Sticks and Stones (11 page)

“Jack’s going to be pissed,” she said. “He’ll think you stole one of his girlfriends again.”

Daniel laughed, the second time in a day, still enough to jolt her with surprise, a quiet, husky sound, sleep-sex blanket full of chocolate and sin.

“Can’t steal you,” he said. His gray eyes glittered, deep amusement, and Sandra didn’t understand but she didn’t ask him to explain.

Daniel’s hand landed in her hair and Sandra let her eyes close, settling on feeling guilty later.

~

Afterward wasn’t what Sandra expected. They cleaned up in separate showers and got dressed, going about their day like usual. They touched here and there. Normal shoulder taps and one-armed hugs, but Sandra was aware of them like never before. She felt awkward, each word coming out of her mouth a little too quick and a lot too loud. Daniel didn’t seem to mind – just acted like nothing had changed.

And then Jack and Lem came home.

It was hard to meet their eyes. Sandra picked at dinner, slowly smashing her cooked vegetables until she wasn’t even sure the boys would eat it if they were on their plates. But Danny just smiled and clapped his brother on the shoulder, secret grin making Jack narrow his eyes and go for the drama, the mystery that Daniel would never give up, familiar voices fighting and bickering and making her shrink into her chair.

She wanted to feel guilty, to tell him … but something in the way Jack eyed his brother told her he already knew. The fighting was just for appearances sake; the wrestling and shoulder checking was all a guise.

Jack and Danny could always read each other best.

Jack had grown up following his big brother. Those boys had been learning each other’s moves since they were both born. They knew so much more than her. And as much as Sandra had learned about them, as much as she knew them better than herself, extensions of her own skin, Sandra didn’t know them at all. Not like they knew one another. Not even like they knew her.

She hadn’t been taught to read people. She’d had to learn on her own – dodging uplifted legs and quick hands, knowing when to stay away from the other kids’ gleaming eyes. But never like those boys.

She was too caught up inside her own head to ever be like them.

Unbelievably, Jack wasn’t angry, not really, and Sandra didn’t know what to do with that. Sure, he hit his brother a little hard, was a bit more vicious than usual, but he didn’t yell. And he didn’t sulk. Maybe it wasn’t being Jack’s girl at all. Maybe it was just
being
. Because they were together. They’d always be together. Jack and Sandra, and Daniel and Sandra, and… Maybe it would always be like that. They’d come and go, and they’d take other girls – and maybe she’d also take some boys – but it would always come back to
them
. She’d always be theirs.

Always theirs.

Even if it was only as family.

And maybe they’d always want to be hers too.

She found she was alright with that.

Sandra threw her smashed vegetables in the garbage and settled in at the table for a game of cards, listening to Lem snort and Jack lie and Danny cheat them all so soundly that the game was done before any of them even realized.

~

When prom was one week away, Lem quit his job.

He made the boys quit, too. Then he bought a car – an old thing that they’d worked on at the shop, sturdy and strong and it had a whole lot less rust than the truck did. Sandra thought it was kind of ugly, but it ran well and the boys seemed to love it, running fingers and palms over the hood before wiping all the finger marks away.

They told everyone they were moving; they’d get her high school diploma forwarded to a postal box three states away in some far-off place Sandra had never been. As far as the town knew, they left on the twenty-fifth of the month. They loaded up the truck and the car, locked the house door, left things behind that didn’t matter, and drove away.

They parked two miles out of town, on a rocky field road with trees on one side, and slept in the car, Lem in the front cab of his truck. He left before they woke, driving back, as close as he could get to town without being seen and then going the rest of the way on foot.

Trevor Davis didn’t bring a gun to prom.

Trevor Davis didn’t show up at all.

But Lem did come back smelling like blood.

As they drove away, Sandra thought about how it had been before, when they had only saved each other and not the world.

She couldn’t decide which was better. But Lem’s eyes got blacker every time he tried. His own brand of justice turned out to be no brand of justice at all. Not for them. Probably not for the world either.

Chapter Eleven

Everything had
gone so wrong.

They’d been so careful. All of them.

After leaving Respite, they’d settled in a small city in the middle of Tennessee, somewhere easy to get lost in, a large population with new plates on the car and even new last names because Lem knew a number of people who were more than a little bit disreputable.

There was always someone, somewhere, willing to hire under the table.

They’d had months.

It figured that their luck would run out.

They’d been outside the city, racing down a long stretch of dusty road in the middle of an even larger horizon, fields on either side. A swipe of blue sky peeked out from behind low, gray clouds, wind rushing against the car and shrieking in the opened windows as Jack whooped, overly loud, Danny’s grin lighting up his face, and Sandra holding her whipping hair out of her eyes.

Lem’s truck roared ahead of them. He’d bought it a month ago to help with the job working construction he’d landed with a foreman who didn’t care if his name was Jim, Bob, or José. Not as long as he got the work done. The boys used the car to get to their jobs at the mechanics on the other side of the city, and Sandra had found a bookstore that she could temp at that was only blocks away, getting paid from the till because she told Mr. Bakers that her parents would drink her money away if it all went into the bank.

It was a good day. A great one, even. They were well fed and safe and together.

A good day.

Until Lem sped down a straight, barren highway and right into his past.

A siren rent the air. The police car they’d passed on a dirt road miles back pulled up behind them. Sandra’s heart was suddenly in her throat. Danny’s smile was gone and Jack dug his hand into the door of the car. They slowed, but the officer pulled in behind Lem, pulled him over, and Daniel wrestled their car onto the shoulder at the rear.

Sandra leaned over into the front seats, balancing on Jack’s pointed shoulder. The front windshield was dirty, covered in dust. She could barely make out Lem waving his arms, the angry expression on the officer’s face.

He made Lem step out of the truck.

“Goddamn it,” Daniel said, quickly climbing from the car, and Sandra didn’t think the officer would like that either, but she and Jack followed.

“Stay right where you are,” the officer ordered when he saw them, scowling. He didn’t have a partner; he was all alone. “Return to your car,” he said, taking a step toward them. Lem seemed to go very still.

“Get back in the car,” he told them, voice gruff.

Sandra’s chest went tight. Her heart hurt, like something physical was punching her in the middle of her chest.

“It’s not like we were going to run into anyone,” Jack said, exasperated, and Daniel shook his head, already pulling his brother back toward the car.

Sandra didn’t move. She stared at Lem.

Something was very wrong.

“Get back in the car,” Lem said again, voice low, and she noticed the officer had his hand on his gun.
This isn’t about the speeding,
Sandra thought. She struggled to breathe.

“San,” Danny said.

She turned. They had the doors to the car open, Jack going still with one leg inside. His eyes narrowed as he stared at her.

“Miss,” the officer warned.

Daniel’s
too young to remember,
she recalled Lem saying,
but that
man tried to take him away
. Things kept
happening
. And then there was Mr. Murray. And Trevor Davis. And Lem’s wife … what had happened to Jack and Daniel’s mother?

This cop knew Lem’s face.

Sandra drew in a breath that burned like fire. She moved woodenly toward the boys.

“Sir,” the officer said, “I need you to place your hands on the truck.”

There was a rapid burst of pain, right above Sandra’s heart. Supernova pulses, fast and sharp. The officer put one hand to Lem’s shoulder, shoving him to the truck when he didn’t move. A snarl formed on Lem’s face and Daniel was already moving, back out of the car, Lem reaching up to grab the officer’s hand. His eyes were dark –
dark
– and even the policeman knew everything was going wrong. He tried to pull back and Lem twisted, whole body swinging around and—

“No!” Daniel shouted, running hard, Jack right on his heels. Sandra’s chest
hurt
. “Dad, don’t!”

Lem was a graceful arc, predator confident, and he drew blood, face full of rage. The officer jerked back and –
bang bang
– Lem was on the ground.

On a warm September day, Lem’s past caught up with him. Sandra felt the bullets in her chest. Lem was dead.

~

“What were you thinking?” Danny sounded tired. Miserable. There was a long gash down his right arm, startlingly red against his chalky skin. His shirt was torn, stretched out and ripped from where he’d gotten between his brother and the officer, blood on his knuckles from when he’d knocked the man down.

They had the car and they had the truck and they had
Lem
.

She should have
seen
it.

“Jesus Christ, Jack. Were you even thinking? You
hit
him. You’re lucky he didn’t shoo—” Danny’s voice cut off, teeth clacking. Sandra bit down on the sound in her throat. “They’ve got to have Dad’s plates,” he restarted quietly, nervous fingers going to his hair.
Lem had done that, too
.

“
Dad—”
Jack’s voice flattened and cracked and Daniel looked down, tendons in his neck stretching taut. Sandra curled into herself, seated on the packed mud floor, back against the old barn wall, grit under the soles of her shoe. The wood had a burnt, smoky smell. It was dirty and black and dark and mostly empty except for the car and the truck.

She tried not to think about what was inside that truck. Tried not to think on how Lem was sprawled on the truck bed and wasn’t sleeping and
oh god,
how could this be happening?

Her chest hurt.

Bang bang
.

Why hadn’t she seen it?

She had a headache. The gunshots pounded in her head. She held her hands between her stomach and her legs, curling tighter, and trying not to cry.

Jack and Daniel were being so quiet, and Daniel was trying to be so strong.

But they weren’t. They really weren’t.

“We,” Daniel cleared his throat, voice thick, and kept his head turned down, “we have to take care of Dad.”

“What do you mean?” Jack’s voice was full of stones, and Sandra wanted to go over to him, wrap him up and let him wrap her up in turn. But she didn’t think he’d let her. “Dad’s
dead
,” Jack said, grimacing and sneering. “He’s dead. There’s nothing left to take care of.”

Sandra choked on her inhale. Danny leaned back against the wall, like his legs wouldn’t hold him. “I meant …” he said slowly, “I meant we should figure out where to bury him.”

Jack sucked in air, and lowered his head. A bruise had come up on his right temple; he looked unsteady on his feet, but Daniel didn’t suggest he sit down and neither did Sandra. “What do you think we should do?” he asked, and it wasn’t exactly an apology but it sounded a bit like one, voice gone tinny and soft.

Daniel met his eyes, met hers, tried to grin, but he just looked sick, then looked back to the ground. His Adam’s apple rose up and down.

Lem’s eyes had stayed open. She remembered that.

His chest had been leaking, and Daniel’s hands slipped when he got behind Lem and held him from beneath his arms, across his chest, red painting his fingers slick. Daniel trembled as they got Lem inside the truck’s bed, trembled when he climbed up into the front seat, shouting at Jack to get moving, to get back to the car because they had to run away.

Jack had pulled her into the front of the car, tires spitting up gravel as the engine grated and turned over.

And Lem’s eyes were still open.

Sandra swallowed again. It didn’t help. It was only a moment, but she was outside, heaving against the worn brown-wood wall. There was a bottle of water back in the car and she rinsed her mouth, not looking at Daniel or Jack, but settling down close enough to the two of them that Jack could reach her knee and Daniel could touch her hair.

“We can’t give him a proper funeral,” Daniel said, voice loud after all the silence.

Sandra felt her face twist.

“We’ll have to lie low. And we
can’t
—”

This time, Jack reached out and squeezed his brother’s shoulder. Sandra reached up and tangled her hand in Daniel’s loose shirt.

They were with him. Whatever they had to do, they would.

Daniel nodded quick, eyes going shiny, and then he pulled away and led them to the back of the truck. Sandra didn’t want to look inside. She did. It was still Lem, only paler, more horrifying. Blood congealed over his shirt and had spread across the grooves of the truck bed. The dirt from the bottom of the box had stuck to his arms and his jeans. There was a smear on his face, a spatter of drops, and Sandra had to stop and breathe deep. And then she had to breathe shallow because all she smelled was the metal of the blood.

“We should … we should clean him up,” she got out. Daniel nodded carefully and climbed up, stepping over and around Lem, not looking down, to reach the tarp shoved up under the middle of the truck’s back window. He passed it to Jack, and Jack found a clear spot in the barn, free from old mud and stones. Then they picked him up, laid him out, and Sandra went to the car to fetch the water bottle, found another unopened one, and took a rag from the car’s glove box.

There were loose boards along the back wall of the barn, rough and weathered, and Daniel found Jack a pair of gloves. He didn’t find any for himself but didn’t seem to care as he tugged at the wood, getting splinters and nicks. They gathered boards as Sandra wet Lem’s face, biting her lip hard enough to taste blood. There was nothing she could do for his shirt and she settled for brushing the dry dirt loose. His jacket was in his truck and she thought maybe they could use that instead, cover up his chest, put it on and zip it tight. She’d get the boys to help her. The blood stuck under her nails and Sandra trembled as she finished, rising to her feet and looking for metal nails along the floor, ones that weren’t bent or rusted too badly, to make the coffin and close the lid.

She didn’t know if she could do this.

Wiping her arm across her eyes, Sandra breathed in deep, held the air in her lungs until it ached. One thing at a time. That was the only way they’d make it through. She tried not to think, and went back to looking for nails.

Daniel and Jack stacked the boards up, again and again until there were enough. And then Daniel went to the truck, found a hammer and Sandra asked Jack for help with Lem’s jacket.

He stared for a long moment, and she thought maybe he’d want to keep the jacket instead, but then he looked at Lem’s chest and only said, “Good idea,” and quietly went to get that, too. Everything felt like it was moving too slow, swimming in molasses, as though it would break the world to move any faster.

The jacket was hard to maneuver and Sandra was very close to tears by the time they finished. But Daniel had started trying to match the rough boards together, and she pulled her shoulders back and went to join him. She helped hold pieces with Daniel while Jack nailed them into place. The wood got discolored in her hands by little wet spots, and Sandra pretended not to notice while her vision blurred, tears on her cheeks, sure she wasn’t the only one.

They found a spot in the woods outside the barn. A fifteen-minute walk to where no one would ever find Lem. There was only one shovel and they took turns digging. The blisters that sprang up on Sandra’s hands barely hurt.

The walk through the poplars and pines seemed longer with the coffin and after several minutes they had to set it down, rest their backs and shoulders. The death grip on that box gave Sandra splinters, turned her skin red. Daniel kept swallowing, again and again, overly loud. Plants tangled and broke around their feet.

Sandra felt covered in grime, dust and dirt thick over her skin, even though she only saw it on her hands. The too-sweet smell of the forest clogged her nose, the smell of vegetable decay on a warm day.

They reached the spot. A blue flannel marker fluttered in the breeze like a flag. When they gently laid the coffin on the ground, Daniel unwound the rope from his arm and he and Jack awkwardly lowered first one end of the coffin, and then the other. The last inch slipped and the wood landed heavily, making them flinch. The hole was deep and shadowed, and the trees didn’t let much light through. Sandra wished they had a candle to burn so that maybe Lem could find his way home.

Instead, there was his jacket and the photograph that Sandra had carefully placed next to his heart. Hopefully his boys would send him home instead.

The first shovelful was loud, hollow thuds ringing until layers of dirt muffled the sound. The boys didn’t talk, just sunk into the steady dig and dump of the shovel, handing it off when the other nudged his shoulder. The humid-heavy air left their skin damp, shirts dewy, and the insects incessantly buzzed.

Sandra watched and tried not to think of anything.

When it was done, the silence fell thick and heavy.

Sandra didn’t know what to say. This would be easier with someone else, someone she hadn’t cared so much about. But it was only them and she pulled up her courage, breathed deep and made herself
try
. “He…” Sandra began. The boys jerked toward her, startled, like they thought they’d have woken up by now. Her throat burned and her eyes hurt, but she forced the words out, pausing to clear her closing throat. “He saved me,” she said. “He gave me a family.”

Danny’s breath stuttered and he looked away, back at the grave, and then away, staring out into the forest trees. His lips moved with words she couldn’t hear and Sandra closed her eyes, letting him send out his own private prayer.

It still felt like a dream.

I failed
him,
part of her wanted to say.
I failed him
and I’m so sorry.