“Does the moon fuck you, too, or just watch?”
“Liam!”
“Is boiling lobster part of it?” I asked.
“All right, Liam!” Tria suddenly shouted as she stood up. “You are either going to stop with the crass remarks, or you are going to shut the fuck up. Do you hear me?”
God, I loved her temper.
Raising an eyebrow at her, I leaned back on the couch and crossed my arms over my chest without a word. She seemed to understand my answer, so she sat back down and turned to Nikki.
“I have to admit this isn’t a ritual I know a lot about,” Tria said.
I had to squeeze my lips together to keep quiet.
“It takes place up on the hill near the clearing in the trees,” Nikki said. “You remember the one?”
“Yes, I know it,” Tria said. She glanced at me sideways but quickly looked away again. “There are a lot of ceremonies held there.”
“I’ll be in the center,” Nikki continued, “and all the women of the community will stand around me in a circle with their husbands behind them. The single men stand farther behind, either near their mothers, or sisters, or some other woman who is there to represent them.”
Nikki paused for a moment to collect herself.
“Leo will start the ceremony with an offering, and then…and then Brandon goes first.”
“Ultimately, it will still be my child,” Brandon said. “So it starts with me.”
This time I had to ball my hands into fists and only barely resisted the urge to muffle myself with a hand in my mouth.
“If Brandon had any male relatives, they would go next,” Nikki explained. “Since he doesn’t, it will go by the men who have already fathered the most children, and then by age—oldest to youngest—of the men without children.”
Tria looked down at her hands and nodded.
“And you’re really going to do this?”
“It’s our way, Tria,” Brandon said in a cold voice. “Maybe you should remember that.”
“Careful.” I growled under my breath.
Brandon glanced at me before looking back to Tria.
“We have to do it for the tribe,” he said. “We don’t have to like it, but it’s our decision.”
“Nikki?” Tria turned to her friend.
“Well, the good news is,” Nikki said with a half smile, “that I’ll be fairly drugged up the whole time. Makes everything a little easier on me.”
Tria’s eyes met my questioning ones.
“Peyote,” she said simply. “It’s used in a lot of the rituals.”
“You ever do it?” I asked. My hands were starting to shake, but I locked them into fists to keep them still.
“Yes,” she replied but didn’t elaborate.
Nikki told us about a few more details of the ceremony and how Tria was mostly to be there for her afterwards. She didn’t go into the details about what they were going to do, only that I wasn’t invited.
“Can he stay here?” Tria asked. “I mean—while you and I get the arrangements made?”
Nikki looked quickly to Brandon, who just scowled at her.
“They came all this way,” she said to him.
He turned to glare at me for a minute, then got up off his chair and headed for the kitchen.
“Fine.” He grumbled as he walked away. “But he’s bringing beer.”
“I’ll buy it,” Tria said as she looked over to me. I knew what she was saying—that Michael would be buying it. I just shrugged.
The two women continued talking, the conversation turning to people they knew in town and what Tria was going to wear to the ceremony. I took the opportunity to sneak outside for a smoke. I stood on the little porch and leaned on the slightly slanted railing, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke into the misty air. As I stood there, the mist turned to steady rain, so I took a step back to make sure I was completely covered by the roof of the porch.
I heard a sound to my left and glanced over to watch Brandon open and close the front door quietly. I looked back out into the dirt driveway and watched the potholes fill with water from the rain.
“Could I have one of those?” he asked.
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, trying to figure out just what the hell he was doing, but the request at least seemed genuine. I grabbed the pack out of my back pocket and pulled one out. I handed it and the lighter to him, and Brandon lit up. He coughed a couple of times, which made me smirk.
“I don’t really smoke anymore,” he said.
As if I couldn’t tell.
He took a couple more puffs to get used to it and then tried inhaling again. He handed the lighter back to me with a quick thanks and stared out into the rain.
“So, how does this work?” I asked, partially because I was curious but also because I felt like being an asshole. “You stand outside in the rain and watch guys fuck your wife or what?”
He tensed, and I felt my body react the same way in a natural, defensive gesture.
“No,” he said through clenched teeth. “It’s a sacred ceremony.”
I tried to keep myself from snorting out loud, but I failed.
“Never heard a gang bang called sacred before.”
“You know,” he said as he turned toward me, “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Well, you are right there,” I agreed. “I wouldn’t let anyone lay a hand on Tria—not for any reason.”
“It’s not the same at all,” he said. “It’s not like we’re…fuck it. You don’t get it, so there’s no point in talking about it.”
“So why don’t you enlighten me?” I suggested as I tried to hold my sarcasm at bay. “Go ahead and justify this shit, if you can.”
Brandon sighed and took a drag on the cigarette. He seemed to be getting the hang of it.
“We’re dying,” he said quietly as smoke curled around his long hair, “in a very literal way. Every year we lose more people to death than we gain from births. If we don’t do something about it, we will cease to be. Beals and our way of life would be no more.”
“It’s because of the fucking inbreeding, you know.”
“I know enough,” he said with a nod. “It was one of the reasons I went to school in Jonesport. They were offering a course in genetics. We do look outside the community to strengthen the gene pool, but it’s not that simple. There are very few people who aren’t born to this life that want to embrace it. We’re simple.”
“You mean you’re poor,” I corrected.
“That, too.” Brandon moved a couple of steps away, which allowed me to relax a little. “That’s why people like Tria are so important to us. She may not have been born here, but she grew up here. She understands us better than other outsiders.”
“That’s a crock of bullshit,” I said.
He stared at me through narrowed eyes but did not reply.
“Did you entice all the lovely ladies with promises of orgies?” My sarcasm came out again at full throttle.
“This isn’t what I want, you know!” he shouted back. “If there was another option, don’t you think I’d take it? Do you think I want her to have to go through this?”
“I dunno. Maybe you get off on it.”
“Fuck you! Like you’re any better than us.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But I wouldn’t put up with this shit.”
“I suppose I should be impressed that you hit people for a living.” Brandon sneered. “Like hanging out in some crappy bar pummeling people is something you can consider a long-term goal. You gonna support a wife on that? You gonna tell your kids ‘It’s okay, it’s the good sort of beating people up—and they’re asking for it’?”
“Kiss my ass! You don’t know a fucking thing about what you are saying, so shut your goddamn mouth.”
He laughed.
“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” he said. “You don’t know anything about us, but you think you can stand there and judge me. I don’t know why I should be shoc
ked that doing the same to you pisses you off.”
There was something deeply flawed in his logic, I was sure, but I couldn’t come up with exactly what it was. It did make me wonder what it was like to be in his shoes. I was certainly familiar enough with the idea of family expectations weighing on your conscience. The main difference was that when push came to shove—I got the fuck out. He was going to stay here and put up with it.
“If you don’t like this shit, why do you stay?” I asked.
“A lot of reasons,” Brandon replied. “My family has been here for generations, just like almost everyone else around here. We’ve been brought up to listen to the council leader and do as he says.”
“Who’s that?”
“Leo Harrison,” Brandon said. “He’s Keith’s father. Keith will take over for him when he retires.”
“Oh, that will make thing so much better!” I didn’t try to hide the sarcasm.
“If you think Keith is fucked up, wait until you meet his father.”
“Will I want to hit him?”
“Maybe.” Brandon laughed. “He’s only got one leg though, so it wouldn’t go over well.”
“What happened to the other one?”
“Fishing accident,” Brandon said with a shrug. He didn’t give me any more details. “He pretty much runs this community with an iron crutch.”
He finished the last of the cigarette, stubbed it out on the bottom of his shoe, and tossed it into a metal bucket at the edge of the porch. There were a couple of cigar nubs in there, too. I did the same with mine and then followed him back inside the house.
Tria looked at us as soon as we walked in together. She took one glance at me and then quickly appraised Brandon’s condition, likely looking for bruises or busted lips. I gave her a look, and she blushed as she looked away.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who was ready to call it a day. Nikki excused herself to go collect blankets, and Brandon poked around in the kitchen, claiming he had something to do. As far as I could tell, he was rearranging the silverware drawer.
I might have felt bad for them both if it wasn’t for…
Nah—I did feel bad for them.
Nikki brought over some blankets and pillows and then danced back and forth on her feet before speaking.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I wasn’t expecting two. Even if I was, I’m not sure where I’d put you.”
“I’m fine on the floor.” Before Tria could protest, I placed a couple fingers over her lips. “Don’t argue; just take the couch.”
She nodded. I removed my fingers, and Nikki placed worn sheets, blankets, and pillows on the couch for Tria. She gave me a thick blanket for more padding, and I arranged it on the floor next to the couch. Nikki and Tria said their goodnights, and the couple headed to the second RV and what I assumed to be their bedroom.
There was a nosy little part of me that wondered if they were going to have sex tonight. Maybe that “one last hurrah” before she gets passed around.
I shuddered.
“So, you didn’t talk her out of it?” I asked.
“No,” Tria said. “She doesn’t want to be talked out of it. She wants a baby. This is the way she plans to get it, and I have to respect that.”
“Respect the unrespectable?”
Tria dropped down onto the floor near the edge of the couch and crossed her legs.
“It’s no different than if she were doing the opposite.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“I mean,” Tria continued, “if she wanted to not have a baby instead of wanting to have one. I don’t approve of abortion, but if my friend decided she needed one…well, I would help however I could. It wouldn’t be something I would choose for myself, but it’s her decision. I have to honor what she chooses to do. That’s what friends are for.”
“Fucked up,” I muttered for the hundredth time.
I moved the plastic chair, newspapers, and various other crap on the floor and sat down next to Tria with my back leaning against the edge of the couch. My ass hit the floor with a bit of a twinge, and I was reminded again of how uncomfortable I had been on the motorcycle. I stretched my legs out and flexed my ankles until my backside loosened up a little.
“Did you and Brandon have a nice talk?” Tria asked. There was a little table next to the couch that must have been intended as a nightstand because there were two good-sized drawers in it. Tria was taking stuff out of the bag and putting it in the drawers. “You were out there a long time with him.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, ignoring her question. I pointed my finger back and forth between the bag and the nightstand drawer.
“Putting things away,” she said with a shrug.
“You’ve been in the apartment for a month, and you’ve kept most of your shit in your suitcase,” I told her. “But here you put everything away. You did that in the hotel, too.”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes and just shrugged again, which pissed me off.
“You go on about how I won’t say anything,” I grumbled. “Maybe it’s time for you to talk.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye but didn’t stop taking things out of the Gorgon’s Gunnysack and placing them in the drawer.
“You don’t think that’s a little incongruous?”
“I think you using the word incongruous is incongruous.”
“Nice.” I reached up and scratched at the back of my head. “How about me using the word double standard?”
“That’s two words.”
“Well, at least my math sucks, huh? Does that fit better with your impression of me?”
She stopped shoving things into the drawer and seemed to slump a bit.
“I know this is temporary,” Tria said. She waved her hand in the direction of the open drawer. “I’ll put these things in here, and then in a couple of days or so, I’ll take them back out and go home. Same thing with the hotel.”
She paused and fiddled with the strap on the bag. She took a deep breath, licked her lips, and then continued.
“But at the apartment…” She paused again to consider her words. “Everything is different there. I don’t even know what to call it—your apartment, my apartment, our apartment—nothing seems right, so it’s just the apartment. You call it that, too.”
“I do?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“Right now it just feels surreal,” she continued. “Like I’m going to wake up at some point and figure out that leaving Beals was all a dream.”
“More like a nightmare,” I retorted. “I mean, where you left was the nightmare. Whatever. That didn’t come out right.”
“It wasn’t,” she said. “I know you’ve mostly heard the bad stuff, but there are good people here. They’re all kind of like a big family. They take care of each other, and they took care of me. I miss it.”
That comment sent a chill over my skin.
“You’re making a new home,” I told her. “Isn’t that what you want?”
I hoped it was.
“Yes,” she said. “And I don’t want to come back, but I still miss parts of it. Nikki especially. She always makes me feel welcome here.”
“And I don’t,” I said.
“I didn’t say that.”
I reached over and placed my hand on the side of her face. I circled the edge of her jaw with my fingers. I had no idea what the right things to say were—I just knew I didn’t want her to feel like she wasn’t welcome where we lived now.
“Unpack your things,” I whispered. “I want you to stay there.”
Her teeth worried her lip, and she continued to look off to the side. I moved my head over until I was in her line of sight.
“I want you to stay there,” I repeated.
“Even if I don’t have sex with you?” she asked.
“Why do you keep harping on that?”
“Because it’s what yo
u want,” she replied. She moved her head away, effectively pulling out of my grasp. “You said it yourself—you don’t do relationships. You’re in it for the sex, and you aren’t getting any.”
If she had yelled it at me, I would have found it hot, but the way she said it—so quiet, and tired, and defeated—it just made my chest clench instead.
I was never one to pry into someone else’s psyche, but I needed to understand.
Chapter 22—Reveal the Past
“Why are you doing this?” I asked her. “Didn’t we talk about this before?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But when Michael said…when he just assumed I was bought and paid for…it just made me realize the people who have known you the longest probably know better than I do.”
“Fucker,” I snarled. “I should have kicked him while he was down for saying that shit to you.”
“It’s true though, isn’t it?” She turned her eyes to me, and my chest tightened up again.
“No,” I said, “it isn’t. And beyond that, Michael doesn’t know me. None of them do.”
“Well, I don’t know you either,” Tria said. The venom had crept back into her voice. “You don’t tell me anything about yourself.”
“You know everything important.” I shrugged. I reached over to try to take her hand, but she pulled away again.
“How you got to where you are,” Tria said, “is important. I want to know, Liam. I want to know what happened to you and why you are the way you are.”
“How am I, exactly?”
“Cold,” she said without hesitation.
“That’s not what you say at night,” I replied as I wiggled my eyebrows.
“You see?” Tria jumped right back into it. “It’s shit like that. I say something that you should consider insulting, and you respond with a half-assed joke instead of being pissed about it, or upset, or whatever. You’re indifferent to everything around you, and I want to know why.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why does it matter?”
Tria’s chest rose and fell with her breaths as she tilted her head to look at me.
“I need to know how I can fit into this,” she said. “I can’t figure that out if you don’t tell me anything. If I can’t figure it out, well…”