Deconstructed(66)

My gaze snagged upon a bud vase sitting beside the welcome mat. A cluster of yellow carnations. I swallowed hard, waylaid by the simpleness, totally off-kilter from the significance of such a flower on my front doorstep.

Why does everyone want roses all the time? They’re so overdone and overpriced. I like the bright ones, the ones with ruffles, the ones that announce they’re happy to the world.

I can get you those, babe. Say the word and your world can be daisies and yellow carnations.

Word.

“That was there when I got here,” Ed Earl said, nodding his giant bowling-ball head toward the tiny vase.

I reached down and lifted it. No note. But it didn’t need a note.

Digging my house key from my bag, I thrust it into the dead bolt, twisting and pushing so I could get inside quick and shut the door in Ed Earl’s stupid face.

But he had steel-toe boots and the reflexes of a cheetah or some other fast, vicious creature and prevented my evasive tactic.

“What’s with you, Ed? You can’t take a hint?” I turned on him, my own version of a dangerous creature. I wanted to punch him until he screamed, until he felt every bit of the fear, loss, and hopelessness I had felt every night I had lain on that shitty cot, one eye open for Raya D., the meanest bitch in Long Pines Correctional, who had taken a disliking to me when I wouldn’t give her my stupid Valentine’s cookie. I wanted to extract the hate I had carried, rolling it on itself, into a seething ball. Then I would shove it so far down his throat, he’d turn purple. But the thing was, I couldn’t find that hate. Maybe it was gone. Maybe I couldn’t locate it because I had allowed what Ed Earl had done to me to happen. I had played my part and not been strong enough to push him to the ground and put my foot on his throat when I’d had the chance.

His jaw clenched. “But we do have something to say. Or I do anyways.”

I glared as he refused to budge, blocking my path into the safety of my home. Beyond his shoulder I saw a neighbor heading my way, her yippy dog zigzagging on the leash. “Fine. Come inside. I don’t need the whole neighborhood knowing my business.”

He moved out of my way, and we both went inside my apartment. Ed Earl made it feel two sizes too small. I didn’t ask him to sit down because I didn’t want the memory of him on my sofa.

“You wanna Coke or something?” I asked, only because I noted that Cricket was quick to offer refreshments and write thank-you notes for everyone. She was also big on “hostess gifts,” telling customers, “Wouldn’t this make the most precious little happy?” I had honestly never thought about taking a “happy” to a friend’s house. Booze? Yeah. But a scented candle? Eh.

“Nah, I’m good.” He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking around. “This is a real nice place, Roo.”

“Please don’t call me that. It’s Ruby.”

“Yeah, okay, Ruby.” He stared at my curtains while I set the yellow carnations on the counter next to the overblown roses Ty had sent me. A dozen and a half for no reason at all. The carnations looked defiant against the show-off cousin. But they looked like me. I liked them.

“So?” I turned and set my fists on my hips.

Ed Earl sighed. “You already know I’m sorry about what happened between us. I never would have asked you to take my shit to the shelter if I had known Jerry Jefferies was a damned rat. I never would have involved you.”

“But you did.”

“Yeah, I did. No takin’ that back now. And you did my time. You gave up a lot to do that, and I owe you. Sorry ain’t good enough. I realize that now.” He reached into his back pocket.

My first inclination was to run because Ed Earl always packed, and five years back he’d shot out his brother’s windshield over a stupid poker game. But then I realized Ed Earl wasn’t going to shoot me. He wasn’t drunk or pissed. Not to mention I was still trying to wrap my head around his words. He owed me. Excuses I had expected. But the sincerity of his last remark had thrown up a temporary barrier to my irritation. “What do you mean?”

He withdrew an envelope, walked over, and set it beside the carnations. “There. I don’t know how else to make it right. So maybe this will help. But I want you to know something, little coz.”

I swallow hard, looking at that envelope, then back at my cousin.

“I changed. I know you don’t believe me. But when all that happened, I had no intention of changing my ways.” He chuffed and shook his head, looking disappointed in himself. “Hell, even after you going down for all that, refusing to squeal, being loyal when you had no cause to be, I was unmoved, Roo. For all intents and purposes, you should have served me up to the DA on a platter. But you didn’t. You just took it. And yeah, there was some crap that went down with Martine Perez over turf and everything. They threw a Molotov through Mama’s window. You probably didn’t know ’cause Mama’s just like you—she keeps it close to the vest. I found her that next morning with the family Bible, and she’d cut my name out. Didn’t even bother with a marker. Just cut it out like it was never there, and then she told me that I wasn’t her son no more. That was . . . that was somethin’. She ain’t never done nothin’ like that before.”

I pressed my hands against the counter because I had never heard Ed Earl issue any regret. He didn’t wound like the rest of the world. Wasn’t in his nature. “I didn’t know.”