Kristen Ashley - Games of the Heart

Fuck, he was wrong. She wasn’t blank. She was feeling this. She was in pain.

Her head lifted, her teeth left her lips and her eyes opened.

Mike had always liked her eyes. Debbie’s eyes were blue. The rest of the Hollidays were dark brown, like Mike’s. When Dusty was a young girl they always held a warmth that was astonishing. The kind of warmth that could welcome you with a glance, making you feel like she missed you when you were gone and couldn’t wait for that moment you returned. They could also dance like no others he’d ever seen, with amusement, mischief, adoration.

But even with her face mostly in profile, he saw her eyes weren’t dancing. The warmth wasn’t there either.

They weren’t cold.

They were wounded.

Yes. She was in pain. A great deal of it.

He heard Ron finish up and looked forward. Pastor Knox came back to the podium to deliver the prayer and Mike bowed his head with the rest. Then he lifted it when Pastor Knox mumbled, “Amen”.

George Markham hit the podium to inform them the service was over and they’d be moving to the cemetery to lay Darrin to rest. People got up from their seats, shifted, moved and Mike stood too, turning immediately toward Dusty.

But when he did, she was gone.

“Thank you for coming, Mike.”

He was standing with Rhonda and Debbie on the porch just outside the door to the farmhouse and Rhonda was giving him her good-bye. There was a crush of people in the house. The dining room and kitchen tables along with every surface in a common area were covered in platters of food or bowls of snacks. He was holding Rhonda’s hand, squeezing it and looking into her eyes.

They were done, he knew, at least for a time. She couldn’t look at him without seeing him bent over her dead husband, trying to get his heart pumping again. She might never be able to look at him without remembering what they shared.

He would need to avoid her until she gave him the all-clear and he knew that might never happen. This happened to cops, not frequently, but it happened. You shared a tragedy, you delivered bad news; in a small town it was hard to avoid the man who gave it to you. But you did it all the same.

He wasn’t happy about this with Rhonda. Darrin was a friend, without him, Rhonda, in normal circumstances, probably wouldn’t continue to be. Not by either of their design, they would just drift apart without a common anchor. He liked her, she was a little flighty, a little oversensitive, but she was a good woman and now she and her boys needed all the friends they could get.

But it was not his choice and he sighed, squeezed her hand deeper and let her go.

She smiled a small, joyless smile and drifted back into the house.

Debbie moved to him and hooked her hand around his elbow, propelling him over the porch and down the steps to the walk.

“You doin’ okay?” he asked softly.

“No,” she answered honestly.

“Right, honey, what I mean is, you gonna be okay?”

She looked up at him, took a small breath and replied, “Yes. I’ll be all right.”

Mike nodded knowing even before he asked the question that she would. Debbie was like that. She loved her brother, he knew, but she was the kind of woman who sorted her shit in short order and moved on. She’d do the same after losing Darrin and she wouldn’t waste time with it.

He moved with his long since ex-girlfriend toward his SUV as he asked, “There a reason Dusty didn’t show at the cemetery or here?” He jerked his head back to indicate the farmhouse.

Debbie was looking at him and he watched her face get hard.

“Is there a reason she didn’t show at the service?” she surprisingly returned and continued. “Is there a reason she gave us such shit about this whole thing? Is there a reason Dusty does anything? ”

Mike stopped them by his SUV, turning to face her, feeling his brows had drawn.

“She was at the service, Deb,” he informed her and he saw her brows draw together.

“She was?” she asked as she dropped her hand from his elbow.

He nodded. “She stood at the back against the wall.”

Debbie studied him a split second before she rolled her eyes.

“So Dusty,” she stated. “Silent rebellion. Nothing ever changes.”

This didn’t connect. Standing at the back of the viewing chamber in a funeral home during her brother’s memorial service, she didn’t look like a rebel. She looked like a confident woman who knew who she was but who was also in pain.

“What’s she rebelling against?” Mike asked.

Debbie’s head cocked irately to the side. “Uh… everything? ” She asked just as she answered. “She’s Dusty, Mike. You know how she is. She’s a pain in the ass. She always has been even way before everyone saw it. Rhonda’s a freaking mess. Those boys are numb. Mom and Dad are close to losing it. And what does Dusty do? I’m hundreds of miles away, just like her, trying to deal with Rhonda, Fin, Kirb, set up a funeral for my freaking brother and she’s handing me shit. I didn’t need shit. I needed help. I have a job, a home, a life and I had a brother to put in the ground and she’s handing me shit. Same old Dusty. It’s never changed.”

Back in the day, Mike had not understood Debbie and Dusty’s relationship. Whereas everyone adored Dusty before she’d turned, Debbie hadn’t. She’d explained more than once how her little sister worked her nerves, not occasionally, often. They fought all the time.

But even with Debbie’s explanations, Mike didn’t get it.

At first, he’d thought it was because Dusty often pushed her way in when Mike was at their house to be with Debbie. He had to admit, this was frustrating considering the fact that, if he had his chance, he wanted to be making out with Debbie and feeling her up and he couldn’t do that with an animated twelve year old around. Strangely, Dusty, being Dusty, he always got over his frustration quickly and started teasing her to make her giggle, trading wisecracks, something Dusty was really good at, and just goofing around. Debbie liked attention and he figured she didn’t like her little sister taking his. Mike tried to stop it but he couldn’t. Dusty was that appealing.

Later, after he’d taken Debbie’s virginity, their relationship hit a different zone and he was far more capable of gently extracting Deb and himself from Dusty. He was a teenage boy so he had better things to do than goof around with a thirteen year old kid.

Even so, Debbie’s attitude toward her sister never changed so he knew it wasn’t that.

He never got it except to think that when Dusty changed, Debbie always saw something others had not until it came out.

Still, this time, it didn’t connect. The Dusty standing at the back of the funeral home was not the Dusty he last saw twenty years ago. And she had no anger in her face, no hardness.

Just pain.

“If she’s here, she’s protesting,” Debbie went on throwing her hand back at the house. “Leaves me, Mom and Dad, Rhonda, the kids all to deal so she could have her little drama. Well fuck that. We’ve got enough real drama to handle. She can have her own imaginary one. Dusty was always good at living in an imaginary world.”

Mike wanted to know what Dusty was protesting. He also wanted to know what shit she gave Debbie about the funeral. And he wanted to know these two things more than was healthy. He understood it immediately. And it annoyed him.

It also annoyed him because he couldn’t deny that Debbie was right. Dusty appeared at the service but disappeared before she even spoke to her grieving parents, sister, sister-in-law and nephews. She didn’t deign to appear at the graveside. And now, with a house full of people which would mean, in a couple of hours, a house full of mess that would need to be cleaned up, she was nowhere to be seen.