The Second Chance (Inferno Falls Book Three)

by Aubrey Parker

  “Is it true?” he almost shouts.

  I can’t lie. Not now. I’m already so ashamed of my past that I’d cut it off like a gangrenous limb. I keep telling myself I’m a different person today than I used to be, and that new girl has integrity. She won’t live her life as a lie. And besides, I still have a bomb to diffuse. Whatever Tommy didn’t tell Grady, he still might. I have to pop the bubble. The only way to get out of blackmail is by coming clean before someone else can come clean for you.

  “Yes. But Grady — ”

  “Jesus. I was sure he was lying to get under my skin. Or I guess I hoped that, even though I knew deep down it was true. Because that’s how it always was with you, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I guess it’s not. I guess that when the cat’s away, the mouse will play. I just had no idea, based on some other stuff Tommy said that sounded too far-fetched, that you’d ‘played’ so hard.”

  My patience breaks. So does my heart. I can’t take any more pressure, from any end. I feel trapped. Trapped by Tommy, trapped by Grady, trapped all my damned life by my well-meaning but overbearing parents. Trapped by my daughter, even as much as I love her. Trapped by judgments of who I am and who I can’t help being. Trapped by lost affection and vanished hopes. And most of all, trapped by myself — the one who condemned me most of all.

  “You left me! You left me all alone!”

  “Did you go back to Tommy? Get seconds and thirds?”

  “No! And it’s none of your fucking business what I did, Grady! You didn’t stick around! You forfeited any right you might have had to judge me when you ran away like a coward!”

  He’s stirring in the truck bed, shifting, his body language half-crushed, half-righteous. I’m all anger, though I feel tears on my cheeks. How dare he. How dare he judge me.

  “That justifies it, doesn’t it? You broke us up. You slept with Tommy. You got knocked up, and when you came to me, I was just supposed to take it all in stride. ‘Sure, Maya, I’ll raise some asshole’s kid; no problem at all! Hell, I’ll do it just to keep you from the inevitable next step of sucking every fucking cock in town!’”

  “Fuck you!” There’s a beer can within reach now, and I wing it hard at him. The thing is empty and aluminum, so it does nothing, glancing off Grady’s arm and flying to the blacktop beyond. “Fuck you if you think you deserve an opinion! Do you know how hard it was for me? Were you inside my head? Do you even think I enjoyed it?”

  “Getting fucked? You enjoyed it plenty, if I remember right.”

  This time, I reach for a round can, not crushed. It’s full, as I’d hoped. And when I throw this one, Grady barely gets out of the way. It strikes the rear window of his truck, making a huge spiderweb on the glass. The can pops at the seams and hisses like a snake.

  “You left me! For ten goddamned years, you left me alone! It was how I dealt! I’m not proud of it! If I could take it all back, I would! But fuck you, Grady, if you want to polish your halo and act like a saint. Whether it was your kid or not, you told me you’d be there forever! Then you left when I needed you most!”

  Grady hops out of the truck bed and fumbles with his door. He’s far too drunk to drive, but it looks like he’s planning to anyway.

  “Don’t you run away from me again!”

  He turns to me. Slightly quieter, he says, “You’re right. I ran away. But what you did next was your choice.”

  I’m still furious, but now I can barely see through the tears. I can feel them dripping off my cheeks, pattering my arms as I rage. I approach Grady, grab him by the shoulders, and push him back against the truck. With nothing left to lose, I tell him everything, leaving nothing out. Years of dirt. My guilt, my compulsion, my willingness to always do it again if I could, for a moment, forget life and feel craved for a change. I tell him about Chadd, about the way he harassed me, about Tommy, about his offer and his threat.

  I didn’t have a choice, and fuck Grady if he thinks I did. Maybe I had problems early on. But I’m trying to change, and since he’s been back I feel my old self on the surface. Right now, what hurts most is that I can feel that new, better girl sliding back down the slippery slope. If he leaves me now, I’ll never get her back. That girl deserves a shot. She deserves the chance at love she missed out on before because regrets shouldn’t be forever, on either side.

  I finish, sobbing. I’m gripping his shirt, dragged down with ten tons of sadness. I wish I could erase the past as much as he wished last night to erase his. But the difference between us is telling: I forgave Grady. And watching his face now, I don’t know that he’ll ever forgive me.

  “There was no way out, Grady!” I say, hearing the plea in my voice. “But in the end, I knew I’d rather tell you everything than do any of what he wanted and be away from you. In the end, I made the right choice!”

  He watches me for several long seconds.

  Then he gets into the truck, starts the engine, and pulls away.

  I can only collapse into the cone of light, yelling after the departing truck, saying his name and sobbing that I love him.

  CHAPTER 37

  Maya

  The night is endless.

  I don’t sleep. Or maybe I sleep in fits and starts but never notice the lulls between periods of abject wakefulness. Eventually, I give up trying and move to the couch. I’m sure I cry because my box of Kleenex diminishes by half, and the floor between our miniature couch and coffee table becomes a sea of little white balls. I’ve never known this depth of despair. Even when I was seventeen, I felt more hope than this — maybe because I was a kid, and kids feel that they’ll live forever. Now I’m older, and my daughter’s almost ten. I’ve had my chance at young love, and my first shot at a family.

  Those were hard things to lose, but they’re nothing compared to this. Today, I feel mortal. Today, I’m aware that my twenties are almost gone, and I feel fifty or older. I’ve now had two shots and a pair of failures. That’s so much worse. It tells me there’s precedent for future defeats. It tells me that as hard as it used to be for me to believe anyone could love me for longer than a quickie, it’s now flat-out impossible to believe the same. I’d thought Grady was turned around. I thought he was coming home. But now I can only see the dead-end new starts I’d need to make, as a single mother, to be loved again. With all my baggage, I can’t see how it’d ever be possible.

  That will only get worse as Tommy continues his revenge. He was thwarted by me, meaning he’ll lose his business deal and take a hit to his pride. He was thwarted by Grady, who sold his house to someone else. With nothing to lose, I imagine Tommy will explode like an atomic bomb. Unless I want to prostitute myself to quiet him — something I doubt would work anyway, though I’m sure he’d be happy to take what he wanted — he’ll blab from one end of the town to the other about me.

  My parents will know all I’ve done.

  Mackenzie will know all I’ve done.

  Her friends will know. My friends will know. I’ll be the Jezebel for as long as I live in Inferno. I’ll never get another job, and my boss will feel emboldened to harass me harder. My parents will try to understand, but they won’t, and the church will practically shun them. Every man who might appeal to me will come eagerly rubbing his hands. I won’t ever be able to change, as badly as I want to. Forget about climbing out of my hole. This just digs the pit deeper.

  I cry. And I cry. And I cry.

  In the middle of the night, after I’ve turned the TV on low to distract me, Mackenzie comes in to see me. I try to clean my face, surely failing, and tell her that everything’s fine. She asks me if I like Mr. Grady, and then if something bad happened. I’m too weak to lie, so I tell her yes, then yes again. I manage not to break down and cry on her shoulder, though I swear she wants me to. This is how Mac is: She’ll hold me when I’m blue and tell me that everything will be fine. It feels good to have someone trust me, as untrustworthy as I am. But it’s not fair to make my little girl shoulder my burdens.r />
  I send her back to bed with a plastic smile, promising that morning light solves everything. I tell her that maybe we can go roller-skating — just not the park, I think, never the park again. And soon she goes back to bed, and I mute the TV, content to watch other people’s lives unfold in silence.

  In the morning, there’s a knock on my door. It’s Grady’s friend Joe.

  “I tried to call you,” he says, his face long and morose, as if he knows exactly what happened.

  I slip my phone from my pajama pocket. It’s dead.

  “Did Grady send you?”

  “Just come with me. Can you come with me?”

  I ask Joe to come in. Mackenzie is almost ready for school, and it’ll just be five minutes. The carpool will be here soon. Mothers like me can’t always manage to drive our kids where they need to be because we don’t have our shit together. Good thing someone is there to pick up the slack.

  Five minutes later, we’re in Joe’s truck. He won’t tell me why he’s here. There’s a bubble light between the seats, and on impulse I pick it up and turn it on. Joe looks like he might mean to chastise me — the light is for fire calls only — but then he seems to take pity. I don’t like the look.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My place.”

  “Why?”

  “Grady took off last night, Maya. Do you know why?”

  I don’t want to say, but I don’t want to evade, either. I keep it simple: “We had a fight.” Then, hating myself for asking: “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know. On his way to Alaska, I assume. He got in his truck. He had all his gear.” He looks at me. “Except for one thing.”

  I look over.

  “His cat, Maya. He wanted me to give you his cat.”

  I feel deflated. What did I think, this was a love call? Joe’s face said different, and his manner said the rest. I don’t know Joe well, but I know he’s the opposite of Tommy. Just as handsome. Just as desired in town. But kind. Compassionate. Heroic, even, given his position at the fire department. I’ll bet Grady told him how messed up I was when he left the cat. And when we get there, away from my little cave of isolation, I’ll bet he tries to cheer me up. I know dozens of women who’d covet me now, but it’s me who envies them. I’m too beaten to want Joe. I’m too beaten to want anyone, again, ever.

  “I don’t want a cat.”

  “It’ll be good for you. Give you some company.”

  “I have my daughter.”

  He looks over again, handling me like something fragile.

  “Grady said she got along with the cat better than he did. He said … ” Joe sighs. “He said it was the least he could do.”

  And in that moment, I see it all. I know what Joe knows and feels. I can imagine what Grady felt. The revelation makes me so sad. I don’t think any of us were precisely angry. We all just gave up. What this could have been, it simply wouldn’t work. I’m not who Grady spent all those years remembering. I’m different. Someone he probably sincerely wishes he could be with, but just can’t.

  He said it was the least he could do.

  He’s not handing the cat over because the cat is a burden. He’s doing it because Mackenzie wants it. Because it will make her happy, just like how he probably wishes he could have made her happy, if he’d been able to stay. If I hadn’t changed the game, and driven him to leave.

  He’s going away again. And again, I sent him running.

  I start to cry. Joe says nothing. He simply reaches into the truck’s console and pulls out a pack of tissues. I quietly sob the rest of the way.

  When we arrive, I see Carl the cat wandering the apartment, his food and dishes neatly packed and ready for me to take back when I’m ready — at which point, when he decides I’m fit to be alone, Joe will take me home. There are layers of pitiful, being comforted by a male friend of my ex’s is topmost among them.

  I have friends. But not the friends I need for something like this.

  Despite feeling pathetic, I slide onto Joe’s couch without protest. Carl comes up and sits beside me, his eyes assessing. I watch him back, and finally he crawls onto my lap, curls up, and goes to sleep.

  There’s a knock on the door, and I feel a sense of nesting. Joe came to me, and now someone is coming to Joe. The world feels so surreal, I can almost believe it: We’ll go from place to place, summoned somewhere new every hour or so. It makes as much sense as anything.

  I look up and see that the door, where the visitor knocked, is spattered with tiny red circles. Grady’s in the doorway, his knuckles lacerated and red. His face a mess.

  Joe looks shocked to see him, but instead of even glancing in Joe’s direction, he looks right at me as if it makes all the sense in the world that I’m here.

  “What did you do?” I ask.

  “What I had to,” he says, “to protect you.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Maya

  I suppose it’s bohemian for a man to defend my honor with his fists. And I suppose someone more enlightened than me might have a problem with it. A truly evolved woman might have wanted Grady to find a solution that involved talking and planning rather than violence. Or really, if I was truly empowered, I’d have solved the problem myself without male help. Maybe I’d have gone to Tommy. I’d have made him a deal that didn’t evolve debasing myself. Or I’d have embraced my past, turning the word slut into something worth cheering.

  If that’s what an evolved woman would do, I guess I’m not very evolved.

  Grady simply beat Tommy into silence. I saw him on the street a few days later, and when I did, Grady’s bandaged hand was holding mine. He broke two of the little bones in his hand, but Tommy broke many in his face and ribs. After Tommy was gone, not so much as daring to look in our direction, Grady said it was a fair trade.

  Your injured hand for his injured face?

  No, he told me. My injured hand for ten years of doing the wrong thing.

  I don’t know if Tommy will keep his mouth shut forever. With Grady by my side, I don’t know that I care. It matters to me what my friends think, but after a few weeks I realize I’m worth more to them than what I ever did behind closed doors. The same is true of my parents, who would be hurt but would surely recover. I never, ever want Tommy’s blabbing to reach Mackenzie, but even if it did, there are lessons there for my daughter to learn:

  Take responsibility for your actions.

  Don’t let anyone else tell you who you are, or what you deserve.

  And never doubt the people who love you.

  Grady was never leaving. He told me that the next day while we sat in the emergency room. I held his hand like a prize, shamefully certain that taking pleasure in something so caveman was wrong in a thousand different ways. Temporarily homeless, knowing he couldn’t go back to my parents’ given how we left things, he needed to leave Carl somewhere before going where he needed to go. Joe is an upstanding young man, and would have tried to stop him. But Grady wasn’t feeling like an upstanding young man.

  Maybe Tommy will decide to blow my whistle. Let him. Grady’s faith in me will never waver, nor will my faith in him. The next time I’m feeling alone, the emotion won’t last. Because now I have Grady. Now we both have Grady. And now he has us.

  I don’t understand what Brandon did when he bought Ernie’s house, but two weeks later I got a check from the escrow company for five thousand dollars. I wanted to give it back, but Brandon told me there were no refunds or exchanges. If I was a consultant on the deal and needed to be paid out of escrow, there was nothing he could do. The law was the law, and there were no takebacks.

  I’m pretty sure it’s a lie. But Mom and Dad asked to take Mackenzie for a week at the same time as a travel agent called and told me that Brandon had sent her. Who was I to argue? Hawaii and Alaska were the only two states left on Grady’s list, and Hawaii sounded so much nicer.

  Turns out, the auction for Ernie’s stuff — separate from the transaction that snatched the house and lan
d from Tommy and gave it to Brandon and possibly Life of Riley — was far more interesting than anyone saw coming. Ernie hoarded crap, but he also seemed to have hoarded some rather valuable antiques. When we returned from Hawaii, tanned and happy, another check was waiting. Most of it went to repay Brandon. But he keeps telling us not to worry. He’s holding an asset — something that someday, he’ll help us sell.

  Besides, he told Grady, it’d be great if we’d stop being so fucking proud and just accept the help of friends. “I have more money than I know what to do with anyway,” he told Grady. And even though that might have been an intolerable boast to the man Grady used to be, the man I’m in love with is changing, too.

  We kept the stupid cat. It loves Mackenzie, thinks Grady and I are a couple of idiots.

  My little house is too small for three, though, and even before Grady’s bandages came off we were dreaming about something bigger. But probably not here. My days at the Nosh Pit are numbered, by Roxanne’s decree if not by my own. Grady doesn’t want a job. I’ve never left town, and Grady still has Alaska in his blood. Travel would mean taking Mackenzie out of school. But what the hell. We’re young, she’s smart, and she’ll learn plenty before we crack a single homeschooling book.

  By the time we found the auction check in my mailbox, we’d hatched our plan day and night — on the beach, in our little condo in Hawaii, in twenty or more open-air restaurants. We’ll need jobs because we have a debt to repay no matter what Brandon says. But Grady, who’s used to living on the road, has ideas for that, too.

  When we get inside and settle, Grady picks up the phone to call Brandon. He’ll tell him our idea. He’ll arrange a plan to settle our debt. He’ll generally relay good news, because Brandon and Grady have always been close. I can’t hear Grady because I’m in the other room, but I’m sure the conversation will meander from there. And when there’s time, I have questions I’d like answered.