Hold (Gentry Boys, #5)(47)
Despite all that, there must have been an unresolved piece of my heart that always wished she would escape her demons somehow. It was that hidden, hopeful fragment that let out a sob on my wife’s shoulder as she held me.
But there was no time to indulge in grief. I could hear the low growl of Creed’s truck engine right outside. I knew he would have enough sense not to honk the horn, considering the sun wouldn’t rise for well over an hour, but I didn’t want to keep him waiting.
Saylor kissed me. Without speaking a word she went to the closet and handed over a shirt. She waited for me in the bedroom while I threw on the shirt and grabbed a pair of shoes.
“I love you,” she told me, handing over my phone and wallet as I headed out.
I turned around to look at her. I wanted to remember what waited for me right here once I was done with the day’s sorrow. “I love you too.”
She folded her hands in her lap and stared at them. “You want me to say anything to the girls?”
“They don’t need to know the details. Just tell them Daddy had a secret mission. And that when I get back we’ll light those sparklers.”
She bit the corner of her lip, something she did when she was especially worried. “Don’t stay down there long, Cord.”
“No. I won’t.”
And I wouldn’t.
My chest felt heavy as I left my house, locking the front door. Creed had picked up Chase first and they waited inside Creed’s pickup truck, Chase in the back of the cab. I knew their profiles as well as I knew my own. They just sat there together, waiting. Waiting for me, the missing piece of the Gentry triplet puzzle. The things we shared went way back to before we even knew our own names. I didn’t say anything as I climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door.
Creed waited for my nod before he took the truck out of park and pulled into the street. Chase reached from the backseat and touched the back of my head, patting gently a few times for comfort before he withdrew to stare out the back window.
I’d already told them the short version of the tragedy on the phone. There were some details missing but all I knew was what Gaps had told me.
From what the authorities could tell, it was probably around thirty six hours ago that Maggie Gentry had collapsed on the floor of the bathroom and drowned in her own vomit. Benton had been out drinking and once he came home it apparently didn’t occur to him for a good eight hours to check on his wife. And then even after he found her lying on the floor he just shrugged and figured she was unconscious since passing out in that house was about as regular as a sunny day in the Sonoran desert. But when he went to go take a piss and she hadn’t moved and her eyes were open, his pea-sized alcohol-soaked brain started to realize that she wasn’t asleep. By that time she was cold to the touch. The autopsy would tell if she had any garbage in her system but it didn’t matter. Everyone in Emblem knew Maggie was a hopeless junkie and everyone knew who kept feeding her that shit. It was a fool’s dream at this point to believe anything would happen to Benton even if he’d stuck the needle in her veins himself. Gaps all but said so over the phone although he did mention that Emblem PD was happy to haul Benton in for taking a half assed swing at one of the paramedics. He’d been sitting in a jail cell since Maggie’s body was taken away. Gaps didn’t comment on Benton’s state of mind and I didn’t ask. That f*cker had no business even being alive as far as I was concerned.
“You boys hungry?” Creed asked and I saw him glance at the way my fists were balled in my lap. I relaxed them, noticing that I’d forgotten to wear my wedding ring. Since the day I married Saylor I’d only ever taken it off to sleep and shower. It might sound like a small thing to forget since it was such a shit chore we were chasing but it bothered me. It bothered me a lot.
“I could eat,” yawned Chase.
It was still too early for most breakfast drive thrus to be open but Creed knew about a donut and coffee shop close to the university. He ordered two boxes of donuts and three coffees, waving away the change the cashier tried to hand him.
As I chewed I thought about how there’d been a time when a donut was a rare luxury. We’d often been hungry when we were kids and if it weren’t for the kindness of our Aunt Isobel, Deck’s mother, we likely would have suffered some serious side effects of malnutrition.
We were traveling southeast and the sky had begun to lighten. For some reason I wasn’t expecting the sun to emerge. A day of rain and clouds would have better served the mood. But when you live in a part of the world that boasts something like three hundred days of clear skies a year, odds are the sun is going to show up.
On the drive we talked about everything but the past, everything but our parents. Creed had a smile on his face as he talked about how he and Truly planned to adopt their nephew. He already loved the kid and he was excited to be a father. Then Chase cleared his throat and announced that he and Stephanie were officially, unquestionably, one hundred percent engaged.
“Took you freaking long enough,” Creed smirked and dodged the Boston Crème donut that was rifled at him from the backseat. I grabbed the donut from the dashboard and ate it.
Creed shifted his weight and glanced at me. “Hey,” he said. “I’m not arguing about whether we should be driving down there today, but what exactly are we driving down there to do?”
The truth was, I didn’t know. I just knew that we were all of the same mind as soon as we got the news. Call it closure, call it whatever the f*ck you wanted. We just had to go.