Page 66 of Rule the Night (Blackwell Butchers #1)

POE

I knew it was bad when I pulled up to find my gramps sitting on the stairs in front of the double-wide where I’d grown up. The steps were reserved for private conversations.

And serious ones.

I knew even before I parked that my gram would be inside, making food or crocheting baby blankets for the domestic shelter where she volunteered her time.

We all dealt with trouble in different ways.

“You can wait in the car if you want,” I told Maeve when I stopped the Hummer.

I hated that she was here, not because I was in any way ashamed of my grandparents but because Maeve had had enough trouble, and I’d spent the last eight weeks trying to protect her from it.

The last thing she needed was to get all caught up in mine.

“Do you want me to stay in the car?” Her blue eyes were brighter than usual, something that I noticed happened when she was worried, and her long black ponytail hung over one shoulder.

She was so fucking pretty it hurt me to look at her.

I thought about it. “No.”

“Then I’d like to come in, if you’re sure it will be okay with your grandparents.”

“It will be okay,” I said.

My gramps didn’t stand when we got out of the car and made our way toward him. Taking Maeve’s hand felt like the most natural thing in the world, although I didn’t know if I did it for her or for me.

“I’m sorry to call,” he said as we started up the steps.

He looked older every time I saw him, and I wondered how many years Whit’s trouble had added to his age. His black hair was threaded with gray now, pulled back into his everyday ponytail, and his weathered face was creased with worry lines.

“Don’t be sorry,” I said.

He stood and I embraced him on the steps.

“This is Maeve,” I said when we pulled apart.

He looked at Maeve and extended a hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Maeve. Come in. Machi will feed you.”

We followed him into the house and I was immediately transported back to my childhood, the faint scent of my gramps tobacco and the pot of coffee that was never empty mingling with the slightly musty carpet and the air freshener my gram sprayed to try and rid the house of my gramp’s pipe smoke.

The furnishings were old and worn but everything was neat and well maintained. My grandparents didn’t believe in waste. They believed in taking care of what you had, making it last, the land included, which was why they’d refused my offer of money to build a house on the ten acres they owned.

They believed in paying your own way too, which was why they also would have rejected the deed on the thirty acres I’d bought in their name surrounding the ten they already owned.

They had enough, and as my gramps liked to say, “Enough is always enough.”

I could tell my gram had been crying when she joined us in the living room, but she smiled anyway, and I gave her the hug I was sure she needed.

I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive Whit for what he’d put her and my gramps through, but my anger at Whit had never solved anything, so I’d learned to coexist with it.

I introduced my gram to Maeve and she marveled over how pretty Maeve was, then went into the kitchen to put together some sandwiches. Maeve insisted on helping, which left me alone with my gramps on the plaid sofa in front of the TV I’d bought them five Christmases ago.

“What happened?”

My gramps reached for his pipe and started packing it with cherry tobacco. “Shivved in the yard this morning.”

“Any details on why it happened?”

“Are there ever?”

This wasn’t the first time Whit had been sick or wounded in prison. It was a contained war zone where the inmates — and the guards for that matter — were so bored that the only way they could stay sane was to nurse a series of imaginary grievances and an endless string of interpersonal drama.

Whit had been stabbed before. He’d also been poisoned and beaten to within an inch of his life, the latter more than once.

“Will he be okay?”

“They think so.” My gramps paused to light the tobacco in his pipe, then took a puff to get it going.

He exhaled the scent of my childhood and for a split second, Whit and I were running around the living room, arguing over who got control of the remote while my grams came after us both with a wooden spoon. “Came close to his spleen.”

“Did they get the guy who did it?”

“There were two of them from the sound of it. Got them in the shu.”

“Shu” stood for “solitary confinement unit,” one of many entries in the every-expanding Things I Wish I Didn’t Know file in my head.

“Well, that’s good at least. Can we see him?”

“Not until he’s stable. Sunday maybe.”

My grandparents made the hour drive to visit Whit every Thursday and Sunday. I couldn’t say the same — it had been over a month since I’d seen him — but I would visit as soon as he was well enough.

“Who’s the girl?” my gramps asked. “She’s pretty.”

“She’s more than that,” I said before I could think better of it.

He studied my face, his eyes lit with understanding. “Ah, it’s like that.”

He and my grams were the only people who could make me squirm. “It’s not like anything. Not really.”

The corners of his mouth turned up just the slightest in a smirk I recognized well. “If you say so, Hah-nu-nah.”

I smiled at the old nickname. There had been a time when I’d hated it. My friends had nicknames like “wolf” and “hawk.” Who wanted to be a turtle?

But as I’d gotten older I’d come to see the nickname as an honor.

In our creation story, Hah-nu-nah was the world turtle, the one who had held the earth on his back.

According to the legend, the ocean rose in great waves when he stirred, and earthquakes yawned and devoured when he became restless or violent.

“It’s complicated,” I said.

He shook his head. “Simple, Hah-nu-nah. Hold on to what is good.”