For You (The 'Burg Series) (65 page)

Colt’s eyes moved to a casket containing the body of a woman who lived half a life. Pressed to his side was a breathing woman who’d done the same. Both, he figured, in one way or another, did this because of Denny.

 
He lifted his arm from the back of Feb’s seat, curled his fingers around her shoulder and bent his head so his mouth was at her ear.

“Love you, baby,” he whispered, her head tilted back, her eyes caught his and then, with that February Owens light pouring out, she smiled.

* * * * *

Doc waited until after the funeral and everyone was walking to their cars from the graveside to make his approach.

Colt stopped Feb at the passenger side of the truck and waited for the old man to arrive.

“Colt, February,” Doc said when he made it, his face showing this wasn’t a friendly visit. He had something on his mind.

“Doc,” Feb smiled at him and Doc smiled back, then his eyes went to Colt.

“Let the dead dog alone, Doc,” Colt told him, he felt Feb’s body jerk in surprise at his side but he didn’t look away from Doc.

“I see, you two together, you worked it out. And you two here, I figure you found it in your hearts –”

“Nothin’ to find, Doc, let it lie.”

Doc stared at him then he looked at Feb then back at Colt before he said, “Boy–”

“She told you it was me,” Colt said.

Doc closed his eyes, opened them and said, “I know, man like you, even the man you were then, you’d –”

“She didn’t do anything to me, Doc. Let it lie.”

Doc got closer and his eyes slid to Feb and back to Colt and Colt knew what he was communicating.

Softly, he informed him, “The baby she had wasn’t mine.”

“Colt –”

“It wasn’t mine, Doc, let it lie.”

“She told me –”

“Let it lie.”

“Boy, you know now, I know you do, no denyin’ it, you got a son.”

“The baby was Denny’s.”

Colt watched as Doc took a step back, his face showing surprise.

“I reckon,” Colt went on, “she didn’t wanna tell you because either she was in denial herself or, if she told you she’d been raped, she expected you’d try to get her to report it, something she didn’t have the strength to see through. She picked me because she knew you’d let that slide and she picked Craig for the birth certificate because she wanted me and Feb to have no more harm. Now the bones are exposed Doc, let’s all let them lie.”

“I had no idea,” Doc whispered, pain stark in his voice.

“She didn’t want you to,” Colt told him.

“I coulda helped her.”

“We all could have, Doc, like I said, let it lie.”

“Rape?” Doc was still whispering but looking away, the pain now stark on his face.

Feb moved forward and gathered the old man in her arms and, to Colt’s surprise, he let her. He was old, that much was obvious, but he never acted it. Now he looked like a hundred years of life had settled in his soul.

“You couldn’t fix what you didn’t know was broken,” Feb said softly to him. “But you gave her the peace of mind she was askin’ for at the time.” She pulled back and looked at him before she asked, “And that’s a good thing, right?”

“Never easy livin’ with the knowledge that you could have done more, February.”

“Nope, you’re right,” Feb replied. “So you’ll have to live with the fact that you did what she asked, kept her secret, and, in a time when she was scared as hell, you gave her a little bit of feelin’ safe.”

Doc moved out of Feb’s arms and lifted a hand to pat her shoulder but his mind was active behind his eyes, sifting through memories, trying to figure out what he missed, where he’d gone wrong and what more he could have done.

Colt decided to put a stop to it. “Denny Lowe started to wage war awhile ago, Doc, with a lot of casualties along the way.” Doc looked at him and Colt continued. “None of us even knew he was doin’ it and comin’ out victorious. Don’t give him another victory, not standing yards from the grave of one he brought low. Amy wouldn’t want that for the rest of us left standin’. In fact, she died so that we could all let it go.”

Doc looked at him for a long time and he looked at him hard.

Then he said, “You were always a smart lil’ bugger.”

“Yeah, I think you mentioned that when I was about five and a fair few times since,” Colt told him.

Doc kept looking at him then he turned to Feb. “How’re you sleepin’, February?”

Feb moved into Colt, slid her arm around his waist and put her head to his shoulder before she whispered, “Sleepin’ good, Doc.”

Doc took them both in and said, “Two weeks ago, you asked me, I’da said I never thought I’d see this end for you two.”

“Drink it in,” Colt suggested, as he lifted his arm and curled it around Feb’s shoulders.

The pall on the day was lifting because the funeral was over, he was taking Feb to a home she was moving her shit into and he thought it was highly likely he had something to do with her sleeping well. All was not well with the world, but at least it was better.

Feb leaned forward and whispered again, this time loudly, “He’s very full of himself, Doc.”

“A good woman gives him her love, that’ll do that to a man, February,” Doc whispered back, also loudly.

Feb’s chin gave a startled jerk but Doc didn’t give her time to let his compliment sink in. He lifted his hand and then let it fall before he turned and walked away.

Colt watched him and saw his shoulders were drooped, his gait was slow and Colt knew his thoughts were heavy. He’d always liked and admired the man but this feeling grew watching Doc shoulder a dead burden that wasn’t really his. But, Colt thought, no good shepherd would let a member of his flock wander into danger without blaming himself for neglect, no matter if that flock was large and the lamb who wandered was acting out of his control.

Feb was watching him too as he got in his car, started it up and drove away.

She turned and looked up at him. “Do you think he’ll be all right?”

Colt reckoned Doc, being Doc, carried more burdens than anyone Colt knew because Doc collected them. Death for Doc would be a gift because, after, a man like him would be sitting right next to God.

“Yeah, he’ll be okay,” he answered Feb, tore his gaze from the road and looked down at his woman. “You need me to lift you into the truck again?”

She glanced around and then nodded. “But wait, like at the funeral home. I don’t want anyone to see you doing it.”

He wanted to hang out at a cemetery a lot less than he wanted to hang out and wait for all the cars to leave the funeral home, which was to say he didn’t want to hang out at all.
 

Therefore he picked her up, she gave a small, muted scream, grabbed onto his shoulders, he opened the passenger side door and deposited her in the seat.

“Colt!” she hissed, her eyes darting around.

He put his hand to her knee, gave her a firm squeeze and her eyes shot to his.

“Baby, let’s just get home.”

The anger budding in her eyes died away before she whispered, “Okay.”

Colt stepped back, slammed her door and headed to the driver’s side.

* * * * *

Feb went directly to the stereo while Colt went directly to the alarm panel to stop the beeping.

“Can I put on a CD?” she asked as she hit the overflowing CD cabinets around the stereo, cabinets that had been overflowing before but now he saw CDs stacked on top and at the sides and he made a note to buy more cabinets when this shit was over.

“You can make that the last time you ask if you can do somethin’ in this house,” Colt replied when he successfully stopped the beeping.

She turned and stared at him before asking, “What if you aren’t in a music mood?”

Colt started to the kitchen, shrugging off his jacket along the way, saying, “Feb, my ass is in a recliner, a game on or I’m watchin’ a show, the stereo is off. Other than that, you got free rein with music.”

She liked music, always did. When she was a teenager she drove Jack and Jackie up the wall, playing her music as loud as she did and as often as she did it. When she was in a car, you could always hear her coming. Even now, when she was forty-two, Colt heard her rock blaring from her car stereo speakers, she was known for it. And he’d seen her move her ass behind the bar when a song came on the jukebox that she liked. Hell, if he was honest, in the last two years he couldn’t count the times he fought the urge to hit the box and select Mellencamp’s “R.O.C.K. in the USA” or the Doobie Brothers’ “Jesus Is Just Alright”, two of a dozen songs he’d noticed she particularly liked, just so he could watch her move.

He swung his jacket over the back of a dining table chair when she announced, “There’s somethin’ you should know about me.”

He turned his head to see she was still standing by the stereo watching him.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve taken to listening to Gregorian chants. I find it soothing.”

Colt burst out laughing and went into the kitchen. She was so full of shit.

“I’m serious,” she called.

The girl he took to a Springsteen concert over twenty years ago, who screamed out every word to “Born to Run” and “Born in the USA” and the woman he’d seen not a month ago in her car with Jessie, both of their lips moving to Nickelback’s “Something in Your Mouth” while the car windows shook with the sound did not listen to Gregorian chants.

“You feel like somethin’ soothin’, baby, go for it,” he called back and stared at her mail.

He had to check in at the Station and it was likely she’d want to get to the bar but they needed to get her mail out of the way before they did it.

He heard Fleetwood Mac’s “Monday Morning” fill the room and he smiled. Gregorian chants his ass.

He’d pulled loose his tie so it was hanging around his neck, undone the top three buttons of was shirt and was sorting through what appeared to be mostly a big pile of junk mail when he heard her heels clicking on the tiles of the kitchen floor.

She had her hands to one of her ears and her eyes on the mail when she stopped beside him.

“Not feelin’ in the mood to be soothed?” he teased.

“‘Dreams’ comes on after this song, then ‘Rhiannon’,” Feb offered as explanation, setting her earring beside the mound of jewelry she left in the kitchen last night and she went for the other one.

“‘The Very Best of’?” Colt asked, watching her put the back on the earring and drop it next to the other.

“Yeah,” she answered, picking up a flier for something, flipping it back to front without reading it, then setting it aside.

“Stevie Nicks, I reckon, is more soothing then Gregorian monks,” Colt told her.

Her eyes came to his. “You called my bluff, babe. Now be a good sport.”

He returned his attention to the mail but he did it smiling.

She reached into the pile and pulled out a small package, a bubble wrap envelope. Colt watched it slide across the counter before she lifted it up. In that time he saw the postal stamp and he dropped the catalogue he was setting aside and nabbed the package.

“Colt –”

He looked at the stamp, shut his eyes and bit his lip.

“Colt.”

That time she said his name quieter and a tremor slid through it.

He opened his eyes and looked at her.

“Stamped Colorado,” he told her and she looked down at the package. “You want me to open it?”

Her arms crossed her front and she grabbed her biceps, like Cheryl, protective. She did this never tearing her gaze from the package.

“Feb –”

“Open it,” she whispered.

He did and he slid out of the bubble envelope something wrapped and taped carefully in layers of tissue. He tore it away, cautious to keep tissue around his fingers and he looked at a frame which held a picture of Feb with a man he’d only seen dead in crime scene photos, tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed, good-looking. They were standing behind a bar and she had her arms around his middle, her front pressed to his side. He had his arm around her shoulders, tight, keeping her close. She had her head tipped back, her long hair splayed along his arm and running down her back and her lips were pressed to the underside of his jaw but, even so, she was smiling. He was smiling too, big and broad, straight at the camera, a man who, by the expression on his face, had everything he’d ever need held tight in the curve of his arm.