The Great Escape (Wynette, Texas #7)(98)

This was her story, except it was coming from him. She rested the back of her head against the door and listened, her heart rate beginning to slow.

“Eventually we ended up in foster homes. I did everything I could to keep us together, but things happened, and as I got older, I started getting into trouble. Picking fights, shoplifting. When I was seventeen, I was caught trying to sell half a gram of marijuana. It was like I wanted to get thrown into jail.”

She understood and said softly, “A good way to escape the responsibility.”

He glanced over at her. “You had the same kind of responsibility.”

“A pair of guardian angels showed up in my life. You didn’t have that, did you?”

“No. No guardian angels.” They passed Dogs ’N’ Malts, closed up for the night. She was no longer shaking quite so badly, and she unclasped her hands. He flipped on his high beams. “Curtis was murdered while I was in juvie,” he said.

She’d suspected this was coming, but it didn’t make it easier to hear.

Panda went on. “It was a drive-by shooting. Without me around to protect him, he started ignoring curfews. They let me out to go to his funeral. He was ten years old.”

If it hadn’t been for Nealy and Mat, this might have been her story and Tracy’s story. She licked her dry lips. “And you’re still trying to live with what happened. Even though you were only a kid at the time, you still blame yourself. I understand that.”

“I figured you would.” They were alone on the dark road.

“I’m glad you told me,” she said.

“You haven’t heard all of it.”

For months she’d tried to get him to spill his secrets, but she was no longer sure she wanted to hear them.

He slowed for the road’s sharpest curve. “When Curtis’s sperm donor found out my mother was pregnant, he gave her five hundred dollars and split. She loved the jerk and wouldn’t go to a lawyer. Curtis was nearly two before she realized her big love wasn’t coming back. That was when she started using.”

Lucy did the math. Panda had been nine when he’d become his brother’s caretaker. A protector, even then.

“When I got older,” he said, “I found out who the bastard was and tried to call him a couple of times, tell him how bad things were for his kid. He acted like he didn’t know who I was talking about. Told me he’d have me locked up if I kept harassing him. Eventually I found out where he lived and went to see him.” He shook his head. “It’s not easy for a city kid to get to Grosse Pointe on public transportation.”

Grosse Pointe? Lucy sat up straighter, an odd feeling coming over her.

“It was a big house, looked like a mansion to me. Gray stone with four chimneys, a swimming pool, and these kids chasing each other around the front yard with water guns. Three boys in their teens. A girl. Even in shorts and T-shirts they all looked rich.”

The pieces fell into place.

“The Remingtons,” he said. “The perfect American family.”

The car’s headlights cut through the night.

“I’d walked the last couple of miles from the bus stop,” he said, “and I hid across the street. They all had that lean, WASPy look. Curtis and I were both dark like our mother.” The shuttered farm stand whipped by on their left. “While I watched, a landscape crew pulled up at the house and wheeled a mower off the back of the truck. Four kids in the family, and they hired somebody to cut their grass.”

He turned into the drive. The house loomed, not even a light over the front door to welcome them. “I found another hiding place where I could watch them in their backyard. I stayed until it got dark.” He killed the engine but made no move to get out of the car. “I felt like I was watching a TV show. It was his wife’s birthday. There were balloons and presents, this big glass-top table set with flowers and candles. Steaks on the grill. I was so damned hungry, and none of them looked like they had a care in the world. He had his arm around his wife most of the evening. He gave her some kind of necklace as a present. I couldn’t see what it looked like, but from the way she acted, I figured it cost a lot more than five hundred dollars.”

Her heart welled with pity for him. And something more. Something she wouldn’t consider.

“The sickest part is that I kept going back. Maybe a dozen times over the years. It was easier after I got a car. Sometimes I’d see them, sometimes not.” He curled his fingers over the top of the steering wheel. “One Sunday I followed them to church and sat in the back where I could watch them.”

“You hated them, and you wanted to be part of them,” she said. “That’s why you bought this house.”

His hand came off the steering wheel, and his mouth twisted. “A stupid decision. It was a bad time for me. I shouldn’t have done it.”

Now she understood why he refused to change anything in the house. Consciously or unconsciously, he wanted to live inside the museum of their lives.

He got out of the car and came around to help her. Even though she was feeling steadier, she was grateful for his hand as he led her through the front door and into the bedroom.

He understood without her telling him how much she needed to wash away the men’s filth. He helped her undress. Turned on the water.

When she was in the shower, he pulled off his clothes and got in with her. But there was nothing sexual in the tender way he washed her, dried her, tended to the cuts on her feet. Not once did he remind her of what she’d said to him at the bar or criticize her for wandering off the way she had.