Chapter Nine

 

That night, Summer discovered exactly how uncomfortable the couch was. There was no good place to put her hips that didn’t twist her back one way or the other. She finally decided laying on her side was the least-bad option.

Although Tim didn’t have curtains on the window on the front of his house, it was still pitch black in the room. The only light came from the clock on the stove across the room in the kitchen. This was another thing completely different from her apartment back in Minneapolis. There, she had five blackout curtains to keep the light from the street lamps and cars from leaking into her bedroom. Here, there wasn’t any of that. Tim’s house was set off from the other houses she’d seen between here and the clinic or the police station. It was an almost physical representation of what he’d been talking about in the bedroom—being a part of the community but not really.

“The recliner is less lumpy, if you want to trade,” Georgey said into the blackness.

Which, all things considered, was a downright thoughtful thing for a seventeen-year-old boy to say. “It’s fine,” she lied. After all, Georgey was a growing boy. Besides, she had no idea what Tim was going to have the kid doing tomorrow. He needed the rest.

But seeing as neither of them were asleep, Summer had some questions. “Georgey?”

“Yeah?”

“What do you want to do with the rest of your life?”

She heard the boy groan. “I don’t know.”

She propped herself up on her elbow and stared in his general direction, even though she couldn’t see him. “Well, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

She heard the recliner shift and she imagined he was shrugging his shoulders. “Don’t know,” he repeated.

Boys. Either they thought they were going to be the next LeBron James or they didn’t have a clue. “We need a plan,” she told him.

“Why?”

“Why? Because if you don’t have a plan—a goal to work for—then you’re gonna wind up bumping along and that’s when you get into trouble. You do stupid stuff like trying to break into a medical clinic instead of looking at the big picture. If you have a job, you know you’ll be able to afford medicine for your grandma. Or your own car. Or your own apartment with a bed that doesn’t suck like this couch does.”

Georgey snorted. “I offered to trade,” he reminded her.

Although he couldn’t see it, she rolled her eyes. “That was literally the least important part of that entire statement.”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said again, this time more firmly. “It’s hard to plan for the future when you don’t know how you’re gonna eat tomorrow—or tonight. It’s hard to work for a goal when you’re not sure if you’ll freeze to death because the electricity’s been cut off again.” His voice was louder and angrier. “It’s hard to think big picture when the small picture is so huge you’ll never get around it. Never.”

There was so much hopelessness in his voice—in his life. She felt stupid again because she knew on some level what he said was true. After all, she’d seen it with her own students.

But she wasn’t going to let him wallow in self-pity. “Well, you’re going to start thinking big picture. I’m a big picture person and I’m more than happy to take care of you while we work on your big picture, but you’re almost a man. You can’t spend the rest of your life living with me.”

He was quiet for a few moments. She wondered if he was going to pretend to have fallen asleep. Not that she was going to buy that.

“Did you always know what you wanted to be?” He sounded younger, more like a little brother than an angry teenager.

“Sort of. I wanted to be a cowgirl—and an Indian princess,” she admitted. “I knew I was an Indian, but I only have a few memories of our dad before he and Mom got divorced. Mostly, I just remember coming back for a pow wow when I was twelve and you weren’t quite three yet.” She swallowed. “Do you remember that? We played together. I was…” She took a deep breath. “I was so glad to have a little brother.”

The silence filled the room. “I don’t remember,” he finally said, his voice barely a whisper. “I wish I did, though. If I’d known…”

She understood. How would things have been different if she’d kept her promise to her father before now? If Georgey had known he could’ve called her before he’d gotten arrested?

She cleared her throat, which was suspiciously tight. “To answer your question, I always liked school.”

Georgey snorted. “Weirdo.”

She grinned. “I didn’t say it was normal. But I did. I liked school and I liked my teachers and I did well, so it seemed like the most logical choice. I don’t know anything about horses and cows.” Or about being an Indian. But she pulled her thoughts away from that direction. “Don’t get me wrong—by the end of the school year, I'm just as tired of school as everyone else. Right now, I never want to read Romeo and Juliet again.”

“Is that a book?”

She sat all the way up at that. “It’s a play,” she said in a careful tone. “By William Shakespeare?” Surely he had heard of Shakespeare. Hadn’t everyone?

“You read a play in class?” He sounded as careful as she felt.

She realized he was admitting something to her, in his way. “Georgey, when did you drop out?”

Silence.

This was not good. “Georgey?” Because she assumed he dropped out—well, if he was seventeen, hadn’t he at least made it to tenth grade?

“I’m not stupid,” he whispered in a fierce voice.

“I don’t believe you are,” she said honestly.

“It’s just that the words—I don’t think they look right. I mean, the letters…” He swallowed so loudly she could hear it, even in the darkness. “I don’t read. They said it was because I was stupid and lazy but if they tell me what’s on the page, I can remember.”

“They?”

“My teachers,” he said in a defeated voice. “I got held back a couple times and they said I’d have to take eighth grade again…”

Oh, God. He hadn’t even made it past eighth grade. She had been operating under the assumption he only needed a year or two at most—that he could finish up at school with her or get his GED.

“Did any of them ever say the word dyslexia?” she asked gently. She was no expert on learning disabilities but she had enough students who had dyslexia on their IEPs.

“I don’t know. Maybe. My fifth grade teacher was nice.”

Summer dropped her head into her hands and tried to think. In her school district, there were special education teachers who were experts in dealing with learning disabilities and dyslexia. There were workarounds—audio recordings of lectures, verbal tests, exercises to help train their brains to make sense of the letters.

“Did they ever put you in a special class?”

“No,” he said, as if that idea were an affront to his personal pride.

This was terrible—and suddenly, everything made sense. This was the final piece to the puzzle, one she hadn’t known was missing.

Georgey was dyslexic. Because the schools around here were so crappy, no one had even known, except for maybe one teacher back in fifth grade. Instead the poor kid had been completely on his own.

This was not what she had signed up for. It was, however, something she was at least somewhat qualified to deal with.

There was only one problem. Even if she got Georgey correctly diagnosed, there was no way in hell the seventeen-year-old boy was going to go back to the eighth grade. And she couldn’t afford to quit her job and homeschool him.

“Am I…” He sounded scared and she wasn’t sure why until he finished the sentence. “Am I in trouble?”

“Good Lord, no. I think you’re dyslexic, though. Your brain flips some letters and numbers around and it makes it hard to process what you’re seeing. It doesn’t mean you’re stupid,” she hurried to add. “It just means you have to learn in a different way—and it sounds like you never had a teacher who knew how to help you do that.”

He snorted again. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a teacher who knew anything about anything.” He sighed. “That fifth grade teacher… She wanted me to go to the Catholic school. She said she had friends there who could help me better than she could. But that cost money and Mom wouldn’t pay it and Grandma couldn’t.” He huffed. “And Dad was dead. I barely remember him.”

Everyone had failed this kid. She didn’t necessarily want to lump her father in with that, but he had gone and died ten years ago. Georgey’s mom hadn’t even tried. His grandma had done her best, but there was only so much one old woman in poor health with no money could do, apparently. Every other teacher he’d ever had and every other adult in his life had let him down. Even her, because she hadn’t kept an eye on her brother for all those years.

“We don’t have any money,” came Georgey’s quiet voice out of the darkness again. “And Grandma can’t see anymore and I thought that if I took her in to the clinic, they’d make me try to read something or sign something and I can’t do it. So I thought I’d just take what I needed because I didn’t want them to tell me I was stupid again. I didn’t want to—I didn’t see how I had a choice.”

Until Tim came along. Tim, who could have easily given up on this kid and shunted him down the system into juvvie or foster care. Instead, he tracked Summer down and put Georgey to work righting his wrongs.

“Anyone who calls you stupid is an idiot,” she told him. “This is going to take a little work for me to figure out, though.” Wasn’t that the understatement of the year. “In the meantime, I want you to start thinking about what you want to do for the rest of your life. You let me worry about food and a place to sleep and your education for now.”

“Okay.” He sounded relieved and she wondered if he’d been waiting for her to blow up at the news that he could barely read. Had he spent the last several days waiting for her to abandon him?

The poor kid. “Get some sleep,” she told him, lying back down on the couch of doom. “You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

“Yeah, right.” Then, “Are you sure you don’t want the recliner?”

“I’m sure.”

She lay there for a long time, listening as Georgey’s breath evened out. Obviously the local school system couldn’t handle him. But this wasn’t the sort of thing she could put off until the next school year. Georgey was already so far behind.

She had only one other place to check. The local community college.

***

Summer Collins was not a morning person. Tim got up, showered, got the coffee perking and shook Georgey awake—and she slept through the whole thing.

Tim got some coffee into the kid then carried a cup over to her. As best he could, he crouched down beside her. “Summer.”

“Mmph,” was the response he got.

“We’re leaving,” he told her and he couldn’t help but brush a few loose strands of her light brown hair off her face. His fingers curled around her cheek on their own. “I saved you a cup of coffee.”

“Coffee?” One of her eyelids managed to prop itself open at half-mast. “Oh,” she exhaled. “Hi.”

He grinned down at her. “Good morning. Is there anything you need before we go?”

His hand was still cupping her cheek, his thumb stroking over her freckles. Her hand snaked up to the back of his neck and pulled him down. Then she was kissing him and he wanted nothing more than to let her, but Georgey was behind him, apparently choking on his coffee.

So Tim pulled away—not because he wanted to, but because he knew she would be embarrassed when she woke up enough to realize she’d kissed him in front of the kid. “If you need anything,” he told her, “call the police station.”

She blinked at him a couple times, her eyelids almost moving in unison—but not quite. He saw the moment she actually woke up. “Oh! Tim! Are you okay?”

“I’m better,” he reassured her. It wasn’t a lie. He’d gotten close to ten hours of solid sleep. He was still sore as hell and the bruise had turned a dull, angry purple on his ribs. But his mind felt clearer than it had for a couple days and, assuming no one declared war on the rez within the next twenty-four hours, he just might survive. “You going to be okay today?”

She sat up and gratefully accepted the cup of coffee he held out for her. “Where's the nearest grocery store? And how do I get to that college you were telling me about?”

“There's a convenience store not too far away if you need something—otherwise the nearest grocery store is in Wall, but it’s kind of small. The kind you’re used to, you’ve got to go to Rapid City. The college is in the other direction, about an hour away.”

She took a long drink of the coffee. “Okay,” she said. “Is there a place on this reservation with an Internet connection?”

“There’d be one at the college. I don’t think Dr. Mitchell has gotten the clinic wired yet, but you can always ask.” A lock of her hair had fallen back in her face and he brushed it away. “We’ll see you tonight, okay?”

She yawned. “Okay.”

Reluctantly Tim backed away from her. He looked at Georgey and nodded toward the door. The kid scowled, but he followed.

Tim didn't exactly feel up to making small talk, so they drove in silence. He had the feeling the kid had things he wanted to say, so he was just going to let Georgey say them in his own time.

Finally, the kid broke. “So are you two dating or what?”

Tim rolled his eyes at the attitude loaded into every single syllable of that question. “And it’s your business…why?”

Georgey scoffed. “Because she’s my sister?”

Tim slid a hard look at the boy. “Seems to me it hasn’t been two weeks since you were in a cell telling me you didn’t have any family.”

Georgey scowled back. “Well I do. You got a problem with that?”

Obviously the kid was looking for a fight. The thing was, Tim wasn’t in the mood to be anyone’s punching bag. “No. Do you?”

“Asshole.”

“For a kid who owes me some physical labor, you sure got a mouth on you today.”

“I don’t want to see her hurt. She’s not like other people around here. She’s different.”

“You’re not telling me something I don’t already know.” It was good he was worried about her, Tim decided. If the kid was worried, that meant he cared. And if he cared, that meant he hadn’t given up yet. “What did you guys talk about last night, after I went to sleep?” Tim had awoken briefly a couple times and heard low voices coming from the living room. But he’d been too tired to wake up enough to understand what they were saying.

Georgey didn’t answer right away and Tim let the silence stretch. Finally, the kid said, “Have you ever heard of… dis-lex-ee-a?”

“Sure, dyslexia. It’s when you can’t read the letters and words right, right?”

“That’s what she says. She thinks maybe that’s what’s wrong with me.”

Tim turned to look at the boy. He knew Georgey had dropped out of school—but he thought it was the same reason everyone else on this rez always dropped out of school.

What was the point? They weren’t going to go to college and they weren’t going to get good jobs and they didn’t have any hope for the future. Instead they gave up and joined gangs and got drunk and high and died way too early. So many of them died way too early.

“I didn’t think there was anything wrong with you,” he said in a neutral voice because it seemed obvious, from the way that the kid was blushing, he was embarrassed by this admission.

“Well, there is. I can’t read. And she’s this teacher and she said she was gonna take me back to the city and put me in high school and…” Georgey’s voice caught. “And I can’t read and everybody’s going to make fun of me and I’ll be stuck there.”

What the hell was Tim supposed to do with that? No clue. He’d assumed the kid could at least read. “But she’s going to take care of you,” he said, trying to find the right words to reassure Georgey.

“For a little while, anyway. That was the other thing she asked me last night. What do I want to be when I grow up? Because I can’t stay with her forever.” He still sounded mad at the world, but this time Tim saw the truth of it. He was mad, all right—but he was also scared shitless.

Because what could a kid who couldn’t read grow up to be?

Tim had a feeling that at this point, Summer would’ve done something comforting, like haul the kid into a hug and tell him it was going to be all right. She was like that.

Tim wasn’t. “What did you tell her?”

“I don’t know.”

Tim exhaled dramatically. “Well, when you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, you let me know.”

Georgey bristled, and Tim bit down on his inner cheek to keep from smiling. “I am not feeling sorry for myself.”

“You’re not? That’s what it sounds like to me. So reading is hard. Yeah, dyslexia sucks but I got news for you, kid—life is hard. We all get handed a short stick every now and again. You can either sit around feeling sorry for yourself or you can do something about it. Summer can help solve the problem and she’s going to take care of you so you’re not on your own. But you’ve got to do your part, too. It’s up to you.”

He waited for Georgey to respond, but before the boy could come up with anything that probably wasn’t a cuss word, Tim’s CB radio crackled to life. “Tell me you’re on your way,” Jack asked.

Dammit. He hadn’t even made it to work this morning before it all went to hell in a handbasket. He picked up the CB mic and said, “What?”

“Clarence called—he’s got a kid with a gunshot wound at the clinic. Can you get there or do I need to take this?”

Tim mentally translated that. He’d bet dimes to dollars Jack was sitting in his police car in the driveway of his trailer, probably without a shirt on, hoping like hell he’d be able to get a couple more hours of sleep. “I got this. I’ll call you at home if I need you.”

“Yep.”

Tim pulled a U-turn in the middle of the road and gunned it toward the clinic. He glanced over at Georgey and saw he was pale. He knew what the kid was thinking, too—which one of his friends had been shot?

***

It was Shorty. The moment Tim got the door to the clinic opened, he could hear the kid whimpering. Tim glanced back at Georgey, who was still pale. But he set his jaw into a grim line and wasn’t backing down.

Tara, the receptionist, looked up at them and sighed in relief. “Oh, thank God. Shorty won’t tell us anything—he won’t stop moaning, either. He’s freaking the other patients out.”

“I take it he’s not on the verge of death?” Tim said. Tara was not known for her warm and fuzzy attitude.

She jerked her chin toward the back of the room, where Shorty was indeed moaning behind a curtain. “No, he’s not dying. He just thinks he is. Go on back.”

“Let me handle this,” Tim said in a quiet voice. He didn’t know if Georgey was going to pass out or throw up—but Nobody Bodine had said Georgey needed to be scared and there was nothing like seeing a friend with a hole in his body to do the scaring. With any luck, this would ensure both Shorty and Georgey stayed on the straight and narrow from here on out.

“Clarence?”

The big man’s head popped through the curtain. He saw Tim and grinned. “Try not to laugh,” he whispered.

Tim shot him a funny look. In his experience, gunshot wounds weren’t laughing matters. “I’ve got Georgey with me today,” he said, acting as if Georgey were here on purpose instead of accidentally along for the ride.

“That’s fine. The kid is scared. Maybe Georgey will calm him down.” Clarence parted the curtain and Tim and Georgey stepped through.

Tim immediately had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. Because poor Shorty’s bare ass was up in the air. He had been shot in the butt.

Tim glanced back at Georgey, whose eyes had gotten big. He wasn’t giggling and he hadn’t passed out, so this counted as a win. “Shorty, I thought when I let you go a couple days ago, you were going to stay out of trouble.”

At the sound of his voice, Shorty jerked—then moaned again. “What are you doing here?” he got out through clenched teeth.

“You’re not going to believe this, but it’s illegal to shoot a kid on my rez. Even if that kid is a dumbass sometimes.” Tim walked around to the head of the bed where he was able to not look Shorty in the butt. “You’re smarter than this, kid. You’re mixed up with the Killerz and I’m hauling your ass out of gunfights and when I’m not, you’re getting it shot. Who did this?”

Shorty closed his eyes and turned his head to the side. He didn’t moan, so there was that.

Georgey stood back by Clarence, looking at Shorty’s wound. “That’s not a very big hole,” Georgey observed.

Shorty jumped again, which led to more moaning. But then he said, “Georgey? What are you doing here?”

Tim didn't rush into the silence. At no point was “doing community service” a cool thing to say to your friends, and he was curious to see what Georgey would come up with.

Georgey glanced that Tim, then looked back down at Shorty’s butt. “I’m doing a ride-along with the sheriff today. I’m thinking about becoming a cop when I get my GED.”

That was the first Tim had heard about it, but he wasn’t about to contradict the kid. Especially because it was a decent idea.

“Does it hurt?" Georgey asked, turning his attention back to the gunshot wound.

“No,” Shorty lied.

Both Clarence and Tim snorted. Clarence said, “Given the size of the hole, I’m thinking this was rat shot or a pellet gun. Doesn’t appear to have hit any major blood vessels.”

Tim walked back around and looked at the hole. It was small—maybe a .13? That’d be rat shot for sure. “How deep?” Tim asked.

“One sec.” Then he said to Shorty, “If it doesn’t hurt yet, it’s about to start.” Clarence jabbed in a needle—painkillers, probably—and began to dig the bullet out. Shorty made a noise that sounded like a howl that he refused to let out.

Tim was never one to let a good interrogation moment pass by unused. He went back to look Shorty in the face. It was a better deal anyway. “You didn’t shoot yourself in the butt,” he said, watching tears gather in the corner of Shorty’s eyes. He glanced over at Georgey, who was still pale but staring in fascination at what Clarence was doing. “So that leaves me with one of two conclusions. Either someone shot you to punish you and you’re afraid to roll on them, or this was a prank gone horribly wrong and you don’t want to roll on your friends. Which is it?”

“Go to hell,” Shorty got out through gritted teeth.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Georgey said, sounding fascinated.

“The Navy, kid. Tim was in the Army and Jack—well, he’s not allowed to tell us where he was, but I wouldn’t piss him off if I were you.” Clarence held up a pair of long tweezers with a small metal lump in them. “Rat shot,” he said with great finality. “Only about two inches in.”

“So, fifteen to twenty feet away?” Interesting. Rat shot wasn’t as common these days. He’d be willing to bet there were only a few people on this rez that had a decent supply of it. If it’d been a pellet, it might have been impossible to trace. But rat shot made his job that much easier.

“That be my guess—but you’re the artillery expert. I just patch them up.” Clarence dropped the slug into a pan and began to disinfect the wound. Shorty stiffened in pain. “If you’re thinking about being a cop, you wouldn’t do bad to join the military,” he told Georgey in a casual voice. “Try not to scream,” he added.

Shorty screamed anyway and then Clarence was bandaging him up and putting a sheet over his butt. Still Shorty hadn’t said anything about who’d shot him.

Georgey came around to Shorty’s head. “Your ass looks terrible, man. You’re not going to be able to sit down for a month.”

“Fuck off,” Shorty bit out.

Georgey shifted from one foot to the other and Tim realized how young he still looked—how young they both did. Just kids.

“Are you gonna be okay?” Georgey asked.

“What do you care? We don’t hang out since you dropped out.”

“You’re my friend,” Georgey said as if that weren’t some obvious fact. “I’d never shoot you. And I hope you wouldn’t shoot me, either. This is just your butt, man—but what if next time, it’s not?”

Tim leaned back and gave Georgey room to work. Shorty wouldn’t tell Tim anything because he was a cop—but he might open up to his friend. Maybe.

Shorty didn’t say anything yet, but Tim could tell he was trying not to cry.

“Yeah, well,” he said, his voice ragged, “you’re not Levi, are you?”

“Levi shot you? Why would he do that?” Georgey sounded genuinely confused by this, but Tim had a few ideas.

Shorty had been the first one to talk to Tim after he busted up the gang fight. He’d been the first one Tim sent home. If someone were paranoid, he might think Shorty was the first person to turn on him. And if Levi was dealing with Los Perros, he was bound to be nothing if not paranoid.

Dammit. The fact that Levi made bail was bad enough. But now this? Firing warning shots into boys?

Nope. Not on his rez.

Tim and Clarence looked at each other and Tim nodded. Clarence slipped out through the curtain to get an evidence bag for the bullet.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Shorty said miserably.

Georgey crouched down so he could look Shorty in the eye. “Dude, it doesn’t have to be like this.”

Shorty closed his eyes and turned his head away.

Georgey stood up straight and put his hands on his hips, looking disgusted. “Fine, be that way. But I’m still your friend.” He stormed out from the curtains.

Tim waited.

“You gonna tell my mom?” Shorty finally said in a quiet voice.

Tim snorted. “You think you’re going to be able to hide the fact you can’t sit down from her?” At least Shorty’s mom still cared. She couldn’t keep up with her kids, but she tried and that counted for a lot. “We can’t keep doing this, boy. This is the second time in three days I’ve seen you. Do you know where we go from here?”

“Fuck off,” Shorty replied.

It took a lot to get under Tim’s skin but this kid was putting in the extra effort. “Here’s how this goes. The next time I see you, you’ll either be dead or I’ll lock you in a cell. This isn’t a question. This is a fact. Levi might shoot you in the face—and not with some dinky little rat shot—because he wants to make an example out of you. That’s if your luck runs out. Or you’ll do something stupid to prove to him that you’re still his little errand boy and I’ll bust what’s left of your ass down to brass tacks so fast you won’t have time to tell anyone to fuck off. Do I make myself clear? And if I have to lock you in a cell to keep you safe, I will.”

He realized he was shouting but here he was again, struggling to keep another kid alive and out of jail and this time, he was losing the battle. He’d have thought nearly getting his head blown off in a turf war then being scared shitless by Nobody would have put the fear of God into Shorty—but no. He’d gone right back to Levi—and paid the price.

“Anyone else around when he shot you?” If there were other witnesses willing to put the gun in Levi’s hands, retaliation would be harder to successfully pull off.

“No,” came the weak reply.

Yup. Paranoia in action. “I’m going to call your mom—assuming Tara hasn’t done so already. You’re going to lay low for the rest of this damn summer.”

“No!” Shorty was openly crying now.

Tim waited, letting the silence stretch.

“He said if I talked to you again, he’d kill me.” The kid looked up at him, eyes wide with terror. “He thinks I told you about the guns.”

Tim cursed silently. Shorty hadn’t—but Georgey had. Crap. What Tim needed was a plan. He couldn’t have Levi running around his rez—but he wasn’t about to dangle a terrified fifteen-year-old boy with a flesh wound as bait.

He had to get Shorty off this rez without anyone knowing about it. Which really only left him with one option.

The kid was not going to like this.

He crouched down close to Shorty’s ear, just in case anyone was listening. “I’m going to call your mom and you’re going to go home and pack a bag and wait,” Tim told him. “Nobody will come get you and he’ll get you off this rez.”

“What?” Shorty yelped.

Tim smacked the kid on the shoulder. “Shut up, Shorty. I’m trying to save your damn life. Your grandma—she still lives over on Rosebud?” The kid nodded, biting his lip. “You’re going to stay with her for the rest of the summer—no arguments. If I find you on the White Sandy, I’ll arrest you.”

“But my sister…” he whimpered. “Gramma doesn’t have that much money…”

Goddamnit all to hell. It would be hard enough for the older woman to feed one extra mouth—two would be impossible. Tim squeezed his eyes shut. If Levi was okay with shooting his own gopher, he might just take a little girl as insurance.

Thankfully, Tim had an option. “I have a place I can put her for the summer—not with you,” he added. The Last Hope ranch butted up against the far western edge of the White Sandy and was run by Sam Kenady, the granddaughter of one of Tim’s grandmother’s oldest friends. Sam hadn’t grown up on the rez, but she took in strays and lost souls—as long as they were women. No men were allowed on the Last Hope ranch. Sam would take in a twelve-year-old girl for the summer, as long as the kid was willing to work.

“But if I send you to your grandmother’s, you have to help out. She’s not your maid, got it? And if you get in trouble again, I won’t protect you. Understood?”

He thought the boy nodded, which was good enough. Tim left him quietly crying in his little curtained room. God, he hated this. He hated when his own people declared war on their kids. Levi was becoming a problem that needed a solution.

Levi was a problem because Dwayne was in prison. If Tim locked Levi up, someone else would rush into the void. It’d never end, this vicious circle of violence he was stuck in. All he could do was try to hold back the chaos, working long hours and hoping that when—not if—he got shot, it hit him in the vest and just bruised him. And all he could do was take it, take the simmering hatred and the deaths and the suffering—and he’d take it alone. This was his burden, his cross to bear.

Then he saw Georgey waiting for him, a small plastic baggie with a bullet in his hand. And he remembered the kid said maybe he wanted to be a cop—after he got his GED. And he remembered Summer was at his place, that she’d wrapped his ribs and made him dinner and kissed him this morning before she’d been awake enough to realize it, simply because she was glad to see him. And he was going back home to her tonight, him and Georgey.

And he thought maybe…

It was still his burden, but maybe he could carry it just a little bit longer.