Harder (Caroline & West #2)(14)

“When did you ask him?”

“Just the other week. Before his father …” He loops his hand in the air, encompassing everything surrounding us.

… got shot.

… ended up here.

“Did you mention his sister when you made this offer?”

“No.”

“He won’t leave her behind.”

“He’s too young to be responsible for that girl.”

I shake my head, unwilling to agree or disagree. Sure, West is too young, but what does that mean anyway? He’s the age he is. He’s the person he is. He’s been responsible for his sister a long time, and he’s going to take care of her regardless of what Dr. T or I think. Regardless of what anyone thinks.

“Dr. Tomlinson—”

Just then, the funeral director comes through the front door. He’s red-faced, and he reeks of panic. “Where’s Mrs. Leavitt?”

“She was in the viewing room.”

“She isn’t now. Could you do me a favor and look in the bathroom? It’s important that I find her.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“There’s a … some unpleasantness in the parking lot, and if anyone can put a stop to it …”

I’m already on my way out. I’m familiar with West and unpleasantness. He has a bad habit of swinging instead of thinking. I have a bad habit of walking into his punches.

Outside, I find a crowd bunched tight between two parallel rows of cars. I duck and weave like an eel to get a view of the action, and then I’m not sure what I’m looking at.

West has both arms out, holding his uncle Jack apart from a man I don’t know. “No respect!” his uncle is shouting. “No excuse for this f*cker!”

The guy being yelled at has a shaved head. He’s built like a brick wall in a suit. I clue in to his identity when he flinches at the word killer.

Bo.

There are others shouting, too, adding to the chorus of voices. Frankie’s in the crowd behind him, white-faced, silent.

“Calm down,” West says to his uncle.

Jack is Joan’s son—West’s dad’s brother. He doesn’t work. I overheard his wife, Stephanie, telling West’s aunt Laura that she put the kids to bed last night and then spent two hours driving around looking for him so she could drag him home and dry him out for the funeral.

He sounds like he’s plenty wet now, though. “I’ll f*cking calm down when that f*cktard is gone from my brother’s f*cking funeral!”

“He came to pay his respects.”

“He should be in jail!”

“That’s for the police to decide.”

“He shot Wyatt, West! Cold f*cking blood! I can’t believe you’re taking his side. Fucking staying with him, driving his truck around—it disgusts me.”

I’m close enough now to smell the liquor fumes coming off Jack. I search for West’s mom, knowing she and Bo are the two poles of all this conflict. Two points in a triangle whose third point has been removed.

When I find her, that’s when I know this situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

I once went out after a storm with my dad and saw a downed telephone pole in the road, the severed end of a power line showering electricity into the dark night. That’s what West’s mom’s eyes are like. That much energy, loose and sparking. Lacking only a glancing touch to cause damage beyond measure.

“You got some nerve, coming here,” Michelle says. She jerks her chin up. For one frozen instant, I see a strong resemblance to West. It’s in her jaw. In the fire in her eyes. “After what you did?”

Her voice is rising.

“After what you said to me, what you promised, and now you’re disrupting his funeral? His f*cking funeral, Bo! You take him from me and you can’t leave me that much?”

She’s stalking toward him now, warming up. Bo’s protests are too quiet to affect her gathering momentum. Her curses fall on him like rain. Dark and cold.

They pelt him, and he squares his shoulders. Looks into the distance, past her. It’s not until she tries to slap him that he lays a hand on her, but one hand is all it takes.

She tries to wrench her arm away, shouts in pain when she fails, and bloodlust ripples through the crowd, a tangible wave of ugly impulse.

I want to keep it from getting any worse, but no one I see has a stake in stopping this. Laura is so nonconfrontational, it’s a shock her spine hasn’t dissolved. I’d hoped Stephanie could be counted on to prevent her husband from behaving like a jackass, but the excitement in her eyes says she loves this. Heather’s not someone to be counted on. The cousins are strangers to me. The funeral home director is missing.

My gaze collides with West’s. He mouths the word Frankie.

The least I can do.

I look for the fastest way to get to her. It’s a straight line, so I cut through the empty space between Bo and West, ducking under West’s outstretched arms.

“Come with me,” I say. “We have to find your grandma.”

Her eyes are on Bo. “He shouldn’t be here.”

“I know. Come on.”

I pull at her arm, and she falls against my side. We zip indoors, casing the joint for Joan. Family room, bathroom, hallway, coffin room. We find her alone in an empty visitation room. When I tell her what’s going on, she just sits there, gazing at a lit cross in a niche.