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“I think we should go back,” I tell him.
“You miss the snow?” he asks mildly and without an ounce of surprise, as if he’s been on the same wavelength.
“Yes, as silly as that sounds, I do miss the snow and the pine trees and fall colors and spring rain. I want to live in a neighborhood with a patch of grass that you mow in the summer and a driveway that we have to shovel in the winter. I want to see our kids riding their bikes in a cul-de-sac while I gossip with the neighbors about whether that chorus teacher is part of a cult because she makes the kids sing weird chants.”
“Then let’s go.” He slaps a slice of bread on a mountain of ham, turkey and Swiss and takes a bite.
“Is it still safe?” Once Cesaro died, Arturo’s organization suffered one brutal overthrow after another until everyone with strength and power and connections ended up in a body bag. The people that were left standing didn’t have the will to hold the gang together. From the last that we’d heard, everyone had died or left. Mary was forced to eat her poisonous cake. Mason ran off and was never heard of again. Snow and the others joined another, smaller gang who boosted cars.
“Yeah. There’s nothing left. Marjory’s was razed to the ground to make way for a high-rise.” He takes another bite. He seems unaffected, but this is Leka. His foot could be blown off and he’d tell me it was a scratch.
“Marjory’s was your home for a long time,” I say. “It’s okay to miss it.”
He places his sandwich and reaches for a napkin, which he pats at the corners of his mouth before coming around the island to draw me against him. “I never had a home until I met you. You’re my home. You and now the baby inside of you and all the other babies you’ll have. Wherever you are that’s where I wanna be.”
Epilogue
Zach
Many years later
I’m not sure why I agreed to come. The Moore household with the smiley mom and the scary dad scares the shit out of me. I’m the only one that sees the danger. Everyone else calls Mr. Moore by his first name, Leka, like he’s not some predator ready to take them all down if they so much as look cross-eyed at his kids. If someone told me that there were bodies found at Tom’s Quarry where Mr. Moore works, I wouldn’t be surprised.
The Moore house itself makes the back of my neck itch. It’s too neat and pretty. The counters are the white expensive kind that my mom sighs over when she watches cable. The kitchen cabinets are a soft gray that remind me of clouds that appear just after it rains in the summer. It smells like vanilla and cinnamon and some other warm, wonderful scent. There’s an actual bowl of flowers in the middle of the kitchen table. They’re round and really pink.
I hate that I like them. My mom deserves something like this. Instead, our kitchen is crushed beer cans, old cigarette butts, and sticky vinyl flooring. The only thing on our table is a bag of chips that my old man left out after binging the night before. Sometimes there are flies in the kitchen, lapping up spilled milk or melted cheese.
This place doesn’t look like it’s ever held a piece of garbage or hosted even one fly. Outside, my classmates are already filling the pool. I look down at my oil-stained jeans and my Tom’s Quarry basketball T-shirt and know instantly I should leave.
I might go to school with all these kids. I might play on the same club basketball team—the one that Mr. Moore pretty much ordered me to join. I might even eat lunch at the same table, but none of us have a thing in common. I need to get out of here. I need to find Beckett and Kincaid, say my goodbyes, and get the hell out of here before I start melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.
A hard hand lands on my shoulder. I spin around with my fists up only to stare into the unsmiling face of the Moore siblings’ father. “Sir.”
“Brooks.” His gaze falls to my fists, which I quickly hide behind my back. “You forget something at home?”
My good sense, the smartass side of me says. I give that voice a boot in the mouth and manage a respectable, “No, sir.”
I’m certain he knows I’m on the verge of fleeing.
He squeezes my shoulder before releasing me. “Good. My kids were looking forward to you coming today.”
I don’t need a Moore anger translator to understand that means disappoint my kids and I’ll bury your body so far beneath the earth that your fossilized remains won’t be discovered until the next millennium. I’m big on self-preservation, but that’s the very reason why I need to leave. The longer I spend in this house with Beckett, the harder it will be for me to give her up. I highly doubt that Mr. Moore wants me around his precious daughter.
