Crow’s Row

by Julie Hockley

  Frances knew Bill. Cameron knew Bill. After years of yearning for answers, searching for any glimpses of that whole other life, the one that my brother had led away from me; after desperately sitting by as traces of my brother slowly disappeared with every moment, day, month, year that passed until it was starting to feel like he had never really existed; someone other than me had known Bill—and knew who I was.

  How could I have missed this? I tried to go back through all of the events of the past few days, but all I could remember was my conversation with Cameron that morning. He had listened to me while I had told him about my big brother’s premature death, something that I had never told anyone else because it was too painful. Yet—and yet, he had never said a word.

  I wasn’t sure how long I had been parked in Rocco’s room like that. Frances and Danny were long gone.

  I peeled off the front cover of the magazine that had stuck to my half-clad behind and let my limbs carry me back toward the front hallway. But Cameron intercepted me as he was running down the steps.

  His eyes canvassed my face, and he halted on the second last step. My face was hot and drenched.

  “What’s up …” he asked slowly, carefully.

  I considered side-stepping him and continuing to make my way up to his room. He was blocking my passage. Something in his expression told me that he wasn’t going to let me through without an explanation. There was a baseball rising up in my throat. I couldn’t tell if it was tears or words. It turned out to be both.

  “Bill …” was how I started. Cameron’s face went white. “… you knew me too … I needed a clean towel … how could you?” In my head, these were fully structured sentences with nouns, conjugated verbs, and all that stuff that made sense to other people.

  Cameron and I just stared at each other. I looked at him through a veil of gathering tears. Cameron blinked, but his face remained otherwise expressionless. This made me furious.

  “You knew Bill,” I started again, my thoughts clearer now. “All this time, you knew exactly who I was. You never said anything.” My voice was shrill, and I was already out of breath. Cameron was breathing perfectly normal.

  “Yes,” he admitted, slowly again.

  “Yes, you knew Bill, or yes, you lied to me?”

  “I didn’t lie to you.”

  “You omitted vital information.”

  “That’s not the same as lying.”

  “Spare me the grammar lesson,” I growled.

  He sat on the stairs and clasped his hands. “This isn’t what you think.”

  “Oh? Tell me—what am I thinking?” Because I had no idea—jumbled words were all I could manage to think about. “You seem to have all the answers.”

  “Em—” he started, but I wasn’t finished.

  “Were you ever going to tell me?”

  “No,” he admitted. There was no pause, and he looked straight at me. “There are some things that you’re better off not knowing.”

  “Do not make decisions for me! You might know who I am, but you don’t know me well enough to know what’s good for me.”

  He exhaled and rubbed his temples. “Listen, Emmy, I know that you’re mad at me—”

  “Mad isn’t the word.” I was furious, enraged, incensed, going on crazy.

  “Fine,” he interrupted. “You’re beyond mad, but I swear to you that I’m just trying to keep you safe.”

  “No, thank you,” I quickly but politely rebuffed. “I’ve seen what you do with the people you should be keeping safe. Throwing money at me won’t make this any better or keep anyone any safer. Besides, I can’t be bought.”

  Cameron opened his mouth like he was going to say something, and then stopped. Then his forehead scrunched. I could see him trying to digest what I was saying. “Wait … what?”

  “Throwing money at your children, at your son, won’t make him safer. It’ll just make him resent you more.” I had intimate experience with this.

  He stared at me and nodded once. “Ah. I understand what you are saying now. You’re talking about Daniel.” I noticed a barely audible tremble in his voice. I had obviously hit a nerve there and decided to chase it.

  “What kind of man would leave a child to be raised without a father? Paying off your son’s mother doesn’t make you less of a deadbeat.”

  Cameron flinched faintly. He then got up, sliding his hand down the banister as he stepped down, and calmly, too calmly, walked out the front door.

  I had meant for my words to hurt him.

  Cameron gently clicked the door behind him, and I heard someone clamoring up the stairs. When I turned around, Carly and Spider were standing at the top of the basement stairs, and Rocco was rushing up behind them. The grim look on Carly and Spider’s faces told me that they had seen enough of the show.

  “Did you know all along too?” I accused.

  “Know what?” Rocco replied, popping his head between Carly and Spider while dripping pool water everywhere. Carly and Spider simply stared back in response. That was enough for me to understand how deeply the treachery had run. I did what I knew best: I dashed to hide.

  “What’s going on?” I heard Rocco ask in a botched whisper as I reached the second floor. This was followed by the sound of a hand hitting wet skin.

  “Ow! Carly! That hurt! What was that for?” Rocco complained. I slammed Cameron’s bedroom door, blocked out the rest and immediately fell into a routine—anything habitual—that I desperately needed. I showered, brushed my teeth with force, roughly combed through the knots in my hair—considered chopping it all off, but figured that looking like a fourteen-year-old boy wouldn’t solve anything. I got dressed, sweatpants and sweatshirt—unseasonal for the hot weather, but necessary for the drama. I made the oversized bed and vigorously fluffed the pillows. I yanked the heavy curtains shut and plopped myself on the small couch, hiding in my cave. Then I decided to put a movie on.

  During all of this, I wasn’t thinking about how much I missed Bill, missed talking about him with someone outside of myself. I wasn’t thinking about how betrayed I felt or how angry I was. I was especially not thinking about the ache on Cameron’s face when he had walked out on me.

  When my thoughts would start veering from the movie’s plotline, I turned the television’s volume up. When I heard Meatball whine at the door, begging to be let in for the night, I turned the volume up higher. When my stomach growled and grumbled in protest of my protest, I turned it up even higher.

  By the time I was on the fifth movie—a really bad disaster movie with lots of explosions and earthquakes and people screaming for their lives—it was as dark outside as it was inside the room, and my ears were ringing from the deafening detonations. But during a lull of action scenes, there was a crash next to me and an “ouch!” A lamp was turned on. Cameron was standing on one foot, holding on to the other.

  “Sorry,” he yelled over the revitalized explosions, “I knocked, but you didn’t answer.” He hobbled to the couch, grabbed the remote control with the hand that wasn’t rubbing his big toe, and turned down the volume.

  Chapter Nine:

  Misery

  Cameron was in the kitchen; pots, cupboard doors, kitchen drawers were clanking in his path. I was sitting at the kitchen table where he had bidden me to park myself after shooing Rocco away from the television into his room. I was trying to blink through the pain that was streaming into the back of my eyes from the very bright overhanging lights.

  “How much did your brother tell you—about what he was up to when he was gone, away from you?” Cameron asked me.

  “He didn’t need to say much,” I replied, rubbing my temples with two fingers. “The police reports and school records spoke for themselves.” There were also all the rumors that were floating around, things that were being whispered, things that I had heard my father scream at my brother behind the closed mahogany door of his study. I didn’t feel the need to tell Cameron this.

  “What about when the police reports stopped after
he left school? Did he ever talk to you about what he was doing?”

  “Not much,” I admitted. “I didn’t see him very much after he ran away. He would sneak back into the house mostly to just boss me around, tell me what not to do.” I exhaled. “We argued a lot toward the end.” This I regretted more than anything.

  “Hmmm,” Cameron mused over the sizzle of the frying pan.

  He brought two large glasses of chocolate milk and came back with grilled cheese sandwiches and—bless his heart—a bottle of ketchup.

  “Earlier, you called me Emmy, you know,” I mentioned while I squeezed the red stuff on the side of my plate.

  He sat down, facing me and raised his eyebrows. “I did?”

  I nodded and handed him the ketchup bottle, which he refused.

  “Your brother used to call you that,” he said, watching me carefully.

  “You knew him well enough to know that,” I surmised. He took a bite of his unsoiled but boring grilled cheese. Though my stomach grumbled, I left the sandwich there and waited.

  “Well?”

  He shifted in his seat. “I’m not sure where to start.”

  “Starting from the beginning seems to work for most people.”

  “Starting from the beginning would take a very long time.”

  This made me almost giddy, but I tried to keep it cool and shrugged, “Apparently I’m not going anywhere for a while, so talk as long as you need.”

  His lips curved up at the corners. “I don’t need to talk. I’m doing this for you,” he stalled.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, not giving him any other opportunity to delay what I needed to hear.

  “Fine,” he said, shaking his head. “If you eat, I’ll talk.”

  I picked up a half of the grilled cheese and dunked it in my pond of ketchup. I brought it to my mouth and waited to see if he was going to keep his end of the bargain.

  “Let’s see,” he said with his eyes turned to the ceiling. His gaze then came back to me, attached to a crooked smile. “The first time I met Bill Sheppard, he beat the crap out of me.”

  I took a bite of my sandwich and almost choked.

  “Your brother had just been transferred to my school—”

  “Which school?” I tested with a mouthful.

  “Saint Emmanuel.”

  Saint Emmanuel was the last private school my brother had attended before being shipped off to live with his uncle. “That’s one of the most expensive schools in the eastern United States.”

  Cameron’s stare bore into me. “What shocks you more—the fact that I went to a private school, or that I went to school at all?”

  “Neither,” I told him. “I just didn’t peg you for the snooty type.”

  His smile returned. “I’m not. What’s your problem with rich people anyway?”

  This was obviously another stall tactic—even if it wasn’t, I wasn’t going there. “So you met my brother at Saint Emmanuel’s, and he beat you up. Why?”

  “Bill had decided that he was going start selling to the kids at school. One day, he caught me selling on what he thought was his turf, so he beat me up to teach me a lesson. I was just a kid back then,” he clarified, “and I thought for sure that Spider was going to kill him for giving me a black eye—”

  “How long have you known Spider?” I interrupted.

  “A long time,” he replied. He hesitated before he added, “We were roommates in juvi … Spider had come up with the same plan as your brother a couple of years before.”

  “You were in juvenile detention?”

  “Yeah, for a little while.” His face slightly flushed, and he hurriedly continued, “By the time your brother came along, Spider and I already had the school as our turf and had spent a lot of time building business with the rich kids—”

  “What were you selling, exactly?” I asked.

  Cameron sighed. “Emmy, the only way I’m going to tell you this is if it’s is a one-way conversation. That means no more questions.” He waited for my acknowledgement, so I nodded and bolted the imaginary lock on my lips. It hadn’t escaped me that he had called me Emmy, or that I really liked it when he had.

  “Bill’s customers were actually my customers. And my customers were a paranoid bunch of kids who were always looking over their shoulder, afraid that people would know their dirty little secrets, embarrass their families. They never bought from anyone they didn’t know, or didn’t trust, even a persuasive young blood like your brother.” I smiled, picturing my big-headed brother. This was the world Bill and I knew too well—the hiding, the lying, the sham.

  “When Bill finally figured out why he wasn’t getting any business, he decided that he was going to become my partner. At first, I told him to get lost.” Cameron grinned wider. “But, when he told me about his new plan, it made a lot of sense. So, I finally convinced Spider—which wasn’t easy—and your brother, Spider, and I became business partners. Spider kept the product coming in, I kept the school kids well supplied, Bill expanded the business to the parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, et cetera.” He paused to take another bite. “You know, Bill had a way of making people feel like they were untouchable. Spider said it was the smell of money that was ingrained in his skin. Whatever it was, your brother was a great salesman, and, for a while, with our customers’ deep pockets, we had so much business that we had a hard time keeping up.”

  “But your brother had one major weakness: women—the kind that came with a lot of baggage. He always had to come to some girl’s rescue.” Cameron smiled mischievously at me, and I took great care in red-coating the second half of my sandwich, willing my face to stay its normal pallor.

  “Seemed like he had a different girl hanging off his arm every other week. But once the excitement was over and he decided that he was done saving them, he’d move on to the next train wreck, leaving a bigger wreck behind. He got caught up with this one chick … girl …” He corrected himself for my benefit. “… whose boyfriend liked to use her as a punching bag. Bill came to her rescue and beat up the boyfriend.”

  “Turned out that the boyfriend wasn’t just one of my regular customers, he was also the dean’s nephew. Just a string of bad luck,” he said, shaking his head. “Bill’s dorm room was searched, and they found the stash that was hidden under the floorboards. Bill got arrested and kicked out of school.” I remembered this. Bill had been sent home in a police cruiser. Of course, no charges were ever laid—the Sheppards were too well connected for something like that to ever happen. But not even the Sheppard name could stop the gossiping. Bill had to be sent to live with a distant relative, cut off from the family, for the family name’s sake.

  Cameron held my gaze. “You know, I had bigger stashes in my room, so Bill could have used me as a scapegoat to save himself. But he never did.

  “Spider and I kept the business going after your brother got kicked out. We kept it lower key though, selling only to the students I knew. When I finished high school, your brother came to find me. He had whopping plans to expand the business, beyond rich kids and their families, and needed a partner. I brought Spider in, and we spent the next couple of years getting new suppliers and building more contacts. Your brother had big dreams, and the business kept growing, so much so that we had trouble keeping track of all the money that came in. So Spider brought Carly in, and soon we had the competition working for us. No one made a move unless your brother approved it.”

  Cameron paused. The smile left his face, replaced by darkness. “When you’re on top like that, things get a lot more … complicated,” he told me carefully. “Everywhere you look, there’s someone who wants to take you down so that he can get a piece of your action. You start having to look over your shoulder all the time because your friends can become your enemies overnight. Just trying to keep yourself …” He looked away. “… trying to keep the people you love alive becomes a twenty-four hour job. It’s exhausting.

  “And your brother had started to … change. He became …” He was
trying to find the right word and settled on, “… jittery. He started keeping secrets, disappearing from Spider, Carly, and me.” Cameron took a breath here. “Things started to really fall apart when our clients and the other partners noticed the change and second-guessed his decisions. Before we knew what was really going on, Bill was dead.”

  We took our last few bites in silence.

  Cameron then pulled his eyes back up and surveyed my face. “To answer your question, yes, I knew your brother very well, and yes, I knew him well enough to know who you are, Emmy. Your brother was my best friend, and he talked about you all the time.” He stopped and waited anxiously.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before now? Why did you say that you were never going to tell me about my brother?”

  He pressed his lips together. “Because your brother wouldn’t have wanted you to know.”

  “How would you know what was going though his mind?”

  “He would have told you, wouldn’t he?” he pointed out.

  “Maybe he just ran out of time.”

  “Believe me, Emmy,” he insisted darkly, “Bill wouldn’t want you to know this much about his life.” Cameron picked up our empty plates and glasses and walked them back to the kitchen.

  “Okay …” I decided to let it go and moved on. “Why are you telling me this now?”

  He came back from the kitchen and leaned against the counter, searching my face again. “I had no other choice. I know how close you and Bill were and that it was difficult for you when he died.” He forced a smile. “I also know that you wouldn’t let up until you heard the truth. I wanted you to hear it from me … and to stop harassing my kid brother for information that he doesn’t have. He had no idea who Bill was or who you were. You’re making it very hard on me to keep the kid away from all that stuff.”

  “Rocco wants to be part of all that stuff,” I reminded him.

  “That’s not up to him.” He was adamant about this. I wouldn’t press him on that.

  “Spider and Carly—they knew who I was, though.”