Beneath the Stain - Part 3 (15 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said, and then grimaced and swore to himself. Blake’s weasel-thin face had crumpled and blotched. His eyes were bright, shiny red. “And I’m really fucking sorry that I made you cry.”

Blake had put his guitar down and pulled his knees up to his chin, sobbing into them. Mackey grabbed the box of Kleenex behind him and shoved it into his hand.

“Fuck. God. I’m so fucking sorry. Man, I never should have told you. You didn’t have to know. I’m sorry I treated you like shit—you seemed to be doing okay with Kell, and I didn’t think it even fucking bothered you, which just made me more pissed, and—”

Blake nodded and took the Kleenex. Mackey just gaped at him, feeling stupid, until he remembered himself, fetal on the damned floor of the shrink’s office, and the one thing he seemed to need more than anything.

“Aw fuck,” he muttered. “Blake, would you like a fucking hug?”

“God yes,” Blake mumbled through the snot and the sobs, and Mackey found himself perched on the edge of the bed, guitars forgotten, as he comforted a guy he’d thought he couldn’t stand.

Bonus Scene

H
EATHER
’
S
BOYS
didn’t know this, but Heather had, in fact, grown up in a little town called Abelard about 100 miles south of Tyson.

She’d been the preacher’s daughter.

And boy, she must have had a thing for guys like Daddy, because she sure did know how to pick the possessive, unreasonable asshole who would sooner knock her around than talk to her.

The first time it happened, she was sixteen. She’d run to Kell’s father, Jimmy Kellogg, and asked him if maybe, maybe, his parents could help her out since she was pregnant with his baby.

She forgot how the argument escalated, but it ended with him doubting Kell was even his and her getting slammed against a wall.

She remembered getting slammed against a wall—her father had done it to her not twelve hours earlier, and before that, probably two or three months ago, because that was just the way Daddy rolled.

She had a friend drop her off in Tyson with enough money to pay rent for two months, enough food for a week, and just enough skill at lying about her age to get a job as a waitress.

When Wally Jefferson, with his sweetly round face and wide blue eyes, started courting her, she was so terribly relieved. Oh God—Kell was only a couple months old, and he was a good child, stolid and not too much trouble, but to not be alone? Not to be in charge of raising him all by herself? She remembered those months, that hope. Wally
seemed
so sweet—not terribly self-sufficient or courageous, but kind, and she needed some kindness.

But one night he showed up with his bastard half-brother’s cousin (she’d actually had to draw out a family tree to figure out the guy was Stevie’s dad’s cousin too, but that was later), who was leering and stoned and wanted to watch them together and beat off.

She slapped Wally across the face and slammed the door on them both. And then cried for the next two weeks until she took the pregnancy test and realized that after one missed pill, she was once again screwed.

But Jefferson was no more trouble than Kell had been. Oh God—the sweetest babies, both of them. And Kell—he defended his brother from other babies, from loud noises. Kell accidentally broke his crib when he was about a year old because yes, he was that strong, so he and Jefferson shared a twin-size bed with a rail after Jefferson outgrew the bassinet. She would find them cuddled in the middle of the bed in their footie pajamas, clinging to each other in the middle of the night.

Then she would cry and thank the God she’d just started believing in again, because she’d fucked up twice and both times God had given her the most beautiful children. It was like a sign that she was forgiven.

Apparently it was too big of a sign, because one night, her friend Jodi’s mom took her boys and Jodi’s daughter, and Jodi and Heather went dancing. It was Heather’s first time out
anywhere
since Wally, and her first time dancing since the junior prom that had resulted in Kell. She danced mostly with a gray-eyed trucker named Carson McKay, who was kind and funny and graceful.

And she was so lonely.

That one night, she felt like a princess. Even though he was very serious that it wasn’t going to be more than the one night, it actually felt to her like
this
was what the fuss was all about.

Three months later, of course, she knew what all the fuss was about. Her body rhythm had
lied
to her, and she had one more baby without a daddy.

And this one wasn’t well behaved. This one was born small and had to fight for life. This one was fractious with colic and needy for attention. This one crawled early, walked early, talked early, and rolled his eyes at her when he was only a year old.

But this one also cracked his first joke at a year and a half.

“Mama! Want!”

“You want what, Mackey? What do you want?”

“Heh heh—want
mama
!” He grinned and nodded, and she had no choice but to laugh and pick him up and hug him.

Oh, being a mother was so complex. Children needed and you resented them and you gave up things and you resented them and you worked your ass off to feed them and to give them clothing and to give them birthday parties and gifts and to make them happy…

And you realized that your entire world was your children, but that was okay, because your children really
were
just that beautiful. They
deserved
to be your entire world.

Heather stopped looking around for a while.

When Enos courted her, she’d forgotten some of her survival skills. He started showing up at her house when she got home from work—even at one in the morning. Once, he showed up with his sister to babysit so he could take her on a picnic. He took the older boys out fishing, and it wasn’t until much later that she realized he didn’t leave Mackey home because at eight he was too young.

He left Mackey home because Mackey was
smarter
than he was, and Enos didn’t like it when an eight-year-old made a fool of him.

But before that, he brought her flowers and he smiled kindly at her, and he helped with the bills. When he found out the rubber broke and she was pregnant with Cheever, he was so excited. He bought that boy all sorts of baby clothes, lots of different sizes, and a shitload of stuffed animals. This was a good thing, because her boys were all old enough that she’d already given their baby clothes away, but Heather was more concerned with a decent crib. She paid for it and bought it brand-new, because you didn’t buy secondhand baby furniture. Very often, that shit was dangerous, and if she’d learned anything between sixteen and twenty-eight, it was that you didn’t take your children for granted. When you got home from a shitty day waitressing or getting your hair-dressing license, the odds of a man being there to comfort you were slim.

The odds of her
boys
being there were absolutely 100 to 1, and she would sacrifice hair dye, new shoes, and a fashion magazine to bring them cookies or those damned crackers any day.

Her boys hugged her. Unconditionally. Hell, even their
friends
hugged her unconditionally. All she had to do was take care of them the best she could. As leery as she was of Grant Adams and his money and the knowledge that Stevie was related to Wally’s half-brother’s cousin, she could take them in too, because they loved her boys.

So the thing with Enos Cheever was really no contest. She came home from work, exhausted because Cheever was only two months old, and found Mackey crumpled against the wall and bleeding from the nose, mouth, and ears. Kell, fists bloody, was sitting on Enos Cheever’s chest, beating him unconscious.

She hauled Kell off him, screaming at him to stop.

He fell apart, damned near grown at twelve and built like a fireplug, sobbing that you shouldn’t ought to hit Mackey, no matter
what
he said, and she stopped screaming and placed her dainty foot at the apex of Enos’s legs.

And stood up and jumped off before he could double up and howl.

Then she grabbed him by the ear and, with Jefferson’s help, dragged the fucker out of her apartment—the same one she’d landed in when she’d shown up in Tyson—and slammed the door.

Then she called the hospital and asked if she could bring Mackey and Kell in for stitches. Because it was after ten o’clock at night, she had to pay an emergency room fee, which meant she had to work double shifts through most of Mackey’s convalescence. She couldn’t breast-feed Cheever through all of that, which sucked because formula cost too much and also because she’d loved nursing her boys—it had given her an excuse to be close to each one of them—but, well, you do what you have to do, and Heather May Sanders had to take care of all her kids.

God, it was a big job.

And then suddenly…

It wasn’t.

It wasn’t even her job at all.

Suddenly her older boys were far away and Cheever was
gone
all week, and all she could do was visit him for dinner (which he seemed to resent more every day) and volunteer once a week. She was… lost.

What did she do with her time?

Well, first of all, she renewed her beautician’s license.

She set up a little business too—a salon in the back of her house, where she catered to people on their schedule, which sort of cracked her up. She’d been poor. She actually knew what it was like to have no time. Rich people had no idea.

So she had her business. She had Jodi, who’d found a nice husband between Mackey and now and who liked to have lunch with her once or twice a week. She liked to go to antique stores and she liked to hike near the river and she liked to watch movies on the big-ass television the boys had bought her.

And suddenly she liked to look at men.

Just look, really. At least for the first few months.

And then, one day about a year after the older boys left, a nice guy, Forrest Cooper, a single dad from Cheever’s school, started to smile at her real sweet.

He asked her out to coffee, and she went.

He asked her out dancing, and she went. He kissed her chastely on her porch afterwards, and she smiled a little dreamily.

He took her to church picnics and introduced her to his parents and to his son, Aubrey, who seemed sort of like a sneaky little business, but she wasn’t going to tell Forrest how to raise a kid. Jesus, she was lucky to have made it
this
far without God himself pointing a finger at her and shouting, loud enough for Tyson and Hepzibah to hear, “
You
, Heather Sanders,
you
have no business being loved by any human being, much less your own children! See how you have fucked up! See and repent!”

So Aubrey could try to blame all his business on Cheever, and she would just believe Cheever and roll her eyes at Forrest and hope he was just a little dumb and not mean.

When Mackey was attacked, Forrest had been solicitous, and it had felt nice to have someone care besides her. But it also felt a little condescending. Especially when he said, “Oh, well, Heather—you know those Hollywood people. There were probably monkeys hanging from the ceiling at that party anyway.”

“So you’re saying he was asking for it?” she asked, scowling.

He smiled goofily. “No! I’m just saying it was probably… you know. Just things getting out of hand!”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and brushed her breast then, and a part of her screamed,
You, woman, are in your sexual prime!
But she didn’t respond to him. Things getting out of hand? Really? Wouldn’t you characterize Enos Cheever beating her son the same way? Because if that was things getting out of hand, Heather needed to stand on somebody else’s balls!

So his attitude had… unsettled her.

Unsettled enough to put off the intimacy thing for a little while longer—God knew she’d jumped in with both feet enough times as it was.

And then, in October, she got the letter.

Forrest was there having a cup of coffee after their volunteer stint at the school, and she sat there when she opened it, eyes large, and read her son spilling his guts on paper.

Oh Mackey.
Oh
, Mackey. Helplessly, she began to cry, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and forgetting about Kleenex for a minute, because she was holding that letter to her chest. Oh, Mackey.

Then Forrest
grabbed her letter.
“Oh my God, Heather, what’s wrong?”

“Give me that!” she shrilled. “That’s
mine.
That boy is
mine
—you’ve got no business—”

“He’s
gay
?”

Heather’s breath stopped at the derision in his voice. “Yeah. So what?” In fact, she needed to call him. Or call someone. Or… what in the hell had Kell been doing all this time, knowing Mackey was doing drugs, and oh holy fuck—

She scrambled for her cell phone.

“So he’s some sort of druggie faggot? And you’re asking so what?”