Page 82 of Close Quarters

My jaw clenched, but I kept my voice steady. “I see.”

“Not a fan of that story, I see.”

“I don’t…regret what I did,” I said, refusing to look at her. “I regret him.”

She sat back, and I heard the flask clink. “Let me tell you another story.”

“Really?”

“Shut your damn mouth and listen,” she said with uncharacteristic roughness. “See, I grew up in a little town you’ve never heard of. Not much money in that town, and that went the same for my mama. She grew up there and fully expected to die there. It was me, her parents, and my three sisters in that little house she’d grown up in.”

I knew something about that, save for the grandparents' part. “Okay.”

“But see, it wasn’t the poverty that got to us. It was my grandfather. Mean old drunk that he was. Never had a kind word to say, and had my grandma so beat down, the woman hadn’t had a thought of her own in ages. Once upon a time, I thought it was the same with my mama. After my daddy died, I thought the last of my mama’s spirit was long gone.”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t.”

“No, see, there was something else about my granddaddy that, like everything else, no one talked about. Sometimes, when he got drunk, he didn’t just get mean, he didn’t just hit you. Sometimes…well, sometimes he liked to visit you in the night. Take you somewhere quiet?—”

My stomach clenched, and I had a sudden moment of clarity about why I was hearing this story. “I understand.”

“I figured you would.”

“So, what happened?”

“What happened is that one time, I finally told my Mama what was going on. And she got real quiet. Asked me some questions and then went and found my sisters. She talked to them. She made sure we slept with her in her room for a week, having us rotate who slept on the bed.”

“Just a week?”

“Well, it wasn’t much of a problem after that. See, my granddaddy went and had himself an accident.”

“The, uh, fatal kind of accident?” I asked, finally daring to glance at her.

A cold, mirthless smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Exceptionally fatal. No one knew how he managed to plug himself in the chest while cleaning his shotgun or why he was out in the woods to do it at such a late hour, but who knows the minds of drunks?”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “They’re something alright. How tragic.”

“Oh yes,” she said, that vicious smile growing slightly wider but not taking over her face. It was the expression of a woman remembering something pleasant from years past, something that didn’t shine quite as bright but still hadn’t gone dull. “But from tragedy can spring opportunity. My grandma never really ‘woke up,’ I guess you could say. But my mama sure did. She managed to get herself a job in Atlanta and packed all of us out there. Worked herself to the bone she did, but she did good by us.”

“I’d say she did amazing,” I admitted, knowing full well there was no way in hell I could have expected anything like that from my mother. Hell, if someone had come for me like that as a kid, she probably would have turned a blind eye if it meant getting her next fix.

“That she did,” Mona said, grinning far more warmly around the cigar between her teeth. I realized then that her speech was quickly returning to the sharp, precise tone she usually used, the buttery smoothness with a shaky bit at the edges disappearing. “Which is precisely why she has found herself wanting for nothing. She works now only because she wants to, but she has everything she needs, and when it comes time to make her finally stop working, she’ll never want for anything. My sisters and I have made sure of that.”

I supposed that was the one bit of revenge someone who grew up the way I did could finally have. If my parents ever reached the age where they could barely work, there would be no one to help them. I would never, and neither would Mara, which left the other three who were as useless and self-serving as our parents. They’d be left with nothing but their own choices.

“I don’t know if I should say I’m sorry or glad,” I finally told her after almost a full minute of silence. “I feel someone like Riley would know…and Elliot would just repeatedly tell you how sorry he was and how fucked up the whole thing was.”

Mona glanced sidelong at me, her smile warm still. “They are sweethearts, aren’t they?”

“Far nicer than me,” I said, smirking at her. “And you.”

“The world needs nice people. And it needs people willing to look at the bottom line and see what needs to be done.”

I gave a derisive snort. “Please tell me you weren’t lumping me in with you. All I’ve done is screw up my life. I don’t think I count for what needs to be done.”

Mona rolled her eyes. “Then you weren’t listening.”

“I listened. But what am I supposed to say?”

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