Page 83 of Whiskey Chase
Gibson wiped his hands with a cloth and tossed his safety glasses onto a work table. He strolled over to a mini fridge and pulled out two bottles of water. He tossed one to me, and I caught it in mid-air.
“Go on.”
I wasn’t going to sugar coat it for him. “I found the sweater that Callie Kendall disappeared in. It’s stained with what might be blood.”
He stared at me as if I weren’t speaking English. “You’re fucking with me.”
I shook my head. “I wish I were. It’s hers, Gibs. The top button—”
“Daisies,” he said, interrupting me. And I wondered how in the hell he remembered that. But then again, everyone in Bootleg knew everything about Callie except where she disappeared to.
I pressed on. “We were all at your apartment when she went missing. We spent the night.”
He took another drink and looked away. Remembering.
“Why were we there, Gibs? I was fourteen, Jameson sixteen, and Bowie eighteen. Why did we spend the night at your apartment?”
I closed my eyes and prayed for an answer that wouldn’t gut me.
“It was a long time ago,” he hedged.
“Gibs.”
He sighed and pulled out a stool that matched mine from under a sawdust-encrusted table. “Mom called. She asked.”
“She just asked you to keep the three of us at your place that night?”
He shrugged tired shoulders. “I don’t know. It was late. Like after ten. She sounded upset. Said it would help her out. I assumed they were fighting.”
What did Mama know? What was there for her to know?
I rubbed my forehead, a new worry blooming bright. “It wouldn’t have been the first time,” I said. They’d fought before. Usually Gibs or Bowie would keep me entertained in their rooms until the shouting stopped. Sometimes we went to Cassidy and June’s house and stayed there until the fight was over and all was normal again.
“Bowie drove y’all over,” Gibson said with a small smile.
“Did you think it was odd that she asked you to keep us for the night and then Callie up and went missing?” I asked.
“The connection never occurred to me,” he said. “You think he didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“He”meaning our father. And it definitely wasn’t a question.
I shook my head and jumped on the defensive. “I know what you’re gonna say, Gibs. Daddy was many things. But he didn’t take Callie. He didn’t hurt her.”
“Then how the fuck did her sweater end up in his house?”
“He could have found it—”
His rage, poker hot, surprised me. He threw his half empty water bottle across the room. “When are you going to finally realize what a low-life he was, Scar?”
“He never hit us,” I said, rallying. It was an old argument.
“Since when in the fuck should that ever be the line?” Gibson demanded. “Why would everything else up to physical abuse be okay? He told me over and over again that I ruined his life. That I was the reason he wasn’t off playin’ in a band or makin’ something of himself. He told me I wasnothing.”
Gibson came by his musical talent honestly. But as a “fuck you” to our father, he purposely never pursued it.
I wasn’t hurt by the anger I heard behind the words. That was Gibson, a walking fit of rage. It was the pain that got me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
