.
“One of us needs to meet with your sister’s lawyer. I worry that he’s not doing enough for her.”
One of us. Since only one of us ever left the house, that meant I was supposed to meet with LaReigne’s lawyer.
“Is that why you wanted me to come over?”
“I would rest easier if you met him. You could go after court.” The way she said it, I knew she’d gone behind my back and told LaReigne I would.
So I was a nervous wreck walking into family court, knowing as soon as I was done there, I would have to see LaReigne for the first time since I left her in Arkansas.
“Aunt Zee!” Marcus yelled and, before the Gills could stop him, he ran down the aisle to hug me. In four months he’d grown so much, and he had a junior accountant haircut to go with his khakis and button-down shirt, but he smelled like Marcus. My Marcus. Like crayons and grass and somebody who hasn’t been washing behind his ears. I wasn’t prepared for it.
It was the best day and the worst day I’d had since Arkansas. Even while I was hugging Marcus and crying into his hair, I thought about Gentry. Maybe he didn’t hug people, but he was surely missing his family, and that was my fault. As much as I wanted Marcus to be happy, I didn’t deserve to be as happy as I felt.
Not that I got to keep that happiness, because after the hearing, I said goodbye to Marcus, and drove to the county detention center in El Dorado. LaReigne’s lawyer met me in the parking lot. His name was Ben, and he looked like he was about fifteen years old: scrawny with a giant Adam’s apple.
“Is this your first real trial?” I said.
He laughed and then coughed.
“No, of course not. Don’t worry about me, Ms. Trego. I’m going to do everything I can for LaReigne.”
Not Lauren or Lorraine. LaReigne. He was already half in love with her. The ones who were going to fall for her always got it right.
The meeting was in a locked cubicle the size of a bathroom, with a table and four chairs. Ben a
nd I were standing there when they brought in LaReigne, not even cuffed. Just walking next to a corrections officer, carrying a file folder. I’d prepared myself for seeing her in jail scrubs, but I wasn’t ready to see her with all the blond grown out of her hair. She hadn’t been brunette since we were kids.
“So is this an ambush?” she said, once we were in the room together, like I’d tricked her into meeting with me.
“I thought you wanted me to come, but I can go,” I said.
“Don’t be silly. I’m glad to see you.” She held her arms out for me to hug her. I didn’t want to, but I put my arms around her. It was like hugging someone I barely knew. She felt smaller and softer, and she smelled different. Not like when we were kids, when we’d both smelled like Mom’s house—musty and smoky—but not like the grown-up LaReigne, who’d smelled like perfume and makeup. Now, she smelled like prison. Unless Ben pulled off a miracle, maybe she always would.
I let go of her and pulled out one of the chairs at the table to sit down. Ben stood behind me, waiting for LaReigne to pay attention to him, but she didn’t.
“What’s the special occasion you’re dressed up for?” she said after she sat down across from me.
“Mom didn’t tell you? I had family court this morning.”
“Well, you look really nice,” she said in this fake-ass voice. “How did it go?”
“Loudon got arrested in Oklahoma on another DUI and driving on a suspended license. So the Gills will keep custody of Marcus. My lawyer says he’s pretty sure the court will grant me some kind of visitation. But you’re probably not interested in all the details.”
“Of course I’m interested! How can you even say that? Ben is working on me being able to call Marcus for his birthday.”
“The Gills’ lawyer has made it clear we’ll need a court order,” Ben said. “That’s our next step, unless your sister gets visitation, and then—”
“She’d have to get a landline first,” LaReigne snapped.
“I want to talk to you alone,” I said to her.
“I can’t do that,” said Ben, sitting down in the chair next to mine, across from LaReigne. “This is as private as it gets, because this is a confidential meeting between client and attorney. Regular visitation is monitored.”
“You can say whatever you want in front of Ben. It’s okay,” LaReigne said.
“No, it’s not. He’s your lawyer. Not mine. Maybe anything I say he’ll use to try to help you.”
“I assumed you wanted to help her,” Ben said.
“Not if it’s going to get me in trouble.” I’d sat down at the wrong angle, and I couldn’t get comfortable. When I stood up, LaReigne’s eyes got wide.
“Please, don’t go,” she said.
“I’m not going. My hip’s just bothering me.” Once I was on my feet, though, I wanted to leave.
“I was hoping we could discuss the trial,” Ben said.
“Don’t. I’m not testifying. You could subpoena me, but you’d be sorry if you did.” I hadn’t come there to talk to him, so I said to LaReigne, “I’m doing what I can. I’m taking care of Mom. I’m trying to make sure Marcus will be able to see you. And I put more money in your commissary account.”
“I don’t want your money,” LaReigne said in a tiny hurt voice.
“I don’t know where you think the money comes from, but Mom doesn’t have any. I’m the one who pays her phone bill, and I’m the one who puts money in your account.”
“Zee, please, don’t be mad.”
I started to say, I’m not mad, because it was so much more than that. I felt like a firestarter, like I could burn everything down just by thinking about it. Hothead, that was what Mom always called me.
“Did you even Google it?” I said.
“Google what?” She gave me a confused look like she couldn’t understand why I was angry. Like my anger was random.
“What Tague Barnwell did. Did you even Google it before you decided to fall in love with him?”
“That’s not how love works!” she said. “I know you don’t understand anything about it, but normal people don’t decide to fall in love. That’s why it’s called—”
“Okay, fine, I don’t know how it works. So you accidentally fell in love with him. Not your fault. But did you know what he’d done when you decided to run away with him? Because it took me like sixty seconds on the Internet to find out that he murdered five people. He would have murdered more if he was better at building bombs. One of the people he killed was a little boy. His mother was trying to protect him, and a bullet went through her shoulder and into his head. He was only four.”
There was so much heat in me that it dried up any tears I had for that little boy.
“That wasn’t Tague,” LaReigne said, sniffling. “That was Conrad.”
“Even if that’s true, did you fail to fucking notice the part where while you were running away and making plans with Tague that Conrad was escaping from prison, too? Was that just an afterthought?”
“I’m sorry,” LaReigne said. Whatever that meant. Not, I guessed, that she was sorry she’d done something so fucking stupid. “You don’t need to testify. You don’t even need to come to the trial. I appreciate everything you’re doing, but will you do me one favor?”
I didn’t say yes or no, but I didn’t leave. She opened the file folder on the table in front of her and handed me an envelope. There was one word written on it: Tague.
“What is this?” I said.
“Please, you can hate me all you want, but please, will you deliver that to him? If I mail it, they won’t give it to him, but you can go to his trial.” I was so shocked, I didn’t know what to say and, since I didn’t say no, LaReigne kept talking. “I know I’ll never see him again or talk to him again. I accept that. But please, will you do me this one favor?”
CHAPTER 53
Rhys
Somebody must have given my name to the police, because a U.S. marshal came to interview me. I kept waiting for the guilt to kick in and make me confess what I knew, but my drive for self-preservation was too strong. After an hour of saying, “I don’t know,” repeatedly, I said, “There are white supremacists in the SCA, and some of the HMB groups. Not a lot, but some. People who think the Middle Ages were full of white people.”
“Do you believe Gentry Frank is involved with them?” the marshal said.
“No, that’s not what I meant at all. Gentry would never get involved with people like that. I’m just saying maybe that’s how he got the information about where those guys were.”
After that, it seemed like every news site did a think piece or an exposé about the SCA, historical medieval battles, and white supremacists. Some of them played Gentry and Edrard up like heroes. These two plucky kids armed with only a sword and a bow who went to rescue a hostage. Other pieces made them out to be the punch line to a joke. These two idiots who went to fight white supremacists armed with only a sword and a bow.
Somebody must have given the news outlets pictures of Gentry and Edrard from a tournament, because they started running a photo of them in armor. Edrard looked like a jolly elf, laughing and wearing ribbons in his beard. Gentry looked every inch the brooding killer, all in black with a bloody nose, staring past the camera.
Once, I saw an interview with Gentry’s biological brother, Brand. He looked nervous but eager to get his fifteen minutes.
“Well, you know he’s got autism, and he’s like schizo or something,” he said, grinning at the female reporter. “He’s pretty weird and he talks like Oh my lady dost think something. Like that.”
A few times, I saw Zee on the news, when some reporter was trying to get her to make a comment. She never did, unless you count words that have to be bleeped on television.
I got calls from reporters, too, but I never agreed to be interviewed. I wanted less to do with the story, not mo
re. When Gentry’s lawyer called me, wanting to talk about testifying at his trial, I was floored. Obviously, as a friend, I owed him something, but I didn’t plan to pay that debt by perjuring myself.
Plenty of times, I’d thought about calling Zee and talked myself out of it, but that night I did. I got her voicemail.
“This is Zhorzha Trego. If you’re law enforcement or someone connected to the legal system, please leave me a message. If you’re a reporter, no, I don’t do interviews. If you’re a criminal law student, I still don’t do interviews. If you’re a creep who’s in love with my sister, get a life. If you’re calling for some other reason, leave a message.”
I’d forgotten how sexy her voice was. Husky, half bored, half amused. I hung up and sent her a text, asking her to call me. It was almost midnight when she did, and I could hear bar noise in the background.
“For real, this is Rhys?” she said. “How’d you get my number?”
“Gentry gave it to me that weekend at Bryn Carreg. I was trying to hit on his girlfriend, and he gave me your number.”
“I wasn’t his girlfriend, and he’s trusting like that,” she said. As though I were the one who’d taken advantage of Gentry’s trusting nature.
“His lawyer called to ask me to be a character witness for his trial. Did she call you?”
“You’re kidding, right? You think anybody would want me as a character witness?” She laughed. Then to somebody else: “Yeah, that keg’s almost empty.”
“So, it’s just not your problem?” I said.
“I didn’t say that, but you’re his friend, and I’m the person who fucked up his whole life.”
The Reckless Oath We Made Page 33