Free The King of Lies by John Hart Page A

don’t know,” Alex answered. “Sometimes she just drives.”
    “Where?”
    She moved back onto the porch, crowding me backward. “I’m not her keeper. She comes and goes. When we want to be together, we are; otherwise, I don’t hassle her. That’s free advice.”
    “Her car’s here,” I stated.
    “She took mine.”
    Looking at her, I wanted a cigarette, so I asked for one. “I’m all out,” she said, and my eyes fell to the pack wedged into her front pocket. Her eyes challenged me.
    “You don’t much care for me, do you?” I asked.
    Her voice didn’t change. “Nothing personal.”
    “What, then?” Alex had been around for almost two years; I’d seen her maybe five times. Jean would not talk about her, not where she came from, not what she’d done with her twenty-odd years. All I knew was where they’d met, and that raised some serious questions.
    She studied me and flicked her cigarette into the bare dirt yard. “You’re bad for Jean,” she said. “I won’t have it.”
    Her words stunned me. “I’m bad for Jean?”
    “That’s right.” She inched closer. “You remind Jean of bad times. With you around, she can’t let go. You drag her down.”
    “That’s not true,” I said, and gestured around me, taking in everything, including Alex. “I remind her of happy times. Before all this. Jean needs me. I’m her past. Her family, damn it.”
    “Jean doesn’t look at you and see happiness. She sees weakness. That’s what you bring to the table. She sees you and remembers all the crap that went down in the pile of bricks you grew up in. The years she spent choking on your father’s bullshit.” Alex stepped closer. She smelled of sweat and cigarettes. I backed away again, hating myself for it. She lowered her voice. “Women are worthless. Women are weak.”
    I knew what she was doing and felt my throat tighten. It was Ezra’s voice. His words.
    “Fucking and sucking,” she continued. “Isn’t that what he would say? Huh? Beyond housekeeping, women are good for two things. How do you think that made Jean feel? She was ten the first time she heard him say that. Ten years old, Work. A child.”
    I couldn’t respond. He’d said that only once, to my knowledge, but once was enough. They are not words a child easily forgets.
    “Do you agree with him, Work? Are you your daddy’s boy?” She paused and leaned into me. “Your father was a misogynistic bastard. You remind Jean of that, and of your mother; of how she took it and acted like Jean should, too.”
    “Jean loved our mother,” I shot back, holding my ground. “Don’t try and twist that around.” It was a weak statement and I knew it. I could not defend my father and did not understand why I felt compelled to do so.
    Alex continued, firing words at me like spit. “You’re a stone around her neck, Work. Plain and simple.”
    “That’s you talking,” I said.
    “Nope.” Her speech was as flat as her gaze, devoid of doubt or question. I looked around the squalid porch but found no help, just dead plants and a porch swing, where, I imagined, Alex filled my sister with lies and hate.
    “What have you been telling her?” I demanded.
    “You see? There’s the problem. I don’t need to tell her. She’s smart enough to figure it out.”
    “I know she’s smart,” I said.
    “You don’t act like it. You pity her. You condescend.”
    “I do not.”
    “I won’t have it,” she spat out, as if I’d interrupted her.
    “I’ve taken her beyond all that. I’ve made her strong, given her something, and I won’t have you fucking it up.”
    “I do not condescend to my sister,” I almost shouted. “I care for her. She needs me.”
    “Denial won’t change fact, and she needs you like a hole in the head. You’re arrogant, like your father; she sees that. You presume to know what she needs, as if you could ever understand, but here’s the truth of it: You don’t know the first thing about who and what your sister