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“And your shoes?” Sadie Ashby had the most ridiculous shoe collection of any woman I’d ever met and she never wore anything else.
She laughed and sat down, kicking both legs up on top of the desk to reveal her red soles. “Thanks for your concern but my shoes are fine. Red bottoms cover all manner of sins,” she said with a wicked laugh that made me smile even though it shouldn’t.
Soon both Jasper and I were laughing along with her but it wasn’t a laugh of amusement. It was a laugh borne of shared pain and trauma. Of memories none of us could forget, no matter how hard we tried.
“Sit. Thomas managed to get his hands on the most spectacular weed. It’s the perfect way to unwind after a long day.” It was the same thing she always said. But the truth was…there wasn’t enough whiskey and weed in the world to make me forget.
We all managed in different ways. Jasper took control of everything, operating under the mistaken belief that as a little boy he could have stopped the beatings our father rained down on us whenever he was drunk, which was always.
Whenever he lost at the poker and blackjack tables, which he always did. When he just fucking felt like pummeling someone, which was always. Nothing anyone said or did could change that, so we let him do what he needed, to a certain extent, and that seemed to satisfy him as much as anything could.
Sadie, well she dealt with our father’s death by becoming the baddest bitch in all of Glitz, maybe all of Nevada. But how she dealt with what happened to her sons at the hands of grown men who should have known better, men like Father Ray Sullivan, well that was a different story altogether. A story we all knew about but none of us spoke about, not directly anyway.
Calvin hid behind his computers, doing his own dirty deeds to make sure bad people paid for the shit they did. And me, well I buried myself in fucking and kicking ass. Both were therapeutic in their own way, and most importantly, they fucking worked.
“Damn, that’s good shit,” Sadie said around a big plume of smoke and handed the joint to me. The spliff was another dead giveaway of what she had been up to tonight, but I didn’t ask. I accepted the joint and inhaled until my lungs were at capacity. “Just what I needed.”
Jasper accepted the joint and inhaled deeply, exhaling with a grin.
“Think Thomas could hook us up with his connection? Between the dispensaries and the streets, we could make good money off this.” He took another puff and smiled.
“Of course he will. Thomas is like family,” she said in that tone she always used when it came to her valet. None of us knew if it was strictly a professional relationship, though we had our suspicions, and none of us were brave enough to ask. No one wanted to ask their ma who she was fucking.
No thank you.
“Let me know,” Jasper said and took another hit before handing the joint back to Sadie and leaving the library.
“Even weed doesn’t get that boy to relax.” She shook her head and kicked off her shoes, curling one leg underneath her on the sofa Jasper just abandoned. “How are you sleeping, Virgil?”
“Fine,” I grunted. I hated that damn question even though I knew it came from a good place. From worry.
She nodded and took another long drag off the joint. “And how are you sleeping when you’re alone?”
“Ma, I’m fine. Let’s just focus on The Crusaders for now, all right?”
She nodded and handed me the joint as she stood. “Fine. But for fuck’s sake, go out and get laid before you get someone killed.”
Sadie bent down so we were face to face, so I could see all the physical differences between us. Instead of her fair features, I inherited the dark looks of my father, a fact I was sure couldn’t have been easy for her over the years.
“I do this for you, Virgil, for all of you. But I also do it for me. I have to.”
“Ma,” I started and she held my face in her hands to stop me.
“No, Virgil, I have to. I can’t not do this.”
I nodded my understanding. “And you know I’ve got your back, Ma. Always.”
Her smile softened to the one reserved only for family. And Thomas.
“My son. Love you.” She kissed my forehead and straightened before she turned on stockinged feet and left me alone in the library.
With too much booze and too many fucking memories. After a night like tonight, I knew couldn’t escape the memories. The flashbacks. The dreams. So I picked up my phone and found Maisie’s name with a smile.
Ma said to get laid and all good Irish boys listened to their mothers.
