Page 31 of Tinsel & Chrome

MAMMOTH

Christmas Eve 2 Years Ago...

Some Merciless Few club members spent time with their families in their homes, but it was a sad time of year for others, like my Prez. I sat with him at the bar, taking shots of tequila in the clubhouse, along with Crowbar, who played a few rounds of pool with a club member we call Cisco.

“'Have you found your whore sister yet?’ was the last thing my murdering father said to me when I visited him in prison. I knew down to my bones he had something to do with Wren’s disappearance,”

Zero said, his face grim when he handed me a couple of old photographs.

The edges of the first were frayed. It showed Prez as a young kid standing on the beach with a boogie board, his younger sister Wren standing beside him. They both had the same dark hair. They looked so much alike no one could deny they were siblings.

The second photo was Wren’s high school photo, taken before she went missing eight years ago. Her brown eyes and sad smile riveted me.

She was so beautiful.

I thought about my brothers and sisters back home in Bedford, and could only imagine Zero’s pain of not knowing what had happened to her.

Eight years ago, Zero’s father, Gunther Hughes, was convicted of first-degree murder for killing his mother and was sentenced to life in prison in Jessup, Maryland.

“Was there an investigation on Wren’s disappearance?”

I asked, looking at the photos.

“They were incompetent and didn’t give a flying fuck about a missing teenager from a single-parent home. They assumed Wren ran away with a boyfriend.”

There was a moment of silence before Crowbar took his shot with the cue ball, and the eight-ball dropped into the corner pocket.

“Girls, women go missing every day, some ending up dead, never to be found,”

Zero continued.

“Some are lucky, though, and survive. I don’t think Wren was one of the lucky ones.”

Staring at Wren’s high school picture, I felt struck by a bolt of lightning that resonated through my body and warmed my chest. Maybe it was the tequila flowing smoothly down my throat, but I had this unexplainable sense down to my bones that she was still alive.

I swung my arm around Zero’s shoulders.

“Wren is one of the lucky ones, brother. I feel it. When the time is right, she’ll come back.”

Though his eyes were still sad, he smiled.

“Time is all I have.”

I handed him back the photo of them at the beach.

“Would you mind if I kept Wren’s school photo?”

“Sure, brother. Merry Christmas.”