“I’m not sure.”
“Your mom know?”
“My mom died two years ago,” she murmured just loud enough he could hear her over the music.
“Damn.” She lost both of her parents. Like he had.
She might have told him that back at the motel, but sometimes when she talked, he got distracted and while he watched her, some of her words didn’t sink in.
He should do fucking better about that. Women liked to be heard.
“It was difficult.”
He cupped her check and brushed his thumb over the soft skin. “Sure it was.”
“Took me forever to settle her estate and all the things that go along with that.”
“You do it by yourself?”
She nodded. “Yes. I have no siblings.”
Something else they had in common. “Don’t got any, either.”
She released a dry laugh. “I guess our parents didn’t go along with the norm of having the two-point-five kids.”
She didn’t hide that laugh, either. She was probably making an effort not to do so in front of him.
He thought about what she just said about the lack of siblings. His mom never got the chance to have another kid. The autopsy showed she was pregnant when she was killed. He had to assume it was Fender’s kid since no one else had been sniffing around at the same time Fender was.
Fender was an asshole loser, but his mom was more loyal than she should have been to him. Ozzy doubted that fucker was loyal to her. It wasn’t even a doubt. Knowing what he knew now about MCs, he was damn sure his mother wasn’t the only woman Fender was sticking it to.
“Said your mom went to the pigs. They didn’t do shit about it?”
Shay shrugged. “Like I said, she filed a missing person report, but was told since he was an adult, then… He could’ve just gotten sick of his life, hit the road and started a new one elsewhere.”
“Shit good between your mom and dad?”
“Yes, really good. He pretty much did what he wanted to do and she let him. She wasn’t controlling or distrusting like some women can be. From what I saw, they had a happy life and relationship.”
He really didn’t want to open this can of worms, but… “Your mom or the pigs check with the Fury?”
“I don’t know, but I kept telling her she should. I had a gut feeling he was involved somehow with the MC, in some capacity, at least. Though every time I asked him, he said he wasn’t. If he was, he hid it really well, but I don’t know if he hid it from my mother or she knew the whole time and just accepted it. But before she could go to the Fury and ask around, the club disbanded.”
Disbanded. Yeah, that wasn’t what happened to the original club. But it was probably a good thing her mother never started snooping around the warehouse. It wasn’t the best place for the average woman. Sometimes it could be fucking brutal. More than sometimes.
Ozzy had seen a lot of shit back then that he was glad Trip didn’t allow now. But then, the current Fury president had seen and experienced a lot of that himself. The Fury’s implosion left a lot of scars behind on those who survived.
“That what your mother told you? The club disbanded?”
“Yes. I always held out hope he’d show back up. Well, we both did. You said Crazy Pete and Dutch were also Originals, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d love to speak with them. If anything, I’d like to know what happened to him, get some sort of closure.”
“Gonna be hard to talk with Pete. Cancer got him a few years back. But Dutch is alive and kickin’.” And fucking any woman who’d let him.
Dutch wasn’t picky. He didn’t give a fuck what color, race, creed or religion. If she spoke English or even had three tits. Cage once said his father was working his way through a bag of Skittles and no one could argue that.
“Maybe he knows something about my father. Maybe they knew him or heard rumors about what happened to him or where he went.”
Maybe he did. Hopefully, he didn’t.
Because if this Marshall Graham had been a part of the Fury, his disappearance could only mean one thing. Especially since the pigs would’ve told Shay’s mother if her father had turned up in jail or prison. Ozzy couldn’t imagine the man just abandoned his family. Shay talked about him like he’d been a good father and husband.
Another possibility was maybe Shay’s old man wasn’t an Original but his disappearance was caused by a run-in with someone from the Fury.
He frowned. “How old were you when he disappeared?”
She rubbed the back of her neck. “I had just turned sixteen. In fact, he missed my sixteenth birthday.”
As her face began to twist, she took her cue stick and turned to study the pool table. Probably taking his advice and searching for an easy shot and hopefully not turning away to hide her emotions.