by Tess Sharpe
Will looks nothing like Miss Lissa or the pictures I saw of his mom in the newspaper. She was pale and blond, but he has dark hair and eyes and skin. The black eye from that day has long since faded, and the burnt circles on his left arm have healed to lumpy pink messes stretching from wrist to elbow.
I reach out and run my finger over the rough edges.
Will doesn’t jerk his arm away. His breath puffs over the top of my head as he looks down at me and lets me do as I wish.
“Do they still hurt?” I ask softly.
“Sometimes.”
“Carl Springfield,” I say. “He did this?”
Will nods.
My thumb presses into the edge of a scar and it fades pale from the light pressure. “Why?”
“I disobeyed.”
“That’s a shitty reason,” I say.
“I know.”
“He’s mean, isn’t he? Springfield?” I don’t really have to ask; the proof is right there in front of me. But all I have is a picture and Daddy’s orders: Just follow the lessons, Harley-girl, and stop asking so many questions.
I can’t help but be curious.
“When he’s high,” Will says. “Or drunk.” He snorts, but his eyes aren’t laughing. “Or breathing.”
That day, when the fire department and the sheriff came and broke the truck windows after Will and I refused to let them inside, he didn’t let go of me the whole time. Not even when they tried to pull us apart.
He held on, like if we stuck together that tight, we’d be safe. I felt like that too.
“You gave me bruises that day,” I say.
Will’s eyes flicker to my arm and then down to his where we’re still touching. “I didn’t mean to. I was just—I was scared you were gonna get out of the truck. Your momma told me to watch you.”
“I’m not a baby!” My temper flares and my thumb accidentally presses down too hard on the still-healing part of his arm. He tenses, but doesn’t pull out of my grasp. He’s stronger than me, so much bigger, he could easily break free, but he doesn’t. He stays.
“Sorry,” I mutter, my cheeks going red.
“I’m older,” he counters. “I wouldn’t hurt you,” he says after a while. “I don’t—I’m not like that.”
I nod. “He’s not your daddy?” I say. “Springfield, I mean?” I know he can’t be, because Springfield’s white, and Will looks like his daddy isn’t.
He shakes his head quickly, but a second later it looks like all the air’s gone out of him, and he says in a small voice, “No. But he partied with my mom when things were good. And when things were bad…” He trails off. Will twists his arm under my grip so his hand cups my wrist. “He’s bad,” he says. “He’s really bad. But you shouldn’t worry.”
“Daddy says he killed our mommas. And he wants to kill me,” I whisper. I haven’t said it out loud ever, not in the two months since Daddy told me.
Will squeezes my wrist gently. “Your momma was nice to me,” he says. “I promised her I’d watch you.”
“She didn’t mean—”
“I know you’re not a baby. But I promised.” He stares at me, looking more serious than a kid should.
There’s something behind those words I can’t figure out. A question I’m not sure of, but I nod anyway. “Okay,” I say. “Then I promise to watch you, too.”
He smiles, and it’s not mean or anything like the way boys usually look at me, with my skinned knees and dirty hands. Instead it makes me feel taller than I am, steadier and strong.
“Never had anyone watch my back before,” he says thoughtfully. “Gonna be my sidekick?”
I smile, and it’s maybe the first time in months I’ve done that. “You can be my sidekick.”
Will’s smile grows wider. “We could flip on it,” he suggests, pulling a quarter out of his pocket. “Call it,” he says, and tosses it high in the air, so high it glints in the sun.
I reach out, lightning fast, catching it before he can. But I don’t look at it yet. That’d be cheating, and I don’t want to cheat with Will.
His mouth drops open in surprise, and I beam. I’ve always been quick. Daddy says I have a good eye.
“Heads,” I say.
I uncurl my fingers, and George Washington’s profile shines up at me.
“Looks like you win,” he says, smiling even bigger.
“McKennas always win,” I tell him solemnly.
I don’t know why that makes his smile disappear for a second, but it does.
Twelve
June 6, 2:30 p.m.
Fir Hill Nursing Home is just a few blocks from the bar. I take a minute to pull over and pick a few wildflowers in one of the empty lots. They aren’t much, just a scraggly collection of lupine and California poppies, but Miss Lissa has always liked wildflowers over fancy ones.
“Be back in a little bit,” I tell Busy, patting her on the head, leaving the AC on and making sure the water bowl I keep in the car is filled.
Inside, the nursing home’s quiet. I smile at an older man in a robe shuffling down the hall on his walker and turn left at the activity center, past the group of ladies who are watching an old black-and-white movie on the flat screen.
I walk past the ALZHEIMER CARE WING sign and stop in front of the lavender-and-white-striped nursing station. There are bouquets lining the counter, and a few stuffed teddy bears placed on top of the computer monitor.
A curly-haired brunette looks up when she hears my footsteps. “Harley.” She smiles. “I was wondering if you were coming.”
“I’m sorry I’m late, Becky,” I say. “I got hung up on an errand. Is she awake? Has she been asking for me?”
“She’s been a little distracted today,” Becky says. “In a good way. Go on in.”
I’m already halfway inside the room before I realize I should’ve asked Becky why Miss Lissa was distracted. Because the answer to that question is sitting right next to the bed, talking to her in a low voice.
There are already wildflowers on the side table. He must have brought them. The blue tin vase they’re in is set beneath a poster board that has photos of me and Will as kids taped to it, the words WE LOVE YOU in glitter glue scrawled across the top.
I make a noise, I must have, because Will’s head snaps up.
I haven’t seen him in over a year. When he came home that first Christmas, we fought—the kind of fight you don’t recover from, the kind that changes everything and you can’t take any of it back.
Some things—the memory of angry words turned soft and then silent—I don’t want to forget. But the look on his face when I told him to go, that hurt. It’s branded on my mind.
He left, and he didn’t come home again. Next year, whenever he visited Miss Lissa, he stayed in a motel. I know he called Duke, because occasionally Duke would mention him, but when it came to him and me, it was silence.
Like right now, as we stare at each other.
Before he can say anything, before I can do anything, Miss Lissa’s smiling from her place in bed, looking cozy and warm under the blue-and-lavender wedding-ring quilts she stitched herself.
“Jeannie!” She beams up at me. Her hair is neatly combed; the dark-blue bed jacket she has on is probably from the sixties, but it looks brand new. The nurses here take good care of her. It helps that I come twice a week to keep tabs and give Christmas bonuses large enough to ensure she wants for nothing.
“Look, Will, Jeannie’s come to visit! How’s that baby girl of yours? Harley must be getting so big.”
I smile back at Miss Lissa as she reaches up for a hug, and fold her gently in my arms. She smells like her favorite lilac talcum powder. It’s gone out of production, but I’ve managed to track down a container of the brand she likes each year for her birthday.
Now that I’m grown, she mixes me up with my momma more and more. I’ve stopped correcting her—there’s no use in it.
“Harley’s doing real good.” I smile as she leans back into the crisp white pillowcase she m
ade and embroidered decades ago. I stand up and step aside, unsure, because Will hasn’t said a word, though he’s staring at me.
What is he doing here? He’s supposed to be away at college. He has summer classes. I checked. I made sure.
He can’t be here right now. Not today.
He’ll ruin everything.
“I was just telling Will about Duke and the bear.” When Miss Lissa smiles, it’s like sunlight pouring down from cracks in the clouds. It comes from every inch of her, and I reach out and squeeze her hand. Her tiny fingers, gnarled from arthritis and age, curl around mine, cool to the touch.
She’s lost a lot of weight in the past year. On bad days the nurses have a hard time getting her to eat. So I bring her the things she taught me to make: meatloaf and scalloped potatoes, roast chicken with delicate white pearl onions simmered in cream and nutmeg, cheesecake rich enough to stick to the roof of your mouth. I wrap the food on the golden poppy dishes she left with me, and I bring along pieces of my grandmother’s heavy silver that I still polish every few months, even though Miss Lissa is the only person left to appreciate it, and she won’t remember.
Sometimes I can get her to eat.
Sometimes she doesn’t recognize me at all. I’m not Harley or Jeannie—I’m a stranger, and on those days, the fear that mixes with the confusion in her face makes the back of my throat burn.
Will hasn’t taken his eyes off me. He seems relaxed, leaning over Miss Lissa’s bed, his elbows resting near her feet like he needs to stand guard. I almost laugh when I see we’ve both automatically picked the two points in the room where our backs are to the wall, with clear views of the door and window.
Duke trained us well.
I clear my throat. “I wanted to bring you these, Miss Lissa. I can’t stay today, I’m sorry.” I place the flowers next to her on the bed. I hate that I have to leave, because today’s obviously a good one, but Will’s her actual family, her blood, and he doesn’t see her twice a week like I do.
“Going so soon?” Miss Lissa drops my hand and plucks at the quilt, her face falling.
I lean forward and kiss her on the forehead, resisting the urge to run my hand through her frizzed silver curls. “I’ll be back on Friday, like always. Promise.”
I can’t think about not being able to keep that promise. I have to get out of here.
“I love you lots,” I tell her. “See you on Friday.”
I leave the room without a word to Will and hurry down the hallway. I’m turning the corner that leads off the Alzheimer wing when I hear it: his voice, calling my name.
I speed up. He follows.
All he ever does is chase. And all I ever do is run.
I keep walking until I hit the doors, until we’re outside in the fresh air, standing next to the circle of fir trees the home’s named for. I feel calmer here, beneath the shadowy patterns of needles soothing my skin, reminding me of my forest, of home.
But thinking about home always brings me back to him.
“Harley.”
It takes me a second to get a hold of myself enough to turn around and look at him. His black hair’s longer than I’ve ever seen it, gathered at the back of his neck, a few shorter strands dipping into his hazel eyes.
He’s been the most solid thing in my life for as long as I can remember. He’d had it so much harder than me, the half-Native boy raised by a white tweeker momma, his dad long gone before he was even born, probably not even knowing he existed, because Desi was such a mess. Will never knew his tribe or a whole side of his family. He couldn’t mix with the redneck boys, so he was always on the outskirts instead. With me.
I had the kind of protection he didn’t when we were kids. I was a McKenna, so everyone feared Duke. I was a girl, so everyone underestimated me. I was white, so I was trusted on sight.
He had none of those things as we grew up. Will had Duke’s protection, but he didn’t have his name. And even Duke’s name didn’t keep some assholes from messing with him or from them making their fucking “jokes” about firewater and calling him Chief and other racist bullshit over and over, year after year. Even the bikers did it, when Will was grown and working for them. They thought it was funny.
It wasn’t. I’d watch as his mouth would flatten every time, but he always stopped me from saying anything.
He’s twenty-five now. Last month, I spent his birthday staring at my phone, unable to press Call, but now that I’m a few inches away, I want nothing more than to grab him.
It hurts not to touch him. It’s not even an itch or an urge or a want—it hurts like someone’s dragging the edge of a hunting knife up my belly.
“What are you doing home?” I blurt out. My voice is angry, but I’m not.
“Visiting Gran,” Will says. “I had some free time.”
“You have classes.” I sound like I’m accusing him of some crime. Jesus. I need to keep it together.
His mouth quirks up, higher on the right than the left. “You keeping tabs on me?”
I refuse to blush. “When are you going back?”
“It’s nice to see you too, Harley.” His mouth smiles again, but his eyes don’t.
“Will.” I glare at him. I don’t need to be teased.
He needs to be away from here. I can’t have him around right now.
I am not letting him get hurt again. I promised myself, never again. That’s why I forced Duke to let him go. College gave Will some sort of legit life away from all this.
Away from me.
He leans back on his heels. He’s wearing the leather motorcycle boots I bought him for his twentieth birthday, and I study them for a second, noticing that the left toe is scuffed.
“Can you please just tell me how long you’re staying?” I ask, addressing his feet.
“Hey.” He reaches underneath my chin, gentle, tilting my face up. My stomach swoops down, an endless drop of missed you, missed you, missed you. I need to pull away. I have to.
I don’t.
“What’s going on?” Will asks.
I lick my lips, and for one glorious second, I think about how it’d feel to tell him. Not to be alone in this, because he’d take it on for me, he’d share it—that’s who he is.
Which is why I can’t.
This has always been my fight, never his. One of us has to get away from all this, and it was always going to be him.
There is too much of me rooted here to ever leave.
I step back so his fingers slip away from my skin. It’s easier to think if I don’t touch him. “Nothing’s going on.”
He shoves his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, and I fist mine so I can’t reach out for him. I can sense it in the air, pulsing off the both of us, and I feel greedy in that want and need and now way. I remember what it was like, him and me, and it makes my blood beat too fast under my skin.
But if I want him to survive long enough to have the normal life he worked so hard to get, I have to stay strong.
“Duke hasn’t called me in a few months, so I stopped by the truck yard when I got into town last night. Wanted to see him. He wasn’t there, though,” Will says. He’s staring down at me, hard, searching.
I go ice cold, but I use it, freeze out the pain and nervousness. Make my voice level. “Duke’s away. Down south.”
Will frowns. “Kinda early,” he remarks, a little too casually. “Crop’s not in yet.”
“He’s been spending a lot of time in Mexico, last few years,” I say. “Expanding the business.”
“Right,” Will responds, a strange, sharp edge to his voice. “Gotta build his girl a bigger empire.”
I stiffen, the bitterness in his words singeing the edges of me. “Go back to school, Will,” I say. “Everything’s fine here.”
But he doesn’t turn away. Instead, he keeps his gaze on me, looking so close I feel caught—not stripped bare, no, worse: It makes me feel known.
“I know what you look like when you’re lying,” he says, quiet, even though t
here’s no one around to overhear. “You gonna tell me? Or do I have to find out myself?”
“There’s nothing to find out,” I say. And I tell myself it’s the truth.
At least for the next few hours.
“I’ve gotta go,” I say. “Collection day, you know. I hope you’re liking school. It was nice to see you. Have a safe drive back.”
I walk past him, toward the parking lot. The sun’s starting to head west toward the mountains. I only have a few hours of light left. I need to move.
“I’m gonna find out,” he calls after me. “And I’m not leaving until I do.”
To anyone else, it’d sound like a threat. But I recognize it for what it is: a promise.
A promise from him is worse than any threat—he’s the kind who keeps them.
Thirteen
When I’m fourteen, Bennet Springfield breaks my nose.
Every Sunday, after church, Miss Lissa visits with the other ladies, and Will and I are supposed to go to youth group, but most of the time I slip out without anyone noticing—or maybe they do, but they don’t want to bring it up to Daddy.
It’s only three blocks and across the street to the graveyard. Daddy doesn’t visit Momma’s grave, and whenever I go with Uncle Jake, he ends up drinking afterward, so I’ve stopped asking. I’d rather go alone anyway, just Momma and me.
The graveyard’s old as California, there are stones that say nothing more than railroad worker, and in the Wilson Tomb, four cracked and ancient graves labeled infant are dated ten to twelve months right after the other.
I slip between the iron gates and make my way up the grassy hill, toward the west end where the McKenna plot is.
Momma’s family is buried here too. They’re on the south side of the graveyard. Uncle Jake had wanted her with them, but Daddy was having none of that. She died a McKenna, in a McKenna’s death, and she’d be buried as one, next to all the others.
The grass is wet from the sprinklers, slippery as I trudge up the slope. The plot’s one of the biggest, edged by redwood fencing and a neatly carved gate that has the family name burnt into the wood. I push it open and step inside.