Walk knew.
“I thought … I mean Darke, he’s nice-looking, but he’s a fucking freak, Walk. There’s something missing. I’m not even sure what it is, there’s just a coldness to that man. Like a robot. And he wouldn’t touch me.”
Walk frowned.
“You know what that means.”
He felt his cheeks burn.
“I’m not desperate or nothing, but you date five or six times and it’s natural. But not with him. There’s nothing natural about Dickie Darke.”
Seeing boxes in the front yard, he moved to fetch them in but she told him to leave them. “It’s all trash. I started boxing up my life this morning. And you know what I realized?”
She cried, no noise or sobbing, just the steady fall of tears.
“I failed them, Walk.”
He went to speak but she held up her hand, so close to breaking. “I failed my girls. I’ve got no home for them now. I’ve got nothing.”
* * *
That night when Robin and her mother were sleeping she climbed from her bedroom window and wheeled her bicycle from the house.
Dusk, blue day broke down, trash cans out, the smell of barbeque. Duchess was hungry, never quite enough to fill her. She made sure Robin ate all he could.
She turned onto Mayer, the low hill falling away, letting the bike coast, streamers on one side. She wore shorts and no helmet, her top zipped and sandals on her feet.
She slowed at the turn for Sunset Road.
The King house had always been her favorite, the way it stood, part-ruin, flipping off the surround.
She saw him straight off.
The garage door was up, the man on a ladder, gently removing slate. He’d stripped half, a roll of tar paper lay, tools like hammers and picks and a wheelbarrow full of dry and dusty rock. He had a lamp and it shed just enough light.
She’d seen photos of Sissy, they were the same kind of girl, light hair and eyes and freckles atop small noses.
She crossed slowly, legs out, the saddle hurting, balancing this way and that, one foot pushing.
“You were at my house.”
He turned. “I’m Vincent.”
“I know that.”
“I once knew your mother.”
“I know that too.”
He smiled then, not real, maybe like it was called for, like he was learning to be something again. She did not smile back.
“Is your mother alright?”
“She’s always alright.”
“How about you?”
“You don’t need to ask that. I’m an outlaw.”
“Should I be worried? Outlaws are bad, right?”
“Wild Bill Hickok killed two men before he became sheriff. Maybe I’ll straighten out one day, maybe I won’t.”
She wheeled a little closer. He was sweaty, his T-shirt dark at the chest and beneath the arms. Above the garage was an old hoop, the net gone, she wondered if he remembered playing, if he remembered anything about before.
“Freedom,” she said. “Is it the worst thing to take? Worse than anything. Maybe it is.”
He climbed down the ladder.
“You have a scar on your arm.”
He looked down at his forearm, the scar ran the length, not angry, just there.
“And you have scars all over your body. Did you get beaten in there?”
“You look like your mother.”
“Don’t let that fool you.”
She scooted back a little, fussed with the small bow in her hair as he watched. “Subterfuge. People see a girl and nothing else.”
She rolled the bicycle back and forth.
He found a screwdriver and walked over slowly. “The brake is sticking, that’s why it’s hard to pedal.”
She watched him carefully.
He knelt by her leg, careful not to touch her skin, and fiddled with the brake then stood and moved back.
She rocked again, felt the wheel move easy, turned as the moon fell, starred sky behind him and the old home.
“Don’t come by our house again. We don’t need anyone.”
“Alright.”
“I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
“I don’t want that either.”
“That boy that broke your window, his name is Nate Dorman.”
“Good to know.”
She turned and slowly rode back, away from him, toward home.
When she reached her street she saw the car, the hood so long it jutted from their driveway. Darke was back again.
She pedaled hard and dropped her bike to the grass, frantic, she should not have gone. She moved down the side of the house and then into the door by the kitchen, quiet, sweat rolling down her spine. She took the phone from the cradle on the wall. And then she heard it, laughing, her mother’s laugh.
She watched from shadows they could not see. A bottle on the coffee table, half gone, a cluster of red flowers, the kind they sold at the gas station on Pensacola.
She left them and stepped out into the yard, climbed back through the window and checked their bedroom door was still locked. She peeled off her shorts, kissed Robin’s head, then opened the drapes and lay at the foot of his bed. She would not sleep till the giant man was gone.
7
“TELL ME ABOUT THE GIRL,” Vincent said.
They sat at the back of the old church. Through the window was the cemetery and beyond that the ocean, each given stained colors. They’d stopped by Sissy’s grave, Walk leaving his friend alone for a while. Vincent had brought flowers, dropped to his knees and read the stone. He stayed there an hour, till Walk came and gently rested a hand on his shoulder.
“Duchess, she’s older than she should be, you know.” Walk guessed he knew better than most.
“And Robin?”
“She looks out for him. Duchess does what her mother should.”
“The father?”
Walk looked at the old benches, painted white, droplets had made it to the stone floor. The roof was high and arched and intricately knotted, the kind of beautiful that impelled vacationers to take photographs and pack the place out every Sunday.
“Nothing in it, both times. She was seeing a couple guys back then, she was out a lot, I’d see her come back in the morning.”
“Walk of shame.”
“There wasn’t shame in it. You ever know Star to care?”
“I’m not sure I know Star at all.”
“You do. She’s the same girl you
