Page 23 of The Hardest Hit
The last time he’d been in the storage unit it had been a disaster zone of piled furniture and boxes. Whatever Evan had been doing, it had included organizing. Jackson felt a tremor of unease to see that the wicker furniture that he had previously climbed over had now been set up to face a whiteboard. There were tick marks and numbers on the board, and Jackson stepped closer, trying to assess their meaning. A few newspaper articles were taped to the board with blue painter’s tape and he flipped through them. Henry Deveraux’s obituary featured prominently near the left side of the board. Jackson looked it over curiously.
Entrepreneur and innovator, Henry Evan Deveraux passed away in his home on Tuesday from complications relating to cancer. His wife Eleanor Hicks Deveraux was by his side. Born in New York…
Jackson skimmed the obituary. It was a full page and only reiterated what Jackson already knew—his grandfather had a lot of money and connections. Whoo-de-freaking-hoo. The obituary read like a resume—it was a list of accomplishments and not much more. There weren’t any quotes from friends and family. No funny stories. Nothing that amounted to a worthwhile human being. Jackson let the sheet of paper fall back onto the board and looked around again.
Why had Evan been here? What did he need with Henry’s obituary?
He went to the next tick mark on the board, figuring the numbers above them were dates. But that tick mark was empty. Sticky ghosts of tape marked the board there indicating that somethinghadbeen there, but wasn’t any longer. He traveled the board, none of the dates stood out as important to him until he got to the end. The Deveraux plane crash stared out at him from a scanned copy of a newspaper.
All three Deveraux children Randall, Owen, and Genevieve Deveraux, as well as Genevieve’s husband Jack Casella, were pronounced dead Thursday after their private plane crashed in the Rockies. The pilot reported turbulence shortly before the plane went down. The pilot is still listed in critical condition.
Jackson sighed. Whatever Evan had been digging into, Jackson was sure it wasn’t a good thing. Evan could be obsessive and stubborn. Fixating on their parent’s death could not be mentally healthy. Three years ago, Jackson had convinced Evan to stop going to Fetish. The stupid sex club hadn’t been about pleasure for Evan—it had been away to punish himself for being too much like his father. Jackson hadn’t had any patience for that and when he’d gotten the call that Evan was in the hospital, he’d finally been unable to respect his cousin’s privacy.
Evan was sitting in the hospital room when Jackson walked in. He went directly over and looked at the x-ray on the light-up box in the wall.
“How’d you get in here?” asked Evan.
“I bully people,” said Jackson. “And I said you were my brother. Radial fracture.”
“Yeah.”
“How’d that happen?”
Evan didn’t answer and Jackson could see that Evan had no intention of answering. Jackson sighed.
“Did I ever tell you about my mom?”
“No?” Evan looked off-balance.
“She liked S&M. It was one of the reasons we got booted out of her family. They said she was a whore. Which was kind of true, although unrelated. And they thought she… defiled herself. I believe that was the term my grandfather used.”
Evan swallowed hard. “Defiled?” he repeated.
“I punched him in the face,” said Jackson with a shrug. “Not that it did much good. I was twelve. He just threw me out of the house. It doesn’t matter anyway. I told you—they abandoned us. They are not my family. This is my family.”
“Evan stared at him mutely and Jackson decided that there wasn’t going to be any commentary.
“My point is that I’m not unfamiliar with people or places like Fetish. And I’m telling you that the good part about those places is that they are all about consent. When to use it, when to give it, when to take it away. The bad part, the part I don’t like, is that you are consenting to this.” Jackson gestured angrily to the x-ray, and Evan looked down, avoiding eye contact. “My question to you, is, are you sure thatyoulike it?”
“What?” Evan looked up, startled. He looked down at his arm and then back at the x-ray. “It’s a broken arm. Of course, I don’t like it. It was an accident. I just didn’t… It wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m stubborn.”
“Yes. I see that,” said Jackson. “I see that you don’t like being told what to do. I see that you like controlling things. But there’s a big difference between control and pain. And if you don’t like it, why are you doing it?”
“It’s better,” whispered Evan, his voice hoarse.
“For who? It’s not better for you.”
“It’s safer.”
“Again, for who? Not for you. I can’t have people hurting you Evan. It’s unacceptable.”
“There can’t be any more monsters in the family,” said Evan, his face deathly pale.
“There aren’t any.”
“Are you sure?” demanded Evan.
“Yes,” said Jackson. “I am. This is my family now, Evan. You know why Eleanor brought me in, right? Instead of leaving me to rot in prison.”
