Crow’s Row

by Julie Hockley

  It started drizzling again, but we kept a very slow pace. “After he died, we found out about Frances when she came looking for money.”

  “Did Bill know she was pregnant?” I wondered.

  “He must’ve. Her belly was already out to here when he died,” he said, rolling his arms in front of his stomach.

  “Spider must have felt vindicated,” I guessed, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice.

  “Not really—he was too busy bringing Carly back to worry about being right,” he answered and his voice became grave. “When Bill died, Carly was devastated. Then when Frances came around, she still wouldn’t believe that Bill cheated on her. But when the baby was born and he looked so much like Bill, Carly was …” He took a second and brushed his hand over his face. “We didn’t think that she could take anymore.”

  While my brain took a moment to recoup, my mouth asked, “Are Spider and Carly related?”

  Cameron burst out laughing. “What? God no! It would be pretty sick if they were!”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

  “He seems very protective of her. I just thought …”

  “There’s nothing platonic about Spider’s need to protect Carly.” His laugh cooled to a chuckle, and he explained, “Spider has been in love with Carly for at least as long as I’ve known him—probably longer. They don’t like to talk about their childhood, so I don’t know a whole lot. From the bits and pieces I’ve heard, they grew up together; Carly had a creep for a father and Spider has been watching over her his whole life.”

  He leaned in and lowered his voice, in case the trees heard us. “When Bill and Carly started dating and they got really serious, I thought Spider was going to snap. I figured he was either going to kill Bill or himself. Instead, he spent his time trying to prove to Carly that Bill wasn’t good enough for her.”

  Something didn’t fit. “Bill has been gone a long time, and Carly seems okay with me now,” I assessed. My interactions with Carly had grown from her deathly glares and her screaming profanities at me, to civilized, almost friendly.

  He grinned proudly. “Spider and I are just as surprised as you are. We both thought she would have been mad longer than that.”

  My head shot up.

  “You talk to Spider about me?”

  His brow furrowed, and he glanced ahead.

  Thunder roared, and new rows of black clouds hoarded in. The mist had dropped from the treetops to the ground, making the gravel road barely discernible beyond two feet. Cameron and I walked closely and silently for awhile. Questions still colored my thoughts. For one, my brother’s stupid and idiotic mistake had nothing to do with me. Second, if Carly wasn’t as perturbed by my being there, why did Spider still feel the need to scowl every time he saw me?

  “There’s more to this than what Bill did to Carly,” I said and watched him carefully. “There’s another reason why Spider doesn’t like me.”

  He slowed our already slow pace while he deliberated. When he looked up, I could see the struggle. “He doesn’t trust you, and he definitely doesn’t trust me with you.”

  “Why?” I challenged.

  “For the same reasons he never trusted your brother, even before Bill and Carly met.”

  All of a sudden, I had this sick sense in the pit of my stomach—I somehow knew that I wouldn’t like what Cameron was about to tell me … and he took his time telling me, prolonging the agony.

  “People like you, like your brother—people who come from money like you … will always have your family money, your family name, your family power to fall back on and protect you, cover you when things get bad.”

  I tried to keep my voice normal, though the storm was raging inside me. “Bad as in getting caught, arrested.”

  “Amongst other things,” he continued, refusing to look at me. “When people like Carly and Spider and me get into trouble, the only thing that people see is that we come from the streets. They’re happy when we get caught, because we deserve whatever comes to us. There aren’t any search parties when one of us goes missing. No one cares if we turn up dead—just another crime statistic. If the ship starts to sink, we go down with it. No one will be there to throw us a life raft.”

  I couldn’t imagine ever going to my parents for any kind of life raft. My family was more apt to stand on the luxury cruise ship beside the sinking ship, entertaining, diverting other guests so that no one would notice that one of us was drowning.

  “Do you think the same way that Spider does? Do you see me as one of those people who skips town when things get hard?” I said, my temper flaring up.

  “I think that you have a lot more options than anyone else I know.”

  “You’re judging me because of the amount of money my parents have in their bank account?”

  Cameron finally looked at me through narrowed eyes. “I’ve been judged my whole life because of the money my parents didn’t have.”

  “I am not my parents’ money, and neither was my brother. I didn’t get to choose who my parents were going to be or where I grew up.”

  “Neither did I,” he snapped. “You can run away from your big house, pick the crappiest school you can find and live in the ugliest house in the worst neighborhood … none of that changes where you come from, Emmy. To the rest of the world, you and your brother will always look like two confused rich kids who are trying to slum it because of their issues with their parents. But when you’re done slumming it, you get to go back to the big house and the bank accounts. I don’t have that comfort. This,” he said bitterly, extending his arms out, “is it for me. I have nowhere else to go. Fancy schools, rich friends didn’t change the fact that I’m just another street kid.”

  The sky exploded and buckets of rain came pouring down. I hadn’t realized that Cameron and I had stopped in the middle of the road, and that was where we stood, glaring at each other, getting drenched.

  “So you don’t trust me … just because my parents have money.”

  “I didn’t say that,” he said sullenly.

  “What are you saying, Cameron?” I kept staring angrily at him through the water. “Why did you say that Spider doesn’t trust you with me?”

  “Because he’s smarter than me,” he blurted, his voice a worthy opponent for the roaring thunder above. “He knows that I like having you around too much when you shouldn’t even be here in the first place. And, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I tend to spill my guts when I’m around you. I’m in a type of business where people who talk too much disappear. Permanently. And people like you get taken out even before they can get the chance to snitch on people like me.”

  His eyes were fierce, and the muscles of his face were pulled tightly. He looked like he meant every word of what he had told me. All of this was enough for my chin to start quivering. No matter how hard I bit my lip, I couldn’t help but give myself away.

  Cameron suddenly dropped his head into his hands. “Emmy … God, I’m sorry … I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I—” When he glanced up, he looked heartbroken. “Emmy, I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just so confusing for me to have you here,” he resigned, shaking his head. The rain dripped from his straggly hair into his eyes. He looked dismal and beautiful, all at once. I found myself wanting nothing more than to make him happy again. This scared me more than the words that had come out of his mouth.

  I smiled at him. It took him a while, but he did smile back, faintly.

  I wished that I had never decided to clear the air about Spider. “Can we start over?”

  “I don’t know,” he said with awareness. “Can we?”

  I considered and smiled wider. “What’s your last name, Cameron?”

  He smiled a little wider too. “You know, no one has dared to ask me that question in a really long time. I don’t think anyone here knows my real last name, except for Rocco and Spider.”

  I waited, tapping my foot in the puddle we had been left standing in. I thought it must be odd t
o be surrounded by people who had no idea who you were. And then I realized that this wasn’t much different from my own life in Callister.

  Cameron looked pensive, taking part in another of his private debates. He shook his head in defeat. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this … my last name is Hillard.”

  While my thoughts were engraving his name inside the walls of my head, I held my hand out in a truce. “Nice to meet you, Cameron Hillard. I’m Emily Sheppard.”

  This time, Cameron took my hand and shook it hardily with a guilty smile on his face. “Nice to meet you, Emily Sheppard.”

  “There,” I said with satisfaction. “Now we can officially start over.”

  Cameron chuckled lightly, slowly picking up his good mood. I was relieved.

  Thunder and lightning crashed, and we ran the rest of the way home. The fog was blinding, so Cameron had to shepherd our way.

  I was startled by the two soaked guards who appeared out of the fog as we neared the property line. They quickly receded when they saw Cameron.

  We had made it back to the house, breathless, covered in mud, and soaking wet. Puddles were rapidly forming around our feet on the marble floor.

  I stood by, with great awkwardness, while Cameron stripped down to his boxer shorts.

  “Wait here,” he ordered with renewed energy and ran off through the kitchen. He came back with a bath towel in his hand and another around his waist. He draped the towel around my shoulders and held it so that I could get undressed under it. “I promise I won’t look,” he told me with a devious smirk.

  Shivering, I removed my clothes while Cameron looked away with a big grin on his face. I relieved Cameron of his post and draped the towel tightly around my torso. My teeth chattering, I flew upstairs and stood under the scorching hot water of the shower until I was sure I had accomplished my mission of getting a first-degree burn. Dressed and warmed, I bounded back down the stairs and walked in on five nearly naked men standing at the front entrance.

  Piles of wet and dirty clothes had been thrown on the floor. It seemed that, like Cameron and me, everyone had been peeling off their clothes at the door instead of trekking water and mud everywhere in the house. The foyer floor was now a brown lake.

  I waited for them to move out of the way so I could get by. Clad in their soaked underwear, the trembling men largely disregarded me and argued about whom the highest ranked were to determine first dibs on a hot shower. They kept the argument going while they made their way downstairs.

  A bare-chested Griff was left behind in the foyer, still struggling to get his soaking wet socks off his feet. He had a sour look on his face, his mood matching the stormy weather.

  “Hey, Griff,” I said with careful cheerfulness.

  Griff lifted his head, acknowledged me with a grunt. He finally managed to pull one of his socks off and proceeded to throw it onto one of the piles of wet clothes, but slipped and almost fell on his behind.

  “I saw you with Spider earlier, he looked pretty upset,” I said. “Did you get in trouble for slacking off while they were gone?”

  “That and other stuff.” After tugging for a while, Griff pulled off his wet jeans and stood unabashedly in his underwear. I instantly looked away.

  The uncommon smell of a home-cooked meal was coming from the kitchen. The prospect of food always cheered me up.

  “Are you at least coming in for supper?” I offered, motioning toward the kitchen.

  “No, thanks. I think you’ve gotten me in enough trouble as it is. I’ll be lucky if I live to see another day,” he grumbled.

  “What do you mean?”

  Griff’s eyes shot over my shoulder. “Never mind. I gotta go,” he said, his voice low and panicked. He rushed past me and disappeared into the basement.

  I spun on my heels. Cameron was behind me, leaning against the doorway into the kitchen, his arms casually crossed over his chest. I hopped toward him.

  Carly was standing over the stove, vehemently stirring foodstuff in a large frying pan while barking orders at Spider, who was dutifully cutting vegetables. Cameron led me to the table, where mismatched candles and a table set for five waited for us. Rocco was already sitting at the table, eagerly holding his plate over his heart with both hands.

  “Where’s everyone else?” I wondered.

  “It’s just the family tonight,” Cameron told me.

  Rocco glanced at his big brother with interest, momentarily slacking his grip on his plate while Carly and Spider filtered in with masses of food. Burritos, fajitas, guacamole, apple juice in plastic wine glasses … it seemed to me that there was too much food for just five people.

  Rocco was still picking at the crumbs on the counter when the first hand was being dealt out. After much debate between Carly and Cameron, we were playing poker—Texas Hold’em. The stakes were extremely high: a week’s worth of laundry duty.

  Bill had taught me how to play poker when I was eight, and I’d always thought I was a pretty good bluffer, but after just a few hands, I was already out of chips. I didn’t feel too bad though—Carly and Rocco were in the same boat.

  It was getting late. Cameron was sitting behind a fortress of chips and Spider was barely hanging on. Rocco had his head on the table, and I had mine leaning on my fist.

  “Is it always like this?” I whispered to Carly.

  “You mean, does Cameron always win?”

  I thought about it and nodded.

  She squinted in Cameron’s direction. “He wins, but he cheats.”

  I heard a grumble from Cameron’s chair.

  “How?” I gasped, my attention fully on Carly.

  “He counts cards and he reads people.” She paused and watched my puzzled expression with enjoyment. “He knows what people are thinking just by looking at them. Cameron didn’t brag about that to you?”

  I shook my head.

  Carly shrugged. “That’s surprising.”

  I turned my eyes to Cameron. “Is that true? Can you really tell what people are thinking?”

  “Not exactly,” he answered with a sharp glance in Carly’s direction. “Carly likes to embellish.”

  Spider pushed the rest of his chips into the pot and mumbled, “All in.” Cameron immediately called. They overturned their cards on the table and waited for the dealer’s cards to unfold. The first three cards gave Cameron a flush. Spider waited for the next two, hoping something would save him.

  But the game was no longer of any interest to me. “What part of it is embellished?”

  “I don’t know what people are thinking,” he clarified. “All I can tell is, if someone is nervous, or mad, or happy, or bluffing their brains out …” He winked at me.

  The fourth card was a nine of diamonds. Spider jumped a little. Another nine or a king would give him a full house to beat Cameron.

  This made me wonder. “Are some people easier to read than others?”

  “Everyone has their own quirks that give them away,” he said. “Though, yes, some people are definitely easier to read than others.”

  “Well, do you count cards too? Because that is cheating,” I scolded.

  “Poker is more about knowing your opponent than counting cards,” he said, contracting his eyes toward an unaffected Carly again. “I do count the odds in my head. It’s not a sure thing but …” He smirked at Spider. “… for example, I know that Spider has almost no chance of winning this hand.”

  “We’ll see,” Spider griped quietly.

  Carly turned over a queen. Spider bent his head in defeat.

  Chapter Twelve:

  A Dark Place

  It rained, for days on end. The front hall was mostly flooded—I had only observed this because I had to trudge through some of the gathering water while I skipped to meet Cameron in the kitchen in the morning. Otherwise, the rain went mostly unnoticed by me.

  Early mornings were my favorite. It was the only time that I had alone with Cameron, before the rest of the house awoke, before Rocco would start follo
wing us around from room to room, from couch to kitchen.

  I noticed things. Spending every waking moment with Cameron had opened my eyes. First, Cameron was timid, almost as painfully as I was. When it was just the two of us, there would be moments when we’d be sitting at the table, quietly eating our cereal, and he would all of a sudden look down, or break a small smile and his cheeks would blot red, for no reason. I was resigned to having my cheeks and neck permanently tattooed of scarlet hues.

  When it wasn’t just the two of us—and these moments were too numerous—he was mostly quiet and watched from the sidelines, like he was trying to fade into the wallpaper.

  Then there were the other darker times, fleeting moments when he became distant. A glaze would awash his face and the premature wrinkles around his eyes resurfaced. I hated these moments. Eventually, his eyes would find me, and he would come back. I’d wonder where he’d been—what dark corner he had come out of.

  The second thing I noticed was Rocco’s immeasurable attachment to his older brother. Wherever Cameron went, so did Rocco, faithfully, eagerly. Cameron would secretly smile at me while his brother tried to impress with his newfound fighting skills, or tried to match whatever weights Cameron was lifting in the workout room. And we watched a lot of TV, spent our days moving food from the kitchen to the kitchen table to the couch.

  Carly and Spider would join us once in a while. One was never without the other. They mostly kept to themselves. I really liked Carly. Spider was tolerable.

  With the torrential weather, I had expected the house to be bustling with people trying to get out of the rain. Yet the house was quieter than usual. Guards only came in for mealtimes and sleep.

  The third thing I noticed was that even the mid-rankers ate in the basement kitchen. It seemed that when Cameron was around, guards stayed away and all meals were eaten as a family. I loved this.