Black River by S. M. Hulse Read Free Book Online

poisonous half of Dennis’s blood to show itself. He’d done all he could to keep that from happening, to raise Dennis right and teach him discipline and values. And he’d succeeded, at least in that Dennis was living in Black River by choice and not because someone had locked him in a cell behind coils of razor wire. But in doing the job, Wes had cast a wide gulf between them, and it seemed the years hadn’t begun to mend it. Shouldn’t have surprised him. The only thing he and Dennis had in common was that they both loved Claire, and now that she was gone, so too was the fragile, frayed thread that tied them together. Still, Wes had loved Dennis once, when his own straight fingers had been fast on the strings, when Dennis was a child who danced while Wes played. Felt like he was carrying that memory for someone else, though, for another man who had lived in his body before him.
    â€œWell, you haven’t changed one fucking bit,” Dennis finally said, biting off each word almost before it left his mouth. No different than as a boy, everything just barely controlled, just waiting to crack. “And I sure as hell don’t know why Mom wasted her life on you.”
    â€œThat’s it,” Wes said. His tone was even; he almost wished it weren’t. “Had enough of this.” He backed away from the truck a few steps, and when he turned hard he just missed the black-haired kid, gray horse in tow.
    Â 
    His name was Shane, Claire had told him once. And for a while, she said, when I was sixteen, I thought I was in love with him.
    That was it. His name was Shane. Claire thought she was in love with him. The phrase stuck in Wes’s ear, a wrong note.
Thought
she was in love with him. Why not just
was?
(Claire looked at the floor when she said his name.) At the time, Wes had known little of Claire’s life before she and Dennis arrived in Black River, and he might have put aside his misgivings about Shane—assumed the man was simply a run-of-the-mill deadbeat—if it weren’t for Claire’s sister. Farmer and Madeline never had any children—couldn’t, was the impression Wes had, though no one ever said as much—and Madeline doted on other people’s. She taught fifth grade at the elementary school and worked in the church nursery on Sunday mornings. Always kind, always gracious. It made the fact that she didn’t love her own nephew that much more obvious. Even when Dennis was just four, five years old, she could barely stand to look at him, and when she spoke to him her voice took on an oddly rigid quality. Once Wes caught her eyeing the boy with an expression of what could only be called disgust.
    One night—after the engagement but before the wedding—Wes went to see Madeline when Farmer was at work. They sat in the kitchen. Condensation beaded the untouched glasses of lemonade Madeline put before them. A fly buzzed around the daisies in the center of the table, alighting for a fraction of a second before going airborne again. Madeline, who was six years older and six inches taller than Claire, but shared her sister’s face, sat staring at her folded hands.
    â€œShe won’t call it rape,” she said.
    It was merely a confirmation of his suspicions, but the word charged his blood. Hard not to stand up and rage right there.
    â€œShe was his girlfriend,” Madeline continued. “Your typical high school infatuation. Puppy love, you know? Talked my ear off about him for a time. But she didn’t want that. What happened, I mean. I know she didn’t.” Madeline batted the fly away with the back of her hand. “She called me afterward. There was no real ambiguity about it, Wes. Not the way she told it to me. But I think it hurts her more to think of it as rape, so she invents excuses for him. Says he was confused, that she led him on. That sort of thing.”
    â€œWhere is he now?”
    Madeline looked up