Walk (Gentry Boys) (3 page)

As Deck paid the bill I watched the money change hands and hoped I’d be able to pay him back one day.  Deck and the rest of the Gentry cousins could have easily shrugged over the sad fate of some distant relatives and called it a day.  This family was made of strong stuff though.  I was proud to be a part of them.

“You ready?” Chase asked me, standing and stretching. 

“I’m ready,” I answered. 

And I was.  I was ready to meet life head on.  This time I would do the best I could with it. 

Evie

When I was a kid I had some pretty spectacular ideas about where I would be by the time my years on earth reached the quarter century mark. 

I didn’t plan for anything too outrageous like queen of a remote space colony or mother to a half dozen children who looked very similar to their Academy-Award-winning, Super-Bowl-ring-wearing, Adonis-faced father. 

No, what I had in mind was more reasonable yet still impressive.  I had my eye on a useful kind of destiny such as head of a global cosmetics empire or a Pulitzer Prize winning author. 

Those dreams happened a long time ago.  Back then I was full of all kinds of bold predictions as I traipsed through an idyllic childhood in the ponderosa pines of northern Arizona. 

My brother, Macon, the practical half of this twinset, would have none of these fantasies.  He would just look at me with sympathy and say something unhelpfully realistic like, “You’ll probably work at a bookstore or something.” 

He wasn’t trying to be insulting.  Macon was just a born believer in sensible concepts.  

When I heard my phone pinging with the onslaught of what were surely various and sundry Happy Birthday wishes I pulled the covers over my head and stared at the sunlight filtering through the paisley fabric. 

Usually I’d be up by now, coffee in hand, crookedly lining my eyes in the rearview mirror as I played stop-and-go-and-stop-again on the Interstate on my way to work.   But luckily my fabulous boss had awarded me the day off even though I didn’t get around to asking for it until four fifty five p.m. yesterday.  She hadn’t even hesitated. I loved my boss. 

I’d actually made some plans today but being cocooned in my own bed covers was comforting, kind of like being ensconced in a pastel womb.  It was tempting to just stay here in my warm isolation for the next twelve hours or so and pretend that there was nothing better for me to do.  I flung the covers aside and stared at the ceiling. 

I was too old for pretending, too jaded for wishes. 

The next time my phone buzzed I picked it up. 

“Happy Birthday, Gorgeous!” 

Kendra.  We’d been friends since freshman year when we both arrived at Arizona State as self-proclaimed ‘serious students’ on a dormitory floor filled with party animals who played beer golf in the hallway and dry humped in the study lounge. 

“Hey, Ken,” I yawned. 

“When you didn’t answer I tried to call you at work and that tarpaper-voiced receptionist said you were out today.  Why do you keep yawning?  My god, are you still in bed?” 

“No.”

“Liar.”  I could hear her smiling.  “Wait.”  Her voiced became hushed, excited.  “Do you have company?”

I looked at the empty pillow beside me in a lonely king-sized bed.  “Yes.” 

Kendra sighed.  “Evie, you never learned how to lie persuasively.  Too bad.  Some overnight company would have been good for you.”  

“You’re one to talk,” I retorted because she’d hit a nerve without meaning to.   Kendra’s situation was a little different than mine though.  Tall and dazzling, she’d recently started her dream job as co-hostess of Wake Up Phoenix, the most popular early morning talk show in the state.  Kendra was ambitious, brilliant, no-nonsense, and scared the daylights out of most males worth their testosterone. 

“I know,” she groaned.  “It’s been a long, dry season.  Anyway, what are your plans today?  I can make a call and get us in for lunch at Monte Carlo.  My treat, no arguments.  A girl’s twenty fifth birthday only comes around once.”   

“That sounds lovely but I made plans.”

“What plans?” 

I hesitated.  “Driving down to see Macon.”     

There was a pause on the other end.  “You sure that’s a good idea, hon?”

“Of course.  It’s our birthday.  And just because he refuses to see me every single other time I make the trip is no reason to believe he’ll do the same now.” 

“Evie…” Kendra started to say but her voice trailed off.  She knew better than anyone else how deep the wounds were. Yet even Kendra didn’t know everything. 

After all, there was no way to adequately explain that when you were lucky enough to enter this world with someone holding your hand you didn’t let him go.  Not even when he was an imprisoned heroin addict whose terrible choices had destroyed your family.  I couldn’t abandon the hope that somewhere behind the haunted eyes of a ruined man was the boy who’d accompanied me on a thousand happy adventures on our parents’ rural estate outside Flagstaff.  Buried in there was the tender child who saved caterpillars from getting squished on sidewalks but had enough fire to break Andy Carpenter’s nose when he called me ‘flat-chested bitch’.  

Even though everyone from Kendra to my own mother gently insisted I was chasing a useless cause, I still had faith.  I had faith that someday that boy would climb out from underneath his demons and be my brother once again. 

“Drive safely,” my friend finally said because she figured there was no use in lecturing me about Macon.  Kendra instead changed the subject and asked if I remembered that I’d promised to create the party favors for Briana’s bridal shower. 

“Of course,” I said smoothly even though I’d completely forgotten all about it until three seconds ago. 

Briana was a mutual friend from college, a sweetly naïve girl who dated the same guy for six years until he abruptly dumped her for a Brazilian underwear model he’d met on a business trip to Hawaii.  Despite all the tears, empty wine bottles and impromptu girls’ weekends in Vegas to cheer up devastated Briana, it all turned out to be for the best.  Less than a month after Ass Wipe (as we tenderly dubbed him) broke her heart, Briana met Gavin.  Gavin was great.  Gavin was nice.  Gavin was not selfish like Ass Wipe and he gave spectacular head.  He was a forty-year-old real estate agent with a house in North Scottsdale who worshiped the ground Briana walked on and proposed within a fortnight.   Kendra and I had both been named bridesmaids for the 1920s art deco themed wedding, which was conceived, planned and scheduled to be carried out within six weeks of the day the princess cut diamond landed on Briana’s slender finger.

Some people, Kendra included, were kind of dubious over how speedily Briana rebounded, and with a man who was fifteen years her senior.  However, I wasn’t one to scoff at true love.  My friend was happy.  She had walked into a fairy tale.  It even gave me hope that someday I might stumble into one too. 

“So what is it?” Kendra asked. 

“What is what?”

“What do the favors look like?  Send me a pic.”

“Um.”

“Evie!”

“I’ll take care of it.  I swear.” 

“The shower’s two days from now.” 

“I know.  I suck.  But I’ll make it happen.  Not a word to Briana, okay?  You know how her blood pressure goes up at the first hint of disorder.  Oh god.  Don’t to that.  Don’t sit there and silently disapprove of me.” 

“I’m not.  I’m sending you a Pinterest board.  It’s filled with ideas that don’t require much assembly.  ”

“Oh.  Well in that case, thanks.” 

“Of course.  Again, I’m taking care of food and drinks. Darcy’s seeing to decorations.  I still say we should have booked some place, at least a restaurant, but I couldn’t convince Darcy that I was happy to foot the bill.” 

“Their apartment will be fine.  It’ll be the last place Briana will expect.”  

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Kendra sighed, knowing the nature of our friend’s high maintenance attitudes. 

She tried a few more times to cajole me into some kind of birthday celebration.  We could go to lunch.  We could go to dinner.  We could go clubbing in Scottsdale and adopt alternative identities belonging to characters from CW Network shows.

Kendra was a good friend and she meant nothing but love by trying to wheedle me but I just wasn’t up to celebrating.  Everything about today screamed ‘Macon’.   It was our day.  Dupont Twin Day.  It always would be. 

Once Kendra had reluctantly hung up I decided not to waste any more time moping beneath my quilt.  Once I was out of the shower I grabbed a pair of jeans because there was really no reason to dress up for visiting day at a prison.  But then I changed my mind and selected the kind of power ensemble I would typically wear to the office.  Kendra had been the one to teach me that unequivocal confidence came from dressing for success.  Kendra, as usual, was correct. 

I cleared my throat and blinked at my reflection, pleased with my appearance.  Since I’d been designed as short, mouse-haired, non-curvy and with a face that had once been described as ‘elfin’, sometimes I had to try a little harder than other women to look like someone to be reckoned with. 

“Keep moving,” I said to the mirror. 

It was part of a longer motivational quote that my boss had had hanging on a lithograph in her office.  She’d probably be amused to learn that I often repeated it to myself but it would be too embarrassing to admit. 

Besides me the only other breathing creature in my apartment was Teddy, my Himalayan Guinea Pig.  When I’d first started bringing home a fat enough paycheck that allowed me to live alone in nicer digs than the cheap places surrounding the university, it had seemed like a life victory.  There were no roommates leaving dirty dishes or using up all the toilet paper or installing deadbeat boyfriends on the living room couch.  Just me.  And Teddy, if you could count him as company. 

But lately I’d just been feeling lonely.  Many of my college friends had settled into long-term relationships and a few were planning weddings.  Meanwhile, I’d never found a way to make love exceed the six month mark and my last semi-boyfriend had actually called me a ‘cock killer’.  That was just his charming way of deflecting his own personal sexual inadequacies.  At least that’s what Briana, who was interning with a clinical psychologist, had insisted when I hiccupped through the humiliating story.   She might have just said that because she was trying to make me feel better. It did.   

“Wish your mama a happy birthday,” I ordered Teddy, picking him up and nuzzling him briefly before gently returning him to his enclosure.  Once I set him down he blinked his beady little guinea pig eyes at me and then attacked a piece of iceberg lettuce. 

The sky was a brilliant blue and it was impossible not to feel slightly cheerful as I climbed into my old cherry red Ford pickup truck.  It was a gas guzzler, a wallet emptier, an environmental eyesore.  It was my most favorite thing in the world.  

It would take about an hour to drive down to the prison.  I’d called yesterday and talked to a bored, gum-chewing admin who confirmed that visiting hours for Macon’s unit were still on schedule.  Of course that didn’t mean he’d agree to see me.  He never had before.

My mother had already tried to call me twice so once I was on the road I called her back. 

“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” she said with the warm sincerity that only a mother could summon.

I smiled.  “Hi, Mom.”

In the terrible year following my father’s death and Macon’s imprisonment she’d sold the house in Flagstaff and accepted a position teaching literature at a small college about a hundred miles south of Salt Lake City.  Even though I’d felt sore over the loss over my childhood home at a time when it seemed I was losing everything, I understood her reasons.  Home had become a poisonous place of bad memories and reminders of what was gone.  She was better off in a place that had no backstory. 

We chatted for a little while as I steered toward the southeast.  She asked when I would be visiting again and I promised to make it there for Thanksgiving if not sooner. It was all very pleasant and very mundane and very Macon-free. 

As usual the problem wasn’t what we said to each other.  It was the weight of what was unsaid that hung thick over the five hundred miles separating us.  The main thing we weren’t talking about was the fact that on this day twenty-five years ago, I wasn’t the only child born to Marion and Richard Dupont. 

I didn’t tell her I was driving down to visit him.  She would have sniffled and sighed and perhaps started to cry.  Macon’s descent had been so long and so painful, even before that final, fatal confrontation.  At least now there was some relief in knowing that he had at least six months left behind bars. Six more months that would keep him off the streets and away from the venom that destroyed all love and hope when it reached his veins.  It was the coldest kind of comfort. 

The prison looked exactly as it had the other six times I’d driven down here.   The check-in area hosted a sad collection of grim family members, mostly women.  Once I signed in and was submitted to a check for weapons and contraband, I was sent to a large cafeteria-style room filled with anxious eyes that waited for a loved one to appear. 

My heart sank when a female guard squinted at the visitors, then approached me all alone.  “Miss Dupont?” 

“Yes.” 

“You are here to visit Macon Dupont, correct?”

“Yes.” 

“I’m very sorry.”  She did indeed look sorry.  Her days were probably filled with fun chores like this one.  “Macon Dupont refuses to leave his cell.” 

“Was he told that his sister is here?”

“He was.  However, the unit manager said he is adamant that he does not wish to visit with anyone.”