As I pulled it wide, I immediately heard a ruckus coming from the dining room. I ran down the short hallway and peered in.
“Get out of here, Beth,” Viola said. “Now!”
I froze in place. I was finally witnessing Viola with her gun drawn.
Sixteen
The furniture had been upturned. Though there were only tables and chairs in the dining area, none of them were upright or in their normal places. I couldn’t see into the kitchen on the other side of the far wall, but I hoped it hadn’t also been in the path of destruction.
“Viola, what’s going on?” I said, though it was pretty easy to figure out.
“Get out of here, Beth,” she repeated.
The gun was aimed at Ellen. She was curled into a ball on the floor but held a lamp as if she wanted to throw it at Viola. I had a lamp just like it in my room.
“No, no,” I said as I registered a scratch on the side of Viola’s face. I stepped toward Ellen. She turned the lamp my direction.
“I’ll shoot her,” Viola said. “She’s out of control.”
Ellen snarled, just like any junkie coming down, probably.
“Why don’t we call Dr. Powder,” I said. “Or I’ll go get him if he’s hard to reach by phone. Don’t shoot her, Viola. No matter what she does, don’t shoot her.”
Truthfully, I didn’t think she would. She was just using the gun as a threat to stop Ellen from continuing the destruction she’d begun.
Still, though, I knew you were never supposed to aim a gun unless you truly thought you would use it. It was a Mill rule, one I’d learned when she showed me the gun she kept holstered at her ankle. Unfortunately, Mill always thought she might need to use her gun, or maybe wanted to.
“I don’t know who you are,” Ellen said. “I don’t know who either of you are! I need help. I need … something. Help me! Get me out of here!”
I put my hand up, signaling her to stop.
“I tried all that,” Viola said. “She’s not listening.”
“Maybe if two people tell her, she won’t be afraid?” I said as I looked at Viola.
Viola sighed as a drip of blood from the scratch on her face rolled down over her jaw to her neck. “Go for it.”
“Ellen, you’re in Benedict, Alaska, a halfway house. You were convicted of…” I looked at Viola, but she was only glaring at the scared woman in the corner, gun still pointed, so I punted. “Drug possession and a slew of other things. Does that part make sense to you?”
She squinted hard my direction. “I don’t remember that.”
“Of course you don’t, you were strung out, big-time. But that’s what happened. You were sent to Benedict to get straightened out.”
“Not a recovery facility?” Ellen said. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Viola?” I said. “Why is she here and not somewhere else?”
“Because she failed too many times in Anchorage. They booted her out of town. She can only go back if I give permission or if she swims. And it’s a cold, cold swim.”
“Okay, Ellen, if you have any memory left, does this make sense?”
She shook her head hard.
“Are you sure?” I said.
She snarled again. It was worse than some of the wild bear noises I’d heard.
“Ellen?” I said.
“I’m dying here. I need a fix, bad.”
It was my turn to shake my head. I wasn’t going to lie. “No fixes here. This is Benedict. We don’t have anything like that close by. You’re going to have to do this the hard way, I’m afraid.”
I did wonder where Orin got his weed.
“Then I’m going to die,” Ellen said. “I’m going to die.”
I shrugged. “Then so be it.” She shot me a look with wild eyes. I continued. “Or you can battle like you’ve never battled before and finally get yourself cleaned up. Your choice.” I looked at Viola and back at Ellen. “Or she can just shoot you—and she will if you continue to mess with her stuff. You want Viola to just put you out of your misery?”
I really hoped she wouldn’t say yes, but for the longest moment, I thought she might.
“No” was all she said.
“Then you have to get up to your room and stay there until you’re through it. Worse women than you have made it. You will, too, if you want to,” I said.
Tears started rolling down her gray face. “I don’t think I can walk.”
“We’ll help you,” I said. “But you have to behave.”
She bit her bottom lip so hard that tiny blood bubbles formed around her teeth.
It took more convincing—we had to get her to put the lamp down and let us lift her up. But we did get her upstairs and into the shower. Viola got her cleaned up and I changed her bedding and aired out her room. I filled a few water bottles and grabbed a couple of apples from the kitchen, which seemed to have been spared from damage.
We put Ellen, her eyes still big and terrified, into bed, though sitting up. I didn’t know if she’d decided to obey us or was just too tired to fight anymore. She had calmed down enough to stay on the bed, but it was going to be a rough night.
“Should we lock her in?” I asked Viola.
“Nah. If she gets out and tries to run, she’ll die of exposure. Problem will be solved for all of us.” Viola paused, noticing my questioning eyes. “Don’t worry, Beth, I’ll check on her through the night,” she continued as she closed Ellen’s door. “We’re past the worst of it. Now that she knows where she is and what’s going on, she’s still going to struggle, but maybe she’ll stay in her room. She knows she’s safe and at some point she might realize that others care about her.”
“How long before she can function?”
“Not sure. Couple more days, maybe. I’ve seen it happen sooner. Maybe tomorrow.”
I debated my next words, but then went for it. “Viola, Benny told me that Ellen is a test.”
Viola rolled her eyes. She still had a streak of blood on her face, but it had dried. “Of course she did. None of her business, none of your business, but there we are.”
We made our way toward the stairs.
“I’m sorry you’re going through this,” I said as I took the first step.
Viola laughed once. “Beth, this is nothing. Absolutely nothing. The girls who have come through here have given me hundreds of challenges. I screwed up a few months ago. I understand why the powers that be felt like they needed to ‘test’ me. But they aren’t going to take this job from me. This is a great place to send troublemakers. They don’t want to lose it, and no one else will run this place. It’s all going to be fine. My goal is to get Ellen clean and then convince her to stay that way, but not because it’s a test—because it’s what needs to be done. It will take some time, but I’m the one to do it. If she fails, then at least I gave it my best.”
We stopped outside Viola’s room.
“You’ve worked with other junkies?”
“So many, I couldn’t even count.” Viola frowned. “Ellen was particularly messed up, though. Honestly, I wasn’t sure she would survive, but I think she will now. At least until she uses again. I’m going to work hard to make sure that never happens.”
“You’re not just a babysitter. You do good.”
Viola smirked. “Let’s keep that between the two of us. Want to help me a little more? I need to get the dining room put back together.”
“Sure,” I said. “But I have to know, Viola. Would you have shot her?”
“If I thought I needed to.” Viola didn’t hesitate.
“Were you close?”
She smirked again. “Gun wasn’t loaded tonight, Beth, but don’t get me wrong, most of the time it is. I’ve had to fire it before, but I’m not giving you those details. Don’t bother asking me if I’ve killed anyone. I won’t answer, and anyone who would brag about such a thing shouldn’t carry a weapon. Anyway, let’s get the dining room cleaned up.”
As we worked, I asked about Randy’s wife. Viola had n
o memory of her at all, nothing. I asked her about the girls and their father again, but she wanted to talk about that less than she did about who she might have shot.
She did ease my mind one way. She said she had asked Donner to check on the girls, and he was going to drive out to Tex’s home the next day or so to make sure they were okay.
I was relieved that someone was going to do that. I wanted to go with Donner. As I told Viola good night, I tried to figure out how to ask him, how to word the question the right way so he would say yes.
But by the time I crawled under the covers and closed my eyes, I was too tired to think about anything else.
Seventeen
I was again awakened by a knock at the door. At least this time, it wasn’t an anxious pounding.
“Beth, you’ve got a call. Wake up, you’ve got a call,” she said from the other side.
I slipped out of bed and went to the door. I opened it without touching my bedhead hair. “I do?”
“Hey, good morning,” Viola said. She was dressed, and the cut on her face had been cleaned up. She wasn’t wearing the Indiana Jones hat, and her hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail. I’d never seen it pulled back before. “You have a call in my office.”
“Who?”
“It’s someone calling herself Mill.”
I caught the word before it made its way out of my mouth—Mom?
“Okay,” I said. I reached over to the small table where I kept my room key and grabbed it. I closed the door and followed Viola to her office.
She didn’t ask if I wanted privacy, just let me go in by myself and closed the door after I was inside.
My heart was racing in my chest. How did my mother find me? What did she want? Was she okay?
There was only one way to find out. I picked up the landline handset.
“Mill?”
“Hey, girlie,” she said.
“How? What’s going on?” I said.
Mill sighed, then took a sizzling pull on one of her ever-present cigarettes and blew out the smoke. “I had to talk to you.”
“Text me?”
“I tried. You didn’t respond.”
Shit. I had destroyed the burner phone tied to the number she’d last used. I hadn’t used the new phone yet. I should have fired it up immediately and let her know the new number.
“Jesus, Mom, how in the world did you get this number?”
“I went to talk to Detective Majors. Saw a note on her desk that said ‘B.R.’ and this phone number. Figured it was her code for you. Here we are.”
“Shit. That’s…”
“Brilliant on my part, idiotic on her part? Yep. Couldn’t agree more. Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”
“I know, but…”
“I memorized the number and then destroyed the note. Mostly just to mess with her. I had her go grab me a water and I ate it.”
“You ate it?”
Mill snorted. “Not really. But I took it and destroyed it good.”
“Thanks.”
“Of course. You always got me, kid, you know that.”
“I do.” My heart rate started to slow, and I blinked back tears I hadn’t even noticed had welled in my eyes.
The note had been a careless oversight. Why hadn’t Detective Majors known that? Even if it hadn’t specifically included my name, just the letters were enough for someone like my mom to figure out or make a good guess. Why had she kept it—out in the open?
I sighed. “How did it go?”
“Never got around to bringing up the reason I wanted to talk to her, but I have a name and a picture of our other problem.”
“She told you, showed you?”
“That she did, and I gotta give her a little credit. It takes a million years to test DNA, but I think they got a solid answer in about half the time. Now we just have to find him. And I will. I think…”
“What?”
“I think I’ve seen him, girlie.”
“Where? Recently?”
“Listen, this is going to upset you and I don’t want it to. It is what it fucking is, right? Knowledge is power. Blah, blah, blah.”
“Okay.”
“I think I know him from Milton, but I can’t place how or when, and I thought that before the good detective told me that’s where he’d been hatched. I’m going to work on it. I’ll get Stellan the stud involved.”
I didn’t tell her I’d talked to him because she’d be upset I hadn’t told her first, that I’d let Detective Majors give her the news. Frankly, from this vantage point, as I now knew about the note, I wasn’t sure I’d made the right decision not to send the email I’d drafted to Mill. So often since my abduction, nothing seemed completely clear or understandable.
“You need to be careful,” I said.
“Always. You know that. Don’t tell Majors. I didn’t tell her I thought he looked familiar. None of her beeswax, you know. Once I was there, I decided not to mention that you-know-who might be alive, too. It just all felt like too much info.”
In fact, it was the police’s beeswax, but I wouldn’t point that out right now. Mill was speaking in code, just in case someone was listening. No one was, probably, but on the phone Mill always spoke as if someone might be listening. “All right. She might figure it out on her own. And why do you think he might be alive?”
“You know how our subconscious sometimes picks up on things that our conscious selves don’t?”
“Sure.”
“That name you saw on the envelope, the one you thought was attached to the man who took you?”
“Levi Brooks?”
“Jesus, darlin’, let’s not say it out loud. Anyway, even though I do think there’s a chance you really did see it on an envelope, I think it struck a bell with you for another reason. I think that since that was the name of the man who burned down a barn, you glommed on to it, because your subconscious remembered that fire from when you were little. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was somehow discussed in that … van. I hate thinking of you in that vile thing.”
“Right, but…”
“I found Brooks, girlie. Shit, now I said it. Oh well. I talked to him. He knew your dad back in the day. Shit. I mean, he knew you-know-who, your dad. Crap, I’m just gonna say it—he knew Eddy.”
“What?”
“He told me that … he saw Eddy a couple years ago.”
“What?” I said, louder this time. My mind tried to make sense of what she was saying. “Come on, Mill. If you found the same Levi Brooks, who we know is a bad guy because he burned down a barn, he’s probably lying to you.” I didn’t much care about being careful with names now. We needed clarity.
“I don’t think so, but that’s what I’m looking into. He told me stories about him and your dad, things they did when we were all younger. They were friends. Brooks said he met me, met you when you were a little girl. I don’t remember that. Do you?”
“No.”
“Hold tight, I’m not ready to believe him all the way. I’m looking at it, that’s all. It … it just feels more solid than other things. I really need you not to tell Majors about any of this; this time it’s extra important. Please.”
My head was swimming. I had questions, but I also knew Mill would do whatever she wanted to do. And maybe she really was onto something.
Mill and I were a team. A strange team, one that had stayed together maybe only because my grandfather had had vision enough to know that even though my mother had all but abandoned me like my father had, she still loved me, and she would come back to me every time she went away. She’d proved that much. And she’d been there for me when I’d needed her the most.
After a few moments of digging deep inside myself to try to predict ramifications I couldn’t possibly yet understand, I said, “Okay. I promise.”
“Atta girl. Gotta go. Got work to do. Send me a different number if you don’t want me to use this one.”
“I will do that. Love you, Mill.”
“More
than Cheerios with extra sugar, baby girl. Later.”
She disconnected the call, and I sat there a long moment, holding the handset, my head still swimming.
The part we hadn’t discussed but was making its way up to the top of my thoughts now was that her call to me meant that, really, anyone could find me if they wanted to badly enough. Anyone.
But “anyone” wasn’t Mill Rivers, and I had to remember that too.
I hung up the handset and sat back in Viola’s chair. I glanced at the old digital clock on the edge of Viola’s desk; it was only five thirty in the morning. My people in St. Louis needed a better understanding of the time difference between here and there. I smiled to myself, but I was still riddled with shaky nerves.
How could Detective Majors have left that note out when she knew my mother was coming in? She should have known Mill was always looking for clues.
My eyes were absently wandering over Viola’s desk when they landed on almost the exact thing I’d been thinking about: a note with an address, a handwritten scribble in a notebook on the corner. It read: “Girls’ address—end of village. Brayn.” Pretty easy to memorize.
It seemed the universe might be trying to tell me something.
I pushed away the overload of information Mill had shared and left the office with only the Brayn address on my mind.
Viola wasn’t in the hallway, but I thought I heard activity coming from the dining room again. It sounded less violent than the noises the night before, but I hurried toward it anyway. The scents of breakfast hit me before I turned the corner.
“Eat your eggs,” Viola said to Ellen.
They sat next to each other at a table overflowing with food.
“Hey, Beth, since you’re awake, you might as well come on in and join us. We’ve got plenty,” Viola said.
Ellen didn’t look like the same woman she’d been only about seven hours earlier. Her still-blemished face wasn’t gray anymore; her eyes weren’t sunk as deep in their sockets. She still had an unhealthy waxiness to her skin, but she seemed to be on the mend.
I joined them, sitting across the table and serving myself some scrambled eggs.
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