by Liz Crowe
His mother got to her feet and glared at her husband down the length of table, their family silent between them.
“Anton.” Her voice remained calm. “Do you have something you wish to say?”
Dom glanced at her then at his father. The man practically quivered with rage. Frankly, Dom had never seen him this worked up. He attempted to deflect his own extreme terror at the confrontation with a fake-casual stance, reared back, one leg over the other, ankle to knee.
The tension shimmering in the air rivaled anything the family had experienced, and Dom silently acknowledged that implied something pretty significant.
“As a matter of fact, Lindsay, I do.” Anton’s voice matched his wife’s—calm, cool, collected—which scared Dominic more than any ranting and raving. Anton opened the box and started pulling out clothing, laying them on the table in untidy clumps. “I found these in the abandoned apartment over the old brewery. I’m having the place cleaned and fumigated. Gotta find a new renter.”
Dom’s clothes kept piling up in the middle of the table. By the time his father had emptied the box, the pile of denim, flannel and cotton was so high he couldn’t see Anton, Margot or Kieren anymore. A pair of boxer briefs fell off the pile onto the patio.
“A new renter.” Lindsay’s voice was distorted through clenched teeth, still glaring down the table. “Cleaned and fumigated.”
“Well, yeah, I mean, since your son took off and left all this stuff….” Anton shrugged. “Also decided not to show up to work for the last week. I figure…well, I figure on finding another brewer and tenant.”
Dom blinked, trying to square the strange, surreal conversation with how he’d thought the confrontation might go. Aiden cleared his throat. Rosie rose and started clearing Dom’s laundry off the table in silence.
“Don’t touch that.” Anton’s voice dropped even lower than its usual timbre. Aiden put his hand on top of the pile of clothes. “Don’t get in the middle of this, Little A. I mean it.”
“Daddy, this is pretty silly, don’tcha think?” Aiden spoke slowly.
“No, I don’t.” Anton met his wife’s gaze. “I have another announcement.” He bent down and picked up a box labeled Love Brewing Whiskey Batch #1.
Dom clenched his jaw. “You can’t,” he blurted out. “It’s not any good.”
Anton pulled out a bottle and held it up to the afternoon sunlight. “This will be our new focus for the fall.” He plunked the bottle on the table, making a point not to look at Dom. “I already have the marketing gal working up press releases and the graphics kid making labels.”
“You can’t do that,” Dom repeated. But the words sounded like they came from someone else’s mouth. Dizziness, like he’d been on bender but without the bonus of actual drinking washed through him. His mother touched his arm, but he shook her off without thinking. In the time it took for him to blink, his father had him out of his chair and pressed up against the sliding-glass door, a huge, dark-skinned forearm pressed against his windpipe.
“I get to do whatever…” He pressed harder with every word, his spit peppering Dominic’s fevered skin. “I fucking well please. And you will not ever, ever disrespect your mother like that.”
His brothers were arrayed around Dom’s peripheral vision, tugging and making noises he barely heard. Dom didn’t protest or even move. He welcomed it. He wanted the last thing he ever saw to be his father’s dark, furious eyes. The world went gray at the edges. His mother’s terrified scream, calling his father’s name, echoed through his rapidly darkening brain. His vision registered her scratching at Anton’s arms and shoulders. But his father never wavered, not once.
Do it, he thought. You’ve been wanting to for years. He sucked in the last remaining bit of air he could find, forcing his arms to go limp, not to defend himself, even though his fight instinct had kicked in hard.
A strange vision appeared to him then, even as the yelling and screaming faded. A small boy with golden-blond hair ran across the yard, clutching a balloon and a water gun. He laughed, but Dominic couldn’t hear it. A woman scooped him up, kissed his cheek, then set him down so he could run again.
The pressure on his throat increased, but Dom barely felt it. The boy in his vision whirled and looked straight at him and he knew, in that split second, it was his son, the one he’d let go when he’d allowed Gina to run off to New York and out of his life. Just as he welcomed the encroaching darkness, he stumbled forward, dropping onto the patio concrete.
The air rushed into his lungs fast, so fast it hurt. His throat ached like someone had whacked him in the throat with a baseball bat. Something pounded his side. The something came at him again, like a bull goring him over and over. He groaned and tried to escape the animal attacking him. He sucked in more air, trying to blink away tears of pain clouding his vision.
“You are not my son, do you hear me?” His father loomed over him, blotting out the sun and sky. “Get the fuck off my property.”
Dom rolled over onto his hands and knees onto the grass between the patio and the pool deck. People clutched at him, trying to pull him up, but visions of the boy suffused his brain again. The kid regarded him with those eerie, dark-brown eyes, accusing him. Dom focused on it as he crawled from the scrum of brothers, sister, sisters-in-law, his mother…oh, God, his mother.
He leapt up, then dropped to one knee when the earth buckled beneath him. “Mama,” he croaked out, reaching for whichever brother was closest. “Get Mama for me.” He managed to get to his feet with Kieran’s help. “I’ll be in the driveway.” He half-ran, half-stumbled, forcing the kid out of his brain.
By the time his mother appeared, he had his breathing almost back to normal and sat on the bike, head bowed to the increasing late-summer heat. The empty sensation in his chest had expanded and filled his body, suffusing his limbs with lethargy. He wanted to go to sleep for days, maybe weeks.
Lindsay put a cool palm on his arm. Her arm draped over his shoulders and her lips touched his temple while she ran her fingers ran through his hair. He leaned into her, but tried to remain free and clear of anything resembling emotion.
“I…I’m not….”
“Shush, honey. Not now. I have to figure out what I’m gonna do with your daddy.”
He raised his head. “Don’t kick him out on my account.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. Dom swiped at them, desperate to make her happy, terrified she would abandon him.
“I’ll bring your things. Kieran says he found you out at the Brantley’s.” She smiled at him. “I always did like that girl. The younger one. You know.”
He averted his gaze. “Yeah, Mama, I know.”
She yanked his chin to force him to face her, her jaw set in a very familiar way. “You are somebody special, Dominic Sean.” Her grip tightened. “Don’t ever forget that. I don’t know that I understand why, or what, or….” She dropped her hand, looking helpless, as if she no longer knew him. His heart sank at how very old she seemed right then.
“I love you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“You have no reason to be sorry.”
He shook his head and glanced behind her at his brothers, standing shoulder to shoulder a few feet away. The extreme urge to escape stabbed him square in the gut. She held out a bag and he stared at it, confused for a moment.
“Please take your medicine. You know good and well you require it.”
He nodded and took the bag. The moment felt final in a way that hurt worse than anything his father had done to him. He tried to smile.
“Let me know if he decides I’m back in his will.”
Lindsay sucked in a breath.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” he repeated. “Don’t cry anymore. Please.”
Kieran appeared at her shoulder. “Go on. He’ll calm down. I’m sure of it.”
When his mother slumped against Kieran’s side, Dom leapt off his bike, determined to pound his father so hard the entire goddamn Amatore family would feel it in the old coun
try. He got as far as the crest of the grassy hill where the pool deck had been installed when Antony stepped in front of him.
“Get the fuck out of my way.”
“It isn’t the place,” his oldest and much-bigger brother insisted. “Not now.”
“You don’t get to decide anything about this.”
“No, but you do.”
Dom stared into Antony’s face, so like their father’s. He cursed and squared his shoulders.
Fuck this. Fuck my father. I don’t require the Love family’s approval for anything. I never have.
He shoved his way past the wall of Aiden and Kieran, jumped on his bike, and peeled out onto Hunter Street. The wind whipped his hair, the sun beat on his shoulders, and his mind went completely, alarmingly blank.
Chapter Five
Diana focused on the flashing silver of her knife, concentrating on chopping the rest of the tomatoes and not her fingers. The kitchen smelled like the inside of a salsa bowl already. Piles of bright cilantro, rich tomatoes, nasal passage-clearing jalapeno and poblano peppers lay along the stainless steel counter to her left. Odors of grilling meat floated through the open windows. The rest of the ingredients for her mama’s recipe chicken salad sat in one of the many huge metal bowls to her right.
She paused and wiped her forehead with her wrist. Thanks to getting distracted by Dominic’s reappearance in her life, she’d gotten behind on pretty much everything. Jen was due out any second to pick up the salsa and she hadn’t even touched the stack of cukes—their secret ingredient that gave Brantley’s salsa a rich, gazpacho edge. It didn’t take much, but the quantities she dealt with meant not much translated to a dozen cucumbers’ worth of work.
Jen’s catering van horn honked so loud Diana jumped and cursed, nearly skewering her hand. She noted the mild tremors she’d been experiencing since Kieran had dragged Dom out for the Big Family Confrontation had graduated to full-on shakes.
Leaning on the counter, she watched while Jen unloaded the two plastic containers for the salsa, and the smaller, metal one for the chicken salad. The dogs ran out to her, barking their usual enthusiastic welcome. Jen plodded through the canine scrum, headed for the porch. Diana winced when her sister frowned at the grills loaded with half-cooked meat.
Unable to pick up the knife again, Diana cursed Dominic Love for the zillionth time in her life.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jen shoved her out of the way and started scooping the massive pile of chopped tomatoes into the mixing bowl. Frozen in place but still shaking, Diana decided to sit before she fell down.
Fucking Dominic.
Her sister started on the cucumbers in silence, making short work of them. After dumping the final ingredient into the massive bowl, she grabbed one of the oversize mixing spatulas and began folding everything together. “Get that chicken done,” she demanded in a tight, trying-not-to-yell voice. “Hurry up. Please.”
Diana got to her feet and slouched outside. Visions of Dominic wouldn’t leave her in peace. His hair, that wild ink she’d seen when he’d mesmerized her washing the dogs in his nothing but his worn blue jeans, his lips when he smiled or laughed—it had to be her ultimate curse that she’d never get over him.
The raging rat bastard.
She stomped down the wood steps and started flinging the chicken thighs and breasts around on the grill’s surface. The heat stung her skin, distracting her for a while, until yet another memory came at her—a smoker, the venison she’d prepped, Dom sitting and drinking an illicit beer in the shadows the morning after her own sister had lured him into bed.
“Get the hell out of my head,” she muttered, stabbing a breast all the way through and snagging the tongs on the grate.
“Give me that.” Jen reached across her. “I told you having him here was a bad—”
“You know what?” Diana whirled, brandishing the greasy, sharp utensil like a sword. “You don’t get to tell me what to do relative to him. I’m pretty sure we established that a while ago.”
Jen sighed and crossed her arms over her giant, pregnant belly. “Can we please not go there again?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Diana knew how sullen she sounded as she tried to focus on the task. “Bring me the pan.”
Jen disappeared then returned with a large stainless tray. She dropped it on the stand next to the grill. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“What? Again? Third time’s the charm, I’d say. Oh, wait, is the fourth?” Diana plopped the thighs into the pan and flipped the breasts over. She blamed the smoke billowing up at her for the way her vision clouded over.
The Dominic Topic had been forbidden between them for a good long while. By the time he’d taken his second powder and bolted after graduation only to be found drugged up and sexed out in his teachers’ backyard Airstream, Diana had lifted the moratorium, mainly because Jen was the only human she could stand after that.
“Okay, those are done. Dump ‘em in here. We’ve gotta get the salad done. I have customers waiting.”
Diana closed up the grill and followed her sister into the kitchen. They worked side by side in silence, which calmed her racing pulse. The minimal amount of conversation required between them soothed by its predictability. She chopped the chicken while Jen sliced grapes, celery and pecans. Diana mixed up the yogurt and honey dressing they used in lieu of mayo and dumped it into the mix, strong-arming the giant wooden spoon to blend everything.
“All right, done.” She raised both arms. “I’m beat.”
“I’m bringing the contractor out later,” Jen said as she loaded the salad into the large tray. “Can you make sure Mr. Love’s not still hobo-camped up the hay mow?”
“I am not making Daddy’s barn into some kind of hipster banquet hall, Jennifer. I already told you that.” Diana slumped over the cup of coffee Dom had left on the table, exhausted in body and mind, worried sick about what might be happening at the Love house.
Jen slammed the chicken salad container down so hard the oldest dog lazing by the door leapt to his feet and barked.
Diana put her head down on her arms. “I’m not in the mood to fight about it. The horse is lamed up again, the goat needs to be milked, the cow’s about to drop her calf, the sink’s leaking—hey! Cut it out!” She yanked her arm away from her sister’s hard pinch.
Jen’s eyes, a shade lighter blue than her own, were hard. Her jaw set. “I’m about five seconds from finally having this baby.” She rested a palm her stomach. “I’ve got a three-year-old home screaming her fool head off and a husband who’s decided that now is a great time to expand our business.” Diana stood up and went to her, noting the tears slipping down her sister’s alarmingly red cheeks.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I know y’all are just trying to….” She patted Jen’s shoulder, letting her sister cry it out.
“Not you all. We.” Jen stepped away and swiped at her tear-stained face. “You and me, Diana, remember? This is ours.” She stamped her foot on the floorboards. “This house, and farm, and the Brantley name. We built ourselves out of nothing. Remember all that nothing Daddy left for us? Those stupid tobacco contracts he never signed? All those dang credit cards?” She winced and rubbed the small of her back, and Diana instantly felt like ten loads of shit for whining. Nobody worked harder than Jen and her husband, Dale. Hell, they all worked like dogs, but the Brantley reputation for top-quality meats and cheese had grown by leaps and bounds in some pretty rarified restaurant circles, not to mention Jen’s white-hot catering business and small deli.
“I know.” She kissed Jen’s flushed cheek. “Calm down. I can’t have you popping that brat out on my kitchen table or something equally gross.” She fell into her chair, exhaustion flooding her nerves once more. “I just don’t want to do the banquet-hall thing. It doesn’t make any sense. We’re way too far out in the boonies. All those rich ladies won’t wanna trek out here for their club lunches or daughter’s weddings. Besides, where am I gonna put my horse? And th
e goats that give the milk that make the expensive Brantley cheese? Where do they get to live?”
Jen picked up the chicken salad container. “I have to get this into the fridge. Can you?” She elbow-pointed to the vats of salsa.
After getting everything loaded, Jen slammed the catering van doors and turned, a familiar, infuriatingly patient gleam in her eyes. “Dale’s building you a new barn, bigger, just farther back yonder.” She pointed toward the rear of their property. “For production and with a paddock for your stupid horse.” She grabbed Diana’s shoulders. “We talked about this, remember? Dang it, Di, that man’s got you more addled than our Aunt Betsy. I hate him. I swear it. I hope he stays away this time.”
Diana stared down at her feet, encased in their work-worn cowboy boots. She wore them every day, even on a hot day like this one when she’d pulled on a tank top and jeans shorts, they were that broken-in and comfortable. Resentment bubbled up in her chest, but she held her tongue.
If it weren’t for “Brantley’s” and her crucial place in its small hierarchy, she’d have nothing, no job, and no real hope for one. She’d dropped out of college after three-and-a-half semesters of hard partying and class-skipping, and slunk home to wait tables at the Love Pub like she’d done in high school. By the time their parents had been killed in a car accident, her sister had married Dale and was already running a successful catering business out of a tiny storefront downtown. She’d snagged Diana to help her and they’d been working together since, even through all Diana’s ex-husband’s lies and thievery of her small inheritance.
“Whatever. I doubt he’s coming back.”
“Good.” Jen gave her a not-so-friendly smack to the face. “Besides, aren’t you going out with….”
“Shush.” Diana held up her hand. “My love life. Not your business. End of discussion. Besides.” She patted her sister’s giant belly. “You have enough to worry about, right?” She winked, to show she’d forgiven Jen the guilt trip, knowing it would be just a matter of time before she got to take another one.