The screen door banged open and Danny stepped out with Dad's shotgun leveled at Tony's chest.
"Get your hand off my sister." Danny's voice was cold and I believed he really would kill Tony. "Get off our property or I'll shoot first and call the cops later."
Tony held my throat for one more second, eyes locked on mine. Then he released me and stepped back with both hands raised. He looked at Danny and the shotgun and didn't seem particularly concerned.
"Easy, brother," Tony said. "We're all friends here…"
"We're not friends," Danny told him. "Get on your bike and leave."
Tony backed toward his bike, hands still up. Then he stopped and looked at me one more time.
"You know, it's going to be something when Garret finds out he's got a kid he never knew about, Ms. Ducette." He said it loud enough for Danny to hear every word. "He's not gonna take kindly to being kept in the dark. That's the kind of news that changes a man."
Danny's aim didn't waver but his eyes flicked to me as I turned and rushed toward the house, humiliated and scared to death.
"What's he talking about, Sara?" Dan asked, but I ignored the question and rushed inside to find Kip.
Tony mounted his bike and kicked it to life and rode out of the driveway without looking back, and my brother followed me in, handing the gun to Tiffany as he passed her.
"Sara, What did he mean, Garret has a kid?"
The sob that came out of me was ugly and raw and I couldn't stop it. I scooped Kip up from the living room floor, carrying him down the hall to my bedroom where I shut the door and locked it.
"Sara," Danny called, knocking on the door. The knob jiggled, and he said, "Come on… open the door. We can talk about it. I’m not mad." But I was too scared to open that door for a single second.
I sat on the bed with my son in my lap and cried. Tony knew the truth, and that meant he would tell Garret. I had no way out of this now. My secret was out. Tears came so heavy, I couldn't see straight, and it made Kip look up at me and notice.
He reached up and pressed his small hands against my cheeks, trying to wipe the tears away.
"No cry, Mama," he said, patting my cheeks with his small hands. "I okay."
But it wasn't okay. Nothing was okay, and the walls I'd spent three years building to keep Garret and Kip apart were crumbling faster than I could hold them up, and I didn't know how to stop it.
If Tony told Garret the truth, he would think I ran away to hide Kip, which wasn’t the truth, and I'd be forced to tell him what thetruth really was. That Tony had killed Mandy and I was the only person in the world who knew it. And if I let a single soul know that, Tony would kill me and my family too.
22
GARRET
The shower steam fogged the mirror and clouded the small window above the toilet, while the water pelted the knots between my shoulder blades, and my mind went over what I would say to Sara. All afternoon they'd been rearranging themselves in my head, building up and stripping down until they sounded right. There was no room for ambiguity tonight.
I had been back and forth on this for the past several days, but I knew it in my heart when she skipped town four years ago what I wanted. I didn’t know why I let fear of other things try to dissuade me from taking what I wanted, but hearing Fox talk about Mandy broke off every hesitation I had and I knew I had to act on it.
I planned to tell Sara I loved her, and after that I would stake a claim with Fox, and then talk to Anne. She deserved to know that I loved Sara as much as Sara did. I'd deal with Peter when he got better, and it appeared I had a bit of time to prepare myself for his reaction now.
The water went cold and my hand found the faucet and killed it before I grabbed a towel to wipe the mirror down while I dried off. The mirror wasn't kind to me, or maybe that was just how I looked—forty-something, greying at the temples, scarred and bruised from life. Whether Sara saw the same wear and tear or something else entirely crossed my mind too. I knew it was something Peter would hate, maybe Anne too, but the age difference didn't matter to me anymore. It was how I felt that was important, and I knew I loved her.
I strolled naked to the dryer to pull out a clean pair of jeans and a flannel, then stood next to the bedroom window to get dressed. I had to keep telling myself that taking a stand and telling Sara how I felt was necessary even if she pushed me away and decided to leave town anyway. It would destroy me again, but it would hurt worse if I let her leave without telling her how I felt. I couldn’t let her leave like that again.
As I tugged on one sock then the other I heard the rumble of a few bikes roaring to live. It started out distant, giving me time to pull the curtain back and peek out, then it swelled until the windows rattled and the ground shook from how many of them rumbled past.
I watched them file out of the trailer park onto the county road toward town and I knew the code but I stayed inside until every taillight had vanished into the dusky evening and the rumble was nothing but a memory. Every ride Lightning organized ended the same. He'd provoke the Locusts, the Locusts would hit back, and the people caught in between would pay for it. Four years of following orders and swinging fists for what? Lightning had no business leading this club and keeping Fox liquored up so he could instigate trouble was only gonna get people killed.
Right now it was just the two clubs, but I knew how fast that would evolve to including outsiders and innocent folks who didn't know better. If the Locusts attacked the Anvil on a Friday night there would be a dozen regulars who weren't club members at risk, and the diner sat right next to it. What would happen if Anne was there and a fire spread?
No, I wanted nothing to do with that.
I swung my cut on and stepped outside. The sky had gone deep purple over the tree line in the general direction of the creek where I was supposed to meet Sara. I breathed a sigh of relief as I straddled my bike and kicked it to life, thankful no one would hear me and try to follow.
