Tyler O'Neill's Redemption

“Okay,” she said. “But we’ve got to keep you away from your dad. Where is he now?”

“It’s Monday, so he’s sleeping it off and then he’s back out at the refinery until Saturday.” The refinery was over the state line, and employed many of the men and women of Bonne Terre. Due to the commute, many of them, like Miguel’s father, spent part of the week in a cheap hotel closer to the refinery.

“Your sister?”

“She’s at Patricia’s. I’m gonna pick her up for school tomorrow.” Patricia was an old friend of Miguel’s mother, who did what she could for the kids, but the woman was eighty, on welfare and barely spoke English.

She nodded. What to do? What to do?

“All right.” She ducked her head, looking hard into his good eye. “Tomorrow after school you come right here. In fact, after school you come here every day.”

“To the police station?” he asked, horrified as any good delinquent would be.

“It’s your only choice, Miguel. And considering what I’ve done for you, if you don’t show up I’ll be—” He looked away. “Miguel,” she snapped and he looked back up, sighing. “I will be very, very insulted.”

Miguel nodded, his lip lifting slightly. Nearly made her cry to see it. Here he was, face beat in, future up in the air, and the kid could still smile. Sort of.

Maybe she could make this work—as long as Dr. Roberts didn’t tell anyone and Tyler kept his mouth shut. And if no one in the station cared about an attempted grand theft she made disappear, or wondered why Miguel was cleaning squad cars every day after school.

And particularly if no one else saw Miguel’s file.

Panic nearly swamped her. Who was she kidding?

Thinking about what she was doing made things worse. She needed to move, act, do something. Give Ramon Pastor a warning that even he would understand.

“Get in the car,” she said, following Miguel toward her sedan.

“Chief!” Lisa came running out into the impound yard, her blond ponytail a little flag out behind her.

“What’s up?” Juliette asked, a little surprised to see Lisa away from her FreeCell game.

“Mayor wants to see you,” Lisa said.

It had been approved? She’d just turned in that paperwork last week. The squad car requisition? Man, the mayor was totally on her side—

Lisa’s eyes flipped over to Miguel. “About the boy.”

“DAD!” TYLER CALLED, slamming the front door shut behind him.

“Yeah?” Richard stepped in from the kitchen into the hallway, a sauce-splattered apron tied around his trim waist. Good God, the man was playing house.

“Let’s go,” Tyler said to Richard’s blank face. “Let’s go back to Vegas. Play some cards, get a steak as big as our heads.”

“I’m making lasagna.”

“Screw the lasagna!” Tyler cried. “It’s time to go.”

“But we just got here. We haven’t found the gems.”

“Dad, if it’s about money, I’ve got more than—”

Richard shook his head. “I’m not taking your money.”

Tyler blew out a long breath and stared up at the ceiling. This totally misplaced sense of honor his father had could be such a pain in the butt. “You will live in my suite, charge meals to my room and wear my damn clothes, but you can’t take money from me?”

“Hey—” Richard wiped his hands off on the apron “—that’s taking care of one another. You’ll remember I did the same thing for you for years after you found me in Vegas.”

I was a kid! Tyler wanted to yell. I was your kid! It’s part of a father’s job description.

But the truth was, Richard often got the job description for father and sperm donor confused.

I should just leave. Leave him here to find these nonexistent gems. Tyler’s feet twitched with the urge to turn around and walk away, leave Richard behind like he’d done to his family. Shuck them all like so many dirty socks.

If he could leave the best of them behind, why the hell couldn’t he walk away from the worst of them?

“I need you, son,” Richard said, his voice getting earnest, his eyes slightly damp. The old caring father routine—I may have been absent, but you were never absent from my thoughts. Tyler fell for that story hook, line and sinker more times than he’d like to admit.

“You need me to help you look for gems,” Tyler said, crossing his arms over his chest. “You could hire someone for that. Hell, we could get a cleaning crew in here and they’d—”

There was something off on Dad’s face, something raw. Something not manufactured and it looked like worry.

“What?” Tyler asked, feeling his stomach fall into his shoes.

“It’s not a big deal—”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“I was in a…thing…back in Los Angeles.”

“Oh, my God,” Tyler breathed, turning away from his father, fisting his hands in his hair. “Oh. My. God.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Richard said. Tyler heard him step forward and Tyler put up his hand. If the old man got closer there was a good chance Tyler would knock him out. “I swear to you, son, I didn’t do anything. But the friend I was staying with was arrested for credit-card fraud. I didn’t know what he was doing, but because—”

“But because you were staying with him, the police think you do.” Tyler sighed and looked his father hard in the eye, willing his father to tell the truth.

“I was questioned and released. I swear, son,” he said. “I had nothing to do with it. Credit-card fraud is for lowlifes.”

Tyler’s laughter was a hard bark that hurt his throat. “Good to know you have standards.”

“I just need…a change of scene, until things cool down. Just for a little while.”

“What if I decide to leave?”

“Then I’d wish you well,” he said, “but I better stay. Empty house and all.”

Empty house full of gems.

“It’s not your house.”

“Not yours, either.”

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

There was no way Tyler could leave now. It would be like walking away from a bomb with a lit fuse. There was simply no telling what kind of trouble Richard would get into unattended. And if he wasn’t here, Juliette would drive by, checking on The Manor. It was only a matter of time before she found Richard.

“I need a drink,” he muttered.

“WHAT WE NEED IS A PLAN,” Richard said an hour later, pouring another finger of whiskey in the old crystal tumblers. Tyler picked his up, loving the paper-thin edge of the glass against his lips and the solid heft and weight in his hands. Made him want to bite it and hurl it against a wall.

Sort of how he felt about his father.

About Juliette. Lord, how was he going to be able to avoid her now? In a town this size? Impossible.

“What we need is to stop drinking, start looking,” Tyler said, drinking anyway.

“I’ve been looking,” Richard said, stretching back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankles.

They sat on the back porch, the early afternoon sunlight a bright warm blanket across their legs, the whiskey a warm blanket in his stomach. Thoughts of Juliette like a sore tooth he just could not leave alone.

More whiskey would fix that, he thought, taking a half inch from the glass. Which was why he was drinking instead of looking, because first things, after all, were first.

Gotta get Juliette out of my head.

“Yeah? Where have you been looking?”

“I started in the basement,” Richard said, looking out over the maze and the greenhouse. “Boxes of paperwork. I tell you—” he smiled, shaking his head “—that little girl of mine is a packrat—”

Tyler stiffened, his skin suddenly too tight. Bright sparks in his head. Don’t call her that, he wanted to yell. You don’t get to call her that.

But he bit back the words.

“Margot still raising orchids?” he asked, unable to look directly at his father without the help of much more booze.

“I wouldn’t know, son. Margot and I never discussed hobbies.”

Tyler stood and stepped onto the lush green grass, a miracle in the end-of-summer heat, and crossed the yard, his fingers touching the silvery green leaves of the trees. Soft. But not soft like Juliette.

“Hey, why the sudden interest in finding the gems, Ty?” Dad asked, following him across the grass. He stumbled a little, but righted himself with grace. Dad never could hold his liquor, but he was about the most gracious drunk Tyler had ever seen. Whiskey turned the old man into royalty. “This morning you could care less.”

“We’ve got nothing else to do,” Tyler said.

“You don’t believe me about the gems, do you?”

“I don’t believe one way or the other,” Tyler answered. And he didn’t. He didn’t actually care, either. At this point he was babysitter/bomb squad, and if the baby wanted to look for gems—what did it hurt?

“You aren’t excited about the money?” Dad asked.

Tyler shook his head. He had more money than he could spend in five years, and considering the way money rolled out of his hands, that was saying something.

But with this last win, he’d finally taken his brother, Carter’s, advice and talked to a money guy. Tyler got a nice little check every month from his investments.

Carter, he thought, the whiskey making him fond rather than irritated at the thought of his brother. Leave it to the Golden Boy to find a way to run a con on nothing.

Tyler stepped into the greenhouse, which was warm and humid, like breathing underwater. Plants lined a table, and more hung from baskets. No blooms, just the young shoots, green arrows out of dark soil.

Margot was starting over with her orchids and he had to wonder why. He took a sip and touched the soil in one of the baskets. Dry, but not very, considering Margot was on some cruise and Savannah was off falling in love in Paris.

Someone was watering the plants, and it could only be Juliette. Always Juliette.

He found the hose coiled in the corner and turned it on, finding the balance between a trickle and a flood, just like Margot taught him a million years ago.

“Orchids are particular,” she’d said, filling the hanging pan under a pink flower. “Some want water from the bottom, some want it from the top. Some want lots, some barely any.”

“Seems like a lot of work,” he’d said, pissed off at the world because he knew why he was here and that his mother was never coming back. He didn’t want to take care of the damn plants, he wanted to smash them. Break those little pink flowers into pieces.

“That’s why I need your help,” she’d said, looking right at him, right down to that twitchy dark place. She knew he wanted to wreck her flowers. Wreck everything. And still she wanted his help.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said, scowling.

“I’ll show you,” she said, putting the hose in his hand.

“You think the gems are in here?” Richard asked, digging into one of the pots, crushing the green bud with his big, fat, clumsy fingers.

“No, Dad,” he said, and flicked the hose at him as if Richard was a cat digging in a house plant.

“Hey! Watch it!” Richard said, bouncing away, bumping into a worktable.

“I don’t think the gems are here,” he said. Splashing a little water in each of the pots, he didn’t know which was which. Which, if any, needed special care.

He turned off the hose, flinging it back in its corner. The last sip of whiskey burned a familiar trail down his throat. An odd longing bobbed in his chest, an unvoiced wish for something he didn’t even understand.

I miss this place, he thought. I miss Margot and Savannah. I miss Juliette.

He thought of who he’d been, that boy with those bright green dreams pushing out of the rotten soil his mother had planted him in.

The thought, as soon as it was fully formed and poisonous, was plucked out. Destroyed.

Wishing for something different was a waste. These were the cards he’d been dealt, and if he didn’t like them—too bad.

He was Tyler O’Neill, born a card man, from a long line of con men and petty crooks. This was his life.

And the best thing he could do for Juliette Tremblant was to keep himself and Dad far away from her.

He tested the weight of the tumbler in his hand. Tossing it. Catching it. Fine crystal, it was so perfect. Better than a baseball.

The tumbler rocketed through the air—a perfect arc, catching the light at its zenith, splashing rainbows across the courtyard—and then smashed against the stone wall, fracturing into a million glittering pieces.

“Tyler?” Dad asked, his voice careful.

“I’ll start in the upstairs bedrooms,” he said, and headed back to the house.

CHAPTER FIVE

“WHERE’S THE BOY NOW?” Mayor Bourdage asked, sitting behind the giant desk in his office.

“I dropped him off at home,” she said.

The mayor tore open a packet of Alka-Seltzer and dumped it into the glass at his elbow, the water exploding into bubbles. The man looked decidedly gray.

So, she imagined, did Father Michaels, the wrestling coach and Lou Brandt.

The good old boys really tied one on during those Sunday-night poker games.

The mayor drained the glass in three large gulps and then wiped his face. “The kid looked like he’d gotten into it with a freight train.”

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