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“No one calls me that,” the man answered. “I’m Bowman. What do you want?”
“My name is Nick. I’m in love with your sister.”
“Which one?” Bowman asked, pushing the door open the rest of the way. “I know it’s not Jamie. She’d eat a guy like you for breakfast. And Linda has a wife, so that’s not really going to work.”
“Cleo,” Nick said, his back tightening and his posture ready for whatever might come his way.
“Cleo?” Bowman asked, twisting his mouth up thoughtfully from side to side. “I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
“I know that.”
“So why are you here?” Bowman’s posture had changed too. He looked ready for something; Nick just didn’t know what.
“I don’t know exactly why I’m here. The woman I love is hurting. She was hurting long before I came around and I want to help her.”
“You think I have something to do with that?”
“I don’t know the whole story. She told me some. But I do know that she has no family and she feels like that’s the punishment she deserves.”
“This isn’t really some front porch conversation.”
“Then let’s take it somewhere else because I’m not leaving here without some answers.” Nick stood his ground as Bowman shifted from one foot to the other.
“Come in, I guess,” he finally offered, holding the door open for Nick.
Bowman walked to the fridge and grabbed a couple of beers without even asking Nick if he wanted one. Instead he just handed it over and gestured to the couch. Nick spun the top off the beer and sat down.
Bowman let out a loud sigh as he settled onto the recliner across from Nick. “How is she?”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself? You’re both grown-ups. The past is the past. Don’t you want to move on from all of that?”
“I have. I’ve moved on by myself.”
Nick fought the overwhelming urge to ball his hands into fists. “She was a kid.”
“I don’t blame her for what happened,” Bowman took a long sip of his beer and cleared his throat. “It was messed up that day.”
“What day?”
“She didn’t tell you about the day it happened? Damn, then you don’t know the half of it. My dad was supposed to be selling some guns from the base to these dudes. But he didn’t hold up his end of the bargain. I guess he didn’t realize how serious these men were. Me, Cleo, and our sister Linda were home when they kicked in the door.”
“Shit,” Nick said, trying to imagine Cleo in that mess.
“Yeah, it was nuts. They were pointing guns in our faces and trying to get us to tell them where my father was. They made Cleo call him but my father did something I will never understand. Especially now that I have nieces and nephews.”
“What?”
“My father called their bluff. Three of his kids were there with these very dangerous men and my father called their bluff. He basically told them to screw off and that they weren’t going to get anything from him.”
“That’s messed up.”
“Very.” Bowman picked at the label of his beer and stared at the floor. “We were thirteen. I was totally freaked out. The guys couldn’t believe my dad was going to do us like that. They started getting really pissed. Cleo got scared and she did the one thing we were never supposed to do in our house.”
“She called the cops?”
“Yup. We were on base though, so it was the military police. From there it all started to unravel. The cops separated us and tried to get to the bottom of what happened. My father tried to play it off like it was some random home invasion. Cleo broke though. She told them the truth.”
Nick sipped his beer in an effort to keep himself from yelling. “Your father was willing to let you die for the sake of some shit deal he made, and your family turned their back on Cleo for doing the right thing?”
