Page 3 of Wolf

She’s back.

Chapter 2

Julia

They’re going to find me in a couple hundred years, like they found all those people at Pompeii, frozen in the middle of the day’s activity. I’ve been filling out paperwork for a couple hours now and it feels like it’s never going to end.

I rub my aching eyes. I have bags under them that would get me charged for extra weight at an airport. Still, I try to look at some positives and remind myself that at least I’m alive and able to fill out these endless papers. Things could have gone very differently. I could have stayed where I was. Instead, I took the first and hardest step of getting out of a difficult situation.

I left.

I got out of there with basically nothing and drove all the way back here to Helena, where I grew up. My mother still lives here and it’s to her that I went. Even though we’ve never had the best relationship, she opened up her door.

I’ve been here for a few days now and I probably haven’t slept for more than a couple hours. Everything is a mess. There’s so much to do. Mom doesn’t have internet or anything and I hate filling out important documents on my phone, so I had to go to the library today to print off everything I needed.

The form on the kitchen table in front of me, that I’m working on right now, was sent to me by my attorney. Doing this is another hard, but very necessary step because this is the first phase of filing for divorce.

It was my husband that made me leave the city where I’d been living for the past six years. What he did that day… I’ve taken a lot from him. I’ve endured and made excuses. But that day, it pushed me over the edge. It made me realize I had to get out of there before things got worse.

So, even though things suck right now, they can only improve, right?

As I bend over to scratch out my initials on yet another blank line, my back protests the abuse I’ve put it through. Throwing my pen down, I stand up and stretch. Sunlight punches through the gloom of the unlit house to splash warm and tempting on my skin. All at once, I can’t bear to be inside any longer. I need to get out of here. I need to move, do something, anything.

I abandon the forms for the time being and grab my shoes from by the front door. Stepping outside, the breeze that greets me lures me out, lets me know I made the right choice. It’s a nice spring day, not too warm and not too humid for once. Rare for Florida. All sorts of weeds are sprouting in Mom’s yard, filling in the gaps between the patches of untamed grass. Butterflies flutter between the wildflowers and bees lazily drone. Chattery birds fill the air with a symphony of their mingled songs. The sights, the sounds, they tug at my heart, make me long for the seasons of my past when everything felt so sweet and idyllic.

Walking down the rows of houses, I can’t help but compare things to how they used to be the last time I was here. There are new cars in the driveways of the neighbors that I used to know so well. I’ve also seen some new faces, which means not everyone is still here. There’s a pool in a backyard where there didn’t used to be one, and a new house has sprung up in the vacant plot where I would play games as a kid.

The church a couple streets down has benches out front now and some of the old plain windows have been replaced with stained glass ones. The cemetery has new fencing, replacing the rickety chain-link stuff. It even has an arching brick entryway, which strikes me as too fancy for such a humble place.

I didn’t mean to end up at the cemetery. Or maybe some hidden part of me did intend that, while the rest of me just assumed I was on a normal walk. I hesitate in front of the archway while a couple of kids zip by on their e-scooters, a dog keeping pace with them. The high-pitched whine of the scooter engine is abruptly overtaken by the distant roar of a motorcycle.

Those bikes are one of the things I never forgot. Helena is a motorcycle club town.

I shake my head to push thoughts of bikes and bikers out of my head as I step through the arch into the cemetery.

Rows of gravestones in various states of decay form tidy lines, interrupted by strips of very short, very green grass that I would think was fake turf if not for the occasional clump of dried trimmings left behind. Some of the graves are clean, glowing with captured warmth from the sun. Those ones have the freshest flowers, sometimes photographs and other items that loved ones have left behind. Then there are the ones with dried flowers. Most don’t have anything.

I find myself standing in front of one particular headstone. The marker’s little more than a flat stone rectangle with words carved into it, plus a cross that comes across as an afterthought.

My hands curl into fists as my eyes roam over the words. Richard J. Palmer. Husband. Father.

They neglect to mention how he wasn’t very good at either of those things.

My lips move, forming the name that I knew him by. “Dad.”

Without flowers, photographs, any kind of mementos, someone could step right over this grave and not even know it was here. It seems like he’s forgotten. Except, I remember. I remember what he was like, the way he always had to know what I was doing, where I was going, and who I was with. When I was a kid, I thought that made me Daddy’s Little Girl. I thought he loved and cared for me so much. Then, I got a little older. Instead of letting me spread my wings and test them out, he tried to keep me in the nest. He stifled me all through high school, to the point that when I graduated, I maybe went a little crazy trying to experience freedom.

I wince. I definitely went a little crazy.

There are some people in Helena who love having an MC around, and some who absolutely hate them and would chase them out if they could. No matter a person’s opinion, they have to admit that the Steel Riders are what defines this town. The bikers are everywhere, these huge men easily identifiable at a glance by their leather vests. Motorcycles line up outside houses and stores, and especially outside the bar they frequent the most, the Canteen. They’ve got their own compound out in the industrial area, near the water tower.

It wasn’t a decision I made, not consciously. It just kind of happened, that I started spending time around the bikers. Dad hated it. He grounded me, took my phone away. I was eighteen, then nineteen. I wasn’t dumb or naïve. I knew he couldn’t actually stop me from leaving the house whenever the hell I wanted.

He couldn’t actually stop me from developing a relationship with one of them.

Wolf.

Thinking his name sends a spasm of pain through my whole body. My legs weaken and I almost collapse right there at my father’s grave. Anyone walking by would think I’d been overcome with grief. I was, just not for him.