Page 20 of Shattered Fate

Pop grabs Baby’s leash and lets her lead him to a small pond where she noses around the weeds and cattails scaring some ducks. The water’s starting to ice over. My breath blows white in the chilly air, and I sit at a picnic table keeping an eye on our bag of hotdogs and scrolling through the news and social media on my phone. The Maddoxes dominate King’s Crossing’s gossip, a lot of it focusing on when Stella and Zane are going to get married. Zarah’s the most eligible bachelorette in the city, and everyone is always speculating who will tear down her walls.Truth or Dareis crass enough to name names.

I think of her silly list. That kind of money causes more problems than it solves. I mean, she wouldn’t be in this mess if her parents owned farmland in Nebraska. I don’t know Zane and Stella personally, but if I can believe half the gossip about them, he sure took her on one hell of a ride before it all settled down. Doing a woman wrong like that, and so many times...you know she loves you irrevocably or she would have said fuck off a long time ago.

Max had that kind of patience, but I wonder if Zane’s right. If Zarah would have fallen for the first guy who had shown her kindness no matter who he was. I feel sad for Max, if that’s the case. Once she’s off the drugs, maybe she wouldn’t have needed him anymore.

No use guessing andTruth or Dareis placing enough bets, but I think of who Zarah’s next lover will be and if it will be a forever kind of thing. I fantasize spreading her legs, revealing her glistening pink pussy ready for me, and my cock hardens.

No, that’s not how it would go.

She would need to be the one in control. One hundred percent. She would need it to mean something, and she would need to know the man she gave herself to loved her just as irrevocably as Stella loves Zane, or she wouldn’t take off her clothes.

“You’re thinking about sex,” Pop says, sitting across from me and reaching for a hotdog.

I cover Baby’s ears. “Shh. Not in front of the children.”

Pop laughs. He has a sense of humor, I gotta give him that. If he didn’t, stakeouts and all the other shit we have to do as part of the job would be boring as hell.

“Thinking about Zarah?”

I scowl. “How did you know?”

“Call it father’s intuition.”

“I thought only mothers have that.”

“Dads, too. How else do you think I kept you out of trouble when you were a kid? Your plans had a stink I could smell a mile away.” He bites into his dog and chews.

He’s not wrong. He thwarted many a plan. I never thanked him, but he probably saved my life a time or two. But to be honest, how many teenage boys never do anything stupid? It’s like a rite of passage to risk permanent bodily injury at least once a week. It’s why at thirty-six I can still hop a fence chasing a meth head who did a little B & E for some cash. Or, you know, beat the shit out of some guy who kicked the crap out of his dog. I wanted him to know how it felt. Broke the asshole’s jaw, and I sent the dog to live with a second cousin twice removed or some shit in North Dakota. He’ll never touch another animal as long as I’m alive.

I keep in shape to teach fuckers like that a lesson, and I owe it all to fucking around the city instead of sitting on my ass gaming the hours away.

“My stinky plans turned me into the man I am today.”

“You’re a good kid.”

We fall silent before we get too mushy. Pop and I are close, and I’m grateful. Not much comes between us, and when it does, it blows over pretty quick. I have a feeling Zarah’s going to be an issue, and it’s not going to blow over as fast as I’d like. Pop liked Max. Admired and respected him. If Pop’s and my relationship had been any less solid, I might have gotten jealous, but Max was a good guy and Pop knew it. Now Max asked me to do him a favor, and in my eyes, that favor is paid up.

In Pop’s, not so much.

He’ll bring up sex and marriage, even babies, and he’ll bring up Zarah, not because she has money, but because he sees the same thing I see whenever her picture flashes on the TV screen.

A young woman needing a second chance and no one around to give her one.

The Donnellys are wealthy and live in a gigantic house in a rich part of King’s Crossing.

I forgot the clients or their families had to be richer than fuck to afford care at Quiet Meadows.

They don’t live far from the divorcée, but the gated community is definitely bigger and brighter. More yard, larger houses. Swimming pools that are a waste because in Minnesota, we have exactly two months of decent weather to enjoy something like that. I picture Zarah sunbathing by a sparkling pool, a muscled dude rubbing coconut oil into her supple skin. Sipping a Sex on the Beach. And not in Minnesota either. Someplace else. Hawaii.

The problem I have thinking about Zarah is, in my head, I give her a normal life, but the last thing she’s going to do is lie by a pool in the summer, or anytime for that matter. She’s too busy worrying about her murky future to care about her tan.

Thankful my truck is in good shape, I turn into their driveway and park. A vehicle wouldn’t dare drip oil on the pristine concrete.

I slide out and adjust my clothes. I didn’t wear dress pants, but my jeans are clean and look new, and I put on the same dress shirt I wore to McClennan’s office. Pop’s dressed the same way. Respectable, like we know what we’re talking about. If Mrs. Donnelly hires us to snoop around, this could be a good paying gig.

We stand on the brick porch and I ring the doorbell. It chimes, and we wait in the cold for an answer. They’ve already strung Christmas lights in the hedges that border the house, and a hollow deer stands next to me, the white-wired strings of bulbscreating a weird kind of skeleton. Maybe it would look pretty lit up at night, but in the daytime it’s creepy and not festive at all.

Pop and I don’t make a big deal out of the holidays. He’ll come over or I’ll go to his place and we’ll eat a meal that’s not takeout and watch football. Sometimes for Christmas if I know he’s got his eye on something he wouldn’t buy himself, I’ll pick it up and maybe wrap it. We don’t get very sentimental. Holidays are for children. I’ve never been sad I don’t have kids, but maybe this year I’ll feel a bit of something when I don’t have presents to put under a tree. Or a tree.

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