Page 11 of Close Quarters

“Pretty sure you threatening him with a baseball bat did it.”

“That too. Point is, if he’s not here causing problems, then he’s not a problem. And you’ve got enough to worry about without worrying about our brother being…well, our brother. He’s not going to change.”

That was true of most of our family. My parents had managed to have five kids, and so far, only Mara had turned out to be worth a damn. Our oldest brother kept hopping from one fix to the next, stealing, robbing, and hurting anyone in his way. Our oldest sister was a drunk as well as a violent bitch, she had kids of her own, and sometimes it was tough not to think too hard about how she was just doing to them what had been done to us. Our youngest brother had got caught up in some gang and landed himself in prison and wasn’t going to see freedom for another thirteen years. Then there was me, also in prison, but compared to the rest, I was practically golden.

“Yeah, well,” I said, even though there was nothing I could say as a good comeback. Our family wasn’t going to change, our siblings were disasters and were always going to be, and our parents were always going to be the drinking, crack-smoking users they’d always been. “You called for a reason, and you sound…weird.”

She let out a heavy sigh, full of weariness and something else heavy…thick. “It’s…Grandma T.”

I winced. “Shit, is her blood pressure bad again? You and I told her she needs to watch it or?—”

“She’s gone,” came the flat interruption.

I didn’t know how long it lasted, but it felt like her words were suspended above me, sharp and brutal. A fuzziness coated my thoughts as I stared at the scratched surface of the small table, trying to reach out and make sense of the sentence but too scared at its razor-sharp edges.

“What?” I asked, my voice empty and lifeless.

“It was a stroke,” she said softly. “Well, more than one, from what I’ve been told.”

“What…I…she?—”

“It happened the other night. I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, but I’m the only one here to take care of this without making it a disaster,” she said.

“But…God, she was alone.”

“It happened in her sleep. By all accounts, she probably didn’t know what happened. Just laid down to sleep and?—”

My grip tightened on the phone. “You and I both know people only say that shit to make people feel better. You’re a fucking nurse, Mara, how many times have you told people that?”

“More times than I can count,” she said with a heavy sigh.

“Fuck, and here I am, in this fucking place,” I said, closing my eyes as the fuzziness became razor blades cutting away at me. The pain had nowhere to go, so it began burrowing deep.

“And if anyone would want you to continue to be there, to do what that place wants you to do, it would be her,” she told me softly.

“Fuck, everyone else is going to give you so much shit,” I said. My grandmother didn’t have much, but what little she did have would be picked apart and sold by whoever won the fights over every knick-knack and item of seeming value. My grandmother’s few prized possessions would be fought over like a fresh kill and sold for pennies on the dollar. They might pretend like they wanted this or that for sentimental reasons, but my family didn’t know sentiment from a rock on the side of the road.

“Ha! You don’t think Grandma T’s big heart made her stupid, do you?” Mara asked with a humorless laugh. “She had a will, believe it or not. And wanna guess who’s executor?”

“That means you’re in charge?”

“I am now.”

“What? But?—”

“It was you, Reno. You were the original one. But after that whole thing with Liam and Ryan…well, I guess she didn’t know if you’d be free by the time she…well, she changed it to me.”

Great, so not only was one of only two good members of my family dead, but I had failed to be a decent person for long enough to be trusted with what she left behind. No, I let my temper get the better of me, and instead of letting the law take care of things, I lost my mind and landed in prison. This was the first time I ever truly regretted what I’d done that day, and all because I failed my grandmother.

“I wish this hadn’t happened now,” she said. “I wanted…I wanted more time. I wanted her to see you…but I had to tell you. And I wanted you to know that I’m taking care of things. I’m staying at her place, and I’ve got Will staying here when I’m not, and his brother stays when neither of us can.”

“That’s good, at least,” I said with a heavy sigh. Her husband and his brother were good guys, one an EMT and the other a firefighter, so they could hold their own if my family tried anything.

“But I’m being paged, so I have to go. I love you,” Mara said in a low voice.

“Love you too,” I muttered, hanging up the phone only to stare at it.

I felt robotic as I pushed upright and walked out. If the guy behind the counter said anything, I didn’t hear it as I stepped out into the heat. Everything felt hazy as I stood there, peering around but not seeing anything, not comprehending. I barely noticed the sun burning my skin as I stood there in the windless open, giving it little attention as I tried to make sense of everything that had just happened.

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