chairs. The floor and stairs are all hardwood, worn by years of sand tracked in from the bluff outside.
“Wow,” Ulie says from beside me. It’s not a good wow. It’s more of an Are you serious? wow. I know this because it’s exactly what I’m thinking.
“This place is great,” Lee says, a little defensively. She ushers Sherm into the living room, yanks the dust cover off the sofa with a quick jerk of her wrist, like a magician unveiling a rabbit that has materialized out of thin air. There is no rabbit. Just an overstuffed blue-and-green-plaid sofa, which she plants Sherm on. She wipes the raindrops off his face with the sleeve of her sweater and smooths back his windblown hair. The WITSEC consultant wants all three of us guys to grow our hair longer, and Sherm’s already hangs in his eyes in thick brown clumps. “It has a ton of character.”
Grant slams the door behind him, rattling the windowpane in the center. “It’s like we walked into a scene from fucking Courage the Cowardly Dog.”
“Do you mind?” Lee says, cutting him a look and tipping her head at our nine-year-old brother on the sofa.
“And what does that even mean?” Ulie snips, crossing to the kitchen and systematically opening cupboards, behind which stacks of dishes and rows of glasses catch the light and wink out at us.
Grant rolls his eyes, moves deeper into the room, plops down next to Sherm. He grabs his little brother in a headlock and gives him a noogie. “You know, the Middle of Nowhere?”
I watch Sherm. There’s no giggle. No smile. He doesn’t even try to squirm out of Grant’s grasp. Something’s really wrong with him. I’ve pushed what happened our last night at the house out of my head, but he obviously hasn’t developed that skill yet.
I grab the rail, start up the stairs. “You’re welcome to go back to Chicago anytime, Grant.”
I barely catch the “Fuck you, Rob” that follows me up the staircase, but I really don’t give a shit. He’s going to have to learn to deal right along with the rest of us. I do hear Lee’s, “For the love of Pete, Grant! Will you please watch your mouth around your little brother?”
“Yes, Mom,” he mutters.
The truth is, Lee has been a mother to this motley crew. She was only eighteen when our mother died five years ago and despite the fact I’m a year and a half older than her, she was the one our younger siblings looked to when they needed a parent. Especially when our father began to pull away and lose himself in his vendetta. Sherm wasn’t even in school yet, and the twins were snarky sixteen-year-olds, but Lee took it in stride and never complained about her increasing responsibilities. She and I were superclose back then, and even I relied on her way too much.
But that all changed a few years back.
At the top of the stairs, I push open the first door I come to. It leads to a bedroom with two twin beds and a dresser. The door across the hall opens into a white-tiled bathroom with a pair of sinks and a tub with a green shower curtain. Beyond, through doors on either side of the hall, are two more bedrooms, both with double beds.
Just as I turn to head back down, I notice a small door that nearly blends into the dark paneled wall at the very end of the hall. I feel around and find a latch at the top. When I pull it, the door opens. I duck under and wedge my six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-thirty-pound frame into the tight space. I follow a narrow set of stairs around two tight corners to a four-foot-by-four-foot room of windows, battened down against the winter. The door across from me rattles against the storm. I shoulder it open and step out onto a third-floor widow’s walk with a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view.
I push the door closed before the wind rips it from its hinges, move slowly along the narrow walkway, holding the carved wooden rail against Mother Nature’s attempts to claim me for sea and sky. The storm outside rivals the one brewing inside me. I lift my face, let the cold rain sting my unshaven skin.
All I had to do was hold the business together for a few years, until Pop got out of lockup. The guys swore loyalty to me when Pop went into the pen—said they’d stand behind me like I was