The Reckless Oath We Made

by Bryn Greenwood

  The next time Gentry tried to tap him, Marcus put his hand up and pushed the sword away.

  “Ah, but a true sword is sharp. ’Tis not safe to grasp with thy bare hand. Canst thou parry my sword with thine?” This time, Marcus brought his little sword up and tapped Gentry’s. Not really hard enough to push it away, but Gentry let him.

  “Well done, Master Marcus. Again. And now canst use thy shield?”

  In another couple minutes, he had Marcus doing something that looked like sword fighting to me. Trang, who’d been watching Gentry, too, looked up and saw me standing on the patio.

  “Behold, ’tis Lady Zhorzha,” he said.

  “Aunt Zee! Aunt Zee! I’m gonna be a k-night!” Marcus ran across the yard, dragging his sword. He slammed into me so hard that I almost fell backward, but I managed to bend my knees in time. The chain mail was cool against my arms where I hugged him, but under it he was hot and sweaty. Holding on to him made me feel better and worse at the same time. He was safe and he was Marcus and I loved him, but what if he was never going to see LaReigne again? Was I enough?

  As fast as he’d run to hug me, he let go and started telling me everything about being a k-night, which included about a hundred words I didn’t know, including greaves and gorget and gauntlet. I smiled and nodded, fighting to keep a calm look on my face. When Gentry reached the patio, he went down on one knee, with his sword held across his chest, the way he’d knelt to me the day we met. Seeing it done in full armor was somehow less bizarre than seeing it done in cargo shorts and a T-shirt. It made sense with the sword and the armor.

  “Lady Zhorzha,” he said. “Thy servant.”

  “Sir Gentry,” I said, which surprised him enough that he looked up and made eye contact with me. Then he dropped his head and a whole rainfall of sweat droplets fell out of his hair onto the patio and my shoes. It must have been hot as hell under all that gear.

  “Master Marcus, ’twas well done for thy first lesson, but let us disarm thee,” he said. “’Tis hot and thou art not accustomed.”

  Marcus gave up his armor, sword, and shield, and we went into the house, where I offered to help Charlene do something, anything, but she told me to sit down and color with Elana and Marcus. She and Bernice went back to the kitchen bar, and it sounded like they were planning an event for something at church. I tried to turn my brain off, to just be there coloring, but I felt like my head was full of bees. After a while, I heard that weird grunting and thunking noise I’d heard the day before and, when I looked out the patio doors, I saw Gentry and Trang, swinging swords at each other. Not the low-key back and forth he’d done with Marcus, but really whaling on each other.

  When I glanced back at Charlene and Bernice, they had their heads together over a cellphone. Bernice looked at me and then away, like I’d caught her at something. All the sudden, they both got up and went into the laundry room. I could hear them whispering for probably ten minutes, before Charlene came out and gestured for me. I felt light-headed when I stood up. Some of that was from not eating anything since breakfast, but the rest of it was fear.

  “Have you seen the news?” Charlene whispered when I got to the laundry room. Bernice had the phone in her hand, and she looked as nervous as I felt.

  “Before. Earlier. Have they—” I leaned against the washer. Even though the vibrating made me queasy, I needed the support. “Do they know who it is?”

  “No, they haven’t said, but I wanted to be sure you’d heard,” Charlene said.

  I nodded and limped back out to the front room. I didn’t want to be rude, but I couldn’t talk about it. After a few minutes, Charlene walked Bernice to the front door. I could hear bits and pieces of what they said: remember to get the ham—need to put the rug back—Gentry can help—did you find the curtain rods? Just boring everyday stuff, but full of the kind of shorthand you use with someone you know really well. Someone like your sister. There was a little bit of silence, which must have been them hugging, and then: love you, baby girl—love you, too—see you on Sunday. I colored harder, trying not to cry.

  When Bill came home, Charlene and Gentry cooked dinner, which was taco salad, complete with every kind of thing you could imagine to put on it. I got the impression meals at Gentry’s house always involved lots of things to be sliced and diced. I was relieved not to get the impression that I’d overstayed my welcome.

  Toward the end of dinner, my phone vibrated. I slipped it out of my pocket and looked at it under the table. The Gills. Calling me for the third time that day.

  “You’re not allowed to have your phone at the table,” Elana said.

  “Last I checked, you weren’t the dinner table police,” Charlene said.

  “I’m sorry. I need to take this.” I pushed my chair back and answered as I was walking away from the table.

  “This is Harold Gill,” he said, so I knew it was serious. So serious it made my taco salad go wobbly in my stomach. He never called. It was always Winnie.

  “Hey. I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls, but obviously things are kind of crazy right now.” I mostly wasn’t in the business of apologizing to assholes, but I wanted to play nice. Harold didn’t.

  “It has come to my attention that Marcus has not been in school since Monday,” he said.

  “It has come to your attention?” I said it like a question, but I knew how he knew. They’d called the school and, since they were on the approved list of people, the office secretary must have told them that Marcus hadn’t been in class.

  “I do not feel it’s appropriate for him to be out of school,” Harold said.

  “His mother has been kidnapped and maybe she’s—and you think going to school is the most important thing right now? Because I kind of thought it might be better to wait for some news.” I hadn’t really thought it through at all, but fucked if I was telling Harold that.

  “I expect my grandson to be in school tomorrow. Especially during such a chaotic time, he needs routine.” Oh, now Harold was an expert on childhood psychology. “This is not an idle threat. If I call tomorrow and he is not in class, I will get my lawyer involved. You are not a custodial parent. You do not have the right to make the decision to keep him out of school.”

  I took the phone away from my ear, because I didn’t trust myself not to curse or cry or yell. When I was calm enough, I put the phone back to my ear and said, “Of course. He’ll go to school tomorrow.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Goodbye.”

  That’s what kind of an asshole Grandy Harold was. Not a drop of concern about LaReigne. She could be dead in a morgue drawer in Nebraska with pictures of her corpse on the ten o’clock news, and he would call me and say, “Be sure to take my grandson to school tomorrow, or I’ll have to get my lawyer involved.”

  “Motherfucker.” I said it under my breath about ten times while I paced up and down in the front hall trying to get my temper under control.

  “My lady,” Gentry said. He’d snuck up on me and was standing in the doorway. “Thou art troubled? Hast thou news?”

  “No. I’m fine. And no news.” I didn’t want to get into it with him about how messed up everything was. I hadn’t noticed before, but the wood-paneled walls of the front hall were covered in framed photos of Gentry’s family. In the picture hanging next to where he stood, Gentry was an awkward teenager with long, shaggy hair. He had his head down and his arms crossed over his chest. Bill was sitting in a chair, and Charlene stood behind him with a hand on his shoulder. Trang was maybe five or six, and he looked like a grinning elf. There were two older kids, a boy and a girl, who looked like they might be Bill and Charlene’s biological children, because unlike Trang and Gentry, they were black.

  A nice family. A happy family.

  “Who’s this?” I said, pointing to the picture.

  “My mother and father, and brother Trang—”

  “I kinda guessed th
ose. Who are they?” I put my fingers up almost close enough to touch the glass.

  “She is my sister Janae, who is three years my elder. And he is my brother Carlees who is but one year my elder,” Gentry said. “He is a teacher in the city of St. Louis. She studieth to become a veterinarian.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “My father has declared that we shall have no television this night, but that we shall play games. Wilt thou join us?”

  “Sure,” I said. My first choice would have been curling up in a little ball somewhere, but my second choice was definitely just pretending that my sister wasn’t maybe dead.

  CHAPTER 13

  Zee

  At Marcus’ school, I realized I didn’t know how drop-off worked, because I was always picking him up. I almost pulled in the wrong drive, and in the right drive, there was a sign that said NO PARKING, but I was already late. I got Marcus unbuckled and grabbed his book bag and the lunch Charlene had packed for him.

  “You can’t park here, ma’am,” the school resource officer said. He came down the sidewalk with his gun belt rattling. I never knew what to think about that. Was Marcus any safer because a cop with a gun was on duty at the front door?

  “I’m sorry. I don’t usually drop him off, so I don’t really know what I’m doing.” I gave the cop what I hoped was a friendly smile.

  As soon as I got his book bag strapped on and his lunch in his hand, Marcus ran up the sidewalk to the front door. I was going to call him back and hug him, but the SRO was frowning about where I was parked, so I yelled, “I’ll see you at three-thirty!”

  As I was pulling away from the school, my phone rang. Mom. I’d missed a call from her while I was getting Marcus out of the car, too.

  “The police are here again,” she said, as soon as I answered.

  “They came by again? Or they’re there now?”

  “They’re here now.”

  “What do they want?” I put on my signal and got into the turn lane to go to Mom’s house.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t answer the door.”

  I wanted to say, You can’t hide in your house like a turtle and hope this all goes away, but she’d pretty much done exactly that since Dad died. Instead, I said, “Okay, well, I’m on my way to your house, so I’ll talk to them.”

  When I got there, two patrol cars were parked in the street, and a police van was parked at the bottom of the driveway. Two guys in suits and three uniformed cops were standing on the front porch. I think I was too exhausted from worrying, because I didn’t feel anything as I got out of the car. As I came up the sidewalk, though, I saw that one of the cops was holding a goddamn battering ram, which I guess they were planning to use to knock the door down. I broke into a jog, wishing I didn’t have to do the whole day on nothing but two stupid ibuprofen pills for the pain. One of the uniformed cops turned and held up his hand.

  “Miss, you can’t be—”

  “I’m her daughter. Is there a problem?” I said.

  I’d thought it would be the police coming to give Mom bad news, but when the guys in suits turned around, it was the U.S. marshals, Mansur and Smith.

  “Miss Trego,” Mansur said. “We’re a little concerned about your mother. We’ve been here almost twenty minutes, knocking on the door, and she hasn’t answered.”

  “She’s fine. I talked to her on the phone. It’s hard for her to answer the door. She’s an invalid, okay? You met her.” I didn’t intend for it to come out like an accusation, but it was. They’d met her. They had to know how difficult it was for her to get up and come to the door.

  “We’re going to need you to let us in.” Mansur had an ink stain on the pocket of his dress shirt, and I focused on that. On remembering that he was a federal marshal, but still just a person.

  “Do you have some news for us?” I said, even though my mouth had gone totally dry. I mean, how could they not know? LaReigne was thirty and a petite blonde. The other woman, Molly, was fifty-something and a brunette. I could have looked at the hands for two seconds and known if it was LaReigne. As soon as I thought that, I was glad I hadn’t eaten any breakfast.

  “I’m sorry, we don’t,” Mansur said.

  “Then I’d rather you didn’t come in. You’re just upsetting her.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not an option.” The whole time, Mansur had been holding a sheet of paper folded up in thirds. He held it up real casually, like it wasn’t any big deal. “We have a warrant to search the house.”

  “A warrant. To search this house?” I pointed at the screen door that was still canted off to one side. “This house?”

  “Miss Trego, is there a problem?”

  “You saw it yesterday, and you want to search that mess? What do you think is in there?”

  “The search warrant explains what we’re looking for. Now, if you’ll unlock the door, I’d prefer to do this with a minimum of distress for your mother.”

  “That’s not even possible. Just wait here,” I said, but when I unlocked the door and pushed it open, Mansur stepped in right behind me.

  “Zhorzha? Are the police still here?” Mom yelled.

  “You remember the marshals? Mansur and Smith?” I said. “They’re here with me. They have a search warrant.”

  I waited in the front hall, because I wanted her to have a minute to pull herself together before she had to face the cops, but also because I didn’t want to see the look on her face once she knew what was about to happen.

  Mansur was getting impatient, so I started toward the front room as slowly as I could, with him following me. When I got to Mom, she was sitting upright in her chair with her inhaler in her hand.

  “Oh my god,” she said in a breathy voice, so I knew she hadn’t used her inhaler yet. Her hand was shaking too much. I took the inhaler, put it up to her lips, and gave her a dose.

  “Mrs. Trego, I’m here to serve a search warrant for this house. We’re going to need you to go outside, so we can conduct it,” Mansur said. He’d been standing back a few feet, but he came close enough to hand Mom the search warrant.

  “You bastard.” Mom hadn’t quite gotten her breath back, but by the time I got her out of her chair and put her robe on over her nightgown, she was saying it in a much louder voice. I knelt down and tied her shoes while Mansur waited, and then I guided her toward the front door. It took a good twenty minutes to get her to the front porch and, when she stepped out into the daylight, where the other cops were waiting, she’d worked up some real venom.

  “You bastards,” she told them. And then, as they helped her down the front steps: “You heartless goddamn bastards. Searching my house when my daughter is still missing!”

  “You need to get her something to sit on,” I said to one of the uniforms. There was no way Mom could stand outside until they were done. She was already shaky from walking that far, and who knew what was going on with her blood sugar? I didn’t dare ask her, either, or she’d bite my head off about minding my own business.

  “I think we’ve got a folding chair,” the cop said.

  “Are you stupid? A folding chair won’t hold her.” I didn’t even bother saying it quietly, because Mom wasn’t paying attention to me. She was staring at the front door of her house, moving her lips. I wasn’t sure what she was saying, but I guessed it included the word bastard.

  We were still standing there ten minutes later, when my cousin Emma pulled up. As she walked around the end of the police van to reach the sidewalk, she acted like it was radioactive, and she was afraid to get close to it.

  “Are you okay, Aunt Dot?” she said.

  “Oh, sweetie, thank you for coming,” Mom said. “Zhorzha was dropping Marcus off at school; that’s why I couldn’t get ahold of her.”

  I took a step back, so Mom and Emma could hug each other, and it was a relief to have someone else holding Mom up for a while.
r />   “What are they doing?” Emma said.

  About half a dozen uniformed cops had gone into the house with Mansur and Smith. I wasn’t even sure where they could all be standing, but they’d left one cop on the front porch.

  “They have a warrant to search the house,” I said.

  “I can’t imagine what they think they’ll find.” Mom sounded annoyed, but I had to purse my lips not to laugh, because I was trying to imagine what they wouldn’t find.

  Then I remembered the search warrant. When I reached for it, Mom let me have it. I didn’t understand all the legal crap, but there was a list of items they were searching for, which included the money from the first bank robbery my father and Uncle Alva committed. That didn’t surprise me, even though they’d searched the house for it eighteen years ago. Probably the cops just used that to be sure the judge would give them the warrant. Since the money had never been recovered, it was a perpetual free pass to harass my mother.

  What surprised me was the cops were also searching for guns, “correspondence or other communications” between LaReigne, Tague Barnwell, Conrad Ligett, and Molly Verbansky, and “components for improvised explosive devices.”

  I was staring at that last line when a cop stepped out the front door carrying three cardboard boxes stacked on top of one another. At some point, I guess they’d decided the air in my mother’s house was too dangerous, because he was wearing a dust mask and rubber gloves. As soon as the first cop cleared the porch, another came out, then another, until all six uniforms had come out. They carried boxes to the edge of the driveway, where the police van was, and lined them up.

  “Be careful!” Mom called. “There are valuable collectibles in those boxes!”

  A couple cops turned and looked at her. Because of the dust masks I couldn’t tell what kind of look it was, but I guessed contempt. Then they went back into the house and carried out more boxes. Some of it looked like kitchen things.

  “I swear, if they damage anything, I’m going to hire a lawyer,” Mom said. “There are a lot of valuable things in there.”