Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within) (25 page)

“It fucking kills me you’re the only one who understands.” His eyes were bloodshot and full of baffled grief when he pulled away from me.

“He was your blood relative. Your only connection,” I said and he nodded.

“You see,” he said over my shoulder to Murphy. “She does get it.”

“I know,” said Murphy. “It’s because she lost her connections. She knows how it feels.”

“Nora may still be bonded with me, but I lost her the second our son died,” said Jonathan, and shook his head. “I took her for granted the same way I took Grandfather Tobias. And now I’ve got shit and it’s just what I probably deserve. Bet you think so, huh?” He gave me a belligerent grin, but there were tears in his eyes.

I almost told him then, that I’d killed his grandfather. I wanted to comfort him but I didn’t want him to accept my comfort because I was guilty, so guilty. Somehow I kept my damn mouth shut, but it wasn’t easy.

“If you could get Nora to stop drinking and feeling sorry for herself, you’d get her back,” I predicted and Jonathan made a scoffing sound.

“I have tried to keep her away from the booze, Stanz. I’ve dumped more bottles of whiskey down the goddamn drain than I want to think about. She just buys more. And hides them. Every night when she passes out, I go all over the damn house to find her secret stashes but there’s always one I seem to miss. I swear people are going behind my back to give her the shit. I’m paranoid, I know, but I think I’ve found it all and they come over to visit and the next thing I know she’s shitfaced and locked in the bathroom with a bottle of Wild Turkey.”

“They? All of them?” I wondered. “Or someone specific?”

Murphy took my elbow and gave it a warning squeeze, I’m sure to tell me not to press so hard.

“Ah, they come over in pairs mostly, but sometimes all of them. I don’t know if anybody’s giving her stuff. I just said that because I’m paranoid, because I can’t make her stop and right now it’s a toss-up which one dies first, Callie hemorrhaging to death from some miscarriage or Nora choking on her own vomit, drunk and passed out. It’s coming. You hear me? It’s coming.” He stabbed a finger at me as if I doubted him, but I didn’t. He was right on target.

All at once he stiffened and fixed his attention on something over my shoulder.

I turned around to see the rest of the pack, the Councilors and a small, balding man with a pointed chin emerge from the front door. Pointy Chin held a small black urn under his arm and when I saw it, I gulped.

“Can I come to the Devil’s Hopyard, or do you want me to stay away?” I asked Jonathan, turning back to him. “I’ll do what you want, Jonathan, don’t worry about Vaughn.”

A muscle in Jonathan’s cheek twitched. After Vaughn’s threats inside, he knew he’d be in for trouble if he objected to my attendance at the funeral.

“You can come,” he allowed. “Do you think you could give me and Nora a ride? I don’t feel like driving and she’s fucking drunk.”

“Come on.” Murphy took the keys out of his pocket and unlocked the doors to the Prelude.

Nora stumbled over to us and most of Riverglow watched in absolute shock as she and Jonathan got into the Prelude with me and Murphy and waited for them to get into their cars so we could all go scatter Grandfather Tobias’s ashes.

Chapter 17

The interior of the car reeked of gin but it was too cold to put down the window. Murphy cracked his anyway, forcing me to huddle in my coat.

“Can we make a packy run?” Nora begged. She hiccupped then giggled at herself, while Jonathan silently fumed beside her in the back seat.

“What in the hell is a packy run?” Murphy had never heard the term before and was curious. He was also suspicious.

“She means booze. She wants more booze,” snapped Jonathan. He shot Nora a dirty look which she ignored, no doubt from lots of practice. Flask uncapped, she made a big show of upending it to prove there was nothing inside but a few drops. They dripped onto her black skirt but she didn’t seem to notice. Jonathan did, judging by the tightening of his mouth.

Nora’s hair needed a good brushing. It crackled around her head full of static electricity. She’d put eye makeup on but forgotten eyeliner on the left while overdoing it on the right. Her lipstick was uneven and her skin was an unhealthy bluish white. Her cheekbones jutted aggressively and I thought if a good wind blew up while we were standing in the state park, she was likely to blow away.

“You know, Nora,” I remarked, half turning in my bucket seat so I could look at her. “There are much easier ways to kill yourself than drinking yourself to death.”

“Jesus, Stanz,” objected Jonathan wretchedly. Murphy’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t say anything, so I went on.

“I thought of at least six different ways when I was in Boston after Grey and Elena died and you guys kicked me out of Riverglow.”

Jonathan winced, but Nora leaned forward, fascinated.

“You were all alone there, weren’t you, Stanzie?” she whispered, licking her cracked lips. Most of her lipstick disappeared, which was a good thing.

“You had family in the area. Your birth pack came from around Boston,” Jonathan declared with an argumentative sneer.

“I was in exile, Jonathan,” I reminded him sweetly. “You and the rest of Riverglow put me there, remember?”

“Not for real. The Council voted in your favor. It was a bullshit pack thing.”

“Yeah, but I took it to heart. You made me feel like shit about myself. After you threw me out, I didn’t have anyone left to turn to.” My voice was too bitter, and I struggled to control it.

“You had your family. Your mother and father—” Jonathan began and I cut him off with a ruthless smile.

“—told me to fuck off, basically.”

Murphy’s fingers clenched around the steering wheel. I hadn’t shared any of this with him. Or anyone. There hadn’t been anyone to share it with.

“You called them, didn’t you?” Nora wondered.

“More than once,” I agreed. “After the third time they stopped taking my calls. After that I left messages every couple of months. For the first year. So I felt like somebody was out there even though I knew there wasn’t. The whole of last year I didn’t bother and it actually was better. Those messages were hell. What did I have to say? ‘Hi, Lauren, hi, Paul, it’s Stanzie. Nothing much to report, really. I got a new plant for my kitchen window sill. I made spaghetti for dinner last week. Still have a job. Talk to you soon, bye.’” My tone was mocking and I laughed a little.

“We thought you were drunk, and that’s why they died. If that had been the truth, you’d have deserved everything you got,” Jonathan muttered.

There was nothing to say to that, so I didn’t bother.

“So you thought of all those ways to kill yourself, why didn’t you?” Nora brought us back on track and I gave her a grateful smile. For a moment I had been back in time, exiled and terribly lonely and I remembered those phone calls from hell and the two days afterward when I told myself there might be a chance, a slim one that they’d call back. They never had.

“Well, what’s suicide but a big fuck you to everybody?” I asked her. “Nobody gave a shit about me so who was I going to tell to fuck off? I thought people might actually be glad I’d done it and I said to hell with that. I’m not sure I believe in reuniting with your loved ones in the otherworld after you die so I didn’t really think I’d see Grey and Elena, and yet a part of me was a little afraid I might. And they’d blame me too. I mean, I was driving the car. I wasn’t drunk, but I was driving. And even now that I know Grandfather Tobias did something to the brake line, it doesn’t make much difference. I’m the one who brought the car to him in the first place. There’s some guilt you just can’t escape, I guess. Anyway, Nora, who are you trying to tell to fuck off? Jonathan?”

Nora snorted. “As if he’d care. Probably can’t wait to find me dead one morning. Can you?” She turned to him and dared him to deny it.

“I don’t want to find you dead,” he half-whispered. “Why do you think I go around pouring out all the goddamn booze you hide? If I wanted you dead, why would I bother?”

Nora tossed her head and gave him a disbelieving smile. “You know what he said to me after our baby died? Stanzie, you know what he said?” Twins spots of color blotched her pale cheeks and her fists were clenched so tightly I could smell blood from where her nails cut the skin.

A look of bewilderment crossed Jonathan’s features, and I knew he hadn’t expected her to say this. He also clearly didn’t know what it was he’d said. Either he didn’t remember or didn’t believe she was referring to what he remembered.

“What?” I prompted.

“The egotistical bastard said, ‘At least you’ve still got me, Nora.’ Can you freaking believe that shit?” The look she gave him was scorching hot with contempt. Jonathan sank in his seat, shoulders hunched until he looked like a little boy swamped in his father’s clothing. “Men think everything revolves around them, don’t they? Or is it just Jonathan?”

Jonathan’s long black lashes swept his ashen cheeks. He said nothing in his defense. I still didn’t think he understood what he’d done wrong.

“You know the last time he told me he loved me, Stanz?” Nora was on a roll and there was no stopping her now. I almost wished we’d found a package store and bought her a boatload of gin so we didn’t have to hear this.

“No,” I said because I had to say something.

“Neither do I. It’s been that friggin’ long.” Nora gave him another blistering look.

“You just went to the Great Gathering, Nora. If you’re this unhappy with him, why didn’t you sever ties and look for somebody else?” I wondered.

Jonathan’s chest heaved and his dark eyes accused me silently of betraying him.

Now Nora’s scorching contempt was directed at me. Her mouth curled in absolute derision. “Who the hell would want me, Stanzie? A barren drunk, that’s what I am. I have nothing to offer anybody. Who’d want me?”

“You’re beautiful. Lots of guys would want you,” Jonathan whispered, head down.

“Oh, sure, right. The best I could have done was to be the spare to the pair in some triad. Bullshit. No way.”

“Jonathan, you could have found somebody else,” I reminded him.

“I don’t want anybody else.” He lifted anguished and ashamed eyes to stare at me. “And anyway, who’d want me? Listen to her, listen to what she says. I’m an egotistical bastard. Clueless, and I never say ‘I love you’. She’s right, I don’t. But just because I don’t say it doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. She always knew that before, or maybe I was just being egotistical. And I don’t understand why what I said was wrong. Callie came out of the room after...after the baby was born dead and she said, ‘I’m sorry, Jonathan,’ and it seemed so damn stupid and inadequate. Anybody can say ‘I’m sorry’. I’m sorry doesn’t mean shit. You say it if you accidentally bump into somebody or if you reach for the same piece of bread. It’s not what you say to somebody who’s just lost a baby. All I meant was that she wasn’t alone. That she had somebody who loved her and wanted to take care of her. That’s all.”

A potent silence filled the car. My throat closed over and my eyes burned with tears. I stole a glance at Murphy. He was subdued and his gaze was fixed desperately to the road.

Nora was very still, her expression blank, but her eyes were feverishly bright as Jonathan’s words seemed to sink in and penetrate her fog of drunken self-pity.

For a moment the Nora I remembered, fuller of face and figure, Jonathan’s constant shadow and devoted companion, floated over the person she’d become—bitter, emaciated, drunk.

“Why didn’t you say that? Say it the way you just said it?” She asked and Jonathan grimaced.

“I could barely squeeze the words out that I said. You looked so fucking destroyed and I felt so tiny and scared because I knew anything I said wouldn’t be enough. I don’t know, Nora, you wanted that baby so much. You say I never say I love you, you never say it anymore either and you used to say it a lot. I felt replaced. You were so different after Grey and Elena died, and Stanzie left Riverglow. Somehow you lost respect for me. I know you did.”

“We did a piss-poor thing to Stanzie and you know it,” Nora said, her eyes hard. “You were the ringleader, Jonathan. You turned most of us against her. We weren’t against you at first, Stanzie. Peter was talking about Vaughn bonding with you and everything.”

“Vaughn.” I shook my head.

“Everyone knew Jonathan wouldn’t take you into a triad with us. Even if you’d be the spare to the pair. But Peter thought Vaughn should bond with you, only Vaughn was dead against it.”