Or any way, for that matter.
“Well, fine,” Ruby says. “Sorry for spoiling your breakfast, dear Addie. I’m in a sore mood this morning, which happens whenever Eli bangs on my door at an ungodly hour and drags me down here while grumbling about potential lockdowns. And to think, I had just been chatting with a lovely man on Tinder earlier and was about to make plans to go visit him. He’s a former colleague, and I never expected to see a man like him out here. Lone Mesa is definitely not his scene. Last I’d heard, he was living out near Aspen.”
“Wait, hold on, Ruby, you’re on Tinder?” I say.
She drains her martini and winks at me.
“Why, of course I am. It’s been so long since my husband passed away and, being a fan of discretion and non-committal relationships in my old age, Tinder has been a godsend. And a magnificent way to fill my weekend. Lone Mesa has a very active community of men who’ve reached that distinguished age where they’re no longer intolerable.”
I stare at her.
“You’re not joking?”
“No, I’m just a very busy woman who knows what she wants and doesn’t care to dither around with anything else. Though, I do actually talk to some of these men from time to time. Once they get old enough, they’re actually able to carry on a competent conversation. It’s refreshing, and a great way to pass the time between sessions.”
“Sessions?”
“Dear, you know what I’m referring to.”
“She’s talking about sex, Addie,” Tricia says, harnessing the exceptional power that mothers have to embarrass. “Your father and I still have ‘sessions’ and often have two or three of them per night. Talking is how we pass the time while we’re resting.”
“Please, stop talking,” I beg. “And you too, Ruby. At least about sex.”
Her answer is an exceptionally loud sip of her martini. A sip that somehow cuts through the general raucous of the clubhouse as all the prospects behind us chatter about the meeting taking place between the patched members in church.
I force my way through finishing the breakfast on my plate. I’m famished — and have been since I spent all that time this morning whipping up a breakfast for Snake that neither of us got to eat — and even finish the sausage after only a little hesitation.
“Mom, do you know what’s going on? Did dad tell you anything?”
“He doesn’t really talk about club business, Addie, you know that. He likes to keep us out of it,” she says. But, from the way she worries her lip and the exhausted rings beneath her eyes, I know there’s more to it. It only takes a moment’s look to get her to crack. “But he’s troubled by this new arrival in town. He didn’t sleep much last night. Not even after I… Well, usually there’s things I can do to help him sleep, but he stayed awake even after. You know how he gets when club business touches you and me. Plus, with the FBI coming around, it means he has to be careful in how he responds.”
“And how is he planning to respond?”
Ruby and my mom both give me a surprised look.
“How does your father normally respond to these kinds of threats, dear Addie?” Ruby says.
“By making them regret they’ve ever been born,” I answer.
“He’s going to do the same for this one,” Tricia says. “He hasn’t come out and said it, but I can tell. If they’d just done the bomb by the warehouse, he might’ve been open to dealing, but once they threatened you and me, they crossed a line. You know how your father is.”
Her answer makes me think of Snake and his reaction earlier. Maybe that’s why he wouldn’t take me to bed. It doesn’t surprise me; I know how my father can get. Still, Snake should know to trust me. I’d never say anything to put him in danger. I want him. I want him to be my first. I’ve wanted it for years.
And now that I finally have a chance? There’s no way I’m going to give up that easily.
Ruby look back across the clubhouse, narrowing her eyes.
“I will bet you anything, Addie, that your father emerges from church within the next ten minutes, full of fire, brimstone, and fury righteous enough to make a crusading pope pop a jealous erection, and he’ll declare that he has a plan to meet with this newcomer. And that he’ll promptly decapitate them the moment they stick their neck out”
I nod. It sounds like my father. Reasonable, businesslike, until you threaten his family. And then he becomes an animal more ferocious than a rabid grizzly.
“Addie, it’s going to mean a few other things. For one, you will be kind of locked down for a while,” my mom says. “And it’ll be at least a week before you can do any sort of traveling.”
I start at that.
“A week? You know I have that photography thing in a few days. I’ve got my entrance photos picked out and everything. And, if they select me, I can display my stuff at their event in Santa Monica. This could be a new career for me.”
My mom puts a hand on mine. “I know, dear. But club business comes first.”
I pull my hand back. She’s been a model in more than a few of my photographs. She knows this event is important to me, a chance to branch out and establish an identity of my own, while still staying in the area and around the club that means so much to me.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. There’s still the business deal in New Orleans to think about. That’s going to take more than
