The Familiar Dark(16)

I’d been almost perfect. No drinking, no drugs, no smoking, no stealing or getting in fights. No arrests. No men. Or almost no men. But when I’d screwed up, just the once, I’d screwed up big. Jimmy Ray was never a plan I’d had. I’d like to say he charmed me or that I was lonely, but that wouldn’t be the truth. Jimmy Ray was never big on charm. And other than Cal, I’d been a loner all my life. Loneliness was more a permanent state than something I’d ever thought about escaping. It would probably be most accurate to say Jimmy Ray was like an itch I had to scratch. I’d been walking the straight and narrow for almost three years, since the day I’d found out I was pregnant with Junie, and I was starting to chafe under my own restrictions.

Being a good mother hadn’t been as effortless as I’d tried to make it seem. There were plenty of days when Junie was little, crying all night with colic as a baby, or whining for a toy I couldn’t afford as a toddler, when I’d had to lock myself in the bathroom and scream into a towel. Knot my hands into white-knuckled fists and count to a hundred just to keep from slapping her. Those early years were the worst, when slipping into my mama’s brand of motherhood had seemed dangerously close. A hair trigger waiting to be pulled. And then I ran into Jimmy Ray one day at the gas station, and thought maybe he was a way for me to let the pressure off, get a taste of relief.

I’d seen Jimmy Ray around when I was growing up, older than Cal but younger than my mother. I’d known what he was because I wasn’t blind. But I’d still fallen for the dark hair and green eyes, the lopsided grin, the tiger tattoo curled around his neck. The scent of danger he wore like cologne. When I was with him, I felt like the old Eve, the one who had flirted with disaster and never cared about how much something might hurt. I hadn’t believed him when he said what we had was different, that with me he was a changed man. I knew he was full of shit because I’d listened to a dozen men spout the same lies to my mama over the years, but I’d thought I could contain the damage when we inevitably blew apart. Somehow it had still caught me by surprise, the moment when he’d backhanded me across my own kitchen table, split open my cheek in front of my daughter and kept right on eating his chicken potpie while my blood dripped out from between my shaking fingers. So yeah, I wasn’t blind, but I was stupid. I’d thought that I could dip a single toe into the pool. Didn’t realize I was drowning until I was completely submerged.

“I’m looking for you,” I told him, gripping the seat of my bar stool with both hands to steady myself. He looked older and harder than I remembered, skin starting to loosen at his jaw, deeper lines fanning out from his eyes, one of which was swollen shut, the lid bruised almost black. “What happened?” I asked him. Hoped whoever delivered that punch enjoyed it because it was probably the last thing they ever did on this earth.

Jimmy Ray snorted, took a hit off the beer bottle dangling from his fingers, and then pointed at his eye. “This? Courtesy of your brother. Came in here all fired up a few nights ago. I let him have his shot, because he’s a cop and who needs the aggravation.” On anyone else it would have smacked of face-saving bravado. On Jimmy Ray, I knew it was the truth. Cal’s badge was the only thing that had spared him from a bullet in the head. And now I knew why Sam had worried Jimmy Ray might not want to see me.

“Cal?” I said. “Why?” But I remembered Land’s questions about Jimmy Ray the day Junie died. That would have been all Cal needed. He stayed within the letter of the law most of the time now that he was tasked with enforcing it, but he’d learned at my mama’s knee. No one messed with Cal’s family. We protected each other with bared teeth and claws. No excuses and no forgiveness. And no amount of civilizing, no years of carrying a badge, could ever completely tame that impulse.

Jimmy Ray slammed his beer bottle onto the bar top. “He wanted to see if I was eager to start talking.”

“Were you?” I asked, although I already knew the answer. It would take more than a couple of punches for Jimmy Ray to spill his guts if keeping silent was in his best interest.

Jimmy Ray smirked at me. “What do you think?”

I slid off my bar stool and moved closer to him. He threw a look over the bar at Matt, a laugh working its way onto his lips. He always did think women fighting back was funny. He’d usually let you get a few swats in, like a kitten squaring off against a pit bull, before he squashed you. But when I reached out and poked him in the chest, he grabbed my fingers, the smile wiped off his face in an instant. He didn’t bend my fingers backward, not yet. But I felt the threat hovering there, tendons poised to snap. “Watch yourself, girl,” he said under his breath.

“Do you know anything about it?” I said. “About what happened to Junie?”

He released my hand and gave me a shove backward. “I don’t hurt kids,” he said. His mouth twisted up, offended. “Jesus.”

“I think you’d hurt your own mother, Jimmy Ray, if you stood to gain something by doing it.”

Jimmy Ray snorted out a laugh. “Shit, I’d kill that worthless bitch for free. But that’s beside the point. There ain’t nothin’ a couple of twelve-year-old girls could do to or for me that would make killing ’em worth my while.”

“Look me in the eye,” I said. “Look me in the eye and swear you didn’t have anything to do with it.”