CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella)(32)

She raised her head then. I couldn’t see her eyes. Her face was a yawning hole in the darkness. All these years. All the rumors and the gossip and the sad guilt of being raised by a man who tried to shield us from all of it.

They might be lies. But lies don’t usually happen on dirty living room floors under the shelter of darkness. No, that’s when the truth shakes loose.

Chrome Gentry.

Benton Gentry.

Two brothers who were legends in their prime. Chrome was Deck’s father, dead at least a half dozen years now. Traffic accident or something. Benton was alive though, still somewhere out there in the barren wilderness of outer Emblem. I’d see him now and again, lurching around Main Street with a pot belly and a mean attitude, such a foul-tempered waste of a man that his own sons didn’t even talk to him.

His sons. The triplets. My half brothers.

And, if alcohol was really a truth serum and Tracy Gentry had just made the confession of a lifetime, then Stone was Deck’s half brother.

My mother had started crying harder. Her beige work skirt had ridden up over her thighs and I could see enough to be embarrassed as hell, even as I was still reeling over the things she’s just said.

“Come on, Mom,” I said, gently trying to lift her. I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t hurt and angry for having all this shit dumped in my lap. But she was my mother and she was terrible in some ways yet I still felt sorry for her. At least some mysteries had been answered, like why she’d always preferred Stone and why she seemed more bitter with each passing year as she was slowly poisoned inside by the burden of secrets.

Instead of accepting my help she slapped me away. “No!” she shouted with flailing arms that knocked over a blue hobnail vase that long ago had been a gift from some dead Gentry relation. “You’ll never touch me again!” she screamed.

“I’m trying to help you,” I explained as I dodged sharp fingernails.

“Don’t want you. DON’T WANT YOU! NEVER FUCKING WANTED YOU!”

I backed away as she crawled toward the hallway on all fours. She’d stopped screaming but the low, grief-stricken moaning was worse. It carried words. I heard, “Elijah” and I heard “Sorry”.

Time passed as I crouched there in the darkness. There was no more moaning and crying, only the sound of thick snoring from somewhere down the hall. She might not remember any of this tomorrow. I would remember it forever. I would also need to tell my brother.

Suddenly, desperately, I needed Stone. I needed his mix of cocky arrogance and affection to sort through this mess.

I needed Erin too. I needed to hold her in my arms and hear that I can be loved, that I’m more than just the unwanted reminder of a terrible man.

There was no telling where Stone was at this hour but he would be home eventually. And Erin would be asleep next door right now. If I crawled under her window and rapped on the glass for long enough she would wake up. I just wanted to look at her. Just for a minute. And I wanted her to look at me with that special light that lived only in her eyes. Then maybe I’d be able to sleep tonight.

As I stepped out the front door I realized I wasn’t wearing shoes but the hell with it. I wouldn’t be going far. Anyway, the less noise I made the better, since I wasn’t sure what kind of hours Mr. Rielo kept.

I crept along the side of the house, pausing when I heard a small animal or reptile scamper away with alarm. There were no lights on at my house but Erin’s window was open and her light was on. If it hadn’t been I wouldn’t have seen them.

They were sitting side by side on the ground underneath the open window. They weren’t kissing. They weren’t touching. They were just sitting there, my brother and my girlfriend. There was a hot wind blowing in the wrong direction so I couldn’t hear their words. I could only hear the muted blend of their voices, so deep in conversation with one another that they had no reason to look up and notice that someone stood nearby, just watching them.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


ERIN



We’d ended the night with “I love you” and somehow I was still unhappy.

There had been a few tense moments during the evening but Conway had done his best to be sweet. I found myself staring at him over dinner, memorizing small details like the cute furrow between his eyebrows as he scraped the mustard from his hamburger and the hint of a dimple that only ever appeared on his left cheek. I loved everything about him.

I was still watching him walk slowly back to his house when I started wishing I’d said yes to him. I wished I’d gone back to his bedroom and burrowed against his body while confessing the things I never dared to talk about.

Things I hardly dared to even think about.

Things like how when a woman who had battled her own mind for her entire life stuck her head in an oven and turned on the gas it wasn’t an ‘accident’.

Things like the origin of the faint scars in private places on my own body.

Things like my terror that I’ll lose myself in the same abyss of depression that swallowed my mother.

Instead I just walked tiredly through my front door and dropped my purse on the couch. Unfortunately, my dad happened to be napping there. My ten pound support system of tampons, cosmetics, pens and books hit him in the head.

“Ow,” he complained, sitting heavily upright and rubbing his skull.