Crow’s Row

by Julie Hockley

  “What happened to your dad?”

  “I don’t know. He came back once with some woman. I didn’t want to be associated with him and get thrown back into juvi. I told him to stay away; I never saw him again after that.”

  His breathing had become slower, deeper. I took another second.

  “Cameron?” I called out softly.

  “Hmm … ?”

  “Was my brother happy?”

  He considered this. “Most days …”

  I held my breath.

  “Do you think he knew he was going to die?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Cameron?”

  “ … I really wish I knew, Emmy …” he said with a long sigh.

  After a minute, he was asleep.

  He snored, just a little bit, like a subdued Darth Vader.

  I carefully reached over him, feeling the heat that radiated from his skin, and clicked off the lamp. I lay there for a while, next to him, listening to his calm, even breaths, watching his chest rise and fall in the shadows. I was exhausted. Having him there, so close, was strangely peaceful, but it didn’t help me relax. I could feel every muscle in my body tiredly tingle. When half an hour had gone by, I started to wrestle with the sheets again. I was afraid of waking him.

  I considered … decided, listened vigilantly. When I was sure he was in a deep sleep, I extended my hand … and very slowly slid it under his. I clasped our fingers. In an unconscious reflex, his hand squeezed mine. I inhaled and I exhaled, and finally, finally I fell asleep.

  We were woken up in the morning by the commotion of incoming guards downstairs. I had awoken a few seconds before Cameron, carefully peeling my hand away from his before he realized what I had done. My hand suddenly felt cold, unnatural, like it was missing a finger.

  The front door slammed shut.

  Cameron shot out of bed like a bullet and stood, disoriented, panting, every muscle of his body tightly clenched, like body armor.

  “It’s okay, Cameron,” I gasped. I was scared of him, for him.

  He turned abruptly toward my voice. His face was ominous.

  I smiled softly and waited for him to come back.

  He kept his eyes on me. He blinked. His fists loosened. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, ran his fingers through his hair, and scratched his head, breathing with purpose. After a long second, he turned. A forced smile had crept across his face.

  “Good morning.” My voice croaked a little. I swallowed the sadness of him away.

  “Mornin’,” he answered gruffly. His cheeks flushed, and his hair went every which way. He was beautiful again.

  I sighed with gratitude.

  “I thought you said that you don’t sleep?”

  “I don’t … usually,” he replied with a sheepish smile.

  The bedroom door was still ajar, the way Cameron had left it during the night. Meatball was already downstairs, likely taking on the routine of his food inspection duties.

  Cameron and I stepped down the stairs together. Spider and Carly were walking in through the front door. Spider grimaced as soon as he saw us. Carly turned to him. “Told you he’d be here,” she muttered loud enough for us to hear.

  Spider wasn’t laughing when he turned to Cameron. “Is there a reason why you weren’t answering your phone? You could’ve at least left us a note, man. We had no idea where you went.”

  Cameron cleared his throat, looked like he was about to respond, peeked at me, and flushed a little more. Guards carrying boxes were lining up at the doorway, and being halted behind Spider and Carly, who were blocking their procession. Carly moved ahead to let them through. Spider followed her, ensuring to throw a glare at me before he disappeared through the kitchen.

  Some of the guards’ gaze flashed toward the stairs in our direction as they walked through.

  Cameron sparked a small discreet smile my way and ran down the rest of the stairs. He walked out the door, passing Griff on his way out.

  “Hey, Ginger,” greeted a chipper Griff. He peered at me over the box of frozen dinners he was carrying. He paused at the door to take off his shoes, balancing the box at the same time. Cameron was walking off the front stoop. His head momentarily spun toward Griff, but he kept walking to the awaiting vans.

  Griff eyed me top to bottom. “Did you just get up?” he asked in passing and continued into the kitchen. I realized with mortification that I was still wearing my pajamas—my uncool Mickey Mouse flannel pajamas.

  Back in Cameron’s room, I was walking on air, setting a new record for my morning routine. Then I bounced back down the stairs and into the kitchen where Rocco was busy putting the groceries away. Cameron, Carly, and Spider were sitting at the kitchen table, murmuring over paperwork. Cameron, who was also freshly showered and dressed, snuck a look as I walked into the kitchen. He grinned very quickly, and bent his head back over the documents in front of him before Spider and Carly ever noticed the momentary lapse of attention. I smiled to myself and helped Rocco put the groceries away, tucking them in whatever free space we could find.

  I fixed myself a bowl of cereal, even if it was already past lunchtime. Not wanting to disturb the business meeting and feel Spider’s resentment, I strolled to the back deck, where I sat to eat breakfast alone.

  The sky was gray. The air was still and muggy. A storm was brewing.

  I watched the dark clouds billowing above, threatening rain for the day. Under them, the far-reaching forest was harshly calm, and a thin layer of fog draped the treetops. I closed my eyes and took a long-winded inhalation; the smell of the mossy dampness of the woods that surrounded me was a newfound reassurance, as if the blanket of greenery was keeping the storm from ever really reaching me. An uncanny reaction for a city girl, I thought.

  When Cameron came to sit next to me, he put his feet on the table, and we watched the dark sky, while the clouds debated whether to burst or keep moving.

  He was next to me, but he was far away.

  I turned to glimpse him just as a drop splashed against his forehead.

  “Why didn’t you listen to me?” he asked, his voice distant. He rolled his head and kept my eyes. “When I told you to stay away from the projects, why did you still come back?”

  If his eyes hadn’t been locked with mine, if my brain worked when he was near me, if I was able to lie to him, I could have come up with a million plausible excuses. Except that I couldn’t lie to him, but I couldn’t tell him the truth either. Was I even sure what the truth was, exactly? I broke the dazzle and practiced pulling on the thread that was unraveling from my shorts while my cheeks turned a deep shade of red.

  When I looked up, Cameron had turned his attention back to the sky. He was far away again. My lack of response had been enough of an answer for him?

  After a short while, steady droplets of rain started coming down.

  Chapter Eleven:

  Fun and Games

  Cameron had announced to me that he wanted to do something fun. We headed down the driveway, with Tiny straggling. Rain pelted down on us, and we had to pick up speed.

  When we came to the bend in the driveway, something at the back of the property had caught my eye. Griff and Spider were standing near the tree line at Griff’s usual spot. Spider’s face and his shaking finger were very close to Griff’s face. His chest was pumped, his face was beet red. His lips were moving rapidly, angrily. Griff had his back to me, with his head bent in submission.

  While I was quickly taking all of these things into account, I hadn’t noticed that my pace had slowed. Cameron had come back to get me.

  “You don’t have to wait for Tiny,” he told me, grinning.

  Tiny had caught up to us, panting. He glanced knowingly to the back of the property before catching my eye, but remained silent.

  When we got to the garage, Cameron stood by with an even larger grin on his face.

  Naïvely, I smiled back. “What?”

  “Which one?” he asked, waving his hand back and forth alo
ng the lineup of cars like a game-show host.

  The smile was washed from my face. I shook my head in disbelief. Was this Cameron’s idea of “fun”?

  Cameron nodded as if he heard my thoughts. “They’re your cars. You should know how to drive them.”

  I’d only had my driver’s license for a few months. Getting a driver’s license was one of those Real World things that I had wanted to achieve. I celebrated my feat by buying a car from our landlord for a little less than two hundred dollars. It was a baby blue 1991 Buick Roadmaster station wagon, with wood-grained panel sides and a sunroof that was covered with a garbage bag because it leaked when it rained. Sometimes I could even afford to put a little bit of gas in it. The car was made of real steel, which was crucial. The bent stop signs, the crushed garbage cans on my street testified to my driving abilities.

  I remembered the recently added dents on my Buick and looked at the shiny, frail cars lined next to me. I imagined the kind of damage someone like me could do to them … I lost my breath and leaned against one of the colored toys to steady myself.

  “Ah!” Cameron said waking me from my nightmarish trance. “The Maserati! A bold choice.”

  He smiled with approval and went to grab the keys from the back wall.

  “Cameron, I can’t … I have no idea how to drive … this … thing …”

  “It’s amazingly easy,” he reassured. “I’ll show you.”

  Not even Cameron could reassure me at this point.

  Cameron climbed into the driver’s seat. Tiny squeezed into the backseat, setting his handgun next to him. I grudgingly got into the passenger side. Cameron spent the next few minutes amused with my frustrated attempts at closing the trick door. When I gave up, crossing my arms and huffing like a five-year-old, he got back out of the car and closed the door for me.

  My mood was darkening with the impending doom. This seemed to amuse Cameron even more. Tiny was in on it too. I was sure they were making faces when my head was turned to struggle with the stupid seatbelt. Cameron ended up leaning over me to help me with this too. While he pulled the strap over to my lap and our eyes locked briefly, I let my smile reach my eyes. His cheeks colored a bit; he looked down and then away and fumbled to get the strap secured as quickly as possible.

  Driving out of the garage, Cameron looked at everything and anything that wasn’t in my general direction. At the end of the driveway, he decelerated just long enough for the soaking-wet armed guard to peer in and quickly step away. Within seconds, the car was racing at an incredible speed down the gravel road. I held on to the door handle and the middle console for dear life while Cameron explained over the rev of the motor how the gears worked. But I heard nothing. The trees on the side of the road were a big emerald blur, and I was seated so close to the ground, it was like sliding on a bobsled.

  The rain was hitting the windshield hard. We raced through sharp curves, never slowing down.

  Cameron was completely, frustratingly calm. And then he happened to look over at me. He slowed down a bit, and I was able to swallow again.

  We had been driving for quite a while, at least fifteen miles, I thought. Though I wasn’t sure, I didn’t think that I had seen any other exits off the pebble road. I definitely had not seen any other houses. We were in the middle of nowhere.

  When the gravel driveway turned onto the paved highway, Cameron spun the car around and stopped.

  “Ready?”

  “No,” I mumbled, but he was already out of the car, making his way around to the passenger side. He opened the door and stood in the pouring rain. I scooted over to the driver’s side, catching a glimpse of Tiny’s reflection as I adjusted the rearview mirror. He was terrified … so was I.

  Even though Cameron coached me through, the car kept jerking forward, and then it would stall. Tiny’s head also slammed into the seat in front of him every time the car came to a jolting stop. After a lengthy while, I was able to make the car move more than a few inches at a time, and before long, we were coasting along the muddied road.

  The car did corner curves effortlessly. It was—almost—exhilarating. Tiny’s knuckles had gone white, never loosening their grip on the door handle. Cameron seemed to be looking on proudly, enjoying the ride.

  And then it all went very wrong.

  I came to a deceivingly deep puddle and got to a curve faster than I expected.

  I turned the wheel, but nothing happened.

  I braked hard, the car fishtailed.

  Cameron was looking ahead, one hand on the dashboard, the other pushing me against my seat.

  “Hold on … we’re gonna crash,” he said evenly.

  We all held our breath.

  I touched the brake again as a reflex. The car did a full circle in the mud and slid, picking up speed in the process.

  The last thing I remembered was Cameron ordering me to cover my face, which I did without thinking. Next came a loud bang, swiftly followed by the screeching of wood against metal and shattering glass. The engine ticked. And then all was silent—just the sound of the rain against the hood, that sounded like our breathing in tandem.

  “Em … Are you hurt?” Cameron’s voice was hurried, finally.

  “No,” I answered from behind my hands.

  “Let’s see.” He tugged my hands away and turned my face to him. When my eyes flicked open, he was laughing. “You just crashed a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car!”

  In the back, Tiny was giggling too, his large belly hoisting up and down. He was covered with shards of broken glass from the small back window that had been pierced by the branch of an evergreen. The car was on its side, half in the thread of a ditch, half in the woods. Outside my window, I saw a lot of mud. Nothing about this was funny, or “fun” to me.

  After trying to push the car out, we all stood in the rain and watched the Maserati sink deeper into the mud. When realization set in, Tiny took out a short-wave radio and called for someone to come dig the car out. I recognized Spider’s sharp voice on the other end of the radio.

  My mood had improved after the rain had ceased and Cameron and I were walking the rest of the way home. The road was flooded in parts, and my revered sneakers were gorged with mud.

  At Cameron’s command, Tiny had stayed behind, watching uneasily as the boss left without armed defense.

  Help had driven by us in the form of a black pickup truck, with Spider and four sodden guards who were grimly holding onto shovels in the back cab. After our bit of fun, Cameron was in an excellent mood. So when Spider’s passing glower hit me again, I decided to seize the moment.

  “Spider doesn’t … like me much,” I mused.

  “He’s just being overprotective.”

  I slightly raised my chin and scrunched my forehead. Next to Cameron, I looked like a munchkin. “Am I that much of a threat to you?”

  He grimaced and looked at the road ahead. “More than you know,” he mumbled as he hopped over a puddle.

  “I meant Carly, not me. Spider is trying to protect Carly.” He turned around, extending his hand to help me jump over the large puddle. I still missed, badly, and splashed both of us simultaneously.

  “Why would I want to hurt Carly?”

  “It’s not a matter of you wanting to hurt her. It’s who you remind her of every time she sees you.” Cameron had an intent look on his face, egging me to make the connection.

  “My brother?”

  “Bill and Carly used to date,” he explained.

  “But I don’t look anything like him.” Another unfair twist of fate.

  “Your head might not be blond,” he said, “but you’re very much like Bill.”

  This made me smile, despite the hair comment. “How long did they date for?”

  “A while … longer than any of the girls he dated.” He waited until our eyes met. “Before Carly, Bill never let any girl stick around long enough for her to get to know him.”

  Part of me wondered if this had been added for my benefit, or if Cameron was ref
erring to himself … or if I was reading more into it than there was. The other part of me was trying not to ogle: Cameron’s soaked T-shirt clung to him … it was very hard not to ogle. I looked away and concentrated on getting out of the bog alive.

  “When it came to Carly, Bill was different,” he said with difficulty. “He told her everything … no matter how bad … and there was lots of bad stuff …”

  I quickly frowned. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as you make it out to be, Cameron.”

  He forced a smile. “You mean as bad as Bill made it out to be.”

  I shrugged.

  “He must have loved her very much,” I said, turning to him. “To feel like he could tell her everything without being afraid of what she might think. Takes a lot of guts and trust.”

  He seemed to consider this while he surveyed my face. “Carly’s a tough cookie. She can handle a lot more than most girls.”

  “How would he know if he never tried?”

  “Before Carly came around, your brother had been with lots of girls, and he left a path of destruction behind him. Spider tried to warn Carly about his … bad habits. She didn’t listen.” Cameron’s voice turned sharp. “Spider was right.”

  The next thing that came out of my mouth I hoped with every fiber of my being that he would negate. “He cheated on her, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” he confirmed solemnly. “Except that it was much worse than that.”

  I couldn’t imagine what was worse than cheating on someone you loved and who loved you … until Cameron told me, “He got the other girl pregnant.”

  He was right: this was much worse.

  “Who was she?” I demanded.

  “The other woman?”

  I nodded.

  He gazed ahead. “You’ve already met her and her son. The kid is Bill’s spitting image.”

  From a corner of my mind, I dredged up the picture I had of my brother as a child: blond, curly hair, sun-kissed skin, gray eyes. He had kept these traits as an adult … and I had seen these same traits very recently.

  “Daniel,” I gasped. “Bill fathered a child with Frances.”

  “Spider confronted him once,” he told me. “When your brother was acting … weird, Spider accused him of cheating in front of Carly and me. Bill denied it, and Carly believed him. Hell, I even believed him—not that it had anything to do with me.” He smirked darkly. “Bill could be pretty convincing when he needed to be.”