So he’s not throwing you a welcome parade. Get over it.
We waited in tense silence for a scuffed, oversized duffel to come around. I hauled it off the carousel and we headed out the sliding doors toward the San Jose Airport parking.
When I turned eighteen in March, I aged out of foster care and was on my own. I did odd jobs to survive, the last at a dairy farm in Manitowoc. The gig ended with the summer, and I would’ve been homeless, except my social worker called me with the news that after ten years, an uncle had finally made contact. My dad’s brother was willing to take me in. I’d move to Santa Cruz, live with blood instead of with strangers. Maybe finish school. I’d have a family again.
I glanced at Nelson.
I have family again.
My instincts, honed from years of being on my own and trusting exactly no one, warned me to slow the fuck down. I had to be ready to let go at any time. Survival depended on it. But while waiting for the light to change, I took a second to breathe. Different air. Different sun, somehow. It was only my fucked-up childhood talking, but Wisconsin’s heat had been stifling. The winters heartless. Now I was in California. I could start over. Maybe leave the bloody ghosts of my past behind.
Nelson coughed and hawked a wad of phlegm onto the sidewalk. Beneath his bulk, Nelson had Dad’s build. Tall, with muscles lurking beneath the flab, large hands with calloused knuckles that could ball into huge fists…
So much for leaving the ghosts behind. I’m about to get into a car with one.
He led us out of the gold California sun and into the cold of the parking garage, to an old Dodge pick-up in faded red. I tossed my duffel in the flatbed filled with junk—stacks of musty coats, folding chairs, and a cardboard box that held a tennis racket, coffeemaker, and chipped mugs.
“Eviction,” Nelson said with a nod at the box. “You won’t believe the crap they leave behind. You’ll see.”
I brushed balled-up tissues and fast food wrappers off the seat and sat down with my backpack in my lap. More wrappers littered the dash, and plastic bottles of Mtn Dew rolled around my feet.
Nelson squeezed himself behind the wheel, and soon, San Jose Airport grew small in the rearview. The winding road—a sign said it was the 17—took us deeper through green forest, southward to Santa Cruz. Mountains rose up on all sides, looking like a miracle after the flatness of Manitowoc.
“You don’t say much, do you?” Nelson asked after a few minutes.
“Not much.”
“Fine by me. I don’t need anyone jabbering my damn ear off.” His shark-eyed gaze slid to me and back to the road. “You look like him. Russell. Not your mom so much.”
“I know,” I said through a tight jaw.
“Shameful what happened,” Nelson continued. “A waste. Russ had so much going for him. Until he met her.”
A red haze dropped over my vision, and I gripped the coarse material of my bag, making fists.
“Damn shame.” Nelson shook his head, eyes on the road. “Women will do that to a good man. Fuck with his head. Make him crazy and then he gets the short stick when it all finally blows up.”
“He beat her to death with a baseball bat,” I gritted out, my voice made of stone.
“Russ was no angel, but what did Norah say to piss him off? Wore him down, is what she did. He didn’t start out wanting to hurt nobody. That’s what no one talks about these days. Takes two to tango, doesn’t it?”
An image rose up like a flare: my fist flying, punching my mother’s name out of Nelson’s stupid mouth. I fought the rage—my dad’s rage—that boiled up in me and turned away. The California scenery flashing outside the window was a blur. But in the window’s reflection, I saw her. Crying and huddled in a corner of our shitty kitchen with its cracked tile and the dinner he didn’t like splattered all over. Not one particular night. Could’ve been any night.
“You’re not like him, Ronan,” Mom whispered, her tears mingling with the blood on her cheek. “You’re better than him. Remember that.”
I sucked in a breath, forced my hands to uncurl from tight fists, and tried to believe her.
“We gotta talk about the terms of our arrangement,” Nelson said.
“Okay.”
I hadn’t known there was an arrangement. I thought I had an uncle who wanted me. A chance at a family. A normal life.
I should’ve known better.
“I own two buildings, ten units each,” Nelson said. “I live in the Bluffs Avenue complex. You’ll be in the one on Cliffside.”
I glanced over. “I’m not living with you?”