His eyes roamed over Lucas and there was a residual anger in his gaze. There was also hunger, as if Armand was trying to link the boy he remembered to the man standing in front of him now, as if attempting to detail everything about Lucas in the event that he didn’t see him for another three decades.
Stormy was reluctant to trust him anymore than she trusted the others but the grief in Lucas’s eyes as he watched Armand settle across from them, to the right of Emilia, made her want to trust him, made her want to ask him to come over to their side. He helped to save the farmhand, helped watch over Merlee’s farm—there was no reason he couldn’t choose to help Lucas, too.
The next man to step off the stairs was truly frightening.
Initially he looked taller than Lucas’s six feet six—the mind wanted to reject how massive Lucas was, as if his proportions were incomprehensible—yet up close all illusions were shattered. Lucas’s older brother, Thibideux, was maybe six feet three or six feet four, his bare torso covered in old scars and tattoos. He looked like he lived caged, whether in prison or out. His rage, unlike Lucas’s, was wide awake and boiling, appearing as if it never slept.
Of the three men, Stormy decided he was the greatest threat. He would be the one to ease a knife through Lucas’s neck, and press his cheek against his younger brother’s just to feel the moment Lucas’s spirit fled his body in death.
Stepping past Thibideux to take the spot directly in front of Lucas was his father.
Decades older, he was the closest to Lucas in size, but his bulk had gone to paunch and his green eyes were murky as swamp water. Fumes of alcohol and sour sex wafted off his unwashed body, but it was the mockery in his eyes that disgusted Stormy the most. She had the sense that after all these years the man was gloating over his defeat of a six-year-old—as if inhabiting the home of the parents that condemned and rejected his brutality meant he was winning at life.
Lucas’s mother stepped around Armand and molded herself against her husband, circling her arm around his waist, daring Stormy to say something now that she was surrounded by her men.
Stormy felt obligated.
“I get it, I do. You’ve got grown men willing to disregard the fact that you molested a six-year-old boy—your own son—and you think I’m going to do the same just because they’re standing beside you. No. You should have gone to jail for what you did; at the very least, anyone with children should’ve been warned about the level of depravity and sickness that lives in you.”
“You got a lot of nerve judging when ya spreadin’ ya legs so’s to sink ya filthy claws in my boy. I know what you are, you sanctimonious bitch, you no better than me. You think I haven’t paid a price? I lost my boy andma petite filleovaoneindiscretion, ova one night when ma blood was up. I didn’t harm the boy, he liked—”
“Stop,” Armand said, holding up his hands as if in surrender. Then he clutched his head, rubbing his hands back and forth as to clear his mind. Stormy realized then that Armand hadn’t known what led to Lucas and Merlee being taken away.
Armand was the youngest son. Why had he been left there?
Both of Lucas’s parents were red in the face.
“Wait now, wait,” Armand said, staring at Lucas. “That night when I woke up and you was just staring off, shaking, it was ’cause…and they knew?PaPere,Wallace, and Thibideux, they knew, and they beat ya for it, beat on you near to death because you told ’em she touched you wrong?”
“Ibeggedyou to come with us,” Lucas said, old betrayal lacing his words.
“Reckon I was too young to understand the choice, brotha. We got beat on all the time, yeah, didn’t mean I should leave my kin and go with a stranger,” he scoffed. “I prayed many a day that you’d come back, come get me, offer again…ya neva did.”
“I couldn’t,” Lucas said. “And I didn’t believe you’d want me to.”
Armand rubbed a hand over his chest. “Yeah…it’s been a rough night and I’m fair needing to sit this little reunion out. I’ll be out tending the animals if ya need me.”
He took a step and stopped inches from Stormy, looking at her as if she was suddenly the only other person in the room. “It’s funny yeah, how you can run from a truth ya whole fuckin’ life, and when you stop, thinkin’ you’ve outrun it, ya turn to the side and see it was right there keepin’ pace, neva let you outta its sight. Truth is, I ain’t shit…but I ain’t like them.” He continued toward the back door. “Y’all be good.”
“Did you touch him?” Lucas asked his mother. He still hadn’t acknowledged his father or older brother.
“I neva touched that boy.”
“He always was a useless piece of possum shit,” Lucas’s father muttered.
“You think that evil woman didn’t try to keep her foot on our throat the moment she stole you and Merlee away?” Belle Mère asked. “You think anytime the littlest thing happened to that boy—and none of it our doing—we wasn’t made to suffer? That bitch tried to ruin us, ya paw couldn’t hold a job, T-Bo here always picked on by the law, women in towns always casting they dirty looks, judging me. My oldest boy would still be living if she’d kept her nose out our business. So no, nobody ever touched ya precious brotha.” His mother spat out her words, then literally spat. On the floor.Insidethe house.
Stormy curled her nose in disgust but Lucas didn’t react.
“You suffering has nothing to do with Mama,” he said. “The way y’all live is the way you’ve always wanted to live, so don’t start making shit up now.”
“Watch ya’self now, boy,” Lucas’s father warned. “That there’s still ya Belle Mère, ya give her respect due as ya mama.”
Lucas closed his eyes for a moment, his jaw clenched and Stormy knew he was fighting to stay in control. The look of naked hate directed at his father when he opened his eyes made her flinch and instinctively step back.
“Respect her or what?” Lucas smiled.
It wasn’t a Lucas smile, it was a wolfish baring of teeth, a sharp-toothed ready-to-rip-flesh-from-bone smile. Stormy slid her hand deeper into her purse and adjusted her fingers so that all she’d have to do is pull out the tranq gun and fire.
