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Wendy’s the one who found the house. It was a shitty fixer-upper in the middle of the desert at first, and it had room enough for them and the boys. But it’d be habitable someday; it wouldn’t be a rat trap forever.
Wendy’s focused on the future, because the past makes her crave things she ought not. For the moment she thinks in positives. Maybe someday the boys will take it over and move into it together when they grow up. Maybe they’ll have a future that has nothing to do with the Sons. Maybe they’ll get into medicine and make herself and Tara proud.
Horses and hand grenades, as they said. You couldn’t count on one exploding without the other imploding. Or at least Wendy’s pretty sure that’s the phrase she heard at AA the other day.
Then a voice brings her out of her trance. “Who found this place?” Tara asks. Straight through the bullshit, as always.
“Nero,” Wendy explained. “He knew a guy who knew a guy and picked it up cheap. Says there’s nothing wrong with it – no pest problems, working heat and air. Told me before I left Charming he’d pay for guys to come over and finish fixing it up while we’re working and the boys are at school and daycare.” Automatically, she checks the car just to make sure Abel and Thomas are still there. Abel’s sleeping in his car seat and Thomas is paging through a book. They’re just as clean and satisfied as they had been when the four of them had pulled off the road and had dinner in a family restaurant in Las Cruces.
“He’s a pretty nice guy,” Tara said. Because talking about Nero was easier than talking about what they’d left behind in Charming and what they were going to do with the rest of their lives.
“He said he’d be by when the heat’s off,” Wendy said. “When Jax…”
“We can’t count on Jax doing anything for us ever again,” said Tara.
“You’re not waiting around for him?” Wendy asked. She couldn’t quite keep the cynical note out of her voice; Tara had waited forever for Jax, for his relationship with Wendy to end, for him to come around and see sense, notice her around the boiling, burgeoning legacy of his father and the club.
All Tara could do was shrug. “He knows where I am. When he’s free of the Sons, he can see his kid. Until then…”
Yeah, Wendy knew that score, she’d sung it before.
They’d both given up in their own ways on him ever seeing the way out of the complicated tangle of lies he’d made for himself, but they’d both accepted the possibility of joy in others. It was about protecting the boys now. Learning to be happy.
Wendy opened up the car and got them going, got them into the house. That was the start. It was enough to grow a new life on, anyway.
Tara managed to score a job at a local hospital after a couple of months of background checks and interviews. Wendy was impressed; she was still interviewing for the right position for herself, something that’d ensure Thomas and Abel if something awful happened. She could be picky with Tara easily paying the bills.
To her surprise, the best bet seemed to be the local library. She doesn’t have a degree for it, but she can work on that nights, and she knows well enough how to return things to the right stacks, how to run the computer and when to give directions. Wendy’s just happy to be given an actual chance to provide something for the boys.
Well, it was a safer place than a bar or a supermarket, where step-down temptation existed. So she said yes.
“Do you know a lot about books?” Tara asked.
“No.”
Tara spoons more spaghetti sauce onto Thomas’ stack of macaroni and carefully passes it across the table. “They’re going to ask you,” said Tara. “We’d better get you ready.” She started pulling up Amazon pages, showing Wendy the bestsellers list both for fiction and for nonfiction. It was easy enough to move from there, to show her what people would ask her for when she was standing behind a desk.
“Shit, I had no idea I’d have to take a test,” Wendy said.
Tara laughed. “Someday I’m going to tell you about the exams I went through to get into medical school.”
Wendy could imagine. She caught sight of Abel slurping down his noodles and felt a sting of self-recrimination. She could just imagine.
Nero stopped by the first weekend. He brought them a spider plant and three sturdy-looking guys who checked over the wiring and the air and the water, then made themselves useful fixing the upstairs bathroom and patching together the leak in the second bathroom.
“The four of you getting on all right?”
Tara shrugged. “I have a job, Wendy’s almost got a job. The boys are in daycare and school. We’re having a pretty good time.”
“How’s Charming?” Wendy asked. The strange part about the question was that Charming felt like it was a million miles away, as if it were some strange foreign alien planet that ha nothing at all to do with their small family.
Nero gave her a small smile. “Charming is Charming. That place doesn’t change except at gunpoint. And why do you think I have a six?”
They had their own weapons for protection – knew how to use them – but hadn’t had to pull them out yet. Nero asked them how the boys have been and Wendy volunteered all of the information she could. He poured them lemonade and listened.
“Jax?” Tara finally asked. It was as if saying his name was a grand release from the tension between the three of them.
Nero shook his head. “They’re supposed to have a brawl with the Irish soon. Whoever wins gets the territory. I’m keeping my nose clean. I have enough to deal with, between my girls and my trade.”
That seemed like the smartest possible choice; Wendy didn’t want to deal with the repercussions of whatever Jax had chosen, didn’t want the boys to have to cope with what he was going to be doing on Friday night.
“So!” he clapped his hands together. “I’m gonna bet you girls don’t know how to bake.”
“You do?” Wendy laughed.
“Mija, I happen to know just the way around a tube of dough. But I could go scratch, if need be.”
Tara snorted. “I have to see this,” she said, and got the butter out to soften.
A little while later, they had a plate of cookies that would have made Betty Crocker cry. They ate them together, giggling the whole time.
The first major holiday their little house saw was the Fourth of July. Neither of them were particularly patriotic, but they still took the boys to the little local park. Everyone got slathered in sunblock and glasses of cold lemonade were passed around.
Tara made them lunches and Wendy kept an eye on the kids while she mugged the Good Humor man for dessert. They ate their melting ice cream as it got darker, and watched with wide eyes as the fireworks began.
The noise no longer reminded Wendy of guns. It no longer reminded her of being in a warzone, scouring about for drugs in the middle of the night.
It reminded her of the surprise and delight in Abel and Thomas’ eyes as the world showered down sparks over their young heads. Of the smell of cordite and Rocket Pops. And of the simple beauty of looking over at Tara and knowing that whatever she was thinking, it was pretty close to what Wendy was thinking in that moment.
Kismet.
It was Tara’s idea to plant a flower garden.
They bought a bed of marigolds and seeds that would spring up roses and sunflowers by the time the fall came. The cactuses came in terra cotta pots and thrived in the hot sun. It was too late in the season to make a real vegetable garden, so they struggled instead to get together something that would look good in the fall, that would last the cold desert night temperatures.
They made plans for what they would do in the spring, when the seasons switched around again. Neither of them had lived this deep into the dirt, neither of them had ever tried to make something sprout up wild and alive from the ground before. But here they were now, bringing life out of what had died long ago.
Late at night they sipped their coffee and they talked about what would happen next. The house was fully repaired and repainted; the boys were doing well at daycare and school. Tara’s shifts were long, and Wendy sometimes didn’t understand what the library wanted of her. Easily, it could all disappear into the ether.
She went to her meetings, And Tara kept looking at her phone, waiting for it to ring.
Life would keep going on, their regrets would always be there, but they would be improved upon with time. Jax could nut up and join them if he wanted.
Right now they had everything they needed.