Page 64 of A Love So Hard

“She had a pipe or something in her hands,” Gretchen broke in. “She was going to use it on me,” her words were a broken whisper as she spoke them. “He yelled at her. Got her attention on him instead of me. He started telling her that she was fucking crazy and he’d never be with someone like her. He was pissing her off. He did it on purpose to keep her from hurting me. I took my eyes off of him for a just a minute. There was a hot rush between my legs,” she got out before the sobs started again. Ever ran her hands up and down Gretchen’s arms as the detective took over from there.

“According to witnesses, the woman lost her shit, ran at Toby with that pipe she had picked up from somewhere. It wasn’t part of the wreck. She,” he glanced around the room nervously. “She impaled him with it. He was brought here with it still intact in his abdomen.”

“No!” Lucy called out, and for the first time that day I watched as my woman lost her composure. Laying down his bike, and possibly having a crushed leg was one thing. A pipe through his stomach was something else. I had never, in all of our time together, seen true rage in my woman’s eyes. It was there, in that moment, as she took in every man in the room wearing a kutte. “I warned you. I told you to get rid of the whores. You promised me! Did you even try?”

“We were going to bring it to the table at church this week,” Merc explained in a calm voice as if he were talking someone off the ledge.

“You were too late,” Lucy hissed. She turned as the woman she was there to comfort started running her hand up and down my woman’s arm now, offering the same comfort to her that she had been receiving all this time from my girls.

“I’m sorry,” Lucy apologized for her outburst.

“I think I have everything,” the detective started to say as he stood. Then the curtain off to the side was pulled over a bit and the doctor who had been here earlier stood there with another and a couple more people at their back.

“We’re going to move you all to a room of your own.” He turned to Lucy then. “They got it ready for you earlier.”

“We’re not leaving her,” my wife spoke of Gretchen as she grabbed the woman’s uninjured hand in her own.

“You don’t have to. We’re going to wheel Ms. Tierny down there too.”

There was something else going on. I could feel it in the air. “What about Toby?” I asked.

“We’ll check on him once we get all of you moved,” was the response. I didn’t miss the way the tension ramped up amongst the staff. This was not good. I didn’t think they needed to check on my son. I was pretty sure they already knew his status. My gut clenched hard as I turned to Lucy. There was a flash of something in her eyes that made me believe she had felt it too and understood what I did. We were about to get news that would devastate everyone and they wanted us in a more controlled space before that happened.

We followed along as we were moved to a separate room far from all the other ER patients, waiting families, and with each step the dread I was feeling bred iron butterflies in my stomach that were tearing me apart from the inside. I walked with Lucy in my arms so I knew she was feeling it too, because her legs weren’t exactly keeping her upright. The girls hadn’t caught on yet, thankfully. I knew Merc had though, because was at my back with Anna tucked up under his arm instead of where’d she’d been with J-Bird as we’d all listened to what had gone down.

Once we were secure in the room the doctors left to have a quick word with the detective before he left. I knew. He was getting the news they were about to break to us. He would have to know because the charges against Seneca Davis were about to include murder. The door cracked open with an audible hiss and Lucy, even with her back to it, knew too. Her legs gave out from underneath of her and let it happen, going down with her and pulling her into my lap there on the floor as she cried against my shoulder. I glanced up in time to see Ever reacting to this and then glancing around wildly as if to pull answers out of the air the way my wife seemed to have done. That was when the doctor spoke.

“I’m so sorry,” he started, and the rest was lost to me. The words no parent ever wants to hear come from someone’s lips tumbled free into the room loosing our grief. Our rage. Our sorrow. The whoosh of pain hit me and rumbled through my chest until it roared out of me. I held Lucy tightly to my body as it happened. A piece of me left on that God awful noise to join my son wherever he was now.

“Daddy?” I heard my baby girl hiss, and then she was also in my arms, in her mother’s arms. They both expelled their grief right there in my lap on a cold hospital floor, and there wasn’t a single thing I could do to stop this. I couldn’t take it back. I couldn’t trade places with my son so he could be here in my stead. He had so much more to look forward to. He didn’t get his chance to be a father, and the injustice in that nearly killed me right there. He would have been so much better than me. He would have done it right. He would have done better. He would have protected his boy from a danger he knew all too well. He should be here holding our family together now, not me.

Chapter 27

(Lucy – age 43, Double-D – age 46)

Gretchen didn’t show up. I stood there beside my son’s grave as everyone else was starting to leave, and she still hadn’t shown. I refused to leave until I saw her there. My son deserved a goodbye from her too. We had placed a smaller tombstone beside his with his baby’s information. Baby Brothers was etched in the stone, because we hadn’t known if it would have been a girl or a boy. Gretchen had only been three months along, and she refused to tell us even though we knew the medical team that took care of her had informed of her the gender.

I traced the name, Brothers, over and over in mind remembering when we had legally changed Toby’s last name to CJ’s. They had both been so proud that day. It was just after I married CJ that we realized it was something that needed to be rectified. I’d taken my husband’s name, because I didn’t want the lie that mine represented any longer. It didn’t take much to change our son’s name, and he was so proud to have ‘married’ his mom and dad too. That’s what he thought had happened to get him a new name. The sweetness of that memory rolled over me like a wave, then just like the sea was wont to do, it all swept back out to be replaced by the pain and anger that had been bubbling up and waiting for a release.

“Luce,” CJ called to me. I glanced up from where I’d been staring out at the horizon, watching. Waiting. “Come on, babe, we need to go.”

“No,” I insisted. “I’m not leaving until she shows up.”

“Luce.” His tone was demanding, almost harsh and people stopped to watch us instead of walking away as they had been. Off in the little paved parking lot of the church that stood vigil before the cemetery was a row of motorcycles that there hadn’t been room for. They were so deep they extended out and lined the street leading into the cemetery on both sides. The men from all the other chapters of Aces High and some of their allied clubs were there to see my son and his baby off into the next world. The woman he had loved was nowhere to be seen though. Then I heard it. There was a rumble in the distance of another bike. The service was long over, but I watched as that bike rolled into the lot and parked behind others, blocking them in. There was a woman on the back on the bike.

I knew instantly who it was. I also knew who was driving that bike so I understood there was nothing there for me to be pissed off about, and still I was angry on my son’s behalf. Putting her on the back of his bike had meant something. That she would show up on the back of another man’s bike to pay her last respects was a slap in the face. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” Ever said quietly.

I turned my narrowed eyes on her. “I know they’re not together, and yet, she hopped on the back of his bike anyway.”

“He doesn’t have anything else right now, and it was probably the only way he managed to get her here. She didn’t want to come while everyone else was here,” my daughter tried to explain.

“We are her family,” I huffed out.

“No,” Ever told me. “We were going to be, but that was taken from her. It was taken from us too, but it was taken from her in such an ugly way. You lost a son. She lost a child and her love all at once. Remember that.”

I wanted to lash out at my daughter for the first time since I met her. I wanted to scream, cuss, cry, and blame her for the words she’d just spoken. Didn’t matter that they were the truth. My anger couldn’t be sated. CJ’s hold on me grew tighter, obviously realizing what I was feeling.

“We should go and give her a moment’s peace with them,” he whispered in my ear. “Please, don’t do this here,” he begged.

---