Into the Storm (Signal Bend #3)
Susan Fanetti
Susan Fanetti has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this book under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Hellen Lee
As always, this is dedicated with love to my Freaks.
A truer group of friends has never been.
And especially to Shannon Flagg, the best writing partner and a true, steady friend.
Thank you for weathering my storms.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.
from “A Line-storm Song,” Robert Frost
CHAPTER ONE
He wedged himself out of the miniscule shower and grabbed a worn towel. The bathrooms in the clubhouse dorm were not built for men of Showdown’s size. He practically needed to kneel to get his head wet. No chance of soaking away a hangover in there.
He’d been living in the dorm for…damn, ten months now. He’d barely noticed time moving. But it was time to make some decisions, he guessed. Get Holly off his back.
Dry, he dropped the towel over the rod and walked naked into the bedroom. He picked up his personal cell to read, again, his ex-wife’s most recent text. He’d read the thing a dozen or more times, like poking at a rotten tooth.
“Um, Show? I’m so sorry—I thought I could get in and out before you were done in the bathroom.”
He turned to find Debbie, one of the club girls, clutching an armload of linens. Then he saw that the bed had been stripped. The girls served as a kind of housekeeping staff, when they weren’t serving the Horde on their knees. She looked a little scared. Showdown shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Do what you need to do.”
Heedless of his own nakedness and her nervousness, he turned his attention back to the phone. Debbie shuffled around the room for a few minutes, and then she left. Show paid her no mind.
WTH are you waiting for now? I want my things. My girls want their things. We’re sitting here in an empty apartment. I’m sick of your shit.
Her girls. Not theirs, hers. He had a very strong suspicion that she’d chosen that word deliberately, knowing the sharp stab he’d feel. Things had been hard between them for the last few years of their marriage, a bilious current just under the surface—over the surface sometimes, too. But he was a long-haul guy. She’d been his old lady, his wife. They’d had three daughters together. He never would have left her, never would have strayed. Even after Iris was born and sex had hurt her, even after she pushed him out of their bed, he hadn’t strayed. Eight years—half their marriage—without intimacy. By the end, barely any touch at all. But he’d have stayed true. Just the way he was wired.
And then everything had gone to hell.
Now they were divorced, and Holly was in Arkansas with their two youngest daughters. She’d cut ties with him completely. He sent money, but he had no custody or visitation with his girls. She was right—they were hers now. She’d ignored him for months. Months he’d spent alone, living in the clubhouse, steeping in self-loathing and grief. And whiskey. That, too.
She had taken Rose and Iris and left in a hurry last year, taking only what she could pack in her Suburban. She’d moved them in with her parents. Show had not been back in his house since the morning of the day he’d lost his family. He’d sent a Prospect in to collect his weapons and some clothes. He’d had every intention of letting the place disintegrate into dust without ever crossing the threshold again.
Then, a month ago, she’d texted him. It had been brief: We want our things. He’d tried to call her, but she wouldn’t pick up or return his calls. She’d only communicate via text. He hadn’t heard her voice, or his girls’, in almost a year. Over the past few weeks, they’d had a stilted, infuriating text conversation, the net of which was that she’d moved with the girls into an apartment and wanted him to ship furniture and other shit to her.
He didn’t want to go back in there. He’d offered to send her money to buy new shit. She’d insisted that she, Rose, and Iris, all of them, wanted the things they already had. He’d thought about ignoring her, getting a new number, shutting her down. But she had Rosie and Iris. That f*cking phone was his only chance to connect with them. Maybe someday Holly would let him.
He had to do something. All these pissy, sometimes raging texts from her were doing was pushing him back into that awful night of their last contact, standing in a hospital waiting room, her screaming and hitting him. The night Daisy died. His Daze.
If he couldn’t ignore her, then he had to give her what she wanted. He’d always given her what she wanted. In almost everything.
He hated texting more than a word or two; his fingers were too big for the touchscreen. He could only use one finger, and still it took forever to get the words right. Going today. Will pack and ship.
With a sneer of disgust, he dropped the phone on the freshly made bed and opened the closet for a clean pair of jeans.
oOo
When he came into the Hall, he was surprised to see Isaac, the club President, standing at the big chess table, setting up the board. Isaac was an artisan woodworker, and he’d made that gorgeous board. For years, Show and Isaac had always had a game in play—until last fall, during the lockdown, when they’d packed up the pieces to make way for the crush of people taking refuge in the clubhouse. In the ensuing months, they’d been too busy with club and town business, and Isaac with his new wife and daughter, to start up again. Show hadn’t really thought about it, anyway. His head was too full of fog and blades for chess. Or games of any sort.