HORIZON MC

by Clara Kendrick

  Haley’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know you have a twin.”

  “That’s the thing, sweetheart. I don’t. Not anymore.”

  I hadn’t liked any of Chelsea’s boyfriends because they were lowlifes. They weren’t good enough for her, and that was made glaringly clear to me time and time again. Honestly, I was hard on them all because I just felt protective for my sister. She was my best friend. I cared about her. I would do anything for her, and I hated to see guys take advantage of just how kind she was.

  I hadn’t liked Rob Shepard, either, but by that time, Chelsea had been at the end of her rope with me.

  “You can’t just keep doing this, Chuck,” she groused, pacing back and forth, the new boyfriend she’d just introduced to meRobalready ducking outside, making excuses about having somewhere he needed to be within the first few minutes of speaking with me. He was just like the others, to me shifty and rotten and not worth the dirt beneath my sister’s feet.

  “Doing what?” I asked, spreading my hands at her. “All I do is show up. You’re the one who keeps introducing me to loser after loser.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Maybe the problem is me. Maybe I should just stop introducing you to them. Maybe then I’d actually have a chance at a fulfilling relationship.”

  “I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again. Men who can’t keep it together in front of someone wearing a uniform aren’t worth your time. They have something to hide. This guy is like all the other guys who go crawling and skittering and slithering away from you once they see me. You’re better than him. You’re better than all of them.”

  She pushed her hair away from her face, and it stood standing like that, crazed, like I knew I was making her feel.

  “I haven’t resigned myself yet to living the rest of my life alone,” she spat at me. “I’m not going to be like you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re not even trying. You’re still living at home, with Mom and Dad. You’re not even trying to live your life, Chuck.”

  I puffed out my chest at that, indignant and defensive. “I pay rent. I help them out around the house. They’d tell me if they minded that I was still staying there.”

  “No, they wouldn’t. They’re your parents. You’re their baby boy.”

  “Well, they’re your parents, too.” It was a lame comeback, but it was the only thing I could think of and true besides. “And you’re their baby girl. They’d love it if you stayed with them.”

  “They might love it, but I wouldn’t love it.” She folded her arms across her chest.

  “What’s so bad about Mom and Dad? You could save money. You wouldn’t have to worry about keeping up with rent and chores and another job while you’re getting your degree. It’s the smart move to make.”

  “I want to be my own woman,” she said, thumping herself on the chest, angling toward me like she was leaning into the wind. “I want to be independent of them. I want to live my life. I want to help people. I want to find love.”

  I snorted a laugh at her. “You’re looking for love in all the wrong places, girl, if you think that creature that just disappeared from here is going to bring you any happiness.”

  “Well, I’ll never find out now, will I?” She was livid, and I regretted that I was the one who made her feel that way. “You think you’re doing me some kind of favor by shitting on everyone I introduce you to. It makes me fucking miserable, Chuck.”

  “I just want you to be happy, Chelsea.”

  “Look at me. Look at me!” Her eyes were wild, wide, and filled with tears, and her lips trembled in barely contained rage. “Do I look fucking happy to you?”

  “No. You don’t.”

  “A gold star for Chuck. Good job, Chuck. You got that one right.”

  “I worry about the kind of men you attract,” I said, my voice hoarse.

  She cackled. “And what in the fresh hell is that supposed to mean? Is that supposed to make me feel any better?”

  “No. It’s just an observation.”

  “Just an observation. My twin brother is observing my life and deciding I’m a magnet for assholes. What does that make me?”

  “It doesn’t make you anything, Chelsea.” I tried to switch tack. This was the opposite of what I’d wanted to do. “You’re such a good person. You’re so open and giving and I think that there are certain men who try to take advantage of that.”

  “So you’re telling me that you’ll start respecting the guys I’m trying to date if I act more like a bitch,” she scoffed, pressing her hands against her hips. “Unbelievable. Even for you.”

  “I’m just trying to look out for you.”

  “Go look out for someone else. Please. For my sake. Be done with me. I can’t take your torture anymore.”

  “I’m not”

  “Chuck. Seriously. Just go.”

  I was scrambling to find something that would resonate with her, something that would prove to my sister that I was just trying to take care of her.

  “If it’s a matter of money, Chelsea, maybe we could rent a place together,” I said. “That would be fun, right? The two of us living together again. You wouldn’t have to deal with Mom and Dad, if you didn’t want to, and you could save money on rent. I’d even do all the chores, so you could have more time to study.”

  “You’re going to need to explain yourself,” she said, her eyes narrowed. She nearly slapped her own cheek in her haste to wipe a tear away. “Carefully.”

  “I’m trying to say that you don’t have to be with guys you don’t like. You could live with me.”

  Her jaw dropped open before she gritted her teeth together. “I’m leaving now.”

  “Chelsea, I’m just saying”

  “I know what you’re saying,” she said with a vicious slash to the air. “You think I’m just dating to try to get some kind of sugar daddy situation set up in my life. So that I can afford my apartment without having to work as many hours.”

  “Well, are you?” Because how else could she be associating with such jerks? Chelsea was such a beautiful person, inside and out, that there was no reason she should have to tolerate the kinds of fools I met.

  “Have a good life, Chuck,” she said, spinning on her foot and stalking away.

  I’d revisited that evening time and time again, knowing that I was the one who had fucked up, aware of the sneaking suspicion that if I had been better that night, if I had successfully conveyed what I’d wanted to share with my sister, she would’ve still been alive.

  Because even if I had been hard on some of the scumbags she’d introduced to me, Rob Shepard was the real monster, and I’d driven her right into his arms.

  Chelsea cut contact with meand our parents by extensionover the next few weeks. It wasn’t as abruptly as she’d left me after our fight, but it was a steady decline of contact, until even phone calls became something we knew we couldn’t expect. I kept casual tabs on her just because I was helpless not to. I was her twin brother, and a police officer. Plus, in our small town, people would mention to me that they’d seen her all the time, and I could make a rudimentary map and timeline of her movements in my mind. Really, it was more of a surprise that I never ran into her not on my rounds, not at our parents’ house, and not even when I was just out and about, off duty. I knew, though, that it probably just meant she was avoiding me. I missed her, but I knew through the grapevine that she was still going to class, still substitute teaching and tutoring when she could, and still seeing Rob Shepard.

  I made another mistake with that one in a string of many, even if I couldn’t be sure it was toward the beginning of the string or the end. I could’ve searched the name, Rob Shepard, even if it was a reasonably common one. I could’ve run it through the system anyway, just to see what it turned up, and paged through any mugshots I might come across. I’d done it before, when the rare guy had stuck around after our initial meeting. And if I’d come up for a record for them, I in
formed Chelsea and the guys made themselves scarce after that. I usually got yelled at for it, but I didn’t have any regrets.

  Now, though, with the way things were, the extended absence of my twin sister a physical pain, a constant reminder of just how badly I’d screwed up, I resisted the urge to look into her boyfriend of the moment. Doing that could be the first step to being reunited with her. I could wait a while, until this all sort of blew over, then visit her, ask her how she and Rob were doing, assure her, if she asked, that I didn’t misuse department resources to research her love interests. It wasn’t a lot, but it was a start.

  A start and a grave error.

  Because if I would’ve run Rob Shepard’s name and come up with the right records, I would’ve known right away what we were dealing with.

  It was late one nightI’d had nothing better to do than to patrol during the graveyard shift when everything came crashing down. I didn’t mind graveyard shift, even if it was a little lonely. The town was, minus its requisite drunks, fairly peaceful at night, and I thought a lot about all manner of things when I was out in the darkness, alone, ready to be needed for whatever purpose. Up until that night, my biggest law enforcement achievements had been responding to car wrecks.

  But when the dispatcher’s panicked voice over the radio crackled into my reverie, I knew that something serious was happening.

  “Rogers, what end of town are you in?” she demanded, breaking the protocols, all the numbered codes I’d taken such care to memorize and learn how to use.

  “East end,” I said, restarting the engine of the cruiser. “What do you have?”

  “Head west,” she said. “Fast as you can.”

  “I need some specifics, here. What am I looking at? Where, exactly, am I going?”

  “Neighbors reported screaming and shouting, the sounds of things being thrown around, being broken,” the dispatcher said, her breath fast and audible and distracting over the radio. “Sounds like a domestic.”

  Domestic violence could get really ugly. Much of the time, the people actually involved in the incident never called us. It was the neighbors who heard the altercation who got the police in. But once officers arrived, both parties in the incident would often unite against the uniforms, saying that it was a private matter, that they didn’t want the police involved, that they were working things out in their own way.

  Of course, it was usually the husband or boyfriend who was exerting his will over the battered woman, but there was little we could do if she refused to press charges, and even less if she yelled at us to get off their property right alongside the man who’d just been using her as a punching bag physically or verbally.

  “I need an address, here, please,” I said. “The roads are clear. I’m making short work of it.”

  “Rogers…”

  “Do you want me to do my job, or not?” I snapped, irritated and confused. “You called for me. There’s a case going on I need to respond to, and I need the address right now.”

  Then she gave me my sister’s address.

  “Repeat.”

  She gave it to me again, her voice wavering, and I knew this wasn’t just some kind of mistake. I was too shocked, too frightened to think I’d misheard the dispatcher two times in a row. I flicked on the cruiser’s lights and siren, even if there was no need to in the quiet streets, and pushed the gas pedal flush with the floor. Strangely, mundane things cycled through my mind as I pulled into the parking lot of the apartment building how long it had been since I’d visited, how much I had missed my sister, the things I was going to tell her to make sure she was caught up on the gossip.

  I had a fleeting thought, as I slammed out of the cruiser and dashed up the stairs toward Chelsea’s apartment, that this had to be some kind of mistake. The dispatcher had the address wrong, or the neighbors misheard the altercation. It couldn’t be Chelsea’s apartment. She was too self-possessed, too strong to ever fall victim to something like domestic violence. I’d respond to this problem, then I’d go over to Chelsea’s apartment and laugh it off with her. Laugh everything off. Apologize, if that was what she needed me to do to let me back in her life. Promise I wouldn’t intrude again, that I wouldn’t intimidate any of her boyfriends, or look them up. Prove to her that I didn’t know a damn thing about Rob Shepard, the man she’d been attached to recently. Try to wriggle my way back into her life again. Be a better brother for her.

  But the truth was that I knew it was Chelsea’s apartment. The dispatcher didn’t get things wrong. I knew the kinds of guys my sister attracted. I knew this call was for her.

  I just didn’t know how bad it was going to be.

  The door was open, or else I would’ve broken it down without bothering to identify myself as a member of the police department. But when it bounced off the wall and revealed to me what had actually happened, I just snapped. There wasn’t a lowering of a red veil, or a warning that I could do something that I might regret. There was just the door, popping back against the wall, Rob Shepard kneeling over my sister’s shape, red on his fists, the strange, vacant, vulnerable gap between my sister’s lips, parted, slack, the stillness of her chest.

  Then, pain.

  Only pain.

  Forever pain.

  Pain in my heart. In my eyes. In my knuckles. In my stomach.

  Pain I couldn’t explain or understand.

  I knew, much later, that I had entered the apartment and proceeded to beat the shit out of Rob Shepard, who had beat the life out of my sister, who was lying dead on the floor when I made my appearance. I knew through third parties that I’d had to be pulled off Rob Shepard, my fists as red as his, his face as crushed as Chelsea’s, the juxtaposition of the two of us too much for the police department to handle. I was spared criminal charges thanks to my connections in the police department, and Rob Shepard, with his broken face, made the odd choice of not pressing civil charges against me. But I couldn’t remain as an officer. Not with that department. Not with that town.

  We put my sister in the ground and I drifted home, intent on finding out if my parents had survived it from afar. I was without an anchor. Without a purpose. I didn’t have my sister, I didn’t have a job, and my parents didn’t know how to handle this terrible development in our lives.

  It wasn’t their fault.

  It wasn’t.

  At least, that’s what I told myself.

  But when my mother approached me, roughly a month into my funk, it didn’t mean it hurt any less.

  “What are you still doing here?” she demanded.

  I’d been watching terrible daytime television, and that was no excuse. I was well aware that I needed to get on with it, to move away, find some other career that didn’t involve violence and intervening, and serving, and protecting, and I just hadn’t gotten it figured out yet. It was maybe past time for me to figure it out, but I was still here, living with my parents, trying to figure out how I could stay here and keep helping them and not have to do anything else.

  “What do you mean?” I asked my mother, knowing damn well what she meant. Knowing and wanting it for myself. Hating it all the same.

  “I mean, why are you still here?” my mother asked. “I gave birth to two of you. One of you died. Why are you still here when she’s not?”

  The question made me choke on my breath because it had been a question I’d craved an answer for. But at the same time, it hurt me, coming from my mother, that she expected me dead alongside my sister. Except maybe I wanted to be. Maybe it felt unnatural to be alive when my twin wasn’t. Maybe my mother wasn’t just spouting nonsense.

  “I did the best I could, Mom,” I told her, not even believing myself.

  “Bullshit,” she said, her tone lacking heat. “She was your sister, and you should’ve tried harder.”

  “I know. I know I should’ve. I should’ve figured this out before it happened.” I should’ve discarded my sister’s wishes and run Rob Shepard through the system. There would’ve been some clu
e, some red flag that would’ve alerted me to the situation on time. If I hadn’t pissed Chelsea off so badly in the first place, then maybe she could’ve trusted me enough to tell me something bad was going on in her relationship.

  “Yes. Yes, you should have.” My mother turned around and walked away, and that was the last thing she said to me. We just didn’t talk anymore. She couldn’t stand to look at me and know that the other child who had shared her womb was gone. And I couldn’t stand to look at her because I hadn’t protected my sister like I should have.

  It became clear to me that I couldn’t stay in my hometown. My parents’ home held too many memories, and there weren’t any opportunities for me to make a living in a place where I had lost everything. So I struck out blindly, spending weeks on the road, only to end up just an hour away in Rio Seco.

  There was solace to be had in Rio Seco. Friends. A new career, working with my hands as a mechanic. The beginning of finding my way back.

  And Haley.

  Love.

  Chapter 7

  Haley was silent for a long time, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake in telling her everything, in revealing that much about myself. It was a lot to take in, and I was sure she was second guessing her own decision to encourage me to be open with her. No one wanted to hear that the partner in their relationship had a fucked-up family life. That just meant there was a bigger chance of them being fucked up themselves. I felt like curling up and dying myself, the longer the silence between Haley and I stretched on. I wished she would just go ahead and comment, whatever it was that she was going to say. Even breaking things off right then would be a greater mercy than this quiet.

  “The end,” I rasped out, trying to be helpful.

  She responded by squeezing my hand in hers. “It’s not the end, obviously. You’re still here, and you’re still living with it.”

  I nodded. That was true. “It never really goes away. You’re right. It’s something that stays with me. I think about Chelsea a lot. Miss her, to this day.”

  “How long has it been?”