Talon - A Warriors MC Romance novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Home
Terrence's mother stood in the main house kitchen in her cream cardigan, holding a shoebox in both hands.
She looked ten years older than she had at the Hollow.
Dane stood opposite her with his arms crossed, and June stood between them.
"I'm not here for him," the old woman said when Talon and I came in. "I want that understood."
"Then why?" I said.
"Because my son kept things in his desk."
She set the box on the table.
Inside lay a stack of small cassette tapes, rubber-banded together, with dates on them in a hand I knew.
Mine.
I had labeled the tape on our landline's machine every week in the first year, the way I'd labeled everything.
Terrence must have taken the tapes out of our machine on Alder Street himself, and kept them.
"They were in the bottom drawer," his mother said. "I found them the day after they took him. I listened to one. I didn't listen to the rest."
She looked at Dane.
"I should have told you what I suspected. I told myself it was between men."
Dane's jaw worked.
"Thank you for bringing them, ma'am."
"Don't thank me."
She left, small and straight, across the dark yard.
June found a tape player in the pantry.
We put the first tape in.
It hissed, and then my own voice, five years younger and trying hard to sound light, said, "Dane, it's Lexi. I know you don't want to hear from me. I just wanted to say I'm okay. I'm okay, and I miss you."
My brother put both hands over his face.
I put my hand on his back, and he let it stay.
"Play the next one," he said, in a thick voice. "Play them all."
We played them until the sun came up.
Six weeks later Terrence Kingswood pleaded guilty in the same county courtroom, to arson and extortion and assault, and the same gray judge put on her glasses to read his sentence.
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