I playfully pushed on his chest. “She threatened me,” I announced, trying to change the subject and trying to get the hammering of my heart under control. The smirk on his face told me that he saw right through me, but he humored me anyway.

“What?” he asked, not sounding the least bit surprised.

I pushed my hair behind my ear. “Yeah, it was the first time I met her actually. We weren’t even an us then.”

“She threatened Ray too, back in the day. It’s a good thing. It means she liked you,” Bear said. He closed his eyes and sighed.

“Grace said if I hurt you she’d come after me,” I told him, “The way she said it, it still scares me.” The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

“Yeah, but babe we just came back from her funeral,” Bear reminded me. “No reason to be scared now.”

I shook my head. “No, you heard her in the hospital. There was something in the way she said it that made me think that even death couldn’t stop her from making good on her threat.”

“I think you might be right on that one,” Bear said, planting a kiss on my jaw.

“I think so too,” I said. The lamp on the end table flickered.

“Promise me you’re not going anywhere. It sucks that Grace is gone, but I can handle it, or I will be able to handle it, because I knew it would happen someday. But if something happened to you…” Bear paused. “I don’t know if I could…no, I know that I couldn’t.”

“You won’t have to. I’m not going anywhere,” I reassured him.

I made a promise and I’ll keep it. I will take care of him, I silently vowed to Grace.

I snuggled in closer to Bear who kissed me again, this time on my temple. I’d meant it. I’d take care of him with everything I had…or I’d die trying.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Thia

SILVER COLORED CLOUDS interfered with the normally unrelenting rays of the sun. With the clouds came a few moments of relief from the constant sweltering heat. A light breeze flowed in through the open windows of King’s truck as Ray and I made our way to Grace’s house to pack her entire life into boxes we’d gotten from the back alley of the Quick Stop. “What the hell are they even doing in there?” I asked Ray. It’d been almost twenty-four hours since King and Bear locked themselves in his tattoo shop. Rumbles of laughter, crashing, banging, breaking, and all sorts of loud music could all be heard from the room. The smell of weed and liquor permeated from underneath the door.

“Nothing good for them. I’m pretty sure they have enough booze and other shit in there to last them a week.”

“A week?” I asked.

“Yeah, but they obviously don’t have a week.” Ray was right. Chop and the Bastards would be back in just a couple of days. Gus had called to let us know the MC had started their trek back from the Carolinas. The war was on its way. “At least they have each other.”

“Yeah, that’s why even though you showed up in bad shape, I’m glad you came because if you didn’t, Bear would still be out there somewhere when he belongs here, at home. With family. You brought him home,” Ray said. “And you should have seen those two when Preppy died. They locked themselves away for what seemed like forever. But in the end, they came out better for it. Not healed. Not whole. Just…better.” Ray paused. “I told the kids about Grace¸” Ray added, taking a sharp corner without bothering to use the breaks. I held on to the handle on the headliner above the window in fear that I might fall out, suddenly very glad I remembered to wear my seatbelt. “Sorry,” she said after noticing either my white knuckles or the look of fear in my eyes. “I just recently got my license.”

“You’re doing so good,” I lied, releasing my death grip on the handle and dropping back into my seat after we settled onto a straight patch of road. “How did they take it? The kids?” I asked, as I looked in the rearview mirror to make sure Wolf and Munch were still behind us. Bear may have been having his moment with King, but he didn’t like the idea of us going over to Grace’s unprotected, especially after what had happened with Tretch.

“King and I talked to them for a while,” Ray said, keeping her hands at ten and two. “But all they got out of it was that Grandma Grace won’t be around to play with them anymore.” Her eyes never left the road. “That alone was enough to set them both to tears. Took us three hours to get Max to settle down. Both her and Sammy wound up sleeping in bed with us.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, knowing there wasn’t much else I could say that would make the situation any better for her. “I don’t know how you do it. Managing three kids. It’s like you’re not even human.”

Ray flashed me a brief smile and parked the truck in front of a small white house that looked more like a little cottage with its little picket fence and white siding. “I’m not human,” she said, hopping out of the truck. “I’m a mom.”

We spent all afternoon at Grace’s house going through a lifetime of her things and packing them into boxes to either keep in storage or donate. I’d never been to her house before, so seeing thousands and thousands of rabbits stacked on every shelf and surface was quite a shock. “They were from her husband,” Ray explained, which was the least crazy explanation for having so many little glass eyes staring at you all day.

I was on a ladder, going through the higher kitchen cabinets and I was packing away Grace’s wedding china, which I knew was her wedding china because when I opened the cabinet door I was greeted with a label that said WEDDING CHINA.

I wrapped the long stemmed glasses and gold-rimmed plates in newspaper before placing them in boxes and filling the empty spaces and crevices with bubble wrap.

When I pulled the very last plate from the back of the cabinet, something taped to it caught my attention. I turned the plate around and found that it was a picture of a baby boy.

When I read the caption on the back I dropped the plate and it shattered into a million pieces, scattering all around the kitchen in a symphony of delicate porcelain bits. “Shit,” I said, hopping down from the ladder.

“You okay?” Ray shouted out from a back bedroom.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I grabbed the broom that had been leaning up against the wall in the hallway and swept the broken pieces of china into a dustpan. I set the dustpan down and sat down at the table. I sorted through and picked up the piece that still had the photo taped to the back and shook off the dust. Maybe I’d gotten it all wrong. Maybe it hadn’t said what I’d thought it had said.