by Eva Ashwood
I didn’t want to talk about that right now though.
“How’ve you been, Dad?” I asked instead, attempting to strike up a normal conversation. Well, as normal as one could have in prison.
“Food is terrible,” he answered, gazing at me through the glass as he held the phone to his ear. God, this is all so awkward. “Sleep is terrible. I’m alive. Waiting for this damn sham of a trial to be over.”
I nodded. There was a pause in the conversation before he continued on.
“How are you? Studies going well? Your mother?”
There was a momentary pause as I tried to formulate an answer. “How are you” was such a simple question, but given the state of my life right now, it was hard to think of what to say. What the hell was I supposed to tell him?
Oh, I’m great, Dad. I’m being shared between three criminal boys that I’m drawn to in a way that scares me, and Mom never leaves the house unless she’s going off someplace that she doesn’t talk to me about.
“Good. School is good. I have some friends. Mom is taking things in stride.”
What a sanitized answer.
Dad nodded though, as if it were a satisfying enough response. I wondered what a regular conversation between a normal father and daughter would be in this situation. And then I wondered if there even was such a thing.
“How long do you think you’ll still be in here?” I asked, deciding to springboard off something he said earlier. “You said that… the trial was a sham?” What would make him think that?
He waved his hand.
“Not much longer. Not if my lawyer does his job. Someone planted evidence in my office, I’m sure of it. Fool ass criminals…”
He muttered the last part, shaking his head.
My thoughts went back to the Lost Boys—their pasts, their accusations, and the accusations of almost every student in Slateview High against my father.
I didn’t know if I should bring any of that up on this visit. I was desperate to know how much of what I’d learned from the Lost Boys and other kids was true, how much of it was just bitter gossip, and how much of it was rumor and speculation. But a part of me knew that the answers—the real, unvarnished truth—probably wouldn’t be found by talking to my father. I’d lived with him my whole life and had only just learned of his possible underhanded dealings. He either wouldn’t admit or didn’t believe that he’d done anything wrong.
And in all honesty, it was entirely possible that he could’ve done some shitty things and still been completely within the law. His guilt or innocence as far as a jury was concerned was a separate issue from the question of whether he’d built his empire by taking advantage of people who couldn’t defend themselves.
I allowed our conversation to meander, drifting from one boring topic to another like a slow-moving stream until our allotted time was up. It never got less awkward, and although I’d been glad to see my father in person, I was just as glad to leave.
Twenty-Two
The ride home took over an hour. Finally, I transferred onto the final bus, which brought me back to the decrepit little neighborhood my father’s actions—real or not—had forced Mom and me into. I didn’t expect the bitterness to settle in, acrid in my core, but it was there.
I had spent weeks rolling with the punches, adjusting and readjusting and making the best of a shitty situation, but something about seeing my dad had seemed to put everything back to square one. He seemed utterly convinced that the trial was a sham, that he’d been set up by someone, intentionally sabotaged, but his reassurances that he’d be out soon rang false somehow. Even if he really was innocent, even if evidence had been manufactured against him, he obviously hadn’t found a way to prove that or he would’ve been released before his case even went to trial.
The bus trundled away after I stepped off in my neighborhood, and I dragged my feet as I headed toward the house. Tears welled in my eyes as I walked, and I blinked them back over and over again until my eyes stung. I didn’t know what to do about any of this, but I couldn’t bare to force myself through the front door of our new home, to fix another badly prepared hot meal, and then go to bed just to do it all again the next day.
The car was in the driveway when I got back.
At least Mom’s home.
I didn’t go inside though. I stared up at the rundown little house, then turned to look across the street. Bishop’s house was just across the way, and I was pretty sure his foster parents weren’t home.
My feet moved before my brain made any kind of conscious decision. I didn’t even know what propelled me forward. Just a sense that I needed to do something—and I knew Bishop was a person who could get things done or at least point me in the right direction. When I reached his sagging front stoop, I knocked on the door, three hard raps that I knew would get his attention.
“Who the fuck—”
He yanked open the door, irritation clear in his voice, then paused when he saw it was me. I must’ve caught him in the middle of changing clothes, or maybe he’d been working out. He didn’t have a shirt on, and his hair was disheveled. I’d seen him shirtless a few times before, but the sight of it still caught me by surprise. All of the Lost Boys were so purely, darkly masculine. His skin was lightly tanned, and it covered muscles that bunched and flexed as he moved, reaching up to run a hand through his slightly damp mess of hair. A little water droplet ran down his neck and over the broad plane of his pec, and I had the most insane urge to dart forward and lick it off.
Shit. Get it together, Cora.
My heart thudded hard as I pulled my gaze from his torso to look him in the eye, a slight flush to my face.
“Hey, Bishop. Can—can we talk?”
He stared down at me for a moment, his head cocked slightly to one side and his hazel eyes narrowed, as if wondering what I was doing here, what I could possibly have come to bother him with.
This wasn’t part of our arrangement, I knew that. Our deal gave them control over my life, the right to step into my house uninvited at any time, the ability to demand what they wanted from me and get it. But the opposite wasn’t true—it wasn’t a two-way street, so I was out-of-bounds asking him for this.
I was bracing for the door to slam in my face when Bishop surprised me by stepping aside without question, leading me deeper into the house.
It was a dimly lit space, clean in a sparse way—there was just enough furniture that it didn’t look like the house had been completely abandoned. I was pretty sure his foster parents were barely ever home, and I wondered if he knew where they went but figured it was better not to ask.
We could compare absentee parent stories later. That wasn’t what I’d come for today, and I didn’t want to waste the hospitality he was showing me.
He led me into his bedroom, and I tried not to breathe too deeply as we passed through the door. Not because the room smelled bad, but because it smelled like Bishop, and I liked that aroma way too much. The faint, woodsy scent of his cologne teased my nostrils, bringing with it an almost instantaneous reaction in my body.
I cleared my throat, stepping forward quickly to sit on his bed as he lingered in the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at me with an expectant gaze.
God, I wish he’d put a shirt on.
Between trying not to look at him and trying not to smell him, I was likely to pass out before I could even voice the questions I’d come here to ask.
“Didn’t expect you’d be coming over here,” he said. He fidgeted a little, the muscles of his biceps flexing as he shoved his hands in his pockets. Was he nervous too?
No. Of course he isn’t.
“Yeah. I, uh, just came back from seeing my father. In prison.” Ugh. Why did I feel the need to tack that little bit on at the end? He already knows my father’s in prison…
“Yeah? How’d that go?” He leaned forward a little, asking the question so earnestly that I almost forgot to answer. I hadn’t expected that tone in his voice, something almost l
ike sympathy.
“It… went.” I sighed, lifting my shoulders in a small shrug. “To be honest, I almost don’t know why I went. We’d had this visitation day set up for a long time, and I hadn’t seen him since he was taken away. But, I mean, it isn’t like we had a lot to talk about.”
“Well, he’s your dad.” Bishop shrugged too, still watching me carefully. “Didn’t you talk about how school was going or check in on each other or your mom or something?”
“Sort of.” I bit my lip. “It was very barebones.”
He nodded. “Guess you and your pops don’t talk a lot to begin with.”
“Not really.” I cleared my throat. “But that’s not what I came over here for. I wanted to ask you a question.”
“Sure. Ask away.”
“I wanted to know if there was some sort of… connection between the kind of people you work for and people like my father.” I asked, forward. “I know you guys report to Flint, and then he reports to Nathaniel. But what does Nathaniel do? Are there other people like him in the city? Other people as powerful as him?”
Bishop squinted at me, gauging my question.
“Is there a hierarchy? Is that what you’re asking me?”
I nodded.
He shifted, brushing a hand over his chin as he considered his answer. I was quiet, patient, letting him mull it. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully.
“There’s people in a ‘network’, I suppose. But the people at the top are the real big fish. There’s people like Flint, who run small-time operations at a high frequency. Then there’s people—like Nathaniel—who have as much power as the wealthy upperclass like your dad. They sit at the top and play the long game and pull the real strings. I guess you’d call them the closest thing to kingpins this neck of the woods has.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know all this?”
I bit my lip, glancing down at the faded and worn floorboards.
“Because I’m not sure my father is guilty of what he was arrested for, and I don’t think it’s too crazy to consider that someone set him up.”
A heavy silence met those words, and my stomach pitched sideways.
Bishop must know what I was thinking. My question had made it obvious.
My father had insisted since the day he was arrested that he’d been set up, sabotaged, framed. And just a couple weeks ago, I’d seen Bish and Kace come out of someone’s house in a wealthy neighborhood bearing stolen files—evidence to be used for blackmail or a setup, probably.
I wasn’t stupid, and although I may have been sheltered from the harsh realities of the world for much of my life, I was learning on a fast curve these days. Nathaniel had sent the Lost Boys to steal something from a wealthy businessman he had a grudge against, so was it really that far-fetched to think someone out there—whether Nathaniel or another man like him—might’ve done something similar to my dad?
Maybe it was naïve to think my father really might be innocent of fraud, but it was something I had to at least consider.
Because if it’s true… maybe I can do something about it. Maybe I can fix this, and we can all go home.
“Do you really think he’s innocent?” Bishop’s voice was hard. “Do you really think, after everything we’ve told you—”
“You don’t know my father like I do,” I interrupted. “You didn’t grow up with him, he didn’t raise you. You keep telling me I’m not allowed to judge you or anyone here, but all you do is judge me and my father and my family!” My stomach knotted and twisted, and I rose from the bed, stepping toward him. “Why is it so hard to think that maybe he’s innocent of this one thing? That maybe it was ‘karma’ or something, and this is the one thing he didn’t do, even if he is guilty of everything else you’ve said he’s done.”
“And have you considered that even if that’s true, maybe he doesn’t deserve to be proven innocent?”
A loud crack filled the quiet room, the sound as sharp and piercing as a gunshot. I heard it before I felt the prickle in my palm, a tingling pain from the impact of hitting Bishop’s cheek. And then I saw it—the bloom of red across his skin and the pure shock in his bright hazel eyes.
I breathed in. Breathed out.
He did the same, his nostrils flaring as he gazed at me, unblinking.
We were both still, so still, staring at each other in a room that felt like it had no oxygen left.
Then my body lurched into motion again, darting forward and bolting out the door on shaky legs. I practically threw myself down his front steps and ran across the street without even checking for cars in the road.
My entire body felt jittery and numb at the same time, and pain still radiated out from my hand—I could only imagine what Bishop’s cheek felt like.
The strange thing was, I wasn’t afraid of Bishop. I didn’t think he would hit me—there’d been too much shock and not enough anger in his eyes for that. What scared the actual fuck out of me was the fact that I’d been so angry that I had lashed out and hurt someone. That my reaction to my pain and confusion had been violence. That wasn’t me. That wasn’t who I was. Was it?
How much had I changed since coming here? And was I changing for the better or worse?
I had hit Bishop. And that was so fucked up—especially when, on some level, I knew he could be right.
What if my father was innocent of this one crime? If he’d done everything else Bish had accused him of, did it even matter? One count of innocence wouldn’t exonerate him from all the guilt he may truly carry.
I burst through my front door, slamming it behind me like I was shutting out everything ugly and vile in the world with it. I leaned my back against it, panting for breath as my heart raced. My anger beat in tandem with my sadness, and a lingering loss made my chest ache. I laughed bitterly.
It wasn’t even like Dad and I had a great relationship. Where was the warmth? Where was the tenderness? Those things didn’t exist between us, and although that fact was more obvious now that he was in prison, the truth was, they never had.
So why did I care so much?
After a few moments passed and Bishop didn’t come knock on the door—or break it down—my heartbeat slowly began to calm. Blowing out a breath, I looked up.
“Mom?”
Pushing away from the door, I stepped forward. She and I never spoke a lot, but I needed her right now, in a way I’d never needed a mother before. I felt the sting of tears in my eyes and the childish desire to curl up tight in her arms and bawl my eyes out, to sob and tell her everything that was wrong with the world. Ava used to be that person, but Ava was long gone, and I had no way to contact her. Even if I did, I couldn’t find it in myself to force her to deal with my family’s ugly baggage.
“Mom?” I repeated, louder this time.
She didn’t answer, and I called to her again as I went to her door. The car was outside, so she had to be home.
I knocked on her door at the same time I pushed it open a little, poking my head inside.
“Hey, mom. Are you—”
The words died in my throat.
And then a scream poured from my lips instead.
Twenty-Three
Mom lay on her back, arms splayed, body limp. I might’ve thought that she was sleeping if it weren’t for the bile built up at the corners of her mouth. My scream cut off with a guttural, choked noise as I noticed the bottle of pills beside her bed.
The ones she always took to go to sleep.
What am I supposed to do? Who do I call? Is she alive? Oh God. God. Is she alive?
It felt like bees were buzzing through my skull, the droning hum making it impossible to think. My fingertips tingled and my skin felt numb. I moved like a robot, crossing to her bedside and putting my hand to her neck to feel the faintest of pulses thudding through her veins. Tears slipped down my cheeks, but there was only the smallest moment of relief because she still wasn’t moving, and her heart wasn’t beating hard enough, and then she started to convulse—
�
��Cora?”
A voice called my name from the other side of the house, but I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. I kept trying to feel her heartbeat again, but I couldn’t find it this time. Her body was jerking on the mattress, and I couldn’t find her pulse, dammit, dammit! Panic consumed me like an untamed fire, eating me alive and leaving nothing but ash.
“Cora?”
The voice came again, closer, and then someone was at my side, moving me away from my mother. My vision was unfocused, blurred with tears, but I recognized the mop of shaggy brown hair.
Bishop.
It was Bishop. He stood over my mother, his hands on her chest, pushing up and down, up and down. The movement was hypnotic, and I wrapped my arms around my stomach like I was trying to keep myself from flying apart and watched, unblinking, numb.
I’d known she was despondent, known she missed our old life, known she had spent too many hours curled up in bed. But she’d been better lately. She’d been getting up, at least. Going out.
Was this my fault?
Had I missed important signs?
Please, Mom. Please.
Don’t die.
There are realizations that hit you at inopportune times. They’re almost funny, even though they really aren’t.
Mine came as I slowly blinked my eyes open to find myself propped up in a bed in the ER with an IV drip in my arm—and it suddenly struck me that I had never been in a public hospital before. Back in our old life, we’d had a private family doctor who made house calls. Even for my birth, my mother had been at home, comfortable in her bed, with what amounted to a fully staffed and stocked hospital room around her.
This too bright, sterile environment, where I could hear the person in the room beside mine vomiting up everything in their stomach and another down the hall yelling that they wanted pain medications or else they’d sue the hospital, was the farthest thing imaginable from every other encounter with doctors I’d ever had. Those visits had always been calm and serene, even the one after I’d broken my arm running down the large spiral stairs when I was six.