The Space Between Lives

Billy stood with his arms crossed, watching Lucky vomit into the trash can. It reminded Lucky of the first time he’d drunk tequila after Billy warned him to slow down. He’d been sixteen and knew everything back then—and, like most things in life, you didn’t realize how little you knew until you had to face the aftermath.

Billy finally sat down. “Jesus, Lucky… for a guy who looked so calm with a gun to your head, you don’t look so tough now.”

Lucky stayed on the floor, his whole body burning like there was a fire lit somewhere deep in his chest. Sweat trickled down his brow. “I don’t feel so tough now.”

“You know, one of these days Dakota’s gonna drop you,” Billy said. “Is making your wife proud worth taking a bullet?” He leaned forward. “Dakota’s got problems at home. That’s how he blows off steam.”

Lucky looked up through watery eyes. “Dakota’s always got problems at home. He’s been married five times and divorced four. The first couple you can call bad luck—but when you start counting them on your fingers, it’s not bad luck. It’s you.”

Billy leaned back. “It’s the life.”

“The hell it is.” Lucky slumped against the wall, breathing heavy, his stomach still rolling. “He can’t keep his pecker in his pants, and he does it so openly even a blind woman would know he’s a cheating bastard.”

He pushed himself to his feet. “I didn’t do it to impress Clara. I did it because that girl was too young, and I didn’t want the cops at the door.”

Billy laughed softly. “You know, I blame your darling wife for that moral compass of yours.” He tossed Lucky a small cloth. “I remember the day she moved onto the reservation. Skinny little thing who couldn’t get attention from anybody but you.”

Lucky grinned. “I liked her smile.”

Billy lit a cigarette and tossed the pack over. “No. You fell in love with that smile. I still remember a thirteen-year-old kid telling everybody he had to be a better man to deserve her.”

Lucky laughed. “No. I said I was going to marry her someday—and I did.”

Billy studied him for a moment. “So what’s got you in such a bad mood? The other MCs give you trouble? Or the guys at the docks?”

Lucky reached into his pocket and tossed the gold ring across the room. “No. There was a surprise in the trunk.”

Billy turned the ring slowly between his fingers, then raised an eyebrow. “I’m guessing a hand came with it, judging by the blood.”

Lucky shook his head. “A whole damn body.”

Billy frowned. “You didn’t—”

“No,” Lucky snapped. “He was already dead. An unwanted gift from your preacher friend.”

Billy sighed. “I knew working with those junkyard rednecks was going to get complicated.”

“Complicated?” Lucky said. “If the cops had pulled me over, I’d be looking at a long-term vacation in the pen.”

Billy leaned back farther in his chair. “I know. Any idea who he was? We don’t need blowback from some trailer-park war.”

Lucky lit another cigarette and stared at the wall. “No idea. The guys at the docks are shipping him overseas. It felt like an everybody thing.”

He took a drag and let it out slowly.

“It wasn’t an oh shit, a dead body moment for them. It was just another problem to solve.”

Billy opened a drawer of a small desk and dropped the ring into it. “Go home to your wife, Lucky. Forget that tonight ever happened, and I will talk to our friends about extra baggage. The MC survives because we don’t compete in the serious drug business or take hits. This won’t happen again.”

Billy grabbed a small envelope from the drawer and tossed it at Lucky. “There is your cut. I took the MC’s five percent and mine out already.”

Lucky stared at the envelope. He didn’t count it. He didn’t need to. It felt heavier than it should have, like the world was shifting under his feet—or maybe it already had, and he was just late noticing.

The days of buying smokes off the reserve and running them to mom-and-pop stores for easy money were gone. Even the booze felt like a shrinking slice of the pie now. What used to feel like side work was starting to look like the main event.

Was tonight the new normal?

Would the MC survive if extra baggage stopped being a what-the-hell moment and became a business model?

Lucky didn’t stop by the bar for a drink like he usually did. He didn’t play pool or darts. The only thing he wanted was to go home and hug his wife.

Some people thought home was four walls, or that a man bought a house and a woman made it one. Lucky knew better. Home wasn’t a place. It was a person. The one you wrapped your arms around, and no matter where you were, everything felt right.

That was his real life. Where home truly was.

Lucky drove slowly through the reservation toward home. His cut was stuffed into his saddlebag, hidden from view. Not because anyone didn’t know who he rode with—the town was small, and everyone already knew. And not to keep anyone from finding him. In a place like this, nobody was ever hard to find.

It was about respect. For the elders. For the community.

He pulled into the small driveway and parked beside the Chevy Malibu they used for this life. He sat there longer than usual, trying to leave the day where it belonged.

This was the family he loved the most. And he never wanted to drag the other one home.

As he made his way to the front door, he could see the dim light from the lamp beside the couch. Clara must be grading papers. She was a good teacher, teacher of the year, two years running. An even better wife. One who had been putting up with him for a long time.

He opened the door and heard, “Uncle Loo is here.” A second later, the faint thump of small feet came racing across the wooden floor.

Kelly barreled into him, arms wide, grinning like he’d hung the moon. Clara followed more slowly behind her.

Clara smiled. “Your niece fought sleep because her uncle wasn’t home yet to read her a bedtime story.”

Lucky knelt as Kelly launched herself into his arms.

“Uncle Loo, I missed you.”

He lifted her easily. “I missed my girl, too.” He tapped her nose gently. “You should be asleep.”

Kelly kissed his cheek. “You should have come home. I missed you.”

Clara stepped closer and wrapped her arms around him. “She’s right,” she said softly. “You should have been home. I missed you, too.”

She kissed him, then smiled. “Some nights I wish you were an accountant or a door-to-door salesman.” Her eyes flicked to his cut. “And then I see you dressed in leather and remember why I fell for you.”

Lucky laughed. “Do I look like I could be an accountant?”

Clara kissed him again. “I think you could be anything you wanted.”

Kelly whispered, “I want a bedtime story.”

Lucky smiled. “Oh, you do? What story do you want?”

Kelly smiled back. “The bear one.”

Lucky set her down. “Go get in bed, and I’ll come tuck you in and read The Little Bear Who Always Came Home.”

He watched Kelly run down the hall, then kissed Clara. “How was your day, my love?”

Clara smiled. “It was good. Your mother came over today.”

“And how is she?”

Clara laughed. “Pissed off at you.”

Lucky raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And why’s that?”

Clara wrapped her arms around him. “Well, the fact that she lives three doors away and you still have to ask might be one of the reasons.”

Lucky shrugged. “She’s got three sons, and I’m the one she gets mad at if I don’t see her three times a week.”

Clara laughed. “That’s the price of being her favourite.” Then she glanced down the hallway. “She’s also asking when she’s getting grandchildren. She sees how good you are with Kelly and starts wondering.”

Lucky met her eyes. “Kelly’s ours. She’s her granddaughter as much as she’s my daughter. As long as I love her like a father, I am her father.”

As he held her, his eyes drifted to the table, where a paper lay half-covered beneath a stack of grading. An image of a house caught his attention.

It wasn’t small or cramped like the one they lived in now. It didn’t have a white picket fence or neat hedges either. It was a farmhouse—but not the working kind. No fields stretching out behind it. No equipment. Just open space and quiet.

A place meant for living, not surviving.

“What’s this?” he asked, reaching for the paper.

Clara glanced at it. “Oh. Nothing, really. It’s just a house I pass on my way home from work. I wondered what it looked like inside.”

Nothing never meant nothing.

Lucky stared at the page, unsettled by the idea that this might be one of those dreams people carried quietly, never saying out loud. He’d never thought about living anywhere else. Not because of ancestry or obligation—every inch of this place was already theirs in one way or another.

He lived here because it was the only place he’d ever known.

And for the first time, that felt less like certainty and more like a question.

All he could think of to say was, “It looks.”

Clara, still holding him, whispered, “It just reminded me of a house that I saw when I was a little girl. You know the kind of place that you wish you grew up in, and as you get older, you think I could raise a happy family there.”

Lucky had never thought about the kinds of dreams a girl carried from childhood into adulthood. It had never occurred to him that maybe she’d set hers aside so he could chase his—even if the ones he chased didn’t turn out the way he’d imagined.

Clara looked up, “Go read your niece her story. If she hasn’t fallen asleep, which I doubt, she is getting impatient.”

Lucky was troubled, but still smiled, “I can’t keep the lady waiting.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the envelope. As he tossed it to Clara, he said, “Here.”

As she caught it, she said, “I will drop it in the back on Monday during lunch.’ With a smile, she added, “Tomorrow we are going to your mother’s for lunch.”

Lucky walked into Kelly’s room and found her with the blanket up to her chin. She was already starting to doze off like she always did. He grabbed the book from the nightstand—the Little Bear Who Always Came Home.

He lowered his voice.

“Once there was a little bear who lived near a river,” he said. “Every morning, the little bear woke up when the sun did and went out to see the world. Some days, he helped his friends carry berries. Some days, he walked along the path and listened to the birds. Some days he went farther than he meant to.”

Kelly’s fingers curled around the blanket.

“But every night,” Lucky went on, “when the sky turned dark, and the moon came up, the little bear felt tired. Not the sleepy kind of tired — the home kind. So he followed the path back the way he came.”

“The path knew him,” Lucky said softly. “It always showed him where to go.”

Kelly whispered, “Did he ever get lost?”

“Maybe once,” Lucky said. “But when he stopped and listened, he could hear the river. And when he heard the river, he knew he was close.”

“So he went home,” Lucky said. “And his bed was warm. And the night stayed quiet. And everything was right again.”

He brushed Kelly’s hair back gently.

“And the little bear closed his eyes… knowing he would wake up in the morning and do it all again.”

Lucky stayed quiet for a moment.

“Because home was always there.”