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Hannah started to answer, but she only got as far as “Dunc—" before Mom slammed her hand on Hannah’s shoulder and cut in to answer herself.
“I think Duncan just crossed a pretty important boundary with Phoebe.”
“Yeah, I got that. I just don’t know what it was about.”
“That’s the boundary, I think, Dad,” Kelsey said. “She didn’t want him to bring up the topic.”
“Mama, I want DOWN!” Tildy roared.
“Got her!” Dex called, with the enthusiasm of a tween yelling DIBS! He leapt from his seat and went to his daughter, obviously wanting nothing to do with Duncan’s trouble.
Duncan was just trying to help, though. Phoebe needed help. She did not have it handled. He understood her reluctance; the Bulls had a reputation that was a hindrance in as many places as it was an asset, but maybe there was a way they could help off the record. Fuck, the club lived off the record. But he wasn’t high enough in the hierarchy, nor long enough in a patch, to know on his own what options there were, if any. He had to ask the question.
“She’s in real trouble. She could lose her life’s work in a few weeks. I just want to know if there’s a way we can help her.”
“It sounds like you already told her that, and she told you no,” Kelsey said. Dex had Tildy out of her high chair and hightailed it into the kitchen to clean her up.
Duncan nodded in response to his sister’s observation. “She did. She says she doesn’t want that much help from me, or the club, because it could fuck things up between us. She’ll feel like she owes me, and that will screw up the power between us, or something like that. But it’s really bad. She could lose everything. It’s so frustrating that she won’t even consider—”
“You’ve known this girl a month, is that right?” Dad asked, speaking over him.
“A little more than that,” Duncan corrected. “I really like her, Dad.”
Dad smiled. “I know. I like her, too. But you can’t force your idea of help on her, son. You have to listen to what she says she wants. We’re talking about her life here. A life she’s been living a lot longer than you’ve known about.”
A strange, strangled laugh came from the direction of Mom’s chair, and Duncan looked that way. Mom was staring at Dad with a weary, deeply ironic twist to her mouth. “That is a lesson your father learned the hardest possible way, Dunc. Trust me when I tell you.”
Duncan looked back to his father, who was smiling sheepishly at Mom.
Had he ever seen his father look sheepish before?
“What’s that mean?” he asked.
Dad was the one who answered. Before he did, he reached over and grabbed Kelsey’s hand. “You all know why I went away, back before Mom and me were married. When she was pregnant with Kelsey.”
“Yeah. Mom’s dad”—Duncan had never thought of that awful man as his grandfather—“was abusive. He beat her up when she was pregnant with Kelse, and you went for him and nearly killed him with your bare hands.”
Despite the pain and danger for Mom and Kelsey, despite the hard years Dad had done in McAlester for aggravated assault, Duncan loved that story. It showed exactly who Dad was: someone who would do anything to protect and avenge the people he loved. That was a formative story in Duncan’s life. A role-model story.
“What’s that got to do with this?” he asked, ready to defend that story and his attachment to it.
Dad sighed. “I guess a part we don’t talk about so much is that Mom did not want me going after him. She wanted to handle it herself, and I didn’t listen. I thought she was too soft on the guy, and I wanted to kill him for hurting her.”
“Of course you did!” Duncan said. “He deserved it.”
“I agree,” Dad said. “But your mother didn’t deserve what happened because I did what I thought was right. I went away for years, son. I was ready to pay that price when I went for him, but because I did, Mom was alone in the world when she had Kelsey. And I didn’t kill Earl, I only broke him. When his insurance ran out, he had to go back home, and your mom had an infant and an abusive father I’d made a vegetable to take care of. So what I really did was fuck up her life and put myself out of reach to be there for her—and for Kelse. When I finally came home, I had a lot of making up to do. And a lot of work to figure out how to take care of my family without bulldozing everybody under my will.”
“Well, that explains a lot,” Hannah muttered. Duncan gave her a sharp look, and she gave him an Eat glass, asshole, look back, but nobody else seemed to have even noticed her snarky comment.
“I love you,” Mom said to Dad, her quiet voice traveling the length of the table like a waft of spring air.
“That’s six,” Dad said, his eyes locked with hers.
They had a weird thing they’d always done, between them and with the kids, where they counted each day’s ‘I love yous.’ Duncan thought it was one of those cringey-cutesy things parents did. He liked it because it was such a Helm Family Thing, but he’d be embarrassed to ever try to do it with someone else.
“You are so much like your father, Duncan,” Mom said, her tone softer but back to Mom Voice. “In all the wonderful ways, and the frustrating ways as well. I thought we covered all this while you were growing up, but apparently nature overcomes nurture. So let’s try again. Look me in the eyes right now.”
Duncan did.
