Chasing Claire (Hells Saints Motorcycle Club) (21 page)

The years had faded Dolly’s fiery, auburn hair to a softer shade. And although her thick curls mostly hid the smattering of gray, she had confided in me that she’d begun to put a colored rinse in her hair to cover those “pesky things.” She needed reading glasses now to see the fine print. I knew from the sheen of sweat that sometimes came on her unexpectedly that she had some trouble with hot flashes, or “power surges” as she liked to call them.

And then there were those wrinkles.

From the corner of each of Dolly’s eyes lay a fine network of tiny deep creases. They radiated out like sunbeams, an array of fine lines and crinkles that she made absolutely no effort to hide. Once, on one of our many shopping trips together, we had stopped at the cosmetic counter to try some fragrances. A well-meaning cosmetic clinician had approached Dolly and suggested a foundation to get rid of those fine lines of age. Dolly politely told the clerk that she was all set. That those wrinkles had nothing to do with age, and that she was happy to keep them just where they were, thank you very much.

On the way home she told me the heartbreaking and beautiful story of those tiny lines.

Dolly told me that the first one appeared almost like voodoo magic the morning after Petey had been killed. She said that after that, one by one, they slowly appeared like fault lines in her skin. In no time at all, a small network of wrinkles had fanned out like shattered glass from the corner of each of her eyes. For a while, it had seemed like every day there would be a tiny new line or crinkle. Finally about a year after Petey died, Dolly noticed that one day they had stopped just as suddenly as they had begun. Over the years, the lines had stayed exactly as they had appeared in that time of extreme grief. None of them went away and no new ones emerged.

Dolly told me that a few years back she had read a magazine article that referred to those fine lines as “laugh lines.” She said that those words had horrified her so much that she hadn’t been able to sleep for days after that.

Because Dolly knew that those lines had nothing to do with happiness. They were trails of grief.

Dolly knew that the pain of losing her young husband had been so complete and so deep that her poor heart had been unable to contain all that sadness. The hurt had risen upward, leaving in its wake fine scars of unimaginable sorrow.

Dolly told me that eventually she had learned to laugh again. But not to love again.

With time, Dolly told me, she had gotten used to living without him.

With enough time, she said, she supposed you could get used to just about anything.

CHAPTER 32

A
re you ready, Babe?” Reno’s voice took me out of my musings. I took a quick look at the clock and hurriedly grabbed my school bag. Today was my psych seminar. The class I hated more than death itself, it was so boring. But I was already on the teacher’s bad side, and arriving late with the rumble of pipes thundering through the ivy-covered brick passageways of the campus would not help matters.

As always, Reno got me to class on time. But I was almost late anyway, because today I just had not wanted to let him go. Usually I was okay with being in class while he roared off, but today the only place I wanted to be was where he was.

Well, that might not be quite true. The truth was that the only place I wanted to be was some place other than my psych seminar. Especially on a sunny Monday. The dentist’s chair, cleaning out the bathroom at Reds, the gynecologist’s office . . . anything would be preferable. Reno knew exactly how I felt about this course, so he had not been flattered or fooled by my transparent attempt to delay his leaving. After giving me a quick kiss and a shove in the right direction, he roared off without looking back.

I sighed and headed toward the lecture hall.

About fifteen minutes into class, I had to fight to stay awake. The stage lights were dimmed and a PowerPoint presentation flashed endlessly across the screen. Dr. Charto droned on
and on.

And on.

As I looked around at the sea of students, I noted the bleary-eyed faces of my classmates. Their expressions of apathy and boredom validated my own. In the darkened auditorium, a vast array of laptops, tablets, and phones were secretly opened. Their screens provided a needed respite from the endless tedium of the class.

Basic public speaking rule number one. Never read a PowerPoint presentation word for word.

Evidently, Dr. Sylvia Charto had not gotten that memo.

How this woman had ever become an educator was beyond me.

The woman bored me to tears, and judging from the activities of the students around me, I knew that I was not the only one who felt that way. More than anything, I was disappointed. When I had first enrolled in college, I had been really excited about all my classes, but the psych courses were something that I had particularly looked forward to.

Except for this one.

This one I hated.

More to the point, I hated the professor.

Psych 101/02 was a general education requirement and came with a three-hour weekly seminar. It was a prerequisite for lots of other higher level courses. There was no escaping it. Just about every student at the college had to pass through the doors to that lecture hall sooner or later. This thorn in my side ran for two semesters. Unfortunately the same professor taught both classes. Even after Julian’s help with that first research paper and the study groups I attended on a regular basis, my grades never reflected the hard work I put in. At first, I had tried to force interest by being an enthusiastic contributor to the class. But my comments and overall participation had been met with such complete disdain that I had begun to take it personally. Honestly, the hostility that emanated from this woman seemed to come at me in waves. And it was not just that way
in the lecture hall. Every paper that I handed in to her was marked up through and through. Red pen lines slashed through my hard work like bleeding sword wounds. If I hadn’t been doing so well in my other classes, it wouldn’t have been so glaringly apparent.

I resolved to get to the bottom of things.

When she did not respond to the third email I sent requesting a scheduled meeting, I had waited with a few other students outside her door during office hours. I watched while people who came after me went in and came out, and still she kept me waiting. Then, when she finally opened that door and called me in, she gave me ten minutes to everyone else’s twenty. During that time she didn’t answer any of my questions. However, she did suggest that I might be more comfortable at a two-year community college where “the expectations weren’t so high.”

I left that meeting with my head up, but I cried buckets onto Reno’s back all the way home. Finally he had to pull over. When he asked me what was wrong, I was too ashamed to tell him what the professor had said to me. I just told him that I felt overwhelmed. Reno didn’t buy it. He had seen all the hard work I had put into the class, and he had seen the caustic remarks Professor Wonderful had written on my papers.

He hadn’t liked it. Or her. And it was with great reluctance that my man stepped back to let me handle the situation in my own way and in my own time.

“Just remember, Babe,” Reno said to me. “Trash is trash. And this bitch is small-minded gutter trash. A few letters after this teacher’s name don’t change that. You ever get tired of working around that on your own, you let me know.” Then my man added this, “But if you ever come out again with tears on that pretty face of yours after meeting with that piece of shit, I’m going in.”

Reno stayed up half that night with me and quizzed me on the flashcards that I had so painstakingly prepared. The multiple choice
tests were scored by a Scantron so there was no bias involved, and so far I was kicking ass on those exams. I thought that maybe if I did well enough, she would see me as something other than the “less than” that she evidently thought I was. I tried my hardest, but that just seemed to piss her off more. I found the whole thing shocking, because I thought that a professor who had over one hundred students per class should be a little too busy to hate on hardworking me. But then again, maybe I wasn’t the only one who was getting this kind of treatment.

Evidently, the good professor did not approve of the company I kept. I had run into this kind of narrow-mindedness before when I was out with Reno. I knew that Raine and Glory had had it happen to them as well. It came with the territory. But I had never expected to find that kind of prejudice here, in a place of knowledge and learning. And I certainly never expected it to come from a professor. Someone who, in my mind, should be far too wise and enlightened to harbor an apparent hatred based on a stereotype.

But Dr. Charto made no secret of her disdain. When she first saw me with Reno, she gave us a look of such contempt that I felt it like a slap across my face. Reno saw it too, and had raised an eyebrow at her. To his credit though, he did not say a thing. I knew that he had kept quiet for my sake and I was grateful for it.

As it so happened, her office sat adjacent to the campus parking lot. More often than not, Sylvia Charto would be exiting her building just as Reno and I rode into the campus. The psych seminar was the first class of my day. This meant that oftentimes the three of us would be making our way across campus at the same time. Reno always walked with me to my first class before he headed off for the day.

The whole thing was very strange. At first Dr. Charto seemed content to walk behind us, but then she would increase her steps at intermittent times. This caused the three of us to arrive at the door to the building at the same time. When I entered first, I always politely held the door a fraction longer than I needed to, just to make sure it did not slam in front of her.

When she arrived at the door first, she would let that door slam right behind her.

Oh, yes she did.

And not just with a casual “oh, sorry” whoosh. Professor Charto would swing the door open wide enough to make sure that it shut right in my face. The first time it happened, I was so shocked that I just stood there for a second. Then I decided to give old Sylvie the benefit of the doubt, so I opened the door and went on toward class.

The next time she did it, I had figured it was no accident. While I was figuring, I had felt Reno’s arm slide past me and slam the door open so wide that it caught the heel of the professor’s sensible shoes and sent her stumbling toward the floor. She’d regained her balance, just short of sprawling onto the tiles. She righted herself and shot a scathing look at Reno.

“Well, I should not be surprised. You are evidently just as rude and ill-bred as you appear to be,” Dr. Charto spat at us.

I gasped.

Reno had taken a step and stood between the professor and me. Then he said, “Really, bitch? You need a PhD to come up with bullshit as meaningless as that? I don’t give two fucks what you think of me, but that’s the last time you are going to disrespect my woman.”

Professor Charto blustered and hissed like a fat little alley cat.

“Don’t you dare speak to me in that manner. Do you know who I am?”

Really? She went with that?

Reno had leaned in so close to her that his nose almost touched hers. Her breath steamed his dark aviators.

“Yeah, I do. I know exactly who you are, Sylvie. Last name, Charto. Husband, Albert. 546 Commonwealth, Apartment C. Hundred-year-old Volvo in your driveway, tags 678VYC. I get that right?”

Sylvie had taken a step back, way, way back.

Reno moved in again.

“Yeah, I got that right. Bitch, I know exactly who you are. And if you ever,
ever
slam a door into Claire’s face again or take this conversation into that classroom of yours, you are going to get to know who
I
fucking am.”

The professor had stumbled off, pale and shaken. I’d turned to Reno, my mouth opening and closing like a fish gulping for air.

Reno had kept his eyes on the professor until he saw her turn the corner into the hallway. Then he kissed me on the top of my head, spun me around, and said, “Get to class, Babe. You’re going to be late.”

Yeah, it was pretty safe to say that good old Sylvie and I had pretty much stayed out of each other’s way since the door incident. I looked at my watch for what was probably the fifth time in half an hour. Reno should have picked up Dolly by now. I hoped that he was in for a more interesting day than I was.

I dug into my bag, pulled out an apple, took a bite, then flipped open my laptop and tried to follow along with the lecture.

It was going to be a long morning.

CHAPTER 33

I
t took about a half hour for Reno and his mom to drive to the cemetery. Reno routinely scanned the perimeter of his father’s final resting place before he allowed his mother out of the Escalade. His father had been buried in a family plot that lay just outside Saints territory. Because Petey had not been a club member, and at the time Reno had still been a young boy, the territory boundaries had not been an issue. Eventually the area had been absorbed by Los Diablos Rojos. The president of the MC was Lucius Rieldo. Because the territories bordered each other, Prosper and Lucius had had a choice to make.

They chose peace.

Eventually that peace moved the two clubs to an uneasy alliance. Except for a few setbacks, the alliance had remained strong.

The first setback had come when Manny Rieldo, Lucius’s nephew, kidnapped Claire and Raine.

The second setback came when Manny was made to pay for that stupid move.

The abduction of Prosper’s daughters and the subsequent death of Lucius’s nephew had been the cause of a major meet with the heads of the East Coast gangs. After much debate, his killing had been seen as a necessary and justified act.

Everyone had decided to play nice, and because of that, some pretty profitable deals had been made between the various criminal entities.

Everyone liked that payout.

Everyone had been on their best behavior.

All of them.

All of the
boys
had been quiet.