Page 60

Pray the gay away, right? Motherfucking ignorant bullies!

I had to work hard to hide the shake in my voice. “I’m gonna drive her over to see Doc Whitley, just to check her out. You wanna catch a ride with us? Have Doc take a quick look at that arm?”

He shook his head. “I told you, I’m fine.”

“Red,” I said, spearing him with a look. “Don’t argue.”

“Fine. But it’s just my damn shoulder. It’ll hurt for a couple days. Ain’t nothin’ new.”

Something occurred to me then. “Why were you here by yourself so early?”

He looked down at his boots. For someone usually so full of piss and vinegar, he was awfully quiet.

“Red?”

“I’m glad I was here,” he said. “She asked me not to wake Theo. She was scared. I wanted to help set up for the day. Start the coffee. I just… wanted to help.” He shrugged but didn’t look up. “Maybe I like it here.”

“You do?” What the hell? Prepare a press release: Red Graves has a heart?

“Don’t you go makin’ anything out of it,” he grumbled, finally looking at me. “I’ve been alone a long time. My house is so damn quiet, and I don’t sleep so well. It’s… nice to be around young people. Nice to feel needed.”

“Yeah,” I said, agreeing. Frank nodded silently.

What else was there to say?

“Mr. Graves?” Sylvie’s soft voice interrupted us, and Red cleared his throat gruffly. She stepped next to him. Tears filled her eyes again, and in a small voice, she said, “Thank you for tryin’ to help me,” and then she threw her good arm around him and held onto him tight.

Red grunted at the pain, but he didn’t move. He let Sylvie hug him and cry silently all over his shirt. He patted her back awkwardly for a moment with his uninjured arm, and finally, he hugged her back.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

DEVO

Lying in the bed I used to share with my sister, Lola, in the tiny bedroom I’d had to share with both my brother and sister, I gazed up at the flower stickers I’d dotted along the ceiling the day we moved in.

All I could think about was Abey.

Against my better judgment, I’d left the window open all night, because if I’d closed it, I would’ve suffocated. My mom said she couldn’t sleep with the sound of the fancy new air conditioner running. The thing was nearly silent! It was one of the reasons I’d picked out the model I had. Paid extra for it too.

Whatever. I hadn’t slept well anyway, and it had nothing to do with the heat.

Theo had filled me in about the situation with Sylvie Locke. God, that poor girl. I ached for her. He said Abey had taken her to the doctor and she was okay physically, but everything else in that kid’s life had gone up in smoke. She couldn’t go home. Even if Sylvie had reported what her father had done, which she refused to do, her mother was of the same mind. If Sylvie wasn’t willing to be someone else entirely than who she was born to be, then she wasn’t welcome in her own home.

And Red had tried to deal with it by himself? Theo said that Red and Sylvie had bonded in some way, so he wasn’t upset with Red for keeping quiet and not waking him when Sylvie showed up at the center.

It wasn’t the first time we’d dealt with that kind of situation at Ace’s House, and it wouldn’t be the last. Wyoming Family Services would look into it, but I didn’t have much hope that they would make much of a difference.

In the meantime, thankfully, Sylvie had an aunt on her mother’s side who had been horrified to hear how her sister and brother-in-law had treated their own daughter, so she’d driven over from Laramie last night to pick up Sylvie and take her somewhere she could feel safe. Her mother hadn’t even fought it. She let Sylvie go, but Laramie was a college town, so I knew she would find like-minded people her age there. She could thrive there. I hoped.

The whole thing had me thinking about my dad. The good memories I had of him were fuzzy. My mom never talked about him or about why he’d been so miserable, why he’d made my mom’s life miserable.

She grieved when he died, but I didn’t think I was wrong as I remembered her breathing easier after he was gone. Remembering his reaction to my coming out and all the other times he hadn’t been there for his family left me feeling indifferent.

His absence from my life, even though he had been sitting right there, made it easy to let the memories fade away. Still, I felt like I should feel something about him being so dismissive of me, but I didn’t.

Relief, just like my mom had felt, was all I knew about the man who had provided half my DNA. Relief that he was gone. I wondered if he’d have an opinion about my job if he were still alive. Maybe I liked helping people because he never had. If he wasn’t trying to help himself in some way, then he didn’t help anyone. He’d never seemed to care about anything enough to hold an opinion about it at all.

I wondered what Abey’s dad had been like. Had he been like mine—apathetic? Had her dad known about her? Had he hurt her, too, like Sylvie’s dad? Was it the reason for all the awkward, hushed silences when her family made the mistake of bringing him up?