broken claims

Part 10

Merle's face was bright red the way her dad's got whenever he was mad. He leaned against the door and swung it open, silently allowing her passage. "Hi," Leigh said softly, scanning the room. It looked clean of any pill bottles he sometimes kept on the table.

"What time is it?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm looking at a clock that's saying it's after midnight. You walk over here?"

She shrugged in response and felt him yank her bag from her arms.

"You know damned well your daddy hates when you come over here," Merle grouched, tossing her bag onto the couch and yanking the phone down from the receiver on the wall. She heard him punch in the number she knew by heart and the shrill ringing warbling out twice before it was answer. "Hey. You know where your kid is?"

It was nearly three in the morning. Daryl wasn't supposed to know she was gone until he found the letter she wrote him sitting on the table. Something was said back but Merle didn't care to listen, practically slamming the phone back down. "I can pay rent. Can I stay, please?"

"Oh, you can pay rent?" Merle mocked, prying off the tab of his beer with his teeth. Leigh obliged him by pulling out a wad of cash bound together by a hair elastic. "How the hell did you get that?"

"Stole some candle sticks. Took 'em to that pawn shop down by the park."

"You stole... you took Mr. Hitler's fancy silver, didn't ya'?"

Leigh hummed, sitting down on the couch and kicking her feet. "Waited a couple weeks to see if they'd notice. But they didn't. So... rent money."

"Tell you what, kiddo. You hold onto that money and in a few years when your daddy calms down about all this, we can be a pair of roomies. But you don't go around carrying that much money around this place. Those folk? The ones sitting on the steps? They're the nice ones."

Daryl hated whenever she came over. He made a point of having Merle pick her at home so she didn't see the drinks being passed around in the grungy stairwell. "He's angry," Leigh said quietly into her unwanted money. "It isn't fair."

Something was different. Daryl was suddenly stretched thin between something with a lawyer and fancy classes about anger management. She barely saw him anymore. He was always out and Verna from next-door was minding her instead. Whatever he was learning about managing anger, though, hadn't done much. The big window got shattered somehow when her dad was drunk on the couch, miserable as a rattlesnake. Merle fixed up a plastic sheet around the broken window but hadn't been back since.

"Can't go running just because he's throwing a fit. Daryl's got a hothead. Always picking a fight with a stone cold shadow."

"He hates me."

He took a swig from his beer but his expression stayed sour. "Fuck, kid. He doesn't hate you. Whatever my baby brother's issue is? It ain't about you. He's just mad because he can't toss a punch in his own face. He'd feel better if he could."

"Why?" Leigh asked, tucking her legs up so she could sit crosslegged. Her bag fell against her leg and she toyed with one of the keychains. "Why would that help?"

"You'd get it, if you were older."

A loud knocking banged from the door. Merle slowly got up to his feet and managed his way to the door, leaning against the frame. "Who the hell is it?" He called back pleasantly through the doorway, radiating smugness. "That you little brother?"