"It wasn't your fault, Lenny," Edison said, seeming to read the train of my thoughts.
"I should have seen the..."
"Sometimes there are no signs. Sometimes people are really good at hiding them. Or were never low enough to do it until right before they do it. You couldn't have known. Even if you had, that doesn't mean you could have stopped it."
"She's gone," I heard myself say, feeling the loss of it, the emptiness, the void that would always be in my life.
Who was I going to talk about men with?
Who was I going to spend holidays with?
Who was going to tell me that they saw through me, they knew I wasn't the bitter, guarded, smart-mouthed bitch I pretended to be?
Who was... God, who the hell did I have left? What the hell did I even have left?
"Lenny," Edison's voice called, reaching out to snag my chin when I didn't look at him. "I know you're hurting and confused and don't feel like it, but you need to eat something. Then you need to get into bed."
"I need to go online and figure out..."
Ugh.
I couldn't even say it.
It raked through my brain with ragged nails to even think it.
Make the arrangements.
For her funeral.
How could you even focus on something like that so soon?
How could I pick a casket?
How could I decide what she would want to be buried in?
"There will be time for that," Edison told me, reaching up to grab a blanket off the couch, draping it over me.
I liked that.
I was aware of it enough to appreciate how he didn't force me to grieve like he wanted me to, like it was acceptable to. If I needed to stare at the wall, he let me stare at the wall.
If I needed to sprawl on the floor clutching a teacup like a security blanket, he got down there with me, covered me up, and just let it be.
"Toast?" he asked, "Think bread is about all you keep in this place."
"There's ramen," I heard myself say as if from far away, hearing it like through a tunnel.
"Don't figure your stomach is up for that much MSG right now," he said, moving to stand. He came back a few minutes later, putting down a plate of two slices of bread, slightly browned - which was a miracle since my toaster generally offered two options, warm bread or charcoal bricks - and two bottles, one of gin, and one of iced tea. "Which one are you feeling?"
As an answer, I unscrewed the top of the iced tea, leaning awkwardly upon my forearm, chugging it half down, then reaching to fill the rest of it with the gin.
He took the bottle back when I was done, moving to put it back in the kitchen cabinet. "Just one," he told me. "Then toast and sleep. Don't drown it in alcohol. That never ends well."
I said nothing but I could see the merits to both ideas.
On one hand, oblivion. On the other, ending up like those pathetic saps at Meryl's who I always made fun of.
Then again, what the hell could it matter if I did?
I had no one left to matter to. No one was going to care if I fell into a bottle.
But even when I finished my drink, I didn't push up, go across the room, and fill it to the brim with something that could take the edge off the sharp corners of grief.
Maybe for the simple reason that I knew Edison was there, watching. He wouldn't stop me. He wasn't that kind. But somehow his possible disapproval kept my ass on the floor.
I pushed up to a seated position, reaching for a slice of toast even though the idea of food made the gin slosh around in my stomach. I managed about a slice before I gave up, pushing the plate away, pulling the blanket closer around myself as my hand stroked over the music box absentmindedly.
I hadn't opened it.
As odd as that was.
I had read her diary, but not opened her box to see what was inside.
I guess maybe the diary provided answers.
The music box didn't offer the same.
My finger snagged the indent in the wood, pulling upward.
The little ballerina popped up. There was no music. And she didn't dance.
She was more like a pretty guard dog, protecting Letha's little stash.
And what did she store here, in this box that meant the world to her?
A ring her father got her for her sixteenth birthday that she was always upset about because her fingers grew too fat to fit, but she couldn't have resized because of the inscription he had inside.
And that ring was sitting on a pile of pictures.
Printed from her phone. Endless selfies she conned me into over the years.
There were dozens of them.
The top one was the one from just days before she was so unhappy that she thought death was better than continuing to go on.
And I couldn't see it, not even now, not even knowing what I knew now about what had been happening, where her mind had been.
It wasn't there.
She was just Letha.
Smiling, brilliant, beautiful Letha.
She never smiled again.
She never would.
That was what did it, what broke the dam that had kept the tears at bay all day.
That was when Edison crossed to me again, stopped giving me the space he thought I wanted.
"She was beautiful," he told me as he took the pictures from my fingers, tucking them away, then pulling me to his chest.
Was.
She was beautiful.
I hated tenses.
I had hardly ever been aware of them before.
But now I hated them.
She could never just be something again
She would always be a was.
"Come on," he said even as he slowly got to his feet, dragging me up to sit on his lap on the couch, holding me close.
"I don't want to pick out a casket," I admitted, burying my face in his neck. "I don't want to pick out times and dates and things to be read. Or what she wants to be buried in. Or what fucking food to serve to people who will come to pay respects even though they barely knew her. And I don't ever want to see my fucking mother again."
"Okay, love," he agreed, stroking my hair, pressing his lips into it as well. "Well, you don't have to do any of that tonight, okay? So let's not think about it. Alright?"
He made it sound easy.
I knew it wouldn't be easy.
And I knew that when I woke up, I would have to deal with all of it.
But somehow, with his arms around me, his solid chest against me, his voice in my ear, I thought maybe I could give it a try.
I could trust him.
TWELVE
Edison
Fuck.
That was the only accurate word to describe the entire situation.
Her sister was the light of her fucking life. Lenny had been something like a second mother to her. She had a soft spot for her. It might have been the only soft spot Lenny had.
And Letha had found herself abused, depressed, and too hopeless to think of anything but permanent escape.
She didn't want to burden Lenny with it.
She didn't want her to have to keep being her mother, this adult woman.
It sounded like Letha got a lot of what Lenny never did. She got softness and love and a man she could lean on without fear.
She got a childhood and a chance to bloom.
That was good.
It was important
But it also meant she didn't get the grit that came from falling and crawling around on her hands and knees like Lenny did, that unshakable spirit and drive to go on.
She was sweeter.
Softer.
More easily taken advantage of by a shitbag of a man who knew he could try to take that softness and mold it into whatever he wanted.
She had been young, beautiful, and open.
Unfortunately, just what predators like that fuckhead looked for.
Suddenly, it all made sense.
The training.
The ruthlessness with which she approached it.
It wasn't because she had a stalker, a psycho ex, or some rapist or something to deal with.
She had the man who abused her little sister, who eventually led the girl to suicide to make pay.
And pay he would, if her focus had anything to do with it.
I was sure that was the last thing on her mind now, now that a life she held so dear was ripped away from her by someone who had no right to make that call.
I had never seen someone grieve like she was grieving.
Or, perhaps, that wasn't right to say either. Maybe it was so startling because it was Lenny, because it was someone as hardass, as stoic, as guarded as she was almost all the time.
Maybe this was what it was like to see every shield fall at once, to reveal all the shit underneath that she needed to keep hidden for her own sanity.
It was, to be perfectly honest, a scary thing to witness, her grief.
It came from a bottomless well inside, surging with a force I didn't know was possible, then going still, leaving her staring at walls, eyes open, but unseeing, for hours.
I almost preferred the tears.
At least it was something I understood, it was a release for her.
She talked to me when she was crying.
I had no idea what was going on in her head when she was staring at the walls, if there was anything going on in there at all, or if she was just numb at those times.
All I knew was that numb, for any prolonged period of time, was not good.
Numb was when you turned to a bottle.
Numb was when you turned to a knife.
Numb was when the demons had a chance to whisper in your ear.
She needed to grieve because it was the only way she could get her fight back.
I knew it would come.
In a few days, when she had cried herself out, when she had gotten a chance to get the ugly parts of death over with - the arrangements made far too soon, when she finally got a chance to say the goodbye she needed for closure.
She would get the anger back then.
And that anger would lead to one thing.
Revenge.
I knew that feeling well.
I lived a life of it.
And if ever there was a reason for it, driving a woman to her own suicide with your evil, yeah, that was it.
He needed to be taken out.
And soon, Lenny would be ready to do it.
And me, well, I would let her.
But I would be there in the shadows, having her back.
Watching my girl do what she needed to do to be able to go on.
Yes, my.
There was no mistaking that at this point.
She was mine.
Hell, she was mine the first night I got to be inside her, she just didn't know it yet, or, more likely, was too stubborn to admit it.
And she was damn sure mine when she sat in the clubhouse and got on with my brothers.
And when she brought me French Toast Crunch and Cookie Crisp for dinner.
And when she snuggled into me at night.
When she gave me little pieces here and there of herself.
And I think even she would admit that she was mine when she learned the news of her sister... and came right to me, knowing I would be there for her, because I promised her I would, and I had made sure to keep my promises before, because she knew I would let her grieve how she needed to, but keep her going at the same time.
Because, as much as she would never want to admit this, she needed me.
She needed the comfort I could give her, the freedom she needed, but also the grip that held on at the same time.
Hell, I could even give her family, as makeshift as mine might have been, just bikers and old ladies. But no one could say we were as tight as any family. Our bond ran deep.
She would get on with them, too.
I already knew she got on with a bunch of them. But I could easily picture her and Renny throwing sarcasm back and forth. I could imagine her having deep conversations with Lazarus, pushing Reign's buttons.
As for the girls club, they would like her as well.
I already knew she and Lo and Janie got on from the gym. Alex and Lenny were cut from the same cloth, all sarcasm and attitude.
Maybe she wouldn't exactly be best friends with some of the other, softer girls like Penny and Kennedy and even Summer.
But then again, maybe they could help fill the void of softness that was left with Letha's passing. Maybe she would surprise me by clinging to that more than I would have expected.
"Yeah?" I asked, voice hushed, moving out of the doorway to Lenny's room where I had just put her down on the bed, still out cold. I didn't want to go far, but I knew better than not to pick up when Reign himself was calling.
"Know you're dealing with some shit," he said, voice understanding since he had fresh memories of Summer's grief over her father on his mind. "I just want to keep you in the loop."
"Did someone finally find something?" I asked, meaning about Adler who was just bouncing around the clubhouse in his cuffs, throwing around his snark, flirting harmlessly with the women when they happened by, clearly winning them over, for better or worse.
To be perfectly honest, I even liked the fuck.
Hell, I think we all did.
We were maybe even hoping that things came back as he said, nothing sinister in his connections.
We wouldn't hate having him as a brother.
So far, Janie and Alex had turned up almost nothing on Adler. He was a social media ghost. They said it was almost impossible to have no footprint online anymore.
But he had nothing.
They couldn't find a birth certificate or social security number, though that was likely because he wasn't originally from the States. There was no driver's license, no credit score, no nothing.
He was traceless.
In his line of work, that was not only smart, but necessary.
If people could trace you, so could the law, and then your ass was looking at twenty-to-life in a cell, pissing in front of other men, eating shitty food, and going half-crazy.
Reign would ask him directly eventually.
He could sit him down and demand the ugly details, every last one of them.
We had all had that treatment, not being allowed to play much close to the vest. He wanted to know if any of our dirt could come back and get thrown on the club.
But he liked going in knowing some shit so he could make sure you weren't trying to pull one over on him.
"We finally got in touch with Ward. He was apparently too fucking busy buying a dog to see us."
"Did you get a meeting?"
"Yeah, Cash and I went over to Hex today. Pagan and Laz came along since those two guys are close. He was shocked as shit when we said Adler had broken in."
"So he does know him."
"Since they were fifteen apparently, though there was a huge gap when Adler was off doing his contract killing thing where they weren't in touch."
"That's not really giving us too much then."
"Not what we wanted, no," he agreed, and I swear I could hear him scratching a hand down his face like he did when he was a mix of confused and frustrated. "But Ward did say he would trust the man with his life, and the life of his woman. I know Ward; Laz and Pagan know Ward. That is saying something that he would make that claim."
"Yeah," I agreed. I couldn't claim to know Ward, but I had seen the man; I knew how he handled business and his fighters. I knew his reputation as a fighter. He was someone who took pride in his reputation, who would never let a recommendation come back to bite him in the ass.
"He did warn us that there is some shit that went down, with the two of them, that he was pretty sure we wouldn't be able to get out of Adler. But he assured me that it wouldn't affect the club, that what it involved was taken care of back when they were eighteen."
"Yeah, but what about the decades after that?"
I asked.
"Exactly," Reign agreed. "I'll get it. I always do."
That was true.
If he got Roan's past out of him, as secret as that shit was supposed to be, he could figure out Adler's deal.
"How's your woman holding up?"
I looked back into the room, taking a breath. "Not good. She's got to do arrangements tomorrow. And she's not up for it."
There was a pause at that, a slightly muffled sound that likely meant he was covering the speaker so he could talk to someone else. "Do you think maybe I should send Summer over? She's been there recently. She could, if nothing else, make some of the decisions for Lenny. They fucking need to know everything from goddamn program paper to chair coverings."
I didn't know how Lenny would react to having a third party brought in, but quite frankly, I didn't know dick about program paper or flowers or music. And I wasn't sure Lenny would be up to it all herself.
"If she's up to it," I said carefully, knowing she was on her way back to her old self, but worrying maybe that adding another set of funeral arrangements to it would make things worse again.
There was a shuffling, then Summer's sweet voice filled my ear.
"Don't worry about me, Edison," she said, sounding soft. "Worry about Lenny. I had Reign to worry about me, and the girls club to worry about arrangements. And, honestly, I couldn't have done it without them. That's what we're here for. I can pick out all the stuff she doesn't care about, make it nice. She doesn't need to worry about music selections right now."
"Thank you, Summer," I said, meaning it. "I just want to warn you that Lenny is..."
"I heard she is a bit, ah, prickly," she said carefully. "And that is probably going to be exacerbated by the grief, but that's fine. I'm a big girl; I can take it. Just text Reign a time. I don't have anything pressing going on tomorrow."
"You're a good woman, Summer. The best."
"Take care of her, Edison," she said, handing the phone back to Reign.
"I'll text you if we find anything out."
He didn't say goodbye.
He never did.
Lenny seeming out for the night, I ventured out into her hall, finding a frazzled mom of what looked to be a three-year-old, and offering her a hundred bucks to run to the store to grab some groceries for Lenny's bare cabinets and empty fridge. I had a feeling she would want to be here for a while, around her stuff, around Letha's stuff, away from anyone who might judge her grief.
Edison Page 17