The Stillwater Girls(66)

She’s ours, but we’re not hers, not yet. As of now, we’re strangers. The only mother she’s ever known is gone forever. And who knows what Davis has put her through these last several months.

“Evie!” Wren’s voice comes from behind us, and the moment their eyes meet, Evie releases May’s hand and runs to her sister.

Sirens sound in the distance, and May reaches for her radio, bringing it closer to her ear.

Before we get the chance to fully appreciate the joyful expression on our daughter’s face and this long-overdue reunion, the sear of bright headlights almost blinds us, and flashes of red and blue paint the front of Davis’s trailer.

Tires skid to a stop in his gravel driveway, walling the scene in a cloud of rock dust, and Evie hides behind Wren, tucking herself out of sight, and Brant shields me.

Everything happens at once.

The door to Davis’s truck swings open, and a moment later, when the dust settles, I’m able to distinguish the outline of his hands in the air against the flicker of the squad car’s light bar behind him. Two officers guard themselves behind open car doors, guns pointed, and three more swarm Davis’s truck.

May yells for us to get down.

Before I so much as blink, Davis is on the ground, his face planted in grit and gravel while one of the deputies cuffs his wrists behind his back.

“Nic, come on.” Brant leads me to our car, walking me to the passenger side, all the while keeping his vision trained on the situation by the truck.

“You’re not going over there, are you?” I ask before climbing in, but he doesn’t hear me. “Brant.”

“Just get in the car. I’ll be back.”

I’ve been married to him long enough to recognize the corded-steel look in his eyes, but before I have an opportunity to protest, he’s gone.

Stepping out of the car, I slam the door behind me and trail after my husband, but he’s already halfway down the driveway, headed straight to one of the patrol units, where a squat deputy is shoving Davis in the back seat with minimal effort. Davis is gaunter than usual—a sign he’s using again—and he doesn’t put up a fight, doesn’t so much as resist. But he was always more of a manipulative weasel than a fighter.

“Brant,” I call after my husband, who won’t acknowledge me, and from several yards back, I watch him say something to the deputy, who then nods and leaves the back door to the squad car open.

In an instant, my husband lunges at his brother, fisting his shirt and dragging him out of the car. Davis lands on his knees in a cloud of dust, his hands still secured behind him.

“Look at me, you piece of shit,” my husband commands him.

It takes a moment, but eventually Davis lifts his head.

“You knew where she was this entire time?” Brant’s voice is low, but I still hear him loud and clear. A couple of deputies keep their backs toward the situation, and another one is by the leaning porch, talking to May, who’s suddenly taking an interest in what’s going on but doesn’t appear anxious to come any closer. They’re all turning a blind eye.

Davis spits to the side, defiant in his choice not to answer. Even his current state of physical restraint doesn’t stop him from trying to get one more rise out of his brother.

“How long?” Brant’s voice is deeper, grittier.

Davis shrugs a shoulder before scratching his nose against it. “I don’t know. The years tend to blend together any—”

“How long?” Brant crouches, getting in his face.

Davis laughs. And I’m sure under any other circumstances, this would be a sight to see—my sweet-natured husband roughing up his brother—but the chuckle is all the incentive Brant needs to grab Davis by his shirt and lift him just enough before letting him drop. This time he falls on his back, his knees bent at a ninety-degree angle. Brant’s going to destroy Davis. He’s going to destroy him in front of everyone.

Brant is all the family Davis has left. Everyone else is long gone, and the ones who aren’t severed ties with Davis years ago when he started getting into drugs and running around with the wrong crowd. It wasn’t long before Davis started looking like the older of the two. Bags under his cloudy eyes, teeth in desperate need of fixing, skin sallow and washed out. We always knew when he was clean. And when he wasn’t.

But all this time and after all the antics Davis pulled, Brant has never once considered turning his back on his brother, choosing to remember the one he knew, the one he grew up with, the one with whom he rode bikes, traded baseball cards, and camped under the stars in the summer when it was hotter inside their house than it was outside. Davis was the one who bought him his first camera from a local pawnshop on his thirteenth birthday, who encouraged him to take pictures and even let him practice on him. Photography became Brant’s escape as well as a way to control his chaotic reality. In the end, it became so much more than a hobby or a passion. It was a way of survival.

He’s never said it, but I believe Brant feels indebted to Davis for this reason. And I think that’s why he’s always been so quick to give and even quicker to forgive.

But as I watch my husband’s shoulders tighten now, watch the lines between his brows deepen, and see the flex of his teeth grinding as he stands over his brother, I know after this, Davis is dead to him.

“Why?” Brant asks. His green eyes shift as he searches his brother’s face. If he’s looking for a sign of remorse, he’s won’t find it there.