The Cantaloupe Thief by Deb Richardson-Moore

rapes and murders, too, when things went wrong.
    She nervously pulled alongside Liam’s SUV, her stomach in a knot. Liam emerged as soon as he saw her Honda.
    â€œHe’s under the bridge,” he said.
    â€œIs he strung out?”
    â€œNo. I smelled alcohol, but he’s coherent.”
    She smiled tightly. “Did you tell him you were calling me?”
    â€œYeah. He knows. Get in the back, Miss Cleo,” Liam commanded. “I’ll ride with you.”
    Cleo obediently leaped over the seat back as Liam climbed in. Branigan knew where they were headed — the Michael Garner Memorial Bridge, named for a police officer gunned down in this neighborhood fifteen years before. When the bridge was built some years later, Grambling’s police chief lobbied for naming rights. Had she been part of Michael Garner’s family, she wasn’t sure she’d want his name connected to a site so close to his murder. But they considered it an honor, and the bridge now bore his name. It also sheltered dozens of the city’s homeless.
    Liam knew the bridge community. He and his staff frequently visited, inviting residents to Jericho Road for drug rehab, mental health counseling and worship. But even he never came here after dark. With the blackness impenetrable, suffocating, Branigan felt her heart thumping. She was about to face the man she loved above all others.
    Her twin brother, Davison.
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    They parked in the pitted lot of a storage facility 200 feet from the bridge. It was as close as they could get in a car. Liam had wisely brought a flashlight that helped illumine a path through the weeds. Cleo ran ahead, and Branigan heard her excited bark before they reached the bridge.
    Then she heard the voice so like her dad’s, so like Chan’s.
    â€œWell, what a pretty girl! You must be one of Gran’s.”
    Branigan stumbled forward. There, sitting on a cement block, was her brother. Even with Liam’s dim light, she could see that his blond hair was shoulder-length and matted. A week’s stubble grew along his jaw line. His jeans looked too large. But she could see the glitter of his familiar emerald eyes, identical to hers and shining like a cat’s in the dark. The slow smile that emerged when he saw her was one she remembered well.
    â€œBrani G,” he said through cracked lips, using the childhood nickname Liam had adopted. “Hey, Sis.”
    The bridge soared at least fifty feet above them, devoid of traffic at this hour, and invisible. Branigan peered into the darkness, but could see nothing past Davison in Liam’s little circle of light. Still, she’d never known this site to be vacant and sensed people listening from nearby tents staked into the hard red mud, and from the girders forty-five feet up an incline.
    Davison stood to hug her, and she walked into his arms silently, awkwardly. She steeled herself against the smell of dried sweat, dirt and grime, and he sensed it.
    â€œSorry. I haven’t bathed in awhile,” he apologized, pulling away. “Liam says I can shower tomorrow at the shelter.”
    Branigan nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Then clearing her throat, she fought the urge to scream a hundred questions and instead said quietly, “Tell me how you’ve been.”
    He shrugged. “Not much to tell.”
    The siblings had never been ones for chitchat. So she asked what was foremost in her mind: “Are you clean?”
    He hesitated, knowing how badly she wanted him to say yes, and she presumed, wanting pretty badly for it to be true.
    â€œNo,” he said.
    She exhaled and slumped, not realizing how tightly she’d been holding on to this hope until it was whisked away.
    â€œCrack?” she asked.
    He nodded. “And beer. Some meth.”
    She glanced at Liam. It didn’t get much worse than crystal methamphetamine, he’d once told her. The rotting teeth, the skeletal face, the aging skin. Five