Page 64 of Part & Parcel

Kelly, then Owen, and then Digger had all left to go find their own place in the world, leaving Nick and Eli and Ty to make the trip back to DC alone. But Kelly had been the first to leave. He’d pined for that spot in Colorado, that little town that felt like home, that plot of land in the middle of nowhere with the for sale sign that had been the perfect place to build his cabin. Eventually the call of that place had been too much for a young man who’d had his fill of adventure, and he’d said good-bye to his boys and left.

Some nights, he’d lain awake and regretted it, lain awake and cried because he couldn’t go back.

“Did you blame me?” Kelly blurted.

Nick jerked awake. “What?”

“After I left. You all kept going without me for a while. But then the others all left, too, because I had broken the seal. Did you blame me? For leaving? For killing the team?”

Nick was silent, his fingers digging into the skin of Kelly’s arm, his heart racing under Kelly’s hand, his breathing so hard that it woke the kittens and started them purring again. After several torturous moments of waiting for an answer, Nick nodded.

“Yeah,” he croaked. “Yeah, I did.”

February 17, 2003

“I don’t get the Colorado state signs,” Eli said as Nick was navigating through the twists and turns of yet another mountain range.

They’d left Grand Junction, Colorado, that morning at the ass crack of dawn, and they were still only halfway to Santa Fe. They’d kept passing in and out of Colorado the past couple days, and every time they passed back into the state, they made fun of the plain brown sign with white lettering that said, “Welcome to Colorful Colorado.”

“What do you mean, you don’t get them?” Nick asked.

“Colorado is not colorful,” Eli insisted. “All we’ve seen is green in the mountains, brown in the plains. And white everywhere. They could fucking run the Mountain Leaders course up here, bro. It’s thatuncolorful.”

“I think it’s a play on the name,” Ty offered. He was in the backseat, taking a rest from his last turn driving. He was sitting backward, his shoulders wedged between the two front seats as they played cards in the back.

“What do you mean?” Eli asked as he turned to scowl at them.

“Colorado,” Nick said, glancing at Eli quickly and then turning his attention back to the winding road. “It’s a fucking Spanish word, dude.Colorado,” he said again, except this time he said it with an accent, as if he were speaking Spanish.

Eli was silent, and Nick glanced at him again, raising both eyebrows when he found Eli staring at him. Ty turned and leaned his elbow on the console, and the sudden silence from the card game in the back told Nick that they’d drawn the attention of everyone.

Nick had to look away fast before Eli could see him smiling. He covered his mouth with his hand and focused everything he had on the road, frowning to compensate.

“Dude,” Owen grunted. “Did that never occur to you before now?”

“You white people don’t say it right, okay,” Eli finally growled.

Ty and Owen burst out laughing, and Nick could see Digger in the far back, shaking his head as he shuffled the deck of cards they were playing with.

“Did you ever wonder why Montana has so manymountains?” Nick asked Eli, barely keeping the laughter out of his voice.

“Tu madre, bro.”

Nick was laughing so hard he had to slow their progress so he didn’t wreck the Bronco.

“Montana, that’s fucked up. There weren’t even mountains in Montana, man, they were just, like . . . like . . . lumpy plains.”

“Lumpy plains?” Ty cried, and they were all rolling around in the back, no seat belts in sight, cards forgotten.

“You better stop fucking talking to me until your ass is bilingual inside your head, okay.” Eli had to grip the handle above as Nick took a turn a little too hard. “Pay attention to the road, Rico! Jesus Christ!”

There was a chorus of complaints and laughter from the back, and Nick wiped his eyes and slowed the Bronco to a near crawl. If he laughed any harder, he’d have to pull over.

Eli was still grumbling, his foot on the dash and his knuckles turning white as he gripped the handle. Nick glanced into the rearview mirror at the others. They were laughing, grappling around for the seat belts to secure themselves, arguing over whether Digger would fit in the middle seat or if he had to stay in the back with the luggage.

The only thing missing was Kelly.

Nick’s grin fell. The realization that Kelly was gone and wasn’t coming back hit him just as hard as it had the last time it had confronted him. It was instantly sobering. He cleared his throat and focused on the road, fighting the melancholy he’d been trying to ignore since they’d left Kelly behind in the tiny town near Colorado Springs where he intended to start his new life.

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