Finn closed the open file in front of him and sighed again. "Michael, I respect your pa.s.sion. I know you love your boy. I believe one-hundred percent that he should be with you, and that you were treated unfairly at nearly every turn. But I need you to let me be your lawyer and give you counsel you'll take. You look better the worse she looks. Let's find Dakota and see what she's up to. Let's just see. If she can be useful to your case, then let's use her. If she can't, we'll leave her alone. I think you can control yourself for that, don't you?"

Demon laughed a little. Finn had no idea. The most control over himself Demon ever felt was maybe half. And that was on a good day, when everything was chill. Put him in eyeshot of the woman who'd f.u.c.ked up his child, and no, he didn't think he'd be able to control himself. Especially since the c.u.n.t got off on sending him over.

He'd liked her a lot at first, and he was fairly sure she'd honestly liked him at the beginning. He didn't 'date' much at all. Usually he stuck to club girls, because that was simple. But sometimes he got lonely for more than just a f.u.c.k. He'd had somebody once, only for a brief time, but long enough to know the peace in a bond like that. So sometimes, he was lonely.

In the year or so after he'd been allowed to come back home, he'd had trouble adjusting. The club moved-and became a different club-and he'd been struggling with staying in one place after the years riding Nomad. He'd started thinking about what he'd almost had before, and he'd felt even lonelier. So when Kota came up to him at a bar and started talking, he'd been open to listening.

They'd been okay for a while. Just hanging out, steady but not really serious. It never occurred to him to put his ink on her; that wasn't what they'd been. She was a stripper, and he was fine with that. He'd gotten between her and a few overly excited customers who'd been lurking after hours, and she got to calling him her bodyguard. She'd given very enthusiastic head on those nights.

But he'd been a moron, because he hadn't known she was using, all that time. He didn't figure it out until it had taken her over completely. She'd robbed him blind. Then she'd started whoring herself out for her fixes. He'd ended it and left her to her vices.

And then she'd tried to use the club to blackmail him. She didn't know anything about the club; he never talked about that s.h.i.t. But he'd opened up to her, during their good times, and told her about his childhood. Things he'd never said to anyone, not even Faith. Secrets and shames he'd harbored. And Kota had said terrible things that night, promising to twist old pains into lies that would hurt him now, make his club, his family, see his wrongness, make him lose what he'd only just gotten back.

All to squeeze more money out of him to get her next fix. He barely remembered what had happened after that. Except he remembered her laughing in the middle of it, her mouth full of blood, and he remembered thinking that she didn't even care if she got her next fix. She'd been high on tearing him down.

In the ER that night, while he was in lockup, she'd found out she was pregnant.

She'd declined to press charges. They'd let him go, and he'd gone to see her in the hospital, to apologize for hurting her. She'd told him about the baby and said it was his. Demon didn't know why he'd just believed her, but he had. He'd brought her home to his trailer, and he'd tried to help her kick the junk. He'd tried and tried, and he'd failed and failed. But he'd stuck it out with her, finding her again and again in some flophouse, her belly getting bigger and bigger, trying to figure out how to keep her away from trouble and never coming up with the answer.

Tucker was born with his mother's habit. He'd had a rough first few weeks. But the first time that boy's eyes met his own, Demon had known for an absolute fact that he was looking at his son. And he'd known purposeful love for the first time in his life.

DCFS didn't take Tucker from her, despite the addiction she'd shared with him. They put her in an outpatient program and gave Tucker a caseworker, and they sent them home. Kota moved out of Demon's trailer right away and took his boy to live with a girlfriend.

His fight to be a father to his son had started then and still hadn't stopped.

He stared hard at his lawyer. "Go ahead and look. You better know your business, though. Keep her the f.u.c.k away from me. Don't tell me where she is. Just do your thing. But if this blows up in my kid's face, then I'll know who to blame for it."

Demon pulled up to Hoosier and Bibi's house later that afternoon, and he was relieved and disappointed that Faith's car wasn't around.

When he'd left that morning, he'd stopped cold on the sidewalk. She still drove Dante, and the car itself was in the same cherry condition it had been in before. But now it looked finished, completely covered from top to bottom and front to rear in art. It was beautiful, and so very Faith.

He'd had an urge to hug the f.u.c.king thing-that urge, at least, he'd been able to master. But he'd ridden off with his stomach in knots.

She was gone now, though. That was a good thing. He needed time, and if she hadn't been gone, even though he'd been as prepared as possible for her to be there, he'd have panicked-which would have led to stupidity. But he didn't know if she was gone for good or just for a while. He had no idea why she'd even been there in the first place. Maybe last night had just been a special torture for him, stirring up everything and then coming to nothing.

Inside, he found Hoosier and Tucker in the family room. Tucker was playing on the floor with his beloved wooden train set, and Hoosier was watching ESPN. Bibi wasn't around, but Demon had known that when he'd pulled up-the garage door was open, and the s.p.a.ce for her Caddy was empty.

His grat.i.tude and trust for Hoosier and Bibi was boundless. They were giving him the best chance he'd ever had to be a father to his son. They'd been the closest thing to parents he'd ever had. Since he was nineteen, when he'd started hanging around the clubhouse, they'd treated him almost like a kid of their own. They'd given him a home and a family.

He didn't blame Hoosier for taking it away. Demon had done that to himself.

Hoosier had kept it from being worse. He hadn't lost his patch or his life, and both of those had been on the table for a vote. He'd been exiled, not excommunicated. Not ended. And things had turned out more or less okay.

As much as he'd been torn apart to be sent away from his only home, he'd felt like he fit as a Nomad right away. Rootlessness was something he understood. He'd partnered with Muse right off, and he'd found his first actual friend. They'd been rootless together, except when one or the other of them was inside, and that had been okay.

And d.a.m.n, the s.h.i.t that the Nomads of their old club had been into. It was life or death business in those days, and they were up to their shoulders in it just about nonstop. Demon had found stability in the surge and release of adrenaline in a firefight, and he'd learned how to channel his darkness and violence into the work that needed doing. He'd found his calling as an enforcer. Sometimes he'd gone too far, but even so, he felt more a master of his impulses than he had before.

He'd been arrested a few times, and he'd done a couple of bids, but they were short enough. If his childhood had prepared him for nothing else, it had prepared him to survive prison. Even to thrive there.

Then, at Blue's funeral, Hoosier had asked him to come home. And Demon had humiliated himself by breaking down into tears.

So he was home. He had a home. And a son. People who loved him and wanted him. And with no outlet for the c.r.a.p in his head, he was losing control of his darkness again.

Tucker looked up as Demon came into the room. "Pa! Bwain!" He held out a little blue train engine.

"T-T-Train, buddy. T like in Tucker." He squatted at his son's side.

"Tuh-bwain."

Demon laughed. "Close enough. Did you have fun with Gramps?"

Tucker nodded and held out a shiny new engine, this one kind of purple.

"You got a new one! Who's this?" It had a vaguely female face. All Tucker's engines had faces.

"Bwain!"

"Deme. You doin' okay?"

Demon looked up and saw Hoosier eyeing him over the back of the sectional. So Hoosier knew that Faith was in town. It made sense; Bibi would probably have told him as soon as he was back. He ruffled Tucker's hair and stood up.

"Have you been in touch with her all this time?" The words came out more sharply than he'd meant them. He didn't want to accuse Hoosier and Bibi of anything. There were probably dozens of good reasons not to tell him they knew where she was. He wasn't sure even now how much he trusted himself to know.

"Have a seat, brother." Hoosier waved at the side of the sectional, and Demon went around and sat down. "Beebs's kept up with her, yeah. Until today, I hadn't seen her since she ran."

"She's been good?"

Hoosier heaved a sigh. "Yeah. I guess she actually earns making her weird, rusty art. Remember that sh-stuff she used to make?"

That thought made Demon smile and feel a little proud. He remembered climbing around with her at the salvage yard. She'd been so cute and enthusiastic. He'd kissed her that day. It had been her first kiss ever. His, too, in a way.

He closed his eyes and counted five beats. Muse had taught him that, to focus on his heartbeat until the hurt that made red edge his vision backed off. Sometimes he needed a lot more than five beats.

"Why's she back?"

"There's something goin' on with her mom. Any more is for her to say."

Not for him, then. Of course she wouldn't have been, but there'd been a little flickering light in the back of his head that had thought maybe she'd come because she couldn't stay away.

"You mind some advice, Deme?"

He shrugged, and Hoosier took that for permission.

"It all went down bad back in the day. You f.u.c.ked up bad. But you were a kid, younger than your years. I knew it. Most everybody did. Even Blue, deep down, knew you were just a kid, too. He couldn't see anything but his little girl, the one who ran around with sc.r.a.ped knees and ratty pigtails stealing sips from beer bottles and getting caught swiping loose parts off worktables. He'd never've admitted it, but when it all fell out, I think even he knew it was more for you than just claiming his little girl's cherry."

Demon flinched at the rawness of Hoosier's last statement. "Don't, Prez."

"I'm telling you something that might help, so listen. It don't matter what Blue thought. Not anymore. He's dead and buried. And you are no kid anymore. Neither is she. I've seen you both today, and you both look like somebody ran over your best dog. Now, you both got other good reasons to be so glum, but maybe, just maybe, ten years is long enough to beat yourself up about something that wasn't really all so bad."

His face felt hot, and he tried to count beats, but he couldn't. "Not so bad? Not so bad? Are you s.h.i.tting me?" He stood up, and Hoosier did, too.

"Deme. Easy. I know it was bad then. I was there." His voice was low, and sort of rolled, and Demon was still in control enough to know he was being talked down like a wild animal.

He didn't have enough control for it to work, though. "YOU HAVE NO f.u.c.kING IDEA!"

"NO, PA! NO!" Tucker yelled. He was standing at the corner of the sectional, his sweet little face contorted into a scowl that was both angry and afraid.

Demon deflated instantly, dropping back to the sofa. "I'm sorry, Motor Man. You okay?"

For a few seconds longer, Tucker stared at him with that fearful distrust, and Demon wanted to die. Then his little boy came around and climbed up onto his lap. "Bad noise."

"Yeah. I'm sorry." Demon kissed his son's head and looked over at his President.

Hoosier picked up where he'd left off. "I'm saying in hindsight, you were a couple of stupid kids in love. The worst thing you did wasn't to Faith. Far as I know, you didn't do anything to her but love her. What you did wrong was betray a brother. That's why the club let it go to a vote at all. But that sin was dead and buried with Blue."

"What difference does it make?"

"Boy, you are so tangled up in thinking you're fuc-messed up, you can't see when somebody's offering you a help. I'm telling you the slate's clean. Don't bother about what happened before. Everything's changed for all of us since then. You were a kid, now you're a man. Act like it. Quit pouting and figure out what you want. Maybe what you have here is a second chance. You gonna moan and sulk until it goes away, or are you gonna f.u.c.king take it?"

"f.u.c.king take it," Tucker said, with perfect enunciation.

CHAPTER FIVE.

"This is where she lives?" Faith looked out the windshield of Bibi's Cadillac, ducking her head to take in the full view of the little ranch house.

Actually, 'house' was too grand a term for the building before her. 'Shack' might have been more appropriate. It wasn't small, but it was unloved. The stucco was a faded yellow, worn bare and smooth in noticeable patches. The windows and doors were covered with pocked iron bars.

Though a large attached garage dominated the front of the building, apparently that hadn't been enough storage s.p.a.ce. Somebody had turned the front yard into a parking lot. What little 'yard' there was had been filled in with white gravel. There was a huge, dry, concrete birdbath or fountain or something in the middle of that gravel expanse. Faith realized that she was looking at a poor man's idea of xeriscaping.

The house in L.A. that Faith and Sera had grown up in had been surrounded, front, back, and sides, by an elaborate garden. The house itself had been pretty average-a palace compared to what she was looking at now, but in itself nothing special-but the yards had been amazing. Gardening was her mother's pa.s.sion, and she had a real talent for it. She had an artist's eye. It was one of the few things Faith was glad to have gotten from her.

She tried to imagine Margot Fordham living in this ugly, barren, unwelcoming hovel, and she couldn't. So she said again, "She lives here?"

Bibi reached over and gave Faith's hand a squeeze. "It's been hard for her since your dad pa.s.sed, honey. Your dad didn't do so good settin' things up for her, I guess. I know Sera's schoolin' cost a lot, too. And your mama don't have much she can do in the way of work. Not anymore."

Faith gave an absent nod. Yeah, she guessed not. The only job her mom had ever had was p.o.r.n. She'd stopped doing that when she became an old lady.

"Madrone is cheap, though, compared to L.A. She should have been able to do better just from selling the L.A. house." They'd owned that house free and clear, too, as far as Faith knew.

"I don't know. A lot's been different these past few years. I got her to move with us, to keep her close, but she pulled back a lot. From the club, mostly, but from me a little, too. So I don't really know. She'd bought this before I even knew about it."

That was unlike her mother. Bibi and Margot had been best friends since long before Faith and Sera were born. They were the kind of friends who had matching jewelry and gave each other flowery mugs that said c.r.a.p like Best Friends Make the Best Sisters or whatever. They used to share a seat at parties, getting drunk and giggling like girls. Her mother's relationship with Bibi was one of the few signs Faith had that her mother could actually be a decent person. If she was pulling away from Bibi, then things had gotten really bad.

Faith wasn't quite sure why she cared, but she did.

She didn't say anything, but when she turned, Bibi was giving her that examining stare she had.

"I know your mama's bein' a b.i.t.c.h right now. She's never been an easy woman, and there's obviously somethin' even more wrong than I knew." She'd thrown Bibi out of her hospital room, too-after demanding that she go to her house and pack a bag for her. "But I am here to tell you, she loves you. She misses you. She lost you, and then she lost your dad, and now Sera's off and away and never calls. She's a lonely woman who's realizin' that a lot of things she thought were right weren't. That's a hard lesson. We all do bad s.h.i.t in our lives. Sometimes we do bad s.h.i.t and we think we're makin' a hard choice for right reasons. Sometimes we are. But sometimes, we find out we were just f.u.c.kin' everythin' up. When we figure that out too late to fix it, well, that wears a sore spot. I can tell you that."

"You never did anything like they did, Bibi."

They locked eyes, and then Bibi let out a long breath. "I wasn't in her shoes or your shoes then. I know why your folks did what they did. I know what your mama was afraid of, and what she thought she was doing. I know I've done things I regret as a mom, even though I was tryin' to do it right. That I am sure of. I'm sure Connor could tell you stories of all the ways I f.u.c.ked him up."

Faith shook her head. There was no middle ground to be had on this point. No forgiveness. She wasn't interested.

Bibi sighed again. "Come on, honey. Let's go on in and get your mama the things she wants."

The house was a little nicer on the inside than the outside suggested. Margot was a neatnik, and everything had its place. The hardwood floors gleamed. Faith felt an awkward sense of verisimilitude, because all of the furniture was familiar to her-the same black leather, gla.s.s and chrome furniture that had always been in the house she'd grown up in. The faux zebra throw over the arm of the leather sofa was in the same place it had always been, but the house itself was foreign.

Maybe that off-kilter, foreign familiarity was the reason Faith didn't notice anything remarkable right off. Not until Bibi muttered, "What the h.e.l.l?" did Faith widen her focus and really see.

All over the house, in tidy rows and columns, her mother had stuck neon-colored Post-It notes. On the back of the front door were five, written in block letters with black marker: KEYS, PHONE, PURSE, read one. SHOES, another. CHECK STOVE AND OVEN, another. IRON? yet another. FAUCETS, the last.

There was also a calendar hanging on the back of the front door, the block for each day filled with reminders, the days that had pa.s.sed crossed out with black Xs.

Bibi moved into the house, and Faith followed, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

On the gla.s.s table in front of the sofa, a row of notes reminded her mother about shows and channels and how to use the remote.

There was a whiteboard calendar on the wall over the gla.s.s-topped dining table, each block filled in with colored marker.

The refrigerator was covered with a matrix of notes, telling the dates that items had been bought and when they should be thrown out. On the cabinet above the stove were notes explaining how to use the burners, the oven, the microwave, and the timer.

On the back door, there was one note: "SLY."

Faith stared at that one for several seconds. "It this...?"

Bibi's answer was distracted. "Hmm? Oh, yeah. That nasty old b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a cat. He's still around. Outside, mostly. He's too mean to be closed in with people, but she moved him out here just the same."

Feeling something like excitement, Faith opened the back door and looked around. The yard here had overgrown gra.s.s and a plain, square concrete patio. It was completely bare. Not even a hibachi or a lawn chair, and no plantings at all. "Sly?" She whistled and then made the clucking sound she thought of as her cat-call. "Sly!" Nothing. She went back in. There was a pet door in the bottom of the back door, so she supposed he'd be okay. There was a set of empty bowls on the floor in the corner. She found food and filled them with food and water. While she did so, Bibi wandered off. Faith followed as quickly as she could, feeling nervous about being alone in this weird house papered in Post-Its. She still couldn't find the rhyme in what she was seeing.

In Faith's mother's bedroom, they found her bed unmade, her drawers and closet open and in disarray, Post-Its everywhere with reminders about how to do things like set the clock and where the extra blankets were.

Reminder notes confetti'd the surfaces of every room of the house. Bibi and Faith wandered through, saying nothing, their only communication an occasional shared gasp.

And then, heading down the hallway as they continued their confused tour, Bibi drew up short. The hallway walls were covered with family photos. That had been the case in the L.A. house, too, and, again, at first the familiarity blinded Faith to the difference.

There were small Post-Its on, above, or below every frame. Identifying the people in the photos. People like Margot's children. Her parents. Her best friend. Her husband. Some of the notes, especially those with photos of friends, had only a question mark.

On Faith's parents' wedding photo, there was a single Post-It with three question marks.