Rusty.
“Hey, you guys, what’s up?”
Scott turned, furious, his eyes burning a hole into Aubrey’s. “What the fuck, Aubrey? He has to stop just coming here whenever he wants. I thought you fucking talked to him about that.”
“Not crazy about the language,” Brady said.
“Who asked you?” Scott snapped.
“Nobody. Just voicing an opinion.”
“What are you guys doing in there?” Rusty yelled, from the doorway. “You gonna let me in or what?”
“I’ll handle it,” Aubrey said, getting up from the table. Scott turned away, so he couldn’t make eye contact with Rusty, and now it was Celeste’s turn to try to comfort him. God, Aubrey was going to get sick of that us-two-against-the-world dynamic real quick, but one problem at a time. “Excuse me.”
She headed for the front door, making a conscious effort not to force a phony, accommodating smile onto her face. She was done with that shit with Rusty. She reached the door and stopped, pointedly, on the other side of the screen, not opening it. “What’s the matter, Rusty?”
He looked at her and frowned, held his hands up in confusion. “What do you mean what’s the matter? You asked me to knock first. I knocked.”
“I mean why are you here?”
He scratched his neck, too hard, and gestured to his truck. “Came to juice you up.” Again, he’d backed into the driveway, his truck hanging out into the street this time, since Brady’s BMW was already parked beside the house. Aubrey could see the yellow generator in the back.
“Who’s Mr. BMW with the California plates?” he asked.
Aubrey was in no mood for his bullshit. “No, thank you.”
“What do you mean?” Rusty asked.
“I mean I don’t want power right now.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not gonna be over this way for another four or five days, so it’s kinda now or never, honey.”
“That’s a chance I’ll take.” She started to close the front door, but Rusty leaned in, right up against the screen.
“What’s your fucking problem?”
“Do you need some help here?”
Aubrey turned. Brady, all six foot four and two hundred twenty pounds of him, was standing just behind her, a little to one side.
“Rusty was just leaving.”
Brady turned and looked at Rusty, a flat-affect the-lady-says-you’re-leaving expression on his face.
Rusty laughed and looked Brady up and down. “Who the fuck are you supposed to be?”
“I’d answer that, but I heard you needed to go.”
“Oh, for the love of Christ,” Rusty said to Aubrey. “What is this guy, muscle? Jesus, look at this Mick. He’s like a ton of corned beef floating in beer.” Rusty scratched his neck again, compulsively.
Meth, Brady thought to himself. Everywhere, meth. His brother Terence, those kids in the desert, and now this guy. It felt like it haunted him, stalked him.
Aubrey looked back over her shoulder and saw Scott and Celeste were staring at them. She turned back to Rusty, trying to end the conversation. “He works with Thom. He’s here helping us out today.” The moment Thom’s name was out of her mouth, she wished she could snatch it back out of the air before it reached Rusty’s ears. That seemingly innocent and non-specific comment was the first of two calamitous mistakes Aubrey would make.
While Rusty and Aubrey were married, her husband and brother had never gotten along. Rusty was somehow deeply resentful of Thom’s attempts to help them financially yet also found his offers totally inadequate. And, of course, the fact that Aubrey continually turned her brother’s money down made Rusty crazy.
On dark nights when things were bad, she’d wondered if Rusty had ever loved her, or if it was just her brother’s money he’d been after all along.
In the clear light of day, she knew that it was. Mentioning Thom at all would mean only one thing to Rusty: money.
In her irritation, Aubrey turned away from Rusty, who was still on the other side of the screen. Her eyes, looking for anywhere else to land besides her ex-husband’s rotting teeth, fell on the living room, and on the blue duffel bag that was still sitting in the middle of the coffee table. Her gaze only rested there for a split second before she abruptly looked away, back to the conversation in the doorway.
It was her quick look away that Rusty noticed, and that involuntary reaction was her second, and more grievous, mistake. Rusty, no dummy, picked up the twitch of her head, the way she snapped it back at him, but not just to him, away from something. Looking into the living room, his eyes searched for whatever it was she hadn’t wanted him to see. The blue duffel bag was the obvious choice, sitting out on the coffee table as if on display.