Page 11 of August Lane
CHAPTER FOUR
L uke woke to a note in his mother’s loopy handwriting that told him she’d be home to make dinner for her boys.
The word boys was framed with hearts. She was always overly affectionate after a rough night.
Instead of apologizing for her bad behavior, she’d pretend it never happened, daring her sons to mention it.
If one of them did, she’d cry and yell, call them every foul version of ungrateful.
Ava’s shout had the force of an earthquake.
She’d scream until the whole house shook.
Luke eyed the bruises along his forearm, and the previous night rushed back. Ava had been drunk when he got home. She’d gone out with friends after work and had an argument with one of the other bank tellers about whether her drawer had been short all week.
“She called me a thief. Can you believe that?”
Luke wasn’t paying close enough attention.
He didn’t notice the gleam in her eyes that signaled she was too far gone for an honest answer.
“I don’t think that’s what she meant,” he said absently.
He was thinking about August and how risky it was to hold on to her journal.
He’d been plotting ways to return it without her noticing while the real threat was brewing in front of him.
Ava said, “You asshole.” Then she laughed.
That’s when Luke started paying attention.
His beautiful mother, with her amber eyes and tawny skin, had transformed into something ugly, her features contorted with the pain she usually smothered with pills.
Doctors couldn’t explain her condition. A few accused her of faking.
Her prescriptions had run out years ago, so Luke didn’t know where she got the Vicodin she stowed in her purse.
A few days ago, she’d said she was quitting and made a big show of flushing a bottle down the toilet in front of him.
Luke hadn’t believed her, but now he realized she’d been serious.
After seventy-two hours of suffering, she was tired of hurting alone.
Ava leaned forward and spit in his face.
Luke jerked back, rubbing away her saliva, but she followed him, asking who the fuck he thought he was.
Her arms went up, and he grabbed them instinctively, trying to stop whatever came next.
But he couldn’t. He never could. He could hold her down, pin her arms to her sides, or walk away and lock himself in his bedroom, but he could never make her calm or remorseful.
Rage spread inside her like an infection. The feverish, killing kind.
Once Ava got tired of wailing on him, she left the house. Luke grabbed two six-packs of beer from the fridge and drank them all. When his little brother returned from junior high band practice, Luke was lounging on the couch, surrounded by crushed silver cans.
“I’ll clean this up,” he promised, gathering a few in a tiny heap.
“What did she do?” Ethan asked, retrieving a trash bag.
Luke told him the truth because they didn’t keep secrets from each other.
It was their primary survival tactic, trading information about their mother’s moods.
The lesson Luke passed on to Ethan, who was thirteen and struggling with hormonal changes that made it increasingly difficult to bite his tongue, was to avoid talking to their mother about work for a while.
“She might get fired,” Luke had said. “That’ll make things worse, so be prepared. ”
Luke shook off the memory of last night, crumpled Ava’s non-apology note, and made his way to the kitchen.
It smelled like bacon left in the pan too long.
Ethan was at the stove wearing one of Luke’s old T-shirts.
His brother was tall for a thirteen-year-old, with the bony frame of a kid forced to skip meals when his mother forgot to feed him.
The fabric billowed around his narrow shoulders while he poked at scrambled eggs.
“This is burning,” Luke said, turning off the heat under the bacon pan. Ethan’s face flushed red. Despite inheriting Ava’s light brown complexion, Ethan had inherited his Irish father’s tendency to turn the color of beets at the slightest provocation.
“I like it crispy,” Ethan protested, ever the perfectionist. He’d been that way since birth.
Ava said Ethan had refused to cry, even when the doctor slapped him.
“They thought he was dead at first,” she would say with a laugh.
“But knowing Ethan, he probably didn’t want to admit being confused in front of strangers. ”
Luke cleared the table, which was covered with crumbled fast-food wrappers and half-empty wineglasses. “Is she with Don?”
Ethan loaded up two plates with bacon and eggs. “He picked her up this morning.”
Don was the latest man Ava had decided would make a good role model for her sons.
He was blond and toothy, always grinning even when it made the situation awkward.
He worked at a chicken plant and lived in a trailer near the county line, which he thought entitled him to rant about Luke’s poor career prospects, even though he seemed to spend more time praying about lottery tickets at New Life Church than murdering poultry at his day job.
Luke knew that with his poor grades and low ACT scores, a football scholarship was his only path to college.
He agreed with Don’s favorite insult (“A snowball’s gonna survive hellfire before you get to the NFL”) but going to LSU wasn’t about playing in the pros.
Baton Rouge was his mother’s hometown. If Luke moved there, she might follow him and bring Ethan with her.
“Don told her to kick you out,” Ethan said. “That it would teach you a lesson.”
Luke shoved down more food and tried to look unbothered. It wouldn’t do Ethan any good to see him panic. “She’d never do that.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.” Luke fixed his brother with a hard stare. “Don’t argue with her about it. I can take care of myself.”
“You let her spit on you.”
Luke’s skin flashed hot. He didn’t regret being honest with Ethan, but his brother’s black-and-white way of viewing things didn’t make it easy. “I didn’t let her do anything.”
“You didn’t fight back.”
“How? By spittin’ back? You want me to hit her?”
Ethan fell silent, and Luke instantly regretted his sharp tone. Although Ethan had seen the worst sides of Ava, her fury had never been pointed in his direction. His little brother didn’t understand why they were treated differently and often blamed Luke for not standing up for himself.
Luke knew exactly why the sight of her youngest son was a sigh of relief, while the sight of her oldest sent Ava into a rage.
At nineteen, she’d gotten pregnant by Jason Randall, a pitch-black cattle farmer, which had infuriated her rich Creole parents.
They’d cut her off and refused to acknowledge their grandson.
When Jason died unexpectedly, Ava had packed their things and driven to Baton Rouge, ready to be welcomed back with open arms. But according to his mother, they took one look at Luke and slammed the door in her face.
“My people are weird about some things” was her only explanation.
Luke became a reminder of her loss. He represented a choice she regretted and the man who convinced her to make it.
Ethan, the unexpected child of a roaming white folk musician she met at the Delta Music Festival, became her humanity.
Loving him was the only reason she hadn’t given up on life completely.
“How’s school?” Luke asked. He wanted to rescue the morning since they rarely had much time alone during the school year. “Did you ace that chemistry quiz you were stressed about?”
“That was last week, and yes.” Ethan tried to look grumpy but failed because he loved bragging about being an eighth grader earning perfect scores in senior level classes. “It was multiple choice, so I memorized a lot of that stuff for nothing.”
“Not for nothing, Dr. Randall,” Luke said. “You’ll use it in college or medical school.”
“Pretty sure those will be a lot harder.”
Luke grinned. “For you? Nah. You’ll be whining about it being too easy on the first day.”
Ethan smiled down at his food, moving it around his plate. He’d barely touched it. Luke tapped the table and motioned for him to tuck in. “Don’t want to be late.”
“Because you want to see August Lane?”
Luke frowned. “How do you know August?”
Ethan turned red again. “Don’t be mad. I borrowed your iPod without asking and was trying to sneak it back into your room when I saw her notebook open on your bed.
” He bit into a piece of bacon and spoke while chewing.
“Y’all would make a cute couple. Have you met her mother yet? You should play her your music.”
“Hold on. One, don’t steal my shit. Two, I’m still with Jessica. August and I are just friends.”
“August doesn’t have friends.”
Luke started to argue but couldn’t think of a shred of evidence to the contrary. “I thought you didn’t have friends,” Luke said instead. “Who’s telling you all this stuff?”
“I have friends, jerk. Ever heard of study dates?”
“You’re dating now?” Luke leaned back and tried to look at his brother with clearer eyes. A dark smudge dotted his cheek, threatening stubble. How had he missed it? “What’s his name?”
Ethan’s eyes shot to the door out of habit. No one else knew he was gay. Their mother, a lapsed Catholic, had become a lot more devout since she’d started dating Don, a Southern Baptist who wouldn’t hesitate to send Ethan to some “pray the gay away” church camp.
“I’m not—he isn’t—it’s new, so I don’t want to talk about it yet.” Ethan’s face was the color of ripe cherries. “Anyway, you’ll get tired of Jessica. She never talks about anything interesting. Plus, you don’t play guitar for her. You play for everyone you love.”