Then I drink my coffee, go to bed and I stare at the ceiling for a very long time before sleep comes.
CHAPTER 9
Austin
EJ's settled with the other kids. Rosie has looked him over and told me with the quiet authority of a nurse who's seen worse, “He’s absolutely fine. You need to stop hovering.” I let him go and find Prez.
I know I shouldn't be doing this. I know the rule and I know the rule exists for good reasons. I know that walking across this yard with what I'm currently feeling visible on my face is a bad idea. I do it anyway.
"You knew she was opening this week," I say. "Both of you. You knew I'd been driving past that corner and you knew today was the day she'd be open and you said nothing."
Prez looks at me. He's got the measure of my mood and he's not moving away from it. "You want to have this conversation right now, Sprog?"
"Yeah, I do."
Brick is standing off to Prez's left, and he has the look he gets when he's decided he's going to take what's coming and not argue with it. That look makes me angrier.
"I knew she was back. I've known for three weeks. I've been managing it." I keep my voice down because the yard has ears and I'm not putting this in front of the whole club. "What I haven't been doing is walking into her office with my son bleeding in my arms without a second to get my head right first. A heads-up would have been something. One sentence. She opens tomorrow. That's all it needed to be."
"You want to be angry at me, Sprog, you do that." Prez's voice is level and it has the particular quality it gets in Church, the one that means he's not managing a situation, he's leading it, and the difference between those two things isn’t subtle. "But I need you to hear me before you decide how angry."
I say nothing.
"Three weeks ago, Brick told you she was back. You were already distracted. You've been riding past that corner every couple of days and coming to work and getting under trucks and not talking about it. I watched that. I watch everything in this yard." He steps forward, not aggressive, just closing the distance so I can't look away from him. "If I'd warned you she was opening today, you'd have spent last night awake planning what you were going to say if you saw her. You'd have come to Church this morning with half your head somewhere else when we needed you clear for a real threat. I protect this club. That's my job. That includes you. That includes your head."
I have nothing to say to that.
"I'm still angry," I say.
"Yeah," he says. "You're allowed."
He holds my eyes for another second and then he nods, the nod that means we're done here, before he turns away. Brick stays. I look at him.
"I should have said something," Brick says. "I knew about the surgery when you asked me about Ruby's that day. I made a call. I might have made the wrong one."
The fact that Brick will say that, just straight out, is why he's Brick. He doesn't dress it up or defend it. He made a call and it cost me something and he's saying so.
"She was right there," I say. "I had no warning. I walked in and she was just..." I stop.
"I know."
"She was incredible with him. She talked to him the whole time, answered all his questions, didn't talk down to him. EJ loved her." I say it before I've decided to say it and once it's out I can't take it back.
Brick is quiet for a moment. "Yeah," he says. "That sounds about right."
He puts his hand on my shoulder briefly, the way Brick does things, quickly and without ceremony, and then he goes back inside.
I stand in the yard by myself for a while.
"Church in ten minutes," Prez calls from the doorway. "Lose the attitude before then, Sprog."
"Yes, Prez," I say. And I mean it.
Rosie and Megare with the kids when I find them, and when I walk in they both look at me the way women look at you when they've already been having a conversation about you before you arrived.
"He's fine," Rosie says. "Color’s good, no sign of dizziness. Savannah did a good job."
I grunt.