Together always (3 page)

He turned his hand, squeezing Lily's fingers in reassurance, giving her a half smile. The uncertainty faded and she turned her attention back to her breakfast, her world safe again. Trace lifted his head and stared across the table at his stepfather.

Jed looked into the boy's eyes and his satisfied smirk faded, replaced by a hesitancy that even the bourbon couldn't drown. Trace's eyes were a cold, cold blue, too old, too controlled. He glanced away, reaching for the bottle that was never far from his side. He splashed another shot of bourbon into his glass, his lower jaw setting sullenly.

The boy had always been too old for his own good. From the time he was a toddler, he'd look at you with those cold blue eyes that seemed to see deep inside a body. He always seemed to see things that shouldn't be seen, know things you wished he didn't know. Too damned uppity. He'd told Ad-die time and again that the boy needed a good whipping to take some of the spirit out of him. In thirteen years of marriage it was the only time she'd ever shown any signs of a backbone. He'd never quite forgotten the look in her eyes when she'd told him never to lift a hand to her child.

He took a swallow of liquor, feeling it bum its way down his throat and settle in a warm pool in his stomach. Looking at Trace again through a haze of alcohol, Jed wondered if he'd imagined the cold threat in the boy's eyes. The liquor made it easy to believe he had.

Trace found it impossible to concentrate in school that day. His mind kept racing round and round, looking for some way out. There had to be a way to protect Lily. He had to find it.

The light snowfall two days before had melted, leaving the ground muddy. It sucked at your feet when you walked, threatening to strip off your shoes. The warm breeze that had melted the snow had shifted to a cold northerly wind. When he stopped into the gas station to get a candy bar for Lily, old man Hanover commented that it sure did look like they were going to get a real snowfall before long. Shaking his head, he edged closer to the electric heater. *'Goin' to be a real cold winter, I reckon."

Trace walked the rest of the way home, thinking about what winter might bring. With cold winds howling outside, there'd be few opportunities to escape Jed's surly drunken moods. He hunched his shoulders inside his thin coat, knowing that the wind that chilled him now was nothing compared to what January would bring.

He kept Lily in his room again that night. She accepted his suggestion with a trust that Trace found both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing that he didn't have to try to explain the unexplainable. And it was a curse in that it increased his feeling of responsibility.

He wedged a straight-backed chair under his door and crawled under the covers, only to lie awake staring at the door, waiting. He didn't know quite what he was waiting for. He couldn't believe that Jed would actually come into the bedroom while he was there. Still, sleep, when it came, was fitful and unsatisfying, leaving him more tired than rested the next morning.

Walking home from school that afternoon, he faced the fact that this was something he couldn't handle alone. He had to have help. The decision made, it seemed like providence when he found his mother alone in the kitchen. Jed wasn't home. He was either out on a job or out drinking— neither would do much for his mood. Lily was watching cartoons in the living room. It had been a long time since he'd gone to his mother for help, but she was his only hope.

"Mom? Could I talk to you about something?"

Addie started nervously, her eyes lifting from her mending for a moment to look at her son's face. She glanced away, her fingers plucking at a crooked stitch.

''What about, Trace?"

"It's about Lily. I'm worried about her."

"I don't know why. She seems to be settling in real well. Follows you around Hke a puppy, too. She's a pretty little thing, isn't she?"

"Yes, but that's not what I wanted to talk about." He hesitated, watching her thin hands weaving the needle in and out of one of his shirts, mending a ripped seam. He was torn between his love for Addie and his need to protect Lily. What he had to say was going to hurt his mother and surely

she'd known enough hurt in her life. Yet he couldn't stand by and let his stepfather destroy Lily.

*'It's about Jed, really."

Addie jerked, jabbing herself with the needle. A bright spot of blood welled on her finger, dripping onto the faded blue flannel of the shirt and disappearing into the fabric. She didn't move for a moment and Trace might have wondered if she'd heard him if it hadn't been for that single bright drop of blood.

*'Mom, he's-"

She broke, into his words, her voice holding an edge of panic. "I know you and Jed have never gotten along all that well. Trace, but he don't mean no harm. Jed has a lot of things on his mind—things we don't even know about. You got to be patient with him."

''Mom-"

''You know, I really think we're going to have to buy you some new shirts this winter. This old thing is about to give up the ghost. Maybe we'll go into town after the first of the year and see if we can pick up something on sale."

"Jed-"

"Don't you worry about Jed. I'll talk him into the money. He's not as bad as you think he is. Trace. Really he's not." Addie looked up, her eyes pleading with him, her fingers knotted in the old shirt.

Trace stared at her, feeling the last fragile illusions of youth break into a milHon fragments. There was a dull pain in his chest, and for a moment it was hard to breathe.

She wasn't going to help him. She couldn't.

The realization washed over him, bringing pain and a certain sharp relief. A part of him had known all along that this was how it was going to be. It was out in the open now. No more pretending. No more hoping. It was up to him.

In that moment he left the last traces of childhood behind. Looking at Addie, he saw her clearly and he couldn't

hate her. She had no strength left, nothing to give. Not to him, not even to herself. She couldn't help him protect Lily. He'd been foohsh to think she might. She hadn't been able to protect herself.

He saw his mother now through adult eyes. At thirty-five she looked like fifty. Her shoulders were hunched, her face was drawn. Her eyes, which had been such a bright blue when he was a child, seemed to have faded to a dusty gray, like an old woman's. He looked at her and felt a great pity.

Addie seemed to sense something of his feehngs. Faint color came up in her thin cheeks and she glanced down, her eyes on her fingers twisting aimlessly in the worn shirt.

*'It's okay, Mom. Don't worry about new shirts. I guess what I've got will see me through winter." He wasn't talking about shirts.

Addie's flush deepened, her mouth pulled tight with shame, but she only nodded stiffly, still not looking at him.

They sat there without speaking. Trace accepted her inability to help him but there was a part of him that couldn't walk away. He'd sat down in this chair still half a boy. When he got up, he'd have to shoulder a man's responsibility. He'd leave childhood behind forever. His thoughts didn't run so clear as that. He just knew he didn't want to leave his mother yet.

From the living room came the faint chaotic sounds of cartoon mayhem. On the stove a pot of watery beef stew bubbled. Where the steam from the pot met the chilled windows, a mist formed, shutting out the cold prairie. Addie made a few clumsy stitches in the shirt, her head bent over the work. Trace watched her, wishing things were different.

"You know, things would have been real different if your father hadn't died." Addie's hands stilled but she didn't lift her head. "I wish you could remember him. Trace. He liked to laugh. Nothing he enjoyed more than a good laugh."

Trace didn't say anything. It was so seldom she spoke of his father. He'd been barely a year old when Robert EHi-shane was killed in a car wreck. There was a faded picture in the cigar box where he kept his treasures and he'd worn the paper thin studying the image of a smiling man whose eyes seemed to laugh into the camera.

"You know, you have an uncle." Addie smoothed the flannel across her knee, her eyes on the aimless movement, at odds with the intensity in her voice. "He lives in Los Angeles, worked at Lockheed last I heard. Probably still there. Philip. I only met him once. He came to our wedding. Seemed like a good man." Her fingers smoothed imaginary wrinkles. "Los Angeles has a real nice climate. Your dad used to say we'd move there someday."

Trace sat very still. Now he understood why she'd brought up his father. It wasn't his father she wanted to tell him about. It was his uncle. An uncle in Los Angeles.

Lily couldn't stay in this place. He couldn't protect her forever. He'd known that, even while he hadn't wanted to consider the results of that knowledge. His mother, in her own soft way, was telling him how it was going to have to be. She couldn't deal with the problem head-on, but she knew something had to be done. And Trace would have to be the one to do it.

Lily slept in his room again that night. If she thought the situation was strange, she didn't say so. She curled up on his lumpy mattress, Isaiah cuddled against her, and fell asleep instantly, content that as long as Trace was there, all was right with her world. Trace only wished life could be so simple.

Jed had been drinking heavily at dinner, and just the memory of the way he'd watched Lily was enough to make Trace feel sick. How could Jed look at her like that? She was hardly more than a baby.

He stirred restlessly in the hard chair. There'd been something particularly ugly about Jed tonight. Twice he'd caught Trace watching him but he hadn't looked away. Instead, there'd been a sly challenge in his eyes, as if he knew he'd win sooner or later.

It was that look that had Trace sitting up in the old chair as midnight approached. The room was dark except for the moonlight that shone in through the open curtains. Outside, the prairie lay still and empty, at peace before winter howled down out of the north. But Trace wasn't interested in the moon-kissed scenery.

He was watching the door, his ears strained to hear any sound in the quiet house. His hands lay in his lap, loosely curled around the grip of an old Colt 38. It had belonged to his father, and on Trace's fifteenth birthday, his mother had given it to him. She'd given him the package after Jed left for work one morning and he hadn't needed to ask if Jed knew about the gift.

Trace's head bobbed, exhaustion winning out over tension. It was so late. Maybe he'd imagined the look in Jed's eyes. Maybe there was nothing to worry about. A floorboard creaked in the hallway, the sound loud in the quiet house. Trace's head jerked up, his eyes sharpening on the door. Another floorboard popped and he could suddenly feel the pulse in his temples.

It could just be the old house settling. But then the floor shifted outside his bedroom door and he knew. Jed was standing out there, staring at the door, just as Trace was staring at it on this side.

He tightened his hold on the gun, easing the safety off, aware of his sweaty pahns against the wooden grip. He lifted the gun slightly, wondering why it suddenly felt so heavy. Was Jed going to try the door?

His mouth was dry, his tongue thick with the coppery taste of fear. There was no sound from the hall but he knew

Jed was there, waiting, watching. Trace's head began to pound, the ache centering in his temples. For one insane moment he almost hoped Jed would force the door. In one moment of crystal-clear thought he knew he could kill his stepfather without regret.

And still there was no sound from the other side of the door.

Trace had no idea how much time passed while the bizarre standoff continued. It might have been hours but he suspected it could only have been a few minutes when the floorboard groaned again. He sensed Jed leaving more than he actually heard him.

Still Trace didn't move until he heard the click of a door latch and knew that Jed had gone back to the bedroom he shared with Addie. His breath exploded out of him on a sob, making him aware that he'd been holding it so long he felt light-headed. He slumped in the chair, easing the safety back on the .38 and setting it on the table before wiping his sweaty palms on the legs of his jeans.

"Trace? What's wrong?" Lily's sleepy voice came out of the darkness, startling him. He turned, making out the vague lump of her under the covers.

"Nothing's wrong. I was just studying l^e. Go back to sleep."

*'Okay." She snuggled deeper into the thin pillow and was asleep instantly, only half-awake to start with.

Trace listened to her light breathing, his thoughts painfully sharp. He no longer had a choice. And he no longer had any time. Tonight Jed had walked away, but if he'd had a little more to drink, maybe he wouldn't have.

No, he had no choice. No choice at all.

"Lily, wake up." He kept his voice low, clenching his teeth against the nervous shivers that threatened to set them chattering. "Lily, come on. We've got to go now."

* Trace?"

He'd turned on the table lamp, throwing a towel over it to mute the light. In the dim glow he saw Lily's eyehds flutter and then lift. Her sleepy gaze settled on him as her arms tightened around Isaiah's scruffy form.

*'Is it morning?"

"No. It won't be morning for a long time but we've got to get going now."

She sat up, rubbing her fists into her eyes. "Where're we going?"

"Away from here. We're going to California to visit my uncle." He tried to keep his voice calm, hoping she wouldn't notice that his hands were shaking as he helped her tug a heavy sweater over her head, leaving her pajamas on under it.

"CaHfornia?" He pulled her hair out from under the sweater and handed her a pair of jeans.

"That's right. It'll be real nice there."

She stood up, obediently poking her foot into the boot he held, balancing herself with a hand on his shoulder. He bundled her into a heavy coat and tugged a wool cap down over her ears.

"We have to be real quiet, Lily. Don't make a sound, okay?" Her eyes were wide green pools of questions but she nodded.

"I'll be quiet as a mouse."