The Ranger - Ace Atkins [5]
“Sure,” he said.
She shifted the child to the other hip, the boy curious and bright, watching Quinn as he walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a cold Budweiser. He smiled at the child, the kid maybe two, obviously of mixed race, with coffee-colored skin and soft blond curly hair.
Quinn’s mother made him a plate, heated it up in the microwave, and nervously sat down. Her eyes were bloodshot, and hazier than he’d recalled. She was unsteady, not knowing what to do with her hands.
“You know why I didn’t come?” she asked.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“If it had been reversed, if I’d said those things to him, you couldn’t have paid him to go to my service. He may be dead, but he’d understand. He’d respect my decision.”
Quinn ate and took a sip of beer. He shrugged.
“How long are you home for?” she asked, lighting up a Kool, finding some comfort in the action. “I appreciated those nice blankets you sent. Did you see them on the sofa? And the letters. I appreciated the letters, but I do wish you’d respond to the ones I wrote. It’s like we were both playing tennis with ourselves. Don’t you read what I send? Did you get the toothpaste?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Quinn leaned back and sipped his beer. “You could’ve warned me. You told me he had a heart attack.”
“What’s the use?” she said. “Knowing what he did doesn’t help. I just wish he hadn’t been such a selfish person not to think about his family.”
“Because killing yourself is a sin.”
She covered the little boy’s ears. “Quinn!”
“By the way, who in the hell is this kid?”
His mother stood up and turned the child around to face him. Quinn took a bite of turkey, some burned corn bread.
“This is your nephew,” she said. “If you’d opened a few letters, maybe you would’ve known it.”
“Hey there, kid.” Quinn grabbed the child’s tiny hand and shook it. “Where’s Caddy?”
“We haven’t seen your sister for six months now.”
Quinn was dead asleep at the motel when he heard a banging on the door—must have been nearly two in the morning—and he stumbled, looking for his jeans and his watch, confirming the time. As he pulled back those cheap antique curtains, he spotted Deputy Lillie Virgil standing underneath a bright outside light. She’d been at the funeral, but there had been a lot of handshaking and good manners, and it was not the kind of place for a solid conversation. “You looked in a funk,” Lillie said as soon as Quinn opened the door. “Figured we could talk later.”
“It’s kinda early,” Quinn said, leaning into the frame, feeling a blast of cold air, the dry asphalt lit dull by the crime lights in the lot. “Jesus.”
“You mind putting on some clothes?”
Quinn was wearing a pair of white boxers and walked into the room to look for his blue jeans and boots, which felt awkward and loose without laces.
Lillie looked over the room as he dressed, smiling at the way everything was as neat as a pin except for the unmade bed, everything he’d brought home packed away in the Army ruck. She ran a hand across the bathroom counter, seeing he’d wiped down the sink after shaving and hung his towel up to dry.
“You look like you want to make a fast exit,” she said.
“Makes things easier to find.”
“Been a long time, Colson.”
“Lillie.”
Lillie stood about as tall as Quinn in her boots, her curly hair wrapped up tight in a bun, Quinn recalling watching her play soccer and baseball, running as fast as the boys at state track meets. She’d always been the tomboy, the girl that women would marvel over when she applied a bit of lipstick or wore something other than blue jeans to their school prom. Lillie curled her hair and wore it down, with a sparkly dress, but she went with this shit-bag redneck—in Quinn’s humble opinion—who’d tried to get her drunk and get himself laid. Quinn hearing about all this the next morning. Even in a dress, Lillie Virgil