I looked up at Colt and saw his face was blank but stony.

Although most things about Colt had been shielded from me by pretty much everyone, I knew a lot about what had happened with Ted and Mary Colton the last twenty-odd years. One of those things I knew was that Colt hadn’t seen his mother in years and never spoke to her.

Colt had attended my wedding to Pete because he was that kind of person, responsible, doing the right thing, even though I hated him being there as much as it was obvious he hated it and he left the reception before we cut the cake.

I hadn’t attended his wedding to Melanie even though Melanie sent me an invitation. This was because I was irresponsible and rarely did the right thing but also because I was weak and I knew deep down there was no way I could handle it. I sent them a wedding gift from their registry that cost more than I could afford at the time but I did it anyway thinking I was making some kind of idiot point that was probably lost on them.

I’d also heard from Mom, who was furious about it, that Mary Colton had showed at the wedding. She’d been trashed out of her gourd and started to make a scene, blathering on, apparently (this I heard not from Mom but from Jessie) about how the wedding was a farce and Colt was meant to marry me. She luckily didn’t make it into the church, she did this outside and then Colt, Dad, Morrie and Sully got rid of her with Jimbo driving her home. Colt had somehow shielded Melanie from it and, as far as I knew, she never heard a word about it happening. Even back then, thinking I had no right, when Mom called to tell me this happened, and Jessie augmented the information, the knowledge pissed me off to such an extreme that I was glad I wasn’t there because I knew there was no telling what I’d do if I was.

Before Colt and I broke up, but long after he’d moved out of his Mom and Dad’s house, Ted Colton hit two kids while drunk driving and killed them both. Colt and I knew the kids. They were good kids, never got into trouble. The girl was named Jenny and she won the Spirit of Junior Miss at the Junior Miss Pageant the fall before. The boy was named Mike and he was an ace shortstop for the high school team. They’d been dating for ages and were on their way back from a late movie at the mall. They were seniors in high school but I’d been in school with them both for two years before I graduated. Colt and I didn’t know them well, but we knew them.

By this time, Colt was far removed from Ted and Mary Colton. In all eyes, he was a bona fide member of the Owens clan and had been long before he moved into our house. Therefore, no one even looked at him askance when this happened.

Still, Colt knew their blood ran in his veins and his Dad killing two kids cut Colt to the quick. With me at his side, he attended both funerals and for weeks he slid into a darkness that I worried he’d never come out of. But he did when he applied to the Police Academy. He’d always known that was what he wanted for his future but his father’s mindless act of violence spurred Colt to doing it.

After the accident, Ted Colton was in pretty bad shape too, but he survived. Once he was healthy, he went to trial then he went to prison. Years later, he got out on parole and went back due to parole violation, which consisted of twice being hauled in for drunk and disorderly, once being pulled over for a DUI and then there was the small matter of him never showing at parole meetings.

When he did his time, he got out again only to go back in when he robbed a liquor store, not their money, a box of booze. The man behind the counter saw him, called the cops and instead of stopping, Ted led them on a fifteen minute high speed chase through the streets of town that ended with Colt’s Dad driving through someone’s yard and into their living room. Luckily he caused no bodily harm not even to himself. Stupidly, he got out of the car, drunk off his ass, resisted arrest and he did this with a knife. Making matters worse, he had borrowed his neighbor’s car without their knowledge, which meant they were pretty pissed when they found out it was used during a burglary and wrecked during the ensuing chase. Therefore, they were happy to report it as stolen.

Ted Colton had always been a mean drunk but I’d never thought he was a stupid one.

Back to prison he went, where, as far as I knew, he was still rotting.

His Mom, though, had moved to a trailer park in the next town and how she managed to keep her trailer and her vodka and pill habit when I’d never known her to work a day in my life, I had no clue. But I didn’t doubt she did.

Dad turned to walk out the door and Colt and I followed. I did this quickly because Colt was moving fast. I caught up with him when we hit the bar, coming to his side and grabbing his hand. His eyes never left the woman who was standing at the bar but his fingers curled around my hand so tight I worried he’d break my bones. It took effort but I didn’t make a peep at the pain.

The bar was nearly silent, no buzz of conversation, only the jukebox playing. It was usually set low for the day crowd. We turned it up at night.

I was shocked at the vision of Mary Colton. She didn’t look like I always remembered her looking, unkempt, clothes wrinkled and sometimes not clean, skin sallow, hair in disarray. She looked clean, her hair cut and tidied. She had makeup on. She was wearing jeans and a sweater, both of them washed and well-kept, her jeans even looked ironed.

None of this hid the years of hard drinking and internal abuse her body had endured. She was too thin, her hair, although tidy, looked bristly and there were steel gray roots exposed at her part, the rest of it a fake dark brown that was obviously a home dye job in dire need of a refresh. Her face was lined, her skin sagging, her hands were thin and deeply veined, the knuckles seemed huge, the bones were visible, all of this making her hands look like claws.

My Mom, not too far away and staring daggers at Mary, looked the picture of youth and vitality next to Colt’s Mom. They were close to the same age but Mom looked thirty years younger.

Mary turned to watch us walk up to her. I saw her take us both in, her eyes dropping to our linked hands and then they closed, slowly, almost like she was suffering some kind of internal pain.

Then she opened her eyes and Colt stopped us three feet away.

“Alec,” she said, her voice deep, rasping and unfeminine from years of chain smoking.

I felt my body give a jerk when I heard her call Colt that name and I swore, in his bed or out of it, I’d never call him that again. I finally understood why he hated it. Said by her, it was hideous.

“There something I can help you with, Ma?” Colt asked.

She hitched her purse up on her shoulder and shifted on her feet.