by Laura Kemp
“Sounds nuts if you ask me.”
I didn’t know what to say, how to convince her that what had happened had really happened aside from the fact that I would never cut myself for shits and giggles.
“But I believe you, Squirt.” She reached out and touched the top of my head. “And right now, we need to get you to the hospital.”
“Not yet,” I shook my head. “The blood is starting to stop.”
“Do you want me to call Dylan?”
I nodded, my eyes filling with tears because she’d offered what I couldn’t ask for.
“Dave’ll do it,” she reached out, squeezed my hand. “I don’t have to tell him why.”
“He wouldn’t believe you anyway.”
“Don’t bet on it. I try my best not to date assholes.”
I giggled, surprising myself with the sound.
“Wait here. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
Like I was going anywhere with a bum knee and a bloody towel stuck to the side of my arm.
If only he could see me now. I closed my eyes, fantasized for a moment that Dylan knew I was crippled and was at this very moment racing towards the apartment, hell-bent on kicking someone’s ass. I imagined him bursting through the door and rushing to the bathroom where he would gather me into his arms and carry me to the yellow La-Z-Boy.
After that I was a little confused as to whether we talked about our fight or had passionate make-up sex on the blue shag. I was leaning toward the latter when Holly re-entered the bathroom, a frown on her face.
“Holl?”
She shook her head, smiled. “Dave talked to him this morning. Said he sounded fine.”
I scowled. “Fine?”
“Well, not ‘fine’ in the actual sense of the word, but pretty darn good…” she paused, “Considering.”
I pressed my lips together. “Tell me,” I ordered, my eyes searching hers.
“Dave called when he bailed on their basketball game. Said he wasn’t feeling up to it but they were supposed to meet up afterwards.”
“And he didn’t show?”
“Not exactly,” she blew out her breath. “He could have just been late. Dave had an early shift, so he couldn’t really wait around all night.”
I tried to steady my breath, tried to still my shaking hands while pushing to my feet. One quick jerk and divorce proceedings with the turquoise bath towel were finalized. Ten hops and I was in the living room searching for my keys.
“Sit down before you kill yourself.”
“I can’t,” I said. “Something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong. He just needs time to cool off.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
She looked away, twisted a strand of hair.
“I’m calling his cell.”
“Oh, Squirt,” she mumbled, but it was too late. I’d already found my phone and began punching numbers in, numbers I’d dialed a million times and it felt good and right, like coming home to warm food on the table.
Three rings and someone picked up.
“Hello?”
I didn’t recognize the voice as Avery’s but wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
“Who is this?”
“Chelsea.”
Chelsea? Who the hell was Chelsea? I looked up, my eyes searching for Holly’s but she’d slunk off into the kitchen.
“Where’s Dylan?” I demanded.
She laughed, pulled the phone away and covered the mouth piece. A muffled conversation that lasted several seconds followed and in the garble, I thought I heard his voice.
“Can I take a message?”
I bit my lip, fury starting its slow boil. How dare this person, this “Chelsea,” tell me I couldn’t talk to Dylan?
I gritted my teeth and grunted, “Put him on the goddamn phone.”
“He stepped outside for a smoke. Can I tell him who called?”
A smoke? Since when did Mr. I’m So Fit I Could Survive on a Turnip start smoking?
“Tell him it’s Justine.”
She laughed. “I’ll tell him you called but it’s going to be a late night.”
“Great,” I played along, “If he’s up, tell him I’ll swing by later and get my underwear.”
Silence, followed by a hasty hang-up that made me feel a tiny bit better. But not much.
Hopping in a circle, I faced my roommate. She looked guilty, looked compassionate, looked anywhere but into my eyes.
“Did you know about her?” I paused, a throb welling in my throat that matched the pain in my kneecap.
She sighed, came to the counter, and leaned over on her elbows. “They met tonight for drinks over in Onaway but Dave had to leave early.”
I hopped her way, balanced myself on one of our wobbly stools. “And when he left Dylan was hitting on someone?”
So much for taking a little time to cool down.
“Someone was hitting on him, but he kept blowing her off.” She stopped. “At least he was then.”
I tried not to cry, thinking of how quickly things could change from bad to worse and why I’d bothered to fight so hard for my life when it was perfectly obvious Dylan didn’t give a shit.
Luckily my roommate wasn’t one to dwell on the past. “You need a doctor.”
I wanted to argue but couldn’t, not when my arm pulsated like a discotheque and my knee felt as though it would never again support anything close to my current weight.
I slid from the stool and hobbled towards the door. “I think you’re right.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
My long-anticipated trip to the E.R. was profitable only in the sense that I came away with a prescription that could make me some fast cash on the streets and a knee brace that made me look like an all-star athlete.
And while my situation couldn’t have sucked more, wondering whether Dylan was sleeping with some slut named Chelsea was a lot better than knowing Red Rover had killed him.
I was pondering my next move in the La-Z-Boy, my knee elevated at a perfect thirty-degree angle when the phone rang. For a split second my heart prepared for the dismount it had been dreading since the day before yesterday—the moment he told me the separation would be permanent and not to call him again. Ever.
I reached out, pushed the button that would connect me to the speaker I prayed had finally come to his senses and croaked out, “Hello?”
“Do you have a cold?”
“Well,” I coughed, “As a matter of fact—”
“I’m worried about you,” My mother interrupted. “Is something wrong?”
I felt my face go slack. She was worried? Concerned? Called of her own accord with no ulterior motives? “Never felt better.”
She waited before answering—another oddity—and I gathered it, held it tightly because I didn’t know what it meant or where it would lead us.
“I had a bad feeling,” she paused again and, in the background, I caught the sound of silence and realized she wasn’t multi-tasking. “I can’t explain it.”
“Bad feeling?” I echoed, trying to sound nonchalant. “About what?”
She drew a breath and I waited, my pain meds not quite dulling the edges as I’d hoped and when she spoke I felt my insides slide as if made of jelly.
“Something I should have told you a long time ago.”
I bit my cheek. Never in my life had she voluntarily offered up valuable information.
“Dad?” I asked, letting the word be the cord that connected us.
“Yes.”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see, still unable to speak as the TV droned on, an undercurrent of white noise that just matched the jumble in my head.
“I knew eventually you would find your way to that place,” she said, her sharp tone under wraps for the first time in recent memory.
“That makes one of us.”
I heard her stifle a nervous laugh, realized she was in unfamiliar territory and decided to give her the break Dad had asked me to so many years
ago.
“I know about Butler.”
“You do?” She seemed relieved. And troubled. “How?”
“Iris told me.”
Had I hurt her? “Oh?”
“And my brother.”
She sighed. Nothing close to self-pity, just a simple acknowledgment of the truth and her inability to change it.
“Robert wasn’t perfect.”
“I never thought he was.”
She laughed. “Yes, you did.”
“I was eleven when he left. What did you expect?”
“Justine—”
“Don’t take that away from me.”
“I don’t intend to,” she began, her voice low and soft and full of something potent. “You’re a grown woman and you deserve to know why I never treated you like one.”
Another silence filled by the lonely childhood that had come between us. I wanted to forgive her for not getting over it and moving on, for crying at night and leaving me to fend for myself. It was only natural when you loved someone that much to grieve their betrayal.
But she had betrayed me, too.
“I wanted to keep you with me forever—and I knew what was coming…ever since that day you cut your knee.”
I sat up in the La-Z-Boy, shifted my weight so my knee was straight, traced the white line running down the center of it with the tip of my index finger, and remembered the moment Dylan had kissed it.
“Robert went crazy after that…talking about the Shaman and Calvert Cook, going over the stories he’d heard as a little boy from Iris—stories about you and your brother.”
“Mom—” I felt her pain, wanted her to stop and go on forever at the same time.
“Calvert said a brother and a sister would kill the monster Butler created and we hoped.” She paused. “We thought as long as we never had another child you would be safe.”
I put my fingertips to my hairline, undone by how much my parents had loved me. “Why did he have an affair? If he knew—”
“I asked him that same question and he always told me he didn’t know,” she took a deep breath. “I was very angry for a long time, even before he had the affair and, in a way, I can understand why he did it. I was cold…unfeeling…but I wanted a different life.”
“Don’t,” I whispered, my pity for her plain in my voice. “It’s no excuse.”
“I know, Justine, but as time went on I began to realize everything happened for a reason. If he hadn’t met Pam we wouldn’t have Adam and the two of you wouldn’t have your shot at ending this once and for all.”
I scrunched up my face, unsure I’d heard her right. “Are you saying you think I can do this?”
“I’m saying I know you can.”
“Mom,” I whispered, undone by her faith in me. Unprepared for it.
“Your dad left us that day at the pool and drove up there, went into the woods behind Back Forty Farm and was never seen again.”
I thought of Butler, and of Odessa, searching the long, northern nights for him and wondered if every Cook woman was destined to walk alone.
“Jonas Younts—”
“Must have known he was coming. Robert wasn’t prepared, he had no idea what it would take to undo the black magic Butler had been forced to perform. He only had a handful of stories from his mother and the belief that a father’s love could conquer everything.” My mother paused, and in the gap, I heard her steady herself again. “I begged him not to go, Justine. I asked him to wait until you were older, out of high school and he told me it couldn’t wait. His dreams had gotten worse and now there was another baby. He knew his children were in danger if Jonas Younts found out about them.”
I shook my head. “It’s not Jonas we need to be afraid of, Mom.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s another one, the one I used to draw with my crayons—”
“The man with no face?”
“Yes.”
“Did he hurt you?”
I took a breath, stalling for time because the last thing I wanted was for her to drive up here and meddle in something that could get her killed. “No…but he knows about me and Adam.”
“I’m coming up there.”
I bit my lip, ecstatic that she cared, but terrified she would mess something up and I would be trapped in this nightmare forever.
“Please,” I whispered, tears pouring over my cheeks now, tears I swatted with an impatient hand. “You have to let me do this.”
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“Yes, I do,” I lied, “Iris has been helping me, and Adam and Dylan.”
I stopped cold, wondering if I could really add his name to that list when she asked, “Dylan?”
I hobbled to the window, gripped the sill and looked outside.
“Is he tall?” she asked. “With blond hair?”
I felt my fingers tighten. “Yes.”
“And blue eyes that sometimes change color.”
“Mom—”
“And a wheel between his shoulder blades.” She stopped, searched for the word. “A tattoo?”
“My God—” I said.
“Robert said he would watch over you.”
I closed my eyes, all the nerve endings and bone and ligaments that kept me upright and moving and carrying on a respectable pace liquefying in an instant. I couldn’t stand, couldn’t sit and so I propped myself in the window sill and placed my forehead against the glass.
“A part of me was afraid he wouldn’t find you in time.”
“He did, Mom,” I whispered, my hands quivering. “And I screwed it up and now he won’t talk to me.”
“You need him, Justine,” she insisted. “The reversal calls for blood. Your blood.”
I closed my eyes, the late afternoon sun burning the side of my neck.
“Once it starts you won’t be able to stop it.”
I tried to stay calm even as my chest ignited, remembering the dream he had told me about as I laid in his arms. “But Dylan can.”
“You have to find him. Do what you can to make it right.”
“I don’t know where to find him,” I began, my pulse doing a chin-up in my chest.
“Then you’d better start looking.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I didn’t want to bartend at Huff’s, didn’t want to pour shots when Dylan’s whereabouts were in question and still I figured an evening in the company of Mallard and his rowdy regulars was safer than sitting at home waiting for Red Rover to finish me off. I’d tried his cell phone again, hoping that he would answer and tell me Chelsea was a thing of the past, but it had gone straight to voicemail.
And damned if I was going to leave a message.
Three hours into my shift and I still felt lousy. My only relief came when I devised a plan to go driving around Presque Isle County after closing time, looking for the silver truck that would solve all my problems.
Don’t call…
He didn’t know about Dad’s prediction or the fact that he was supposed to stop me from bleeding to death. All he knew was that he’d had some weird dreams about a girl that looked like me and that I kissed another guy and didn’t tell him about it. Chances are he wouldn’t talk to me even if I did locate his truck.
I must have looked pretty depressed because even Mallard kept his distance at first before circling for seconds as though barmaid baiting was a recreational sport.
“How come you’re hobblin’ around?” He glanced at my brace while shaking out his pack for a fresh smoke. “Spend some time on your knees last night?”
I didn’t dignify his innuendo with an answer but continued to serve drink after drink to my smattering of regulars as Garth Brooks followed Shania Twain followed The Goose Girl Polka on our dilapidated jukebox. It wasn’t long until the place was empty. I was just about to try Dylan’s cell phone again when the doors opened and two girls walked in.
The first girl was pleasantly plump and plain, her V-neck blouse demure and matronly,
but the second girl…
Mallard’s jaw dropped so low a semi-truck could have driven through with clearance.
She smiled, revealing perfect teeth while settling on Shaw’s barstool.
“Holy shit,” Mallard panted under his breath. “That ol’ fucker’d keel over if he knew that ass was on his seat.”
I made a face, then limped over and asked them for their orders. The first girl asked for a wine cooler, smiled at me in a nice way and looked to her gorgeous friend. The second girl pulled her hair over a tanned shoulder, nicely displayed in a black tube top.
“Fuzzy navel.”
I turned toward the tier of liquor bottles, thinking that if everyone had a drink that described them, a fuzzy navel would be hers.
She seemed out-of-place in Huff’s but not in her own skin. A confidence only the crème de la crème possessed oozed from her pores as sweat did from mine. She opened her purse, a leather number that cost more than my four years of college and drew out a tube of pink lip gloss.
She applied it to her lips, smacked them together, and waited for her drink.
I grabbed the peach Schnapps, reached for a carton of orange juice, and wondered why they had come to this bar alone and if the Supermodel could possibly be waiting for her equally attractive boyfriend.
Which reminded me of Dylan. Which reminded me of Mom.
You need him, Justine…
In more ways than one…and so I ventured toward the till when Mallard wasn’t watching, grabbed my cell phone and hit his number.
His ringtone—the University of Michigan fight song—jolted me. I spun, half-expecting to see him in the doorway before I realized what was happening.
Dylan’s wasn’t answering his cell phone because the hottie with the expensive purse had gotten her mitts on it.
I watched her fishing for the phone in her purse, watched her gaze shift to me as a sort of horrid understanding steeped her elfin features.
She didn’t bother to answer, just grabbed her friend by the wrist, threw a five-dollar bill on the counter and got up to leave.
No way was I letting that bitch out the door.
Moving with the speed Butler had given me, I blocked her escape before she knew what was happening.