The downtown motel was a mistake. It was run-down, shabby, and tucked between several high-rise buildings, but it was all I could get at a moment’s notice. I hadn’t been back in Los Angeles in years, not since right after my first tour in Afghanistan. Afterwards, I’d run off to New York City—Brooklyn, to be specific—and found refuge in a new place, far away from my father. Three hours ahead and thousands of miles from home, I felt some kind of peace.

At least, as much peace as I could stand.

I showered in the sputtering motel bathroom, scrubbing at my black hair, my tattooed biceps and back. Standing at six foot two, the showerhead fired squarely into the middle of my chest. I cursed at it.

I should have stayed home. I shouldn’t be here.

But my sister, Leandra, had called me up two days before, telling me—with that somber voice she only used for “special” occasions—that she needed me for a family emergency. “We need to discuss something, and we absolutely can’t do it over the phone,” she’d said. She was the eldest, so her word was law. I was almost 30, but she still commanded a fraternal obedience in me.

I had to do what I could to protect us. The Johnston family. Especially since I lived with the guilt of abandoning them every single fucking day.

Besides, it wasn’t as though I wasn’t living my own life out east. Dressing quickly in a wife-beater and a pair of torn jeans, I took three long steps towards the motel door and threw it open. I ducked into the incredible August heat, already feeling the sweat beading at my hairline. I’d forgotten that no shower in L.A. in August could combat the heat. You just showered and sweated into eternity. There was no escape.

Out east, I had been working on the near-right side of the law, doing private security for some of Brooklyn’s more unsavory characters. There was Bobby Buckwheat, who operated a weed business, and had a bunch of college-aged kids working for him. Then, there was Trinity Callahan, who had a hair studio, much like my sister. But she laundered money through it, while her husband sold even harder drugs on the side. I had these people’s backs. And I worked carefully, diligently, to ensure their safety.

It wasn’t much of a life. But while I’d been in Afghanistan, I’d realized that “not much of a life” was really what we all had. It could all be over in a split second. Bullets. Bombs. Sickness. A rogue car, running you over in the middle of the street. As long as I had enough money to keep going, to live, then I was fine.

Leandra’s hair studio was just a few blocks away, walking distance from the motel. Walking through L.A. wasn’t necessarily something I’d done often, and it made me feel bizarre, like a stranger in my own town. I tried to take in everything as I walked: the way the steaming sun glinted against the windows, the way the drivers in cars stared at me.

I couldn’t imagine what my sister had in store for me. A family emergency. Mom was already gone, buried. Dad seemed fine—at least, he had been in good health, the last time I checked. But you could never count on anything to last, really. Good health could turn on a dime.

As I rushed forward, something—no, someone—crashed against my shoulder. A young woman had whisked around the corner, jangling her keys and clutching a cup of coffee. Her blue eyes burned with anger and I realized that as she had run into me, the lid on her coffee had flown off and the liquid had splashed all over her dress and her neck, even getting into her blonde hair.

“Whoa, whoa!” I cried out, stretching my palms skyward. “Watch where you’re going!”

She glared at me, coffee dribbling off her chin. I noticed, then, that her dress was speckled with holes, showing its age. Otherwise, she was incredibly beautiful, with bright blue eyes that seemed to reflect the sky.

“Watch where I’m going? It was a corner! And I was trying to avoid assholes like you who are too busy staring into space to know that they have to share the sidewalk!”

Taken off-guard, I looked into her eyes. I hadn’t expected such a ferocious response, and I really hadn’t expected the British accent. It was adorable, even if it was carrying an insult. I flashed her my best smile, trying to calm her anger. “You’re right, I was looking…”

“Whatever,” she cut me off with a scowl. “Did you know this coffee was five dollars?”

“Sounds like you got screwed over by the L.A. hipsters,” I replied, grinning even wider.

There was something between us. I could sense it. Her eyes flickered with amusement, even as she berated me.

“What’s it to you if I got screwed over?” she said, falling into an exhausted laugh. “It’s impossible not to get screwed over in this city.”

“You’re telling me,” I said. “That’s why I don’t live here anymore. Got the hell out of here when I could. And I think you should do the same. Back to Europe, or wherever it is you come from.”

“You don’t recognize that this is clearly an English accent?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “You Americans are such idiots, you know that?”

“We know it, and we own it,” I said, bowing my head. “Now, as much as I’m enjoying standing around being insulted by the Queen of England, I think I’d better be on my way.”

“Just remember, you’re only a colonial to me,” she responded, winking. She spun around and continued on her way, flicking her hair back. For a brief moment, I watched her go.

And then, I reminded myself that I had a job to do.

Continuing down the street, my heart burned with the pleasure of meeting someone, of just interacting with a gorgeous woman. Come with me, I wanted to shout back. Let’s get a drink. Let’s curse the world together.

My sister had been a beautician for nearly a decade, at the same little shack-like beauty parlor that had an apartment upstairs. The apartment was her own, the place where boyfriends came and went, a place that she’d often told me she would “die alone” in. I didn’t quite believe it. She was insanely loveable, a beautiful, thin little thing, with hair that changed colors like the seasons.

As I stood on the sidewalk out front, I grew increasingly nervous. I hadn’t seen Leandra in years. Not since I’d returned from Afghanistan. Before I’d left L.A. the last time, she had sobbed into my shoulder, begging me to stay. That she would take care of me. That going all the way across the country to “feel better” wasn’t the answer. “PTSD is a very real thing,” she’d told me, her eyes red with tears. “And I can help you better if you’re here.”

But I hadn’t listened. And our phone conversations had grown fewer and farther between, until now, it almost seemed like I was visiting a stranger.

Finally, I took a deep breath and took the last few strides towards the door of her beauty salon. The ‘OPEN’ sign was sun-bleached and a little cracked. I pushed on the door, which stuck slightly, and then stepped into the blasting air conditioning.

“Baby brother!” Leandra’s words crept into my ears. I blinked into the darkness as my eyes adjusted to see her rushing towards me. She crossed the distance before I could react, and wrapped her arms around my neck and jumped against my chest. For a long time, we didn’t speak, allowing our hug to say all the words we hadn’t to one another in years.

“Well, well,” I said, breaking the hug and glancing around. The same stations, the same hair dryers, the same mirrors: the place hadn’t changed at all in four years. “Looks like you’re doing all right?”

“Psh, I have my regular customers,” Leandra replied, gesturing for me to sit. “And, honestly, it looks like you could use a haircut yourself.”

“Don’t be honest, Leandra. It doesn’t suit you,” I laughed. She tossed me a beer from a mini-fridge near her chair, which I cracked open gratefully. The beer was cold and crisp. I guzzled it a bit too fast, feeling my brain relax slightly. This, for better or for worse, was home.

“How have you been?” she asked, almost gasping. She was eating me up with her eyes, taking stock of me as an older man. “29 years old now. Last I saw you, you were what—25?”

“Just a boy,” I laughed, shaking my head. “It does feel like a million years ago, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe more.”

She cracked open her own beer and slipped toward the door, flipping the ‘OPEN’ sign to ‘CLOSED’. Her hair was dyed bright red, with white streaks in it, and it was longer than it had been years before. It made her look wild and free in a way she hadn’t in years. I grinned up at her, shrugging. “It’s only three-fifteen. You don’t have any more appointments today?”

“No, Baby Bro,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been saving this afternoon for you.” Tears glinted in her eyes as she gazed down at me, holding back secrets. “You can’t imagine what has been going on.”

I shifted, watching as she took a seat across from me. The air conditioner blared in the corner, becoming louder with each moment of silence that passed. I waited, knowing that she would fall into the tale soon. Knowing my sister, she would want the drama to unfold slowly, cinematically. Like many who came to L.A., she had wanted to be an actress, before falling back into her beautician role. But she’d never lost her charisma.

“It’s Dad,” she said then, nodding. “As if you couldn’t guess.”

“Sure.” I had assumed. Our father, also ex-army, was a tough man, solemn and stern.

When I’d enlisted in the army at 22, he hadn’t spoken to me for several days. The day before I was due to leave, he had gripped my shoulders, and told me that enlisting in the army was the stupidest thing I could have possibly done. “It’ll fuck you up, son,” he said. “It’ll make you think you’re crazy. It’ll make you think the world is out to get you. I’m telling you. Don’t go.”

But I had gone. I hadn’t known what else to do with my life. I had assumed—wrongly—that filling my years with something like the army would give me some kind of direction. In the end, Dad had been right. The army had eaten at my soul, made me think the world was cruel and bleak. When I had returned, I had been a shell of my former self, and I hadn’t wanted to face what my father knew to be true about me. I’d left.

“But Dad doesn’t want anything to do with me,” I told her, after a brief pause. “You know that. He wants to just hide in his little shack in Echo Park and live out the rest of his days alone. He won’t even use his retirement savings. He’ll probably bury it in the backyard before we can get to it.”

“I hate when you talk about him like that. He was trying to protect you, all those years,” Leandra said, her eyes narrowing. “Funny you should mention his retirement…he’s been scammed out of it.”

My ears perked up. Righting myself in the chair, I cocked my head. “Scammed out of two-hundred thousand dollars? How on earth did he manage that?”

“Dad doesn’t know how the world works anymore,” Leandra said, sighing. For the first time, I recognized how much she’d aged in the past few years. “He wasn’t going to tell me what happened, either. But he had been ignoring my calls, and I let it go on for a few weeks before I got worried and went around to check on him.”

I was stunned. When you’re younger, you can’t imagine the big, sturdy man who “runs” your family will be beaten down and stripped of his savings. The moment you realize he’s a human, on the wrong side of his timeline, mortality hits you like a brick wall—his life will end, and so will yours. All in due time.

“He’s completely broke, Billy,” Leandra said. Reaching into her pocket, she drew out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, inhaling sharply.

“I didn’t think you smoked anymore,” I said, eyeing her. “You know that’s how—”

“Yeah, yeah. I know Mom died of lung cancer, Billy. I was there.” Her words were crisp and her eyes were sharp. I’d hit a nerve. “You don’t have to remind me.”

I shifted in my chair, suddenly wishing that I’d stayed in Brooklyn, where I felt I belonged. After a pause, as the smoke filled the air around us, I asked: “Who is this guy who scammed Dad, then?”

“He’s this British asshole called Clark Lambert. Sounds like he does this kind of stuff all the time. He pretended to own a condo development. Dad wanted to get out of his little Echo Park shack, if you can believe it, and build a better life for himself. Now, I don’t know how he’ll manage with simple things, like groceries.”

“This is so fucked,” I sighed, my brain racing with ideas of what I could do. Living on the “other” side of the law, I sensed there was a grey area; that I couldn’t deal with the police even when trying to get this asshole. “Clark Lambert, you say?”

“I think you should call Dad,” Leandra said, her eyes searching mine. “It’s been years, and I think if he knew that you were on his side he would feel a lot better. At the end of life, I think any father would want to know that his son was there for him. Wouldn’t you?”

I didn’t answer. Chugging the rest of my beer, I tossed the can into the recycling bin and skirted back outside, giving her a nod.

“Are you leaving?” she asked, her voice high-pitched, worried. She didn’t want me to run out on her again. She wanted me to step up for our family. For us.

“No, no,” I explained. “I’m just making a phone call.”

“Because I thought we could grab dinner at—”

“At La Señorita,” I said, completing her sentence. “I know. Me too.”

It was our place. The place we’d first snuck into for margaritas when we’d been underage, slipping extra bills to the Mexican waiters who couldn’t have cared less if we drank ourselves under the table, so long as we paid. The food was greasy, cheesy, burning your tongue and then oozing down your throat. So many sensations, for just five dollars. It was a place I had really missed while I was back in New York. But more than that, I missed going there with Leandra.

When we were there, it was as though the years that had passed between us hadn’t happened. Like we could slip back into another time.

Ducking outside, I drew my phone up to my ear, dialing the familiar number. “Randy,” I said. “How quick do you think you and Everett can get out to Los Angeles? I might have a job for you guys, if you’re up for some extra cash.”

I knew they were always up for whatever I asked them to do. Even if what I had in mind was on the slippery end of the law.