Heaven's a Lie
Page 19
“Here they come,” he says. “Last chance. Is there anything you want to tell me before they get here?”
He wants something, anything. To help explain things. To explain you.
“No,” she says.
FORTY-SIX
I don’t think I know anyone else who’s ever been shot,” Helen says.
Late afternoon, and the diner’s less than half full. Joette is finishing up a slice of apple pie, cutting at it with the edge of her fork. Her left arm is in a sling under her jacket. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“I’m surprised they let you go so soon.”
They kept her two nights for observation, discharged her the afternoon before, with prescriptions for painkillers and antibiotics. She took a cab back to the hotel, tore up the letter, slept the rest of the day and night through. That morning, she rented another car. The Toyota had been impounded as evidence.
“It might be stiff after it heals, but I can deal with that,” she says. “I have to follow up with a doctor, get the dressing changed, check for infection. That’s it for now. Maybe some PT down the road.”
“Do you have one?”
“What?”
“A doctor.”
“Not yet. I’ll find one.”
“Two nights in the hospital, ambulance, ER. How much will all that cost?”
“I’ll work it out somehow,” Joette says. “Pay them as I can.”
“How are you managing with all this? I don’t mean physically.”
“Haven’t been thinking about it too much. The pills help me sleep. If I have dreams, I don’t remember them.”
“Something to be thankful for.”
Joette sets down her fork. “You’re giving me that look again.”
“Am I? I’m just wondering if I’ll ever know what all this was about.”
“You know most of it.”
“I doubt that. And I’m still trying to figure something else out.”
“What’s that?”
“Who you are now.”
“You asked me that before. I haven’t changed.”
“Then there’s a side of you I’ve never seen, many years as I’ve known you.”
“Could be.”
“That’s your answer?”
“It’s the only one I’ve got,” Joette says.
* * *
Ten p.m. Steering one-handed, she pulls into the motel lot, parks under the dark sign. Plywood is nailed across the office door and crime scene tape is strung in front of the rooms, doorknob to doorknob.
She shuts off the headlights, waits as a car passes, then gets out, walks around to the back patio. More plywood across the broken doors there, more crime scene tape.
There’s just enough moonlight to see by. She takes the vinyl cover off the propane grill, lifts the cast-iron lid. The sports bag is still there. She unzips it, looks at the money, remembers what Danny Boy said: “You earned it.”
Did I?
She feels nothing, looking at the banded bills in the moonlight. Then she zips up the bag again, takes it out, closes the grill and replaces the cover.
The highway is empty in both directions. She stows the bag in the trunk, gets behind the wheel and drives away from there.
FORTY-SEVEN
The next morning, she parks outside Keith’s apartment, taps her horn. Brianna comes out. Joette takes off her sunglasses, nods to the passenger seat.
A curtain moves in the apartment’s front window, Keith looking out.
“How do you feel?” Brianna says when she gets in.
“I’m fine. I just wanted to talk to you alone. How’s Cara?”
“Okay, I think. I hope. It’s hard to tell. She was asking if you were all right. I didn’t want to bring her to the hospital with me. I thought it might upset her, see you like that.”
“That was the right call.”
“I think sometimes kids get over things better than we do. It’s easier for them to forget.”
“Forgetting is good,” Joette says. She takes an envelope from her sling.
“What’s that?” Brianna says.
“A check for twenty thousand. For all you’ve been through.”
“I can’t take that. I owe you already.”
“This isn’t a loan. I did some things, made some choices, that put you and Cara at risk. Keith, too. I’m sorry about that. It was wrong.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes,” Joette says. “It was. Take the money. Use it to find a place to live. Buy whatever Cara needs. Open a bank account, if you don’t already have one. A friend of mine can help you with that.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything. Just take it.”
Brianna puts the envelope in a jacket pocket. “Thank you. This will help a lot.”
“You get into a jam later on, need more, let me know.”
Brianna looks at the apartment, then back at Joette. “Are we okay now? Are we safe?”
“Yes,” Joette says.
* * *
Her mother’s eyes are closed. There’s an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. Joette can’t tell if she’s breathing.
“How long has she been like this?”
“She’s been unresponsive since last night,” Annalisa says. “When she wasn’t any better this morning, we thought we’d better notify you.”
She got the call after leaving Brianna, drove straight to the nursing home. Annalisa and Lourdes met her in the lobby.
“Her vitals weren’t good, and she was having some respiratory discomfort as well,” Lourdes says. “The oxygen’s helping. She’s breathing easier now. And she’s in no pain.”
Joette lays the back of her hand on her mother’s forehead. Her skin is cool.
“We heard what happened to you,” Annalisa says. “It was on the news. Thank God you’re okay. The Lord must have been looking out for you.”
“Maybe He was.”
“The aides are here, if you’d like them to come in.”
“No,” Joette says. “I just want to sit with her for a while.”
Annalisa leaves. Joette takes her mother’s hand. A cloud shifts outside. Sunlight fills the room.
“I think she was waiting for you to get here,” Lourdes says. “I see it all the time. They don’t want to let go until they know their loved ones are safe and close. Tell her you’re okay. That she doesn’t need to worry about you anymore. That she can go in peace.”
Joette feels warm tears on her face.
“There’s nothing you can do now, except be with her,” Lourdes says. “She’s in God’s hands.”
“I don’t want her to go. I’m not ready.”
“She is,” Lourdes says. “You’ve done everything you could for her. Now you can both rest.”
* * *
Joette’s cell phone wakes her, buzzing on the hotel nightstand. She stayed at the nursing home until midnight, sleeping on and off in the chair beside her mother’s bed, lulled by the low hum of the oxygen machine.
The phone screen lights up, shows her the time—3:10 a.m.—and the number of the incoming call. It’s the nursing home.
FORTY-EIGHT
On a cold and sunny morning three weeks later, Joette sits on the fender of her rental car, watching a yellow excavator maneuver in the motel lot. She’s parked on the shoulder, just above the ditch where she almost died.
She can feel the vibration as the excavator backs up, treads clanking, and positions itself. Its long hinged arm swings right to left, and the heavy grapple at the end of it crashes into the side of the building. The front window shatters and collapses.
For a moment, she can see inside the office, the counter, the desk where she sat. Then the grapple’s jaws close on a section of roof, tear it away with a screeching noise, and the ceiling caves in. The arm swings out over a blue construction dumpster and the grapple opens, spilling debris. Dust rises up.
A police cruiser comes down the highway, slows and pulls in b
ehind her car. It’s Noah. He gets out of the cruiser, closes the door, walks toward her. “Thought you might be here.”
“Singh told me,” she says. “I guess it was only a matter of time.”
They watch the grapple slam into the building again. Part of the roof buckles and slides off in one piece, cascading into the parking lot.
He leans against her car door. “If that place could talk.”
Dust floats across the highway toward them, dissipates in the air.
“I’m a little sad to see it go,” he says.
“I’m not.”
“How’s the shoulder? I see you lost the sling.”
“Aches a little, that’s all. Thank you for coming to the funeral.”
“I drove by your mom’s house the other day. The For Sale sign was gone.”
“I took it off the market. I’m staying there until I decide what to do next. I’ll figure it out when I get back.”
“You’re leaving town?”
“Maybe, for a while. For now, at least. I just need to get away, get my head clear.”
She turns to him, waits for him to meet her eyes. “Are we good?” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“I know the pressure all this put on you. I’m sorry for that. And I know you didn’t get all the answers you wanted.”
“Maybe some of them I don’t want after all.”
“Can you live with that?”
“I guess I’ll find out,” he says.
The grapple swings again. The last wall falls slowly in a wave of dust.
“There it goes,” he says. The neon sign is all that’s standing now.
She slides down off the fender. She’s seen enough.
“You’re a good man, Noah. Try to be happy.”
“Easier said.”
“But maybe not as hard as we think,” she says.
* * *
That night she drives down to the ocean, walks out on the fishing pier. The full moon lights a path on the water, stretching into the darkness.
She looks out at the waves, silver in the moonlight. She thinks of Troy and her mother, and Travis Clay, too.
They’re all out there waiting on the other side. My ghosts.
Tomorrow she’ll decide what to do, where to go. Now she’s just tired.
Enough of the night, she thinks. Go home.
The moon behind her, she turns and walks back to her car.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my editor, Josh Kendall, and to Sareena Kamath and everyone else at Mulholland Books/Little, Brown for their hard work and assistance, and to my agent, Robin Rue, for her unflagging support. Thanks also to the many friends, new and old, who brought some light to dark times. Love and respect to all.
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About the Author
Wallace Stroby is an award-winning journalist and the author of eight previous novels, four of which feature Crissa Stone, the professional thief labeled “crime fiction’s best bad girl ever.” His first novel, The Barbed-Wire Kiss, was a Barry Award finalist for best debut novel. A native of Long Branch, New Jersey, he’s a lifelong resident of the Jersey Shore.
Also by Wallace Stroby
Some Die Nameless
The Devil’s Share
Shoot the Woman First
Kings of Midnight
Cold Shot to the Heart
Gone ’Til November
The Heartbreak Lounge
The Barbed-Wire Kiss