All Things Pretty, Part Two (Pretty #3.5)(4)
Author: M. Leighton

“Where’s your other brother now?  Maybe he could tell us something. Help us out.  Is he still involved with Tonin?”  I’m thinking he may be in prison.  Finally got busted or something.  But I can work with that.  I am a cop after all.

“No, he can’t help us.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

She leans her head back and closes her eyes.  “Can’t.”  She exhales and adds softly,  “He’s dead.”

Oh shit.

“God, Tommi, I’m so sorry. I…I…”

“It’s okay. You didn’t know. It happened a long time ago.”

“What happened? How’d he die?” I ask gently.

She turns eyes to me that are both wary and tired.  She doesn’t answer me, which is an answer in and of itself. And that pisses me off.

“After everything, everything that’s happened and all that we’ve shared, you still don’t trust me.”

“Sig, I…”

“Ain’t that a bitch?” I snap bitterly.  I’m frustrated and a little stung by it.

“I…I just…”  Her voice breaks like she’s going to cry, but she doesn’t.  At least not that I see.  Maybe she’s crying on the inside.

“Please, Tommi,” I plead sincerely.  “I can help you.  But you have to trust me.”

She’s quiet for a couple of long, tense minutes. When she finally speaks, her voice is low and robotic.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN- TOMMI

“My father left when Travis was just a few years old.  Left and took his income, half the furniture, and most of our stability with him.  My mother held it together for as long as she could.  She had two jobs waiting tables.  Worked all kinds of crazy hours just to put food in our mouths.  It was tight, but we were making it.  She wasn’t around much, though.  My brothers and I were practically raising ourselves.  We all started getting into trouble.  I guess I wanted to escape.  That was my reason for most of the stuff I did.  For Travis, I think only part of what he was doing was acting out.  The rest was because of his condition.  But my older brother…well, he was mad. Just plain ol’ mad.  At Dad, at Mom, at the world.  I didn’t really know how bad it was until I was thirteen. That’s the year Momma had her wreck.  She lost both of her jobs, couldn’t really do much in the way of hard work, so she got on disability.  Things went from tight to miserable, and everything just went downhill from there.  Downhill fast.

“My brother started using drugs first.  Experimenting, I think.  Then he started selling.  To try to get extra money.  He was busted a few times.  Minor stuff mostly–petty theft, breaking and entering. But then he got busted with enough coke to get him into serious trouble.  Spent a year in juvie when he was sixteen.  When he got out, he was like a totally different person.  He was bitter. Careless.  Barely graduated high school.  That’s when he really started dealing.  I mean, seriously dealing.  I think that’s when he gave up.  He was dead by the time he was nineteen.”

“How’d he die?”

“Drug-related accident,” I answer vaguely.

Sig is silent for the better part of at least two minutes.  I pray that he’ll stop asking questions and just focus on getting Travis back.

But I’m not so lucky.

Never have been.

“Tommi, look. I know you know how things work.  In this business, we have to do everything we can to keep the upper hand, to avoid doing time.  In most cases, that means finding a dirty cop to put on the payroll.  Eyes and ears where we need ‘em.  Just because I’m new here doesn’t mean I’m stupid.  Or unprepared.  I’ve got sources.  Everybody’s got sources.”

I turn my frown on him.  “What are you getting at?”

“I got info, dirt even on everybody associated with Lance.  Know your enemies, know your friends.  When I found out I’d be protecting you, I had a friend look into you.  Something turned up on Tommy Lawrence.  A juvenile record.”  Sig pauses, drawing out the tension until I think I will burst before he continues.  And when he does, one of my worst nightmares comes true.  “Who’s Tommy Lawrence? The real Tommy Lawrence?  The boy?”

The dull ache of panic fills my chest with so much tightness that I feel like I might explode.  My heartbeat is thundering inside my head, like the thump of a thousand bass drums reverberating through a dark, shadowy forest.  Behind my eyes, the old crashes into the new, the past into the present, in a fiery collision that threatens to incinerate me where I sit.  Oh God, oh God, oh God!

“I don’t know what you mean.”

I concentrate on taking deep, calming breaths even though my lungs seem to be frozen in terror.

“Don’t lie to me, Tommi.  You said you wouldn’t.  And considering what we’ve had together, you owe me that much at least.  The truth.  Who’s the real Tommy?”

For a few tense seconds, I feel as though nothing moves.  Time, space, the air, the earth. Nothing breathes.  Rather, everything is stopped on a gasp.  And for the first time in my life, for as long as I can remember, when backed into a corner, I take a leap.  Instead of running or evading or lying,  I take a leap and I trust.

I don’t know why I leap, why I trust.  I don’t know why Sig, why now. I only know that some part of me needs to be able to trust him, needs to be able to believe in love again.  Because that’s what Sig makes me feel. Love. Trust. Hope.

“H-he’s my older brother,” I confess stiffly.   Once the words are out, the rest spews out of me like an uncontrollable geyser.  The tears streaming down my face are little more than evidence of its eruption.  “He came home one night, high on bath salts that he got from Lance Tonin.  He punched Travis in the face twice before I even knew something was wrong.  He was like a rabid dog.  Mad and so strong.  I couldn’t stop him. I could only stand between him and Travis.  I honestly thought he was going to kill us both.  But he didn’t.  Instead, he turned and went after Momma.  Maybe it was because he blamed her.  I don’t know, but one minute he was there with us, the next I heard these awful noises coming from her bedroom.