Beneath the Stain - Part 7 Read Online Free PDF Page A

mom used to call us because Grant had gone missing, and Mom would go driving toward his house and find him trying to find us. He always said he just wanted to play.”
    Kell’s voice wobbled a little, and Mackey found his favorite refuge.
    “Don’t talk like that,” he snarled, making everyone in the car jump. “Grant is still alive, and that place is just a fucking house. I brought his goddamned guitar—he says he can play if he sits down. We’re gonna go play with our friend, and he’s gonna meet Blake and talk about what a pain in the fucking ass Kell is. Stevie and Jefferson can talk about married life, and we’re gonna see him hold his baby—that’s what’s happening today, do you all fucking hear me?”
    There was a rather cowed response of “Yes, Mackey,” and Mackey harrumphed in response.
    “We will not get soft about this,” he promised. “Not this visit. Maybe next one, yeah. But not this one. This one, we’re just sayin’ hi.”
    A stocky middle-aged man with gray curly hair, wearing a pricey leather cowboy hat, matching boots, and clean, unfaded Wranglers, waved Debra around the back of the perfectly sculpted yard to a hard-pan dirt spot behind the multicar garage.
    “Damn,” Trav said in surprise, and Mackey cackled.
    “Wow—it’s like a 50/50 ice cream bar! Wouldja look at that?”
    The front of the house may have been all faux English garden, but the back of the house was dusty horse farm. There was a stable about a hundred yards off of the house and a practice ring behind that. Mackey marked four different pens—each one roughly half the size of a football field—with a galloping Arabian horse in each pen getting its panties in a bundle as the new car drove up.
    “Horses!” Stevie and Jefferson piped up, excited.
    “Grant hates ’em,” Kell muttered, and Mackey nodded. He remembered that about Grant. His old man kept them, paid a live-in trainer, dragged the family to horse shows every weekend, and fawned over the creatures—but not Grant.
    Grant had escaped them.
    Mackey, who had always known exactly how small he was next to an animal that size, had never blamed him.
    Right behind the house was a little shaded patio with chaise lounges and a picnic table complete with a big umbrella to keep off the sun. Even though the air was brisk and the wind edged with cold, the sun was still bright and hard.
    The young wraith in sunglasses and a bandana, leaning back on a chaise lounge, turning his face up to the sun and smoking a joint through coughing fits, did not seem to mind either the cold or the brightness.
    He just looked happy to be there, under the heartbreak blue sky.
    He turned toward them when they walked up, though, sitting up painfully and lifting his arm to wave.
    “You made it!” he said by way of greeting, although Mackey knew they were probably a little early.
    None of the boys wanted to get there late.
    “Yeah, well, when we heard it was a day getting high in the sun, we could hardly hold ourselves back,” Mackey retorted.
    Grant took a pull on his joint and raised his eyebrows. “Just ’cause you’re jealous,” he murmured. “Besides, I’m almost done, and then you all can come in and see the baby. You haven’t met her yet.”
    Kell walked up and claimed brother-privilege by hugging him. Everyone followed suit like they hadn’t just seen him two days before, but nobody said anything.
    Unspoken things—stupid unspoken things: Grant Adams had a finite number of hugs left.
    They talked excitedly while he finished up, giving him the details of the fight after he’d been hustled out.
    “Yeah, you shoulda seen Mackey!” Stevie burbled. “Man, Trav just crouched low and caught Del like a charging horse—”
    “Delmont, really?” Grant asked animatedly. He looked at Trav and nodded, adding a low whistle. “Man, that takes ball-balls—he’s freakin’ huge! There’s rumors that man kills people with a swing of his fist!”
    “He would have,” Trav