The Davis Years (Indigo) (28 page)

He leaned forward and clasped his hands together. “One thing I learned in here is the past is for learning. It’s not for punishing others or yourself. It’s not for dwelling on and getting angry about things you can’t change. It’s for learning how to do better in the rest of your life. And being grateful you get another chance to try and do better.” He held up a hand and shook his head the moment she tried to say something. Then, he said, “I’m not expecting instant forgiveness or for you to run down to the parole board and sing my praises. And maybe you can never forgive what I did. I just wanted you to hear those things. From me. There are just some things that can’t be expressed the right way in letters.”

“Right.” Nothing he’d ever said to her before had made so much sense.

Larry smiled. “You go on and do well for yourself. That’s all I want for you. After all I done wrong and all I took from you, I pray every night for you to have that. I know I can never fully apologize for all I’ve done, and I can’t change the past, but I can at least offer you my heartfelt well wishes.”

“I’ll tell them the truth.” Jemma’s heart instantly felt lighter. “Nothing more or less than that. Including the fact that you’re more than what I thought you were. That you’ve changed.”

His voice cracked. “I’m glad to hear you say that.”

They talked for a while longer about Larry getting his GED and his trying to be a mentor for some of the guys he’d met. Later, when she left, his words about learning from the past rang through her head. Their echoes stuck there hours later, bouncing around along with what Mary had said.

Monday morning, Davis’s brothers showed up bright and early as promised. In fact, he was awakened by a phone call and Cole’s angry voice telling him they’d been knocking on the door for five minutes. Davis rolled out of bed, pulled on the first pair of sweats that caught his eye and limped down the stairs, grimacing at the morning stiffness in his knee.

He threw open the door for the three of them, grunted a greeting, and then retreated into the family room. They followed.

“Well?” Cole raised his eyebrows.

Davis sneered at him. He looked like he thought he was entitled to the answer he obviously expected Davis to give. Davis watched Lydia go around the room with her hand pressed to her mouth, looking at pictures of the three brothers—her sons—growing up in soccer, football, and baseball uniforms and shirts and ties for school pictures. Ashby paced around the room, fidgeting with his wedding ring and tapping his foot against the floor whenever he attempted to stand still.

“Davis, our appointment with Seth is in less than an hour. I suggest you tell us what you have to tell us or else go get showered. ’Cause you could really use one of those.”

Davis’s stare went back to Cole. Not only was he going to take what little Davis had left, he was going to be a jerk about it. Then again, what else could he expect from Cole?

“We don’t have time for this.” Cole glanced at his watch. He was probably calculating in his head the quickest he could get back to Pennsylvania and get on with his life. Dump Lydia off and go. That was their M.O., Cole and Ashby. Dump the family problems on Davis and go. Davis, the skeleton keeper.

He’d made his decision almost as soon as he left the hotel the night before. He was sick of them. They kept thinking they could boss him around and they were wrong. He nodded. “She can stay here.”

Lydia rushed over, beaming up at him as she was a full head shorter. “Thank you. I knew you had it in your heart, son. I knew it.”

Cole nodded. “You made the right decision.”

Davis locked his cold stare first on one brother and then the other. “But I won’t. You two are going to buy me out of the house.”

“Davis, no,” Lydia said.

“Don’t be stupid. Where will you go?” Cole said.

“Don’t worry about it. You’ve never worried about me before. Your little plan backfired on you, huh? I can’t afford to buy you two out, but you can certainly afford to buy me out.” He laughed bitterly. “Besides, isn’t this what you wanted anyway? You have your friggin’ house. Now you can re-sell it, burn it, do whatever you want with it. But I’m leaving.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Cole said, running a hand through his short, thick hair. He looked like he’d rather use that hand, along with the other one, to strangle Davis.

Davis ignored his comment. Before he turned to leave the room, he said, “I guess I better grab that shower. We’ll need to keep that appointment with Seth to talk all of this over.”

Davis headed for the stairs, leaving his stunned brothers and hysterical mother behind him. He had no idea where he would go or what he would do. But it was too bad Florida wasn’t an option. Not that he should allow himself to think that way, but he couldn’t stop little thoughts like that from popping into his mind, and he’d given up on trying.

***

On her way home Monday afternoon from running errands and long after visiting Smooth, Jemma decided to take a route home which took her by Davis’s place. She slammed on the brakes, stopping just past the driveway, shocked to see his car there. She pulled over to the curb and parked. She didn’t know what she was going to say, but she knew she had to see him. Her last memory of Davis wouldn’t be of him speeding away while she watched from his bedroom window.

She wasn’t going to tell him how much she wanted to be with him and that she was thinking of not leaving. He couldn’t know those things. First things first. She had to see if he would answer the door and take it from there. After all, the last time she’d tried to call, which had admittedly been Friday, he hadn’t answered.

She stood at the front door, just staring at it for a moment. She raised her hand to knock several times before she got up the nerve to actually do it.

He answered the door with a drunken grin. “Jemma.” He stumbled backward so she could come in.

“How much have you had, Davis?” Jemma followed him into the family room. She pushed a pile of takeout cartons out of the way so that she could sit on the sofa.

“Psht. Just a sip,” he slurred, sitting, or more like falling, across the chair facing her.

He was sloppy drunk. She hadn’t seen him like that the whole time she’d been home. He’d had a glass of wine or two with her, but he hadn’t gotten anything close to what he was like at that moment. He’d told her one night that he drank a lot and was afraid of becoming his father. She hadn’t thought he’d been in any danger of that until he’d opened the door for her moments earlier.

Davis upended a rectangular bottle filled with dark liquor and Jemma sighed, shaking her head. He looked at her. “What?”

“You’ve probably had enough.”

Davis smirked before taking another large gulp from the bottle. “You don’t know what’s enough for me. You’re not around enough to know. I developed a high tolerance over these last six years, Jemster.”

She went up to him and grabbed the bottle. He gave it to her without much resistance. She set it on the end table furthest away from him and walked back over. She let him pull her onto his lap. Putting her head on his shoulder, she combed her fingers through his hair in a slow rhythm.

“I’m losing my house,” Davis said. “Well, his house, I guess.”

Jemma stopped running her fingers through his hair and looked up at him. “What happened?”

“My mom is back. My idiot brothers want me to let her live here. We went to the lawyer today. Worked it so that they’re going to buy me out. She can have this house. I’ve been trapped in here with a bunch of bad memories. And it’s the last thing tying me to them. Good. Riddance. At least I get some money out of it.”

“Oh, Davis.” She wanted to know more about his mom being back, but the look on his face told her asking wouldn’t have been a good idea.

“Don’t ‘oh Davis’ me. I don’t care.” He pushed at her and she stood. “I shouldn’t anyway,” he muttered. “I earned this damned house, though.” He pulled himself to his feet, wincing a little.

“Is it your knee?” Jemma asked, worried.

“What knees? I’m golden. I got whiskey.” He grabbed the bottle she’d taken from him earlier. It fell through his drunk-slow fingers and hit the floor. “It’s like I don’t have any knees. I don’t really. Well, I got one maybe.”

“Davis, please tell me you haven’t been drinking all day.”

“What do you care?”

“Please.”

He heaved a huge sigh. “No. I have not.” He lumbered toward the stairs.

Jemma went to the kitchen, retrieved an ice pack from the freezer and hunted down a clean dish towel after searching through several drawers and cabinets. She went up to his room and lay next to him. Without saying a word, she wrapped the ice pack in the towel and gingerly placed it over his right knee. She then patted his shoulder before lying her head on it.

“You’re staying?”

She nodded, and her cheek rubbed against the fabric of his t-shirt. “Yeah.”

“What about the car? Doesn’t Mary need it?”

“She’s not working tonight.”

“I’m fine. I don’t need you to do this. You can go home if you came here just to take care of me. And feel sorry for me,” Davis said.

“I know,” Jemma said, rubbing her hand over his chest. “I know.”

He put his arm around her, hugging her to him. A few minutes later, he was out. She lay wide awake in his arms, wondering what in the world she would or could do about him.

The next morning, the moment Davis stirred, she looked up at him. He rubbed a hand over his bloodshot eyes and mumbled something about whiskey.

She sat up on the edge of the bed. She couldn’t just leave him there. The pain she felt radiating from him almost broke her heart.

“How you feeling?” she asked.

“I don’t need looking after.” He glanced at her before rolling over to the edge of the bed and pulling himself to first a sitting and then a standing position while leaning heavily to the left.

“I didn’t say you did.”

Davis grunted in response.

“You want to talk about it?”

“What?”

“The house? Your mom? Any of it?”

He grunted again.

Jemma looked down at her hands, knowing she was crazy for suggesting what she was about to. She didn’t expect a positive answer. But she took a deep breath and did it anyway. “You could come to Florida.”

“Oh, that’d be a great idea. That’s exactly what I want to do. We should invite Wendell, too. And Stephanie.”

“Davis—”

“Yes, it’d be great. We could get a place together and be like
Three’s Company
, millennium edition, only there’d be four of us.”

“It was just an idea,” Jemma said, feeling defensive after getting the burst of attitude from him. She no longer felt like apologizing for how she’d acted the week before.

“A bad one.” He glowered at her from across the room.

She stood and straightened her jeans and shirt out the best she could before pushing her braids away from her face.

“I don’t need you to rescue me. You’re only asking me to come ’cause you pity me,” he said.

“I wasn’t trying to ‘rescue’ you. I was trying to be a friend.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s kind of hard for me to be friends with someone I’m in love with. I’m not going to pretend everything’s fine and wonderful when it’s not. You can leave me, but I’m not going to play the confused loser game with you.”

She’d been right. He’d just proved how little a word like love really meant. “Yeah, confused, I dunno. But the loser part sure fits you.” Jemma slammed the door behind her. Wiping angry tears from the corners of her eyes, she hurried down the stairs and out of the front door.

She didn’t know what she’d been thinking by coming there and especially by asking him to come to Florida, but at least Davis had proven her point. Shown her that she’d been right all along. In a way, it was a good thing that she’d gone to see him. Up until that morning, she’d actually been enough of a fool to start second-guessing her decision about him.

***

Tuesday afternoon, Lydia brought over the few suitcases she had. He overheard her, Ashby and Cole talking about how light her load was. Apparently she had a few things in storage back in Denver, but still she didn’t own much. Davis heard her and his brothers going in and out of Bill’s old room, but he didn’t so much as open the door to his. He sat on his bed, playing a video game with the television on mute. He was barely paying attention to it, though. He kept dying and having to start the game over. His mind was on Jemma and what a jerk he’d been to her that morning. And on his new housemate until he found somewhere to go.

That was the other thing. He didn’t know where he’d go. Especially now that he was fired again. The money he got once they closed on the sale of the house would last for a little while, but he still needed a job. One of the cooks at the restaurant was looking for someone to share his new apartment in Richmond, but Davis wasn’t sure he wanted to have a roommate or live in Richmond.

Once Lydia got settled in Bill’s room and Ashby and Cole left, she came to his. He called out for her to come in after hearing her knock.

She walked in, putting one foot in front of the other at a snail’s pace. “This place is going to be a great investment for your brothers. And they are going to make a killing on it once the market turns around. You’ve kept it in great shape.” Cole and Ashby were going to use the house as a rental property once Lydia moved out and then sell it after its value increased enough.