Chapter 6

I found that I liked the work. We were building the development in three different stages, getting a hundred homes ready for sale in each stage. I was replacing a guy who’d quit to take on an office job in Dallas with an oil company.

Dave, my boss, was grateful to have someone that knew how to handle themselves at a job site and soon we were moving smoothly, getting stage one to market.

That was a year ago. Today, I’d heard the voice of Sabrina’s killer for the first time in years. I went home and parked my truck in my spot in the driveway. I’d rented a small apartment from Mrs. Sanchez as soon as I’d gotten in to town. I’d asked for recommendations for places to call home from my boss and her name had been at the top of the list. She was in her forties, widowed and took in students to help pay the bills. She had four bedrooms in the house and an apartment that had once been her husband’s man-cave over the garage.

I took the apartment, but provided unofficial security and tech support for her and she’d been good to me in return, looking after the apartment when I’d driven to Birmingham for the holidays and making sure I was getting a home cooked meal a few times a week.

Today I went to the house and knocked on the front door. She came out and smiled when she saw me. “Mrs. Sanchez, has anyone called here looking for me in the last few days?” I asked.

She nodded. “Your brother said he needed to find you this morning,” she told me. “It sounded urgent, so I gave him the work number. Is everything okay?”

“Not really,” I said. “I actually have two brothers. The one that called today is not welcome with me. He knows that. He tricked you into giving him my work number. Don’t feel bad about it. Once upon a time, he tricked me too. That’s why he’s not allowed to be part of my life anymore. Was he the only one that’s been looking for me?”

“Your sister arrived here about an hour ago,” she told me, starting to look alarmed that she may have done something wrong.

I nodded. I KNEW that Mary hadn’t been to Austin. The kids were too young for a trip that long. “Okay, thank you, Mrs. Sanchez. Did she say when she’d be back?”

“She asked ... She wanted to know if she could wait in your apartment. I let her in. That’s her car parked at the street. Should I go get rid of her?”

“I’ll handle it,” I said. “In the future, if someone comes looking for me, call me instead of giving them the number, please. “The brother that called today ... he killed someone I loved very much in a car crash. There’s no forgiveness for him and it upsets me to hear from him.”

“I’m so sorry!” she said. “Tell me what I can do to fix it.”

“I may want you to come with me when I go to see who’s in my apartment. It’s not my sister. She’s in Alabama with her children. I don’t think I want to have this conversation without a witness.”

“Okay,” she said and started putting her shoes on. While she did that, I went to look at the car, confirming that the plates were from Colorado. Damn. I’d had hope that it was someone I’d want to see.

I collected Mrs. Sanchez and we went back to my apartment. I unlocked the door and we went up the stairs to find my least favorite person in the world waiting for me.

“You drove a long way,” I commented and then went to get a beer. I didn’t want to be drunk for this conversation, but I had to have something to steady my nerves.

“I know what you must be thinking,” Linda admitted. “I guess I can’t blame you.”

“Lady, you have no idea what I’m thinking,” I told her. I was actually thinking about packing the truck and driving off into the sunset. At least none of them had ever contacted me in LA. I could probably get some work doing computer work for a porn company, hook up with some of the talent and spend my free time on the beach. It was pathetic that Linda was the last person I’d had sex with. Sabrina and I were planning to spend that night together, but Billy made sure to put an end to my sex life again.

“If I were you, I’d be thinking about hitting me,” she said.

“That’s a tempting offer,” I admitted, I got Mrs. Sanchez a beer that she took gratefully, if for no other reason than for the distraction. “I think if I took you up on it, I’d have trouble stopping. I get the feeling that hitting you would be addictive. That’s not what I was thinking though.”

She nodded even though she blanched at my declaration that I wouldn’t want to stop hitting her. “So what were you thinking?” she asked.

“I was thinking about going back to the one place I was free of you and my brother,” I told her. “You tracked me down in Birmingham. The calls were from you, weren’t they?”

She winced and nodded. “It wasn’t meant to hurt you!” she said.

“I remember you telling me that about your choices in life once before,” I said dryly. “Alright, I’m done playing guessing games. Why are you here and why is Billy calling me at work?”

“He tracked you down?” she asked, sounding surprised. “I didn’t think he’d be able to find you.”

“Well, you must have left a clue behind,” I told her. “He called Mrs. Sanchez and tricked her into giving him my work number. Sort of like how you talked her into letting you into my apartment.”

She nodded guiltily. “I’m sorry about that,” she said.

“It’s funny how you’re always sorry, but you never stop doing things to make it worse,” I pointed out and then sighed. “Alright. What’s on your mind. You clearly came down here for a reason. It’s a little far to pop in just to say hello.”

She nodded, but glanced at Mrs. Sanchez uncomfortably. “Well, first off, I wanted to tell you how sorry I was that Sabrina died. Mary showed us the pictures of the two of you. I was very glad you were happy. When the accident happened, we had no idea that it was you in the other car. When I heard that she’d been killed and that you were in the car with her, my heart broke for you. I’d been so hopeful that she’d make you happy and then in an instant, it was all taken away.”

I nodded and took a pull on my beer. I hadn’t offered her one, but then, she was going to have to drive home from here. “Thank you for your sympathies,” I said flatly. I wasn’t sarcastic about it, but I still had nightmares about it. It was the most awful day of my life.

She gave me an anguished look. “I know you don’t believe me,” she said sadly, “but I mean it.”

“I know you do,” I told her. “I’m not being sarcastic. I just see that night in my dreams all too often. You know she was awake before the end?” She gaped at me in horror and shook her head. “She apologized to me. She said she loved me and she was sorry that she wasn’t going to be around to say it. She told me she was scared, but her last thoughts were that regret that she was leaving me alone.”

I’d gotten to the point where I could talk about this and not cry. It still broke my heart to think about that night, but I didn’t think that would ever change.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered.

“Yeah, no reason you should. After the accident, Mike decided he’d had enough of Billy tearing chunks out of my flesh. After he almost killed me at work and then after he killed Sabrina, we got out, but you wouldn’t stop following me. I don’t know how you tracked me down, but the phone calls where you just breathed were making it worse.”

She nodded. “I was calling to try to tell you how sorry I was about Sabrina,” she said. “Every time I’d hear your voice though, I’d panic. What could I say that would make it better? I’d freeze up every time. When you asked me to stop, I berated myself for a month for upsetting you. Then when you screamed at me and Mary took the phone, I knew I couldn’t do it by phone.”

“So you drove all the way down here to tell me that you’re sorry about Sabrina?” I asked, sure that I was missing something.

“Not just that,” she said, looking down. “Billy and I are married now and I’m pregnant. I wanted to talk to you about the baby. If it’s a girl, I was planning on naming her Sabrina if you’re okay with that.”

I shook my head. “Mike and Mary named their daughter after her already,” I told her.

“They had a baby?” she gaped.

“They had twins,” I told her. “A little girl named Sabrina and a little boy named Peter. They loved Sabrina too. Everyone who knew her did.”

She looked crestfallen. This had been her last best hope to reach out to me. “That must have made you very happy,” she said softly.

“It made Sabrina’s parents happy too. They’ve been down to visit at least three times since the twins were born.”

She nodded. “Your mother would probably like the chance to see them,” she suggested.

“That’s not my decision,” I told her. “I never asked Mike to cut her off. For that matter, I never asked them to cut you and Billy off. Mike decided that what happened that night was too much for him to gloss over.”

She nodded. “Your mother said that it had made the three of you decide to move away,” she said. “I tracked you down through a friend. She’s in computers, like you, but her specialty is online security. She found out that you were in Birmingham and then she said it was easy to find your work and home numbers.”

I shrugged. “Took you a little longer to find me here,” I commented.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “You didn’t get an apartment in your name. She tracked you down through your truck. That took a little longer, I guess.”

“So you wanted to tell me that you were sorry about Sabrina and ask my blessing to name your daughter after her. Anything else on your mind?”

“Can we just ... catch up for a little while, Petey?” she asked.

I thought about that for a long moment and finally nodded. “Alright,” I said. I turned toward Mrs. Sanchez. “I won’t keep you any later, Mrs. Sanchez. Thanks for coming to make sure everything was okay. I think we’ll be okay now.”

She nodded and knocked back the rest of her beer. “I should start dinner anyway,” she said. “Will you two be joining us?”

“Not tonight, I don’t think,” I said judiciously. “I think we’ll order delivery. Could you send them back to us if they come to the door.”

“Sure,” she said and disappeared down the stairs.

As soon as she did, I took out my phone and started the recording app, setting it up to record to the Cloud. “Linda, I feel the need to record the rest of our conversation, since Mrs. Sanchez just left,” I told her. “I admit that there’s almost no chance that you came here to cause me trouble, but you’re a married woman and it’s reasonable for Billy to think that I’d do just about anything to get back at him, so I need to protect myself. You understand?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think that’s probably a good idea. I would never cheat on Billy, but he might think I would be tempted to try to apologize to you physically.”

I nodded and plugged the phone in so that it wouldn’t die while we were talking. We agreed on pizza and I used my house phone to order it before we settled in to talk. She was sitting on the sofa, so I took the chair. It was where I sat most of the time anyway.

“I don’t really go by Pete anymore,” I told her for starters. “Most people call me Ham now, short for Hamilton.”

She nodded. “Is that because of Mike’s kids?” she asked.

“Maybe a little, but mostly because there’s three guys named Peter on the crew I work on,” I told her.

“You’re back working construction?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I install household automation in the houses as they’re being built. I run cable, set up the networks and test the systems.”

“That sounds interesting,” she said, trying to be upbeat.

I nodded. “The technology is amazing, but the work is mostly routine,” I admitted. “What about you? What do you do for a living? You finished college?”

“I did. I got my certification as a CPA and I’m working for a firm in Denver,” she told me. “THAT is routine. What you do is exciting compared to that.”

I nodded. “Did Billy finish school and get a job?” I asked. I wasn’t avoiding topics.

“He tried computers like you,” she admitted. “He didn’t have the aptitude for it though. He’s working with your dad.”

I shrugged at that. It was tempting to gloat that Billy-boy flunked out, but I restrained the impulse, telling myself that Mike had too and I loved and respected Mike. “Not everyone’s cut out for classrooms,” I said casually. “So that’s work. How are your parents?”

“They’re okay,” she said. “We don’t spend a lot of time with them, especially since the accident.”

“They blame Billy?” I asked.

She nodded. “They were never really thrilled with him,” she admitted. “When you were coming around that Christmas, Mom figured out that we hadn’t told you yet. She told me that was a cruel thing to do to someone, no matter what I was feeling.”

I shrugged and nodded in agreement, but didn’t put my mouth in the middle of that. “Do they know that I was in the other car when the accident happened?” I asked.

She nodded. “I don’t think they believe it was an accident,” she admitted.

“Neither do I, Linda. I might if it weren’t for the fact that he nearly killed me on the job when he was there.”

“Was it really that bad?” she asked skeptically.

I stood up and showed her the scar on my back. “A few inches to the left and I’d have been in a wheelchair. A couple of inches deeper and it would have stabbed me in the kidney and I could have bled out while they were trying to get me free.”

She nodded. “He didn’t do it on purpose,” she promised me. “When we got free from the airbags, he went to check. He was in hysterics when he came back. He recognized you. You were already screaming for her to wake up. I could hear that from in the truck.”

I nodded. “It was the worst night of my life, brought to me by the producers of the second worst night of my life,” I commented dryly.

She cringed. “I know. I’m sorry. I came here hoping that I could offer you something that would at least give you some peace.”

I nodded. “When I woke up in the hospital, I didn’t remember at first. Then it hit me all over again and I freaked out. They had to sedate me. The first words I actually said was to beg them to let me go to her. Mary made me promise not to do anything to make it happen. She knew that the only thing I wanted was to lay down in the ground next to Sabrina and let them bury us both, but she made me promise not to seek it out. So I prayed every day for over a year for something to send me to her. I saw your headlights coming toward us almost every night for months.”

She looked upset and nodded. She was getting a picture of how badly I’d been injured in the crash, not physically, but emotionally. “How did you get over it?” she asked.

“I didn’t,” I told her. “I think about it less. I pray for it less. I have the nightmare less often, but I still wake up sometimes and feel disappointed that I’m here and not with her.”

“That must be awful!” she frowned at hearing that.

I shrugged. “My life is awful,” I said simply. “Since the day you kissed Billy in front of me, my life has been beat-down and recovery. As soon as I recover from this, something else will happen and I suspect that fate or Billy’s talent for making the world a worse place or cosmic humor will bring the two of you back into my life just when I’m on the edge of getting my feet back under me to ruin it all. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m nowhere near recovered, I’d suspect today was that day. After all, Billy called me at work and here you are.”

“I swear, I’m not here to cause trouble,” she told me quickly, shaking her head in denial that she’d do anything to hurt me.

“Relax,” I said. “There’s nothing for you to destroy. There’s no one in my life, my job is okay, so long as Billy doesn’t keep calling the office. All my furniture belongs with the apartment. I don’t have much else to my name.”

“What do you do with your time?” she asked.

“I work as much as I can,” I told her. “When I’m not working, I sleep. Sometimes I get a little drunk and talk to ghosts. That’s about it. Not much left to take away.”

She looked deeply troubled. “What can I do to help?” she asked seriously.

“Mostly stay away,” I told her. “If I see Billy again, I’ll kill him. I won’t hesitate. I won’t think twice. I’ll always think of Sabrina’s death as murder. Whether he meant it when he put the key in the ignition or it just happened, he ran a red light and slammed into the car hard enough that they couldn’t make her presentable for her own funeral. Part of me hopes he does show up. Texas practices capital punishment. It’d put us both out of our misery. But you’re pregnant. Your child will need a father. Billy’ll have to do. So keep him away from me. If I ever come back to Denver, I’ll be visiting two places on my way through town. He has no business being in either location.”