Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water ) (19 page)

“Whoever did it must’ve known the suicide theory would wear thin after Donny.” He paused. “You gonna pull Etienne from one of those pockets?”

“I wish,” Prophet said. “You think something’s wrong?”

“Yes.” He took the envelope with his name on it, opened it quickly, and skimmed it. It was handwritten, and God yes, it was all there. Apologies for what happened under the bleachers. Apologies for their intentions that night in the bayou. Apologies for everything that happened afterward . . .

He glanced up at Prophet, who was watching him carefully but not asking any questions. “Etienne told you what this was?”

“Said it was an apology from Miles to you. Part of his making amends, as per AA. But he didn’t tell me for what, just said it had something to do with you guys when you were growing up. I think it’s time for you to put it all on the table, T.”

“Yeah.” He stared between Miles’s handwriting and Prophet. “What else aren’t you telling me?”

Prophet predictably cursed, “Fucking voodoo,” then, “Della said . . . rumor is that your fingerprints were found on knives at both scenes.”

Tom blinked.

“I tossed Miles’s house—there wasn’t any knife, T.”

“Like I’d be stupid enough to leave one behind.”

“Still doesn’t negate the fact that men are dead and that things are pointing to you. You sure those guys aren’t exes?”

He laughed hollowly. “Not even close. They made my life hell growing up. Things hadn’t improved when I came back as a deputy.”

“So the reasons you’d want them dead?”

“Too many to count.”

“Shit, T.” Prophet grabbed a soda, walked over to the bed, and sat down next to him. He popped the can open, handed it to Tom and asked, “What’s really going on here?”

Tom took a long sip before telling him. “
Bad loque
.”

“I’m supposed to know what that means?”

“I’m bad luck,” he managed.

“Well, yeah, I picked up on the translation, T. But I’m still alive.”

Tom raked a gaze over him. “Yeah. You broke the curse, Proph. Or I thought you did.”

“Jesus, Tommy. You can’t get rid of me that easily—haven’t you figured that out by now?”

Despite the trepidation in his gut at having to spill everything about his past in this parish that he’d never wanted Prophet to know, what Prophet said warmed him. He smiled, in spite of everything. “Starting to.”

“Good. Because staying away from me might’ve ensured we’d both be fine, but we weren’t happy. And I’d take happy over safe any day.”

“You did that already.” He set the soda down and played with the bracelet, unable to look at Prophet when he said, “I’m the seventh son of a seventh son.” And then he braced for the man’s reaction.

“Does that really mean something?” Prophet asked carefully.

“On the bayou, it does.”

“Is another alligator going to walk in here?” Prophet demanded.

“No wonder you couldn’t get a partner,” Tommy muttered, finally looking at him.

“Didn’t want,” he corrected. “Did. Not. Want.”

“Thanks for the reemphasis. Where I come from, we don’t get much schoolin’,” he said, deliberately slowing and drawing out his drawl.

Prophet didn’t say anything. His face was set into serious lines even though he’d tried to lighten the mood a little. “So it runs deeper than just the partner thing.”

Tom nodded. “Started before I was born.”

“That’s why your mom’s in that graveyard.”

“Yes.”

“I know there’s significance to the seventh son thing. It’s a big deal, isn’t it? I think there were some famous people who were seventh sons?”

“Yeah. Perry Como. Len Dawson.”

“So it’s a good thing, right?”

Tom laughed bitterly and threw his hands up. “Obviously, that depends on the circumstances. Depends on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you. And wait, you have six brothers?”

“I have six stillborn brothers,” he said, his throat tightening. He barely got out, “I’m built on the dead. Bad luck, Proph.”

Prophet put a firm hand on the back of his neck. “Not for me, Tommy. Just breathe, okay?”

Tom did that, because it was easy to follow Prophet’s orders, especially because they’d always kept him safe. When he’d bothered to follow them. “Sorry. Just hard to talk about.”

“You were punished for something that was completely out of your control.”

“Combined with the fact that I could see things, people were convinced I was bad luck. And I was. My mom, then our house burned down. Dad started drinking . . .”

“How is any of that your fault?”

“Because it can’t be proven that it’s not,” he said fiercely. “That graveyard is where they put the disgraces. I’ll be buried here.”

Prophet shook his head no, his eyes blazing as his free hand went to Tom’s.

Tom continued, “They say that the cemetery’s built on ancient ground. That it’s haunted.”

“Better than alligators,” Prophet said, and Tom felt the corner of his mouth pulling up into a grin despite himself.

“Asshole.” Tom twined his fingers through Prophet’s. “The bayou around the cemetery’s where kids in my day were taken for a sort of twisted version of an Outward Bound program.”

“As in, punishment?”

“Yes. Me and Etienne, Miles and Donny . . . we were sent in there together, but we were put in the cemetery, instead of outside of it. I know that was a special touch, just for me. It was supposed to be for one night.”

“What the fuck did was supposed to happen from that?”

Tom glanced at him, then looked straight ahead. “My dad told me, before he let the sheriff take me, that if I survived, I was bad luck. Only evil survived evil.”

“You tell me you believe that bullshit and I’ll have to kick your ass.”

“Someone tells you shit day in and day out, and a lot of it comes true . . .” He trailed off, then repeated, “A lot of it comes true.”

“You ever think about the fact that you help more people than you hurt?”

Tom’s head swam—he wavered between desperately wanting to believe Prophet and knowing he couldn’t. Not about this. “Etienne and I . . . I took him to hell and back.”

“He looked fine when I saw him,” Prophet pointed out.

“Etienne’s always fine. Like you.”

Prophet let that go and moved his hand from Tom’s neck, dropping it down to his shoulder, pulling him into a side embrace. Tom sagged against Prophet and stared into space. They were still holding hands. “Things got bad, Proph. Really fucking bad.”

“Before or after the Outward Bound thing?”

“It started before. And afterwards, everything was just so much worse. For me. For Etienne. Even for Miles and Donny.”

Prophet’s phone rang, and Tom didn’t need Della to tell him that Etienne was nowhere to be found.

Prophet waited, Tommy still pressed against his side, his hand slung over Tommy’s shoulder, and pictured the dreamcatcher tattoo under his palm. For once, he knew goading wouldn’t help—Tom would kill for that kind of distraction, and that’s precisely why Prophet wouldn’t do it.

Tom finally continued. “I knew the punishment existed. Everyone knew, but the thing was, no one ever admitted to being a part of it. It was a big stigma, you know? And I thought that maybe it was just a rumor started to keep us out of trouble. It was supposed to be like, an Outward Bound for fuckups. Sheriff would turn guys loose into the bayou, the west end. Had twenty-four hours to show up on the other side. It was supposed to make you a man.”

“Or kill you.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t help but know the bayou like the back of your hand when you grow up here. But not the cemetery—not as much. But I knew my way around it. Etienne did too, because he’d visit my mama’s grave with me.”

“So it was you. Etienne. And the two dead guys?”

Tom nodded. “Donny and Miles were fuckups. Etienne was there because he’d just come out to his parents—and the whole school.”

“Donny and Miles must’ve had a field day with that.”

Tom opened his mouth, then closed it. Pressed his lips together tightly, and Prophet shifted, because he needed to see Tommy’s face. “I’m here, T. Okay? Nothing you tell me’s going to change that.”

“You sure?”

“Is there anything I’d tell you that’d change it for you?” he asked before he could stop himself.

“No, Proph. No way.” Tom swallowed hard. “Jesus, is this what it took to get us here?”

“Wouldn’t have expected it to be easy.”

“Don’t think I don’t remember you have some sharing to do later,” Tom warned him, then cursed some in Cajun French before saying, “No lies, no half-truths. Starting from the beginning.”

He could’ve been talking about either one of them. But for right now, Tommy was the one telling the story.

“The four of us all went to the same small high school. Came up through elementary. Etienne and I weren’t friends with Miles and Donny—Etienne and I stayed to ourselves. Me, for all the reasons I told you, and Etienne because he had a fuck-you, in-your-face attitude.”

Prophet snorted. “Had?”

Tom smiled a little, even if it didn’t reach his eyes. “He’s toned it down a lot. He’s also been an artist for as long as I’ve known him. He has that kind of soul.”

Prophet didn’t want Tom thinking about any part of Etienne’s . . . soul. “You’re an artist too.”

“I draw a little.”

“I saw the originals of your tattoos at his shop.”

Tom’s expression shuttered, and he stood, putting distance between them as he gave up. “I don’t want to do this.”

“If I don’t know the background, I can’t help.”

Tom closed his eyes for a second, shoved his hands into the pockets of his old jeans and rocked a little on the balls of his feet. Then he stopped dead. “Miles and Donny . . . they tried to rape Etienne.” He cursed again, shook his head hard, but his gaze never left Prophet’s. “They
did
rape him, under the bleachers at the high school. He came out, but that’s not why they did it. It’s because he defended me, so it was the best way to teach
me
a lesson.”

Prophet’s throat tightened. He wanted to stand up and go to Tommy, but he didn’t want to break his momentum, so he stayed put as Tom drew in a shaky breath. “Etienne reported it. But no one did anything, not even Etienne’s parents. Della was the only adult who pushed the issue. The court wanted mediation—”

“Mediation?”

“Yeah. There wasn’t even talk of prosecution. But since Etienne wouldn’t drop it, and I wouldn’t either, that’s why we were sent on the Outward Bound thing—to work it out. See, if it’d been me they raped, it wouldn’t have mattered. But with Etienne, the sheriff had an image problem. Even though Etienne’s parents wanted him to drop it, he wouldn’t, and so they couldn’t just ignore their son’s wishes so blatantly like that. And then the sheriff couldn’t just sweep the complaints of the son of a judge under the rug—especially not if he ever wanted his cases before the court to get a fair shake. Didn’t matter that Etienne’s parents weren’t happy that he came out—weren’t happy that he was gay—even tried to tell him to stop ‘embarrassing himself.’ And even though Miles and Donny denied everything and Etienne didn’t go to the police or the hospital right away—hell, he didn’t even tell me until a couple of days later—the sheriff had to do something to put an end to all of it.”

“So sending you in together would accomplish what? I don’t get it—did they expect you all to come out friends?”

Tom shook his head. “Look, at the time, I didn’t know for sure. Figured maybe the sheriff told Miles and Donny to apologize, to beg Etienne to drop it. Or maybe he told them to threaten us into shutting up since we had no proof, and it turns out that was what he’d had in mind. But it didn’t matter which one it was, because sending us all in together would prove, once and for all, no matter how it turned out, that wherever I was, trouble followed. Not that the community needed proof of that. And Etienne’s parents thought it could make a man out of him.” Tom pulled his hands out of his pockets and ran them through his hair as he looked around at Etienne’s artwork on the walls. When he spoke again, his voice held a fierce edge. “Etienne was born a better man than anyone I knew. And fuck, we were fourteen—and holy shit, how can something that happened when we were fourteen haunt us for the rest of our goddamned lives?”

“All of this was why you’d never have won the sheriff’s seat,” Prophet said as the pieces fell into place.

“Yes,” Tom admitted.

“But you came back here after the FBI, knowing what you were up against. And you ran. Jesus, T, it’s like . . .”

“I’m my very own whipping boy?” he asked sardonically.

“You thought you deserved the punishment of trying to earn everyone’s respect.”

Tom hung his head, a silent concession to Prophet’s words. “Even Etienne told me to go the fuck away. Not because of what it did to him. But he knew what it did to me. So you were right when you called me my very own whipping boy when we first met. Pathetic, isn’t it?”

Prophet stood then, strode over to him, and put a hand under Tom’s chin. “No. What’s pathetic is that no one but Etienne and me could see that you’ve always been stronger than any of the people who tried to hurt you, physically and mentally. Your father. The people in this town. You had one safe place to turn—Etienne—but you were trying to save him too. And look at you now. No one else could’ve taken all that abuse. No one.”