Jackson Stiles, Road to Redemption (Road to Redemption #1)(19)

The sound of Marty Sweetwater’s earlier news segment rerun bleeds in from the other room when I start to brush my teeth. It’s enough to keep me from sinking into what is quickly becoming sulk mode and more along the lines of the much needed P.I. mode.

Before I hopped into the shower this morning, I heard the tail end of Donnie Leary’s funeral announcement. Now I’m getting all the deets. It’s being held in a few short hours at Redemption’s South End Cemetery. Good to know, but why in the hell are they making this a segment? It’s not like he was a big player. He wasn’t even a medium player.

The next words out of Sweetwater’s mouth answer my question. They needed a reason to bring up Thomas Flint and his clan of *s again.

“The gang is known to be in connection with much of the drug distribution that’s infiltrating the area. Flint is said to be personally responsible for the increasing number of high school dropouts in the past two years by recruiting teenagers into his circle of crime.”

Dun, dun, dunnnnnn.

Frustrated with the amount of attention this guy gets lately, I turn off the boob-tube, toss the remote, and stumble down the hallway. I’ve got to find myself something to wear today.

My closet’s full of a lot of the same shit so it doesn’t take me long to find a decent shirt, socks, and jeans to walk around in. I push my feet into some shoes on my way to the kitchen. After I dole out food for Frodo to find later, I slide my Smith & Wesson into its holster. I nab the cigarette I left sitting on the coffee table last night, just in case, and head out to the car with one thought managing to nag at the back of my mind.

Donnie Leary.





X X X


Breathe, Stiles.

I hadn’t planned on paying my respects to the kid, yet here I am, a good forty to forty-five minutes away from my office and headed straight toward the one place I shouldn’t be.

Go figure.

I park the car about a quarter mile away from the burial site and head up a familiar hill to check things out from afar.

An uncomfortable stiffness begins to creep into every inch of me the closer I get to where Donnie Leary is about to be put into the ground. It could be the darkened skies putting me in a bad mood. Maybe it’s the cold weather. Or it could be guilt for not visiting this place often enough over the past decade.

Mikey’s gravestone is playing at the edges of my periphery I don’t dare look in its direction, though. That’s asking for a whole bunch of pain I don’t have the will or the want to deal with right now.

Instead, for the millionth time, just today, I question my decision-making skills from a few nights ago. I’m not sure I have a right to even be here, but it’s too late now. So I trudge the rest of the way up the hill and take a spot behind an old maple tree.

When I look down onto the scene below, my gut is shaky. A tailspin of memories are hurled at me of another funeral that happened on this property back when I was barely considered an adult.

It didn’t go so well, but then again, what funeral does?

“What the hell are you doing here?”

My father’s voice echoes inside my mind while I try to focus on the current burial that’s about to happen. It doesn’t work. All the confusion, anger, frustration, and regret I had that day takes a hold of me all over again.

“I didn’t mean for—”

“It doesn’t matter what you meant, does it?”

If I concentrate hard enough, I know I can push his voice out of my head. And I do. Because I need to see who shows up to say goodbye to Donnie and make an assessment as to whether or not any of them might have played a hand in putting him in the ground.

Thunder cracks above me. It’s like the sky's about to open up right over my f*cking head, but I still have a few minutes to make some notes.

There aren’t a ton of people here. A few hoodies pulled over some faces, a couple of adult-type figures, ten, maybe twenty more I don’t care to elaborate on, and the preacher, grasping his Bible like it’s a goddamn security blanket.

I expected more based on the number of kids who were ready to rumble for him the other night, but I guess it makes sense, them not being here. Most of Donnie’s associations were probably criminals, and the rest, well, they most likely didn’t want to come out in the middle of what looks like the beginning of a pretty disastrous storm.

One person, who’s notably standing just outside the crowd of attendees, is the girl from the street race. The one who kissed Donnie good luck and whispered sweet somethings into his ear. She isn’t the happy, bubbly young girl in love from the other night. Now she looks stoic, frozen, and much older as she watches the generic scene unfold in front of her. Kind of how my mom looked the last time we stood about fifty feet from where I’m standing.

“I’m sorry, Ma.”

She couldn’t look at me, and it drove an ice pick straight into my chest. The more I tried to make amends, the more she cried. The more she cried, the more my dad reminded me I wasn’t wanted there to begin with.

“Why don’t you take some of your own advice, son? Go home.”

I’m not gonna lie and say it didn’t hurt. But it was one of those learning moments I was awarded in life.

Don’t open up a wound and people can’t pour salt in it.

I did better than go home. I moved out that day.