I wake up suddenly to the sound of Geraint swearing. The clock on the dashboard reads a quarter past twelve. Ahead of us on the road, all the cars are stopped.
Geraint
Fucking traffic. Fucking roadworks. Fucking fuck. I slam the heel of my hand on the wheel and Branwen starts into wakefulness. She looks around at all the cars, her eyes bleary with sleep.
“Did I wake you, princess?” I say through clenched teeth. “I’m so sorry.”
We were making fantastic progress until just after Red Rock. Then two lanes were closed and the traffic slowed down, and finally stopped altogether. Every few minutes, we’re able to inch forward, only to stop again.
Branwen sighs, and then reaches over for her sandwich, opens the packet, and bites into it. After a moment, I do the same. We’re getting nowhere fast so I may as well eat my damn lunch.
For the next forty minutes, we stop-start-stop along the interstate. Branwen points at an LED sign flashing over the road. accident ahead. Jesus, fuck. Roadworks and an accident. I pull out my cell and check the traffic on Google Maps. There’s an angry red bar all along the interstate into Phoenix. The other roads are showing yellow for medium traffic.
“Soon as we get to an exit, I’m taking it, and I’ll try to get us through Phoenix another way.”
Branwen nods, and I get the feeling she’s as concerned about this traffic as me. Maybe she wants to get home? Given what I’ve implied I want to do to her daddy, I would have thought she’d be relieved about delays.
“You’re a funny one, Branwen. I can’t figure you out.” I step lightly on the gas and move forward by a few feet, and stop again. “It’s not just the silence. I stole you from a convent in the middle of the night and you’re taking it in your stride. Makes me wonder if you feel like you don’t deserve any better.”
Branwen lays her unfinished sandwich in her lap and looks out the window. I feel a ferocious burn of anger toward Adelmo Lange. The sweetest, loveliest girl, and he’s gone and petrified her so bad she runs away and suffers on her knees, for months on end. No one to comfort her. No one to tell her that’s enough, she’s forgiven. Just the cold silence of a merciless God. That’s not how punishment works. That’s just fucking cruel. No girl of mine ever suffers longer than she has to.
“I’m not taking you back to Avallonis to punish you. I’m doing this because I need you.”
Ignoring her lunch, she starts chewing on her thumbnail. I reach out and gently tug her thumb from her lips. “Hey, don’t chew your nails. I know it’s hard going home when you’re afraid. If someone was dragging me home, I’d freak the fuck out. Couldn’t wait to get out of that place. Didn’t even stop to think what I was leaving behind. You got any siblings, baby?” I ask, knowing the answer. She’s got three older brothers and none of them could keep her safe either.
She puts her nail in her mouth and starts chewing again.
“Hey, what did just I say?” This time when I reach for her hand, I hold on fast, the back of my hand resting on her thigh. “You feel anxious about anything, you don’t chew your nails. You squeeze my hand instead.”
Branwen immediately clutches my fingers in a death grip. Woah. All right then.
“I had a brother. Trefor. We were kids together in the system. I looked out for him. Protected him from the other kids. And then I left him behind when I turned eighteen. Really left. I never even went back to visit him.”
With my left hand, I reach over and change into first gear, move the car forward into the gap that’s appeared in the next lane over, and then change back to neutral, all without letting go of Branwen’s hand.
“My own little brother.” I stare out the windshield ahead but I don’t see the road. I see rows of bunkbeds and plates of shitty, overcooked vegetables. I feel the fists of the other kids in my gut and the endless, lonely hours in time-out. Trefor, with a bloodied lip, telling me it didn’t matter, he’d just get beaten up; I didn’t need to get into fights for him.
Branwen seems to be listening and I keep talking. It’s kin
d of soothing, talking about him to her. “We didn’t start out in the system, and don’t you fucking go thinking our mom couldn’t take care of us. We weren’t taken away from her, she was taken away from us.”
Beside me, Branwen nods solemnly.
“All right then. Mom was real pretty, but kind of broken. I think it was her parents who broke her, and my dad just finished her off. He took his time about it too. First, they had me, and then four years and a few separations and reunions later, they had my brother. In between, she got a helluva lot of bruises. I think she could bear it for herself, but one day, when I was twelve, he hit me so hard I saw fucking stars. She took me and Trefor, and she fled.”
I remember that road trip. We left in the middle of the night, just like me and Branwen did, and we drove and drove. Trefor slept for most of it, laying along the back seat. I sat up front with mom, not sleeping because I knew she needed me. “We managed to get a few states away. Then he came after her, and he killed her.”
Branwen looks at me sharply. I remember the blue flashing police lights and the lady cop with her arm around Trefor as he sobbed. The blood on the motel room bathroom floor. But mostly, I remember her screaming, and then dad coming out, covered in blood and standing over me with the knife in his hand, a choice in his eyes.
“He killed her in front of us. I always thought if I was bigger, meaner, I could have protected her. I couldn’t fucking do nothing.”
Branwen puts her other hand over the one holding mine, squeezing hard, saying more than words could say. I’m not telling her this because I need sympathy. But then, why am I telling her this? I don’t know, but I keep talking.
“We went into a home and were fostered out a few times, but it never stuck. I fucking hated every guardian and every teacher I had. I guess they all reminded me of my dad. I should have known better than to join the Army where I had psychos riding my ass, day and night, but I didn’t have many options. Eventually, they kicked me out, but not before they taught me to shoot.”
I already knew how to brawl, and after I left the Army, I started carrying a knife and a gun. Trouble just seems to follow me around. I don’t make it, but it finds me.
“Best thing to ever happen to me was meeting Arthur. He gave me a purpose that suited my skills and morals. I was twenty-eight and making a few thousand here and there as a hitman. I took down a target one of his men had been hired to take out as well. I guess this shithead had a lot of enemies. Arthur liked my style and offered me a permanent job, and I never looked back. The first time I saw headquarters, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”