[Georgia 03] Fallen

one thing for his baby sister to try to boss him around, but he wasn’t going to take it from someone who wasn’t blood. It was a strange reaction considering Zeke, Faith, and Jeremy had all grown up calling her Aunt Mandy, an endearment that Faith was fairly certain would get her fired if she used it today. Still, they had always thought that Amanda was part of their family. She was so close to Evelyn that at times she’d passed for a surrogate.
    But she was still Faith’s boss, and she still kept her foot firmly planted on the back of Faith’s neck, just like she did with everyone else who worked for her. Or came into contact with her. Or smiled at her in the street.
    Faith opened the nutrition bar and took a large bite. The only sound in the kitchen was her chewing. She wanted to close her eyes, but was afraid of the images she would see. Her mother tied up, mouth gagged. Jeremy’s red-rimmed eyes. The way those cops had looked at her today, like the stink of her involvement was too much to stomach.
    Zeke cleared his throat. She thought that the hostilities had passed, but his posture indicated otherwise. If there was one constant in her life, it was Zeke’s enduring sense of moral superiority.
    She tried to get it over with. “What?”
    “That Victor guy seemed surprised to hear about Emma. Wanted to know how old she was, when she was born.”
    She choked, trying to swallow. “Victor was here? In the house?”
    “You weren’t around, Faith. Someone had to stay with your son until I got here.”
    The string of curses that came to Faith’s mind was probably worse than anything Zeke had heard while stitching up soldiers in Ramstein.
    He said, “Jeremy showed him her picture.”
    Faith tried to swallow again. She felt like rusty nails were catching in her throat.
    “Emma’s got his coloring.”
    “Jeremy’s?”
    “This some kind of pattern with you? You like being an unwed mother?”
    “Hey, didn’t they tell you when you got back that Ronald Reagan isn’t president anymore?”
    “Jesus, Faith. Be serious for once. The guy has a right to know he’s a father.”
    “Trust me, Victor’s not interested in being a father.” The man couldn’t even pick up his dirty socks off the floor or remember to leave the toilet seat down. God only knew what he’d forget with a baby.
    Zeke repeated, “He has a right to know.”
    “So, now he knows.”
    “Whatever, Faith. As long as you’re happy.”
    Any normal human being would’ve trounced off after dropping that bon mot, but Zeke Mitchell never walked away from a fight. He just sat there, staring at her, willing her to crank it back up. Faith reverted to old ways. If he was going to act like he was ten, then so was she. She ignored his presence, flipping through the Lands’ End catalogue, ripping out the page that showed the underwear Jeremy liked so she could order it for him later.
    She flipped to the thermal shirts, and Zeke tilted back in his chair, staring out the window.
    This tension was nothing new between the two of them. Faith’s selfishness was Zeke’s favorite one-note song. As usual, she accepted his disapproval as part of her penance. He had good reason to hate her. There was no moving past an eighteen-year-old boy finding out his fourteen-year-old sister was pregnant. Especially when Jeremy got older and Faith saw what it was like for teenage boys—not the walk in the park it had seemed when she was a teenage girl—Faith had felt guilty for what she’d done to her brother.
    As hard as it was for her father, who was asked not to attend his men’s Bible study, and her mother, who was ostracized by most every woman in the neighborhood, Zeke had endured a special hell because of Faith’s unexpected pregnancy. He’d come home from school at least once a week with a bloody nose or black eye. When they asked him about it, he refused to talk. He sneered at Faith over the dinner table. He shot her looks of disgust if she walked by his room. He hated her for what she’d done to the family, but he would rain down hell on anyone who said a word against her.
    Not that she could remember much from that time. Even now, it was one long, miserable blur of slobbering self-pity. It was hard to believe that so much had changed in twenty years, but Atlanta, or at least Faith’s part of it, had been more like a small town back then. People were still riding high on the Reagan/Bush wave of conservative values. Faith was a spoiled, selfish