“I had no choice, Eddie. He already suspected something. He had a picture that was taken of you from yesterday. He was completely flipping out and demanding answers from me. Said if I didn’t come clean, it was over. So I told him about what happened last year. About how I was trying to protect him.”
“You stupid girl!” the old lady hissed. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I love him, Mom!”
Eddie was cursing up a storm. “He knows about last night?”
She looked over to him and reluctantly nodded.
Eddie threw his burger across the trailer. “This is unbelievable, Beth. We are so screwed!”
“I couldn’t stop myself,” Beth explained. “He was so upset with me! I’d never seen him like this before. He kept saying if we had any future together that I had to be completely honest with him.”
“You are such an idiot,” his mother said to Beth.
“Shut the hell up!” Beth yelled at her. “You don’t even know what love is. Your man ran off to get the hell away from you.”
Eddie could tell his mother was about to attack Beth physically, so he stepped in between them to try to defuse the situation. Fighting right now wasn’t going to get them anywhere. But they were all screwed depending on what her man did next. Especially Eddie—he had blood all over his hands.
“So what’s he going to do, Beth?” Eddie asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “He looked so devastated. He kept blaming himself for everything and talking about how he had to come clean. To make this right. Then he wrote me a big-ass check and told me to get out of town as fast as possible. And not to tell anyone where I was going. And that maybe after all of this finally calms down again, he’d come find me.”
The old lady poured herself more whiskey and quickly downed it. “Does he know about the girl?”
She nodded. “But I swore to him she was OK, and I didn’t know where you had her. I wanted to give you a chance to get out of here, too. Before he did something.”
“OK, good,” his mother said. She seemed to have calmed down. Eddie was unsure why. This whole thing was spiraling out of control.
“I’m sorry,” Beth said. “I didn’t want any of this to happen.”
His mother put her hand on Beth’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s OK. We’re all going to be OK. Just go back home, pack up some of your things, and then get back over here. We will all leave together, as a family.”
Beth exhaled deeply, nodded, wiped the tears from her face with her fingers. Then she left. Eddie watched through the front window as his sister climbed back into her Honda Accord and drove off.
“So that’s it?” Eddie said. “We’re just going to leave?”
His mother’s eyes grew narrow. “No, we’re not leaving, son. You’re going to go take care of this right now.”
Eddie knew what she meant. “It will destroy Beth. She does love him.”
“You think I care about her precious feelings right now? That guy comes clean, we’re all going to prison. And I’ll die in there.”
“We can go to Mexico instead. Dad did it.”
“I’m too old to live on the run. Plus, your daddy died two weeks after he crossed the border. Shot in an alley by a drug dealer.”
Eddie’s eyes widened. “What? You never told me that.”
She shrugged. “You were still a kid who kept praying your daddy would come home. I didn’t feel like it was something you should ever know.”
Eddie cursed. “Well, you picked a real nice time to say something.”
“Stop whining. Go make your daddy proud by doing what you have to do right now to take care of his family.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Logan Gervais smoked a cigarette while sitting in his black Taurus. He was parked on a hill overlooking the river with a great view of downtown spread out before him. The satellite radio was tuned to old-school jazz. John Coltrane currently filled up his speakers. Gervais loved the classics. In his opinion, A Love Supreme was one of the greatest jazz albums of all time. Living in New York City gave him access to the world’s best up-and-coming jazz musicians. Gervais spent several nights a week out in the clubs. He could play a little saxophone himself but never quite had the ear to do much with it. If he got the opportunity, Gervais planned to visit the Elephant Room later tonight to listen to some jazz. He’d read some good things about the local club. A lot of the greats had played there.