When No One Is Watching

by Alyssa Cole

  Sydney looks at me with wide eyes, the ash building up on the end of her cigarette. “Mafia?”

  “Something like that, but a million times less interesting than the movies. I got out before I moved to New York, so I don’t know, maybe this is where all the cool mafia stuff happens.” People glamorize it, but it’d been just another job with no insurance and a low life expectancy when it came down to it. “Anyway, here I was at this fancy office. And I wasn’t stupid or anything. I fit in fine, and I started small. There was a group in my department who always wanted cocaine. And I told them I could get it for them. I’d take their money, buy a little of the good stuff, a little of the not-so-good stuff, and a little of the probably bad stuff. I made a profit, the cokeheads were just happy to have some coke, and all was well and good.”

  “Wow. And here I was thinking you were just a regular degular dude, but Fyodor was trappin’ at the office.” She snort-laughs a cloud of smoke.

  “Yup. And eventually, I realized that I had access to all these people’s bank account information. And maybe I could make some transfers.”

  “Theo!” She slaps the table, eyes wide in disbelief. “You didn’t.”

  “I did. Kim wanted this house and kept saying it was fine if she had to pay for everything, which made me feel like I had to contribute because, I don’t know, toxic masculinity? In retrospect I should have just let her be my sugar mama instead of committing multiple elaborate and unsustainable crimes to get out of a life of committing small sustainable crimes. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, I guess.”

  Sydney laughs, sharply, abruptly, and I’m surprised to find that I can join her.

  “All this to impress some woman who cheated on your ass anyway. I feel that.” She takes a gulp this time when she raises her glass.

  “Yes and no. Part of it was that all that money was sitting there and I knew, intimately, how little work most of these people did to earn it. Kim’s family are the most miserly people ever, and the accounts were held by so many people just like them. Everything was about helping them cheat to get more money, to not pay employees who were owed money, to avoid taxes, and to hoard it because they didn’t ever want to spend what they had.”

  I grit my teeth and look at her, expecting to see judgment, but her expression hasn’t changed much.

  “You got caught,” she says.

  “I triggered some internal system before any transfer went through. Then they started looking into my background. Fired me without prosecuting because they didn’t want to make the company look bad, but my name was blacklisted within the company, with our partners, within the industry’s whisper network.”

  “And Kim?”

  “Didn’t know. Was understanding at first, when she thought I got downsized, but couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just get another great job. She thought I was lazy but apparently never realized I was just a bad liar and a criminal. The former is worse than the latter in her world.”

  Sydney drains the last of her drink and thumps at her chest.

  “My turn.”

  I’d expected more of a reaction, but she seems unfazed by my confession. She grabs the bottle, pours some more scotch for herself, and then tops me off.

  “I was married, like I told you. Mommy never liked Marcus. Told me he had the fingernails of a cheater and a forehead like a billboard. I didn’t listen, of course. He was from a nice family and said all the right things. When we had to move to Seattle for his first job out of grad school, Mommy hated him even more but wished the best for me.”

  “Did he hit you?” I ask, because I need to prepare myself for that particular kind of rage.

  “No. He never hit me. Just . . . I never could do anything right once we got there. I couldn’t find a job because the market sucked.” She raises her glass to me and I raise mine in return. “And his job was so stressful, some kind of start-up that he never wanted to talk about because ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ It started with dinner. Suddenly my food was too spicy or too salty or not healthy enough. Then I wasn’t cleaning the house well enough. Then I wasn’t well-informed enough and he didn’t want to bring me around his colleagues in case I embarrassed him . . .”

  She laughs bitterly. “And then, ‘Hey, you’ve gained some weight.’ ‘No, I would never cheat, stop being paranoid.’ And then, ‘Maybe I did cheat but you’re crazy, we should have you committed.’”

  “Jesus, Sydney. You didn’t deserve that. You know that, right?”

  She gives me a jerky nod.

  “Seriously. You’re beautiful, you’re interesting, and even if he didn’t think so there was no reason for him to treat you badly.”

  She exhales deeply.

  “Thanks. It all feels so silly now compared to everything else. While that was going on, Mommy started having some health problems. She couldn’t work as much. Started falling behind in the water bill payments, the taxes, and she didn’t want to bother me with any of it. I told her everything was fine, and she told me everything was fine, and guess what?”

  “Nothing was fine,” I volunteer.

  She nods. “One day she gets a call saying that she’s in danger of losing the house because she’s racked up back taxes. This person is calling from a program to help people get their debt in control and make sure they don’t lose their homes. She doesn’t want to bother me because she knows I’m not doing well, so she doesn’t even mention it. She doesn’t tell me anything! She just agrees to their terms and conditions because she wants to make sure she doesn’t lose the house, my inheritance. Who does that?”

  A tear starts to slip down her cheek and she brushes it away hard. “Then whaddaya know, a year later her debt has ballooned. The company that was supposed to have prevented this doesn’t know how this happened but they can help. They’re willing to pay off her debt for her. All she has to do is sign the house over to them and the debt will go away. She can stay in the house until . . . until she dies. It’ll be just like the debt never happened. They’ll even give her some money. At that point, she knew things with Marcus were bad. She knew if she could get some money for me, maybe I would leave him. The house wouldn’t get passed down in the family like she’d dreamed, but she wouldn’t have to worry about me paying off her debt because someone else had taken it. And I’d still have someplace to come back to. Sounds legit, right?”

  Her eyes are so filled with hurt, a hurt I understand completely—the pain of grabbing a proverbial hot doorknob, pulling the door open, and not being able to let go as your mother’s bad decisions flambé you in their backdraft.

  “I’m sorry.” I don’t know what to do, so I gently pry away the cigarette that’s burned down to the filter and put it in the ashtray before holding her hand.

  “I came back after the divorce and she didn’t tell me anything then, either.” Her voice is hoarse, breaking every word so I have to lean in to understand her. “She didn’t tell me anything until she got sick, and then she only told me because she realized how they’d fooled her, stolen all her hard work from her so that it added up to less than nothing. She got mad then, and told me, ‘Don’t you let them take my house. Our house. No matter what happens to me.’”

  Sydney’s eyes are unblinking and empty as her gaze meets mine.

  “She’s in the garden. Mommy is in the garden.”

  Chapter 16

  Sydney

  I START SHAKING NOW THAT I’VE SAID IT OUT LOUD—I FEEL like I might shiver myself right out of my seat.

  I can’t believe I’ve told him. I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody. Why him?

  Mostly because he was there, but maybe because he looks so concerned. Maybe because I’m fucking lonely, and he told me that I’m beautiful and held my hand.

  No.

  It’s because this secret has been turning me to ash from the inside out and I’ve hit the I’m not feeling so good, Mr. Stark threshold. If I hadn’t told him, I would have been lost.

  Theo is still holding my hand, and I expect his grip to slac
ken but it gets tighter. “Hey. Whoa. What do you mean she’s in the garden?”

  “Um.” My throat tightens painfully and I try to breathe through it so I can speak the words that have tied this house I love so much around my neck like an albatross. “She got really sick and—and she didn’t want to be a bother anymore. The money she’d gotten from the people who stole the house was gone so fast with all the medical bills. Her health insurance was shit. My savings went like that.” I snap, or try to but my hands are shaking too much. “We were watching her favorite movie in her bed. Con Air. Con Air! God, Mommy has such bad taste in movies. If I would have known—”

  I suck in a breath, caught off guard as I think about the last night with her. How I’d snuggled up next to her too-thin body and kept cracking jokes about how bad the movie was—how she hadn’t told me to stop interrupting, like she usually did.

  “That’s an underrated classic,” Theo says calmly, like this is a first date and we’re making small talk. “I grew out a mullet after watching it.”

  I sniffle and swallow the tears and the snot and the pain. “She told me she loved me when the credits rolled. She told me that if she died before we were able to get the house back legally, I couldn’t let anyone know because she wouldn’t be able to rest knowing she’d failed me, and any kids I had, and any kids they had. Generational wealth all lost because of one mistake.

  “I found her bottle of painkillers empty the next morning. And she was . . . she was . . . There couldn’t be a death certificate, right? Then they’d know. I buried her in the garden that night.”

  It hurts thinking about her face so still, her body so . . . empty. About wrapping her up in her favorite blanket.

  I jam my fingertips against my forearm and rub—I remember how cold and slack she was beneath my fingers. I can’t stop feeling that memory.

  Theo breaks the silence. “You moved her by yourself?”

  “Yeah.” He doesn’t need to know about Drea. After that night, we never mentioned it again. And I told her if anyone ever asked, I would never, ever take her down with me, would deny it even if she tried to confess. But it’s been so heavy on my soul. And Drea’s, so I thought. But there’s that check. That check with the name of the company that tricked my mother in the “issued by” area: Good Neighbors LLC.

  The lawyer told me that sometimes companies like this give money to a person who helps them convince their marks to sign the house away. But Drea couldn’t have . . . she’d never . . .

  Theo stands up and his sneakers squeak on the tile behind me. Maybe he’s going to call the police.

  I hear the fridge door open and the snikt of a bottlecap being twisted off. He places a bottle of water in front of me, sits back down, pulling his chair slightly closer to me. His right arm is along the back of my chair, and his gaze is locked on my face.

  “Drink the water.” He waits until I pick up the bottle and take a sip, urges me to take another, then says, “So your mom . . . died. And you buried her in the community garden?”

  I nod, waiting for him to tell me the thing that keeps me up at night: what an awful, evil daughter I am. How I failed her. Buried her like a dog, and didn’t even give her soul the chance to have her memory honored and celebrated. I’m not religious, but I wonder all the time if I’ve somehow damned her along with myself.

  “Where in the garden?” Theo asks.

  The words fall out of my mouth. “Behind the shed. There’s a strip of sunflowers. She’s under them.”

  I can’t bring myself to look at him in the long silence that follows, but glance at him from the corner of my eye when I hear him shift in his seat.

  “Well, I think that’s nicer than being in a cemetery somewhere with a bunch of strangers. You buried her someplace she loved.” He sighs deeply and smooths both hands down his beard, but then nods. “It’s illegal as fuck, but I’m not exactly one to judge that. I can’t imagine how hard this has been for you, going there every day, not able to tell anyone. How unfair it was that you were pushed to make that decision.” His gaze rests on me, and there’s no judgment among the various emotions in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Sydney.”

  It’s the last sorry that breaks me. He’s said it a few times, but this one finally sinks in. I’ve gotten so used to apologizing for being too weak to carry my own burdens—I don’t know if anyone’s ever apologized to me for how heavy they are, even if they couldn’t do anything to lighten the load.

  I put the water bottle down and drop my head to the tabletop, one swift motion to hide the fissure of pain his words open in me. A silent sob chokes me up, but the bands of fear and panic that have been squeezing me for months fall away.

  I can breathe. I take in a deep shuddering breath, and when I exhale it’s like a dam breaking.

  He rubs my back and lets me cry; the tears pool on the table and cool against my heated face, but I don’t stop.

  At some point he slips his arm through mine and half carries me to the couch as I sob and sob and sob, but for the first time in a long time, it feels something like relief. I keen into his chest, and he just cradles me.

  I don’t even care if he reports me to the police after this, really. Right now, it feels good to be held without judgment, without feeling weak or evil or like I let Mommy down, even if just for a few minutes.

  I don’t know how much time has gone by when the sobs taper off, but he’s still holding me, still rubbing his hand over my back.

  “The people who scammed her out of the house don’t know,” he says. His voice is rough and low.

  “No. They keep calling to check in and I keep making excuses. But I’m starting to feel crazy, like they’re watching me. Like they’re gonna find out and then come and take everything. And the garden, today . . .” A wave of full-body terror seizes me as I remember the breathing on the other end of the phone.

  No. They would have just arrested me, though that seems inevitable.

  “If they start digging for a foundation. They’ll find her. It’ll all be over. The house will be taken. I’ll be in jail.”

  The well of panic I’ve just cried out starts to fill again.

  “Okay. Okay. Don’t worry about that for now. It usually takes a while for a place to get building permits and all that jazz.” He’s still speaking as if this is a perfectly normal situation, and it helps to calm me. Maybe it isn’t normal, but it is what it is.

  “I don’t think these people are exactly bound by the rules,” I say. “The deed they had was approved, but it was fake. I know it was. The supposed new owner of the plot got so mad when I questioned him, like how people blow up when they’re trying to hide something and want to scare you from the truth. And there’s nothing I can do.”

  We sit in silence. Theo’s heart is beating fast even though he seems outwardly calm, and I remember him grinning at me and telling me his own secret.

  Theo is a liar. A grifter, with possible ties to the mob. He’s a man I’ve known for just a few days.

  I’ve entrusted him with the one thing that can destroy what’s left of my life and possibly take out Drea, too.

  “Please don’t tell anyone,” I say, not nearly as upset as I should be because my body is limp like a wet washcloth. I’ll probably be angrier with myself tomorrow. But I’ve felt so heavy for so long, and now I’m light, like I could float away from all these problems for just a little bit.

  “Go to sleep, Sydney.” Theo brushes his hand over my braids, then exerts pressure, holding me against him. It’s this stillness that makes me realize I’m shaking.

  “But—”

  “Just go to sleep,” he says gently.

  I do.

  WHEN I WAKE up a few hours later, I’m stretched out on the couch and the throw blanket from Target that usually rests on one of the arms is tucked around me. I sit up, head throbbing and face swollen, and find another bottle of water, some Advil, and a cold compress from the freezer sitting on the coffee table. They’ve been there for a while, judging from the conde
nsation.

  I consider that maybe this was a farewell gift before he went and called the police—though, maybe they would have been here by now? Unless they’re at the garden . . .

  But he isn’t exactly the kind of person who would want to invite the attention of the police, either.

  I palm the two pills and take a sip of the water to wash them down, then pick up the cold compress and stare at it for a minute. This is some thoughtful shit.

  I lay it over my swollen eyes, but when a memory flashes in my mind from that horrible night in the garden, I pull it off, throw it back onto the coffee table, and go to the kitchen to look for another cigarette.

  There’re other things I should be doing. Going to the police myself, to explain what happened? Running off to Belize, which has no extradition treaty but does have those cute manatees? I could create a new life as a never-married manatee tour guide whose mother is absolutely fine but won’t come to visit, and no one would ever know about my past.

  I giggle at the thought. The giggles are a little wild even though my thoughts are surprisingly calm given the situation I’m in.

  That’s what happens when life keeps throwing shit at you—the last months, hell, even this last week, have been enough to push someone over the edge. But I’m still here. And now that I can think clearly, I’m starting to suspect that some majorly fucked-up shit is going on, besides the fact that I had to dig my own mother’s grave.

  I’ll think it through after another cigarette.

  I’m fidgeting with the packet’s flip top when there’s a hard knock at the apartment door.

  I feel a spurt of anger that I won’t even get to enjoy this last drag in peace before going to jail, where I’ll have to pay who knows what price if I really need a hit of nicotine.