Page 20 of Enforce This
“Fucking raccoons.” Eric scoffed, slamming the door.
My eyes shot open, and I stared at him, and then the door. I was sure that he was wrong. Someone was going to kick that thing straight off the hinges any minute now.
“Tris– Trista, did you hear me?” Eric softly called from beside the sofa.
I blinked and looked at him, my cheeks still wet from spent tears.
“Go back to sleep. Everything is fine. I’ll be here between you and the doors, okay?”
He might as well have been speaking Swahili. I didn’t hear a word. All I could do at the moment was stare at his tall, toned frame. He had tattoos on his chest and upper arms. One of them was military inspired, but the one above his boxers read “Easy” in fancy cursive writing.
He stretched out on the couch, not waiting for a response.
I shifted around, covering myself in his blankets, and laid my head on a pillow that vaguely smelled of his shampoo. I’d been surprised by it in the shower, it was high-end-salon-type shit.
What man bought shampoo and conditioner from a hair salon?
The moment the thought crossed my mind, I inwardly deduced the answer.
A man whose Aunt Daisy owns Daisy’s Mane Attraction. My mother was murdered at his aunt’s salon.
I suddenly had more questions than I could sleep with. So, I swallowed and sat up. I looked toward the back of the sofa, straining until I could barely make out the shape of it, in the moonlight that trickled through his simple curtains.
“Was your Aunt Daisy in on my mother’s murder… Is that why you’re keeping me here?”
Before I could finish my thoughts, he sprang up to a sitting position, laid an arm across the back of the couch and focused on my side of the room.
“Is that what you…?” He trailed off before answering, “No. My Aunt Daisy is… Well, she isn’t like that. She is my aunt on my mother’s side.”
“What does that mean?” I didn’t know anything about his mother, except that she loved an outlaw once upon a time and had paid for it with her life.
He made a throaty sound that was pretty similar to a growl, “It’s not exactly bedtime story material… It’s late, okay…”
When I didn’t lay back down, he sighed and popped his neck.
“My mother was… Goddamnit. They weren’t good together, okay? He’d smack her around when he’d been up for a few days— When he’d finally fall out, after being up so long it would be like he was dead. He’d go from being a raging monster to just…” Eric snapped his fingers, “Out. She’d pack mine and Anthony’s shit up and haul us to Aunt Daisy’s in her beat-up station wagon. Daisy was always a place of shelter. It was a place where my mother could breathe, and we could play for a few days without him raging and mood swinging from the up and down of his drug cycle.”
He hadn’t wanted to talk about it, and now it was like listening to a recording, his voice was flat, and he was staring into the darkness at the wall in front of him.
He laughed abruptly, “He didn’t dare drag his ass to Aunt Daisy’s property, though. She’d have called the law on him quicker than shit.”
He paused finally and the silence hung before he made a thoughtful sound, “Anyway… She took me in when they died. She would have taken Ant in, too; except he was thirteen. He ran away every chance he got, and eventually…”
“The state took him,” I guessed, having some understanding of how these matters worked.
They had made us take a class about child protective care and all of that since nurses are mandated reporters in the state of Illinois.
“Nah, the sheriff stopped getting involved.”
“What?” My eyes bugged and I was grateful it was still dark. “Wh– Why would the sheriff allow your brother to run away?”
“Because Mark told him if he came to the compound looking for that boy one more time, he’d turn Maryette County into a war zone.”
“Fucking hell!” I exclaimed, unable to hide the disgust in my voice.
He laughed and popped the top of the sofa with his hand, “You sound a lot like Aunt Daisy, you know… Ya’ll would probably get along just fine.”
“She sounds like a good woman. I’m glad you have her in your life,” I quietly mused.