Hard Time

by McKenna, Cara

  “Sure.”

  “How’d it go? Any hair get pulled?”

  I smiled. “No, we did real good. You should be proud of us both.”

  “Hey, glad to hear it. I’ll see you in twenty. Don’t leave me for some dreamboat before then.”

  I laughed. “Impossible.”

  “See you soon.”

  I hung up and got my layers on to join Kris outside. I found her standing a few feet from the front door.

  “He’s going to be about twenty minutes,” I told her.

  “Oh good. I’ll smoke another, then.”

  I pulled my gloves from my coat pocket and tugged them on.

  “Feel free to wait inside,” she said again.

  “Nah. It feels good, actually.” The night had that rare crispness to it—nothing to do with the cold, just that state of mind where the world felt to be in the finest focus. I looked up into the black sky. “So many stars out he—”

  Kris grabbed my upper arm through my coat. Her other hand flicked her cigarette to the pavement and the blue-gray smoke jetted out before us.

  “What is it?”

  “I dunno yet. Maybe nothing.” Her eyes were locked on a red truck with a white cap on its bed, pulling into a spot in the far corner. I studied her expression and the night went liquid-nitrogen cold.

  “That’s not him, is it?” I didn’t even know his name. “The guy who . . . ?”

  “I dunno,” she breathed. She seemed to remember she’d grabbed me, letting my arm go. “Looks too much like his goddamn truck.”

  “Did he drink here a lot?”

  She hissed a long, “Shi-i-i-it.”

  Across the lot, a man had exited the vehicle. Big guy, over six feet, round through the middle under his canvas bomber.

  “Let’s go inside,” I told Kris. “He hasn’t seen you. Hide in the bathroom and I’ll tell you when—”

  “No,” she said softly, eyes on the man. He moved slowly and unevenly, a sway in his step. Drunker than us, surely.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know. Feel free to go inside.”

  “No . . . He looks wasted. We could call the cops, if he’s driving drunk.”

  “He’s not drunk. He’s got a limp, from what my brother did to him.”

  Oh, Jesus. “We can’t start something that’s going to drag Eric in, when he gets—”

  “Wes,” Kris called.

  The floor dropped out of my stomach. He was close enough that I registered the surprise in his widening eyes. He stopped where he was, maybe ten paces from us.

  He said simply, “Hey, Kris.”

  I could hear her pounding heart in her voice. “What’re you doing here?”

  He didn’t answer that question. “How you been?” His tone was uneasy. He wasn’t afraid of her, but he wasn’t sneering or cruel or threatening, either. Uncertain. I had to wonder how he might’ve felt about what he’d done to her, once he’d detoxed in the hospital or prison.

  “I was doin’ just fine,” Kris said, “until I heard they were letting you out.”

  “I got no beef with you.”

  “That’s funny. I’ve still got one with you.” Her quavering voice undermined the tough words.

  He changed the subject. “How’s your mom?” There was no threat implicit in the question, I didn’t think. No veiled, Be a shame if anything happened to her. I could guess the reply Kris held back, something to the tune of, You mention my mother again and I’ll gut you. But she didn’t give him the reaction, didn’t hand him the ammo. Didn’t say a word.

  “You gonna sic your brother on me again?” Wes asked, shifting from foot to foot.

  I held my breath, worried for what might come next from Kris’s lips. He’s on his way now. But no. Instead she simply said, “You know I could, but only if you give me a good reason. My brother wasted enough of his life on your sorry ass. What’re you doing in my town?”

  “Meetin’ my cousin for a beer.” He looked to me. “Who’s your friend?”

  “None of your business,” Kris said, and took a step forward, as though shielding me. She was doing a decent job of acting tough, but I wanted this guy to have every reason to keep being cool.

  I kept my voice level, rational, like I was talking to a guy at Cousins. “What do your parole terms say about you going to bars?”

  He stared at me a long beat, a hint of aggression in those eyes giving me pause. “Who the fuck wants to know?”

  “Kris’s friend,” I said.

  “It’s a goddamn good question,” Kris said, and she pulled out her cigarette pack and slid one between her lips. She spoke around it. “What does your parole have to say about that? ’Cause I got a dozen good friends in that bar who’d be happy to say they saw you drinkin’, tonight.”

  “Well maybe they won’t see me drinkin’,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just order me a ginger ale and have a nice chat with my cousin, call it a night.”

  “That sounds real smart,” Kris said smoothly. The fear had left her voice. She sounded oddly cocky, in fact.

  “I got no issue with you,” Wes told her. “I ain’t here to get myself crippled by your goddamn psycho brother again. Just here to see my cousin, so I can borrow his power drill. Okay?”

  “Good plan,” Kris said. “’Cause if I hear about anybody seein’ you around town after this, I’m not gonna be impressed. And if for any reason you get any ideas about coming around me, I got a gun, and I know how to use it.”

  “You sound fucking crazy, you know that?”

  “I barely told anybody what went down between you and me,” Kris said slowly. “But I could. I could tell every good friend of mine in this county what you did, and you’ll be lucky if they don’t put my brother’s justice to shame.”

  I held my breath, stunned by that. Stunned because I believed her, that she’d tell. The thing she’d not even been able to confide in the cops, but I heard it in her voice, she’d do it. Take that horrible crime and turn it into a weapon to keep this man from haunting her ever again.

  “You heard what I said?” Kris demanded.

  He nodded. “Yeah. I hear you. You’re fucking crazy, all you Colliers.” He spat on the salted asphalt. “I’d have to be crazier than all of you to want any part of your rabid-ass family.”

  Headlights swung off the main road and into the lot. I froze, and so did Eric’s truck. He’d stomped on the brake between two rows of parked cars, and his door popped open.

  Wes muttered, “Fuck,” then asked Kris, “You got a fucking Bat Signal or something?”

  Eric was walking in a way that made him look taller than the bar and out for blood. I waved for him to stop, but it was Kris who actually managed the feat.

  “Get back, Eric. It’s fine.”

  “The fuck it is. What the fuck you doing around my sister?”

  “Small world, that’s all,” said Wes. He was playing it cool, but his fear was evident. I didn’t blame him. Eric’s eyes were darker and colder than the winter sky.

  “Just here to meet my cousin. Borrow his drill.”

  “You get in your truck and you leave,” Eric said, “and you buy your own goddamn drill. Get the fuck out of my town and stay the fuck out.”

  The bar’s door opened behind us, the noise inside flaring, light spilling out as two thirtysomething women scooted by to smoke on the other side of the entrance. They were chatting tipsily, but the rest of us had gone silent and somber as gravestones.

  “Go,” Kris told Wes.

  And he did. He skirted Eric’s statue-still body, limping toward his truck. We all waited in silence until he’d pulled onto the road and out of sight, then our collective postures slumped.

  “Oh my gosh,” said one of the smoking women brightly. “Eric!”

  He looked confused,
then spent a moment jogging his memory about whoever she was to him, and they exchanged post-holiday pleasantries. Surreal, but it gave me—and presumably Kris as well—a minute to come down from our adrenaline highs.

  The women finished their cigarettes. The one who’d recognized Eric said, “See you around, maybe. You look good,” she added, making my eyes roll. “Real good.”

  He said good night and gestured for Kris and me to get in the still-idling truck.

  Once he was behind the wheel and buckled in, he dropped his head and muttered, “Fuck.”

  “I thought that went real well,” Kris said.

  “She handled it great,” I told Eric.

  “Didn’t threaten to send you after him or anything,” she said. “Just the whole goddamn rest of the town.”

  “And his parole officer,” I added.

  “He say anything to you?” Eric demanded. “Either of you. Anything aggressive?”

  “Nah,” said Kris. “He’s a real chickenshit, sober. I’d forgot that about him.” She was acting so calm, but I’d heard in her voice, she’d been terrified.

  “He say anything to you?” he asked me. “He look at you?”

  “Not like, look at me, no. We did fine. Really.”

  Eric sighed mightily, like he was exhausted from having hauled us unconscious from a burning house. “Let’s get the fuck home.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kris recapped the encounter for her brother as we drove back to Lakeside. About fifty times he demanded details like, “And that’s what he said, exactly? How’d he sound when he said it?” before he finally seemed like he was calming. If not satisfied, confident enough to believe maybe he didn’t have to stay awake all night, listening for tires rolling up outside his mom’s house.

  “He’s not coming around,” Kris said. “I could tell from his face. He’s a coward when he’s clean. And he’s got to be clean, if he’s gotten that fat. Goddamn . . . I’d like to know how a man gets that fat on prison food.”

  The joke seemed to relax Eric officially. I could sense his relief for the confrontation to finally be over and done with as clearly as I might feel the sun on my hair.

  “Should I tell Mom?” Kris asked.

  Eric looked pensive as he parked the truck. “Not tonight, at least. Let’s figure that out tomorrow, maybe.”

  Kris nodded and pushed the passenger door wide. She intuited from the way he kept the truck running that we needed a minute, and slammed the door without a word. Once she was swallowed by the light of the kitchen, Eric sank back against his seat.

  “Fucking hell.”

  “It’s okay, really. I’m okay. Kris is okay.”

  “Makes my goddamn skin crawl, to know he even laid eyes on you.”

  “I’m okay. Really. All those Fridays at Cousins prepped me well. And Kris was careful not to tell him who I was.”

  “Still . . .”

  “I’m real proud of you,” I said, “holding yourself back the way you did.”

  Eric didn’t seem to hear me. He dropped his forehead to the wheel and made a noise of absolute grief and surrender. “Jesus. If anything had happened to you . . .”

  I rubbed his back. “But it didn’t. Your sister got in front of me and everything. She didn’t need to, but she did.”

  He sat up and met my eyes. “Did she?”

  “She was scared for maybe the first minute, then it was all bulldog.” I offered a little smile.

  He exhaled, long and loud. I changed the subject.

  “Who was that woman who thinks you look re-e-eal good, anyhow?”

  His nostrils flared with a tiny laugh, telling me I was ridiculous for asking. And that he was grateful for a little ridiculousness just now. “Just an ex of one of my buddies.”

  “Better be.”

  We were quiet for a time, me watching Eric, him staring straight ahead.

  “It freaked you out,” I said, “knowing he was near me.”

  “Of course it did. Still does.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause of what could’ve happened. You know what he did to my sister . . . the gist of it, anyhow.”

  “You afraid you could’ve lost me?”

  He dropped his head again. “Annie . . .”

  “I’m afraid to lose you, too. If you went off on somebody like him, got yourself hurt or killed, or put away.” I ran my palm over his back in slow circles. “We’re the same, that way.”

  “I know we are.”

  “I want you to promise me, if something did happen to me—which it won’t—you won’t do what you did for her. Because I’d need you with me, helping me heal, way more than I’d need to feel like justice had been done or whatever. Can you promise me that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  My turn to sigh, and my hand went still on his back. “I get that you don’t value your own neck the way I wish you did, so I’m not asking you to understand, or to do it for your own good. I’m asking you to do it for me. I need you, with me. Safe. And free. I don’t need to feel avenged. I only need your body next to mine when I fall asleep.”

  A miniscule nod.

  I squeezed the back of his neck. “Promise me.”

  He held my gaze with those bottomless brown eyes. “I promise.” He kissed my mouth, then again. He spoke right there, words warming my lips. “I promise. You get me.”

  “Good . . .” My heart unwound, chest welcoming a deep draw of air. “Good.”

  I kissed him hard, more a fierce mashing of lips than anything sensual or sweet, and my arms wrapped around him, tight as a vise. The most powerful body I’d ever known, yet I held him as though he might be lost in a breath. And he could be. Was this why he’d protected his sister the way he had? Because he knew how much this hurt, to come so close to losing someone? That made my demands selfish, but I didn’t care. His safety and his future mattered more to me than anything I’d ever held dear. A taste of what motherhood must do to a woman. A possessiveness so strong, it ached deep down in the marrow and muscle.

  He smoothed the hair from my temples and stared into my eyes. “You’re the most precious thing in my life. If you want me in yours bad enough to demand the stuff you are, I’ll give you that.”

  “And I promise I won’t ever say things to your sister again, like the ones I said last night. We talked a lot, at the bar. And I get what you mean to her, too. And it goes way deeper than I’d ever imagined. I understand how big it is, the promise I’m asking of you. Really.”

  He nodded once and kissed my temple, then exhaled steam against my skin. “Good.”

  For a long time we held each other, until the blood pounding in my ears faded to a murmur. Until my vision ceased hopping in time with my pulse. Until Eric’s breathing went silent, little more than a warm breeze ruffling my hair.

  “You want to go inside?” he asked, so soft it could’ve been a thought.

  “Not yet. Let’s just enjoy sitting still, for a while.”

  He killed the headlights, freed both our seat belts and moved. I waited as he repositioned himself, leaning against the driver’s door. He patted his lap and we got comfortable, legs piled along the long seat, two sets of eyes on the rows of modest homes, a few still twinkling with Christmas lights. His mouth was at my ear, his voice filling my entire being.

  “I love you,” he said, and went on before I could return the words. “More than I’ll ever love myself. But I’ll try to do what you want. I’ll try to value what I have to offer, and my own being here—being free—as much as you seem to.”

  I swallowed, throat sore. “You better.”

  “And I’ll keep writing you letters ’til the day I die.”

  I gurgled, the sounds of tears drowning a laugh. “Good. I love your words.”

  “You gave them all to me. Every last one.”

 
“Funny, when they all felt so exactly like gifts.” Gifts I’d unwrapped with a thumping heart and shaking fingers; in my own driver’s seat, in the bar, on my couch, in my bed. I’d wrapped those secret pages around me like satin sheets and dreamed that the man who’d written them could be so good, could even be real. And here he was, wrapped around me himself. Warmer than my jacket. Warmer than the August sun beating on his bare skin. Hotter than the female eyes that’d watched him then, torn between fear and curiosity.

  “When I met you,” I murmured, “you were an incarcerated felon. And yet you’ve only ever lied to me once. And that was so you could hit on me.”

  I felt his soundless laugh behind my shoulders, then a kiss on my ear. “Guilty.”

  “The most honest man I bet I’ve ever known, and I met him in prison.”

  “The nicest woman I ever knew, and she took up with a convict. What on earth would your mother say?”

  I smiled at that. “I look forward to finding out.”

  I’d be telling my parents soon. It was time to stop protecting them—time to stop trying to make amends for the pain I’d never allowed them to share with me.

  “My dad might have a stroke,” I said, “but they’ve already seen the changes in me, since I met you. The way I’ve come alive again, for the first time in years.”

  “Amen.”

  After a minute’s peace he said, “I think we better head home after breakfast, tomorrow. I’m kinda ready to get the hell out of Kernsville.”

  “Sure.” I squeezed the hands clasping my waist. “Maybe we could get up real early and drive out to your lake. Watch the sun come up over it. Grab some donuts on the way back to your mom’s.” Watch as that watery winter sun rose at its cranky January speed, the sky turning from navy to slate to the periwinkle of my mom’s hydrangea. Let the light banish the last of tonight’s scarier memories from my mind, fill the gaps with another taste of this man’s favorite place in the world.

  “That’s not my lake, like I said. It won’t be my lake again until the spring’s here and the water’s blue, and my feet are in the sand.”

  “I’d still like to. And we’ll come back, again, when it’s warm.”