Neon Nights Chapter 12

“Never a dull moment with you," Carly laughed, as they sat eating breakfast at Ocho's, their paper placemats sitting on top of a lacquered table featuring cut-out surf photos from magazines and advertisements from different businesses around town.

"I don't want you to get bored, is all."

"I don't think you are getting invited to the Bass Christmas Bash," she said with a grin.

Marc took a bite of the mountainous breakfast burrito in front of him, filled with eggs, bacon, green chilis, onions, and hot sauce.

"I might show up just to piss him off. Maybe I'll bring a raccoon or something and let him loose in the house as my gift."

A small bite of food flew out of Carly's mouth.

Marc leaned back in his chair and put his hands over his stomach.

"By the way, I always forget just how good this is, even though I've eaten probably 1,000 of them."

"Agreed."

They sat in silence for a minute, enjoying the quiet, with neither feeling the need to fill the moment with words.

Carly finally broke the silence.

"I'm sorry about Kerry. I know what a good kid she was.”

Marc scratched at the back of his neck. He searched for something philosophical and earth-shattering to say but found nothing, so he kept looking out at the ocean.

"Where to next?" she asked.

A family of four rode by on their rented bicycles with a daughter around Kerry's age, smiling and joking, maybe a running inside joke that continued from block to block.

One day this, then the next day that.

He shook his head to clear away the gloom and refocused on the task at hand. He picked up their trays, cleared away the wrappers, and threw them in the trash.

"I think all roads lead to that frat. That's where these three probably started their business. I've got to talk to my nephew and see how he's doing. When I'm done there, I'll ride to the college and talk to some people who knew Jameson. Can you handle the campground?”

"That works. Do I have to tip you for cleaning that up?" she asked, standing up and pushing in her chair.

"I worked at Fish Tales for years with Paul. It's almost like PTSD when I see dirty tables at restaurants."

"The dishes are stacking up at my house, so whenever you get that urge to clean again, I can help you fill the void."

Marc pulled down his older sister Bonnie's "Anytown, USA" street in the upscale Ocean Garden neighborhood, that featured every amenity the modern world could offer its upper-middle-class residents. It was the tier below the Dunes—plenty of money, but still aspirational.

They weren't filthy rich yet.

Bonnie and her husband of twenty years, George, had just painted the house a month ago, and it looked like it came off the cover of Coastal Living magazine. There was a Gone with the Wind style front porch, complete with rocking chairs, columns, and a “Life's Better at the Beach” wooden placard, hung with precision next to the door. Marc rang the doorbell and stepped back to take in the care with which all this was planned.

He waited a minute and started to walk around back but turned around when he heard the door open.

His ten-year-old niece, Emily, stood at the door with a sad smile on her face.

“Hi, Uncle Marc.” “How you doing, Em?” “Sad, really sad.”

Marc pulled her in for a hug and lifted her off the ground.

“Did that help?” he asked. Emily nodded.

"Can we go out and fish sometime soon?"

"There is not a thing in the world I would rather do more," he said, pulling her in tight for another hug. "How about later this week?"

The little girl smiled brightly now. “Sure! Thanks, Uncle Marc.”

And with that, she turned and darted on to her next adventure before he had the chance to get in another word. When she did, she bumped straight into her mother, who had made her way to the door without anyone noticing.

"I didn't even hear your footsteps. I must be getting soft," Marc said to Bonnie.

"I'm still like a cat," she smirked. "How's Logan doing?" he asked.

"Not good. The Bakers told him to go home and get some sleep, and we just got the call a little bit ago. He's crushed that he wasn't there with her. Guilt has pretty much crippled him. If he had gone to the show, she wouldn't have been with that girl or around those people. It kills me to see him like this."

Her eyes started to fill with tears, and she scrunched the corners of her mouth as if trying to push the tears back into place.

Marc knew the "wish I could have done more" feeling well. Survivor's guilt was a powerful emotion, even if it was unreasonable to think you could have created a different outcome.

"Can I go up and see him?"

"He would love that," Bonnie replied. "It didn't help that they had a fight right before the show."

Emily broke the seriousness of the conversation as her footsteps came bounding back down the hall. "Daddy is making something called an Arnol Palma. He wants to know if you guys want one."

Marc laughed.

"Arnold Palmer. He was a famous golfer. Put me down for one." "Me too, honey," Bonnie said.

She was off as fast as she had arrived.

Bonnie looked Marc over with a mix of curiosity and contempt.

"Did you forget where we lived? Haven't seen you around in a while."

Marc knew the look well and avoided her gaze.

"Been super busy, is all. I told Em I would take her fishing later this week."

"She will love that."

"I put in my notice at the department." Bonnie's eyebrows raised.

"Any particular reason?"

"Why does it matter?" he asked, colder than he should have. Her shoulders tightened a bit.

"I mean, I guess it doesn't, but it seems like a reasonable question given that this was your dream for the better part of your life, and all of a sudden, poof, no more. I feel like your sister asking you why is a pretty acceptable question."

He couldn’t come up with anything to say, so he opted for nothing. Bonnie turned without another word and went back into the house.

Marc walked down a hallway with light grey shiplap walls, a distressed wood bench, and a multi-colored hardwood floor with accents of brown, grey, and tan. When he got to his nephew’s room, he knocked on the heavy sliding barn door.

"I'm good, Mom!” the voice called with the type of agitation that can only come from someone in their late teens or early twenties.

"Police, open up.”

“Come in, Uncle Marc,” came a muffled voice from behind the door.

Aunts and uncles would always be cooler and more liked than parents. It was the law of the jungle, and Marc was totally satisfied with his role as spoiler-in-chief and captain of the fun police.

He opened the door to find a handsome, athletic young man sitting on his bed with an issue of a fishing magazine in his hands. He flipped through the pages at a pace that would make it impossible to

process so much as a picture. Logan was always reading, and it was almost always about the outdoors. It had been that way since Marc bought him an illustrated guidebook to the fish of the Atlantic when he was five. His hair had grown out more since Marc had seen him last, and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it. Logan had never been able to grow facial hair, and his baby face was one of the most charming things about him.

Marc walked over to the edge of his bed, and Logan got up to hug him. He dug his head into Marc's shoulder and started to cry.

"I'm so sorry, Logan."

Logan held his uncle tight for a few more seconds and then wiped the tears from his face with his wrist.

"You know what's funny?" his nephew asked. Marc shook his head.

"Right when Mrs. Baker called me, all I could think about was walking up to Kerry’s door to pick her up for the senior prom. I couldn't see her in the coma. I didn't feel like she was gone. I just saw her in that blue dress…."

Marc put his hand on his nephew's shoulder and squeezed but said nothing.

A knock on the door interrupted the conversation and gave them both a reprieve from the emotional octagon they were standing in. Marc went to the door and slid it back. Emily held out a drink for each of them, got hugs and a five-dollar tip from her uncle, and was back out the door like lightning.

"Your sister looks like she's taking good care of you."

Logan's smile found its way back from the darkness for a moment. "She's a great kid."

Marc nodded and took a sip of his drink. It was a perfect blend of tart and sweet with the little ice cubes you only found at restaurants that had Styrofoam cups.

He looked at his nephew and all he could see was the kid who was a perpetual ball of energy, begging him to go to the beach, the pool, or the tennis courts.

He felt him hurting, and the only thing he wanted to do in the world was fix it.

Marc entered the kitchen and found his brother-in-law George cleaning chicken on a heavy wooden cutting board.

When George cooked, Marc made time to eat. While not the man's profession, it should have been. He had a natural talent for understanding flavor and crafting dishes that zipped around your mouth like a bouncy ball let loose by a six-year-old in a grocery store aisle.

But financial planning made the heart sing too. Sort of.

The muscular man with a salt-and-pepper beard and close-cropped hair looked more suited to logging than logarithms, but he was one of the sharpest people Marc had ever met and he knew his business

cold. Cooking was his escape. If he had been a pro, he would have lost all his love for it, so he stayed entrenched in the world of dollars and cents.

"How was the Arnold Palmer?" George bellowed across the room.

"Perfect as always. Feel free to send me on my way with some of that chicken," Marc said as the men hugged.

"Some food for the Bakers. You and Bonnie didn't look like things were all patched up," George said in a way that was more of a question than a statement.

Marc pulled a chair out from the island George was working at and sat down.

"I guess you could say that." The big man laughed.

"Okay … I thought I did say that." Marc smiled sheepishly.

"Touché."

"Y'all gotta put that shit behind you. It's eating away time you guys can't get back. When it's resolved, you will feel like a million bucks, and you can move on. One of you has to make the first move, though."

Marc shifted in his chair. "Why not her?"

The man placed the chicken into a Pyrex dish and poured a dark brown liquid over it with pieces of onions and peppers interspersed throughout. It smelled like Jamaica minus the weed, and Marc had no doubt it would taste like a little slice of heaven.

"Jerk?" Marc asked. The big man smiled.

"Are you calling me, Bonnie, or the chicken that?" "Can't it be all three?"

"Come by for some chicken tonight. Logan needs you right now, and we haven't done anything together in months. And your sister, despite her warm and welcoming exterior, would love to have you here too."

"I appreciate the offer. I do. We've gotten into it deep over the last forty-eight hours, first with Kerry and then with a kid found murdered in his trailer at that festival. I don't see much rest until the circus is out of town."

George nodded and put the chicken into the oven, moving now to his potato cutter and a small mountain of glistening potatoes fresh from a scrub.

"Understood. Raincheck? How about I drop you a plate of this tonight, and then you'll have something to look forward to after a long day?"

His sister walked through the room, made a beeline to the patio, and gave him the finger as she passed.

A worried expression rolled over Marc's face.

"Sounds incredible. Whatever you do, though, please don't let her deliver it to me."