Over the Falls

by Rebecca Hodge

  Mom said “Never again,” and she got no argument from me. “She’s not like the grandmothers in books or anything.”

  “But you like her all right?”

  This was not going in a good direction. “Not really. She doesn’t like me. She smells funny. And she’s … old.”

  Bryn snorted. “She’s always been old, let me tell you.” She caught her top lip in her teeth and bit down hard. The light turned green and she drove on. “I was just thinking it might take a while for the police to find your mom. You might be happier with your grandmother than with me, and it might be safer there, what with Carl and all. She’s supposed to call me back, and I can ask her.”

  “No!” I yelled the word so loud, it bounced off the windshield even louder. My hands turned into fists without me even telling them to. I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or her. “I need to stay with you, not her. Mom said you would help, and you need to come with me to Memphis, and we need to figure out where she is.”

  Bryn jumped when I yelled, and she gave me a worried look. “Josh, I’m trying.”

  “You’re not trying—you’re just doing the easy stuff.” Even as the words came out, I knew they were unfair, but I couldn’t stop. It was like something broke free inside and let it all escape. “You think you can stick me with Grandma and forget about looking for Mom.”

  “No, of course not. I’ll keep looking. I’m just trying to do what’s best for—”

  “That’s what they always say. ‘It’s what’s best.’ Like they know. Then they stick you with some old woman who covers all her furniture in plastic and makes you sleep with three other foster kids who say they’re going to cut your throat if you fall asleep.” I bit off the rest. Couldn’t believe I’d told her so much.

  Bryn’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about? When was this?”

  I looked at my hands. Wished Tellico was there. “Long time ago. Mom had to be in the hospital, and social services put me in temporary care.”

  “You saved your mom.” That’s what the ambulance guy told me. Then when I got to go back home, the social worker said, “Take care of your mom.” I’d been trying to do it ever since.

  “They called Grandma that time, and she said she couldn’t help. So see, you can’t send me there. You need me. I can help. I can.” My voice sounded wrong on those last words, like a little kid ready to cry. I blinked hard and turned to stare out the side window.

  There was a long, long, quiet where I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, and maybe Bryn didn’t know what she was thinking either, because she kept fidgeting, shifting in her seat like there was no way to get comfortable. Finally, she reached over and gave my arm a pat.

  “I’m not going to send you into foster care. I promise. I don’t know what’s happening with your mom, and I can’t see the future, but for now, you’re with me.”

  Uncertainty still hung like a cloud, but it was better than nothing.

  Bryn drove on. She waited a few minutes like she expected me to say something, and when I didn’t, she gave a loud sigh. “Okay, you win. We’ll let Steven—Officer Poole—investigate this afternoon, and while we’re waiting, I’ll arrange for someone to take care of things on the farm. If we don’t learn anything more by tonight, we’ll leave for Memphis in the morning. You and me. I’ve got a few days before I start my next programming project. Mind you—I can’t be gone too long. Mortgage payments don’t pay themselves.”

  Victory. “Memphis, right? You’re not taking me to Grandma’s?” I needed to hear it one more time.

  “Not now. I can’t promise it won’t come up again, but for now, you’re with me. Fair enough?”

  It sounded like it was the only guarantee I was going to get. “Yeah, I guess. What about Tellico? Can he come too?”

  “Sure, he can come. This should just be for two or three days.”

  Maybe if I scooted way over in my bed at home, there’d be room enough for him to fit there too.

  We talked about goat names and other not-Mom stuff the rest of the way. We got back to her cabin, and Landon was there, leaning against his truck with Tellico at his feet. Waiting.

  Bryn pulled her head back, looking surprised. She parked, got out of the truck, and walked over to him. “Hey there. What’s up?”

  Landon hadn’t wasted any time. I went over to them real quiet so I could listen.

  “Hi. I was worried.” He stepped closer to her, his arms raised as if he wanted to give her a hug, but when he saw her face, he stopped, and his arms dropped. “Some guy threatens to burn you out? Of course, I’m worried. I wanted to see if you were all right. I’m incredibly sorry about Annabelle. I know how special she was.”

  “How in the world did …” She stopped. Looked around and found me squatting on the ground, half hidden by Tellico and trying hard to be invisible. “You. You called him? You told him what happened?”

  I nodded and kept myself small. Carl had come here because of me. Bryn was in trouble because of me. And Landon’s number had been on her emergency call sheet. It was obvious he really liked her, so what else could I do, locked away in a police breakroom? Bryn needed help, even if she didn’t think so.

  Landon gave me a nod, for certain on my side. “Don’t blame Josh. And don’t be stubborn on this. I’m glad I found out. How are you doing?”

  Bryn’s jaw tightened up, and she stood straight and tall, as if she was going to say everything was great, but then her shoulders suddenly dropped like strings had been cut. “I’m shaken. No other way to put it. Carl was a creep when I knew him years ago, but back then he was just a small-time punk, and he was after other people, not me. Now he’s worse. Scary. Mean. Determined. He’s real trouble. I’m taking him seriously.”

  Landon took another half step toward her, but when Bryn turned away, he stopped again. “Listen. I made a custom dining table last year for a guy who runs a security firm out of Chattanooga, and I just got off the phone with him. He’s willing to rearrange appointments and come out this afternoon with his team since you’ve got an active threat here. They can install motion detectors. Cameras on the driveway, the house, the barn. Alarms. Remote monitoring. It’s your call, but I hope you’ll do it.”

  Bryn shook her head. “I can take care of myself. I don’t need to be rescued.”

  The way she said it sounded fierce, but Landon didn’t back down. “This isn’t a rescue. It’s one friend helping another. You need help. This is something I can do. Let me do it.”

  Bryn looked at her boots, then off toward the chicken pen, her face sad. Somewhere out there was Annabelle’s grave. “I don’t like the idea of somebody spying on me with a camera. Del missing, Josh here, Carl killing Annabelle, and now you want somebody recording my whole life? No way. It’s creepy.”

  “You don’t have to keep it forever. Just until you get all this straightened out. And you’ll be able to monitor the video feed on your phone. I can move your goats to my place while you and Josh are in Memphis, and I’ll check in on the chickens and the garden every day.”

  The word Memphis whirled Bryn back toward me with a death glare that would have done Mom proud. Yeah, okay, maybe telling Landon we were going to Memphis before I’d even talked to Bryn about it was worth a nasty look, but hey, it was obvious we had to go. I was just saving time.

  Fortunately, the glare only lasted a few seconds, then Bryn’s mouth twitched a few times, and she sighed. “I think I’m outnumbered.”

  I was surprised. Not just giving in, but pretty good-natured about it.

  She turned to Landon, gave him a long, searching look, and then nodded. “Thank you. I guess this is the way it has to be. I’ll go along with it, and I admit it will make me feel better if some security is in place while I’m gone. Make sure the bill comes to me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Landon tipped an invisible hat, and Bryn almost laughed.

  “I should know for sure about Memphis later tonight. And yes, if you can take Kudzu and Thistle and the twins in the
morning, that would be great. It would keep them safe.”

  “No problem. I’ll clear out a pen for them. Plenty of room.”

  She turned to me. “As for you”—I held my breath—“it’s not your job to take care of your mom, and it’s not your job to take care of me. It’s supposed to be the other way around.” She gave me one of her almost-smiles. “Thank you all the same.”

  At least I hadn’t gotten yelled at. I stood up, and Landon came over. “Good job. Thanks for letting me know about Carl.”

  He gave me a quick fist bump and pulled it off pretty well for an old guy. He glanced back at Bryn. “You should reconsider a gun.”

  Her defiant headshake left no room for argument. “No.”

  “I figured.” Landon pulled something out of his back pocket. “At least take this.” What he held out to her looked like an oversized pocketknife, but when he touched a button on the side a long sharp blade whipped out on its own. “It’s a spring knife. Don’t worry—it’s small enough to be legal.”

  She hesitated a minute, but then she took it. “What the hell are you doing with something like this?”

  He looked a little embarrassed. “After that break-in …” He left it at that. Bryn shook her head but slipped the knife into her pocket.

  Landon must have had serious pull, because the security guys got there fast and started installing equipment. For me, the rest of the day was nonstop busy, with Bryn trying to get as much done as possible before we left. She tossed in a load of laundry, did some computer stuff, and had me straightening up the house, even though I didn’t see much at all out of place. She mumbled under her breath at the security people, who were everywhere at once as they installed sensors at windows and doors. Bryn got fed up tripping over them and switched to outdoor tasks, dragging me along with her.

  I helped take the kayak down off the truck, handed her tools while she fixed a hinge on the door to the chicken coop, learned how to pinch off suckers on the growing tomato plants. I didn’t even have a spare minute to check Instagram.

  Some of it was almost fun. I liked the goats a lot. The twins climbed all over each other like they were part of a tiny circus, and they liked it when I scratched them behind their floppy ears.

  “You know, we really need to name them.” Bryn was pulling together halters and leads for Landon to use while we were gone, bundling it all together real neat.

  I thought about Bryn’s real job when she wasn’t hunting for a lost sister. “What about Python and Java?”

  She burst out laughing, maybe the first real laugh I’d heard from her, and it made her face rounder and not so hard. “You’re on.”

  “Python’s the one I carried. She’s the best.”

  “Totally. I can tell she’s the really smart one.”

  She was teasing—the twins were so much alike it was hard to tell them apart—but I liked the way she said it anyway.

  I also liked listening to Bryn, who just sort of talked along about nothing special while she was doing things. Not like I was a kid, but like I was a real person, although I noticed she talked the same way to Tellico and the goats. At least it gave me a break from worrying about Mom. We made pizza for dinner, and she told about how yeast does its bubbling thing.

  “No way pizza crust is alive,” I argued, and that got another laugh.

  There were minuses too. The garden, for one. We spread mulch from the compost pile for weeds, and it took forever and smelled like shit. Didn’t Bryn realize you can get all this vegetable stuff from the grocery? I dumped my fifth wheelbarrow of mulch, and I was sure my arms had stretched at least an extra five inches from the weight. “You know, there are child labor laws.”

  Bryn snorted like I was being an idiot. “Yeah, I’ve heard of such things, but they don’t apply to boys who want to go to Memphis tomorrow. Keep going—we have plenty still to do before we get out of here.”

  I was glad we were heading back home to a normal apartment.

  By the time Bryn called the cop, that Officer Poole, after dinner, I was worn out. I stared at my phone like I was playing a game, but really I was listening. Tellico was stretched out right in front of me, warm where he leaned up against my feet.

  “Any news? … Uh-huh … And the car? Nothing there either?” She listened for a while. “Yeah … Okay. Well, Josh and I are going to Memphis tomorrow, and we’ll see if we can find anything there that might help … Yes … I will. Thanks.”

  She hung up and sat there a long minute.

  “You heard,” she finally said. “We’re going. We’ll leave in the morning after we’ve fed the animals. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow afternoon, so the garden will survive on its own for a bit.”

  At least there was a real plan, and all that work to get ready had been worth it. That should have meant I could worry less, but no. Annabelle dead. The cops. Bryn’s questions about drugs. Mom’s cell phone still off, her voice mail now full and not even taking any more of my messages. The worries piled up, and my insides tightened into a stone the size of a baseball.

  To make things worse, Bryn’s place was too quiet and too noisy both at the same time. No traffic sounds. No footsteps on the ceiling from an apartment upstairs. No music drifting in from out on the street. But once it got dark, it flipped, and jungle noise started up so loud it made my head hurt.

  “What kind of birds are those?”

  She gave me a look like she was embarrassed for me. “Not birds. Those are tree frogs and cicadas.”

  I seriously needed to get back to a city.

  Bryn said she needed to do some work stuff, and she disappeared into her study. I looked through the books in the living room—boring—and after a while I wandered back to ask if I could use one of her computers since she didn’t have a TV.

  She wasn’t doing computer stuff. She was sitting in her desk chair, hunched forward, looking at a photo album that rested on her lap.

  I looked over her shoulder and saw a picture of my dad. Mom only had a few pictures of him at home, but I’d studied them hard. It was him. I was sure. “Where’d you get that?”

  I hadn’t tried to sneak up or anything, but she jumped like she’d forgotten I was in the house. She slammed the book closed. “Doesn’t matter. This is nothing.” She stood up fast and stuffed the album into one of the bookcases. “Are you all packed for tomorrow?”

  Pack what? I’d only brought one change of clothes. She wasn’t the sort to ask stupid questions like that. She was more upset by those pictures than she was letting on. “Yeah. I’ve got everything.”

  “Good.” She wouldn’t look at me. “I’m going to take a shower. Don’t stay up too late. We’ll try and get an early start.” She waved me out of the office and closed the door behind us.

  I went back to the living room and pretended to play a game on my phone. I waited until the shower started up, then hurried back to the office and searched for the album she’d been looking at. Bryn had stuffed it back behind the books in front, but I’d seen which shelf, so found it without much trouble. I closed the office door and sat down at her desk.

  Nowadays, any pictures Mom snapped just lived on her phone, but she had some photos on paper from when I was a baby, and it was all paper ones in this album. I flipped through to see if I could find a picture of Dad like the one I’d seen, and I didn’t have to look far. He was on just about every page. I turned to the beginning and started going through in order.

  The pictures were pasted down tight on thick white pages, and under each one was handwriting.

  Nantahala, 6/7/2004

  Margery’s birthday, 1/26/2005

  Chattanooga festival, 4/20/2005

  The pictures showed picnics and kayaking and parties, but none of them were of Dad and Mom. They were all of Dad alone or of Dad and Bryn together.

  Holding hands. Smiling and laughing. Kissing.

  Kissing? What the hell? Dad and Bryn? She’d said they were friends.

  I found Mom in two pictures, real young and pretty
, not all that much older than me, but she was in the edge of the pictures, not the middle. She wasn’t standing near Dad in either one.

  The pictures stopped at a page about halfway through the album, where there was a postcard pasted in. Save the Date. Save the date of June 16th for a wedding. But the wedding was for Bryn Collins and Sawyer Whitman.

  I stared at the fancy card for a long time, thinking.

  Dad and Bryn.

  Dad and Mom.

  It made no sense.

  My stomach must have figured it out before my brain did, because it started feeling like I’d swallowed a handful of gravel. There used to be a framed thing at home Grandma made. It must have gotten lost the last time we moved, but it had the date of Mom and Dad’s wedding in big blue letters. June 16th. Mom. Not Bryn.

  A day from a few years back dropped into my head. Ben and I were finishing a level of Zelda, and his older brother, Keith, wandered around the apartment we had then, waiting for us to finish so he could take Ben home. “Hey,” he said, when he got to that cross-stitch thing. “I thought your birthday was in October.”

  “Yeah.” I hated it because it was just a few days before Halloween, so I always got stuck with costume stuff for presents.

  Keith got a real snarky look on his face, and he laughed in a way I didn’t like. “I get it. A love baby. Your parents had to get married.”

  That day, I hadn’t understood. Now that I was staring at this postcard, maybe I did.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Bryn

  I loaded the truck the next morning at half speed, more tired when I woke than when I went to bed. Revisiting those photos of Sawyer. Seeing Landon again. The two events had resurfaced in my dreams as a tangled mess—half erotic, half horror story. Sleep was the loser.

  The moon hung low in the west, a waning crescent, setting later each day as it shrank into invisibility. Always a depressing time of the lunar month—the later moonrises made for dark evenings, and a daylight moon always seemed wasted, its light too feeble to compete with the sun. No wonder I was dragging.