face. The sound of his brief laugh warming my insides just as much, if not more than the whiskey.
He pulled me back in close and continued, “I went over to her place one day. She was always asking us to help her out with the garden and the trash and fixing light bulbs and shit, and honestly, I didn’t mind. I felt like I mattered when she told me to cut my nails or showed me the proper way to place a napkin on my lap when I ate, or rolled her eyes when I belched at the table.” His smile reached his eyes as he recalled that day. “On this one day, I went into her kitchen and there was an industrial-sized box of condoms on the table. Grace was sitting there with one of those green label makers in her hand, turning the dial and humming to herself. When she was done, she peeled off the label and slapped it on the box and handed it over to me.”
“What did it say?”
Bear laughed. “It was my name in big bold letters and under it she’d written BECAUSE MAMA GRACE CAN WAIT FOR GRANDKIDS A WHILE LONGER.”
It was my turn to laugh.
“She told me that she wasn’t a spring chicken, but that she was a pistol back in her day and that she knew what went on out there in ‘that club of yours,’” Bear said, attempting to mimic Grace’s voice and failing miserably. I passed the bottle back to him.
“She sounds amazing,” I said, trying not to engage the tear threatening to spill from the corner of my eye.
“She was amazing,” Bear said softly, staring at the dead TV screen across the room.
“Too bad you lied to her about the condom thing,” I said, feeling his smile against my hair.
“I never lied to Grace about that. Or about anything. I always wrapped up, every single time.” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and pull back to look at Bear’s face, who I’d have sworn would be laughing hysterically at his lie, but instead, he was sitting there straight faced. “I mean it, Ti. Never forgot a single time until you, and honestly, it wasn’t about forgetting. I needed to be as close as possible to you. I needed you to feel every single inch of what I was giving you,” he said, his voice dropping a couple octaves, making my skin come alive with awareness. “Still need to.”
“We should probably talk about what would happen if—” I started, but Bear cut me off.
“Ain’t nothing to talk about. Shit sucks right now because things are so uncertain with the Bastards, but Ti you gotta know that you carrying my kid ain’t gonna make me run. I’m a grown man. It’s not like I don’t know what can happen. What will happen if we keep going like this.” He tipped my chin up to him. “I want to keep going like this. I like the idea of you all fat with my kid.”
I playfully pushed on his chest. “She threatened me,” I announced, trying to change the subject and trying to get the hammering of my heart under control. The smirk on his face told me that he saw right through me, but he humored me anyway.
“What?” he asked, not sounding the least bit surprised.
I pushed my hair behind my ear. “Yeah, it was the first time I met her actually. We weren’t even an us then.”
“She threatened Ray too, back in the day. It’s a good thing. It means she liked you,” Bear said. He closed his eyes and sighed.
“Grace said if I hurt you she’d come after me,” I told him, “The way she said it, it still scares me.” The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
“Yeah, but babe we just came back from her funeral,” Bear reminded me. “No reason to be scared now.”
I shook my head. “No, you heard her in the hospital. There was something in the way she said it that made me think that even death couldn’t stop her from making good on her threat.”
“I think you might be right on that one,” Bear said, planting a kiss on my jaw.
“I think so too,” I said. The lamp on the end table flickered.
“Promise me you’re not going anywhere. It sucks that Grace is gone, but I can handle it, or I will be able to handle it, because I knew it would happen someday. But if something happened to you…” Bear paused. “I don’t know if I could…no, I know that I couldn’t.”
“You won’t have to. I’m not going anywhere,” I reassured him.
I made a promise and I’ll keep it. I will take care of him, I silently vowed to Grace.
I snuggled in closer to Bear who kissed me again, this time on my temple. I’d meant it. I’d take care of him with everything I had…or I’d die trying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Thia
Silver colored clouds interfered with the normally unrelenting rays of the sun. With the clouds came a few moments of relief from the constant sweltering heat. A light breeze flowed in through the open windows of King’s truck as Ray and I made our way to Grace’s house to pack her entire life into boxes we’d gotten from the back alley of the Quick Stop. “What the hell are they even doing in there?” I asked Ray. It’d been almost twenty-four hours since King and Bear locked themselves in his tattoo shop. Rumbles of laughter, crashing, banging, breaking, and all sorts of loud music could all be heard from the room. The smell of weed and liquor permeated from underneath the door.
“Nothing good for them. I’m pretty sure they have enough booze and other shit in there to last them a week.”
“A week?” I asked.
“Yeah, but they obviously don’t have a week.” Ray was right. Chop and the Bastards would be back in just a couple of days. Gus had called to let us know the MC had started their trek back from the Carolinas. The war was on its way. “At least they have each other.”
“Yeah, that’s why even though you showed up in bad shape, I’m glad you came because if you didn’t, Bear would still be out there somewhere when he belongs here, at home. With family. You brought him home,” Ray said. “And you should have seen those two when Preppy died. They locked themselves away for what seemed like forever. But in the end, they came out better for it. Not healed. Not whole. Just…better.” Ray paused. “I told the kids about Grace¸” Ray added, taking a sharp corner without bothering to use the breaks. I held on to the handle on the headliner above the window in fear that I might fall out, suddenly very glad I remembered to wear my seatbelt. “Sorry,” she said after noticing either my white knuckles or the look of fear in my eyes. “I just recently got my license.”
“You’re doing so good,” I lied, releasing my death grip on the handle and dropping back into my seat after we settled onto a straight patch of road. “How did they take it? The kids?” I asked, as I looked in the rearview mirror to make sure Wolf and Munch were still behind us. Bear may have been having his moment with King, but he didn’t like the idea of us going over to Grace’s unprotected, especially after what had happened with Tretch.
“King and I talked to them for a while,” Ray said, keeping her hands at ten and two. “But all they got out of it was that Grandma Grace won’t be around to play with them anymore.” Her eyes never left the road. “That alone was enough to set them both to tears. Took us three hours to get Max to settle down. Both her and Sammy wound up sleeping in bed with us.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, knowing there wasn’t much else I could say that would make the situation any better for her. “I don’t know how you do it. Managing three kids. It’s like you’re not even human.”
Ray flashed me a brief smile and parked the truck in front of a small white house that looked more like a little cottage with its little picket fence and white siding. “I’m not human,” she said, hopping out of the truck. “I’m a mom.”
We spent all afternoon at Grace’s house going through a lifetime of her things and packing them into boxes to either keep in storage or donate. I’d never been to her house before, so seeing thousands and thousands of rabbits stacked on every shelf and surface was quite a shock. “They were from her husband,” Ray explained, which was the least crazy explanation for having so many little glass eyes staring at you all day.
I was on a ladder, going through the higher kitchen cabinets and I was packing away Grace’s wedding china, which I knew was her wedding china because when I opened the cabinet door I was greeted with a label that said WEDDING CHINA.
I wrapped the long stemmed glasses and gold-rimmed plates in newspaper before placing them in boxes and filling the empty spaces and crevices with bubble wrap.
When I pulled the very last plate from the back of the cabinet, something taped to it caught my attention. I turned the plate around and found that it was a picture of a baby boy.
When I read the caption on the back I dropped the plate and it shattered into a million pieces, scattering all around the kitchen in a symphony of delicate porcelain bits. “Shit,” I said, hopping down from the ladder.
“You okay?” Ray shouted out from a back bedroom.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I grabbed the broom that had been leaning up against the wall in the hallway and swept the broken pieces of china into a dustpan. I set the dustpan down and sat down at the table. I sorted through and picked up the piece that still had the photo taped to the back and shook off the dust. Maybe I’d gotten it all wrong. Maybe it hadn’t said what I’d thought it had said.
But I wasn’t wrong. The caption underneath the picture was clear.
“Ray?” I called out, confused by what I’d stumbled upon. Maybe I’d misunderstood the story of how Grace and Bear met when Bear had originally told it to me. He could be very distracting. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d gotten the details wrong.
The little boy in the picture was still in diapers though, and I could have sworn that Bear had said—
“Yeah?” Ray shouted back from the end of the hallway where she was sorting out a linen closet.
“Do you know when Bear and Grace met? Like how old he was?” I asked.
“He was a teenager,” she said, coming into the kitchen with another box in her arms. She set it down on the kitchen table and grabbed the fat black marker from the counter. Ray labeled the box RABBITS PART-SEVEN and set it on top of the other rabbit numbered boxes already stacked in front of the refrigerator. “King and Preppy met Bear when they were fighting about stupid kid shit. They all got into some sort of brawl or something and then shortly after King introduced Bear to Grace. Preppy told me the story, although I’m pretty sure he embellished a bit because the way he told it to me was that after he kicked their asses, he made them apologize to him and buy him new pants. I don’t know about you but I don’t think Bear or King were much of the apologizing type.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” I agreed.
Ray leaned on the back of the chair and set a hand on her hip, cocking her head to the side. “Why?”
I held up the picture that was clearly marked ABEL. “If Grace met Bear when he was a teenager then why does she have a picture of him as a baby?” Ray snatched the photograph from my hands, knocking over a ceramic glass ballerina rabbit from the corner of the table. It shattered on the linoleum but neither one of us reacted to the sound of the second piece of Grace’s life that we’d broken.
“Maybe it’s not really him or something?” I asked, hesitantly. Ray pulled out a chair and took a seat next to me at the table, her mouth agape as she stared down at the smiling boy who was sitting on a checkered beach blanket under the shade of a blue umbrella. “Maybe it’s another Abel?”
Ray rolled her eyes. “Another Abel, with sandy blond hair and blue eyes that just happened to be lying around in Grace’s house?”
“Maybe?” Unsure of what other logical explanation there could be.
“Ti, what do you think this could mean?” Ray asked. She’d been using Bear’s nick name for me a lot lately, and despite the fact that when I was a kid every nickname I ever had made me twitchy, it didn’t bother me at all coming from her or Bear.
“Maybe Bear gave it to her, but then why would it be in her cabinet taped to the back of a dish?” I asked.
“There is no way. Grace would have no reason to hide that. She loved pictures almost as much as she loved rabbits. If this was a picture he’d given to her it would have been in a frame displayed next to a rabbit somewhere,” Ray said, turning the picture over in her hands.
“But then why?”
Ray shook her head. “I have no idea, but whatever it is it’s making my brain hurt,” she said, rubbing her temples. She reached into the back pocket of her shorts and pulled out her phone, snapping a picture of the Polaroid. “Put this in your pocket,” she said, handing the photo back to me. “I have a feeling that the boys don’t know anything about it either. I’m not going to call now and take them out of their pow-wow, so we will have to wait until tonight to show it to them. Grace wasn’t one to keep secrets. Her policy was always about honesty, which is why this is all so confusing.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so either, but it pains me to have to wait until later. My curiosity is on a level ten right now,” I admitted. Patience was never a strong suit of mine. Six months waiting for Bear didn’t help that.
“Mine too.” Ray stood up again, grabbing another empty box from the pile by the front door. “Although I think I may have to wait even longer to talk to King because lately he won’t let me get a word out before trying to impregnate me again. Chances are slim to none for meaningful conversation before he accomplishes that mission. He’s been knee deep in baby fever ever since Nicole-Grace was born.” There was a slight annoyance in her tone, but it sounded forced. “It’s like he’s not going to be happy until we have to build another house for all these kids, and I’d really like to at least have a wedding before he goes through with his plan of using my uterus as a clown car. Or better yet, turn twenty-one. That would be cool.”
I wagged my eyebrows. “Yet, I get the sense that you don’t really mind his methods all that much,” I said, pressing my lips together and trying not to laugh.
“No. His methods.” She sighed dreamily. “His methods are goooooood.” Ray looked at me straight faced before bursting out into laughter. “He has this way of making me give in to him, no matter what. He could ask me to do anything short of nuking a third world country and I’d be all, ‘mmmmm-kay.’ Makes me feel like an idiot.” Ray shook her head and used the corner of the box in her arms to point at me. “But hey! At least King wears shirts! I don’t know how you ever get anything accomplished around Bear. If King never wore a shirt, I’d stand less of a chance than I already do. I’d be in that house giving birth like the old lady who lived in a shoe,” she said, fanning herself with her hand. “On that note, I think I’ll go back and pack another box of bunnies.” She disappeared down the hall.
I took one last look at the baby in the picture before putting it in my pocket. I went back to the business of packing away Grace’s life. For the rest of the day, I couldn’t keep my mind off the photo or what it meant.
Grace may have kept a lot of rabbits in her house, but that day I found out that she was also keeping something else.
Secrets.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Bear
The last time King and I locked ourselves in a room and got fucked up for days was when Preppy died.
This time may have been for Grace but we had every intention of following through with the fucked-up part again.
“I don’t know how the fuck you expect me to cover that entire thing,” King said, blowing out the smoke he was holding and passing me the joint. He ran his fingertips over my biggest Bastard tattoo on my shoulder and scratched his head.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re good at this shit. You covered up Ray’s scar and you did that piece on Abby’s back. Get on it man. Don’t let me down,” I said, taking a hit.
“Do you even know what you’re gonna wanna cover it up with?” King asked, pulling at the skin on my shoulder like it would somehow change the tattoo into something he could work with.
“No and I don’t care. Fucking surprise me. Anything but a big dildo or a portrait of the fucking queen of England would be fine with me as long as this bullshit is gone,” I said.
King nodded, leaning in closer to again examine the largest of my Beach Bastards tattoos on my shoulder.
“All right, fucker” he said, leaning back. “I’ll come up with something.”
“Good, now do this.” I pointed to the much smaller sketch I’d just had him draw.
“Do I look like your bitch?”
I shrugged. “No, but you’re my tattoo bitch.”
“Call me that again and you might get that dildo after all.” King opened drawers in his toolbox and started pulling out his gloves, ink, and other equipment.
“Bad Habit,” by The Offspring was blaring through the speakers in the ceiling. As I waited for King to start, my eyes landed on something I hadn’t seen in a long time. “Fuck, I can’t believe you still fucking have that,” I said, pointing to the plastic hog head on the wall. “And I can’t believe you actually hung it up.”
King looked to where I was pointing and laughed, taking a long pull from the bottle of whiskey before setting it on the floor snapping on his black gloves. “I found it in the attic. Ray begged me not to hang it up until I told her the story behind it. Now it’s her favorite thing in here.” King adjusted the height of his stool and rolled back over to the table I was sitting on. “They say you have to pick your battles,” he said, looking back up at the hog’s head. I’m glad I actually won one for a change.
I laughed but talk of a battle had my mind going somewhere else. Somewhere not too far off. “We got three days before the war. A fourth of the soldiers that they have. You think we stand a shot?” I asked King, knowing he’d give it to me straight.
“I don’t know,” King said, tapping his gun into a small plastic