by Laura Wiess
“Rowan,” she says impatiently. “Please.”
So I go, irritated, sending Eli a quick, regretful smile before I slip into the back and linger out of sight by the cleaning bins.
I hear the bell go off as the door opens, feel the rush of cool air and the sound of traffic—
“No dogs allowed,” Eva says, and blows her nose. “Sorry.”
I forgot about Daisy. I bite my lip, hoping Eli doesn’t give me up.
“No problem,” he says easily, and then, “Here’s my ticket, Pay. We’ll wait out here.”
“Okay.” Her voice is listless. “Uh, I’m picking these up.” Pause. “Eli said I left a pin on my dress when I dropped it off.”
“Let’s take a look,” Eva says noncommittally, and suddenly the line of clothes starts to move, whooshing past me to a sudden stop. “Here’s one.” The line flows again, plastic cleaning bags whispering as they pass, and then stops. “Yes, here you are.”
I hear an envelope being torn open. Peek my head out from behind the bins and look straight at Eli, who is standing outside with Daisy at the edge of the plate-glass window and gazing right back in at me. He cocks his head and gives me a questioning smile.
Mortified, I shrug and grab a pair of pants from the closest bin, pretending to check the tag pinned on them, hoping he has no idea what I’m actually doing back here—lurking—and pretending to be very, very busy.
“Good,” Payton says, her voice thick with tears. “I thought I lost it.” Sniffle. “Shit. I don’t have a tissue. Oh, thanks. What do I owe you?”
“Nothing for the dress,” Eva says after a long, silent moment. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Pause. “The suit is ten fifty.”
I hear the register open and change being made. I risk another peek out at the front window but Eli is gone.
I scowl and fling the pants back into the bin.
“That boy out there with the dog,” Eva says casually. “Isn’t he, uh . . . ?”
My ears perk up.
“Oh right, I guess I should have known. Nothing’s really free, is it? Yeah, that’s Eli from the video and no, he’s not my boyfriend,” Payton says in a clipped and angry recitation, as if she’s answered this question a hundred times already. “He’s just a friend. And yeah, he was on the overpass that day. And no, I wasn’t sleeping with him and cheating on Corey. I didn’t even know him before this.” Her voice rises. “And yeah, I am sick of people judging and asking me stupid fucking questions and then getting pissed when I don’t answer because it’s none of their business and I don’t owe them a goddamn thing. So hey, thanks for the free cleaning. Have a great day.”
I hear the rustle of bags, the motion bell go off, the door open and close again.
Eva comes into the back and sees me standing there with my mouth hanging open.
“Wow,” I say, shocked. “What was that about?”
She shakes her head and stuffs her crumpled tissue back into the sleeve of her cardigan. “Do you see now why I didn’t want you involved?”
I have no idea what she’s talking about and it must show because she gives me an impatient look, her watery, bloodshot eyes squinty behind her glasses, and says, “You’re Nicky’s daughter and she’s very angry. What if she blames your father for—”
“No,” I say. “Eli wouldn’t have brought her here if she did.” I stop. Would he have? Why would he have? “No.”
“You don’t know what she’s thinking, Rowan. Her son was murdered and the police didn’t save him.” She catches my hurt look and holds up a gnarled hand. “Listen, she’s a grieving mother. Her life has been torn apart. The world isn’t fair anymore and there’s no making sense of it. She’s probably out there right now raging about how wrong it is that an old misery like me is still breathing while her beautiful baby boy isn’t. Trust me.” The tissue reappears. “There’s a lot more to grief than just crying and wearing black. You don’t go to the funeral, pack up a few mementos and it’s over.” Motioning for me to follow her, she goes back out front and parks herself on the stool behind the counter. “Has anyone you loved ever passed away?”
“What?” How did we switch from Payton to me? What kind of conversation is this, anyway? “Uh, my grandparents on my father’s side died about two years ago.” I can’t just stand here so I reach under the counter and pull out, yes, a pair of old Mr. Hanson’s pants to finish pinning them. “Pop-Pop had a heart attack maybe three weeks after Grammy died in the hospital from pneumonia.” I stop, wondering how much she wants to know. “He was taking the garbage cans out to the street. By the time somebody noticed him lying there and called my father it was too late to save him.” I reach under the counter into the box of safety pins and pull one out. “It was sad. My father was . . .” I stare down at the pin and the ticket stub. “They were really close.”
“I lost my son,” Eva says softly. “Forty-two years ago, when he was four. And I can tell you now that not a day goes by when I don’t think of him, and miss him.”
“I’m sorry,” I say awkwardly, gazing out at the parking lot and wishing desperately for a customer to come in and interrupt us.
“Thank you. After all of this time it still has the power to make me tear up.” She wipes her eyes and stuffs the crumpled tissue into her pocket, plucking a fresh one from the box under the counter. “We grow up believing that bad things don’t happen to good people . . . but sometimes they do. It’s a hard truth to accept, that life is not fair.”
“There’s a cheery thought,” I mutter, scowling down at my pinning.
“And grief is such a difficult maze of emotions,” she says, continuing as if she doesn’t hear me. “It’s funny, I remember the stages as if it were yesterday: shock, denial, numbness, fear, anger, depression, and finally acceptance, understanding and moving on. Although I’m not sure moving on is the right phrase for it.”
“Why not?” I like the sound of moving on best, of putting all the depressing stuff behind you and getting on with your life. I’d like to do that right now, as a matter of fact.
“Because it suggests leaving your loved one behind and I don’t think you do that,” she says, knotting her arthritic fingers together and gazing out the window. “You learn to live with the loss and when you’re ready, you go on. You carry their memory with you forever.” She glances at me, face grave. “That young woman, Payton, has a very difficult journey in front of her, and she’ll never be the same. Grief . . .” She shakes her head. “You can’t hide from it. There is no over, under or around it. No avoiding. It will stay until you make your way through it.” She squares her thin shoulders. “It’s the only way to heal and find happiness again. God bless her, I hope she can do it.”
“Well sure, yeah, of course,” I say, at a loss. Eva, sticking up for Payton after she got told off? Why, because she lost a kid, too? I don’t know. Why is it so quiet in here? Where are all the customers?
I glance at the clock, sweating. Forty-five more minutes to go.
I’ll never make it.
“I have a question,” I hear myself say loudly, tweezing up the polyester pants and holding them out in front of me. “Not to change the subject or anything, but why are Mr. Hanson’s pockets always damp?”
She blinks and her expression eases. “Isn’t it horrendous? I’m one step from having Terence burn a big hole in them and giving the old lech twenty dollars to get a new pair.”
“I’d donate to that,” I say, pinning the ticket stub on his waistband and balling them up for the bin.
“Rowan,” she says as I start toward the back.
I stop. “Yes?”
“Your father . . . He hasn’t been in lately. How is he taking all of this?”
“Okay,” I say automatically, but to my horror, my eyes fill with tears.
“I see,” she says quietly, and nods as if confirming something to herself. “Well, please tell him that he has my support and not to be a stranger.”
“I will,” I mumble, and escape into the back.
<
br /> And I mean to give him the message, I really do, but Nadia texts me on the walk home about a party she wants me to go to Friday night. Her excitement is as contagious as always and by the time we finish making plans I’m thinking about who’s going to be there, what I’m going to wear and if I can sleep over her house, because that means we can stay out a lot later, since her parents never wait up for us to get in.
I run up the front lawn to the porch and into the house.
Finally, something good is happening.
Chapter 10
“He’s beautiful,” I say in a loud whisper, leaning against Nadia’s shoulder and gazing up at her. “Oh my God, I’m so serious.” I drain the rest of my beer, only spilling a little down the front of my V-neck top. “Crap.” I blot it with the back of my hand. “Anyway, you didn’t see him except in that video. I saw him in person, and trust me”—I slap my wet hand over my heart, give her a solemn, owl-eyed nod—“oh . . . my . . . God.”
“Really,” Nadia drawls, giving me an interested look and shifting away so that I suddenly list and have to regain my balance. “You never told me you met him.”
I laugh and say in an airy voice, “Well, I don’t tell you every thing, you know.” And then I clamp my mouth shut because I wasn’t supposed to tell her that.
“Oh yeah, since when?” she says, raising an eyebrow in cool amusement like she thinks I’m only kidding. “So what else haven’t you told me?”
“Well, um . . .” I blink, thinking hard, and slowly a smile dawns. “Oh, no you don’t,” I say, laughing and poking her in the shoulder. “That was a trap so I would tell my secrets. Why don’t you tell me yours, instead?”
“Because I don’t have any secrets from you,” she says, tossing back her long blond hair and gazing with studied nonchalance around the room. “Anyway, whatever. Did you know Justin was here?”
“No, where?” I crane my neck and spot him over by the keg at the same moment he spots me. He lifts his chin in brief greeting and goes back to hitting on some girl.
“Good thing you don’t like him anymore,” Nadia says, giving me a sideways look.
“Hmm.” I stare at him a moment, trying to decide, and finally shrug because I can’t remember why I thought I liked him in the first place. “Eh.”
Nadia snorts.
“What?” I ask, tilting my plastic cup up again to catch the last drop of beer and lowering it again, frowning. “I want another beer.”
“That’s what, your sixth?” she says.
“Fifth, and what are you, counting?” I say, and give her a friendly hip-bump. “This is the first fun I’ve had in like, a month. Seriously, you don’t know how bad it’s been at my house ever since Corey took that header.” I know I’m not supposed to bring it up but it just comes out.
Nadia snickers.
“No, quit it, it’s not funny,” I say, but her laughing is making me laugh and I don’t even know why. “My father’s totally sinking into this black pit of despair and my mother’s running crazy cooking all this stuff to tempt him to eat and trying to talk to him and all.” I hiccup, laughter fading. “It not funny. I’m so mad.” My voice gets gravelly. “Stupid Justin. I never should have cut school for him.” I wipe my eyes and glare across the room at the back of his ugly head. “I just want things to go back the way they were. Happy. Everything was fine and everybody was happy.”
“No offense, but this is starting to get old, Row,” she says absently, smiling across the room at Brett, who’s lounging by the pool table. “I mean it’s not like that psycho guy and his kid were family or anything. You need to just put it behind you and move on.”
“No kidding,” I mutter, but it’s easier said than done.
“So you’re okay here, right?” she asks, smoothing her slinky black shirt down over her flat stomach. “Because Brett’s—”
“Go,” I drone, rolling my eyes and giving her a light shove in his direction. “I’m gonna get another beer.”
“Last one?” she says, pausing and looking back at me. “Seriously, I’m not dragging you up to my room tonight. If you pass out, you’re sleeping where you fall.”
“I’ll be fine, Mom.” I laugh as she gives me the finger and saunters over to Brett, then look into my empty cup and sigh. “It’s just you and me, kid.”
I weave through the crowd toward the keg, only bumping into two people and ignoring Justin and the girl; fill my cup; and head back toward the stairs. This place, this basement, is better than my living room, with a pool table, fireplace, bar, enormous flat-screen TV, kickass sound system and dimmer lights.
Not to mention the hot tub outside on the deck.
“That’s gonna be trouble,” I mutter, cracking myself up, and ease down onto one of the carpeted steps to upstairs. I can see everyone coming or going from here and although I know Eli probably isn’t going to show up, probably wasn’t even invited, you never know.
I really want to see him again.
I pull out my phone, go on Facebook and send him a friend request.
At least I think it was him. I don’t know, my eyes are bleary and all those Elis listed kind of got away from me.
I watch Nadia and Brett for a while—they really are good together—and when they finally head past me up the stairs holding hands, Nadia pauses and says, “Everything good?”
“Yes, Mom,” I yes, rolling my eyes.
She snorts, says they’ll be back and then they’re gone.
I finish my beer and get another. Get stopped by a drunk junior dancing alone and sway along with him until he sticks his sweaty face in mine and with a sly smile says, “Your old man offed that baby, right?” like it’s somehow our little secret.
Astonishment gives way to rage and my hand swings round to slap him, only I’m still holding a full cup of beer. The golden amber sails out in a wave that not only splashes an arc across the front of me but explodes over him when the plastic cup connects with the side of his stupid face, collapsing into shards against his jaw.
He staggers back, gaping, hits the debris-covered coffee table and goes over, knocking garbage everywhere and landing across the laps of two guys and a girl sitting on the couch, who immediately shove him off to the floor and give me really dirty looks.
I stare back at them through a blur of tears, heart pounding so loud I can’t even hear the music, then turn, dropping my smashed cup, and reel blindly up the stairs.
My father didn’t kill anyone.
I make it up to the main floor and look around. “Nadia?” The house is big, noisy and confusing. Or maybe it’s me, because no matter which way I walk, everything is still out of focus and unfamiliar.
There are twenty people in the bathroom line but none of them are Nadia.
I squeeze past them and keep looking.
There’s a crowd doing body shots in the dining room and some other stuff I don’t want to know about in the den. When I finally get to the staircase leading up to the bedrooms it seems a mile high and all of a sudden I just don’t have it in me.
“Waiting for me?” some guy says, sliding a chunky arm around me and pulling me close. His chin is bristly and his mouth sloppy wet, sliming my chin. I twist my head and dig an elbow into his ribs, prying myself free.
“Get off of me,” I say, shoving my tangled hair from my eyes and glaring at him. “Asshole.” I stagger away, bouncing off walls because the floors keep tilting and I can’t walk straight. Once I make it to the living room there’s nowhere left to go but out the front door, so I do. I pause on the porch, fumble out my phone and with trembling fingers call Nadia, listening as it goes straight to voice mail. “Nad, it’s”—I squint at my watch—“a quarter to three. Where are you? I’m out front waiting. Come on.”
Hang up, shivering in the cool night air, and wait.
And wait.
Text, I’ll meet you at your house. Call me.
And wait.
“Fine,” I say, and shoving my phone in my pocket, I lurch down the middle of the s
hadowy, deserted side street toward the center of town.
It’s going to be a long walk.
Chapter 11
A lean, scruffy-looking cat darts across a driveway ahead of me.
A night bird trills, sleepy, disturbed.
The streetlights hum.
My stumbling footsteps are the only sound of human life.
Just getting to Main Street seems to take forever.
The cool air clears my head some but I know I’m not sober.
I never should have left the party.
I should have crawled up those stairs and banged on every door until I found her.
Or sat on Brett’s car until they came out.
Walking is a stupid idea.
I lurch onto Main Street, which is eerily still and silent, feeling very exposed out here in the open like this. How far to her development? A mile? And then another half mile in to her house?
God, I won’t get there till four in the morning.
I hug myself and shiver.
My father says that something like two-thirds of crimes like sexual assaults and rape happen at night. I glance behind me, heart pounding, see nothing but long, dark shadows and walk faster. What if somebody’s watching me? No, what if that beer-drenched guy who called my father a murderer is really pissed and following me?
I pull my phone out of my pocket and hold on to it.
Maybe I should call home and ask my father to come pick me up, even though I’ll be grounded for wandering Main Street in the wee hours of the morning reeking of alcohol when I’m supposed to be at Nadia’s fast asleep. I can hear his lecture now, asking me how someone so smart could do something so stupid, telling me that this is how girls disappear without a trace and their nude, beaten and bloated bodies are found later by some poor homeless guy searching for empty cans along the weedy side of the road.
I glance behind me.
On the other hand, he always said I should call him if I needed a ride, no matter what.
But then I’d have to explain why I’m not at Nadia’s, where I was and where I left her, which will get her in trouble, too.