Page 55 of Badd Daddy

He shook his head. “I was organizing the basement the other day and…” He shook his head again. “No fuckin’ way. Hold on—I’ll be right back.”

He jogged to the very back of the bar—to a door that led into the storeroom, and down to the basement. He vanished down the steps, was gone a couple of minutes, three at most, and reappeared with something in his hands.

He stopped in front of me and tossed it on the bar in front of me.

My heart…it hurt almost as bad as when I’d had the heart attack—I felt so bad I literally clutched at my chest, unable to breathe. My eyes misted, my throat closed.

It was Lena’s bag.

My hands trembled, shaking like rusty, papery oak leaves in a fall wind. I lifted the too-familiar, long-lost shapeless bag up to my nose and inhaled—it still smelled of her. Mints, dryer sheets, and the faint scent of perfume. I smelled the woods. The ocean. The pine trees.

Lena.

The bag was not empty. I fished inside and withdrew…books, of course:The Unbearable Lightness of Being,Remains of the Day,I Know This Much Is True,The Things They Carried,All the Pretty Horses.

There were bookmarks in each, along with library slips indicating the books were now decades overdue.

“Damn,” Bast murmured. “Guess we owe the library some money.”

“Sebastian,” Dru whispered. “Hush.”

There was no sound in the bar other than breathing and the occasional cough or sniffle.

“This is it,” I said, eventually. “Her bag. Her satchel of essentials, she called it. She came over one Saturday with a paper bag full of old clothes, some scissors, and an old tin box full of sewing supplies. She sat down cross-legged on the big old stump outside the front door of the cabin, and she made that bag. She didn’t look up once, didn’t speak, didn’t do nothing except cut and sew. She did accept a pull of Dad’s hooch, though. Took her maybe two hours, and then she held up this bag. Liam and I had just got back from chopping wood and digging a hole for a new outhouse.”

“She made this herself?” Dru asked, running her fingertips over the fabric.

I nodded. “This was about…oh…six months after we met. After that, she was never without it. She kept a couple changes of clothes in there, food, a canteen, a carton of cigarettes, needful girly sorts’a things like makeup and whatnot. Sewing stuff. A big ol’ hunting knife Gramps gave her. Sometimes she’d have a bottle of somethin’ in there, or a baggie of dope. You could find just about anything you needed in this bag.”

“Cigarettes? Dope?” This was Xavier. “I was not aware that Mother was a smoker of anything.”

I waved a hand. “She wasn’t, except socially. Meanin’, us three’d go hiking up the creek, catch some fish, go swimming, eat, get a little tipsy, smoke some dope or a few cigarettes. None of us were smokers in the sense that we smoked regularly. It was just…something to do. Something you did, I guess. I dunno. It was the same with the dope.”

“By dope, you mean...?” prompted Brock.

“Dope. Pot. Mary Jane. Weed.” I waved again. “I ain’t seen this thing in…god. Since the last time I saw her…that day at the park in Seattle.”

“Tell us about that?” said Corin.

I shook my head. “I’m gettin’ there, kiddo, gettin’ there.” I let out a breath. “The three of us were inseparable. We did everything together. She basically lived with us, after a while. Stopped going to town, except when we went. She’d occasionally vanish for a few days, maybe a week at most, but that was a once a year sorta thing.” I paused a moment. “Liam and I were both stupid for the girl. Head over heels in love. We didn’t ever talk about it, but for the two, three years she was with us up at the Ward Creek cabin, it was simmering between us. We knew it was gonna have to get dealt with at some point, but we were hopin’ it would sort itself out somehow. I dunno. I know I…I loved her.”

I closed my eyes and ducked my head. “Always have. Always will—she’ll always be a part of me.” I shook my head, rubbed my eyes. “We were always vying for her attention. One-upping each other. Who could get a bigger buck, skin it faster, chop more wood, run faster, jump higher, grow a bigger beard. Make her laugh. Buy her somethin’ fancy. For her part, she was careful, mostly. I think she was just as confused as we were, if not more so. Liam and I were a lot alike, but also very different. She didn’t want to choose, I don’t think. Who would, though, y’know?”

“She picked Dad, though, obviously,” Bax said.

I nodded. “Yeah, she did. Not easily, though.” I thought a while. “Not sure what all I told you, boys,” I said to Roman, Remington, and Ramsey. “Probably only partially the truth, knowing me.”

“You said she gradually started favoring Uncle Liam, and it all came to a head when you took a trip to Seattle,” Rome answered.

I nodded. “That’s the truth, but only the vague outlines of it.” I paused again, got up to refill my plate from the kitchen with more salmon and prime rib, and I allowed myself a few French fries and a mozzarella stick. “It got complicated. She liked us both, that much was obvious. But who she liked more was…less obvious. Liam and I, by the time we were eighteen, were gettin’ antsy. We wanted to get off the Ward Creek property and see more of the world. Cast out on our own, the usual coming of age sorta shit. So we each got jobs down here, Liam at a bar, me at a lumber mill outside town. Lena would spend time with whichever of us wasn’t working, and that was when things got complicated, because before we got jobs, it was always the three of us. When it was just me and Lena, I was on top of the world. When I was working and I knew Liam was off, I knew he was with her, and I was jealous.”

I hesitated, not sure how much of this next part I should tell.

“Don’t hold out on us,” Zane rumbled, as if reading my mind, or my hesitation. “Tell it all.”

“Fine. But remember, you asked.” I ate a few bites and then continued. “Liam got sucked into the bar life, started working a lot, so I was spending a lot of time with her. I worked early mornings, so we would meet up after I got out and spend all day together, hiking, fishing, walking around town, just sitting on the dock and talking.”

I thought of those days, and a smile crossed my face. “That lasted about three months, and those were the happiest days of my life.” The grin faded. “We went hiking one day, way up off the trails. We stopped at this little pond, and we went swimming. Skinny-dipping. Things got a little…steamy. It was my dream come true. I thought that was it, she and I would be…together. That she’d chosen me.” I swallowed hard, and summoned the resolve to continue. “It happened a few times. Her and me, usually on a hike, late afternoon or early evening. She…her favorite time of day was sunset. We would hike up to a hill somewhere, and…yeah.”