The thought hadn’t fully articulated until it was out of my mouth, and as soon as it was, the idea that I had a brother out there walloped me like a punch to the gut.
If her son was dad’s baby, that meant I had family left!
“Stranger things have happened.” Chris’s tone was dismissive, but my stomach twisted all the same. I tried to remember what the little boy looked like. Did he have the same high forehead as dad?
“Do you think he is?” I said.
“No.”
“But how do you know?”
“Because, Mady, I worked with your dad. Don’t you think he would’ve told me if he fathered a child with Elly?”
He was right. Chris probably knew more about dad’s life than I did. And, besides, the kid’s hair was red. Dad’s had been black.
I kicked my feet and began to swing, the alcohol rolling sickly in my stomach.
Chris’s phone buzzed, and when he moved off to take the call, I found myself staring at his profile. When he put the phone back into his pocket, he caught me looking. “What?”
“Nothing!” I blurted, slamming my feet into the ground. The world continued to swing. “You’re married.” I nodded at the ring on his finger.
One of his eyebrows quirked upwards. “Yeah, so?”
I shook my head to clear it. “Of course you’re married. You’re, like, a more handsome version of Justin Timberlake.”
I could predict his eye roll, and wasn’t disappointed. He’d always been uncomfortable with his looks.
I put an arm around my stomach to try to quell the revolutions there. “How long have you been with your wife?”
Chris scratched the back of his neck. “Together six. Married four.”
“Kids?”
“Listen, Mady, I don’t know how much the chief told you about the evidence in your dad’s case, but I want you to know I’m doing everything I can to help find out who did it.”
I glanced at him, surprised at the sudden change in subject. “Yeah,” I said. “I know you are.”
“The ballistics on the casing found in the woods came back, but it wasn’t a match.”
“Okay,” I said. A headache played around the edges of my head. “We didn’t think it would be.” The casings were from a .22 but Mitch had wanted them tested anyway.
“And Ingress spoke to Mrs. Jackson. She said she was inside with a flair up all day.”
“Flair up?” Mrs. Jackson lived east of dad’s house. She’d been in the hospital the last week so the cops hadn’t been able to talk to her until today.
“Arthritis.”
“What about the Dempsters?” The Dempsters were one of Beacon Falls’s most notorious families. You know the type: large, poor, rowdy, always in trouble.
Chris’s thumbnail made little tapping noises against the flashlight on his duty belt. “They’ve got nothing to do with this, Mady.”
“Dad must’ve sent half their family to jail.”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “Jail. Not prison. They’re petty criminals, Mads. Not murderers.”
My stomach fluttered at the sound of my nickname rolling off his tongue. “But what if—"
“They’re not involved, Mady.” Chris wiped a hand across his eyes. He looked tired.
“But what if—" I said again, and that’s when I saw it. The beige sedan, idling on the other side of the park, in direct line of sight to the funeral parlor. My blood went cold.
“What’s wrong?” Chris asked.
Whoever was driving must’ve seen me looking. The car dropped into gear.
“No!” I started to run, but Chris grabbed my arm. I wheeled around, fist raised.
He flinched. “Mady, what’re you doing?”
“That car! It’s been following me!” The sedan pulled away from the curb. And still Chris held onto me. “Let go!” I wrenched free, but I was too late. The driver hit the gas and roared away.
I cursed and raised my middle finger. “Stay away from me!”
Too late, I thought to look at the license plate.
“C4B4RJ,” I said, turning back to Chris. “C4B4RJ! Quick! Go run that plate!”
Chris didn’t move, watching me with equal parts confusion and amusement.
“What are you doing?” I said. “Don’t you have one of those cop computer thingies in your car? Go!”
“Why should I run the plate?”
“Because I saw that car outside my house this morning and now it’s here.”
Chris frowned. “Mady, that could just be a coincidence.”
“C4B4…” I trailed off. “Shit.”
“C4B4RJ,” Chris said.
Relief washed over me. I stared in the direction the car had gone, shaking with spent adrenaline.
Chris stepped forward and took one of my hands. His hands weren’t as soft as I remembered, but they were warm, and enveloped mine completely.
“You’re shaking,” Chris said.
My breath caught in my throat. I pulled free. “Will you please go run that plate?”
“I don’t have to,” Chris said.
“Why not?”
“Because I know whose car it is.”
Chapter 8
“Whose is it?” The weight of the last few days pressed down upon me while dread crept up my spine.
“It’s Davis’s.”
Memories of the years of stalking, his constant presence in my life, the feeling of utter helplessness because no one could do anything about it.
“I’ll kill him,” I said, suddenly sober.
“What?” Chris shrank back.
“I’ll rip his goddamn head off.”
Chris half-smiled. “You don’t mean that.”
“Yes,” I said, nodding my head. “Yes. I do.”
“Mady, you can’t—“
I gestured wildly in the direction the car had gone. “He’s clearly stalking me again, Chris.”
Chris frowned. “You said he was outside your house?”
“Yes! This morning. In the same spot he used to park.”
“Okay,” he said, resigned. “Okay. I can talk to him.”
A sudden gratitude washed over me. “Really?”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “After what he did to you, yeah. It’s justified.” A quiet, confident power radiated off him that set my heart pounding.
“Thank you.”
He nodded in that stiff way of all policemen everywhere. Just doin’ my job, m’am.
After a restless night, I woke to the sound of my phone’s chime. Across the room, Remy got to her feet and slunk out of the room. I was surprised to see her in here. Every time I tried to pet her, she ducked away like a temperamental cat. Who could blame her? I was just a stranger. Someone staying in my dad’s house. In her house.
I looked at my phone. It was my friend Carri, texting to see how I was doing.
Not great, I wrote back.
What are you going to do now?
I rubbed my eyes. That was a good question. I had no idea. I couldn’t return to Reno, but I also didn’t want to stay in this house any longer.
I disentangled myself from the sheets, already feeling the humidity. Clearly, turning down the A/C last night had been a mistake. I picked up the giraffe from where it had fallen on the floor and set it against my pillow. I checked my message app. Nothing from Zoe.
After taking Remy out (on a leash this time), I started making piles of stuff in my room: Donation, Trash, Keep. Then I realized I had no place to put the Keep items, so instead I snapped pictures of my report cards, art projects, and yearbooks and tossed them into the trash pile.
I kept thinking about that ring on Chris’s finger. What was his wife like? Was she pretty? Where’d they meet? How many children did they have?
Because I knew he would have kids. He had told me back in high school how badly he wanted to be a father. Easy for him to say—he had a loving, devoted family who modeled in every way how perfect life could be.
Around lunchtime, I took a
break from packing and sat down at the kitchen table to google Chris’s name. The first items were related to dad’s death. I scrolled down, unable to deal with that right now. Then came an opinion piece by Adam Najiim. Adam and I had been good friends in high school.
The cops in this town have always enjoyed a certain status among business owners. Akin to rock stars, or the mob, they’ve never had to pay for a drink, a meal, a tool from the hardware store. “The cops have always been very good to us,” one business owner told the Tribune. “This is our way of showing our appreciation.”
But what, exactly, do the cops do to elicit such appreciation? Drugs have overrun this town, endangering our lives and killing our children. Crime is at an all-time high, at percentages rivaling those of larger cities.
“We’ve always tried to protect each and every one of you in this town,” a contrite Captain John Mitchell, said at a press conference last week. “Sometimes we fail.”
Yes, the Beacon Falls police have certainly failed. They failed to protect young Ayla Ernst from the drug dealers who took her life. And now they’ve failed to arrest anyone in connection with her death.
Which begs the question: How many more mistakes can they make? How many more of our children have to die? And just how far will they go to protect themselves and their wallets?
Officer Chris Savine, the newest member of the force, was hired out of the Avon Lake police department, who declined comment for this article. Despite Savine’s mere three years’ experience, the Beacon Falls PD hired him as their second full-time officer, a position apparently reserved for those with connections to Beacon Falls. Savine was a golden boy at Beacon Falls High in the…”
I stopped reading. I had no desire to relive our high school days.
The next item was a Facebook profile, but it was private. Chris’s name was listed in the Beacon Falls City directory with a number to the police station. There were two more mentions of his name in connection to various small-town crimes: a robbery in which he’d arrested the perp, a bomb threat at the school.
I searched his other social accounts, but when I logged onto my Twitter page to follow him, I was disappointed to see he’d only posted three tweets, one of which was “There, I’m on now, Aaron.”
On the second page of results, I finally came across his wedding announcement. My heart plunged.
The engagement photo had been taken in a flowering meadow. The couple embraced, Chris’s forehead resting against his bride-to-be. And she—she was gorgeous. Long, sleek brown hair framed a bright-eyed oval face with flawless skin and perfect makeup. Dressed in a blue summer dress that accented her eyes, Chris’s wife was the woman everyone would expect to be with a guy like Chris.
Dotty and Roger Brown are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter Rachel Dawn Brown to Christopher Patrick Savine, son of Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Savine. Ms. Brown of Renford, Connecticut, attended Hiram College earning a degree in Economics. Mr. Savine was born and raised in Beacon Falls, and attended the Police Academy of Western Ohio. He currently works for the Beacon Falls PD. A June wedding is planned at the Church of the Apostles, Beacon Falls.
I stared at the photo for a long time, picturing what their life must be like. A house filled with the sound of children’s laughter, a sleepy Sunday morning lying in bed, a stolen kiss as they pass each other in the hall.
Life, for some people, comes so easily.
Chris had tried to convince me it would be okay to have the baby. But there was no way. Unlike him with his perfect family, I had no mother of my own to show me the ropes, and my father and I were barely speaking. I couldn’t imagine bringing a child into that kind of dysfunction.
Chris said it would be okay. That we could get married. But I was seventeen, terrified out of my mind, and filled with rage that my mother had abandoned me to face this—and all of life—alone.
And, running underneath all of that, lay a current of shameful guilt. Because, you see, I was the reason mom left.
Chapter 9
My parents’ relationship was one of passion: they fought hard but also loved hard. There’d be times when they’d never leave each other’s side, when they’d constantly be touching and laughing and snuggling. And then—like the flip of a switch—that same love would transform into a seething hate culminating in screaming matches and stony silences that would fester for days.
The day mom left, it started with an argument between me and her. She wanted to take me to get new clothes, but I hated shopping with mom. She always tried to get me to try on dresses and frilly tops when all I really wanted was t-shirts and jeans.
Mom’s disappointment that I was more tomboy than princess sparked a glowing ember of shame deep inside me that would come out as defiance and, often, misbehavior.
That day at breakfast, mom casually mentioned that we ought to go to the mall.
“And then we can go to that burger place you like,” she said cheerily.
“I can’t,” I said, “I’m going to Zoe’s.”
Mom looked at dad for help, but dad said nothing, his eyes on his Sports Illustrated as he slurped Cap’n Crunch.
“Vince.”
With that single word, the atmosphere in the kitchen changed, the air charged with tension.
Dad looked up.
“Tell your daughter she has to go clothes shopping today. She’s outgrown half her closet.”
Dad frowned and turned to me. “Why don’t you want to go shopping?”
I hated when dad got involved in the arguments between me and mom. “‘Cuz I don’t want to wear a dress.”
Mom clucked her tongue. “I never said you have to wear a dress.”
“She always makes me shop in the girl’s section.”
“Because you’re a girl.”
“Bridgette, please.”
I loved it when dad took my side.
“Mads,” he said, “you have to go shopping. Your jeans are too short.”
I remember the heat of shame rising to my face. “Well, I’m not going. I’m going to Zoe’s.”
“What did you say?” Dad’s voice held a low warning.
I stared at my toast. “I said I’m not going.”
“Go to your room,” Dad said. “Now.”
I shoved back from the table so hard my chair tipped backwards. “Fine!”
Therapists will say that children aren’t the sole reason behind a marriage’s disintegration, but I can tell you without a shred of doubt that I was.
By the time I stopped crying, the argument below had grown in intensity, the words filtering through the floorboards in bits and pieces.
—never listen!
—jeans for Christ’s sake!
—baby her!
I snuck out of my room, down the stairs, and past the kitchen. My mom was going on about insolence and how I was a “teenager at eight” and dad was accusing mom of spoiling me.
I was nearly to the garage door when I heard my mom say, “If I hadn’t gotten pregnant—“
“You were the one who wanted to get married, Bridgette, not me.”
At that moment, my world tilted on its axis. I was still reeling, frozen to the spot, when mom said, “Where do you think you’re going?”
I whirled around and shouted, “I hate you and I wish you were dead!”
The look of shock that etched across my mother’s face was the last memory I have of her because after that day, I never saw her again.
Chapter 10
“Remy!”
Where was that damned dog?
I searched the house again, fearful that she’d escaped when I’d gone outside to get the mail. “Remy!”
At last I found her curled up on the floor on the far side of dad’s bed.
“There you are!” Relieved, I bent to pet her, but she got up and left the room. I knew she missed my dad, but I didn’t know what to do to make her like me. I’d gone to the store to stock up on expensive canned dog food, treats, and chewies. Every night before bed,
I sat down on the floor and called to her, or went to where she lay, and every night, without fail, she walked away.
“You’re really not going to like me after I tell you you have to get a bath, huh?”
She perked her ears at the word.
“I’m sorry, girl. I know you already hate me.” I reached for her collar. She backpedaled quickly and squirmed away. We played cat-and-mouse for another two minutes before there was a knock on the screen door. Someone called my name.
“Be right there,” I shouted over my shoulder. I dove for Remy and clipped the leash on. "Got you!” I pulled her to the front door. She barked at the sight of a short man on the other side of the screen.
“Adam! What are you doing here?”
Adam Najiim, the boy I’d known since kindergarten, looked pretty much the same, but for a receding hairline. He’d never exactly been handsome, but the intervening years had given him a more grown-up appearance that suited his rather short stature. A shadow of a beard hid the acne scars across his brown skin. A single earring flashed in his left ear.
“Mady.” He grinned. “It’s so good to see you.”
Remy barked again.
I thought of what Adam had written about the Beacon Falls PD and my blood warmed with anger. I opened the door. Remy leapt onto Adam’s neatly-pressed button down and kaki pants.
“Remy!” I pulled her down. “I’m sorry,” I said, “It’s bath time. She’s a little high strung.”
“It’s okay,” Adam said, wiping the paw prints from his clothes. He bent to rub her ears. “I’ll help.”
“You don’t have to.”
“It’s always easier with two people.”
I hesitated. I had mixed feelings about seeing him here. Adam and I had had some fun times together. While we never dated, I knew he had always had a crush on me, a fact that I had used often to my benefit. Whenever I needed a ride—no matter what time of day or night—I’d call Adam and he’d come bumbling up in his old station wagon with a smile on his face. When my grades tanked senior year, putting me in danger of failing out, he came over night after night for months to tutor me until I scraped together high enough grades to graduate.
The Things We Keep Page 4