by Frankie Rose
“You look like you’ve been sleeping rough, Avery. Don’t you own a hair brush anymore?” I’ve been in my mother’s presence for all of thirty minutes and she’s already criticized my jacket, my teeth and now my hair. She also said my flushed cheeks are unladylike. It’s minus twelve degrees, so I don’t know what she expects me to do about my rosy cheeks. Or why they are unladylike in the first place.
She is also disapproving of my hand-holding with Luke, although that disapproval is of the silent variety. Pursed lips, narrowed eyes, sharp as razor blades, whenever he isn’t looking. I already want to slap her. Laney offered to let her sleep in their spare room but my mother none-too-politely declined, saying that she needed room to spread out her work and the Reid’s place just wasn’t big enough. As a result, she is spending two hundred and eighty dollars a night at the Cliffson’s bed and breakfast, paying for all five bedrooms, because she refuses to have anyone else stay there while she is.
She’s never really liked Breakwater, wanted to escape as soon as she and my dad were done with college, but my grandparents on my dad’s side both fell sick at the same time, and naturally my dad wanted to stick around. Mom always held it against him. Dad was nursemaid, cook and cleaner to my grandparents for four years while they slowly deteriorated, until Amanda had insisted they go into assisted living. Gran died two weeks later of a heart attack, and then Pops six months after her from pneumonia. My dad hadn’t been present to say goodbye to either of them. And all my mother could say was, “It’s for the best, Maxwell. At least now you can get full time work and use that teaching degree of yours.” She’d said teaching degree like it was a dirty word. Like my dad’s job hadn’t carried them for years while she was studying law and putting in crazy hours, never at home. My dad had just smiled and taken it. He was a saint like that.
“I’m not staying in that police station any longer than I have to. I’m going to choke down the swill the diner tries to pass off as coffee and read over these notes.”
Luke shoots daggers at my mom and parks up Brandon’s beater in the lot in front of the diner. He doesn’t even need telling; Amanda St. French does not open her own car doors. He gets out and opens her door, gesturing grandly for her as she climbs out and teeters on her ridiculously impractical, tall heels.
“Avery, give me your cell phone. Mine doesn’t get reception here. Tell whoever’s on the front desk at the station to call when they’re ready for me,” she says through the window. Since she’s technically paying for it, it is kind of her cell phone. I buzz down my window and hand it over. “You and I need to have a little chat later,” she says under her breath. Her blonde, immaculate hair, down to her mid-back, swings from side to side as she manages to power walk through the snow into Jerry’s diner. Luke turns and looks at me, hands held out. What the hell?
I get out of the back seat where I was relegated and clamber into the front. Luke climbs in, still shaking his head. “She’s a real piece of work. I don’t remember her being like that when I was a kid.”
“Yeah, well she was a lot nicer to people she thought she could get something from. Maybe your mom’s position on the PTA bought her some brownie points or something.”
“Yeah. Or something.”
We check in at the police station but they won’t let us see Brandon. Apparently Chloe was given hell for letting us see him yesterday.
“That Cosgrove bitch chewed my ear off for twenty minutes,” she laughs. “I think I’ll be copping traffic duty for the foreseeable.”
“Sorry, Chlo.” Luke looks beyond contrite; traffic duty must really suck. Chloe shrugs it off. “Ahh, it’s okay. Anything for you kids.” She reaches out and plucks something from my jacket. “Stray hair,” she says, shrugging. You guys are welcome to come over to my place for dinner tomorrow night if you like? The place certainly isn’t New York standards, but it’s warm and I really know how to fry a steak. What d’you think?”
Dinner is the last thing on my mind. Luke accepts, saying we’ll confirm once we know what’s happening with Brandon. On the way out of the station, Agent Cosgrove passes us in the hallway. She locks eyes with me and I swear icicles form on my breath. Back at Luke’s house, his sister’s home and squeals like a banshee when we walk through the door. She launches herself at him, grinning from ear to ear. They share so many familiar features—same dark hair, dark eyes, quirky way of smiling. It’s impossible to ignore that they are siblings. Even though she’s Luke’s younger sister, Emma was still two years above me in high school. She was popular, a cheerleader, but always a lot kinder than the other girls. She grins when she sees me, drawing me in for a big hug. “Good to see you, Iris,” she says, giving me a genuine smile. “I trust my brother’s been taking good care of you?”
I give him a look, screwing up my nose, pretending to think about that. Luke is mock-offended until I say, “You know what, he has been taking good care of me. The best.” The curve of his smile seems to promise an extra special taking care of later, which makes my cheeks burn.
The telephone call from my mother comes at midday, only three hours after we dropped her off. Luke holds out the Reid’s old school Bakelite corded handset like my mom is liable to bite him down the phone.
“Hello?”
“They’ve got no grounds to keep him.” She dives straight in. No hello, nothing. “He’ll be out this time tomorrow. They’ve got a warrant to search his house but they’re not going to find anything. I’ve advised Brandon he might have grounds to sue, but the bull-headed man won’t listen to—”
I hold my hand up, like she can actually see me. “Wait, so he’s not going to prison? They can’t pin anything on him?”
Mom’s frustrated sigh rattles down the phone. “That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”
Relief surges through me, powerful and overwhelming. “So what does that mean? Do they still think Dad was responsible?”
“I don’t know, Avery. That’s not why I’m here. I came as counsel to your uncle Brandon and I’ve done my job. Any other elements pertaining to this case are not my concern.”
I’ve been calm about my mother’s overblown hatred for my father for so long now that I almost accept this statement from her. But my clenched jaw and my bubbling fury won’t let it slide this time. She’s unbelievable. “How the hell can you say that? You know they’ve got evidence that could prove Dad is innocent, right? Shouldn’t you want to try and take a look at that evidence? You’re a terrible mother but you’re an excellent lawyer. You just got this thing with Brandon pretty much ironed out in less than three hours. Don’t you think you might be able to work the same magic?”
My mother snorts. “You’re not a kid anymore, Avery. There’s no such thing as magic. There’s black and there’s white. Guilty and innocent. Your uncle Brandon is innocent, which is why I can ‘iron out’ his problems in under three hours. No amount of pouring over federal files is going to make your father any less guilty.”
“You’re unbelievable!” I grip hold of the phone so hard it creaks, like it might shatter any second.
“No, I’m a realist. I know what your father was like. And I also know what that new boyfriend of yours is like, too. I told you to stay away from him, didn’t I? Has he explained why your father used to mentor him yet?” I’m trembling with rage, so angry I can’t speak. My mother ignores my silence. “I’m sure he hasn’t. Let me just say this—if he had been two years older when he did what he did, he sure as hell wouldn’t be a cop right now. He’d be on the sex offender’s register and he wouldn’t even be able to get a job bagging groceries. Now you listen to me, Avery, you stay away from him!”
“JUST SHUT THE HELL UP!” The outburst rings through the Reid’s residence. Everyone falls silent. Luke stands and walks across the kitchen, concern written all over his face. Pure terror washes through me as my mother’s words ring out loud and clear in my ears. Sex offender’s register. What the hell did he do? For once, my mother is quiet on the other end of the phone. I draw in a deep breath an
d say what I should have said a long time ago. “You can’t control my life when you want nothing to do with it, Amanda. When all you want to do is throw money at me like I’m a problem you can buy off and make disappear. I’m glad that you’re here, that you’ve helped Brandon, but from here on out, I don’t want to see you. I don’t want your money, and I certainly don’t need you interfering in my love life when you can’t even be honest enough with your own partner to admit that I damn well exist!”
I slam the handset down so hard that the phone falls off the wall and bounces off the counter, cracking open and spilling wires everywhere like guts. That’s how I feel right now: raw, torn open, exposed. My insides on the outside.
Luke stares at the broken phone, his hands twitching at his sides. He looks nervous. “What was that about?”
I can’t think. I’m wound too tight to say anything but those three words—the words threatening to take the one good thing in my life and destroy it forever. “Sex offender’s register?”
Laney shoots to her feet, her hand covering her mouth. Luke reels back, his face draining of all color. “What?” he says breathlessly.
“My mom…she said you should be on the sex offender’s register. She said that’s why my dad was mentoring you. Was she telling the truth?”
Pain, an awful, gut wrenching pain, flashes across Luke’s face. He doesn’t need to answer me, but he does. “Yes.”
The single word is like a punch to my gut. I stumble back, hands reaching out for the tabletop to support myself. “What…” I can’t even finish. I want to ask him what happened, what he did. But the knowledge will destroy me, I’m sure of it.
“Avery, wait. It’s really not what you think. I swear, if you’ll just listen—”
I pull myself together and rush past him, straight into his bedroom. I can’t, I just can’t. I’m throwing my few items of clothing into my bag when Laney enters in after me.
“It’s not as simple as any of that,” she says quietly, wringing her hands. He was twelve years old. His father…”
Oh God. Twelve years old. Who is he? Who is this guy I’ve grown up around my whole life? The guy who watched over me from afar for so long. The guy who I slept with. Who I stupidly let myself fall in love with. My stomach twists violently, and suddenly I’m shoving past Luke’s mom and running for the bathroom. My knees explode with pain as I fall to the floor and bring up everything I’ve eaten today. I throw up until my eyes are streaming tears.
I don’t go back into Luke’s room. I walk straight back into the kitchen and pick up my keys, ignoring Luke, who’s still frozen to the spot, staring blindly at the shattered telephone on the floor. I bite back a sob when I see the endless sorrow in his eyes. He looks up at me finally—pain, regret, anger, fear—and that’s my breaking point. I race out of the kitchen, out of the front door, fumbling with my keys before I eventually manage to get into Brandon’s beater and tear away.
Twenty Nine
Home