Whisper Falls (24 page)

His stomach swam with nerves as put down his kickstand, took off his helmet, and walked in even paces toward the front door. And unlike when he’d met his boy a few days ago, this time he didn’t have Tessa’s hand to squeeze. She’d offered to come, but he’d said, “Don’t you think I should do this one by myself, hot stuff?” Maybe if she’d been here at his side, though, stepping up onto the old front porch would have felt a little less surreal.

Everything kicked into high gear, though, when the door opened and his mother rushed out, arms flung wide. His first impression was that she looked good—pretty but older, and smaller than he remembered. Except . . . no, he’d just gotten bigger. “Lucky,” she said, her eyes glassy with tears.

“Hi, Mom,” he managed before she threw her arms around his neck.

He hugged her back, aware that she’d paid no attention to how scary he must appear to her—all tattoos and long hair. He’d not bothered to hide his ink tonight—not scaring his kid was different; he figured the adults in his family had to accept him as he was or not at all.

Behind her came his dad, his once dark hair now shot through with gray, his face worn—from so much loss, Lucky figured. He said nothing, just joined in the hug.

And the moment lingered strangely. Like their reaction on the phone, Lucky hadn’t expected this, either—the hugging, or for it to happen so easily, so immediately. They’d never hugged him much as a kid, after all, and for him, hugging was mostly a thing he did with women—he’d just never really
learned
the hugging thing. But . . . maybe it felt good. It felt good to feel their care flowing so freely over him all of the sudden, after all these years.

Everything after that soon became a blur in Lucky’s mind. He supposed he was just on overload at this point. He heard his parents asking him questions, their eyes searching his for answers. “Where have you been all this time?” “What have you been doing?” “Why didn’t you call?” And then came the barrage of exclamations. “So many tattoos!” “You ride a motorcycle now!” “The grim reaper? Why would you choose the grim reaper?” “You have a boy of your own now—tell us about him!” And his dad, through a hardy chuckle: “Where the hell did you get all these muscles, son?”

He noticed Mike standing off to one side of the room, staying quiet through it all, and he couldn’t help thinking, cynically: reversal of fortune. Once upon a time, Mike had been the constant center of attention, Lucky the neglected one. The big difference was—Mike was old enough to handle it, and this would be temporary. And thank God. As a kid, Lucky had hungered for such attention, but now—shit, it was a little overwhelming.

Lucky answered everything the best he could, ignoring the grim reaper question, and very purposely skirting past his biker gang years, explaining that his appreciation for souped-up cars had shifted to motorcycles after he’d left Destiny, and that he’d spent most of his time away in Milwaukee, home to a thriving biker community, building his custom painting business.

His mother sighed and said, “You always did like to draw,” and Lucky was almost surprised she remembered. She’d seemed so disinterested at the time.

He realized as he spoke, though, that he felt a sting of pride telling them about his business, letting them know he was self-sufficient and successful—and an even stranger, bigger spark of pride struck when talking about his new son. “He seems smart, and funny. Speaks right up and says whatever’s on his mind. He’s not shy—and that’s good since I was worried we wouldn’t have anything to talk about. He’s a NASCAR fan and . . . he looks just like me.” Lucky stopped then, glancing up at his dad, and then even to Mike, who stood silently behind the chair where their father sat, to add, “Like
us
.” It was odd to be back among the people who shared his looks, to realize he’d
come
from somewhere and wasn’t this lone creature floating around the world by himself anymore.

Both his parents were over the moon to discover they had a grandchild, his mother gushing, “Now that Mike is finally engaged, we thought maybe we’d finally get to be a grandma and grandpa one day, but now we already are!”

“When can we meet the little guy?” his dad asked with a big grin.

“Well, we might want to wait a while—he just met
me
. But soon.”

And they nodded happily, saying all sorts of
Of-course
s and
We’ll-work-it-out
s.

But then, finally, came the inevitable question Lucky had dreaded, from his father. And he asked it hesitantly, like maybe he feared Lucky would get up and run right back out the door at the first negative word. “We were so damn worried, Lucky. Why didn’t you ever let us know where you were?”

It was a fair question, and Lucky wasn’t going to sugarcoat it. “I didn’t think you’d care.”

His mother gasped, and both his parents sounded horrified to learn he’d felt that way—while Mike just stayed typically quiet, crossing his arms over his chest and looking angry.

So Lucky went on. “After . . . after we lost Anna,” he began, swallowing—although suddenly now, he was only able to glance quickly from his mom to his dad in between staring at the coffee table—“I felt . . . invisible. Like you didn’t know I was even alive.”

His mother drew in her breath, looking hurt, but if anything were to exist between them, he had to keep it real—he had to explain his side of things. “I know you probably didn’t realize it or do it on purpose, but . . .”

“This is bullshit,” Mike interrupted.

And Lucky lifted his gaze to his brother, snapping, “
What?
”

Mike stepped forward, his eyes burning with the same resentment Lucky had witnessed in them at Gravediggers. “You and I were in the exact same boat after Anna disappeared. We
all
lost her, we were
all
mourning.
You
just grew up making shitty decisions and now you want to blame Mom and Dad for it.”

Lucky didn’t want to start a fight here, but
shit
—he automatically shot to his feet to face Mike’s accusation. “You’re out of line on this,” he said, trying not to let the fresh rage bubbling inside him reach the boiling point. “We weren’t in the same fucking boat at all.
You
were wracked with guilt, and that’s all
they
could see. I get that now. But back then, I didn’t.”

He took a deep breath, tried to calm down, heard himself murmur an apology for his language, then took a seat again and refocused on his parents. “I think . . . between mourning for Anna and bending over backward to make sure Mike didn’t think it was his fault . . . I think I just . . . got lost in the shuffle. And I just felt . . . alone, and like Anna and Mike were both way more important than me.”

“And so you started acting out,” his mother said, surprising him by shifting almost immediately into acceptance, and puzzling through the logic behind his actions in a way he’d never even bothered to do. “You were trying to get our attention any way you could—and we were too caught up in our grief to see it.”

Lucky wasn’t completely sure about that part, but . . . “Maybe,” he said. Then he shook his head. “I know
something
turned me into a troublemaker—I never really knew what.”

Mike continued looking disgusted, but Lucky just ignored him. This wasn’t
about
Mike.

And then Lucky kept talking, thinking back, trying to make his parents understand how he’d felt at the time. It was strange, because he wasn’t usually so good at that—just talking. Or not until lately anyway. It was as if coming back here had . . . slowly cracked away his outer shell, letting all the stuff inside him leak out. And right now, he was glad, because the more he talked, the more his parents seemed to get it. And unlike Mike, they didn’t argue with him or tell him it was all his fault. And even as tense as the discussion grew at moments, at the same time, it left Lucky feeling . . .
freer.
Freer than he had just an hour earlier, like a huge weight he’d been carrying around all these years had suddenly been lifted off him.

It was only after the hard stuff had passed that his dad asked, “How long were you in Wisconsin?”

“About ten years,” he said.

And he realized instantly that he probably should have lied, since he could see his mother thinking, realizing that left more than a five-year gap in his absence. “Oh—well, where were you before that?” she asked.

Hell. He’d just have to keep right on glossing over that part of his history. “I went from place to place for a while, picking up work here and there. Sold my car in Nevada and bought my first motorcycle,” he said. “From there, I was in California a while. That’s where I started painting bikes. But I eventually came back to the Midwest.”
Where the outlaw biker presence wasn’t as heavy. Where there weren’t people looking to kill me for the things I’d done.

His mom and dad seemed to accept the answer and didn’t ask any more questions—thank God. And his mother moved on to telling him how excited his Grandma Romo was to hear he was home, and trying to catch him up on all his aunts, uncles, and cousins—some of whom he couldn’t even remember.

Lucky nodded and replied every so often—and yet from the corner of his eye he could see the grim, distrustful expression still on Mike’s face, and he could sense the narrowed, suspicious eyes glued on him the whole time.

And he remembered his brother was a cop now. With cop instincts.

Shit. Clearly, even if his parents hadn’t caught on, Mike knew Lucky wasn’t telling them everything.

L
ucky hugged his mom and dad goodbye and left his old home, still not having reconciled with Mike. And even as good as it felt to have his parents’ suddenly back in his world, the stark strangeness of it, combined with Mike’s unspoken suspicions, made Lucky feel . . . a little like running. Like he just wanted to get on his bike and ride, right out of Destiny, right out of Ohio.

Maybe tonight was the tipping point, the thing that knocked him over the edge. He’d been doing pretty damn well with all these big changes . . . but now, right when he should feel great, instead he felt . . . overwhelmed. And responsible to too many people suddenly. Like being the lone rider—responsible to no one, able to shut everything out—had been easier than this.

And so he rode. Fast. Up and down highways. He concentrated on the pavement before him, the cool evening breeze cutting through the leather jacket he wore. He concentrated on the sweet country scents of earth and trees and spring grass. He listened to the music he most liked to ride to: the easy pounding beat of Molly Hatchet on “Call Me the Breeze,” and the Allman Brothers going a little darker, deeper on “Midnight Rider.”

He was twenty miles outside the Destiny city limits, however, when on the fringes of his mind, he found himself calculating a route back, trying to reach into his memory to recall how the country roads were all connected. It was the ultimate freedom to ride without knowing or caring where you were going—but maybe he was outgrowing that now. Because
that
kind of freedom suddenly didn’t seem as important as the things he was going back to: a son, a woman.

When he pulled into his driveway, he put his bike in the garage, but didn’t bother going inside—instead he walked down the hill to Tessa’s. He was about to knock on her back door when he caught a hint of movement on the side deck. He climbed the stairs to find her curled up in her lounge chair, wrapped in the quilt he knew her grandmother had made.

“What are you doing?” he asked softly.

Her answer came just as quiet. “Enjoying the night.” Almost May now, the late evening air remained brisk, but you could also feel the slow coming of summer in it.

Lucky grabbed a chair from her patio set and pulled it up to sit beside her. Crickets and other insects sang loudly in the trees, sounding almost as if they surrounded them.

They sat silent for a long minute, until Tessa said, “Are you going to tell me?”

Lucky thought about what to say, and finally settled on, “I feel a little like my head’s gonna explode.”

He felt her look in the dark. “Things didn’t go well?”

“No, things went great. With my parents anyway. We talked. They . . . understood. It was good. Weird, but good. I mean, I haven’t seen them for almost half my life. And they’re hugging me and telling me they love me and . . .” He stopped, shook his head. “And like I said, it was good, but . . . everything’s changing for me, Tessa, almost faster than I can keep up with.” He let out a breath, again suffering the sensation of being overwhelmed.

“And Mike?”

“He’s an asshole,” Lucky bit off.

She let out a sigh. “I thought maybe he’d soften up a little once your parents were here.”

“Not even close.”

They stayed quiet for another moment, until she said, “Lean your head back. Look up.”

He sensed her doing it, too. The sky was clear tonight, and this far out in the country . . . damn, a billion stars shone down on them. He hadn’t noticed when he was riding—too much focus on the road required, too much shit in his head.

“Nights like this make me feel peaceful inside,” she told him.

He kept looking, and slowly, he began to feel that way, too. Then he reached down and found her hand, squeezing it in his.

T
essa stood behind the counter at Under the Covers, copying a quote she’d just found in a book into the little journal she even carried with her in her purse—just in case she needed it.

Think of all the beauty that’s still left in and around you and be happy.

Anne Frank

If Anne Frank could still appreciate beauty, inside and outside, during
her
ordeal, surely Tessa could when she was feeling less than perfect. Reading it over again made her smile.

“So Lucky finally made up with his family, huh?” Amy asked from between two bookshelves. “That’s so nice.”

Tessa had started to fill Amy in, but when a customer had arrived, she’d stopped. “Well, he made up with his parents, but Mike is another story.”

Just then, Brontë appeared, merrily trotting out from the shelves and up behind the counter, where she actually rubbed up against Tessa’s ankle. The gesture filled her with warmth—she couldn’t believe Brontë was openly showing affection—and on instinct, she stooped down to scoop the black-and-white kitty into her arms. “Look at you, being all bold and friendly,” she said, peering into Brontë’s blue eyes.