insisted, leaning above him. He pointed angrily at the surf, his good arm jerking as he mined the horrific images slamming through his thought. “Two feet, and you would have been off that dock. She could have drowned. She could have been crushed. You could have passed out. She’s fifteen, Tony. What the hell would she do with an unconscious old man and a moving vehicle? What would she do belted to a warped truck twenty feet under water that you can’t even see through?”
“She was fine!” Tony hollered, pushing himself up in his seat before sinking back into a dazed stare. Noah swallowed, backing away as he simmered.
“I am the only person, the only person in this entire town, who has ever stuck up for you. I tell everyone, ‘Tony’s a good guy. He’s just rough on the edges. He’s more responsible that he looks.’ I defended you, I trusted you, but you’re an idiot. You’re just a drunk, just like everyone else.”
“I’m not like them,” Tony muttered, fumbling in his shirt pockets for a cigarette.
“You should have called me!” Noah yelled, red crawling across his neck. He balled the available hand into a fist, stomach churning, chest pounding.
He knew even if Tony had, he wouldn’t have known. He was too far out of town, and even then the cell towers were shifty. He hadn’t been there for his sister. If Tony hadn’t found her, when would they have known she was gone? She could have gotten lost in the woods, run in with a bear, spent the night on the road, dragged into the vehicle of a stranger with nauseating intentions. He didn’t even know she had considered leaving.
But Sarah was in a neck brace because Tony picked her up fully knowing he was intoxicated.
Even though he could have hurt her. Even though he did.
Noah watched him struggle to weasel a lighter from his pocket, the man wheezing so heavily you’d think he’d be seeking an inhaler. He smelled like booze and cigarettes. His shirt was unbuttoned, revealing tattoos and scars. A scarred belly rose between the open flaps. The long ponytail was pulled away from his receding hairline, mangled. He sported the same stained clothes he wore the last time Noah had seen him.From the dirt running over his skin like a girl’s makeup after tears and blackened palms, it certainly looked like he hadn’t showered in longer.
Sickened, Noah’s shoulder throbbed under his hand.
“You know what, Tony? I need to get to the clinic. I have to go. I can’t even look at you right now.”
“Yeah, yes. The arm. It looks busted. Looks, looks… Look, boy, I’m just a bit skunked. I’ll be fine in the morning. I’ll ‘pologize then, alright? I need you out of my face, now.”
“It’s ten in the morning,” Noah m uttered, feeling disgusted as he gave him a last glance. Between the burning pulsation of his wounded limb and the crushing disappointment, he needed an escape. “I’m so done.”
“I said I was sorry, man,” Tony began, the wide circles of his dazed eyes rolling from behind heavy wrinkles to meet Noah’s gaze, instead finding his back as he walked away. “I’m sorry! Don’t leave, boy. I’m sorry! Rob! Rob!”
Noah stopped in his tracks, turning in time to catch Tony fall from his seat and look up from the ground.
Rob was his adopted son, a teenage white boy found in a slum with a nasty addiction, the same that ran off the day he turned eighteen. He disappeared with Noah’s aunt, Lee’s little sister Maria, and never looked back.
There were rumors of drug addictions, but according to Lee, they didn’t hear another word until Sarah was born. That was supposedly vague and brief.
The old man’s finally lost it.
He continued to walk and ignored Henry Davis’s concerned stare at his makeshift sling as they traded places. The sandy-haired, middle-aged volunteer paramedic applied antiseptic and butterfly stitches the cuts across Tony Gabriel’s forehead.
At his back, he could hear drunken curses at the sting of cleanser. To his right, Sarah whimpered as Lee and Mark carefully lifted her at the elbows from the chair they had dragged to the sidewalk. Noah gave her a look that spoke for him, informing his sister of the talk they would have later. It also conveyed the thousand silent apologies churning in his chest.
Aly murmured a few more words to Sarah, a reddish white spreading across her pale knuckles as their hands squeezed upon parting. She looked back and forth