The woman stopped a couple of steps from the men, her gray eyes locked tight and hard on Bean.
“Judge Royy Bean...I presume? Royy Bean, II?”
She held out a hand but Bean let it hang.
“This is who, Mariana?”
The woman’s eyes flashed, tightened. Her hand dropped. “What’d you say?”
Our daughter, Jeremiah. This is—
“Angela,” the woman said. “You’re my daddy...and I’ve been waiting a long time.” She snorted. “A really long time.”
She reached behind her, came up with a .45, and fired. The bullet felt like a boxer’s homicidal blow to his chest.
36
Digger fell away from the shot. Bean had the notion of Digger peeling away from him and Angela like the side of a building peeling away after an explosion, or a jumper falling forward off a high bridge to steel-hard water twenty stories below.
Bean hit the ground hard and massive pain—thudding and dull rather than sharp and piercing—stomped his chest. A crack of pain, like a cattle prod to his mouth, rocked him when his teeth slammed down on the tip of his tongue.
“Owwww...” Bean stared at a blank sky.
Angela gaped and waved the gun. “What the fuck? Why ain’t you dead?” She was incredulous. “You should be dead. Everybody else died. One shot. Maybe two. Why ain’t you dead?”
“Who the fuck are you?” Digger shouted. He scrabbled madly, trying to yank his pistol from his waistband, but the hammer caught on his shirt. He grabbed the butt with both hands and wrestled with it. Eventually, tearing his shirt, he managed to get it out and up. His eyes were full of the expectation of death.
She’s going to shoot him, too, Bean thought. She’s here to kill us all.
Angela jerked her .45 toward Digger, froze him. “We could both shoot. Both be dead.” She shrugged. “But then we’ll never know.”
“Know what?” Digger said.
“Anything...everything.” Her gray eyes were dull in the morning sun, hair dirty hair, brown and limp, hanging dead over her shoulders. “I’ll probably know just ’cause I’m personal friends with Him. He tells me everything.”
“Him...who?” Digger asked.
Bean tried to sit up, but he couldn’t center himself beneath the pain. His stomach rolled, then lurched. Hot vomit sprayed across the ground.
She’s wrong, Mariana, I am dying. She killed me. I’m going to see you in a few minutes. It’s been so long. Can I still hold your hand? Can we still walk in the early morning sun and smell the flowers blooming on the air? Can I still buy you a hot fudge sundae? God, I’ve missed you so much...so very much.
“God,” Angela said.
Where the hell was the blood? Shouldn’t he be bleeding? Don’t people bleed when they get shot in the chest by a .45?
Digger frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Shut up.” Angela’s face blazed. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
“Because I gave you away,” Bean said, his voice a choked cough.
She jerked her gaze toward him. “What? What did you say?”
“You’ll kill us because I gave you away.”
She sneered, turning her tattooed mustache into a twisted thing. “Gave me away twice. And I’ll kill you—and everyone you know—because it’s Thursday. Or because it’s eighty degrees. Or because I’ve got webbed toes. I don’t need a fucking reason.”
“It’s Friday,” Digger said.
She screeched and blasted two rounds into the ground at Digger’s feet. “Doesn’t fucking matter. You care what day you die?” Glared again at Bean. “And why the fuck ain’t you dead? He answers all my prayers...always. Why ain’t you dead?”
“’Cause he’s wearing a vest, you dumbass,” Digger said.
For a long moment, she said nothing. Her gaze danced between Digger and Bean and her mouth flapped. Confusion rode high in her eyes. “A...what? Vest?” Then she barked out a laugh. “Paranoid?”
“Pretty much,” Bean said.
The bruise on his chest was going to be a monster...like a modernist painter had gone to town on him with purple and blue and eventually yellow and green. But he wasn’t dying, that much he was sure of.
And why not, Mariana? Has He forsaken me? Has He ignored my prayer? I want to be at your side.
Shut up, Jeremiah, and deal with your daughter.
And let’s talk about that. Who the fuck is she? Obviously not Angela because our daughter was killed in a house fire.
Even these many years later, the pain of Angela’s death bit Bean hard. The fangs were still clamped into his heart, their bloody marks still unhealed. He’d gotten a call one day and knew, from the dead silence on the other end, that something terrible had happened. It was Angela’s case worker, and she said, voice thick with fear and loss and anguish, that Angela was dead. Angela’s new parents had hired a babysitter, had gone out. They’d gotten drunk at some shitty bar and stayed out all night. While they were gone, there had been a fire. Both Angela and the babysitter were dead, nothing left of either of them to bury.
Bean had held a memorial service. On the street in front of a pile of charred debris, it still smoking even as he smoldered. He stood there, letting the smell of smoke get into his clothes and hair, and tried to remember one of Mariana’s prayers. He failed. So he’d fumbled his way through a few words of his own, weak and pathetic, and then cried as Digger had recited “The Lord’s Prayer.”
Then Bean had climbed into a bottle. He’d tried to drown his anger in expensive booze and then, after he lost his position, cheap booze. Then cheap heroin.
I can trace it all back to those two nights...the nights I lost my women.
Fuck that. The truth was he’d gotten to where he enjoyed his booze and his drugs. Yeah, he told himself he was mourning his lost wife and daughter and once upon a time that had been true, but eventually he knew it was just because he liked the drunk and the altered state.
Until Digger had finally broken through. He’d resisted Digger’s attempts to clean him up, pushing the man harder and harder until Digger had kidnapped him, locked his ass in an Austin hotel room for two weeks, and gotten him straight.
Aside from Mariana and Angela, there was no one Bean loved more than Digger. No one Bean trusted more than Digger.
“Judge?” Digger said. “She just tried to kill you. Don’t you want—”
Bean banged a fist on the ground, shook his head, coughed. Black stars danced around the edge of his vision.
“Why ain’t you dead?” Angela asked again.
“Why—” Cough cough. “Why aren’t you—” Cough cough cough. “Why aren’t you dead?”
Bean stared at his daughter and understood why he couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t the shot, it wasn’t the tight vest, it was that she was alive. His heart stopped, his breath stopped. Everything inside him stopped, frozen and paralyzed by the sight of this woman, his daughter, standing over him.
“Son of a bitch,” Angela said. “A vest. Unbelievable. I manage to get here, follow you all over the fucking state, and that was one damned bloody trail, get my chance to set things right, and you’re wearing a vest.” With the shrug of someone just tagged out at second base, she put the gun in her waistband. “Had my shot...I’m done now. You survived so I guess that means something. Maybe that was how He answered my prayer.”
From her pocket, she pulled a tube of lipstick and applied it liberally. A dark, almost sanguine, red. When she was done, she put the tube away, and squatted next to her father. “Look exactly like I remember. Older. Lot more mileage on you.”
Slowly, the pain still thudding in his chest, Bean sat up. “Thinking you were dead put a lot of those miles on me.”
“Maybe it was giving me away.”
“That, too.”
Moving slowly, Angela leaned in and kissed his cheek. “It’s good to see you...Daddy.”
Bean coughed. “I’m so sorry. I thought—I thought you were dead. I thought—”
>
She put a finger to his lips. “Shhhhh.”
“Holy shit,” Digger said. “Judge? Are you serious? Is this actually her?”
Bean nodded, his heart screaming, pained and joyful all at the same time. It hurt and it soared but mostly it seemed bigger, fuller, as though by realizing Angela was still alive, some dead piece of it had suddenly regrown, instantly reshaped, and filled the long-standing hole in his chest cavity.
I can’t believe this, Mariana. She’s here! She’s with me! She’s alive and with me!
I know, Jeremiah. I guess that God you don’t care for answered your prayer, didn’t He?
You knew. You dreamed about her.
No, baby. I dreamed about a woman who wore the same mustache you used to wear. I didn’t know it was her.
How could she have known? Bean had always known Mariana’s voice was his own voice, his own subconscious and broken heart, talking to him. How could his dead wife know something Bean’s own heart or head hadn’t known?
Bean grabbed Angela suddenly, hard around the neck, and hauled her to the ground, hugging her tightly. “Oh, my fucking God, I’m so sorry, Angela, I made a huge mistake. A disaster of a decision. I can never fix that, but...I’m so sorry. I’ll never leave you again. I promise. We’ll be together forever. Father and daughter.”
Laughing, Angela kissed Bean again and let him hang on until his arms began to hurt from the force of keeping her close.
“Almost a family,” she said. “Almost.”
Bean released her, wiped his face. “What?”
Angela stood up, brushed the dust from her clothes. “I miss Mama.”
Bean swallowed. “Me, too, baby.”
The thump in his chest now down to a dull road, Bean let Angela and Digger help him up. He swayed for a second, then found his balance.
“So this is all great and everything,” Digger said. “But if you love him so much, why the fuck did you shoot him?”
Angela never took her gaze off Bean. “Because he gave me away. You shouldn’t have done that, Daddy. You shouldn’t have divided the family.”
“I know, honey, but I had reasons. They seemed good at the time.”
Angela nodded. “So did mine.”
“What?”
“My family. I divided them, too. Gave my daughter away.”
“What? A granddaughter? You gave her away?” Bean’s mouth dried.
“Like father, like daughter.”
“Why?”
Red burned Angela’s cheeks. “Couldn’t take care of her. Father, I was barely able to take care of myself. Never graduated, never went to college. Damnit, do you think I had some high-powered job like yours? You think I made lots and lots of money?”
“Angela, I never made lots—”
“Sitting in judgment of people all day.” She giggled. “Well, I guess I did do that, didn’t I?” She shook her head. “Never had a decent paycheck. Had to borrow alots of money. Hard to pay back. Sometimes had to—Well, doesn’t matter.”
Bean took her hand and squeezed gently. “I’m sorry, Angela.”
“I know, Daddy, I know.”
He’d been twenty-one years without his wife and thirteen years without his daughter and now that entire World was utterly upside down. Echo, Tommy-Blue, Andy, and Jim Dell were dead, but somehow Angela was alive. The day had delivered him something unimaginable. It was as though two moons rose in the sky, or the sun set in the east. He’d never be able to get those years back, but maybe he could make up for them in some small way.
“Jesus Christ, Judge, how is this possible?” Digger asked, staring at Angela. “You said—”
“No blasphemy,” she said.
Bean laughed. “That’s her, all right. Mariana through and through.”
Digger nodded. “I’m sorry, Angela. Judge, you said she died in a fire.”
“I did,” Angela said. “I was reborn. The cleansing of the flames, which was what He wanted for me. Cleanse spirit and soul. A Phoenix named Angela...Angel.”
Bean hesitated. “That’s what I was told, Digger. Cops took me to the scene. I talked to the fire marshal and saw what was left of the bodies. You saw the burned house. You said some very beautiful things at her memorial.”
“You had a memorial for me?”
“We did, sweetheart. It wasn’t much. It was the best I could do.”
“Well, I call bullshit on this whole thing. She ain’t Angela. That’s just some chick running a scam.”
Bean shook his head, his eyes hard on Angela. “No, it’s not. That’s my daughter. I can tell.”
“How?”
Bean bit his lip, glanced at the men cleaning up the rubble. One came toward the group. “I don’t know, Digger. I have no answer for you. I just know.”
“Well, excuse me if I don’t buy into it quite so quick.”
“We will all excuse your ignorance,” Angela said. “That such could be unleashed on the world is a sin. But eventually, we all come to the knowledge. You will, too.”
“Uh...right,” Digger said.
“Hey, Digger.” The clean-up man stopped a few feet behind him.
Everyone turned to him. “Yeah?”
“Remember what you said? Told me to look for...something...in the rubble?”
“The bo—” Digger stopped, shot Angela a look. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Well...uh...”
“Spit it out,” Digger said.
The guy’s eyes flicked from Digger to Bean, then to what was left of the bar.
“Son of a bitch,” Bean said.
Digger looked at Bean, back at the clean-up man. “What?”
“Sorry, Digger, it ain’t here.”
“What?”
“Swear to crap. None.”
“You sure?”
“Fuck yeah, I’m sure.”
Angela nodded. “JD is still alive. This is getting exciting, isn’t it?”
37
Four hours later, after trolling through the rubble himself, they were at Bean’s house.
And reality kept colliding with fantasy.
Just like in the old days.
The old days being when he shot up and laid back on a stream of escapist fantasy.
He’d fixed food—eggs and chorizo, toast—but it sat between father and daughter mostly untouched. Bean hadn’t been hungry, but had needed something to do with himself. He’d needed to keep his hands busy, and his brain on something mindless. Because if he allowed too much of the new reality in, he might come apart at his seams.
His daughter, the one he’d given up for adoption and then driven back to her foster parents when she’d run away and come back to him, was alive. She hadn’t died in a house fire, hadn’t been overcome by flames, hadn’t been burned until there wasn’t even enough left to bury. In this new reality, she was alive.
Alive and at his side, smiling and telling him all about her life—
...that first day of first grade...I loved going to school. Wanted to learn everything! With my little backpack stuffed full of pencils and crayons but mostly with a little, stuffed teddy bear that was my talisman until third grade...
Except reality and fantasy couldn’t be the same thing.
“Wouldn’t send me to school.” Angela avoided Bean’s gaze, stared at everything else in the house. “Called it home schooling, but...” She shook her head, waved her hand dismissively. “I never learned anything. Spent my days trying to keep from getting smacked.”
...had Mrs. Brown in third grade and she taught me to love books...used to get awards for how many books I read...do little reports on all of them. Whenever there was a writer talking at the library, Mrs. Brown would come get me and we’d go listen...
“They fought all day every day, my foster parents. Had a shitload of kids coming through that house. A fucking assembly line. Keep the kids coming and those state checks would never stop. Yelled at each other and then would get pissed and start hitting all of us.” Her eyes stopped wandering and held Bea
n tightly. “That’s why I ran away. That’s why I came home.”
“And I took you back to them.” Bean spoke quietly.
Angela nodded. “Yeah. You said you were sorry, but you just couldn’t raise a daughter alone.”
“Because your mother died...”
“Yeah, except we wouldn’t have been alone. We would have had each other.”
...and then Mr. Collins said why don’t you play percussion because we have too many flute players...and I made Honor Band my first year and then marched during football season...
“Sometimes I was the only one, the only kid. I belonged to them, but the others were just in and out, checks to be cashed. And they’d get this babysitter, Rhonda. I hated her. She didn’t hit me, but she’d ignore me and lock me in my bedroom so she could fuck her boyfriend on the couch. Used to make me laugh...my foster parents sitting in Rhonda and her boyfriend’s funk without even knowing it.”
...hated geometry and algebra but loved American history...first real boyfriend when I was a junior...he had a great car and was so nice and polite...think he really loved me...
The smell had changed, gone from fresh and spicy eggs and sausage to the cold stink of greasy diner food. The stench sat heavily in Bean’s gut, a steel ball rolling around as painfully as the fantasy conversation he’d conjured up. There had never been playing in the school band or reading books for Mrs. Brown or a backpack filled to bursting with pencils and a big, pink eraser. Those were all details Bean made up to ease the black stain on his heart.
Angela sat across from him, her face cold and her eyes lost. The first few years of life, when she’d lived with him, those eyes had been full of spark and fire. Now they were lifeless and he knew he’d never see the spark again. That, more than anything, made him realize what he had lost those years ago.
“I’m sorry, Angela. I didn’t want you going through what I’d gone through with my father and grandmother. When the madness hit me, I knew it would be hard on you.”
“Harder than what I went through? Harder than being hit? Harder than being starved because they just couldn’t be bothered to feed me? They had enough food, Daddy, but they ate first and had their second and third helpings. When they were done, then I got to eat and sometimes she just didn’t fix enough.”
Death is Not Forever (Barefield Book Book 3) Page 22