JUSTIFIED (Motorcycle Club Romance) (3 page)

“Are you going out there?” I asked.

Ash said nothing, like he always did when he was on high alert.

“What are you doing?” I asked again. “Tell me what you’re doing.  You’re starting to scare the shit out of me.”

Ash turned around and shushed me. “Go with Tuck. It’s fine.”

I looked outside. By now the fifty-thousand motion sensor lights had flickered on to reveal a black Crown Victoria parked next to our Ford. Ash was outside by now, standing next to the driver’s side. According to my watch, it was 3:30am.

I watched as Ash was talking to some man. He slowly put his gun back in his jacket. He looked like he was smiling. He seemed at ease.

Fifteen minutes later he was back inside the house. “That was Green.” He said. Green was a local member of a cousin club. He’d helped hook us up with the safe house.

“What the hell was he doing here this time of night?”

“Came to check on us and make sure we got here alright,” Ash said.

“Did you know he was coming? Why would he just randomly stop by a three thirty in the morning?”

“Yes, I knew he was coming. I guess I forgot. Just tired, that’s all,” he said. He had a point. “Let’s try and go back to sleep. We have a lot to go over tomorrow.”

“This is kind of a strange place isn’t it?” Ash said, waking me up. “Good morning.”

“What time is it?” By the heaviness that remained in my eyelids, I hadn’t slept a wink.

“Ten,” he replied. “Thought I’d let you sleep in a little bit. I know you had a rough night last night. I’ve made a few phone calls. You should have internet access in the next day or two. I’ve activated a prepaid cell phone for you to use, though I don’t think the signal’s all that great out here.”

“Why are you going over everything right now? I just woke up. Can’t we at least have breakfast?”

“I have to leave sooner than expected,” Ash replied. He looked away, then over at Tuck who was playing quietly in the corner.

“What?” I normally tried to hide my disappointment, but I couldn’t. “I was hoping we’d at least have the entire day to get to know the house, the area, the safety precautions…”

“We can still do that. We just have to be finished by two.”

“Ash,” I said. “I’m not going to have a car, am I?”

He laughed out loud, something I rarely heard these days. “You’re just now realizing that?” He scooped up Tuck from the corner and walked towards the fancy kitchen. “Your mommy’s a true blonde, isn’t she?”

I loved seeing the silly, goofy side of him. It reminded me of what we had before our life got so crazy. The Ash I grew up with. The Ash from before that night in the country when life as we knew it got flipped upside down.

I followed him through the swinging doors and into the luxurious kitchen of my dreams. The room was flooded with light. The sun coming in through the huge picture window made everything extraordinarily bright, shiny, and sparkly. For two seconds, I forgot why we were even there.

Standing in that room, I didn’t feel like I was in an old, stately, peculiar mansion in the middle of nowhere. I was starting to feel, like Ash said before, like I was on an extended vacation.

“Let’s see. Cheerios and bananas it is,” Ash said as he rummaged through the pantry. Tuck squealed in his high chair.

I started to get up.

“No, Mama. You stay there. I’m cooking for us this morning,” Ash said. He was clearly trying to ease my mind, and I wanted nothing more than to ease his too. It was going to be difficult to be separated from him, but it was nothing compared to the pain of dropping off your wife and child in the middle of nowhere.

“Sounds good to me,” I obliged. “What’s gotten into you this morning? I haven’t seen you this happy in forever.”

He cracked an egg on the side of a skillet. “It’s just an incredible feeling to know that you two are safe. You’re pretty much off the grid here. Untouchable.”

Sometimes I wondered if he was just extremely paranoid or if actual threats had been made against our lives. There were times over the years when it was hard to distinguish. Ash didn’t take killing Tripp lightly. It gnawed away at him from time to time, manifesting itself in night terrors and denying himself happiness.

“So I was giving myself a tour of the house last night,” I began. “There’s a really creepy room down the hall. It’s like a dining room with no windows. It has these grandfather clocks in each corner of the room. Then there’s another door that leads to a bedroom and half-bath.”

“Houses like these, people are constantly changing up and remodeling and adding extra rooms here or there. I’m sure it was just some former owners who wanted a private dining room or something.” Ash tried to come up with some sort of logical reasoning to pacify me. He had more important things to think about anyway.

“Wait until you see it,” I continued. “I just felt like I was being watched in there.” I shivered just thinking about the room. “I hope the upstairs is semi-normal.”

“I’m sure it is,” Ash replied.

“Do you know the history of this place?”

“Nope. Guess it never occurred to me to ask.”

“Can you find out? I’m just curious.”

Ash looked at me as if I had asked him to do me a huge favor. I knew he was busy. I knew he had more important things on his plate, but if I was going to be living here for an indefinite amount of time, I wanted to know as much as possible about it.

“You never wanted to know about the other places we’ve lived.”

“The other places we lived were normal. Let’s see, there was your parents’ basement. Then the cottage on Olive Street. Then the little rental house on Callahan. Then our other apartment on Fourth and Grand. All perfectly normal, boring places.”

“Trust me. This is just another boring place to add to the list.”

I looked at him in disbelief and gave an audible sigh. With Ash, actions always spoke louder than words. The more I spoke, the less of his attention I seemed to receive, especially when he was stressed.

“Look. I’ll try and dig up some dirt on this place when I get a chance,” Ash promised. “I’m not sure I’ll find any, but I’ll ask around.”

“Thank you.”

“You gonna eat your breakfast?” He stared down at the cold plate of scrambled eggs situated in front of me.

I pushed them around with my fork and took a bite. “I appreciate you cooking breakfast this morning. I’m just not that hungry.”

“What’s wrong now?” He shook his head when he thought I wasn’t looking. Growing up in a family of four boys who were raised by their father, he never learned how to truly be patient, especially when it came to women. “Are you going to start crying? You know I hate it when I’m about to leave and you start crying. Here we go.”

I would never label myself as a crier. Sure, I got emotional during certain times of the month, but in general I was not one of those girls who could turn on the waterworks on demand.

“I’m not going to cry. Just a little anxious, I guess.”

“Alright then.” He scratched at his face. He’d been growing out his beard for a few days now and was looking grizzlier by the minute. He barely had time to sleep let alone shave. “You ready to go over some things?”

“Yep,” I said. I carried my dishes to the sink and picked up Tucker.

“Here is your prepaid phone. Keep this close to you at all times. We’ve already gone over the motion sensor lights, the special film on the windows. Oh, come over this way,” he said, walking towards the hallway. He pointed at a light switch in the middle of the wall. “This is sort of an emergency call button. If you switch this button, the police will be here as quickly as they can. Make sure you don’t accidentally bump it.”

I laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“I just can’t believe this is really happening. This is like something out of a really bad cable TV movie or something.”

He didn’t find it as funny as I. “How long would it take them to get here?” I was afraid of the answer.

“At least an hour.”

“An hour? What if there’s an emergency? What if I need an ambulance?”

“I’m going to see about getting some kind of car for you. It might be a week or two, but I’ll find you something.”

“Well, let’s hope nothing bad happens in the next week or two.”

“I want you to keep all doors and windows locked at all times. Don’t go outside in the dark. Don’t make any non-emergency phone calls. Internet should be up and running. There’s no cable. I’m sorry,” he said as he walked throughout the house, racking his brain. “I think that’s pretty much it. Just use common sense, Marina. Oh, and this probably goes without saying, but don’t answer the door for anyone.”

“Got it,” I replied. Each second that passed made me feel emptier than the second before. He was standing in front of me, but he was already gone. I could tell he was somewhere else in his mind.

“I’ve left a gun for you. It’s in the kitchen, in the drawer next to the sink.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t do this to me,” he said.

“Don’t do what?”

“You’re getting all quiet. I know you’re upset. I’ll be back. I promise. I’ll be back by next weekend. If anything changes, you’ll get an email from me or your father.” Ash stared down at me. His dark hair was still wet from his morning shower. He smelled of bar soap and spearmint toothpaste. “I will be back.”

“Got it.” I forced a smile. “You’ll be back.”

He leaned down and kissed me, harder than usual. He kissed Tuck’s forehead, then left the room to grab his bags. No matter how many times I’d seen him leave before, it never got any easier. Each time felt exactly like the time before. My chest would feel heavy, my eyes would burn, my breathing would shallow, and my mind would race. My mind always obsessed over the same thought. What if I never saw him again? 

I walked him outside to the car. In the broad daylight, it felt safe to do so. I stood by the hood with Tuck on my hip. He kissed us again and hopped in the car. He hated long, drawn-out goodbyes.

I watched as the Ford left a trail of dust down the infinite gravel road that stretched from the front of the house all the way to the horizon and waited until the tail lights grew dim in the distance. I stood in that spot until I could no longer make out any semblance of a vehicle.

It had been a full four hours since Ash left. I reclined in a distressed leather chair with a book in the sunroom as Tuck napped on my chest. I hadn’t yet felt like exploring the second floor of the old house. I wasn’t sure what I’d find or how I’d be able to handle any additional off the wall discoveries.

Eventually I dozed off. When I came to, the sun was beginning to set. In the background of the silence of the house, I heard rumbling. It sounded like it was coming from outside. A cloud of dust zipped past the road and a sleek silver Cadillac turned into our driveway.

My heart began to race. My hands shook at the thought of having to touch the gun Ash left for me. I tried to play out multiple scenarios in my head. I tried to think of places in the house for us to hide.

I heard a car door. My heart pounded in my ears now. I grabbed Tuck and went into the kitchen to look for the gun.

There was a rap at the door. It didn’t sound like a scary, heavy type of knock. It sounded more like a gentle, I’m-a-stranded-traveler-and-I-need-help kind of knock. I sat Tuck in the highchair and peered around the corner to get a good look at the stranger at the door. I remembered what Ash said about the special coating on the windows.

Standing at the front door was a woman who looked to be about my age, if not a little older. She wore dark jeans and an ivory cashmere sweater. Her thick, dark hair was pushed back with the help of some oversized, black sunglasses that rested on top of her head. She seemed completely harmless. Ash would kill me if he knew I was deeming someone safe just by looking at them, but she was very nicely dressed. And she drove a Cadillac. She didn’t look like someone who ran around with a rag tag group of rebel bikers.

She knocked on the door again. I reached for the door handle then stopped myself. She gave up and walked back to her car, stopping first to stare at the house one more time.

Jilted, I returned to check on Tuck. He was happy and oblivious in his highchair, elated to see me. I vowed that things would return to normal right then and there. I refused to live these weeks or months in pure fear. I would take safety precautions, but I would not live this period in my life at the mercy of the things of which I knew nothing. I refused to allow my mind to play tricks on me, at least if I could help it.

“Are you hungry, Tucker baby?” I said, in my happiest mommy voice.

He squealed and squirmed in his one-year-old body.

I prepared his cereal and filled a sippy cup with milk from the stocked refrigerator. Once Tuck had been fed, I fixed myself a bowl of soup from the cupboard.

We retired to the living room, where I popped in a DVD to help us both fall asleep. I was aiming for an 8:00 bedtime. I just wanted to sleep away this little extended vacation. If I slept from 8pm to 9 or 10am every day, my days would fly by. I could cope with that.

My wish inevitably came true, as we drifted off to sleep with the dull glow of the TV in the background and awoke the next morning to the sound of songbirds outside the sunroom windows. My pajamas stuck to my sweaty, damp skin. I blamed it on the leather chair. That or I’d had a nightmare. As I wrapped my arms around Tuck and peeled myself off the chair, I couldn’t help but notice how hot Tuck was too. I wondered if the sun had been shining in the windows on us while we slept that morning, but the sun was on the opposite side of the house. Tuck’s cheeks were ruddy and he began to fuss.

I grabbed the thermometer from his diaper bag and took his temperature. 104.1. I began to panic. I gave him liquid fever reducer and grabbed the prepaid cell phone to try and call Ash. As soon as the phone powered on my worst fears were confirmed. No signal. I carried the phone to every corner of the first floor, praying for at least one bar. I ran up the creaky wooden staircase to the second floor, unknown territory at this point, and carried the phone to the far end of the hallway. Still no signal.

I decided I had to carry the phone outside. I had no other choice. I had to get Tuck to a doctor. I had to reach Ash. I’d never felt so stranded and helpless in my life.

Once outside, I jogged up one of the hills behind the house. Still no bars. Frustrated and desperate, I chucked the phone against the nearest tree and the battery cover flew off. It felt good for a second or two, but in a moment of weakness, I fell to my knees and let a few desperate sobs escape my mouth.

“Hey, hello,” a woman’s voice called from over near the house. “Excuse me.”

I looked up to see the same silver Cadillac from the night before parked by the front door and the brunette lady walking towards me.

A million worst-case scenario thoughts ran through my head, jumbling together to the point that I could not compose a single sentence. All I could think about is how angry Ash would be if he knew I had left the safe confines of the house, left our son inside alone, and possibly broke my prepaid phone on top of everything else.

“Sweetie, are you alright?” She was standing in front of me by then, reaching down to help me up.

“Yeah,” I said, forcing a smile. I wiped bits of crushed leaves and dirt off my jeans and took a deep breath.

“Why were you out here? Why were you crying? Do you live in this house?” The woman had a lot of questions.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” It was my way of politely asking her to identify herself.

“I’m Mary Jane Sweet,” she said, extending her right hand. “This used to be my grandmother’s house. Well, it was until my father ran it into the ground and the bank took it.”

“I see. I’m sorry.” I had to be careful with what information I freely gave away. Little by little, I took baby steps closer and closer to the house.

“I stopped out here yesterday,” Mary Jane began. “I’m not sure if you weren’t home or you just didn’t want to answer the door for a stranger. I wouldn’t have either.” She smiled a sympathetic smile. I live about an hour west of here. I haven’t been out to my grandmother’s old house in probably ten years. I guess I’ve just been feeling a little nostalgic lately.”

“I understand,” I replied.

Mary Jane’s eyes were dark and deep and her lashes were a mile long, like my mother’s. “Anyway, I saw that the yard and everything is really well kept, so I figured someone was living here. I was hoping I might get to see the inside one last time.”

I didn’t know what to say to her request.

“I know you probably think I’m some kind of nut job or something. I know I have a lot of nerve asking to tour your house.”

“It is a strange request. I’ll have to ask my husband about it and get back to you.”

I suddenly remembered Tuck and his fever and the fact that I had no phone and no wheels. “I have a strange request myself.”

Mary Jane, amused, said, “Okay, shoot.”

My one-year-old son is inside with a fever of 104. My husband has the car, and I can’t get a hold of him at the moment. Would you be able to take us into town?”

It seemed absolutely insane, I knew, but I had no other choice.

“Are you kidding me? You have a sick little boy inside and you let me stand out here yapping? Grab him and get in the car. We’re taking him into town.” She made a beeline for her car and started it up.

“Thank you so much, Mary Jane,” I yelled as I ran inside to get him. “I’ll be right back.”

Within minutes I had grabbed Tuck, his diaper bag, and his car seat and returned outside to find Mary Jane making room in her backseat for Tuck’s things.

“I really appreciate this,” I said. I buckled Tuck in and climbed into the front passenger seat.

“My grandmother always said things happen for a reason,” she said as she clicked her seatbelt and threw her car into reverse. “There’s a reason we met today. Don’t you think?”

Mary Jane was engaging and charismatic. During our hour long drive into town, she told stories of her youth, stories about the house in which we were staying and stories about her grandmother.

In the 1950s, Mary Jane’s grandparents purchased this house and a few acres of land. Her grandfather had wanted to farm the land, but her grandmother had always dreamed of having an orchard and a little English garden. Mary Jane’s grandfather designated a portion of the land to give his wife a gorgeous garden and planted apple, pear, and peach trees all along the driveway for shade and to give his wife the orchard she so wanted.

“He was always big on function, which is why many of the rooms inside the house served dual purposes and were designed with utility in mind,” Mary Jane explained. “I’m sure you’ve noticed some of the kooky characteristics of that old place.”

“Yeah, I have. I was a little creeped out our first night.”

“Oh, don’t be,” Mary Jane insisted. “That’s silly. It’s just a very different kind of house.”

Mary Jane’s father was an only child, and after her grandfather had passed and her grandmother became ill, he moved into the acreage to help take care of his mother.

“He was used to being a spoiled only child and eventually drained his mother’s bank accounts dry. As her illness grew worse and the medical bills were piling up, he took to gambling and hanging out with the wrong crowds to pay their debts,” Mary Jane sighed. “It was a downward spiral from there.”

“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

“I assure you, I am of his blood, but I do not approve of the things he did,” Mary Jane promised. “I was raised by my mother and stepfather. I was close to my grandparents, but not really my father. He had his inner demons to battle, so he couldn’t be the father I needed. That’s what my mother always told me anyway. Sorry. I’m rambling aren’t I?”

By now we were seated in the waiting room of Geneva County Hospital. The front desk clerk handed me a clipboard and asked me to complete a stack of paperwork. As I got to the address section, I realized I had no clue where we lived, let alone what our address was.

“I feel so silly, but we just moved here the other day and I can’t seem to remember our address,” I lied to Mary Jane. The truth was, I never knew our address to begin with.

“1573 285
th
Avenue, Hartsfield, South Dakota,” Mary Jane replied instantaneously.

I completed the paperwork and gave the clipboard back to the clerk. “Do you know how much longer it will be?” Tuck fussed as he clung onto my hip. “He’s still burning up.”

“Soon,” the middle-aged clerk enunciated behind thick-rimmed glasses. “Please have a seat and we will call your name when we are ready for you, Ms. Decker.”

“Did you hear her?” I said to Mary Jane as I sat back down.

“I did. She was a little condescending to you. I don’t like that,” Mary Jane scooted towards the end of her seat, like she was going to get up. “I want to say something to her.”

“No, please, don’t. I don’t like to cause a scene.”

“Don’t let people talk to you that way. You asked a simple question and she gave you attitude. Not cool in my book.” Mary Jane sat back in her seat. “I won’t say anything.”

“Tuck Decker,” a nurse called from behind swinging doors.

“I’ll be right here when you get out,” Mary Jane promised, grabbing a magazine from the table next to her.

Mary Jane Sweet was, quite possibly, an angel.