by Sasha Dawn
“I know.”
“You’ll be cleaning up—”
“Listen, I’ve pulled a few dozen calves into this world. I think I can handle a little throw-up.”
Really? Calves?
“After all you’ve done for me, it’s the least I can do. And this . . .” She indicates toward the television. “Do you think I can concentrate on school with all this going on? God, what do I do? If I call to tell them my birth mother is crazy, that I’m alive and well—”
“Joshy!”
“Coming!” I call up the stairs. Then I turn to Chatham. “Listen. You have enough going on without dealing with a vomiting four-year-old.”
“It’s the only option that makes sense,” she says. “It’s settled.”
I almost say it right then. I almost tell her I love her.
But how crazy is that?
You can’t love someone you hardly know, but if you could . . .
R e c o n n a i s s a n c e
All day, I keep an eye on the breaking news, which isn’t too difficult. It seems the whole school wants to know what’s happening in rural Georgia and how it connects to the girl who was taken not five miles from here when we were all little kids.
But I’m a little more invested than most.
Instead of eating lunch with my team, I’m in the library, researching. I figure there might be a new story about the foster children living on the Goudy tract, now that there’s national news happening there. And I’m right.
Police records show there might have been typical complaints and challenges of raising teenagers—no mention of Savannah’s outrageous allegations about the girl kept under the floorboards—but no known formal complaints against the Goudys have been filed with Family Services until the woman Chatham identified as her birth mother recently started ranting at the Goudy gate.
As for Chatham’s birth mother—identified as J. Stevenson—the list of complaints against her with the state of Georgia is extensive. It seems she’s been in and out of prison as often as she’s been in and out of rehab. Her testimony at the gate of the Goudy tract has been determined as nonsensical and a nuisance to the investigation.
But one investigative reporter points out: if it’s nonsense, why can’t the authorities comment on the whereabouts of the two foster children entrusted to Loretta and Wayne Goudy?
Furthermore, why haven’t the minor children been reported missing, if not considered endangered, as no one has seen them since the investigation began?
Police neglect to comment, except to say Loretta is cooperating, and if there’s reason to presume the girls are missing, reports will follow.
This is strange.
Because technically, they are missing . . .
Chatham is in Sugar Creek without her foster parents, and according to what she told me, they don’t know she’s here.
Savannah may or may not be in Northgate. No one knows where she is . . . unless Chatham’s lies extend beyond knowing or not knowing the girl with the shamrock tattoo.
What’s going on?
I send the link to Chatham, hoping she’ll volunteer some information or want to clarify.
I search for information about J. Stevenson’s hot Nissan and the day she left her kids inside it. Now that I know her name, it’s easier to find information. There are a few old articles, but none offer much information about the children.
I look up Chatham Stevenson. Nothing of importance hits.
I try Chatham Goudy. No dice.
I text her again: Everything okay?
Minutes go by, and Chatham doesn’t reply.
Hello?
Nothing.
Panic booms like thunder through my system.
She’s with my sisters.
“Jesus.” Not that she’d deliberately put my sisters in danger, but what if she’s in danger, and they’re with her?
My mouth goes dry.
This is all too familiar. Memories emerge from dark places:
Rosie leaves me with some guy. She has no choice. She has to work. And he’s a nice guy, after all . . . who just happens to get his kicks beating the fuck out of his son, and watching his son beat the fuck out of me. How was she supposed to know? You can’t see the truth about someone if you love him.
I shake off the memories. The girls are fine. They have to be.
I try again: How’s it going?
I wait a few minutes, drumming my fingers against my jeans. I can’t sit still.
When there’s no reply, I call, but she doesn’t answer.
Why wouldn’t she answer?
What should I do?
Call the cops for a welfare check?
Call Rosie and admit I found a proxy to sit with the girls today?
I glance at the clock hanging above the double doors that lead out of the library. It’s almost one. I’m out of here in an hour and a half.
But then I have practice. I won’t be home until four thirty, the earliest.
That’s too much time to wait and see.
I’m sure everything is fine.
But if it were, wouldn’t Chatham be replying? Even if she was in the middle of holding a ponytail back from the bucket while one of my sisters throws up, she’d have a minute to text me back in between emergencies. And I haven’t heard from her in over two hours.
Something’s wrong.
I don’t have a choice. I have to go.
I pack up and practically sprint out of the library.
“Mr. Michaels?”
I ignore the hall monitors and keep running through the maze of hallways, ignoring the stop-right-there and where-do-you-think-you’re-going.
I burst out the back doors, by the gym—some retired guy they hired to stand guard at the door is calling after me, but I don’t have time to explain—and go straight to my car.
Chatham’s cell rings nonstop every time I call.
God, let them be okay.
I rip through town, and practically skid to a stop on my driveway.
I dart across the lawn and almost drop my keys at the door when I’m unlocking it.
“Chatham!”
I take the stairs two at a time.
All is quiet.
Eerily so.
Her phone is on the kitchen table.
I pick it up and see all the missed calls from my number, my number, my number. Unopened texts from me, me, me.
The floor creaks somewhere in the house.
“Chatham?”
She’s standing at the end of the hallway, in front of my sisters’ room, putting a finger to her lips in the universal signal to shut up. She’s closing the door.
Relief gushes through me at the sight of her.
I put down her phone.
What must this look like? Me, looking through her phone?
“What are you doing here?” she asks. “School’s not over.”
“I’ve been texting. Calling. I was worried.”
“I gave the girls a bath,” she says. “It helps with the fever.”
I’m nodding. Of course she’s been busy.
“I was reading to them. They fell asleep. I didn’t want to bring my phone in—”
“Sorry. It’s just that . . .”
She’s looking at me like I’ve overreacted. Like I’ve just made the pop of a firecracker out to be the blast of an H-bomb.
“Here.” I tap on my phone to pull up the link to the story about the Goudy tract. I hand it to her to let her read it. “The police don’t think you’re missing. Why wouldn’t they think you’re gone?”
“I don’t know.” She scrolls through the story.
“I don’t understand it.”
Her brow crinkles up as she reads.
I’m growing more and more impatient. There has to be something she isn’t telling me.
“I just don’t get it,” I say.
She shoves my phone back at me. “You think I do?”
“Explain this to me, Chatham. Please. If we’re going to help ea
ch other, I have to know what you know.”
“You want me to explain why the police force in Moon River hasn’t declared Savannah and me missing.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, how should I know why they do anything? Maybe Loretta spun a great story. Maybe it’s taking the police a while to put it all together. I don’t know.”
“But you’d think, especially with Family Services now involved—”
“What? What would you think? Would you think two little girls wouldn’t end up in the hands of someone with a cattle brand? Because it happens all the time. People have kids who shouldn’t. People trust people to be parents, when there’s no way in hell they should be around kids. You know that, Joshua.”
I guess I do.
“I don’t get it, either,” she says. “But if you’re looking for answers, I can’t give them to you. I can’t explain what I don’t understand.”
I pull her into my arms.
With some reluctance, she eventually folds against my chest.
“I just started thinking about all the terrible things that could be happening, and nothing makes sense,” I say. “I got scared. For you. For my sisters.”
She’s warm against me. “The girls are fine.”
“I have to ask you. And I don’t want you to get mad. But you can trust me, Chatham. Is there anything you know that you’re not telling me? About Wayne and Loretta. About Savannah. About that girl with the tattoo at the rave.”
Her lips brush over mine. “I’ve never told a single soul as much as I’ve told you.”
She didn’t exactly answer my question.
“And I’m trying to make sense of all this,” she says. “Savannah. My foster parents. Rachel Bachton. I want to explain it all to you. But I don’t understand it either.”
“Will you call the police in Georgia? Will you tell them you’re here? That you’re worried something might have happened to Savannah?”
“You don’t know what’ll happen if I do that, Joshua. What if they bring me back?”
“Then we find a way through it. Just like with everything else.” I hand her my phone. “Please.”
She looks up the number, then punches it into the phone.
“My name is Chatham Claiborne,” she says. “I’m calling to tell you I’m okay.”
P a i n t i n g t h e R o s e s R e d
If Chatham’s call made any difference, it isn’t apparent.
The world carries on, as it usually does. Thirty-six hours after the story about the Goudy tract broke, no one, except maybe the police, knows how Baby A ended up by the rivers, or who Baby A might be. No one knows if there’s a Baby B, and if there is, if her remains might match Rachel Bachton’s DNA. And so far, there’s no mention of bones, or the scent of them, found beneath the floorboards of a stable.
My own Babies A and B—my sisters—are feeling better today. This morning, they’d begged Rosie to bring them to my game—we’ll see, she’d said—but they didn’t show.
And Chatham . . . I can’t quite get a handle on her since we went to the rave. She’s preoccupied, distracted. I can’t blame her, but I wish she’d let me in on whatever it is she’s mulling over. Maybe she’s just waiting for the authorities to swoop down and take her back into protective custody.
I’m trying not to think about that.
“Nice fucking game.”
I look up from the locker room bench to see Novak standing over me. He’s managed to step into some jeans, but his shirt’s still dangling from his hand, and he’s bare-chested, as if any minute now, he’s bound to emulate a silverback and pound his fists against his chest. “Yeah,” I say. “It was.”
It turns out the douche bag can catch a rope, after all.
“See what happens when you fucking trust me?”
I could remind him that I’ve hit him in the numbers before, and he literally dropped the ball. I could tell him trust has to be earned. But I don’t want to get into it, so I say, “Trust isn’t the issue. When you’re open, I’ll get it to you.”
It’s a good night for Novak to perform, too. Even though Coach didn’t say anything about it, the scout from Northwestern was here again tonight to watch us play. The guy even gave me a nod as I walked off the field. I’m about to share this tidbit, when Novak hits me with:
“So I’m thinking I might ask that girl from the diner to wear my spare jersey next week. For Homecoming.”
He’s talking about Chatham.
“You know, the one who gave me cake that day.”
“Yeah.”
“The one you can’t close the deal with.”
I shrug a shoulder, even though I know what Novak doesn’t seem to realize: there’s more to closing the deal than getting between a girl’s legs. Chatham will be wearing number fourteen on her back next Friday night, and she’ll be with me all day Saturday. At the parade. At the dance. I might even take her downtown to Navy Pier after, if she doesn’t have to work too early Sunday morning. “Give it a shot.”
“Yeah? You don’t mind?”
Wait. Is this a courtesy? I’d considered it sarcasm, but . . .
“She’s kinda cute, you know,” he says, “and she’s new, so she hasn’t figured out yet I’m an asshole, so . . .”
“Actually, Novak, I’m sort of—”
“I appreciate it, buddy.” He claps me on the shoulder, and says, in Holden Caulfield fashion, “I really do.”
“She’s going with me,” I blurt out.
“Oh.” He takes a step back and finally shoves his arms and head through his shirt. “Well, good for you.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s a nice girl.”
Something in the way he says it, in the smirk on his face, makes me pause. How would he know if she’s a nice girl or not? Does this mean he’s talked to her? That he’s tried something on her?
Again, he claps me on the shoulder, but this time it’s with such force that I know it’s not meant to be friendly, as much as it’s an attempt to duel with me. He’s always got to be a total jerk.
Jensen passes us on his way out of the locker room. “Going to the Tiny E?”
Novak and I don’t interrupt our staring contest—which is ridiculous, right?—but I nod. “I’ll be there.”
“Let’s see which one of us can get there first.” Novak makes a show of air-fucking an imaginary girl.
“Whatever.” I turn away. I don’t want to see that shit. It’s insulting to girls, both real and imaginary. And it’s insulting to air, too.
Still, if he’s going to be that way . . . game on. I finish dressing and get out of there as quickly as possible, which turns out to be about three hundred feet ahead of Novak. I dash through the parking lot and climb into my Explorer, but the engine doesn’t turn over when I turn the key. Great.
I try again. And again.
Finally, after a few whinnies—and after Novak peels out of the lot in his Jetta—the engine revs to life, and I manage to catch him on Washington. I pass him on the stretch, give him a middle-finger salute.
But he cuts me off on the next curve.
Then I take the lead again, and while we arrive at the same time, I pull straight into a parallel spot. Novak has to back in like usual, so I’m first inside. A few guys are already crowded around the center table.
Chatham’s at the counter, serving the customers sitting there. I catch her glance, and give her a flash of a smile.
But Novak shoves me—the idiot practically bowls into me—when he passes, and only to get to a seat at the center table, as if I mind sitting on the outskirts—and I don’t. Seniors should sit at the center table.
Chatham rolls her eyes.
It’s then I catch the sense of dread hanging in the air, and somehow, I know. I know before I take in the details of a guy at the counter . . .
The work boots with the broken laces on the left boot.
The patch sewn into the right elbow of the insulated, gray plaid flannel jacket.
It’s Damien Wick.
I know the drill. I can’t stay. If he imposes on a place I’m frequenting, he’s in violation of the order of protection. But if I willingly enter a place he’s occupying, all bets are off.
My heart is banging like mad, but it’s not because I’m afraid. Not really. It’s more that I just can’t believe it. He knows the team comes here. He’s here for one reason: to fuck up my life. He may as well be pissing his scent around the perimeter of the place, reserving it as his territory.
And this place, of all places! It’s where Chatham works. If Damien starts coming here, starts chatting her up every second he gets . . . The man is poisonous. If he knew what Chatham means to me, he’d be filling her head with all sorts of stories of my weaknesses. He’d make me out to be a wuss, at best. At worst, he’d do all he could to make her feel uncomfortable, like a rabbit in the middle of a wolf pack.
A sick feeling tumbles in my gut, and sweat breaks on my forehead.
I catch Chatham’s attention and mime that I’ll call her later.
I don’t explain; I just turn and head for the door. I don’t even want him to know I’m here, so the more quietly I leave, the better. If I’m not here one day, maybe Damien will give up the territorial pissing contest.
Unfortunately, Novak realizes I’m heading out and says, “Michaels! You fucking pussy!”
I’m only halfway past the threshold, and while I don’t look back, I can feel Damien’s stare burning a hole into my back. I hop back into my SUV.
I pull out my phone and text Chatham: Couldn’t stay. Damien at Tiny E. Be careful.
Then I add: See me after?
I know she probably doesn’t even have her phone on her. I can’t imagine what her boss would do if she was texting when the diner was full of customers. But when she does check her phone, she’ll understand why I had to leave. Nothing will change. She’s still going to wear my jersey. We’re still going to the Homecoming dance. Damien can’t ruin everything.
After fighting again with the engine for a few turns of the key, I slowly pull away from the curb.