by Meli Raine
“Okay, okay. It sounds great.” Finding enthusiasm inside myself is like picking a winning lottery ticket right now.
“We have to take a bus to get there. A couple of buses,” she explains. “But first, let’s get a cup of coffee. We’ll splurge and get a mocha latte. And we’ll walk around Rodeo Drive like we have the money to be there.”
A smile plays at the corners of my lips. I can’t help it. I’m not wearing any makeup today. I know that if I do, I’ll end up with it all over my face from crying. I wipe the tears with the heels of my hands, and link my arms through hers. “Sounds like a plan,” I say. We begin the walk.
Her phone buzzes within five minutes.
“Seriously?” she says. “No way. There’s no way I’m going into work today!”
She hasn’t even looked at her phone. “What do you mean?” I ask, perplexed.
“It’s probably work. Someone called off and they need me to come in. I told them I needed today off, no matter what.” She looks at her phone. “Oh, wait! It’s not work. It’s someone calling from—well, that’s weird.”
“What?” I ask.
“It’s from our home town. The area code. A number from home.”
“Chase?” My heart fills like a helium balloon. It’s ready to explode or lift high into the sky.
She answers and says, “Hello?”
Chase? I mouth. A man’s voice mutters through the phone.
She shakes her head. “Not Chase,” she whispers.
The balloon in my chest pops.
“Is it Jeff?” I ask, my voice filled with disgust.
She covers the mouth part of the phone and says, “No, I know his number. Hang on.”
The murmur of the voice on the other end is too low for me to understand the words, but I understand Marissa’s face. Her jaw drops as the voice continues. “Oh, my God,” she says. All the blood drains out of her face, and she stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk. People walking behind us go around.
I stop, too. “What is it?” I grab her arm tightly.
She waves, and then holds up one finger, asking me to pause.
“Yes, yes, um...okay, officer.”
Officer? Is this the police department calling her? I widen my eyes and give her a frantic look.
“Yes, actually she’s right here with me.”
Me? Why is she talking about me?
“Just a moment,” Marissa says. Her hands are shaking and she offers her phone to me. “It’s the police department back home. They want to talk to you.”
“Is this about Chase?” I whisper. The same heart that was slamming against my bones in sadness and in passion for Chase is now jumping double time in terror.
“No,” she says. She looks at me with bleak eyes. I haven’t seen eyes like that since Mom died. “No, Allie,” she says. “It’s about Jeff.”
“Jeff?” I gasp.
She shoves the phone in my hand. “Talk to them,” she says in a hushed tone. One of her hands flies to her forehead while the other rests on her hip. She closes her eyes and bites her lower lip as I pull the phone up to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is this Allison Boden?”
“Yes? Yes, it is.”
“This is Detective Knowles from the Carson Police Department.”
“Detective Knowles... are you Sammy Knowles’s dad?” My mind is a blender of details and worries right now, and that’s the first thing that comes to mind.
He makes a funny sound. “Um, yes, actually.”
“I went to school with Sammy. He graduated with me last May.” Again my mind jumps.
“I’m not calling to talk about that, Allie.” He lets his firm tone take over the conversation. “We’re pleased, though, to locate you.”
A chill fills my spine like someone’s poured ice from the base of my neck all the way down to my tailbone. “Locate me? Did Jeff file a missing persons report on me, sir?”
“No.”
The way the detective says that one word—no—makes my entire body go numb.
“Allie? Miss Boden, are you there?” The detective’s voice echoes like it’s a million miles away.
“Sir, what’s happened?” I ask. This is about Chase. Maybe it involves Jeff, but somethings wrong with Chase. I knew it. Something’s gone south back home, and Chase had to go back. But why? Is he hurt? Did Galt do something to him? Was there another fight between Jeff and the Atlas motorcycle gang? I have a million questions, but I can’t ask any of them. This is a detective with the police, after all. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and get someone in trouble.
“Allie, I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but...” The world stops. Everything I know fades away. The trees in front of me, with thick palm fronds climbing into the sky. My sister, standing there and watching my face intently. The women who walk past in five-inch high heels, dressed in fashionable clothes, carrying iced coffees. The mom pushing a double stroller with an infant in the front and a toddler in the back screaming for a lollipop. The bright LA sunshine streaming over us.
All of it fades. Everything I know about life disappears with those words: I’m very sorry to have to tell you.
And then.
And then he says, “Your stepfather is dead.”
A combination of relief and horror floods my veins. “Jeff is dead?” I want to say to him, Chase isn’t dead, right? But of course I can’t.
“Yes,” the detective confirms. “Jeff Wakefield was found dead in his bar late last night.”
“Oh, my God,” I shout. A couple walking past us, the woman holding three or four shopping bags with logos I recognize—expensive logos—stop cold and look at us. Their faces are twisted into expressions of annoyance, as if we’re bothering them.
“How? What? Where?” I ask. The idea begins to sink in. “Jeff’s dead?” I ask.
“Yes.”
Something about the way Detective Knowles is talking to me makes my throat go dry.
“Uh,” I stammer. “Can you tell me more? What—oh, my God!”
“I can tell you this, Allie. We need you to come back. We need you to come back and identify the body, but we also have questions for you.”
“Questions for me? What kind of questions?”
“Allie, we need you to come back. We need you to come home. You’re his next of kin.”
“Well, so is Marissa!” The words are out before I can even process them. She looks at me, her eyes wide with shock. There are no tears, though. Marissa and I don’t have a lot of tears for Jeff.
“Someone needs to identify the body. There are funeral arrangements that need to be made, and questions that need to be answered. How soon can you get home?” he asks.
I can hear the murmur of voices and a shout in the background over the phone, and I wonder what the police department is like. When Mom died, they came to our house to interview me. Jeff said it was better, that it would protect me from being too upset, that going to the police department was too stressful.
I’ve never been arrested, never had to bail anyone out of jail, never had a reason to go to the police department since third grade, when we went on a tour. I barely remember that, though. Again, my mind just jumps like a flea hopping from place to place. Quick. It processes all these bits of trivia as I stand there on the phone with Marissa staring dumbly at me.
“When can you get back here?” His voice is sharper now.
My mind goes blank. Chase is gone, and Chase is how I got here, so I can’t get a ride with him.
Marissa nudges me. “What’s going on?” she asks.
I cover the mouthpiece on the phone. “He wants me to come back and identify the body. Says I’m next of kin.”
“We’ll both go back,” she says. “Morty has a car. He’ll take us home.”
My stomach fills with an intense heat that radiates through my bones. And then a weird calm fills me and I nod. I uncover the mouthpiece to the phone and say, “Okay Detective Knowles, my sister and I will be
back.”
When? I mouth to Marissa, and she mouths back, Tonight.
“We’ll be there tonight or tomorrow morning,” I tell him.
“That’s good, Allie,” he says. His voice is reassuring. “Please come directly to the police department when you get into town.”
And then the phone goes to dead air.
Dead air.
Marissa’s hands are firm on my shoulders as she plants them there. The phone is in my hands but it feels like a lead weight.
“Jeff’s dead,” I whisper.
“Dead,” she whispers back.
“What does this mean?” I ask.
Her eyes narrow. “What do you mean?” she asks.
I blurt the words out. “I met Chase the day his motorcycle gang came to the bar and they got into a fight with Jeff and his friends. Guns were pulled out, and glass shattered, and tables were thrown, and it was just one big mess.” I blink, remembering everything.
“Chase protected me,” I explain to her. “And yesterday he kept getting all these texts, and said it was his dad, but...”
Her eyes widen again as she gets it. “You think the motorcycle gang has something to do with this?”
I look at her and I don’t want to say the words that have to come out next. “I don’t know, but why else would Chase just up and disappear like this?”
She winces. “I really hope that’s not what happened. That Chase is somehow involved in Jeff’s death. Because that would be—” She makes a choking sound.
I let out a very long exhale and look her straight in the eye. “That’s the understatement of the year, Marissa.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The drive back home is so much faster than the long, slow trip here with Chase. I don’t know if it’s because we’re in a car, and the car can move faster. I don’t know if it’s because my heart won’t stop beating in double time. I don’t know. These days I don’t know anything.
Still no word from Chase. Every single minute I have to rein myself in from begging Marissa to check her phone. I want to call him. I want to text him. I want to see him. I want to kiss him. I can’t do any of those things.
A few hours pass by and we don’t even bother to stop for a bathroom break, or to catch a bite. Morty drops us off at our house, and Marissa looks like she’s about to go into battle.
After we grab our duffel bags, she leans down through the open driver’s door window and gives Morty a frantic kiss.
“Call me,” he says, those bright blue eyes serious and worried.
“I will,” she replies and slaps the car door hard, like getting a horse to start on its journey.
Morty looks at me and just nods. It’s an acknowledgement. It’s also an encouragement, and it makes me feel better.
As he pulls out down the long dusty driveway, Marissa and I turn and look at the front of the house. It looks the same, to me at least. She hasn’t been here for two years.
When Mom died, she called and said she was coming home. To help, to be here, to mourn. And then suddenly the next day she called back, her voice tight with tension and something else unnamed. She couldn’t make it. She told me how sorry she was.
Before we even walk in the door, I turn to her. I have so many questions. Most of them are about Chase. Some of them are about Jeff. But there’s one that’s about Marissa.
I grab her arm, the memory of that second phone call after Mom died suddenly flooding my mind. “After Mom died, you never came back,” I say, trying hard to keep the judgment out of my voice.
She looks terrified and stares at the doorbell button. She licks her lips and then looks at me, her hand squeezing mine “You’re sure he’s dead?” she says.
My eyes fly wide open. “Jeff? Well, yeah, that’s kind of the whole reason we’re back here. The police say he is. I tend to believe the police when they call me and tell me a member of my family is dead.” Now the sarcasm comes out. I don’t want it there, but it’s an uninvited guest.
She swallows and takes deep breaths until she’s almost panting. And then her grip on my hand lessens. “I didn’t come back because of Jeff.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. And then I add, “Did he ever do something to you?”
She shakes her head. “No, but if I came back, he would.”
I peer at her, completely confused. We’re standing in front of the door, and a thin breeze lifts my hair a little, but not enough. “Did he threaten you?”
She nods. “And you.”
“Me? What did he say about me?”
Her face pales.
“He’s dead, Marissa. He can’t hurt you,” I remind her.
She blinks suddenly, rapidly, like she’s clearing a memory. “Yeah,” she says, breathless. “I know, but I’m still scared.”
“What are you scared of?”
“I’m scared of what Jeff can do.”
“He’s dead.” I say the words with firm finality. “He can’t do anything.”
She shakes her head slightly. “Okay, yeah, but what he could do. What he said he’d do if I came back.”
“I don’t understand.” I sit down on the front stoop. Suddenly I’m a rag doll. My bones have disappeared. “I don’t understand, Marissa.”
Marissa flops down next to me. I guess her bones have disappeared too. “Allie,” she says, her voice cracking. “Right after Mom died, I wanted to come back and get you. I wanted to bring you back to LA.”
I jerk my head up. “You did?”
She nods. “Jeff told me I couldn’t do it. I said I was an adult, and that I was your next of kin, and that I could petition a court to give me custody of you. That he wasn’t a blood relative of yours, and I’d have a strong chance.”
My face flushes. “You said all that? You tried to do that?”
Tears fill her eyes. “Yeah.” Her chest moves like she’s choking back a sob. “I looked into it. There’s this legal aid place in LA where I got a free consult, and they told me everything I needed to do.”
So why didn’t you, I think. I get the feeling I’m about to find out.
“I called Jeff,” she says, “and told him. I wasn’t confrontational or negative. I just figured he’d be happy to not have the burden of you.”
I snort. “Yeah. I heard about what a burden I was, every frickin’ day of my life from him after Mom died.”
She winces. “Yeah. I tried to use words that I thought would make it easier for him to just let you go. But that’s not what happened.”
I can tell she feels guilty. I can tell she’s struggling with whatever memory she has. I want to make it okay for her to talk. I put my hand on her knee and squeeze lightly. “I’m not judging you. Whatever happened back then, it’s all water under the bridge.”
She gives me a thin smile. “Thanks. I don’t feel guilty. But I do. It’s just—there was no way out.” She looks at me. “There was no way to save you.”
“Save me? What do you mean, Marissa?”
She takes a deep breath, lets it out, and inhales again. “Jeff told me that if I tried to get you, he would make it so I could never see you again.”
“What, like a custody battle?” I ask. “I don’t understand.”
“No, Allie.” Her fingers are getting colder and colder against my hand. “He said he would make you disappear.”
All this time I was fine, but as her words hit me my knees buckle. I crumple down, like a piece of wet spaghetti. I land on my butt, half on the small landing in front of the door, and half on the ground.
“El Brujo,” I whisper. “Jeff’s been planning this for years.”
Her hands fly to her mouth and she bends down, sitting next to me. “When you and Chase told me that story it was the first thing I thought.”
“I figured you’d think we were out of our minds!” I shout, my voice high and freaked out.
I’m staring out across the dull, dry land that I know so well. I can’t even cry. A voice screams in my head, and all it keeps shouting is No, no, no!
>
Marissa tried to save me? She tried to get custody of me, and let me move in with her in LA? For years I had hoped that she would take me. For years, I had assumed that she hadn’t tried. When she didn’t come back home after Mom died, I had to make up my own story in my head that made sense. Because otherwise, all I was left with was the thought that Marissa didn’t care. Didn’t care enough to try.
“Jeff said he would make you disappear,” Marissa explains with a deep sigh. “He also said that he’d make it so that I would wish I had disappeared, too.”
I jerk my head up and look at her. “What the hell does that mean?” I gasp.
She swallows hard and shrugs, but her face goes pale. “I never asked him. I was afraid to ask him.” She shakes her head slowly and closes her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Allie. I really am.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“You’re sorry?” I exclaim. A bitter laugh escapes through my mouth. “Jeff’s the one who should be sorry. Jeff... he... I...” The words all fade away, turning to dust. I wish a big wind would come along and blow them all away.
“You know,” Marissa says. “I always thought he killed Mom.”
I don’t even have any shock left in me. I just say back, “Yeah, me too.”
“So he killed Mom,” Marissa continues, “and he threatened me if I tried to take you away. And now we know he was planning to give you to a drug lord to pay off a debt.” A hysterical giggle rises up inside her and comes out. “This is too much, Allie! I don’t even know what the hell I’m supposed to think!”
I run a hand through my hair. And then I run both hands, sliding my fingers deep into my scalp until my palms are resting on my forehead. I start to laugh with her. None of this is funny. But it’s the only way to let some of the emotion out.
“Hell if I know either, Marissa,” I say.
She puts a hand on my shoulder. “You must be one fine piece of meat!”
“What?” I say, looking at her like she’s crazy.
“You’re worth six figures of debt to a drug lord, Allie!” She pretends to comb my body with her eyes. It’s eerie. She looks a little too much like Frenchie.
All of the blood suddenly runs out of my body. Chase, Frenchie, the drug lord. I look at her. “Just because Jeff’s dead doesn’t mean the debt’s been paid.”