Page 31 of The Dearly Departed

“If you change your mind, Abraham—"

“I won’t,” I cut him off, watching his back.

“If you do, I’ll make sure you can find me.”

“All I have to do is lift the nearest rock.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Believe what you want, my boy. But the sooner you understand how dirty your hands have to get to win in this world, the better off you’ll be.”

He passed through the office threshold and nearly bumped into Leonard’s short, round frame. Gerald Crowley stopped to glare at the older man who had done more good for us than our own father ever had. I took a step toward his back, ready to close in on him and drive my blade straight through his spine if he dared to utter a single word to Leonard. But lucky for him, he paused for only a moment before sauntering down the hallway.

“Who was that?” Leonard demanded to know, turning his furrowed brows on me.

“Nobody,” I said, folding my knife shut and stuffing it into my pocket.

“He was in my office. He’d better not have been nobody.”

I didn’t have it in me to explain in that moment. There was still a wake to work, I’d been away for too long, and surely, there’d be pitchers to fill.

“I have to get back in there,” I muttered, smoothing my suit jacket over my chest as I brushed past Shawn and Leonard and down the hall.

“Bram!” Leonard called after me, his tone harsh and angry.

But that was fine. He could be angry. I was still going to ignore him though, and if he wanted to be angry about that, too, so be it.

He might not understand—he didn’t have to—but it was for his own protection.

That was all I’d ever wanted to do.

Protect.

I just never accounted for the fact that all I’d ever been good at was getting my hands dirty and getting into trouble.

CHAPTER FIVE

Age Twenty-Six

The paint was peeling away from the siding, chipping and flaking away to fall onto the porch’s warped floorboards. I puffed away at a cigarette as I used my fingernail to scrape at a big chunk of loose paint, breaking it away to join the other pieces at my feet, just as a resounding boom of thunder rattled the windows and my unsettled nerves.

I’d need to get out here and paint at some point. God knew Leonard would never pay a crew of men to come paint the place for him. Why bother when he had three young guys living with him, fully capable of doing the job for him? Problem was, as we were taking care of one issue, three others seemed to crop up underneath our noses.

That was life though, wasn’t it?

I turned to set my gaze out toward the parking lot at the back of the funeral home. It was empty, save for the two hearses, Leonard's old Lincoln, and the beat-up pickup truck Leonard had bought with cash for the three of us to share a few years ago.

"If you boys want your own cars, you can save your money," he'd said the day he presented us with the keys. "But until then, this is yours to take you where you need to go."

We hadn't asked him to do that. Hadn't even expressed an interest in having a car when the hearses served us just fine. But that was Leonard for you. Always taking care of us, even when he was under no obligation to do so. Even while this old place was slowly falling apart around us, he cared more about our well-being than his own.

I was twenty-six, and the old guy was still buying me a pack of cigarettes every week, despite the fact that I'd started buying them myself. I knew it was his way of feeling useful and needed, so I didn't say anything to stop him. I just said thank you and went on with my day.

Not like I won’t smoke them, I thought, narrowing my glare on something in the bed of our truck that hadn't been there before.

The rain hadn't started to fall yet, but the sky threatened to open beneath a thick blanket of black clouds. I stomped down the porch steps, meandering toward the truck. I dropped the finished cigarette to the pavement and stamped it out beneath the heel of my boot, never taking my eyes off the black plastic tarp fluttering in the mounting wind.

I hadn't been anywhere in days, apart from running across the street to the 7-Eleven to grab a cup of coffee—just to change it up from the usual Folgers crap Leonard kept on hand. But Shawn and Isaac had both gone out at various times for school, dates, and a hangout with a couple of friends or something.

Their social lives were in much better shape than mine. While I'd been through college without a single new contact in my cell phone, Shawn and Ike had managed to allure the attentions of girlfriends and friends alike. All that nonsense seemed pointless to me. Trivial and frivolous. I didn't need friends when I had my brothers, and I didn't care about nurturing a relationship with a girlfriend. They brought nothing but complications, baggage, and the uprising of memories I’d rather forget, and what the hell was the point of living with that headache?