KNOW ME (DEFIANT Motorcycle Club)(24)

end.
Several times I had taken the basic cell phone he had given me and stared at it,

touching the keypad lightly.  It was the only link I had to him but he had warned me

that calling just to say hello wasn’t an option.  So I just held it like a talisman

and did nothing.
By the time the third day rolled around with no word my mounting tension had reached a

nearly unbearable point.
Rachel was showing me the washer and dryer in a small closet-like room behind the bar

when I asked her the thing which had been weighing on my mind.
“How do you stand it?”
She cleaned out the lint tray, frowning at me absently.  “What?”
I folded my arms.  A chill had risen on my skin even though the day was warm already. 

“Waiting.  Just hanging out and hoping to god that there will be some hint.  That he’

ll even come back in one piece.”
She thought the question was silly.  “How do you stand it?  You want to be with a man,

and you just manage.”
I shook my head miserably.  When I was a kid Crest had left me often enough.  For a

while we lived in a basement apartment beneath a large Vietnamese family who would look

in on me in his absence.  It was after my mother took off.
As I loaded the washer I thought about Anne Marie Carter.  I’d long made a conscious

effort to avoid doing just that.  My most lucid memory of her is of the day she cupped

my face in her soft hands and gazed at me with watery blue eyes.
“You’re your daddy’s daughter,” she’d said sadly and kissed me lightly on both

cheeks before she left, instructing me to sit at the kitchen table and not to answer

the phone until Crest returned.
The last time among the rare occasions I’d seen her since that day was when I

graduated from high school.  She’d grown heavy and had never had any children with the

stern man who became the stepfather I didn’t know.  But her face was alight with a

serenity I didn’t remember from childhood.  Back then she would wear out the

threadbare floor anxiously twisting her hands as she waited for my father to roll

through the door.  Then they would scream terrible things at one another until they

both tired of it.
I leaned against the washing machine and pulled my hair back.  Anne Marie took a long

time to reach her tired point.  I was tired already.  It wasn’t Orion’s fault.  The

violence I’d witnessed had torn through something inside me.  And Orion? I couldn’t

expect that he would change who he was.  But for the first time I dimly understood the

weariness of my mother’s life.  How it might have driven her to the unthinkable;

abandoning her child.
No, I wouldn’t forgive her. There was no excuse.  But a tendril of sympathy rose in my

gut for the years she’d put in with Crest before giving up.  It wasn’t an easy lot

and it took a tough soul to rise to it.  I wasn’t sure I’d have in me if it came to

that.  
Perhaps, I grimly reflected, I was more like my mother than I’d suspected.  And that

thought scared the living shit out of me.
When I brought in the laundry Teague and Brandon were sitting in the living room. 

Evidently I’d interrupted a tense conversation.  Teague ignored me but Brandon tried

to catch my eye in a friendly way.  I dropped the freshly folded clothes on the bed and

returned to the living room.  I didn’t expect that they would divulge whatever they

knew but I was sick of tiptoeing around the place.
“Hey,” I snapped my fingers and both men glanced at me.  “It’s getting toward

evening.  I saw a box of spaghetti and a jar of sauce in the pantry.  Give me twenty

minutes and I’ll have a meal on the table.”
Teague stared at me blankly but Brandon looked thoughtful.
“I’ll take that offer,” he said.  “Let me run down the road and I’ll get a loaf of

bread of some wine.”
“Wine?” Teague sneered incredulously.  “What the f*ck?”
I laughed and returned to the kitchen, sorting through the mismatched collection of

pots.  I found some garlic powder and seasoned salt in the cabinet above the sink. Both

looked as if they had been there since the last presidential administration but I

figured it wouldn’t harm anything to add a bit to the sauce.
Teague came in and stood next to the fridge.  “I met your daddy a few times.”
I stopped and leaned against the table, closing my eyes.  “Yeah?”
He pulled at his beard, his eyes forlorn.  “Yeah, years ago.  He was less of an

* than most.”  Teague sighed.  I guess that was as close to a compliment as he

parted with.  “Look, this is all a shit show, that’s for sure.”  He coughed.  “I’m

sorry.”
In that moment when Teague seemed human and reachable I wanted to ask him where Orion

and the others had gone.  But I knew how it would go.  His eyes would darken and he

would smirk and then ultimately he would say nothing.  They were his brothers.  I was