Leaving Epitaph: The Sons of Daniel Shaye

28

That same morning, two days behind, Dan Shaye woke all three of his sons for breakfast. He had made a full pot of coffee, but it was James’s job to actually make breakfast.

Shaye was amazed at how he and his sons were getting along with each other. He knew they all had heavy hearts—no, broken hearts—and he knew they were all filled with anger, but never had that anger spilled over onto each other. Even now, as he watched the three boys picking on each other the way brothers did, he was amazed at their good humor—and at his own.

None of them had been able to mourn yet. That would come later, after the rage was expiated, after the thirst for vengeance was quenched. Once that was done, the emptiness would come, and the tears. Until then he hoped that Mary was looking down at their boys with as much pride as he was.

“Breakfast, Pa!” James called out.

“I’m coming.”

Matthew and Thomas saddled the horses while James and Shaye broke camp.

“Can I ask you somethin’, Pa?” James asked.

“Always, James,” Shaye said, hoping that James’s question would be easier to answer than Thomas’s last one about being special had been.

“What would Ma think of what we’re doin’?”

Shaye sighed. Apparently, his sons were not going to come up with simple questions. “Well, James,” he said honestly, “I don’t think she’d approve very much.”

“Of any of it?”

“No,” Shaye said. “She’d approve of me doing my job and trying to get the bank’s money back. She would not approve of what I intend to do when I catch up to the Langer gang.”

“Kill them?”

“Right. She also would not approve of my taking you boys along with me.”

“We got a right.”

“She’d probably agree with that part,” Shaye said. “Just not with me putting you in danger.”

“But you ain’t puttin’ us in danger,” James said. “We’re here to watch each other’s backs, right? To keep each other safe?”

Shaye finished stomping out the fire and turned to face his youngest son.

“I can’t lie to you, James,” he said. “We’re here to kill the men who killed your ma. At least, that’s what I’m here to do.”

“Us too.”

“No,” Shaye said, “it’s not the same for you boys as it is for me.”

“She was our ma!” James snapped, his face growing red the way his mother’s used to when she lost her temper. “We got a right to—”

“Simmer down,” Shaye said. “You don’t understand. Of course you have a right to come along, but I’m the one who’s going to kill them. I’m going to kill Ethan Langer, and probably his brother too. But in the eyes of the law, I might be doing wrong.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What if we catch up to them and they give up?” Shaye asked. “They surrender. What if they’d rather go to jail than resist and possibly die?”

James looked confused. He didn’t have any answers. “Would you still kill them, Pa?”

“Yes, James, I would, and I will.”

“But…wouldn’t that be murder?”

“In the eyes of the law, yes it would be,” Shaye said. “But James, murder is what I’ve been planning ever since we left Epitaph.”