Drive

by Stephanie Fournet

  Once leashed, Archie jettisoned himself from the back seat and strained at the lead as he pulled her to the first patch of grass he could find. While her dog marked new and unchartered territory, Rainey watched Jacques disappear into the salon.

  She walked Archie over to a cluster of trees at the edge of the parking lot. The wind in the young trees and the whoosh of blood through her ears drowned out sounds from the highway. Not wanting to miss Jacques’s text, she pulled her phone from her pocket and held it in a tight grip.

  This was how she stood, heart racing, body rigid, and guts looped in knots when a yellow school bus turned into the shopping center’s parking lot. She didn’t give it a second thought until it pulled up right in front of her and opened its double doors.

  A gust of wind blew curls into her face, and when Rainey cleared them from her eyes, a boy stood before her. She froze, eyes wide, staring — she knew — at her brother. And he was staring at Archie.

  “Hey, is that your dog?” He bent forward and slapped his thighs in the universal dog welcome, and Rainey could only stand there with her mouth open. “He’s so cute!”

  The school bus stop signs retracted, and the vehicle rumbled away. Or maybe the rumble was from the approaching thunderheads. Rainey couldn’t be sure. All she could do was gawk at the boy in front of her.

  “What’s his name? Can I pet him?”

  “Uh…” Rainey opened and closed her mouth, but the utterance was all she could produce.

  Ray Charles glanced up at her with a look of worry.

  “Does he bite?” he asked, frowning. He wore black-rimmed glasses that were just a little too big for his face, and he touched the corner of them to adjust them as he spoke. The lenses made his hazel eyes look slightly larger than life, so the recognition of them hit her with unexpected force.

  She shook her head quickly and found her tongue. “No, no. His name’s Archie. He’s friendly.”

  Ray Charles threw his gaze back to the dog and dropped to his knees, the wind from the approaching storm tousling his hair as he did. “Hi, Archie!” he greeted, and his enthusiasm was only second to Archie’s who lunged forward and began licking the boy on his chin. Ray Charles dissolved into giggles. He dropped his backpack to the ground beside him and used both hands to pet the dog. “Is he a poodle?”

  Rainey sunk down into a squat until she was eye-level with him. She didn’t think she could keep standing anyway. He didn’t look like John Lee, and yet memories of the brother she’d lost fell on her like a sledgehammer.

  It was his voice.

  The way it chirped with excitement. And the look in his eyes as he petted and scratched Archie. A joyful look that penetrated. John Lee had worn the same intense, engaged look of delight and rapt concentration whenever he found something he loved: a game, a gadget, a shell on the beach. Holi still wore that look when she read.

  Rainey had grown up surrounded by the expression. It surpassed familiar. It was elemental. She knew it in her bones. In her soul. This boy was her brother, and she loved him already.

  And he really did look like Holi. His darker coloring matched hers, and the planes of their faces were so similar, especially now that the wind pushed his brown hair from his forehead.

  “I love his ears,” Ray Charles said, rubbing Archie’s crinkled earflap between his thumb and forefinger. When Archie let go a moan of pleasure, even the lump in Rainey’s throat couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped her.

  “I think he likes that,” she murmured. And then because she couldn’t help herself. “I think he likes you.”

  He looked up at her, his wide hazel eyes locking on hers with a force that nearly knocked her back.

  “Really? I want a dog so bad.” He kept one hand on Archie’s ear, but with the other, he unzipped and rifled through his backpack, unearthing a boatload of books as he did.

  “I really want a Labrador retriever,” he said, fishing out a book titled The Everything Labrador Retriever Book: A Complete Guide to Raising, Training, and Caring for Your Lab and thrusting it at her. “My mom says they’re too big, and they shed too much, but I know they’re uncommonly smart.”

  Rainey took the book he offered, but she couldn’t spare it a glance. “Uncommonly smart?” Rainey asked with a grin.

  “Yeah, you know, singularly intelligent,” he offered as an explanation, frowning slightly as if her question seemed ridiculous. And maybe even a little pitiful.

  “How old are you?” she found herself asking.

  He pushed his glasses up on his nose as though he were about to discuss a highly serious matter. “I’ll be ten next week.”

  Rainey felt her face split with a smile. “Well, happy early birthday.”

  She felt her phone buzz in her hand then, and when Rainey looked down at the screen, she saw that she had already missed three texts from Jacques.

  Jacques: I’m in. Come on.

  Jacques: She’s about to wash my hair. Get in here.

  Jacques: Starting to worry.

  “Oh, shit.” As soon as the words left her lips, she clapped a hand over her mouth and looked back at Ray Charles. “Oops. I’m sorry,” she mumbled behind her hand.

  He crooked a brow at her the same way Holi did every time she was about to deliver sarcasm. “I’m about to be ten. I’ve heard the s-h-i-t word before,” he intoned with a hint of impatience. “It’s like my mom’s second favorite word.”

  Rainey felt her head jolt. “What’s her first favorite word?” she couldn’t help but ask. In the back of her mind, she knew she needed to get back to Jacques — she didn’t want him to worry — but meeting her brother overwhelmed her.

  Ray Charles lifted his palm in the direction of the salon, his tone still dry as paper. “Glorious. Everything is glorious. Glorious hair. Glorious nails. Glorious outfit. Glorious glorious,” he lamented wryly. “But if it’s not glorious, it’s s-h-i—”

  “I think I get it,” Rainey said, feeling a little guilty for talking four-letter words with a nine-year-old. She stood up straight and handed back his dog book. “Um, I need to head over to the salon — seeing as it’s so glorious—”

  His interrupting laugh surprised her.

  “—and before I can do that,” she said, fighting her own smile, loving the music of his laugh. “I need to put Archie in the car.”

  Ray Charles shot to his feet. “It’s about to storm. He’ll be scared in the car. You can bring him inside!” he urged with enthusiasm.

  Taken aback, Rainey shook her head. But he was right. The sky was considerably darker now. No rain had fallen, but the downpour was imminent. Still… “I-I couldn’t do that. I—”

  “Sure you can. Like, everyone—” He tucked his chin and eyeballed her over the rim of his glasses as he zipped up his backpack. “And I mean everyone else does. Almost all my mom’s clients have dogs that fit in their purses. Ridiculous,” he droned with a disapproving eye roll. Then he nodded toward Archie “Besides, he’s a good boy. Everyone can tell he’s a good boy,” he said, as if she’d offered a dispute.

  Rainey fought her grin. Her surprise little brother was a neat kid, and all she really wanted to do in the moment was keep talking to him. But her phone buzzed again in her hand.

  Jacques: Rainey, WTF? Now is not the time for radio silence. Don’t do this to me again.

  “Oh sh-sheesh! Okay, let’s go.”

  “Yes!” Ray Charles grabbed his backpack and flung it over his shoulder. Then he looked at her with beseeching doe eyes. “Do you think I could walk him?”

  With a look like that, Ray Charles probably got almost everything he wanted. Still, his mother clearly must have been immune to it if he didn’t have a Labrador retriever yet. She was about to hand over the leash when a thought occurred to her.

  “It’s okay with me, but you don’t even know who I am. You know it’s not safe to talk to strangers, right?”

  He squinted up at her with a frown. “Are you a stranger? You look pretty familiar to me,” he observed innocently
.

  Rainey’s heart knocked against her chest. Did he know on some level that they were related? Did he recognize his own features in her face?

  “Well, we’ve never met,’ she said diplomatically, and she stuck her hand out. “I’m Rainey…” Her mouth hung open a second as she contemplated telling him her last name. She decided against it, not knowing what he knew of their father.

  He blinked behind his glasses. “That’s an uncommonly original name.”

  The pull of her smile was automatic. People always remarked on her name, but no one had ever called it uncommonly original. But his choice of words reminded her, too, of herself when she was about his age. Every time she’d read a book, she’d pick up a new vocabulary word and wear it out over the next few weeks. Uncommonly had never been one of her fads, but she now loved the word.

  Ray Charles accepted her offered hand and shook it with imitated maturity. “My name’s Ray Charles Lopez-Craine, but everyone calls me Ray.”

  Her heart twitched. Hearing him confirm his identity filled her with conviction, but also, she didn’t miss the fact that Reeves was definitely not part of his name. Which made her wonder how that had happened. Had Gloria’s husband adopted him? And if so, did that mean that their father had relinquished his parental rights altogether?

  Her gut swirled with a sickening sense of unease at the thought, but she told herself to put the question away, and she handed Ray the leash and let him lead the way to the salon. The first drop of rain landed on her head so she fell in step behind him. She quickly fired off a text.

  Rainey: Sorry! Met RC. We are walking in together! What now?!?

  As if the last place he wanted to be was outside, Archie made a beeline for the salon, likely following Jacques’s scent. Ray had to run to keep up with the dog, so Rainey had to run to keep up with Ray. Rain started to peck at the pavement beneath them as they ran. Ray reached the salon, flung the door wide, stepped in, and held it open for her.

  “Ray, honey? Is that you? Sounds like it’s getting rough out there.” Rainey heard what had to be Gloria call from a hidden corner of the salon. She could hear water running. Gloria must have been washing Jacques’s hair.

  “Yeah, Mom.” Ray disappeared around the corner, but Rainey stayed near the front of the salon out of sight like the coward she was. “Look, Mom, this is Archie.”

  “Oh!” Gloria gave a startled cry. “Hello, Archie. Son, who does he belong to?” Rainey heard Gloria ask, and at that moment, her stomach plummeted as she realized what she’d done.

  Ray turned to face her with a beckoning smile. “He belongs to your next client, Rainey,” he offered helpfully, and Rainey’s blood turned arctic.

  The water shut off. “Wh-what did you say, Ray?” Gloria’s voice was almost hushed with an eerie disbelief.

  “I said Archie belongs to Rainey, your next client,” Ray jabbered on, but as he did, Rainey froze because she heard the distinct clop of high-heeled shoes. “She was going to leave him in the car but, I told her…”

  Rainey lost the sense of Ray’s words as soon as Gloria rounded the corner. A flash of lightning lit the salon’s windows. For an instant, she saw how the woman’s face was screwed into a frown of confusion until she laid eyes on her, and the kaleidoscope of emotions spun rapidly from confusion to shock to rage.

  “How dare you?!” Gloria roared. She looked exactly like her Facebook profile picture, down to her Beyoncé waves sun-kissed with highlights. Except she wasn’t smiling as she had in the profile. No, her brown eyes blazed with fury, and the plunging neckline of her sleeveless, button-down blouse revealed bulging veins in the base of her throat that forewarned of violence. “How dare you speak to my son!”

  Ray had reared back at his mother’s attack. “Mom—” His own confusion made him step forward and raise a hand to stop Gloria’s advance on Rainey. “It’s okay. She’s nice—”

  “Ray!” Gloria nearly shouted at her son. At that moment, with his hair dripping water, Jacques came around the corner with alarm in his eyes. “Go to the back room right now.”

  “But, Mama, what’s wrong?” He gestured toward Rainey in a way that pierced her heart. She didn’t deserve his kindness or his protection. “Why are you yelling at her? You don’t even know her.”

  Gloria never took her eyes from Rainey, and all of Rainey’s carefully planned words blew out of her mind like dandelion wisps in a gale.

  “Oh,” Gloria spoke through clenched teeth, her eyes narrowing on Rainey as she advanced on her, “I know who she is.”

  Rainey swallowed as she prepared to be thrown — maybe even bodily — out of the salon. But it wasn’t Gloria’s angry voice that filled the room.

  It was Jacques’s.

  “She’s your sister, Ray Charles.” His deep baritone bass rumbled around them. “And she’s here for your help.”

  Chapter 23

  Jacques knew when both women turned to him with identical looks of stunned horror that he’d probably botched everything, but they were dead wrong if they thought he was going to stand by in silence. He wasn’t about to watch anyone light into Rainey the way Gloria Lopez-Craine had, and in his split-second decision, he’d determined that the only way they had a chance of getting what they came for was to let Rainey’s little brother know that he was, in fact, her little brother.

  As for Ray Charles — or Ray, as his mother addressed him — he wore a stunned expression, but it noticeably lacked any taint of horror as his gaze bounced among the three adults in the three full seconds after Jacques’s declaration silenced everyone.

  And to Jacques’s relief, the kid was the first to speak up.

  “Mom, is that true?” His voice didn’t waver as he looked at his mother, and Jacques liked the kid immediately.

  Gloria Lopez-Craine’s mouth hung in an O, and she opened and closed it twice before any sound came out. “You heard me, Ray,” her voice shaking audibly. “Go to the back.”

  Ray ignored her and turned his hazel eyes — identical to his sister’s — to Rainey. “No wonder I thought you looked familiar,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose.

  Gloria turned back to face Jacques with a narrowed stare. “I don’t know who you are,” she growled at him. “But I want you out of my salon now, and you can take that no-good Reeves woman with you. You’re not welcome here. Leave now before I call the police.”

  Jacques was about to try to reason with the irate woman when Rainey spoke softly to Ray.

  “We have another sister, too. Her name is Holi. And she’s sick—”

  “Stop!” Gloria screamed, lunging toward Rainey with menace in her eyes.

  Rainey instinctively stepped back, and a low snarl reverberated through the salon. Jacques glanced down to see Archie straining against his leash, still in Ray’s grip, baring his teeth at Gloria.

  “Archie,” Rainey scolded in a whisper, her face pale now, her frame trembling.

  Archie silenced immediately, but Jacques felt a surge of pride for the protective little poodle. Instead of praising the dog as he wished, Jacques reached out his hand to Ray, and the boy gave him the leash.

  “We’ll go now,” he said to the room. “But Rainey needs to speak to her brother at some point—”

  “He’s not her brother,” Gloria spat. She turned and glared at Rainey. “He’s not a part of your family. Dylan Reeves gave up his claim years ago. Cliff Craine is his father.”

  Rainey gasped, and what little color she had left in her face drained away. But Jacques watched her swallow and rally. “For Ray’s sake, that’s welcome news,” Rainey said, holding Gloria’s gaze.

  Jacques couldn’t be sure, but the older woman might have blinked at this. It was a chance, however small, for them to meet on common ground.

  But not now. Now they needed to leave.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out two of Heroine’s business cards. If either of them wanted to reach out, this was a way to find him and thus, Rainey.

  “We’re not here t
o hurt anyone. We just need your help,” Jacques said, offering Gloria one of the cards. She crossed her arms resolutely.

  But as soon as he angled it to Ray, the boy leaped forward and took it, leaving his mother with a stunned expression.

  “Ray!” she hissed. But he tucked the card in his back pocket before she could stop him.

  Jacques set the other card on the salon’s counter.

  “No one here is a fan of Dylan Reeves,” he told her, and again, he saw her expression change. It didn’t soften, but instead of projecting violence, she looked wary. “But that doesn’t mean their sister should die because of him.”

  This time, shock passed over both of the Lopez-Craines’ faces. Jacques backed toward the door and grabbed Rainey’s hand.

  “We’ll be in town overnight. We just want to talk. Please think about it and give us a call.”

  He tugged Rainey’s hand, but her feet were rooted to the spot. Her eyes, he found, were locked on her little brother’s.

  At the look on her face, his heart twisted. The two siblings needed so much more than these few moments fraught with anger and suspicion.

  Jacques gentled his voice as best he could. “C’mon, Rainey.”

  “Yes, please leave now,” Gloria warned, her voice still shaken, but at least she no longer screamed.

  Without taking her gaze from Ray, Rainey reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out the Despicable Me PEZ. She wordlessly handed it to Ray, and Jacques saw the boy’s face transform with a look of startled delight before Rainey followed the tug of Jacques’s hand.

  He pushed open the door, and a gust of wind blew it wide. As soon as he stepped outside, rain stung his face. Gripping Archie’s leash in one hand and shielding Rainey from the storm as best he could, Jacques led them at a run across the parking lot.