Legacy (2 page)

She could hear Wes messing with the bike, and she hoped that he and Mr. Roush would simply go without seeking her out. Surely, they would put Buck back inside and just leave her in peace.

She curled onto her side, listening. The sound of clicking gears crept under the door, and it was so easy for her to imagine Michael at home, getting ready to go out for a ride.

The house had grown so quiet without him.

Corinne closed her eyes and let herself pretend just for a moment. Sleep would come again, and perhaps her dreams would be merciful.

Chapter 2

C
orinne’s bedroom door slammed, leaving Wes standing there like a dick.

He had fucked up this little mission about as much as he possibly could, and he stared at his best friend’s bike, unsure what to do next.

Wes touched the black grips on the bike’s handlebars, feeling the worn places where Michael’s hands had left their mark.

“I’m letting you down, man,” he murmured, frowning.

Given the options, leaving the bike wouldn’t help anyone, so Wes lifted the feather-light Pinarello out of the stand and guided it from the room. He glanced at Corinne’s door as he crept down the hall, grateful that he couldn’t hear the telltale rush of sobs that had met him earlier.

When Mr. Dan had told him about his plans to collect Michael’s clothes, Wes had thought it would be the right time to ask about the bike. Considering how much Corinne had bitched about Michael’s racing, he figured she’d be okay with him taking it.

But seeing her clutching Michael’s red and white helmet and crying made Wes feel like an asshole.

He walked the bike through the living room and let his eyes take in the sight. It was pretty obvious that Corinne was in bad shape. Guilt, thick and mealy in his gut, sickened him.

Outside, Mr. Dan had loaded the last of the boxes into the back of Mrs. Betsie’s station wagon, and Wes wheeled the bike to his truck parked along side it.

“Need a hand?” Mr. Dan offered, eyeing the bike with sadness.

“No, sir. I’ve got it,” he said, securing it on the mount behind his tailgate.

Mr. Dan rested his arms on the bed of the truck and watched.

“It’s good to see you, Wes. You should come by the house,” he said, not meeting the younger man’s eyes. “Betsie would appreciate it.”

“How is Mrs. Betsie?” Wes asked, wincing as another measure of guilt filled his stomach. Still, Michael hadn’t asked him to look after his parents; he’d asked him to look after his girl.

Mr. Dan shrugged.

“How are any of us? She’s managing, I guess,” he said, clearing his throat. “Claire and the kids come by a lot. That helps.”

Wes watched him struggle, but no words came to his aid to help his friend’s father.

“We’ve invited Corinne to come for dinner a few times,” Mr. Dan continued, glancing back at the house. “I guess she’s not up for it.”

That’s an understatement,
Wes thought.

“Still, we want you to know that both of you are welcome at the house. Anytime.” Mr. Dan looked him in the eye then. “The two of you loved him so. You’re just as much his family as we are. It doesn’t make much sense for each of us to miss him alone.”

Wes nodded, and both men went through the pantomime of looking at their shuffling feet, swallowing hard, and sniffing.

When he could, Wes spoke first.

“I think I’m going to hang here for a while,” he said, nodding towards the house. “It looks like Corinne could use some help in there.”

Mr. Dan nodded and smiled the sad smile he’d given out since they’d arrived.

“Good. I’m glad to hear that...Thank you.”

He offered his hand to Wes, and they shook firmly.

“Tell Mrs. Betsie I said hello, and that I won’t be a stranger,” Wes said, resolving then to make it the truth. Spending an hour or two at Sunday dinner with the Roushes was a hell of a lot better than being with his own parents, and he owed Michael’s family more than just an occasional Sunday dinner. He didn’t want to count the number of times he’d ducked out at Michael’s house as a kid just to get away from the battlefield of his own.

Mr. Dan got into his car, and Wes called Buck to him. The dog listened without hesitation, as usual, and it made Wes smile. Michael had done an awesome job training that dog. Wes remembered the time when Buck was just a few months old, and Michael had taught him to sit still while he asked Wes to place a treat on Buck’s nose. The pup had been hyper-focused on that dog biscuit, but he didn’t so much as blink until Michael gave him the word to flip the treat into his mouth.

“Come on, Buck. Let’s go find you a treat.”

Wes opened the door slowly and let Buck bound in. Corinne was not in the living room, so he stepped inside and quietly shut the door behind him. A glance in the hall told him that she was still in her bedroom, so he headed to the rear of the house toward the kitchen.

“Jesus,” he hissed upon taking it in. Dirty dishes filled the sink, and the trash can overflowed in the corner. Buck was already waiting for him by the pantry, wagging, fully expecting the treat he’d been promised. Wes found a near-empty box of Milk Bones, and Buck scrambled into a sit, head high, ready for his snack.

Wes reached into the box and came up with the second to last biscuit.

“Wait for it,” he said, remembering Michael’s commands. Buck’s frame seemed to stiffen as he stared at the treat, but it was as though his whole body vibrated with barely-contained energy.

Wes slowly lowered the treat until it met the dog’s nose, and he balanced it there before removing his hand.

And then he waited. Just as Michael had.

“Take it!” The words had scarcely left his lips before Buck flipped up the treat and caught it in canine triumph.

“Good boy,” Wes praised, petting Buck’s head. “Good boy.”

Wes straightened up and surveyed the kitchen again. The trash had to be emptied before anything else could be cleaned up. He smashed down the overflowing pile until he could tie off the top of the bag and then carried the trash out the front door and to the bin. He’d be sure to take the garbage up to the street so Corinne wouldn’t have to do it later.

Back inside, he put an empty bag in the trash can and set about picking up. Napkins, paper plates, newspapers, and take out containers lined the counters and showed up here and there on the floor of the kitchen and the living room. But everywhere—
everywhere
—Wes found wadded up tissues. They were in the couch cushions and on the coffee table. They were on the kitchen counters and the windowsill. There was even one on the microwave.

His guilt was quickly becoming a living thing within him, and he feared it would soon learn English and tell him off.

Wes tossed the last tissue into the garbage and went to the sink. He plugged the drain, squirted Dawn all over the pile of dishes in the basin, and turned on the hot water.

Michael had been unconscious for two days after the accident. The doctors had not really expected him to live through the first night, even after the surgery to stop the internal bleeding. But he had. And although Wes had gone to the hospital every day, they only had two conversations entirely alone, and in the last one, Michael told Wes he didn’t think he’d make it, and he asked his last favor.

“But she hates me,” Wes countered.

“Not really,” Michael rasped, attempting to talk past the pneumonia that had developed from his broken ribs, punctured lung, and the immobility from the compound fractures in both legs.

Wes had to sit close to the bed even to hear him clearly. Michael looked gray and waxy, and when he’d told Wes that he needed to plan for the worst, Wes wanted to cover his ears. But the look in Michael’s eyes made him listen.

“She does,” Wes protested. “She thinks I’m a shallow man whore.”

Even in gruesome pain and facing death, Michael remained Michael, and a half-smile claimed his face.

“And you aren’t?” he teased. Wes rolled his eyes. Did sleeping with a few of his clients make him a man whore? Only one of them was married.

“She thinks I’m selfish.”

“Case in point,” Michael said, trying to draw a long breath and wincing. “This isn’t about you.”

“She’s never glad to see me,” he pointed out. A look of disappointment crossed Michael’s eyes, and Wes backtracked, grasping for things to say. “I mean...she’s awesome, Mike, don’t get me wrong. Corinne’s smart...and feisty...and talented, and I can see that you’re crazy about her, and all, but you’ve got to stick around because there’s nothing Corinne’s ever going to want from me.”

“I
want
to stick around,” Michael said, and with those words, Wes finally caught the desperate sadness his best friend felt about the prospect of losing his own life. “But if I can’t...I need to know that you will look after her.”

“Okay,” Wes said, awestruck. “I promise.”

“She hasn’t had it easy,” Michael confided. “And it’s not like she has tons of friends.”

What a surprise.

“I get it. Just get better so you can look after her yourself.”

But Michael hadn’t gotten better. Blunt abdominal trauma led to infection. Infection led to sepsis, and his internal organs began shutting down. Michael died four days after Wes agreed to watch out for Corinne.

And he’d done a crap job of it.

Still, it wasn’t like she’d made it easy. At the funeral, they’d sat next to each other behind Michael’s family—his parents, his sister Claire, and her husband Elton. Corinne had worn this little black hat with a veil as though she were above having people see her cry.

But she did cry. Quietly. Constantly. She’d held onto her sister Morgan at the cemetery, and when they’d lowered Michael’s casket into the ground, Corinne’s legs sort of buckled, and Wes reached over and grabbed her by the elbow to keep her up.

Through the veil, she’d cut him a murderous glare and yanked her arm from his grip. Wes had stepped back like he’d been burned and looked at Morgan in wide-eyed confusion. Corinne’s sister just shook her head, resigned to Corinne’s weirdness.

Bitchiness,
Wes amended the memory in his mind as he rinsed the last glass.

He dried and put away all the dishes and wiped down the counters. He looked around the kitchen, wondering if Corinne had any food on hand. The pantry revealed a few cans of tuna, three packages of Top Ramen, and a can of green beans. The plastic container that held Buck’s Iams looked like it would cover about three more days.

The fridge was grim.

A rust colored head of lettuce in a Ziplock bag sat next to a container of moldy and blackened finger sandwiches that Wes was pretty sure came from the funeral. The one carton of milk in the fridge was dated late December.

Wes dumped everything into the trash, leaving only condiments and Michael’s Abita Ambers.

“I could sure use a drink with you, man,” Wes mumbled as he headed outside with a second bag of trash.

Buck followed him this time and found a tennis ball in the yard as they brought the trash up to the street.

“Wanna fetch?”

Buck answered by jumping backwards in the direction of the back yard with the ball in his mouth.

“Let’s go.”

As they made their way to the gate, Buck bounded back and forth from the closed gate to Wes about four times, seeming to try to show him the way to the ball-throwing wonderland and simultaneously asking Wes why he was taking so long to get there. He laughed at the dogs antics and pulled the gate closed behind them.

Buck immediately ran for the steps off the back porch and dropped the ball. Wes could almost see Michael sitting there on the top step, drinking a beer after a ride.

“Oh, man,” Wes muttered, bracing for the memories.

A 60-mile ride up past Grand Coteau. Nearly four hours on the bike. A Saturday afternoon in October. He and Michael were on their second beer, throwing the ball for Buck, when Corinne came out of her sunroom—the little space behind the kitchen that she’d converted to a studio—arms splattered with paint. She stepped onto the porch, smiling, telling Michael to light the pit for burgers and surprising Wes with an invitation to stay.

“I guess she wasn’t always terrifying,” Wes told the dog. Buck tilted his black head at Wes in seeming confusion before nudging the tennis ball closer to Wes’s feet.

He threw the ball until Buck’s pink tongue nearly stretched down to the dog’s elbows, and then him pushed himself off the steps.

“C’mon. Let’s go make sure you have some water in the kitchen.”

Out of habit, Wes climbed the porch and headed to the sunroom door, but it surprised him when he found it unlocked. It really shouldn’t have been unlocked. Michael’s—Corinne’s house was in the Saint Streets, at the end of St. Joseph near the old Lourdes Hospital. It wasn’t a
bad
neighborhood, really—full of UL students and faculty—but it was only about a 15-minute walk across University Avenue to one of Lafayette’s poorest and roughest neighborhoods. And there was always plenty of foot traffic.

She knows better,
Wes thought, pushing his way into the sunroom.

“Holy shit.”

At first, Wes thought someone had come in through the unlocked door and trashed the place. Tubes of paint, some sealed and some ruptured, covered the floor. Brushes of all sizes had been flung around the room. One of the larger easels lay sprawled on the floor, its canvas face-down on the ground beside it.

Buck cautiously stepped inside, sniffing the burst paint tubes that had dried in large globs, and Wes surveyed the scene for a moment. Other than the mess on the floor, the room looked as he remembered, canvases of finished pieces, mostly portraits, hung from one wall. Fresh canvases were stacked against the bench seats that lined the windows, and paintings that should have been ready to deliver to galleries or clients stood shoulder to shoulder by the door that led to the kitchen. But these—and all of the others—sat under a fine layer of dust.