Page 34 of Seeking Vengeance
Nick didn’t showup for work the next day. Sean hadn’t expected him to. He knew Nicki was making the necessary arrangements for their mother and assumed that Nick would be with her.
Around six o’clock, Nicki showed up unexpectedly at the garage. Sean was on his feet before she stepped over the threshold.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, regretting his words when he saw the hurt in her eyes.
She shielded it quickly but not quickly enough. Clearly, she had misunderstood.
“I was just about to lock up. Thought maybe we could pick up some takeout, have a quiet night. If you’re up for it,” he added.
“Yeah?” she asked, turning those silvery eyes up to his, faded rims of red beneath the glossy black lashes. Her hair was down, falling loosely about her shoulders. Blatantly absent was any hint of the hard-assed biker chick he’d become accustomed to. Faded Levi’s, black top with a couple of buttons open, jean jacket. The little jewelry she wore was tame, even by Catholic school standards, and the blush that played across her skin was natural.
“Yeah.” He put the last of his files into one of the boxes on his desk and grabbed his jacket, and then he set the code on the security panel and turned out the lights.
“You like Chinese?” he asked, taking her small hand in his. It felt cold.
She made no attempt to pull away.
* * *
“Chinese is good,”she answered quietly.
“Your place?”
She shook her head. She didn’t want to go back to Nick’s and face her brother, assuming he was even there. She couldn’t. She’d buried their mother today, and she’d done it alone. Nick hadn’t bothered to show. Nicki could understand his bitterness—she had a fair amount of it herself. What she didn’t get was how Nick could have bailed onher. Charlene was dead. It didn’t matter what he thought of her anymore. But Nicki was still here, and today, she’d needed her brother.
Sean tugged lightly on her hand, leading her to a set of concealed steps on the side of the garage office. Another few punches of a cleverly hidden control panel, and he was leading her upward.
She’d never really given much thought to what kind of place Sean would have, but if she had, she would have pictured this. His apartment spanned the entire length and width of the garage below, an airy, open space. It was sparsely furnished, but what was there was oversize and comfortable, the colors dark and rich. A U-shaped couch faced a big wall-mounted flat screen with a gigantic black glass coffee table in the middle. Beneath the television was a bank of equipment that housed more electronics than the local big box geek store. She recognized a few pieces of equipment, but she couldn’t even begin to guess what some of the other stuff was.
Off the living room was an octagonal game table with raised seats all around. Beyond that was a small kitchen of white tile and stainless steel, separated from the larger space by a half-wall and several barstool-type seats. Directly to their right was a bathroom that, judging from the little bit she could see, was almost as big as the living room of the apartment she shared with Nick. And beyond that, a closed door that most likely led to his bedroom. She tried not to think about that.
On the walls hung an eclectic mix of framed pictures in various shapes and sizes. Sean was in many of them, along with several other men of similar build and coloring that she guessed to be his brothers and father. The photos spanned his lifetime with some pictures clearly having been taken when he was no more than a boy. The most recent looked like it had been at a kind of celebration—Sean with all of his brothers, their wives, and their children. She recognized Lina and Kyle in that one.
It was a world as foreign to Nicki as outer space, but she took comfort in the fact that Sean was surrounded by people who loved him. She’d only ever had Nick, and as today had clearly proven, that was not always a sure thing. But these people, they made a real family. It was the way they looked at each other, in their smiles and in the love captured in time by a camera lens. She was quite sure that when they lost one of their own, they would be there for each other, and she was glad for that.
Sean took her jacket and hung it on one of the dozen or so hooks just inside the door, and then he guided her over to a barstool and pulled a stack of takeout menus from a drawer, placing them in front of her.
“Whatever you want,” he told her, reaching down to extract a bottle from the small bar on the other side. He poured a few fingers of a deep amber liquid into two glasses while she made her selection, and then he called it in.
“Did, uh, Nick make it in today?” she asked as they settled in to await the food.
Sean frowned. “No. I assumed he was with you.”
“No.”
“Ah, Nicki, I’m sorry,” he said, gently reaching over to pull her against him.
She offered no resistance. She probably should have, but it just felt too damn good.
“You should have called me. I stayed away because … ah fuck, baby. I’m sorry. No one should go through that alone.”
She sniffed and then nodded. She would never have called him, but she appreciated the sentiment just the same. And he was here now, holding her, lending her his warmth and strength. It was more than she’d ever had before.
For whatever reason, she started telling him about the urn she’d selected, the pretty one with the engraved roses. Charlene had always loved roses. When Nicki and Nick had been little and their mom was in one of her infrequent sober phases, she’d talk about having a home someday where they could plant all kinds of rose bushes.
Nicki told him about the quaint little chapel and the nice white-haired minister who had spoken a few words on her mother’s behalf. Nicki had never been inside a church before; she had no idea if Charlene had ever belonged or even believed, but it had seemed like the right thing to do.
Sean listened patiently, silently, doing little more than stroking her arm and holding her. That was okay. She didn’t want him to answer; she just needed someone to listen.
