Page 138 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

“I know, I know, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

Tenny drew in a ragged breath. “Your shirt stinks.”

Reese tweaked his ear, and they both laughed, and it wasbetterthan okay.

~*~

Tango wanted to go outside. It was still raining, but there was an overhang in the small smoking courtyard he chose for their conversation. Little birds, finches of some kind, hopped around beneath the boxwoods in search of crumbs, and the rain pattered in a steady, lulling susurrus across the concrete.

There was a bench beneath the overhang, and Ghost took it, leaving a wide space for Tango to join him.

But Tango stayed on his feet. He lit a cigarette and moved to stand across from Ghost, at the very edge of the overhang’s protection. The silvery rain light, and the glimmering sheet of water pouring down behind him, left his face hard to read, half-shadowed. The cherry of his cig glowed bright red, lighting up his eyes, briefly, on a hard drag.

Ghost said, “I heard you were the one who got Fallon.”

The cherry died, and Tango exhaled, smoke a dark smudge against the rain light. “Yeah.”

“Did it feel good?”

“Yeah.” He flicked the cigarette out into the rain. “Look, Ghost, I don’t – okay.” He took a deep breath, unused to initiating hard talks, but braving his way through this one anyway.

Ghost bit back a smile, terribly proud of him.

“I can’t say I know why you lied to us, not really,” Tango continued, voice heavy with disappointment. “I mean, Ido.Because you wanted it to look real. You wanted the feds to think you were really dead, and that we were really broken up about it. But.” He scuffed a toe across the concrete. “That means you didn’t trust us toactbroken up about you. That you thought we couldn’t fake it. For you. For the club.”

“I…” What defense could he offer? Hehadthought that. “You – all of you – are a lot of things. But you’re not actors.”

Tango nodded, and his head turned, lashes miles long in profile. So often in moments like these, when he felt vulnerable, he resembled the boy he’d been when Ghost first met him, shaken, and shaky with withdrawal, too thin and afraid of the world. But right now, he looked older than his years. No. He looked sure of himself. Hurt, yes. But a man, now. Quietly confident, finally, after all these years.

And Ghost knew that none of that was his doing. It was all Aidan’s. Whitney’s. Mercy’s. Maggie’s. The club’s. Even Ian’s.

Ghost said, “You know,” and Tango faced forward again, expression concealed in shadow once more, “sometimes, when I can’t sleep – which is a lot of the time – I ask myself why I coddle Ian.”

“Youcoddlehim?”

“Compared to the rest of you? Yeah. But I wonder. I offered him the chance, if he wanted it, to take out Abacus himself. But he told me to do it, and I thought to myself…I thoughtthat’s good. Because I wanted to spare him that, if I could.”

“Ian’s done his share of taking,” Tango said in a flat, unimpressed voice.

“Yeah. That’s not what I meant. I spent so many years being a shitty father. Even when I started trying to do better, I sucked at it; I always made the wrong overture, or said the wrong thing. I love Aidan, but I don’t know how to show it…damn. This sounds pathetic, doesn’t it?”

“Very.”

Ghost sighed. “I fucked up with you, too. And I’m sorry for that.”

Tango shrugged, but the movement was tight, bothered.

“I literally can’t screw up with Ian. He made me a father figure even though I wasn’t even nice to him. He needs me in a way that none of my actual children do.”

“Sounds like Ian has low standards.”

“Oh, he does. But what I’m saying is, screwing up is a pattern: I’ve gotten things so wrong all along with Aidan, that I don’t begin to know how to get them right.”

Tango let out a deep, tired-sounding breath. “Ghost, what you did this time, letting Aidan think you were dead” – he shook his head – “that’s not ‘screwing up.’ That’s not being a shitty father. You broke your relationship with him. Do you get that? He’ll never forgive you for this.”

“I know.” And he did, and had known all along, but the panic of the moment had overridden his hangups. Now, though, the knowledge crashed over him. Pressed him flat like a bug on a windshield. “Fuck.”

“Aidan’s my best friend,” Tango said. “He’s my brother. I love him. I love the club, yeah, and what it is, what it’s offered me – but I love Aidan more. I was with him the day Walsh told him that you’d died. I would say that you can imagine how that hit him, but I don’t know if you can. It was bad.”

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