I wriggle off of Jake, moving myself around to lie by his side and resting my hand on his chest. His arm curls protectively around me.
“Good night, Summers,” I say quietly as sleep overtakes me.
“Good morning, Winters,” he corrects me, pulling me even tighter against him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In the days after the explosion the mood of Painted Rock has changed. We’ve become a town that isn’t used to outsiders, where anyone that you don’t recognize arouses a certain kind of suspicion. But now that the news of the Angels having ripped off an army truck had filtered through the general populace, there was even more unease than usual. And that was really saying something.
For the first time in a long while, people were actually talking about the Angels and what had happened more or less openly. But, of course, they only speak in hushed tones, their eyes still flitting around them, scanning for any sign that they might be overheard by unfriendly ears.
Over the past couple of days I had managed to piece together a story of the events from the quiet conversations in the diner. It was one of the few places in the town that had a pretty good view out onto the highway. That made it a magnet for all the residents of Painted Rock who wanted to get the scoop on the biggest news to hit the town in years.
“Manny was right there when the truck went up—said he’d never seen anything like it. He’s got the singed eyebrows to prove it!”
“I heard they were looking for guns.”
“Those two biker boys were burnt pretty bad, howling and screaming and carrying on.”
“The driver didn’t make it. Poor guy, burning to death… What a terrible way to go.”
“Saw some fellas looking through the wreck this morning. Looked like city boys.”
“They’ve gone too far this time. Feds’ll have to be getting involved.”
“No respect for life.”
“They’ve always been dangerous, but not stupid. This was both.”
Everyone has their own version of events or knows someone who saw something or who has inside information on what’s going on over at the wreck site. It took less than 24 hours for the professionals to appear and set up one of those tents you only see on cop shows. I take in the snippets of conversation as I make my way through the diner, refilling coffee cups and delivering orders. I wonder to myself how the Feds found out so quickly. If the driver had died in the fire and he was the only person in the truck, then who raised the alarm? It’s not like anyone in this town has a direct line to the homeland security. But I don’t have to wait long to find out.
“Heard they picked up a soldier by the side of the road. He’s in a pretty bad way—guess he must have gotten out when the truck went up.”
“I thought it was strange there was just a driver inside. Army truck like that, must’ve had another soldier along for protection or something.”
When I hear this news, it’s hard not to get excited. First of all, the army isn’t just going to lie down and let something like this happen without investigating. Secondly, if there’s a survivor of the crash, then he should be able to identify who was involved and that’ll lead them right to the Angels. It seems like the best news I’ve heard in a long time.
But, that night, when I share the information I’ve collected with Jake, my excitement gives way to dismay. Most of Jake’s body is under the latest car that he’s working on. Only his legs are visible as he clangs around with his tools underneath it.
“They made it look like an accident,” he says, his voice even.
“An accident? What, like the truck just spontaneously combusted?” I ask incredulously.
“Dad was talking to some of the guys on the force and they mentioned that it wasn’t clear that the bikes had collided with the truck with intent,” Jake explains, emotionless.
“Oh, come on!” I yell in frustration. “The fact they’re at the scene and that the Angels are known for ripping off trucks on the highway? It’s just a matter of two plus two makes four, right?” I ask, unable to believe that the Angels are going to get away with something this big. Isn’t there such a thing as justice anymore?
“All circumstantial, I guess,” Jake says, rolling out from under the car. “One of the bikes collided with the truck—that’s what caused the explosion. Who’s to say that they intended to do it, or if they just lost control of the bike?” he asks, shrugging his shoulders. He makes his way inside the car and puts the key in the ignition, smiling in satisfaction as the engine purrs like a kitten.
I’m surprised at how little he seems to care about this. Especially after we’d talked about this potentially being our way out.
“How can you be so calm about this? Don’t you care that they’re just being handed a ‘get out of jail free’ card yet again?” I ask. I’m taking my frustration out on him, I know—but I’m unable to control it.
“Of course I care, Aimee!” Jake shouts, his anger matching my own. He takes a deep breath to calm himself down and then starts again. “Of course I care. How can you even ask me that?” He shakes his head in disappointment and I feel angry at myself for treating him this way.
“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I just don’t understand how things always seem to go their way. This is a big deal and, as always, they’re getting away with whatever they want.” I fling my hands in the air in desperation and sit down heavily on the stool that I’ve been perching on almost every day for the past ten years.
“We don’t know that they’re just going to walk,” Jake tells me patiently, loping towards me and lifting my chin so he’s looking into my eyes. “It looks like an accident, which might satisfy the local cops. But the Feds are a different breed.”
“They just need to find someone that’ll talk, someone that will tell them what’s been going on here for years, someone that knows they were planning on ripping off the truck,” I say, slowly getting to grips with the ideas rushing around my head.
“Yeah, that should be really easy,” Jake says sarcastically. “Finding someone that’s willing to talk to the Feds in this town. Everyone’s too busy watching their backs to run the risk of being a whistleblower.” He wipes his grease-stained hands on his even more grease-stained jeans.
“I’ll do it,” I say confidently. “I’ll talk to them. Tell them everything I know.”
Jake is looking at me as if I’ve just grown a second head. “You’re kidding, right?” he asks.
I shake my head slowly. “It’s the only way,” I explain. “I’m not just being gung-ho about this.”
“You know they won’t let you do it,” Jake points out. “The Angels won’t just let you have a nice little tête-à-tête with the Feds. They won’t allow it. You can’t fix everything, Aimee.”
“I can at least try,” I insist. “It’s better than sitting around, not doing anything, and just waiting for bad things to happen.” I angrily stand, knocking over my stool in my hurry to get up.
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” Jake demands. “Just sitting back and letting bad shit happen?” His brown eyes are hurt behind the fire that I’ve set in them.
“I think that I’m the only one here coming up with any solutions, and you just keep batting me back with problems and reasons why nothing is going to work,” I snap loudly. I can’t feel so impotent, so unable to change the course of my life—of our lives. I’ve never let myself become so ground down by the reality of where we live and what we have to deal with on a day to day basis. I wasn’t going to start being scared now. “I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to be like her—” The words are out of my mouth before I have even thought about what I’m saying.
“‘Her’ who?” Jake asks with a frown.
“My mom. I’m not just going to let things happen, I can’t believe that I can’t change things,” I say.
“Aimee, your mom didn’t give up,” Jake says reasonably, but I’m in no mood for reason.
“She gave up on me. When I needed her, she wasn’t th
ere. Not in any way that mattered,” I say. All these feelings that I’ve had towards my mother over the past few years seem to be bubbling up from inside me and I need to do something with it before I explode. “I’m going to see my mom,” I say to Jake abruptly, grabbing my bag and heading towards the door.
“What?” asks Jake, clearly incredulous. “So that’s how you’re going to deal with this?” He rakes his hands through his hair. “I know you have some stuff to work through with her, but we’re in the middle of an argument, Aimee. You’re just going to walk away when we disagree about something?”
His words sting me, because I know he’s right. I know that I’m not being fair to him, but I can’t deal with this right now.
“I’ll talk to you later,” I say, barely looking behind me as I push open the door and walk through it.
I hear the sound of metal clattering as Jake presumably throws one of his tools against something, hard. I should probably turn around and go back. I should apologize for being so combative when he’s the last person I want to have any kind of conflict with. But I don’t do that. I set off in the direction of the Summers home, not entirely sure what I’m hoping to achieve by seeing my mother, only knowing that it’s important to me.
CHAPTER NINE
“Aimee, what a pleasant surprise,” Sally says, smiling brightly as she opens the door, but looking a little guilty all the same.
“Jake called you, didn’t he?” I ask, knowing how bad Sal is at keeping secrets.
“He just said that you might be stopping by,” she assures me. Although the look she gives me says she’s guessed that Jake and I probably aren’t on best of terms at the moment.
“I know it’s late,” I start, only now realizing that it’s a little dark out to be arriving unannounced at someone’s door. But the Summers household wasn’t just “someone’s” door—they were family.
“Nonsense.” Sally waves away my concern. “Have you eaten? I can heat up some leftovers if you’re hungry?” she asks, already making her way towards the kitchen as I follow behind. As usual, she’s making it her mission to feed me up. There’s comfort in routine, in knowing exactly what to expect.
“No thanks, Sal, I’m fine,” I assure her.
I can tell she’s dubious, but she doesn’t challenge me. Instead she nods towards the decking outside. “Bea’s out there,” she explains softly. “I was about to go get her ready for her bath when Jake called.”
The idea of Sally, who had been and I suppose still is my mother’s best friend, bathing the tiny frame like she would a child, makes me feel so sad it’s almost hard to breathe.
“You’re amazing Sal,” I tell her, not for the first time. “I won’t be long. I don’t want to keep you up,” I add, stepping out onto the deck.
“Take your time.” Sally waves in my direction as she heads out of the kitchen to give us some privacy. “I know she’ll be pleased to see you,” she says softly. There’s no judgment in her words—just an assessment of the situation. Nothing more than that.
I take a deep breath as my feet hit the wooden deck. My mother is in the swing seat that Jake and I used to pretend was a boat when we were little kids. She doesn’t make any move to show that she’s heard me or that she’s even aware of me. So I sit down slowly, careful not to disturb the gentle rhythm of the swing.
The air is starting to cool as night falls. We’re heading towards Fall and I’m grateful for the change in the weather. The heat has become less overwhelming in recent days. It helps with the panic attacks. The warmer it is, the more claustrophobic I tend to feel and the more anxious I get. It’s amazing how much good the occasional cool breeze can do.
We sit in silence, swinging on the seat, and eventually I take my mother’s hands clasped in her lap and hold onto her. The simple touch seems to awaken her from whatever it was that she has been dreaming about. Perhaps she had been dreaming, or maybe just remembering. I was never sure if she was sifting through memories of the past or just imagining a different present for herself. A present that included my father.
“Hi momma,” I say softly as our eyes meet.
“Aimee,” she breathes out contentedly and, with that one word, I feel like a terrible daughter all over again for not coming to visit her more often.
“How you doing?” I ask, smiling and squeezing her hand gently.
I’m not really expecting any kind of response from her, bearing in mind the last time I’d seen her, a conversation didn’t seem like something that we could hope to aspire to just yet.
“Better,” she says as the silence stretches out between us. She breathes out the word, as if it took all her strength just to say it out loud.
I feel my heart hammering against my chest in excitement. Not only has my mother understood that I was talking to her, but she’s also been able to respond. I’m not sure if one question and one answer counts as a conversation, but it’s more than we’ve had for a while.
“Good momma, good,” I say softly. “That’s great.” I nod as we both go back to looking out at the horizon. Perhaps this was the trick of it—not expecting anything more than she was able to give. Taking every step as a positive move in the right direction, not being angry over what’s missing, not carrying around this anger with me all the time.
It’s restful, just to sit in the silence of the desert night with my mother, holding hands and each thinking our separate thoughts. The crippling loneliness that I’d associated with being around her doesn’t reach me—not tonight. Once I feel ready, I say what I came here for. I tell her the story of everything that’s happened since we were forced out of our home that night. I tell her about Jake and me, how we just keep getting closer and closer, tonight’s argument notwithstanding. I tell her about Big George giving me my job back at the diner and how good it is to know I have a friend like him. I tell her about the night of the explosion and the army truck and how it might be the best chance that Jake and I are going to get.
“But he thinks it’s too dangerous. That there’s too much at stake for me to make it my business to tell the Feds what they need to know,” I explain, struggling to keep my voice calm so that I don’t spook her. “I can’t just sit by and do nothing, especially when this may be the only real chance we have to get away from the Angels for good.” I sigh at the thought of how good it would feel to know they were behind us. To know that they couldn’t hurt anyone else.
“I keep thinking about what dad would do in my position. I know that he would do everything that he could that would make anything better,” I say. “I can’t give up yet, Mom.” I shift slightly in my seat to look at her. “I’ve been angry at you for so long, for giving up when dad left,” I admit, and I wonder if I’m only imagining the movement of her hand when I mention my father. “I still am.”
I search my mother’s face for some kind of signal that she’s listening to what I’m saying, or at least registering it in some way. But her expression remains blank. Regardless, I continue—now that I’ve opened the floodgates, there’s no stopping everything that I have to say to her from coming out.
“It’s been so hard doing all of this without you,” I tell her. “There has been so much that I’ve wanted to talk to you about, to share with you. But you weren’t here. Not really,” I say, motioning towards her semi-present state.
“I know that I should have come and visited you earlier. I know that I haven’t been the best daughter since all this started. But it’s been hard.” I feel the tears coming to my eyes as I come to terms with the reality of how much I’ve missed having my mother to help me. For all intents and purposes, I’ve been on my own—with a dead father and a mother that wasn’t much use to anyone. I feel guilty blaming her for the way that she’s had to cope with the passing of my dad. But at the same time, I can’t stop myself from feeling that way. I can’t just turn it off. “I’ve needed you in so many ways, for such a long time,” I tell her, my voice threatening to break. “But you weren’t here.” I trail off, not knowing
what was left to say.
We sit in silence as the seconds stretch out into minutes and the minutes stretch out into the night. After a while, I become aware of a pressure on my hand and I look down to see that my mother is squeezing it. There’s no mistaking it. I look up into her face and she’s staring at me like she’s struggling to say something. Struggling to make herself heard or understood.
“Is there something you’re trying to tell me, momma?” I ask, searching her face.
“So… so… sorry,” she says eventually, straining to get the words out. She stutters, as if the formation of the words themselves are foreign to her. I notice that she sounds a little less cracked, as if she’s been speaking more recently, exercising her vocal chords. Her expression is stricken as she says the words, but in the space of a split-second her face goes back to the mask of confusion that’s been her standard countenance in recent years.
Hearts of Winter (Bleeding Angels MC Book 2) Page 7