Lana had a sudden, unsettling thought about the connection between his sister’s death and the bad day he’d had. She quickly pushed it aside for the moment though and focused on the feeling that came over her at his words. Here was a guy she’d recently started seeing telling her he felt comfortable enough with her to share something this incredibly private and personal. It was a powerful admission—and a little overwhelming. Once again, she was awestruck by how lucky she was to have stumbled across Max. Men this amazing didn’t come around very often. Tears stung her eyes and she quickly blinked them away before he could see.
“I’m glad you feel that way. How about we talk over dinner?” She smiled up at him. “Assuming we can find something out there to eat.”
Max laughed and took her hand. “I’m sure we can. Come on.”
That something turned out to be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and truthfully, she was thrilled. Lana hadn’t eaten a PB&J since she was a kid, and as she and Max stood side-by-side at his kitchen counter spreading spoonfuls of creamy goodness over toasted wheat bread, she had the feeling maybe she’d been missing out.
Max drowned several of his sandwiches in grape jelly before holding the plastic bottle out to her with a questioning look. She reached out and took it, figuring she’d better do it herself or risk overdosing on sugar from too much jelly.
While she did that, Max poured two big glasses of milk; then they carried everything over to the small table. She looked down at her two sandwiches, then at the big stack on Max’s plate. There was no way he could possibly eat like this all the time, not with the way he looked. Then again, maybe he had the same fast metabolism she did.
“My dad was always a mean SOB,” Max said without prompting after he’d washed down a big bite of his first sandwich. “He worked for a bookmaker off the main strip, intimidating people who were late paying off their gambling debts, breaking fingers and kneecaps when it was necessary.”
His words confirmed what she’d been thinking back in his bedroom, and Lana set her sandwich down, unable to eat. “Did he abuse you and your sister?”
Max took another bite of his sandwich, then another, seeming to take refuge in the repeated motion. “Yeah,” he said after a little while. “He abused Mom, too. I’d like to think he didn’t treat her like that from the beginning, but from as early as I can remember, he was always taking his problems out on us.”
“Didn’t anyone ever call the police?” she asked. “Or try to stop him?”
Max shrugged. “Mom would never say anything, and my sister and I assumed getting smacked around was the way it was supposed to be, so we never said anything, either. I doubt anything would have changed if we had.”
“What finally happened?”
Max took a big gulp of milk before continuing. “I had just graduated from high school and came home from my job at the convenience store to find Dad in one of his moods. Things went the way they normally did, and he ended up punching me. Sarah tried to get involved, and that only made him madder. I don’t know what came over me, but I couldn’t let him hit her again, so I fought back. In all the time he’d beaten us, I’d never fought back. Never.”
Max looked past her, staring blankly at something behind her, lost in old memories. “I beat him up pretty good and embarrassed him in front of my mom and sister, something he didn’t take very well. While I was checking to see how badly Sarah was hurt, Dad went into his bedroom and came back with his gun. He didn’t say a word. He just started shooting.”
Lana had known the story didn’t have a happily ever after, but this was worse than she’d imagined. “He shot your sister?”
Max looked at her, his eyes filled with pain. “Yeah. And me, too. He hit me twice before I lunged at him. I knew I was done the moment the first round hit me in the stomach, but I kept fighting, hoping to get the weapon away from him before he got around to shooting my sister, too. But he kept pulling the trigger. Sarah was hit in the head and died immediately. As my old man and I struggled for the weapon, it went off, killing him, too.”
Max said the words quickly, barely any inflection in his voice, and she could tell it had taken a monumental effort for him to say them.
She blinked back tears. “What about your mom? Was she okay?”
Max shook his head. “I was hurt pretty bad, and the doctors told her I probably wouldn’t make it. My dad and my sister were already dead, and I guess that was too much for her to bear. She took a handful of sleeping pills from the bottle she had in her purse, then went into a bathroom, dozed off, and never woke up.”
Finished with his story, Max turned his attention to his sandwiches again, slowly eating the rest of them. Even though she didn’t feel like it, Lana ate, too.
“Thank you for telling me all that,” she said when she was done. “I know it wasn’t easy, but I think I understand now why you did what you did today.”
He snorted. “For all the good it did. I only ended up making it worse for those kids the same way I made it worse for Sarah.”
“None of this is your fault.” She reached across the table to take his hand. “Back then, you were a kid taking on an adult with a gun. Now, you’re a cop following the law the best way you can. You couldn’t have done anything different in either case. You know that, right?”
He shrugged. “In my head, I know that. But sometimes, late at night, when I think about my sister, I wonder if things would have turned out differently if I hadn’t fought back, hadn’t punched my dad. What if I had turned and shielded my sister’s body with mine instead of trying to get the gun away from him? Even today, I wonder if things would have turned out better if I’d slowed down long enough to think about bringing some backup, or maybe looked in a window before shoving open that door. Maybe I would have seen enough to get the man arrested.”
She squeezed his hand. “Max, trust me when I tell you this. You can replay these situations in your head a hundred times, thinking about all the things you could have done differently. But all that’s going to do is twist your insides into knots and make you doubt every decision you’ve ever made. It won’t help anything, and it certainly won’t change the past.”
Max regarded her thoughtfully. “Something tells me you’re speaking from personal experience.”
“Yeah, I guess I am,” she admitted. “Like you, it’s not something I talk about very much.”
“I get that.” He nodded. “I’m not pushing, but if you want to talk about it, I’m all ears.”
For the first time in her life, she actually did feel like talking to someone about it. Maybe because something told her that Max would be able to understand more than most other people.
“You know, I think I would,” she said. “If you can tell me your deepest, darkest secrets, there’s no reason I can’t do the same.”
