Grace refusing to talk to me stung. I couldn’t move from the spot I was standing in for a full five minutes after she ran away from me. My entire fucking life, and I’d never had a woman run away from me. It would figure that the first time it happened was the time that I needed her to stay more than ever before.
When I finally managed to uproot myself, I made my way to my old truck and climbed inside. The sense of peace that I used to feel when climbing into Bessie didn’t come, and hadn’t ever since I learned that the man I’d worshipped wasn’t the superhero I always imagined he was.
After my talk with Joe a few days ago, I’d gone off in search of Uncle Tony. It’d been a long time since I’d seen him, and I wasn’t even sure where to start looking. Dani didn’t know where he might be living any more than I did, and I refused to tell her why I was wanting to talk with him. I didn’t want to stir things up with her before I knew for sure that the pot was needing to be stirred.
I hadn’t been able to find Tony though, and every day that passed without talking to Grace was becoming more and more unbearable.
I’d thought that I would feel better as time went on, that I would feel confident in my decision to end things with her. But each night that I laid in my bed alone, the more I realized that I was a fucking fool. I shouldn’t have let her go.
Grace was the first good thing to happen to me.
I’d always had Dani, and I loved her. She was my sister, my closest friend, the only person that had ever truly cared about me. But it wasn’t the same as the relationship that Grace and I had.
We were meant to be together, something that I didn’t know until this very moment. Watching Grace run away from me, as though I were a leper and she was afraid she would get the plague, had gutted me. When she’d peeled out of the parking lot it, had been all I could do to keep from falling apart.
I didn’t care about who her father was anymore. I’d find a way to get past that. But first, I had to get her to listen to me. And that was going to prove harder than I thought, because, it was obvious that I had hurt her. Hurt her so bad that I wasn’t sure that I would ever be able to make up for it.
But fuck if I wasn’t going to try.
The door to the bar swings open, the early morning sunlight filtering through, causing me to squint to see who’s walking in.
“Bar’s closed,” I call out, checking the clock over my shoulder. It’s barely eight in the morning, too early for even the regulars to start wandering in. I hadn’t slept at all the night before, trying to figure out how I was going to get through to Grace, to get her to stay and talk to me. My eyes burned, and my head pounded from lack of sleep. I’d given up on getting any rest and come to the bar to catch up on paperwork.
“Heard you’ve been looking for me,” the familiar voice calls out, letting the door slam behind him.
I squint harder, my eyes still not adjusting to the change in lighting. Finally, his face comes into view and my stomach drops.
Uncle Tony.
I come around the end of the bar and meet him in the middle of the room, our footsteps echoing. Sticking my hand out, he grasps it and we shake before he uses his leverage to pull me in for a bear hug.
“Been a long time, boy,” he rumbles, beating me on the back with his free hand. “How ya been?”
His cologne invades my senses, bringing a flood of memories back with it. It wasn’t very often that I saw him, my mother not liking the fact that Dad would take me around his wife and Dani. But anytime I did, Uncle Tony would smile, give me a clap on the back, and then do his damndest to entertain me. It never took much, he was a funny, likeable guy.
“I’ve been better, Uncle Tony,” I tell him honestly.
He releases his grip on me and I motion for him to follow me. He takes a seat at the bar and I go around, grabbing a couple glasses.
“Kinda early for a beer. You want a soda?” I ask, filling my glass up. He nods so I fill a glass for him and slide it across to him. He picks it up and takes a long swallow.
“Tell me what’s been going on with you,” he commands, his deep voice upbeat.
I don’t know where to begin, and really, I’m not interested in playing catch up on all the years it’s been since we last spoke. But I want him to be honest with me, and if I launch into any sort of interrogation, he’ll shut down faster than a bar after last call.
I grab my glass and come back around to the opposite side of the bar, settling onto a stool next to him.
Running a hand through my hair, I let out a sigh. “Where to start,” I murmur, and he chuckles.
“That much goin’ on, huh?” he asks, patting me on the arm.
I nod. “I met a woman.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Just one?” He laughs loudly, the sound bouncing off the walls. “Come on, you’re Jimmy Williams’s son. You gotta have more than one lady.”
I force myself to laugh along with him, even though the assessment does nothing more than make my blood boil. I may be the son of a philanderer, but that’s not the kind of man I am, or have ever been. I saw the trail of tears my father left behind each time he’d come around to my mother and then leave again to go home to his real family. There may be no love lost between my mother and I, but even I knew that you didn’t treat a woman that way. No matter what kind of person she may be.
Besides, Grace was more than enough woman for me. I didn’t want anyone but her.
I shake my head, still faking a smile. “Yeah, she’s the only one for me, man. Except I fucked around and lost her.” Saying it out loud hurts, but I forge on. “More like pushed her away ‘cause I’m a dumbass.”
He nods, rubbing the whiskers on his face. “So you need some love advice? And you thought you’d look up your old Uncle Tony?” He’s skeptical, his bloodshot eyes pinning me with a stare.
I lift a shoulder. “Nah. You asked how I’d been. Thought I’d start there.”
His chin lifts. “Alright. So, why you out looking for me?”
He isn’t nearly as jolly as he was when he walked in the door. He knows something’s up, that I wasn’t just looking to reconnect with my long lost “uncle.” I was hoping to ease into it, to gain more trust, but things never seem to go the way I want them to.
“I need to ask you some questions about Dad.”
He blinks, slapping a palm on the bar. “Ah, there it is. Knew you weren’t just looking to catch up.”
My shoulders tense, I squeeze the back of my neck. “Yeah, sorry. Listen, I need to know something.”
I pause, trying to figure out the best way to approach the subject. When he doesn’t say anything, just continues to bore holes into my eyes with his, I go for it.
“Was Dad a bookie? A loan shark?”
I give him credit; his face never changes as he lies to my face. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Bronnson.”
I smirk. “Come on, man, don’t lie.” I may not have been able to get in touch with him over the last few days, but I’d talked to plenty of people that remembered when Jimmy and Tony would “help” people out, give them a little bit of money to tie them over ‘til payday.
It’s taking a lot of effort to keep my composure, but I know that if I lose my shit now, I’ll never get the answers I need.
“Your father owned a gas station,” he tells me again, his face solemn. “May God rest his soul. Terrible thing that happened to your dad, you know. Gunned down in his own business.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. The image of my father lying dead behind the counter flashing in my head, and I swallow the bile that creeps up the back of my throat. Tony misinterprets my reaction and places a hand over mine. My lids fly open and I pin him with a stare of my own. “Yeah, bet it was hard for you to watch, being his best friend and all.”
His eyes go wide and he snatches his hand from mine. His voice low, he insists, “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Even though he’s doing a pretty good job keeping his cool, he can’t keep the beads of sweat from popping up on his forehead, so I keep talking.
“You know, it was something I had forgotten about that day. Seemed so inconsequential at the time.” I push to my feet and begin to pace as I recount the memory of that day. “Dani and I had been riding our bikes that day. It was hot as hell, I remember. We got thirsty. Dani decided we were gonna go sweet talk Dad into a couple of drinks, some candy. So we took off to the gas station.” I stop and look at Tony, who’s watching me closely, his face unreadable. I’d almost believe that he was telling the truth, except that he keeps wiping his palms on his pants and mopping at his brow with a cocktail napkin.
“Anyway, we were almost there, could just barely see it in the distance. Dani and I were racing, and even though she was older, I was in the lead.” I smile at the memory, it was the first time I’d ever beaten her in a race. She was freakishly fast, on foot and on bike. But I was winning that day, and I was so damn excited. “I would have won probably, except a car was heading in our direction, and fast. I was in the road, so I had to slow down and move over.”
I stop pacing and stand directly in front of him. “I was so mad that I had to slow down to get out of the way. Until I recognized you in the car. I know you saw me, you slowed down. But you didn’t wave, didn’t smile like you always did. You looked the other way, pretending you didn’t notice the boy waving wildly at you. As soon as you passed us, you sped up, sending a cloud of dust flying.”
He clears his throat, his gaze darting around the room, avoiding my eyes. “Yeah, I remember that now that you mention it.”
I saunter back over to my bar stool and prop a hip on it. “You were hauling ass away from the station because you didn’t want to be there when the cops showed up, weren’t you?”
It hadn’t taken me long at all to put the pieces together when the memory of almost being run over by my dear old Uncle Tony had come back. I’d done some digging, gone over the arrest report, and realized that the surveillance system that my dad had installed wasn’t working properly that day.
Or, at least, that was what the police have claimed.
“Bronn, what are you trying to get at?” he asks, again wiping a hand on his thigh. When he sees me watching his movement, his hand stills.
“You were there. You know what really happened that day. And it wasn’t a fucking robbery gone wrong, was it?” I sneer, jabbing a finger in his direction.
His face reddens, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “Now, you just slow down a damn minute, son.”
“Stop calling me that!” I shout. “I’m not your damn son. Just tell me the goddamned truth.”
I’m done beating around the bush. I’m done hoping he’ll fess up. I want answers, I want the facts, and I’m not waiting for him to tell me any longer.
“The truth is exactly what it’s always been,” he replies, his voice rising. “Mickey Chumley showed up to rob the place that day. Your daddy managed to get a shot in before he died. That piece of shit is gonna rot in prison the rest of his life, just like he fucking deserves.” Spit flies from his mouth, his face nearly turning purple as he continues to yell. He heaves his large body from the stool and takes a step in my direction. “You need to let sleeping dogs lie, boy.”
I’m sure that he’s trying to intimidate me, but I’m not scared of him. He’s a fucking coward.
I push to my own feet, my chest bumping his. My face in his, I growl. “I know you have the fucking tapes, Tony.”
His eyes widen and he stumbles back.
“And, I fucking want them.” He continues to back away from me, but I keep advancing.
“I, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but—“
“Grace fucking Monroe is what’s gotten into me.”
Confusion washes over Tony’s face, so I clear it up for him.
“You probably know her better as Grace Chumley. The daughter of the man that was falsely imprisoned for murder.”
He shakes his head. “He killed your daddy! He’s right where he needs to be.”
I slam my fist down on the bar beside me, the glasses rattling from the impact. “He killed my father because my father was a goddamn loan shark and was threatening his family!” I hit the bar again. “My father threatened a five-year-old girl! My father threatened Mickey’s wife! My father shot him first!” I bang my fist again and then stab a finger in his chest. “And you were there! You saw it all! And you took the fucking surveillance tapes and got the fuck out of dodge so you wouldn’t get in any trouble!”
With one final hit of my fist on the bar, I lean into him, my voice so low it’s almost a whisper. “And I want those tapes.”
My hand is throbbing in tempo to my pounding heart, but I don’t feel anything but the rage that’s been building in my gut.
Rage at the piece of shit standing before me, his jowls wobbling as his mouth opens and closes, trying desperately to make up some bullshit story to get himself out of the situation he’s in.
Rage at my father for being a complete scumbag who caused a little girl to lose her hero and a woman to lose her husband.
But more than those two combined, the rage that boils in my blood is at myself, for not fucking believing Grace, for putting her through even more hell. She spent her entire life living in hell, but that wasn’t enough to keep me from being a complete asshole and putting her through even more shit.
I didn’t deserve her, and I didn’t deserve her love, and yet, she’d given it to me. And I’d gone and fucked that up. But even if she never forgave me, I was going to make it up to her.
Starting with getting the tapes that proved Mickey Chumley acted in self-defense, the way he’d always claimed.
Tony holds his hands up in surrender. “I’ll send ‘em to ya.”
I shake my head. “Fuck that. We’ll go get them. Now.”
He nods. “Sure, yeah. Let me just—“
“Fuck you.” I snatch my keys from the bar. “You think I’m dumb? I spent almost a week trying to track you down. You live in this town and yet I couldn’t find your ass. You really think I’m going to let you do any goddamn thing without me right behind you, closer than your fucking shadow?”
I shove his shoulder, pushing him toward the door. He doesn’t resist, but I still don’t relax. I won’t feel any measure of relief until I have the evidence that proves Mickey’s version of events in my hands.
No matter what I have to do to get them.