CHAPTER ELEVEN
Thia
I hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. I’d meant to LEAVE. But when I found out that yet another door had been locked, trapping me inside, I couldn’t help but to listen when I’d heard voices on the other side.
I don’t care about the girl.
When Bear said those words they shouldn’t have stung like a hornet to the heart. I already knew he didn’t care. It wasn’t until after they’d already pulled out that I remembered what Chop had said about the ring and about Bear’s making up the whole biker promise as a joke.
This was probably all still a joke to him. They probably weren’t going to Jessep. They were probably in the truck on their way to some sort of badass tattoo convention where Bear would tell everyone about the stupid trick he played on a kid who actually fell for his stupid lie and came back years later, still holding onto a ring that had meant everything to her growing up and nothing to him from the moment he’d placed it in my hand.
I knew he didn’t care about me. Not then.
Not now.
So why do I feel like someone punched me in the gut?
After my brother died, my dad always told me that under the weight of great tragedy, came great responsibility. I took this to heart and as the years went on I took on more and more responsibility at the grove so my dad could tend to my mother who was slipping further and further into her delirium. Before the Sunlandio Corporation cancelled our contract I was seventeen and running the grove full-time, often skipping school to meet with vendors or make sure that orders went out on time. One night during an extremely rare frost I rallied the workers and we spent all night hosing down the oranges so we wouldn’t lose them to the cold.
Under the great weight of that tragedy I took responsibility, but under the weight of the new trudges was too much, too heavy, and it was crushing me before I could make any rational or responsible decisions.
Why did I even leave town? Why didn’t I just call the sheriff myself?
I know why. I panicked. Panic and fear clouded any sort of logic, but as logic started to once again take over so did the gravity of my loss. I loved my father. He taught me how to tell when the oranges were ripe for the picking from the way they smelled. He taught me how to fish. He’d let me sit in front of him on the tractor when he mowed the field behind the house, the only space not taken up by orange trees. I don’t think losing him was something I would ever be able to move on from. My brother had died when I was young and although it hurt like hell, what hurt worse was seeing my parents hurting.
I loved my mother, but I wouldn’t miss her. Not in the same way I’d miss my dad. She hadn’t been my mother in a long time. My father picking up her slack on days she refused to get out of bed, refused to take her medication, or after Jesse died, refused to acknowledge she still had a remaining living child.
The night she killed my father she’d been more manic than I’d ever seen her. The look of death swirled in her eyes.
I had no choice and my only true regret was not getting there sooner.
Not being able to save my dad.
Responsibility meant not running away. Isn’t that what I’d done? I’d run away.
What if I went back to Jessep? What if I told the sheriff what happened. They knew my mother and although she and my father went to great lengths to cover up her mental issues they had to understand that I didn’t have a choice. Isn’t that the way justice worked?
Guilty people don’t run away. But I panicked and instead of dialing the sheriff for help, the only person who popped into my mind was Bear. Getting to him was my only focus and through my tunnel vision he was all I could see at the end.
That was a mistake.
I didn’t want to be this weak girl. I was never weak before and I hated that I was being weak now. I’d go back and face whatever I had coming to me. Hopefully, I’d get back there in time to tell my story before someone stumbled upon the nightmare back at the house.
I also imagined the relief that Bear would feel when he came back and found me gone which made my decision an even easier one.
I didn’t have a shirt and it’s not like I could walk all the way back to Jessep wearing a towel, so I grabbed a plain black t-shirt from a small pile of Bear’s clothes on the floor. Before I could register what I was doing I lifted the shirt to my nose and inhaled deeply. Laundry detergent, sweat, and cigarettes shouldn’t have smelled so good. I pulled it on over my head. On Bear it was probably tight, on me it was a tarp.
The little apartment I was in was plain, but smelled like new paint. When we built a new shed in the orange grove and the doors were installed the trim company set the door keys on top of the molding. The door was a taller one and me being only five foot three there was a problem. I slid a chair over to the door ignoring the protesting burn of my muscles as I did so. I carefully climbed the chair and felt the top of the molding.
No such luck.
Although I should have known better since luck and I hadn’t seemed to be friends not just the last few years, but my entire life.
I looked around the apartment for something I could use as a key, like a small screwdriver or a nail file when I noticed a paint splattered sheet in the corner of the room covering what looked like a little alcove.
Crossing the room as quickly as my broken body would allow, I tugged on the bottom of the sheet, freeing it from where it had been tucked behind something at the top of the pile it had been concealing. As it fell to the floor it revealed the entire life it had been hiding underneath.
Bear’s life.
An older style TV, much thicker than the more modern flat screens, with fake wooden paneling on the sides sat in the center. On top of the TV was a stack of Harley Davidson coffee table books and behind that was a display case with three hooks holding long curved samurai swords with gold handles. A framed poster of Johnny Cash flipping the bird with the title “AT SAN QUENTIN” over his right shoulder sat on the floor against the wall where a huge BEACH BASTARDS black flag was held unrolled with the Beach Bastards logo peeking out from the folds like an uninvited guest.
I was about to search the kitchen drawers when something in the center of the pile caught my attention. A framed picture of three young men.
One I recognized instantly as Bear, his ridiculously blue eyes practically shone through the old faded picture and although I’d met him when he was twenty-one, he was even younger in the picture, I would guess around fifteen or sixteen. He was facial hair free and his cheeks still had that slight roundness to them that would eventually fade and give way to the sharp intensity that Bear was today. The leather cut he wore read PROSPECT across one side in a U shape at the bottom. I recognized another boy as King, but with slightly longer hair that was too short to give way to the budding half curls that surrounded his face. King was also smiling, but unlike Bear, King already looked hardened in the picture, maybe even a bit sad.
In the middle of the two teenagers, who would grow up to be larger than life men, was a boy who was a good head smaller than Bear or King, which by anyone’s standards still made him taller than most. He was dressed up, different than the t-shirt and jeans of his friends, although the setting didn’t look as if they were going somewhere that required that kind of formal dress. They were sitting on a bright blue picnic table, tall skinny trees and twinkling water in the background. The kid I didn’t know wore a short sleeved white dress shirt tucked into khaki pants with a lime green bow tie with checked suspenders and just like the Johnny Cash poster, he was flipping off the camera. The letters FU were tattooed down his middle finger.
With all the shit I had going on and with the need to run coursing through my very being, I was surprised that a picture of all things had me at a pause. I ran my fingers across the faces of the three boys and wondered if they knew what kind of men they would eventually become.
I found myself jealous of the easy friendship that radiated through the photo.
Socially awkward was an understatement, but after Jesse died and I took on more and more at the grove, friends were no longer an issue because I didn’t have time for them. Between my part-time job at the Stop-n-Go and trying not to fold under the pressure, school dances and first kisses were never a priority.
They were never even a consideration.
I did have one friend.
Buck. I called him Bucky. He was the only one who no matter how many times I told him I couldn’t hang out, he always made time to come to the grove to check up on me. Bring me lunch. He was the only one who amongst a sea of adults realized that I had taken on more than what any normal teenager ever could or should.
Buck was the deputy sheriff. He and Sheriff Buckingham were the only law in Jessep, maybe if I got to Bucky first then he could help me convince the sheriff of the truth? That this was all just a horrible, horrible tragic accident.
I couldn’t go to jail. Not that I thought jail or thinking of being there took any precedence over what had happened to my parents. But because I couldn’t sit there day in and day out and stew over what I had done. What I could have done differently. That my entire family was dead.
I wouldn’t survive.
The thought of survival brought me back to the present and my task at hand. Setting down the picture, I went to the kitchen where the drawers and cabinets were all bare. Growing frustrated with each passing second I made a decision. I walked over to the samurai swords and removed one from the hooks, unsheathing it slowly so I wouldn’t accidentally cut myself on the blade.
I may not be able to unlock the door.
But I can chop the fucking knob off.
And so I did.
With a guttural roar I severed the knob from the door with the sword, revealing the silver mechanism underneath. I pushed my fingers into the small space and pinched the two ends of the small metal bar together, unlatching the bolt.
The mid-morning sun blinded me as I walked out from the cover of the garage apartment and into the light of day. After my eyes adjusted, I followed the driveway past a three story stilt home. I wasn’t sure where I was until I got to the bottom of the narrow driveway and spotted the causeway to my right and knew right away that I was still in Logan’s Beach and that if I took a left I’d eventually find my way back to the highway.
I wish I had my dad’s truck or my bike.
There was no way I’d take a chance of going back to the MC to get it. I shook my head, refusing to acknowledge what had happened to me there. Not yet anyway.
One horrible event at a time.
One tragedy to focus my grief and anger on.
Someday I would allow myself to be upset and angry at the MC, at Chop. I would curse the world for what he did to me, or TRIED to do to me, but not today. I started off down the road. Toward Jessep. Toward home. The injuries caused by Chop and his thumb made each step more excruciatingly cringeworthy.
With newly found determination, I limped forward.
Today was for my parents.
Today was for my dad.
And today I would be strong, for them. For him.
Tomorrow, tomorrow I would cry.
Not today.
Just not today.
* * *
Bear
We were turning back into King’s driveway when his phone rang. “Pup,” he said. There was a short pause. “You see what direction she went?”
I spotted a figure limping down the road and instantly recognized the wild pink hair.
“Never mind, we see her,” he said, ending the call.
“Where the fuck does she think she’s going?” I muttered, leaning over the steering wheel. I brought the truck to a stop with a squeal of the brakes and considerable effort to throw the shifter on the steering wheel into park.
“I’ll take it back up to the garage while you deal with that,” King offered. I nodded and hopped down onto the road, quickly catching up to Thia, who was moving a lot faster than her limp should allow. She was wearing a plain black t-shirt.
MY t-shirt.
It was so big and bulky on her I couldn’t tell if she was wearing anything underneath until the breeze picked up the hem, revealing the same blood stained shorts she’d worn the night before.
“You’re wearing my shirt,” I pointed and grunted, matching her furious pace. It wasn’t the shirt that was bothering me, but leave it to me to point out something trivial when my blood was boiling because she didn’t stay put like I told her to.
“I’ll send it back to you,” she said bitterly, focusing her eyes on the road in front of her.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” I asked, grabbing her shoulder and spinning her toward me. “I told you to stay. Shit, I locked you in. How the fuck did you get out?”
“I’m not some animal you can cage in! I’m going home! Don’t worry I won’t burden you anymore. I’m going to tell the sheriff what happened, which I should have done in the first place. You won’t ever have to think about me again. You’re off the hook.” She tried to wriggle from my grasp but there was no way in fuck that was going to happen. The more she spoke, the angrier I got and the more my fingers bit into her arms.
“You think it’s that easy,” I said between gritted teeth. “You think you can go home like none of this ever fucking happened? ’Cause, trust me on this one, it doesn’t fucking work that way.” I expected her to show a little fear, to cower, even if it was only slightly, but the girl was bold, breathing through her scrunched up nose like she was about to breath fire, challenging my every word with her stare. “I got news for you, little girl. You can’t go anywhere. You seem to forget that the MC knows who you are and now that you have a connection to me, you’re as good as dead out there by yourself. So like it or not, you’re stuck here, at least for the time being, so get back up to the fucking house before I grab a hold of that crazy hair of yours and drag you there.”
“I know it was all a fucking lie!” she snapped, locking her eyes with mine. Fear and anger radiated from her as she stared me down.
“What?” I asked, threading my hand in her hair I gave her a warning tug and her head snapped backward but she stayed strong.
“I told Chop about your promise to me, about the ring, and he laughed in my face. Then I heard you tell King it was all a joke.” She lifted up her shirt so high she revealed the rounded underside of her breasts. She pointed to the purple black and blue bruises on her ribs. “Does this look like a joke to you?” Then she pointed at her swollen lip and then the butterfly stitch around her eye. “Do these look like jokes?”
For the first time in my life I was caught off guard. I wanted to pummel the girl for not listening to me, but for the first time realized that her injuries would never have happened if I wouldn’t have given her that ring or told her that lie. “I got it from here.” She pushed against my chest but it was useless, I had at least a hundred pounds on her.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
“Just let me go! I want to go home!” she screamed, continuing to struggle, wincing when I’d grabbed her by the waist and lifted her off her feet. I loosened my grip but didn’t put her down.
“Listen to the words I’m saying.” I seethed, leaning down, invading every inch of her personal space. “Did I say that I didn’t want you to leave? Am I begging you to stay? What did I just say?” I asked, trying to make the girl see reason.
Thia gasped and her eyes went wide. “You said…I CAN’T leave.” She stopped struggling, but I continued to hold onto her like she was. “Why? Why can’t I?”
“Reason number one is because I fucking said so. I still don’t know if you’re working for my cocksucker old man…” I started, even though what King had told me made that possibility highly unlikely.
Highly unlikely wasn’t beyond Chop.
“I’m not!” she snapped.
“Shut up and listen. I’m going to show you something, but I need to be able to use my hands. I’m going to let go of your arms. You fucking make a move to run and I won’t be gentle next time,” I warned, finally letting go when I felt the tension in her arms start to fade, setting her back down onto her feet. I pulled out my phone and clicked on the internet where I’d already had the website for the Logan’s Beach News Press queued up. I clicked on the morning’s latest news and turned it around so she could see the screen.
Thia paled. Her already white skin fading to damn near see through as she read the headline.
HUSBAND AND WIFE FOUND SLAIN IN JESSEP HOME
MISSING TEEN DAUGHTER ONLY SUSPECT
POLICE HAVE DEEMED THE KILLINGS
THE ‘ORANGE GROVE SLAUGHTER’
I snapped the phone shut and answered her honestly.
“Reason number two, is because we were too fucking late.”