Becoming Juliet - Paula Marinaro Page 0,37

the woman a break? P.J.’s inner voice chided him. Not everyone is comfortable in a crowd. Maybe she’s just shy. Or maybe she can feel your eyes boring into her skull. That’d make anybody a nervous wreck. Give it a rest, man.

But when P.J. moved to turn his eyes away, Juliet made a movement that brought his attention reeling back. The fingers of her right hand began to nervously twist around the ring finger of her left hand. It was as if she was playing with a ring that wasn’t there.

That gesture hit P.J. hard and triggered a long forgotten memory.

Larry Tyler.

Larry and his family had moved to town when P.J. was in middle school. Larry’s stepdad, Titus, had been a steel worker and had moved his family up from Detroit to work on a union job. Larry had been skinny with bright red hair, big ears, and a lazy right eye. He had been a quiet kind of kid who kept to himself a lot. But sometimes on his way home from school, Larry would stop at the Hells Saints garage. He’d sit there in the grass and eat a snack he had saved from school that day. He didn’t say a word or otherwise bother anyone. Larry just liked to watch the club members work on their bikes.

P.J. used to hang out at the garage with his dad while he waited for his mom to get home from work. One day, on his way to see his dad, P.J. saw some kids picking on Larry. To his surprise, Larry threw a few real hard punches, and would have held his own, but there were three of them and one of Larry. P.J. jumped in to even up the score. They kicked some serious ass that day, and from that point on a solid friendship began. They would hang out together every day at the garage after school. And on Sunday mornings, Prosper would pay P.J. and Larry to clean up the guys’ work benches, then he’d take the two boys fishing.

Daisy was Larry’s mom.

She was young and pretty. She had kind green eyes, long red hair, and a shy smile. She liked to read fashion magazines and sew her own clothes.

Titus was Larry’s stepfather.

He was big, strong, mean, and dumb. He liked to drink cheap tequila and beat his wife.

Because Daisy had no friends, and was a master at hiding her bruises, there was no way for people to know that Titus beat his wife silly.

But P.J. knew.

He knew because he had seen those bruises…from far away and only once, but P.J. had seen them.

And he knew because Larry had told him. Larry told P.J. that one day when he was big enough and strong enough that he was going to kill Titus.

Larry had told his mother that she should leave that bastard, drunken, beast of a husband.

But Daisy had been afraid.

Daisy with her kind eyes, flaming red hair and warm smile used to twist that gold ring on her left hand as though it was a shackle that bound and chained her. She used to make that same nervous motion that Juliet was making now.

Daisy was always twisting that ring.

And taking those beatings.

Then one day as Daisy was making dinner, Titus went after Larry.

And Daisy went after Titus.

When Titus raised his meaty fist to punch Larry’s teeth out, Daisy grabbed the large pot of boiling pasta water, got between her son and her husband, and threw the scalding pot directly into Titus’s face. Then Daisy had raised that heavy pot high up in the air and brought it down on that sonofabitch’s head. Afraid of what Titus would do when he regained consciousness, Daisy and Larry left everything behind and ran out the door. Because they had nothing but the clothes on their back, and nowhere else to go, Larry had convinced his mother to go to the HSMC for help. Mother and son had waited in the woods all night until the garage opened, then Larry took his mother by the hand and introduced her to Prosper Worthington.

After hearing their story, Prosper sent a couple of his boys to retrieve Larry and Daisy’s things. He also sent a couple of different club members, men who had been groomed to the job, to deliver a very strong message to Titus about what happens to assholes who beat their women. Titus received a solid beating and then was given one hour to get his bloodied, broken body out