Page 5 of The Grief We Hold

“It is. What brings you to our little town, Blue?”

I don’t miss the way she looks nervously outside the window. “Decided it was time for a new chapter.” She’s about to say something, then catches herself. “Enjoy your dinner.”

I watch her until she disappears from sight, headed to the kitchen.

The meatloaf cuts perfectly, and I scoop it and some mashed potatoes onto the fork and then eat it like I haven’t seen food in days. Took me thirty-four hours round trip on a bike. Six overnight stops at shitty motels.

Revenge gives me an appetite.

I know it puts a strain on my club when I fuck off for days at a time, but I can’t rest knowing there’s someone out there who sawa defenseless woman and child and decided killing them was the only option.

I wonder if he thinks about what he did that day. Know he sure as fuck must be looking over his shoulder, waiting for the day I find him, given the deaths that precede me.

I continue to make my way through the food, even the vegetables because I know Ma will give me shit if I don’t.

“You doing okay?” Ma asks, holding her own mug of coffee as she slides into the booth opposite me.

“Same shit, different day,” I say.

The new girl catches my eye again, and I can see Ma’s face change. “Stay away from her, Axel.”

I look at my mother-in-law. “Watch your tone, Ma.”

“It was only the two-year memorial of our precious girls last month.”

Ma never once blamed me for what happened that day. It might have been easier to move on if she had. Instead, she met me with compassion for the loss. Some days, I think that makes her a saint. On others, it feels like a leash around my throat.

I put my fork down. “Don’t need you telling me that. I came here for some food, not a motherfuckin’ lecture.”

Ma sighs. “Fine. It’s just…I got some feeling about that girl. Blew into town, and I gave her a job. That night there was blood around the moon.”

I roll my eyes. Ma has always thought she has some kind of sixth sense. She’d call Hallie and say she’d done her tarot cards or that the full moon was moving into her seventh house. “You know I don’t believe in that bullshit.”

Ma looks over where Raven is furiously wiping down the counter. “She arrived with two suitcases and a little boy about five. Who only has two suitcases and a little one? Living in that skeleton of an apartment the Dobsons have above the hardware store.”

I know the one. Can’t be more than two rooms with solid walls and a watertight roof.

“We all have our stories. If she’s arriving with a kid and only what she can carry, she must have good reason. You ask what it was when you hired her?”

Ma shakes her head. “She’s a good girl. Hard worker. Offered to do her first shift for free to show me what she can do. Hired her on the spot. But I don’t want any drama she might bring spilling on to you.”

For a second, there’s a protective beat in my chest, but I bury it. Last thing I need is some clingy damsel in distress looking to me to pay her bills and be a baby daddy to some kid who isn’t mine.

But everything that happens in my town is an Outlaw problem.

And I can’t help but think that Raven’s gonna bring trouble.

2

RAVEN

“Fen, can you wash your hands please?”

I don’t have to shout. My voice carries easily across the small apartment that contains a bathroom and a bedroom and an open-plan space for everything else.

Exposed wood beams and a rough wooden floor make for what some would callrustic charm. The stairwell is a little treacherous for a five-year-old, and it permanently smells like sawdust.

But on a night like tonight, when the rain is coming down so hard it looks like it’s moving sideways, I’m just relieved it’s warm, dry, and most importantly, safe.

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