For You

Chapter Two Pete

I’d been up for two and a half hours by the time Morrie stumbled into the kitchen.

It had not been the most joyful two and a half hours I’d ever spent, drinking coffee and filtering through the silt of my life trying to think of anyone that some unhinged psychopath might have decided done me wrong. Even if I did it after I’d done my yoga which usually left me feeling mellow.

In that time, I’d also come to the conclusion that this new living situation was not going to work.

Delilah, Morrie’s wife, had left him just over a year ago, taking the kids with her. It hadn’t been long in coming but still Morrie, like any man, hadn’t been paying attention. Her defection surprised him. He’d suffered her leaving like a blow. But after we’d taken over the bar, Delilah had changed.

Dee could tell it like it was but still, she used to be sweet as syrup, patient as a saint, a great Mom, a good wife to Morrie but she liked Morrie working construction. Out early, home early, at the dinner table with the family. Not out at noon, home after three in the morning, rarely seeing her or his kids.

She didn’t get it about J&J’s. Delilah didn’t understand the importance of J&J’s. Not even when Mom and Dad retired and I came back just because Morrie wanted me to help him run the bar so the family wouldn’t lose J&J’s and also so the town wouldn’t lose it.

Dee knew me; we were close even with the distance. She knew nothing would bring me home, except J&J’s.

So Dee had their old house and Morrie had a new pad – an apartment, a new complex in town. So new, it was void of personality and I hated it. So did Morrie. There were lots of things to hate about it but mostly I hated the trees. The trees that landscaped the outside were thin, the fluorescent tags from the garden store still on them, held up with sticks and wire to help them bear the brunt of winter and wind; the leaves in summer not throwing enough to make but a hint of shade. They’d probably be beautiful in about ten years, but now their existence screamed “New!” and something about it I did not like. It seemed weird in my town because the rest of the town felt old, established, settled and safe. It wasn’t that I didn’t like change, I was used to change, a lot of it. It was just that I didn’t like change in my town.

But there were three bedrooms and the all important two baths. One bedroom for Morrie, one for his son, Palmer, the other for his daughter, Tuesday.

That was how much Dee had changed. Morrie had been named after Jim Morrison who our father idolized. I had been named after the month Valentine’s Day fell in, Mom’s favorite holiday and my middle name was Valentine, not to mention Mom said I was conceived on that day. Morrie had talked Dee (and she loved him so much it didn’t take much effort) into keeping the family tradition, naming his son after Robert Palmer, since Morrie was a Led Zeppelin freak. He’d also talked Dee into naming their daughter Tuesday, which both of them swore was the day of the week she was conceived, which also happened to be Valentine’s Day that year. Dee had barely made a peep naming her kids these crazy names.

Then again, Morrie and I never suffered from our names and Dee had loved my brother back then. Loved him enough to let him name their kids. Loved him so much she couldn’t hack doing without him, seeing her family losing out to a bar.

All this meant I didn’t sleep on their pull out couch in their TV room, which was what I did all those years when I came home, sometimes, the times I didn’t stay with Mom and Dad, doing the rotation, sharing my time between family members. I’d come home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or some other family event, like the kids’ birthdays or Mom and Dad’s 40^th anniversary. Instead, all this meant I slept in Tuesday’s single bed last night.

My bed at home was a queen. Some nights I slept like the dead. Other nights I moved.

Last night I moved and almost fell out of Tuesday’s bed twice.

And my cat Wilson, unused to his new surroundings, steered clear.

I couldn’t sleep without Wilson on my feet or, when I was moving, he slept somewhere close. Wilson was a cuddler. He liked my warmth and even when I shifted he didn’t mind, he just shifted with me.

So I didn’t sleep.

I hadn’t slept well, not for years. But at least I slept some.

I needed to go home.

Morrie went straight to the coffeepot and poured himself a cup.

He didn’t speak or look at me until he was well into his third sip.

Then he did. “See this arrangement is gonna work out great.”

I loved my brother but he was such a fucking man.

He slept in his own bed, a big bed, in his own home. I slept in a foreign bed, a little bed, away from my home. But he got up and there was coffee brewed, coffee he didn’t have to make, so it was all going to work out great.

“Morrie, this isn’t going to work. Tuesday’s bed…” he looked at me, “I don’t sleep enough as it is.”

“Colt’s couch pulls out.”

Oh fuck. No way. No way in hell.

“I’ll move in with Jessie.”

Jessie’s husband was a chemist, he worked at Lilly and he got paid a shitload. They didn’t have kids because that would cut into Jessie’s affinity for having fun whenever the hell she wanted and doing whatever the hell she liked whenever the hell she felt like it. They had a three bedroom house. One bedroom Jessie converted into a workout room. One had been decorated by some interior designer that Jessie hired when she’d got a wild hair up her ass. It had a double bed with a big, down comforter on it and lots of toss pillows and I knew Jessie put mints on the pillows when her Mom and Dad or her sister and her sister’s husband would come to visit.

I could do mints while I was displaced because some creepy, sick psycho had fixed onto me and was murdering people I liked and sending me notes from high school and forcing me to spend time with Alec, time where he touched me.

“No offense but Jimbo is a dweeb and he doesn’t own a .45,” Morrie dismissed my suggestion by slightly insulting Jessie’s husband who was, unfortunately, a dweeb but he also wasn’t a pushover.

I changed the subject. “Please tell me you don’t have a gun in your house with kids.”

“I do. I’m an American. I know how to use it, my kids know to avoid it and it’s locked in a safe anyway so they couldn’t get it even if they wanted to make trouble.”

I let it go and tried something else. “Al’s not a dweeb and it’s highly likely he owns a gun.”

Meems’s husband Al was anything but a dweeb. He’d been the center on the football team, on the line, right next to Morrie. Time had made him a little soft but it hadn’t made him a slouch. And he was a hunter, I knew he had guns. And he loved me, I knew he’d blow the brains out of anyone who tried to hurt me or got near his wife and kids.

No, that wasn’t true. Anyone got near his wife and kids, Al would not use his gun, he’d go in with his hands and rip them apart.

“They got no room for you, Feb. Theirs is a full house.”

This was true, they had four kids and Al wasn’t a chemist at Lilly. He worked on the highway crew. It was union, it paid well and the Coffee House was nothing to sneeze at because Meems could bake. Her muffins were orgasmic and her cookies and cakes were so good, you’d sell your soul to the devil if she made you do it just so you could have one. Still, they had four kids and Meems had a fondness for catalogue shopping. Bob, her postman, blamed her for the hernia he suffered last year and he wasn’t joking.

“Colt works a lot. You wouldn’t have to sleep on the pull out. He’d probably let you use his bed.”

If Morrie was being funny, I wasn’t laughing.

“If he’s gone all the time, what purpose would it serve me staying there?”

I watched Morrie’s face change, resistance drifting through it in a hard way, and I knew part of the bucketload of shit that sifted through my brain while I wasn’t sleeping last night was going to come spilling out just then.

I wasn’t wrong.

“We gotta talk about Colt.”

I shook my head.

His coffee cup came down with a crash and I jumped back a foot. I looked down, seeing the mug had split right down the middle and coffee was all over the place, spreading, spilling down the side of the counter, dripping in a coffee waterfall to the floor.

I looked at my brother. “Holy shit, Morrie.”

He turned and with an underarm throw he tossed the handle to the coffee mug, a jagged section of mug still attached to it, into the sink with such force it fractured again, bits flying out everywhere.

I didn’t jump that time but I took a step back.

“Morrie –”

Morrie leaned forward. “You’re gonna talk to me, February, talk to me right, fucking, now.”

I lifted my hand in a conciliatory gesture but Morrie shook his head.

“You spill now or you spill when Mom and Dad get here. Your choice but it’s been too fucking long. We all let it go too long. We shoulda made you spill ages ago, before Pete –”

“Stop!” I shouted.

No one talked to me about Pete. No one.

Not Meems. Not Jessie. Not Mom and Dad.

Not even my brother, who I loved best of them all which was saying a whole helluva lot.

I thought that’d work, it had worked before many times. Everyone knew I couldn’t talk about Pete.

But it didn’t work. Morrie moved fast. Before I knew it he had his hand curled around my upper arm and he gave me a shake. It wasn’t controlled, it was almost brutal and my head snapped back with the force of it.

My breath started coming fast but thin. Morrie got Dad’s temper which could flare out of control, though neither of them ever hurt anyone who didn’t need to get hurt. I got Mom’s which also could flare out of control but we were women and our hurt came from words rather than actions and those, unfortunately, lasted longer.

“What the fuck happened?” Morrie was in my face. “What made it go bad? What made you do what you did?”

“Let go of me Morrie.”

“Answer me, Feb.”

“Let me go!”

Another shake and my head snapped back. “Answer me!”

“You’re hurting me!” I yelled.

“I should knock some fuckin’ sense into you!” he yelled back.

I made a noise like I was going to vomit, it was involuntary and it sounded nasty. Then I wasn’t breathing anymore, not even thin, useless breaths – nothing, no oxygen.

Morrie’s face changed and he let me go, stepping back. He looked whipped, injured, the expression hideous on his face, the knowledge of what he’d done and what he’d said attacking him.

“Baby Sister,” he whispered but I shook my head.

He couldn’t go back to beloved big brother now. Not after that. Not after that. No way. No fucking way.

“I’m moving in with Jessie,” I announced, turning away.

“Feb, don’t. You need to be protected. You need someone lookin’ after you.”

I turned back. “A couple of hours in, Morrie, fine job you made of it.”

He flinched, his head jerking back with the weight of my blow. Just as I said, my anger came out in words and they hurt far worse than my arm was stinging just now.

I nodded my head to the bar that separated his kitchen from the dining area. On it, probably doused in coffee, was the list I spent most of the morning writing.

“Give that list to Alec, he wants it.”

I left it at that. I had to. And I walked away to pack.

“You’ve got a nerve,” Pete’s Mom, LeeAnne, said in my ear.

“LeeAnne –”

“I’m not giving you his number, you bitch.”

“This is important.”

“Nothin’s that important.”

“Someone’s dead.”

LeeAnne fell silent and I lifted my gaze to Meems and Jessie who were both crunched into Meems’s back office at the Coffee House. Both of them were watching me, both of them looking pissed and harassed, both of them knowing what this cost me and both of them wishing they could pay the toll instead of me.

“Her name is Angie. Evidence came out last night that she was murdered because of something that happened between her and me. There’s a possibility that anyone who…” Christ, how did I say this? LeeAnne was a bitch, the worst mother-in-law in history, but still, good manners prevented me from saying it straight out. “Anyway, anyone who didn’t get along with me might be in danger.”

“You’re poison,” LeeAnne spat, “always were.”

I didn’t get that, even from LeeAnne. She was a bitch but she’d seen me in the hospital and she knew her son did that to me.

She knew it wasn’t me who beat the shit out of Pete. It wasn’t me who came home that fucking, shitty, awful night and attacked me far worse than any of the times before. Times which could be brushed away as too much drink or what Pete called “our passionate but volatile relationship” (I thought it wasn’t much the first and too much of the last). It wasn’t me who tried to rape me, who I had to fight back, scared silly, losing the fight, only somehow to escape and drive over to Morrie’s house.

It was just me who happened to pick a time when Alec was at Morrie’s. And it was me who was battered, bloodied, my clothes torn, barely able to hold myself up, having performed a miracle by driving myself there in one piece at all. And it was me who Alec took one look at, turned to Morrie and said, “You see to her, I’ll see to him.” And it was for me that Alec drove straight to my house and nearly beat the life out of my husband.

“Please, LeeAnne, give me his number,” I said.

“Still can’t see right out of his left eye, my boy,” she countered.

I didn’t doubt this was true. Alec did a number on him. Detached retina, amongst other things.

It wasn’t more than he deserved. He’d done a number on me. We were both in the hospital at the same time.

I got out earlier.

Pete got out and left town. He didn’t press charges. This was likely due to Morrie, Dad and a variety of other townsfolk making this Pete’s only option.

I wasn’t going to say I was sorry.

I was sorry. Very sorry. So sorry it had seeped into my soul. But not sorry for Pete Hollister.

Having had a very long time to look back, Pete had always been an asshole. But he’d been a good-looking one. Not as good-looking as Alec but with Alec lost to me, Pete would do. And I needed someone. Someone to fill the hole Alec left. No, it wasn’t a hole. It was a wound. I couldn’t close the wound so I needed someone to numb the pain. Or take my mind off it. Pete did that, he was good at it. He delivered his own brand of pain in order to succeed wildly in this endeavor.

What I was sorry about was the fact that Alec hurt Pete and I knew he’d hate himself for doing it instead of hating me. And I was sorry that I put him in that position. It was the only one he had, he and Morrie had been looking after me so long they didn’t know how to do anything different even if things had changed between Alec and me. And I was sorry that he saw me the way he did, beaten, not his February, never to be his February again. She was gone like he told me the Alec he was once was gone. Pete had beaten her out of me. I answered to my name but I didn’t know who February was any longer. I’d spent nearly two decades trying to figure it out but never could. The only thing I knew was she wasn’t the girl I used to be.

“LeeAnne, if you don’t want to give me his number then just please call him and warn him –”

“I’ll call. I’ll tell him the bitch is back and he should brace. It was a dark day, the day he met you.”

Then I heard her hang up.

I flipped my cell phone closed and curled my fingers around it.

“Well, that’s done,” I told Jessie and Meems. I was shaking.

I’d forgotten how much I hated LeeAnne. I’d always been so focused on how much I hated Pete that I forgot to hate his mother. But now I remembered.

I knew hate, even as a kid because I always hated Alec’s parents.

Even as a kid, before I understood it and before it happened between him and me, I hated the way Alec’s face looked when the call came, his Mom telling my Mom to bring him home (those times she remembered he was over at all). Or when his Dad would come around to get him.

Then when I grew older and I understood somewhere right and true inside me that he was mine, I hated them more when he’d get in a mood because of them. Because the town was talking about something they’d do that was crazy, like when his Mom went drunk to the liquor store and fell into a display, making a bunch of bottles of rum fall over and crash to the ground and the police had dragged her in. Or when his Dad showed up sauced at a football game and stood at the other team’s bleachers and alternately bragged loudly about Alec or insulted their boys and he’d been jumped before some men from our side, some of the coaches and even some of the players, including Alec, had had to pull his Dad out of the fray.

But that hate slipped away after that night when the police took his Dad away and Social Services had told his Mom he wasn’t coming back and Dad and Morrie moved Alec into Morrie’s room. Because after that night, he was safe, he was healing, he was finally home and I didn’t have to hate anymore.

And for awhile, those years when Alec finally was mine, I forgot what hate felt like.

Glory days.

“Feb –” Meems started.

I got up. “I need to get to the bar.”

“Ain’t no one gonna be bothered, you take a coupla days off,” Jessie told me.

“I’ll go into hiding when the town finds out anyone who ever looked at me funny might be the next one to end up bloody and dead in an alley.”

Jessie and Meems looked at each other before they both looked back at me.

“No one’s gonna blame you for this, Feb,” Meems told me.

“Right,” I replied.

“Feb, everyone on some level is gonna understand you’re feelin’ exactly as you’re feelin’ right now,” Jessie said.

“Maybe, after Alec catches this guy and the fear fades away. ‘Til then…” I let that hang.

I’d been in a lot of small towns, sometimes spent only months in them, a couple, the towns that reminded me of home, I spent over a year. I knew how people thought. I knew how they could turn. I’d even seen it once and it hadn’t been pretty. I hadn’t even been involved and it still hurt to watch.

“Girl –” Meems started again.

“I need to get to the bar.”

I moved and they stepped aside. They knew me, they knew when I meant what I said and when I meant business.

I gave a wave to Meems and Jessie walked beside me the short distance to J&J’s.

“When’re Jack and Jackie getting here?” Jessie asked.

Morrie had called them from the bar yesterday morning about two seconds after Alec had walked away. They were driving their RV up and were on the road by yesterday afternoon. Depending on how hell bent Dad was to get here, they could arrive at any time. I figured Dad was probably pretty hell bent and they could be crossing the town line as Jessie and my boots hit the sidewalk.

“Any time now.”

“That’ll be good,” Jessie murmured as I opened the door to the bar.

I didn’t agree with her.

Mom and Dad were going to feel the same pressure Morrie was feeling. The pressure to keep me safe. The pressure to keep me from feeling this weight hanging so heavy over my head, knowing, any time, without any control had by me, it could drop, crushing me underneath it. The pressure that was there from Alec and me, the pressure they felt in the short time before I found Pete, the pressure they felt in the short time I remained home after Pete was gone. The pressure of wanting with everything they were for Alec and me to go back to what we had, wanting it so much they’d be willing to make it happen, the pressure and disappointment of knowing they had no means of doing it.

Morrie’s head (and everyone else’s in the bar) came up to look at me when Jessie and I walked in.

I had no idea when the bomb would drop. Last night Morrie told me that Alec told him that Angie’s note was going to remain under wraps and any chats he had with anyone I’d put on my list he’d do his best to keep under wraps too.

Alec was good at a lot of things. He’d been an All-State tight end. He’d gained a partial scholarship to Purdue. He’d graduated top of his class at the Academy. He’d crawled out from under the stench of his parents and been a kid, and now a man, that people respected. He was good at being my brother’s best friend, another son to my folks. He was a good cop. He’d even been a great boyfriend, the best, until he’d stopped being that.

But this was a small town. He wasn’t that good.

Then again, the last person who wronged me breathed through a tube for a couple of days, courtesy of Alec, so who knew?

I split from Jessie who went straight to the bar. I went to the back, secured my purse in the office and went behind the bar.

My departure from Morrie’s apartment meant he’d had to open up for once.

My longer-than-usual stay away, due to moving in with Jessie, having a shower there and getting ready to tackle the day there then having to call Pete’s bitch of a Mom in Mimi’s office meant I was in a lot later than usual.

When I hit the back of the bar, Morrie said, “Feb –”

“Save it,” I didn’t even look at him when I spoke, “you need to give me time.”

That was all I was willing to say but I felt his relief because me asking for time meant him knowing I was holding a grudge but also knowing I’d eventually let it go.

“I don’t know about you but I need a drink. Meems’s coffee is the bomb but it ain’t gonna cut it right about now,” Jessie announced.

Joe-Bob laughed at Jessie’s comment.

Joe-Bob was a regular who planted his ass on the barstool by the front door at noon, opening time, every day and didn’t pry his ass from that stool until closing time unless it was to take a leak or wander down to Frank’s restaurant to eat a burger. Hell, he’d fallen asleep at that stool more times than I could count.

We left him to it. He paid his tab at the end of every month, though God only knew how he managed that. Things were rough for Morrie now that he was paying rent, helping Dee with the mortgage and paying child support. It was sad and it was wrong but Joe-Bob was now beloved by Morrie. His tabs were helping to keep two roofs over Morrie’s kids’ heads.

I didn’t laugh with Joe-bob, got Jessie a drink and then got down to work. I spent that time, like last night but more so today, trying not to think about Angie, about the note, about Alec, about whether my cat Wilson would make Jessie’s husband Jimbo sneeze or about anything at all.

About an hour later the door opened and Alec and his partner Sully walked in.

Unable and maybe unwilling to stop it, I felt my jaw move in a nonverbal greeting, the way it always did when I saw Alec. Always and forever. Since I could remember.

I used to do it because it made him smile at me, a smile I hadn’t seen in years, a smile that others saw and it was handsome so I was sure they liked it, at least the girls. But they didn’t get it. They didn’t get how precious it was. They didn’t understand, it not being directed at them, what that smile could do. The power of it. It was like every time he smiled he’d opened a chest of treasure and said, “All this is yours.”

Now I did it because it made his expression change. He didn’t smile but there was something there, not treasure but precious all the same. It was nostalgic in that painful way nostalgia could be, but it was still precious and addictive, like a drug. I’d forget between times, but when he walked in, the craving would assault me, too much to fight, I was jonesing for it. So I went after it, lifting my jaw then his face would change and I’d allow myself half a beat to drink it in before I looked away.

Even after all that happened, today was no different.

Quick as I could, the second I got my Alec hit, I looked at Sully and understood why he wasn’t around yesterday.

He looked like hell. Brimming eyes, red rimmed nose and he was carrying a tatty tissue which had been overused.

“You need hot, honeyed water,” I said to Sully when he hit the bar, hot, honeyed water being what Mom used to make Morrie and I drink when we had a cold.

It probably had no medicinal effects at all except those wondrous ones only mothers could generate. Mothers who gave a shit about their kids and took care of them when they were sick like they were the most cherished things on earth and the world would not be right until her kid’s cold went away. Mothers like my Mom.

“I need hot, honeyed whisky,” Sully told me with a smile.

I could do hot, honeyed whisky. I would have to run down to the corner store to pick up the honey but it was only six doors away.

“You on duty?” I asked.

He gave me a look, it wasn’t a bad one. It wasn’t pitying or filled with blame. It was one filled with concern and a hint of understanding.

“Feels like, this case, with this cold, I’ll be on duty until the day I die.”

“I’m sorry, Sully.”

“You apologize again I’ll ask you over for dinner.”

That made me laugh, the first time I’d done it in over twenty-four hours and it felt rusty in my throat.

Still, Sully’s wife Lorraine was a shit cook. She was famous for it. Ever since she brought a half-dozen casseroles to the high school band’s pot luck fundraiser the first year they were married and gave food poisoning to half the band and some of the town.

The extra late afternoon bodies filling the room and the work and likely Alec being there made me feel suddenly hot.

I pulled off my sweater to strip down to the tank underneath as I replied, “I swear, I won’t apologize again.”

Sully’s laughter was muffled by my sweater being over my ears.

Alec’s comment was not because the sweater was off by the time he said it.

“What happened to your arm?”

I dropped my hands, my sweater still in both of them, and looked at my arm. Morrie’s fingerprints were clear as day, purple and blue and looking angry.

Fuck, but I always was an easy bruiser.

“Shit,” Morrie muttered, eyes glued to my arm.

“Shit, what?” Alec asked, his gaze swinging to Morrie who looked just as guilty as he was.

“Alec,” I said.

“Colt,” Sully said.

“Shit, what?” Alec repeated, ignoring Sully and me, looking pissed.

No, looking murderous.

I’d seen him that way once. I was barely conscious then and it scared the shit out of me. I was fully conscious now and worried I was about to pee my pants.

“Alec, don’t –” I tried.

Morrie tore his eyes from my arm and looked at his friend. “Colt –”

“Shit, what?” Alec cut him off, totally ignoring me. “You do that to her?”

Sully got close to him. “Colt.”

“Please calm down, it was not a big deal,” I tried again.

Alec ignored me again. “You put your hand on her?”

“Let’s go to the back, talk,” Morrie suggested.

“That why she moved in with Jessie and Jimbo?” Alec asked.

Oh Lord.

I’d never lived in a city. Even when I was travelling, trying to find a way to get back to myself, I picked small towns. I did this because you were never faceless, not for long. You were never a number. When something happened to folk in small towns, the entire town felt it. Even if you didn’t know someone, just knew of them, or a bit about them, you felt it when something happened. You sent a card. You gave them a smile when you saw them or someone who cared about them, a smile that said more than “hello”. People looked out for one another. You were friendly even to people you might not like just because it was the right thing to do and you’d likely see them again, maybe not the next day, but soon. And their kid would go to school with your kid. Or there would be a time when you knew you’d need their kindness or you’d give them yours.

But sometimes living in a small town sucked.

This was one of those times.

“Really, guys, this isn’t the time –” Jessie entered the conversation and she was just as unsuccessful as Sully and I had been.

“Your job was to keep her safe,” Alec told Morrie.

“Colt, trust me, we don’t want to talk about this,” Morrie said back.

“Jimbo can’t keep her safe. He wouldn’t have the first clue,” Alec said.

“Excuse me,” Jessie put in.

Alec’s eyes cut to me. “You stay with Morrie or you stay with me.”

“Alec,” I said.

“Colt, man, you know that can’t happen. You’re primary on the investigation,” Sully reminded him.

Alec was single-minded, not moving his eyes from me, he’d made a decision. “Morrie fucked up, you stay with me.”

“I’m not staying with you.”

“You aren’t staying with Jimbo and,” his head dipped to my arm, “you aren’t staying with Morrie.”

“She’s fine with us,” Jessie said.

“She can’t stay with you, man, you’d be yanked off the case,” Sully told him.

Alec bit his lip then looked at Morrie. “Explain why you marked her.”

“Like I said,” Morrie was now getting pissed, “let’s go in the back.”

“Explain why she’s standin’ there with your mark on her after what she went through yesterday,” Alec pushed, already pissed.

“Dude, as I said –”

“Explain why she lived through that asshole usin’ his fists on her only to have her fucking brother mark her.”

The bar, already on silent alert, everyone listening in and not hiding it, went wired.

Not me. I felt something else. Something far from pleasant. Something that made me feel sick.

Morrie’s voice was vibrating when he warned, “Colt, don’t compare me to Pete.”

“You aren’t explaining.”

“What’s goin’ on here?” my Dad said as my cell phone at my ass rang.

No one had noticed the door open. No one had noticed Mom and Dad walk in. No one.

Dad was looking between Morrie and Alec, his expression the same as it always was when he had to wade into one of their arguments or one of my arguments with Morrie.

Mom’s eyes were on me.

I wasn’t thinking. I should have said something, defused the situation. At least greeted my Mom and Dad who I hadn’t seen since Christmas and it was now March. But instead I pulled the phone out of my back pocket, flipped it open and put it to my ear.

“Hello?”

I didn’t even hear the words, the screeching was so loud there were barely words to be heard.

But even through the phone I could feel the fury, the anguish, the blame.

“Slow down,” I said into the screeching, “what?”

“Hacked!” a voice I distractedly recognized as LeeAnne’s shrieked a word in my ear that made my chest hollow out again. “Hacked!” she repeated.

“What?” I whispered.

“His landlord was at his fucking house when I called. He fucking picked up the phone. He fucking told me he was fucking hacked up with a fucking hatchet.”

“Who?” I asked but I knew. I knew. I knewIknewIknewIknew.

“Who?” she squealed, “Pete!”

“Oh my God,” I whispered but the phone was sliding from my hand.

I didn’t drop it, Alec was there taking it from me. Then he was talking in my phone. I heard my Mom’s voice, my Dad’s, Morrie’s, Jessie’s, Joe-Bob’s, Sully’s. I felt hands on me.

Then I ran fast to the women’s toilets. Up came Meems’s muffin and the coffee I had at her place. Then I wretched more. And more. Nothing coming out but my body wanted me to expel something else. Something it couldn’t get rid of no matter how much I heaved. I felt the pain in my chest with the effort, the burning in the back of my throat, someone holding back my hair, me holding onto the toilet and heaving.

“Stop it, Feb,” my Mom said in my ear, she was close I could feel the heat from her body.

“I’ve got to get it out,” I gasped.

“Nothing else in there, honey.”

“I’ve got to get it out.”

Her cool hand wrapped around my hot forehead just like it did when I was a kid and I closed my eyes and focused on her touch.

I stopped heaving and sat back on my haunches.

“Go, Jessie. To the store. Toothbrush, toothpaste. Tell Morrie to bring some lemon-lime in here, a cold one, and a wet cloth.”

I heard Jessie move but I didn’t see her.

I saw a body by the dumpster, this time though it wasn’t Angie’s. It was Pete’s.

I hated him, he hurt me, he nearly raped me, my husband, but it was true. He proved what I suspected, that men were no good. There were good men, like Alec, who were no good and there were shit men, like Pete, who were no good. That was all I knew. I’d wanted him to heal the wound but I knew, partway in it with him, he couldn’t do that. Then I’d wanted him to numb the pain, but he’d only given me more then taken away all that I had left.

But I didn’t want him dead. Not any way but not that way.

“Feb, look at me, look at your Momma.”

I didn’t look at her, I asked, “What is it about me?”

“Honey, look at me.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

Her hand came to my cheek and she tried to force me to look at her but I fought it, holding my neck still, clenching my teeth, staring at the wall.

“Honey –”

“Who’s next?”

“February, you’re scaring me,” Mom said. “I need you to look at me.”

Before I could do anything, even before I knew if I would, hands were under my armpits and I was hauled to my feet, pulled out of the stall, seeing my Mom on her knees by the toilet, her head tipped back, her eyes on some point over my shoulder, some spot higher than me.

I twisted my neck and tilted my head back too and saw Alec had hold of me.

“We need assistance here?” Sully asked, his voice nasally but the authority was still there.

I’d only ever heard that kind of authority from a cop. Teachers had a different kind. My Dad, an even different kind. Mom, even different. Teachers, Dads and Moms, sometimes you listened, sometimes you didn’t. But somehow you always listened to a cop.

“Maybe she needs to talk to someone,” Mom said, getting up slowly but I didn’t see her get to her feet.

I was jostled, brought around face to face with Alec.

“You need to talk to someone?” he asked, his body bent, his face in mine and I didn’t know what his question was about so I didn’t answer.

“Maybe she needs something to help her rest.” This suggestion came from Morrie. “She doesn’t sleep too good. Maybe we should take her to see Doc.”

“You need something to help you rest?” Alec asked like Morrie was in another room talking to Alec in an earpiece and I couldn’t hear my brother.

I didn’t answer. I just stared at Alec, stared straight into his weird but beautiful gold-brown eyes.

His hands, both of them, came to the sides of my head. His palms, so big, so warm, were at my cheeks. His fingers, so long, so strong, were covering my hair. His face, a face I’d known as a boy and I’d watched grow into a man, was all I could see.

“February, talk to me.”

I did.

But, “Alec,” was all I could get out.

Then I fell forward and did a face plant in his chest. I grabbed onto his blazer and held on.

And for the second time in two days, I cried (essentially) in Alec’s arms.

I heard Alec’s phone ring but he didn’t go for it. With my face plant, his fingers had slid through my hair and both his hands stayed where they were, curling around the back of my head, holding me to his chest.

I knew I should move away, I knew distance was paramount but I couldn’t. I was like a leech, latched onto him but instead of sucking blood, I was sucking strength.

I couldn’t talk about Pete, not even now, not with anyone, especially not with Alec. But I wanted him to know I wasn’t crying for Pete, I was just crying about Pete. No one deserved that, even though he was a dick, not even Pete.

But I couldn’t tell Alec that, or anyone.

My crying stopped but I still held onto his jacket, my face in his chest, now because I was hiding.

Alec heard the tears subside and I felt pressure at his fingertips against my scalp.

“Can you talk to me now?”

I pulled away from his hands, let him go and stepped back.

We were alone in the bathroom.

I drew in a shaky breath and straightened my spine. Then I looked at him.

“I think seeing Doc would be good. Morrie’s right, I don’t sleep great.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why don’t you sleep great?”

I felt my head jerk and answered, “Because Tuesday’s bed’s small.”

He shook his head. “You get up at seven o’clock when you don’t need to, you gotta get home after three. You get three, four hours a sleep at night. That isn’t good. Why don’t you sleep?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been workin’ bars all my life, that’s the way it’s always been.”

“No it isn’t.”

My midsection moved back like he punched me in the stomach.

He knew how I used to sleep. He’d slept over lots when we were kids. When we were teenagers all of us slept too late in the morning. It drove Mom wild but that’s the way teenagers were. When he was at Purdue and Morrie would sneak me up there to spend the weekend with him, I’d sleep with him in his tiny bed in his dorm room, hiding from the RAs. We’d sleep in late and his roommate would scope out the bathroom, call the all-clear to Alec and he’d sneak me down when it was empty. Or when he’d moved to that apartment, he had three roommates but he commandeered the top floor, the attic room with the little three-quarter bathroom in the corner. The bed was a double in that room, much better. It had a desk, lots of floor space. I loved that room, I could pretend it was our place, our world and I did. That bed was perfect, just enough space so we weren’t cramped, not enough that we didn’t have to sleep close.

I used to sleep great, he knew that.

I used to sleep the sleep of someone who knew she was loved.

Now, I didn’t.

“Feb, answer me.”

“I don’t know, all right?” I was sounding impatient. “Does it matter?”

“How long’s this been going on?”

Apparently, it mattered to Alec.

“Long enough I’m used to it.”

“It’s not good.”

“It isn’t now. Now I need to close off my mind, for awhile, just for awhile.”

He watched me in a way that it felt like he was examining me. Whatever he saw, I could tell it troubled him at the same time it angered him.

Then he reached inside his blazer and brought out my phone. He handed it to me and I took it and then his hand went right to his back jeans pocket and he pulled out his own. When he flipped it open to look at it, his eyes grew hard at whatever he saw then he hit some buttons and put it to his ear.

I looked at him but he kept his gaze steady on the bathroom floor.

Finally he said, “Leslie? It’s Colt. I need to pull a favor with Doc. He’s gotta make time for Feb Owens. She’s having trouble sleeping.” He looked at me. “Yeah? Four? Good. Feb’ll be there. Thanks.” He flipped his phone shut. “You got an appointment with Doc at four.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m not through with you.”

My mouth filled with saliva and I swallowed it down. His face was back to hard, the way it got when I called him Alec and I knew he was displeased.

He didn’t make me wait to find out why.

“You’re not gonna let me in, you’ve made that abundantly clear, but you gotta let someone in. You can’t go on like this, it’ll eat you alive. You’re makin’ your family watch, your friends, and it isn’t right. It isn’t you.”

“Alec –”

“Shut your mouth.”

I shut my mouth mainly because his tone was mean and he was scaring me, I felt the electricity of fear from head to toe. I’d never seen him act this way, not to me.

He’d been angry at me once, really angry, when I broke up with him. But even then he wasn’t like he was now.

“Christ, Feb, talk to Doc, get some fuckin’ help. You can’t deal with this shit, with Angie, with –”

He stopped talking before he said Pete’s name probably because I took an automatic step back. His gaze dropped to my feet and I saw his jaws flex, he was clenching his teeth.

Then he started talking again. “You can’t deal with all this when you aren’t dealing with whatever’s been botherin’ you since way before this shit started.” I opened my mouth to talk but he leaned in and finished. “And no, don’t try to kid me and for fuck’s sake, don’t kid yourself. It isn’t about that asshole you married and what he did to you. Whatever’s been botherin’ you started way before that and we both know it, especially fuckin’ me.”

I felt winded at his words, the honesty at the same time him still sticking to his fucking lie. He’d never admitted it, he’d never copped to it, he’d acted like it was all me, like he’d done nothing wrong, he made me out to be the bad guy. I never accused him of it but he knew what he did and he never gave the barest hint of guilt or remorse. Now, even after all these years when I should have been over it, way over it, his words hit me on the fly and knocked the breath right out of me.

I still got out a whispered, “Alec –”

But I said no more, not that I had more to say, because he interrupted me.

“And for the last fuckin’ time, stop calling me Alec.” He got close, too close, and his head tipped down so he could stare at me. “You said you called me Alec because that’s who I was to you. I’m not that anymore, whoever that was, I haven’t been in a long time, so fuckin’ stop calling me Alec.”

He didn’t give me the chance to reply. He turned and walked away. I stood in the bathroom, in my tank top and jeans, holding my cell phone in my hand, staring at the door, feeling suddenly bone cold and thinking maybe he was right.

It was time to talk to Doc about what was bothering me.

And it was time to quit calling him Alec because, just then, what was left of my Alec was lost to me.

I’d been hanging onto it for a long time, with my jaw tilts, me calling him Alec.

But I knew it at that moment, I couldn’t hang on anymore.

He hadn’t been Alec in a long time and I had to let him go.

Colt walked into J&J’s late and saw Joe-Bob sitting at his stool, a couple bikers in the back. Colt had never seen them before, they were probably drifting through. The bikers were pulling on beers, playing pool. Angie’s usual table was vacant which it would be this time of night if she got lucky, now seeing it empty made his fists clench.

Jack and Morrie were behind the bar. They were both looking at him after he completed his scan. They were also both moving down to the end of the bar where Colt always sat, around the curve so his back was to the door to the office, his vantage giving him a full view of the bar.

Colt slid onto a stool and Morrie asked, “Off duty?”

“Yeah.”

Morrie twisted, bent then pulled three beer bottles out of a glass-fronted fridge. Jack moved to the shelves, grabbing the bourbon and three glasses. Colt found his mind wandering to what he’d learned yesterday, the insignificant but unknown fact that Feb did yoga. That piece of information had slid into his brain half a dozen times in the last two days, pissing him off because he didn’t know that about her. And it bothered him he didn’t know. What bothered him more was that it bothered him at all.

Morrie uncapped the bottles, placing them on the bar with a dull thud. Jack put ice in the glasses then poured the bourbon, using the beverage gun to shoot a blast of Coke in Colt’s before sliding the glasses around. The one that was cut went to Colt, the two straight shots, one went toward Morrie, Jack picked up the last and downed it in a gulp.

This was unusual. Jack liked his bourbon and was smart enough to sip it. He was also smart enough to play his cards close to his chest and almost always did. This act exposed his mood to anyone who knew him and it made that weight in Colt’s gut shift disturbingly.

Colt nabbed the beer by its neck using two fingers and took a healthy pull.

“We good?” Morrie asked.

Colt’s eyes moved around the bottle to his friend. He dropped the beer to the bar.

“Not really but Feb’s over it and Feb doesn’t have much to do with me so I got no call to be pissed at you.”

Morrie’s lips thinned but he remained silent.

“We’ll talk about that shit later. Tell us about Pete,” Jack demanded and Colt turned to him.

Colt would have paid money, big money, not to be having this conversation. But he respected these men and they needed to know so he did what was right even though it felt shit and, when he was done, he knew he’d feel even more shit.

Still, he let go of the beer and took a sip of bourbon before he started.

“Pete was done three days ago. Why no one told his mother, I don’t know. He was the first that we know of.”

Jack took a sharp breath into his nostrils.

Colt kept talking, “We’re exchanging information with St. Louis. Murder was mostly the same, ‘cept Pete was awake when it happened and the killer did him at home and left him at home. He fought his attacker but the guy got a swipe to the back of Pete’s neck, probably when he was running away. It incapacitated him but didn’t kill him. He dragged Pete back to his bed and did the same as he did to Angie. Took off the clothes he was wearing, all of ‘em, unlike Angie, and delivered blows to the groin, up through to the abdomen, near to the heart. The bed, the floor, the walls, covered in blood.”

Jack and Morrie held his eyes, couldn’t tear theirs away. Colt had seen that before, mortified fascination, hearing words that felt like acid going in your ears but you couldn’t stop listening.

Colt went back to his beer and took a pull before he went on. “Boys spent a lot of time at Angie’s yesterday and today. Results are comin’ in. Angie wasn’t much of a housekeeper and she had a lot of visitors. We’ll be siftin’ through the shit we took from her house for awhile. Got a couple of hits, guys she had who left DNA or prints and have records but they’re unlikely. We’re lookin’ at them. Cory says he left her place around one o’clock. Said she was still pretty hammered when he left. Can’t know, it’s likely she doesn’t take the time to make her bed, but it looks like she slept there and the killer took her from there, though no forced entry, but her purse was there, her car keys, her car out front. Angie wasn’t a walker, she went somewhere, she’d take her car, even drunk. Toxicology came back. We’re guessin’ she’d dosed herself, probably needs to, way she lives her life, to get sleep. Had some over-the-counter sleep aids by the side of the bed, what amounts to four of them in her blood. Dose is usually two so she was either out our seriously groggy when he took her.”

“Thank the Lord,” Jack muttered.

Colt went on. He had a lot to say and he wanted to get it done, he wanted to get home, he wanted to sleep, he needed to be rested for whatever shit the next day would bring.

So he kept going. “Killer left Angie’s body exposed, he’d planned the show. Probably dressed her before he took her out but no bra, no underwear, no shoes. Pulled her top up to show her breasts, yanked her skirt up around her waist. No blows from the weapon except to her groin and abdomen.”

Jack and Morrie remained silent then again there was nothing to say to these grim facts.

“Displaying the bodies the way he does, naked, in Pete’s case, exposed, in Angie’s, hacking into their privates, this is an effort at humiliation,” Colt paused, the feeling of shit intensifying as he said, “a gift to Feb.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Morrie whispered.

“This has crossed state lines,” Colt told them. “The Feds are movin’ in. Already talked to them. Tomorrow morning got a meeting. Feds have called Quantico. The profilers are comin’ from Virginia first thing.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Morrie asked.

Colt had never worked with the Feds but he knew some guys who had, went to conferences, read shit about it. Sometimes they could be a pain in the ass. Most of the time, fresh eyes and that kind of experience were welcome.

Colt welcomed it.

“It’s good,” Colt said, “but I’ve already informed them of Feb and my history. I’ll be takin’ a step back.”

“You need to be working this, son,” Jack said, using the tone he always used with Colt. The tone he used with Morrie, the tone he used to use with Feb; that father’s tone that Colt never heard from his own Dad. The tone that said Jack believed in him, believed he could do what needed to be done, believed he’d do it right, believed no one could do it better.

“I don’t take a step back myself, they’ll push me back,” Colt replied. “They don’t care this is my town. They care about catchin’ this guy and makin’ him stay caught once they do. They don’t need and won’t tolerate anything that might jeopardize that.” No response and Colt gave them both a look. “Sully will be the local primary and I’ll still be workin’ it.”

“Least that’s something,” Jack remarked.

“We got more,” Colt told them. “Chris canvassed. Surprisingly that time in the morning no one saw some guy hacking away at Angie. Still, Chris got two witnesses who report they saw a silver sedan, they didn’t note the make and model. They thought it was an Audi or Mercedes, no license. They saw it pulling out of the alley around the time of the murder.”

“That ain’t much,” Morrie said.

“Better ‘n nothing,” Jack replied.

Morrie nodded and looked at Colt. “If Pete was killed three days ago, and Feb got that note the day Angie died, did we miss something? What –”

“Everyone knew what Pete did to February,” Jack noted. “He had no reason to explain.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Still, the killer left a calling card in St. Louis,” Colt told them.

Both men’s eyes turned to him.

“St. Louis PD couldn’t understand it, already knew they had someone who was seriously whacked in the head, but they didn’t get the message until I told them,” Colt said and Jack and Morrie stayed quiet so he gave them the news. “Bloody scene, carnage, but on Pete’s nightstand was a pristine bouquet of flowers, no blood on them, set there after the mess was made,” he paused, before he clipped out, “tulips.”

“Fuck!” Morrie hissed.

Tulips were Feb’s favorite flowers. Colt used to buy them for her every birthday even though they cost some cake, finding tulips in October. Florist had to special order them. He bought them for her on Valentine’s Day too. In her bedroom when she was a teenager, she had a big picture, white background, a spray of pink and white tulips in a vase displayed over her bed.

Colt kept speaking, giving them information to take their mind from the disturbing thoughts about how well this guy knew their daughter, their sister. It wouldn’t take much to know Feb liked tulips, you just had to pay attention but you also had to be close.

“Dead end on the flowers. He’d arranged them himself, bought the vase at Pottery Barn and fuck knows how many Pottery Barns are around the St. Louis area, not to mention he coulda gone to any mall between here and there. No prints on the vase, no stickers or residue left. He coulda got the flowers from anywhere, seein’ as they’re in season. Spring’s here.”

Colt used to buy her tulips in spring too, just because you could find them easy, they were all around and she liked them. To this day spring meant tulips to Colt and sometimes when he wasn’t paying attention and didn’t have control of the path of his thoughts, he’d see them, at a grocery store, in Janet’s Flower Shop window, and think, I’ll pick those up for Feb, before he could stop himself.

“Is Feb in danger?” Jack asked and Colt looked at him.

Jack was trying to keep those cards close to his chest but the hold he had on them was far from steady.

“Can’t say,” Colt replied, “but the Feds, especially the profilers, they’ll know more.”

Jack nodded. He didn’t like it, but he nodded.

Colt moved on to different business. “Sully and I went down Feb’s list. Five names. We had the chat.”

“They gonna keep quiet?” Morrie asked.

Colt thought about these visits. They were short and they were all the same, every one of them. The news was met with amusement, the upsets history, so slight they were barely remembered. Then Sully and Colt gave them more information and the amusement died and the fear set in. He wasn’t surprised at the end response. Two of them said the same exact words, “Poor Feb.”

Not, “Oh my God,” and not, “Poor Angie.”

Angie was known, she managed to hold down her job but by most of the townsfolk she wasn’t respected, she was tolerated. Some may have felt sorry for her but most simply didn’t think about her and, when they did, they didn’t think much.

Feb, that was a different story.

“They’ll keep it quiet, for how long, don’t know,” Colt answered then he caught his friend’s eyes. “You need to move back in with Delilah.”

Morrie grinned. “Shit, tell me somethin’ I don’t know.”

Colt shook his head, Morrie wasn’t getting it.

“Far’s I can tell February loves few people in this world. Jack, Jackie, Jessie, Meems, their families, your kids and you.”

Morrie’s grin faded.

Colt continued. “Angie and Feb had a stupid, teenage girl fight years ago and Angie bought it. You think Dee might not be on that list, this guy thinks he’s takin’ care of Feb’s business, this guy thinks Dee hurt you and, through that, hurt Feb?”

Colt watched Morrie’s entire frame grow tight.

“Talk to her, move back in with her, explain it,” Colt pushed. “You need me to come with you, I’m there. She’ll let you move in, least until this is over.”

“You got time tonight?” Morrie asked.

“All the time you need,” Colt answered.

“Let’s go,” Morrie said.

“Hang on two shakes,” Jack said, his eyes on Colt. “This business is pressin’, so I’ll let you two go. That don’t mean we don’t got shit to talk about.”

“Jack –” Colt started.

“I saw what I saw in that bathroom, Colt. We all did,” Jack stated.

He could guess what Jack thought he saw. What Colt saw and felt leaking into his shirt was Feb crying her eyes out at the death of some jackass that beat her to shit and tore the last bits of February Owens away. Not that there was much left after whatever caused her to turn, but they were there. They’d come out once in awhile. After Pete was through with her, they vanished. Only the jaw tilt was left and rarely her laughter wouldn’t be guarded and you could almost hear the old Feb in it. But that was rarely and only happened when she was with Morrie’s kids. Not with Morrie, her parents, even Jessie and Meems. Not that he’d seen and, he hated to admit it, but for two years and any time she was home the earlier fifteen, he’d been watching.

“Due respect, Jack, you think you saw what you wanted to see,” Colt told him.

“Due respect, Colt, I saw what everyone saw. You experienced what you had to experience to hold yourself back,” Jack returned.

That pissed him off.

“Not me holdin’ back.”

“You been holdin’ back for twenty years.”

“We aren’t havin’ this conversation,” Colt declared.

“We are, just not now. You and Morrie got a daughter-in-law of mine to protect. See to that, we’ll talk about this later.”

Colt bit back his response, Jack meant too much to him to say what he wanted to say. They still weren’t going to have this conversation, now, tomorrow, next week or ever.

Colt nodded anyway.

Jack nodded back.

“Let’s go,” Morrie was impatient.

Colt took another pull from his beer and slid off the barstool, repeating. “Let’s go.”