Page 109 of Misguided
“Don’t even know where she is. I’ve kind of come to that point in my life where I don’t have a mom anymore, you know?”
I slow a little and reach out for Mel’s hand. It guts me that her momma could just leave her kids behind without keeping in touch. But I also know that a person shouldn’t be judged until they’ve had a chance to tell their own side of the story.
Mel links her fingers through mine and swings our arms as she walks. “Bit cozy for a hunt, ain’t it?”
Every moment I’ve spent with her has been a bit cozier than usual for me, but she doesn’t need to know that.
“Felt right, is all.” I smile down at her.
She tracks along beside me in seemingly content silence until I reach the landscape I know by heart: a rock embedded in the slope to our left, an opening in the trees to our right that lets the sunshine flow in, and the distant rush of a stream that runs along the base of the valley.
“We’re here,” I whisper. “Stay close.”
Mel shadows me as I lead us down over the edge of the hill, into the junction where the valley starts. From this vantage point we can scope both sides and cut our wait time in half.
I point to a semi-flat section behind a rock. “Sit there.”
She squats down and then flicks her legs out onto the top of the rock, eyes scanning the horizon. “How will I know if I see one?” she whispers.
“It’ll look like a deer,” I tease.
She flips me her middle finger and then returns to casing out the hillside.
I slide the pack off and set it down a little further up from where I’ll sit so I can use it as a leaner. Mel watches quietly while I settle in beside her and lift the rifle to rest atop my knee. If I’d managed to get into Dad’s house, I could have retrieved my binoculars and made this a whole lot easier, but the scope will do.
A few minutes pass without any trace of a living thing on the slopes, so I set the gun down between us and stretch my legs out beside Mel’s. “Now we wait.”
She lies back on the grass, stretching her arms out over her head as she stares up at the clouds. “I wonder what Mom is doing right now.”
Who would fucking know, but I can’t think of anything more important than knowing what her daughter is up to. “Maybe wonderin’ the same about you?”
“Hope so.” She lets the sentiment linger between us, closing her eyes with a sigh. “Tell me what happened while I was gone, Dog. All of it. I want to feel like I didn’t just miss out on the freshman year of college while all my friends got to party it up.”
“It wasn’t much of a party. We took out a couple of threats and put the plan to clean up Lincoln into action.”
“Do you think it’ll work?”
King has a grand idea about whittling away at the drug problem on our streets until it’s near non-existent, by controlling the supply. We’ve got the contacts and the physical presence to intimidate anybody from setting up a new source in our area, but the longevity of it? I don’t see it sticking.
“Not long term.”
“Yeah.” She drops an arm over her eyes. “I wonder a lot, you know, what will become of the club in ten, even twenty years time.”
“It’ll be around.”
“I don’t doubt that,” she says, rolling to her side to face me. “I just wonder what sort of club it’ll be, you know?”
Yeah, I do. I’ve seen it already in my short tenure with the guys; men who let the power go to their heads. As much as we all know it’s wrong, the lure of quick, easy money through drugs and weapons is a siren that calls to us all.
“I wonder the same thing,” I admit. “But then I look at the men around me, and I get the sense that a few bad eggs won’t spoil the carton.”
“Poetic,” Mel teases.
I grab a fistful of grass and toss it over her head.
“Hey,” she whisper-yells, rolling away as she bats it away from her eyes and nose.
My suppressed chuckle escapes as a snort, which simply sends her off the deep end. Mel’s whole body shakes as, with hands clamped over her mouth, she tries her damnedest to stop her laugh from bubbling free and echoing around the valley.