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CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Dex had been growing up, his family situation had been unstable, to put it mildly. From the distance of adulthood, he thought his mom had probably been bipolar, undiagnosed—at least until it was too late. What he’d known as a child was she was wildly unpredictable. He never knew from one day to the next whether she’d wake him up at four in the morning and want to keep him home from school for a sudden road trip to Kansas City or Branson or Dallas—one time it was Los Angeles—or he’d have to make his own breakfast, pack his own lunch, and find his own way to school because she wouldn’t come out of her room.
His father hadn’t been equipped to deal with a wife like that, but he wasn’t the kind of man to break a promise, so he’d stayed with the family. But he’d worked three jobs to keep the bills paid and stopped at bars on the way home from the last one to avoid dealing with his wife.
Then, when Dex—Seth, back then—was nine, his parents had had another child. A little boy named Ezra.
Now, from the distance of adulthood and in the light it shone on the past, Dex knew that his mother’s bipolar disorder had descended into postpartum depression. Then, Seth had known only that she wouldn’t wash, wouldn’t dress, wouldn’t talk, and carried Ezra around like a toddler might carry a cat—dangling over her arm and yowling.
Their dad stayed away even more than before, rarely home longer than the time it took to sleep for a few hours, shower, and change.
Seth had learned how to take care of a baby—how to change diapers, mix formula, sterilize bottles, all of it. He hadn’t needed to learn how to do laundry because he’d already been doing that.
He’d stayed home from school for months, being Ezra’s surrogate dad and their mom’s caretaker as much as she’d allow. But the school sent the cops to the house, and they made Seth go back to class.
Two weeks later, he came home to a quiet house. He found his mother sitting on the back porch in nothing but an open, soaking-wet housecoat. She didn’t acknowledge Seth’s presence in any way. When he tried to shake her, she simply shook.
He’d found four-month-old Ezra face-down in a bathtub full of cold water.
As he was the only one in the house not dead or catatonic, Seth had picked up the body of his baby brother, swaddled him carefully in a towel, and laid him in his crib. Then he’d called 911 and gone to sit beside his mother and hold her hand.
His father had stayed around long enough to put a tiny casket in the ground. Then he dropped Seth off with his maternal grandfather and disappeared, never to be heard from again.
Seth’s mother, acquitted of murder on the grounds of mental disease or defect, had died in a psychiatric facility three days before Seth graduated high school, and about two weeks before his Marines enlistment date.
Seth’s grandpa had been an okay guy, but it was just him, and he had no idea what to do with a nine-year-old boy, sullen, grieving, and nearly mute with rage and mistrust. He himself had lost his only child and half his grandsons to madness, less than a year after he’d buried his wife following a five-year bout with throat cancer, so he didn’t have much to say, either.
He covered the bases—food, shelter, clothes, school—and didn’t worry about much else. He expected Seth to work in his auto-repair shop on weekends during the school year and full time in summer. He was gruff and taciturn, but so was Seth, and they got on okay.
Neither of them thought there was much to celebrate in the world, and his grandpa thought God was a sales pitch, so they mainly let holidays pass by unnoticed. Holidays with his mom had been pretty weird, anyway—either too busy or too bleak, and always unhappy.
His grandpa died during Seth’s first tour in Afghanistan.
After almost thirty years of a life like that, his first Bulls Christmas had been utterly bizarre and unsettling. The Bulls’ huge celebrations still freaked him out more than a little. He saw the good in them, saw how happy everybody was—no matter how drunk they got, there’d been almost no fighting, verbal or violent, at the Delaneys’ Thanksgivings and Christmases—and he appreciated that good spirit. Even enjoyed it. But it was also overwhelming. And depressing, frankly.
It was hard to watch so many happy, hyper kids being doted on by so many loving people and not feel how strange and, well,wronghis own childhood had been.
He went, because it was expected, and also because hewantedto shake off the weirdness and feel the good. He wanted to have that good life. He’d been wearing the Bull for more than a decade now, though, and the weirdness held. This new tangle with Kelsey, and with her dad, added another twist to the weirdness.
That was why he’d bailed on the clubhouse party last night. He did a couple of shifts at the VFW soup kitchen every month, and always at least one during the big holidays that were so hard for people who didn’t have families, but this year was the first time he’d taken a shift that conflicted with a Bulls holiday celebration. He’d expected Eight to be pissed, to yell for sure and possibly fine him, but Eight had shrugged it off—and then leaned in and said he’d better not let Mo Delaney down, if he knew what was good for him.
To Dex, the Delaneys were a couple of old folks he kind of knew. Delaney had retired long before Dex had first stepped into the Bulls clubhouse, so he only really saw them for celebrations, and Dex tended to skirt the edges of those. But to Eight, they were like parents—or more than that, even. Guardian angels. Especially Mo. You did not disrespect Mo Delaney. Or disappoint her. Even if she didn’t really know who you were.
So Dex parked his truck in front of their Bixby rancher, collected from the passenger seat the silly gift he’d gotten for his Secret Santa person—Cooper—and the bottle of wine he’d brought for Mo, and climbed out. He patted the pocket of his kutte to make sure he had the other thing, and headed up to the house.
It was thoroughly decorated for the holiday. Lights outlined every window. Long swoops of pine rope wrapped with lights and thick red ribbon ran along the eaves, a massive, lighted wreath hung on the door, five-foot-tall nutcrackers stood guard at each side of the snowman doormat. The big living room window was the stage for the tree, so heavily decorated the limbs were hardly visible.
Bikes, cars, and trucks were everywhere, and the sound of a party throbbed through the chilly Christmas air. He’d never sat down and figured how many people counted themselves among the Bulls family, but it was a lot. Thirteen patches, most of them married, most of them fathers. Retired patches and their families. Widows of patches andtheirfamilies. Sweetbutts who’d been around long enough to transcend that status.
Every room in that house was going to be crowded.
As he approached, the front door swung open and released a blast of merry noise—laughter and chatter and some woman on the sound system belting out one of those religious carols over it all—and Gunner’s wife, Leah, trotted out, laughing.
Leah was a pretty woman, with sleek blonde hair and a bright smile. She was a grade-school teacher and dressed like one. Today, she was wearing a bright green dress with a big, swirly skirt. The dress had a pattern of little red bows and wrapped packages all over it. And she had a fluffy white headband in her hair.
“Dex! Hi!” she cheered. “Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas,” he returned, accepting her enthusiastic hug.
