Criminal Intent (MIRA) (26 page)

Brian paused, his eyes scanning the crowd until they landed on Davy. He went still for an instant, then he moved forward with only a tad less confidence than he’d displayed a moment ago. “Davy,” he said, and held out his hand.

“Bri.” Davy took the hand, then thought
what the hell
and pulled his brother into a brief, awkward hug.

“Don’t worry,” Brian said. “It doesn’t rub off.” But there was no rancor behind his words, just a teasing glint in his eyes, so Davy didn’t take offense.

“You’re looking good, Bri,” he said.

“Thank God. That means I’m successful at hiding the fact that inside, I’m quivering in my Ferragamos.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“Think about it. I wasn’t exactly Serenity’s favorite son when I left, and I suspect the entire welcoming committee is standing right here in front of me. I may look like I have it all together, but in reality, I’m scared shitless.”

“I should’ve done more for you. When we were kids. I should’ve done a better job of protecting you.”

“You were a kid, too, for Christ’s sake. You had your own life to live. It wasn’t up to you to coddle me. You need to stop blaming yourself for everything.”

“But the way everybody treated you—like you were some kind of freak—”

“Welcome to my life. Look, Davy.” Brian’s eyes were intensely blue, filled with warmth and a self-acceptance that hadn’t been there at eighteen. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe things work out the way they’re supposed to? A guy in my position has to develop a thick skin in order to survive. It was a good thing I got plenty of practice at home before I had to go out into the real world, because it’s a lot tougher out there.”

Brian’s
words might have been true, but Davy found them ineffably sad. Why did every conversation between them begin and end with Brian’s gayness? Like a pink elephant parked squarely in the middle of the living room rug, it was impossible for them to tiptoe around the subject. They should have been able to talk about other things. There should have been innumerable topics they could choose from. After all, they had fifteen years to catch up on. So why did their conversation inevitably boil down to this one topic?

“Let’s get your luggage,” he said, “and go home.”

Brian raised his carry-on. “This is all I brought.” At Davy’s surprised look, he said, “I’m not planning to stay long.”

“Obviously.”

“Hey, you called, I came. I could have told you to blow off. Does Gram know I’m coming?”

Taking out his car keys, Davy moved doggedly in the direction of the exit. “No,” he said.

Brian, a good six inches shorter than him, scurried to keep up with his long legs. “What about Dee?”

“I don’t want to talk about Dee. Right now, she’s not on my list of favorite people.”

“Of course. Well, it’s nice to know that some things never change.”

“Dee’s a bitter, hardened woman. She’s not happy with life, and she’d love to be able to blame it all on you or me. But the truth is, it’s her own fault. She’s made her choices. We’re not responsible for the fact that they were the wrong ones.”

“Amen. And what about you, big brother? Did you make the right choices?”

“God help me,” he said, thinking of Chelsea and the years he’d spent caught in her toxic spell. “I’m really not sure.”

“Are you and Chelsea still together?”

The question took him by surprise. He’d imagined that Brian
knew. But Bri was cut off from everybody here, and without some point of contact, there was no way the news would have filtered west to Taos.

“No,” he said. “She died last year.”

“Shit,” Brian said. “Open mouth, insert foot. I’m sorry, man.”

“It’s all right. It was—” He paused, thought about it, recognized the truth he’d denied for so long. “It was over a long time before she died. I just hadn’t figured it out yet.” They crossed the crowded parking garage and he unlocked the door of his car. “What about you? Are you and Alec still together?”

“Yeah. The restaurant’s been a big success, and so has our relationship. Six years now. It feels good to be with somebody you can trust. Somebody who understands where you’re coming from. Somebody who’s there when you come home at night, to hand you a glass of wine, rub your shoulders, and listen to you bitch about your day.”

Davy imagined it probably did feel good. It sounded like heaven. Not that he was qualified to judge. He’d never had any of those things. Sliding into the driver’s seat, he leaned across and unlocked the passenger door. “I’m happy for you,” he said as Brian climbed in. “Really.”

“Thanks.” Brian glanced around the car’s interior, taking note of all the gadgets and gizmos. “So what’s with the cop car?You’re a member of the esteemed blue brotherhood now?”

“Only temporarily. I worked DEA for a few years. Right now, I’m filling in as police chief for a couple of months. I can’t wait for it to be over.”

Brian fastened his seat belt. Grinning like a little kid, he said, “My brother, the cop. Man, does that sound funny. I knew you when. And in those days, I couldn’t have imagined you ever wearing a uniform. But it must rock, driving around in this thing all the time. I’ve never seen one of these up close and personal. Not even from the back seat.”

“It
does have its moments,” Davy admitted.

“Wait till I tell Alec I got to ride in a cop car. He’ll be so jealous.”

And because his love for his kid brother hadn’t dimmed over the years, but still shone as bright as it had when Brian was five years old and he was ten, he said, “If you behave yourself, I might just let you play with the lights and the siren.”

He got Brian settled in at Gram’s place. There was no room to bring him to the trailer, not with Jessie staying there. It was just as well, because he was embarrassed for his brother to see where he lived. “We’ll talk tomorrow before the meeting,” he promised Bri. “I’ll explain all this stuff to you as best I can, but the whole thing’s complicated, and none of it sounds any too promising. I honestly don’t know what to do with her. I know she wants her independence, and she’ll probably scream bloody murder if we try to take it away from her. But there’s the whole safety issue to consider. I guess at this point, the first thing we have to do is clarify in our own minds what our highest priority is. Gram’s safety, or her independence.”

“It’s not an easy decision,” Brian said. “It never is. We went through the same thing last year with Alec’s grandfather. He’d lived in the same house for seventy-five years. How do you pack up seventy-five years of someone’s life and move them into a three-hundred-square-foot room in a nursing home? How do you decide what to give away, what to throw and what to keep? Because stuff is never just stuff. It’s memories. Generations of memories that you can’t just toss on the front lawn and sell to strangers. It might all be part of the circle of life, but it’s a damn cruel circle, complete with fangs and claws.”

Davy said good-night to his brother and climbed back into the Crown Vic. The moon was a shiny silver orb that dogged him, like a homeless pup, from Gram’s house to the state highway. At
the stop sign, he hesitated. The chirp of a cricket floated through his open window, and the whine of a pulp truck ricocheted back and forth across the river valley. In the distance, he could see its headlights, could just make out the amber running lights down the side. The driver neared the 35 mph speed limit sign and began downshifting.

A car passed him on the main road, going a little too fast. The driver caught sight of the lights mounted on his roof and hit the brakes. Grinning, Davy pulled out behind him, just to give the guy something to worry about. He had no intention of pulling him over, not at this time of night, when he was off duty and the guy couldn’t have been doing more than five miles over the limit. But sometimes it was fun to put the fear of God into them.

A mile down the road, he tired of playing head games with the motorist who was now traveling a sedate six miles per hour under the speed limit, and wheeled into the Twilight Motel parking lot. He turned off his headlights and sat there with his engine running and his parking lights on. The shop was dark, but upstairs, a lamp burned in the living room window. She was still up.

He should go home. It was eleven-thirty-six on a week-night, and he had a long day tomorrow. He and Brian would need to talk before they met with Gram’s entire team of doctors at one o’clock. They needed to make sure their heads were in the same place, make sure they presented a united front, before they faced all those medical people. He’d made sure that Dee knew about the meeting. If she chose to show up, fine. If she didn’t, that was okay, too. He was beyond caring any more what his sister did or thought. But he really should get to bed. Morning came early, and at some point in between all the family meetings, he had to squeeze in a little work. Enough, at least, to keep him from being fired.

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Annie’s number. “Hi,” he
said when she picked up on the second ring. “I’m calling to issue you an exclusive invitation to join Insomniacs R Us.”

“What are you doing up so late? Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”

“I could ask you the same thing. Your living room light’s on. Don’t you ever sleep?”

“How do you know it’s on?”

“Look out the window.”

A moment later, a curtain parted in the window above his head, and he caught a glimpse of her face, looking down at him. The curtain snapped shut. “Are you stalking me?” she said.

He leaned back and stretched out his long legs. “Only if you want me to, darlin’ mine.”

“It’s almost midnight. Why aren’t you home, tucked snug in your bed?”

He ran a finger back and forth along the steering wheel. “I had to pick up my brother at the airport. What’s your excuse?”

“I’m being kept up by this delusional man who keeps calling me and showing up at my door at the most ridiculous hours.”

“Sophie asleep?”

“Of course Sophie’s asleep. She knows enough to go to bed at a reasonable hour when she has to work in the morning. Unlike certain people I know.”

“So why don’t you come out and play?”

“You’re certifiable, Hunter.”

“What if I said I wanted to tell you a bedtime story?”

“I’d say you’d better be able to tell it in twelve minutes, because at midnight, I turn into a pumpkin.”

Suddenly serious, he said, “Come on down, Annie. Please? I just want to talk to you.”

“Damn
it, Davy.” The humor had fled her voice, too, leaving it naked and vulnerable. “I’m afraid of you.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I’m afraid of you, too. Are you coming down?”

“Eleven minutes. Eleven minutes, and not a minute longer.”

She came down wearing flannel pajamas and a pair of oversized fuzzy slippers that looked like giant monster feet, complete with long, lethal-looking toenails. Pulling her white cardigan sweater tighter around her, she opened the car door and slipped into the passenger seat. “I’m here,” she said. “Talk.”

He turned off the parking lights and killed the engine, and the night, tender and sweet, draped them in its velvet cloak. “My brother’s gay,” he said into the darkness. “His name’s Brian. Tonight was the first time I’ve seen him in fifteen years.”

“Why?” she said.

“He left town twenty minutes after he graduated from high school. He wasn’t treated very well here. It was easier for him not to come back.”

“The road runs both ways. Why didn’t you visit him?”

“I don’t know,” he said, surprised by her question. “I guess…it was easier for me if I didn’t.”

“Okay.”

“My sister, Dee…we don’t get along. The truth is, Dee doesn’t get along with anyone. She’s a miserable excuse for a human being. Life hasn’t dealt her the hand she thought it should, and the only way she can compensate is to make everybody around her just as miserable as she is.” He paused. “She always hated Brian. She was so damn embarrassed by him.”

“NIMBY.”

“Hunh?”

“Not
In My Back Yard. Let the spread of evil happen somewhere else, just please, God, don’t let it hit close to home.”

“Yeah. That’s Dee in a nutshell.” He went quiet, and she waited for him to continue, the silence between them so absolute that he could hear her slow, even breathing. “And then there’s Chelsea. I was in love with Chelsea for twenty frigging years. Being in love with Chels was a little like having sandpaper rubbed all over your body and then being rolled in salt. She cheated on me for the first time while we were still in high school. I should’ve figured out right then and there that once she got started, she wouldn’t stop. Maybe if I had, my life would’ve turned out differently. Or maybe not. Maybe I was just meant to be a masochist.”

She made a small sound, as though she were about to speak. He waited, but she held her silence. “Chels got pregnant with Jessie while I was away at college. I don’t know who the man was. She never would tell me. After Jessie was born, I asked her to marry me. I loved her so damn much, loved that little girl as if she was my own. Chelsea thought about it for a while and then she said yes. Being married to her was—” he paused, searched his brain for a suitable word “—torturous. It was also the happiest time of my life.”

Beside him, in the darkness, Annie’s hand found his and held it loosely. “How long were you married?” she said softly.

“Three years, and then she couldn’t take it any longer. The whole monogamy thing just wasn’t working for her. She took Jessie away and divorced me. For a long time we didn’t see each other. But eventually, we got back together again. Eventually, we always got back together again. Over and over, for the better part of two decades, I let her lead me around by the nose. It didn’t matter where I was or what I was doing. If Chelsea called, I was there.” He laughed without humor. “And sooner or later, Chelsea always called.”

He stopped, wet his lips. “The really damning thing is, I knew
better. I knew the relationship was destroying me. I just couldn’t seem to end it. She was like—” He paused, shuddering as he remembered the effect she’d had on him. “She was like a drug. Being with Chelsea was like shooting up heroin. I was a junkie. I couldn’t stop, I would’ve done anything to get a dose, and I always wanted more. How’s that for selfdestructive behavior?”