Bad Dream (Dark Dream 0.50)

Brandon sniffed beside me, his sweaty hand clamped around one of my own as we stood beside the yawning wound in the earth that would be Aida’s final resting place.

It hurt to know she would have hated to be buried here, in this random cemetery on the outskirts of some Texas town and not back in Upstate New York where she was born and raised, where she met Dad and gave birth to me. There had been a quaint little cemetery behind a white, peaked-roof church in her hometown where Dad and Aida had planned to be buried together one day. It was a pipe dream. Of course, Dad was buried in Bishop’s Landing beneath a massive marble obelisk where generations of his family were buried with him. But Aida would have liked to be buried in that quaint cemetery in the birthplace of their love story even if Dad couldn’t be beside her. She was the kind of romantic who would have wanted to be laid to rest amid her happiest memories.

Instead, she was being put in the ground of this godforsaken town we had moved to eight years ago out of necessity.

Still, there was a larger group of mourners around the wounded earth and gleaming casket than I would have assumed. A few past lovers, all with sad eyes and damp faces because Aida was the kind of woman you continued to love even if you realized she was wrong for you. Our neighbors, the Dabrowski family with their four little kids who lived across the street, old Mrs. Rhodes with her milky cataracts, the handsome biker, Brick, who Aida had tried to seduce for years without success. My friends, Zoey and Hitchcock, from school were both there with their parents along with an assortment of Brando’s friends and their families. A few people Aida had worked with at the beauty counter at the mall and some of my friends from the diner.

And one man I didn’t recognize.

He stood outside the ring of mourners in a black trench coat with a red scarf tucked under his neck. At first, I thought he was Tiernan, but he was shorter and broader, his hands free of tattoos. I thought I felt his eyes on me, but whenever I looked over, he was focused somberly on something else.

Tiernan was absent.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, really, because he’d proven himself to be a jerk, but I was embarrassingly hurt by his lack of attendance.

Did he really not care about Aida even though he’d asked her to move to New York with him?

Did he really have no sympathy for her children left behind in a turbulent wake of grief?

When I’d called him from the floor of Aida’s room, he had asked me to tell him what went wrong and listened silently while I stuttered over the words. When I was done, he said in so many words that he would take care of it for an undisclosed price and then hung up the phone, leaving me bewildered, angry, and achingly alone.

But things had happened.

The police had come and the EMTs.

Of course, Brando woke up and I had to explain what had happened.

He surprised me, because he didn’t cry. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, his voice scratchy when he spoke as if he were recovering from a long sob fest, but he didn’t shed a single tear. Instead, he held fast to my hand, his Iron Man clutched in the other, and followed me around the house as I talked with the officers and the paramedics.

Then Child Protective Services arrived and wanted to separate Brando and me for the night. I’m not ashamed to admit I’d thrown a fit, yelling at the man who tried to take us, screaming at the cop who tried to forcibly calm me down.

A man had arrived.

Maybe “man” was an understatement.

He was huge like a giant out of Greek mythology. One hand could have easily palmed my entire head. Even the cops had stilled, prey poised for flight before a superior predator.

But the man, I learned later his name was Ezra, only went to the CPS agent and handed him a stack of papers. He was deaf, communicating on a small tablet as they conversed quietly together.

Ten minutes later, the reluctant agent took the papers, shot us a worried glance, and got back into his car to drive off.

Suddenly, I wished we were going with CPS.

But Ezra had simply introduced himself using his tablet and ushered us back into the house to pack our bags before taking us to the only nice hotel in our backwater town.

Brando and I sat curled up in one of the double beds, my little brother dozing and sniffling fitfully.

There had been a knock at the door and my heart gave a staggered attempt at taking flight, wondering if it was finally Tiernan.