by John Moore
Rose took a moment but finally said, “James, why don’t you and I go for a drive to town?”
I snaked my arm around Piper’s back and rested my hand on the crown of her shoulder. “Tom, why don’t you get on your parents’ computer and book your flight to Chicago? Piper, you and I can use my laptop to watch some YouTube videos about New Orleans.”
I guided Piper toward the room Tom and I were occupying during our stay at his parent’s house. It was a large, spacious room for a guest bedroom, painted powder-blue, just like it had been when he shared it with his brother. The bunk beds were long gone, replaced by a queen-sized sled bed, battle scarred from its service to a future marine biologist. We sat next to each other with our backs against the headboard. I placed the computer on my lap and went to YouTube. Piper’s eyes were transfixed on scenes of the French Quarter.
“Oh my God. Look at those buildings. They are so awesome,” she said. Like her uncle, she loved the uncommon style of the French Quarter architecture. “Some of these places look like homes. Do people actually live in the French Quarter?”
“Yes, quite a few.”
“Is it expensive?” she asked.
“Yes, it is very expensive. But there are places just outside the Quarter that are more reasonable,” I said.
Piper took a second, squinted her eyes in a quizzical fashion, and asked, “Where will we live?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “The short answer is, I don’t know yet. Neither my condo nor Tom’s apartment is big enough for three for more than a little while.”
Three? How the fuck did that happen? It was one thing lying in bed musing, another having to answer a smart adolescent’s questions.
Piper peered at me with large, imploring eyes. It was a puppy dog look, no doubt one she’d mastered long ago. It worked like a charm. “We can all three look for a place when Tom returns from Chicago,” I said.
“Can we look in the French Quarter?” she asked.
I didn’t need to discuss living in the Quarter with Tom. I knew he’d want to live there. It dawned on me that as many times as I’d been in the Quarter, I really didn’t know much about its history. Maybe Piper and I could spend time learning it. I wanted to know more about her history too. Tom and I knew squat about her or her mother. Hell, Tom didn’t even know much about his brother’s life in Chicago.
“Piper, we can look. I don’t know if we can afford a place in the French Quarter, but we can look.”
Tom sauntered into the room. His flight to Chicago departed tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. He’d also made arrangements for the Cook County coroner to release his brother’s body to a funeral home for preparation and transport to Red Bluff. His brother’s funeral was scheduled two days from today. Tom was anxious to get us all back to New Orleans. Piper, Tom, and I were scheduled to leave the day after the funeral.
Returning to New Orleans would be different for me this time. I had an almost official family again, and I had to admit I was excited. This was a new direction for my life. There was something about Piper I really liked. She had energy and curiosity. Her eyes told me she knew much more than her rebellious outer shell revealed.
James and Rose returned. Instead of taking a leisurely drive, they had gone shopping at a local organic vegetable and fruit stand.
Tom helped them unload the bounty. Rose yelled, “Alexandra, Piper, come see what we have.”
Her face was aglow, and the family trademark blue eyes sparkled, complementing the colors of her Native American turquoise necklace. Clearly, organic food was like Captain Hook’s buried treasure to her. We all helped unload the groceries. They were neatly stashed in reusable hemp carryout bags Rose always had in her car. In this part of California, being asked “paper or plastic” was not cool. Especially if your customers were two cottontops stuck in the hippie revolution. Ironic, I thought, how a generation that spawned the environmental movement created more conspicuous consumption that may have accelerated the path to climate change. Better keep those thoughts to myself.
“Mom, Dad. I am leaving in the morning for Chicago to wrap up Ethan’s affairs. Alexandra and Piper are staying here till after the funeral.”
“Well, then, I’ll cook the best going-away meal for you tonight,” Rose said with all of the enthusiasm of a cooking show host. “Tom, would you and Alexandra help me prepare the veggies?”
Rose was masking her sadness wanting to project a happy persona for Tom and Piper. I could tell she was hurting deep in her heart because she had to put too much effort into smiling to conceal her pain. Sometimes when she thought no one was watching she cried, hiding her face in her hands.
I noticed Piper had disappeared. No worry, I thought, she needs some time to assimilate all of the changes going on. I knew I did. Rose’s kitchen didn’t have any new gadgets in it. Every action to prepare the meal was done by hand. We prepared the vegetables for cooking with knives. Rose coached me through the delicate process of peeling the perfectly ripe tomatoes. Tom separated the fresh oregano leaves from their stems. I crushed two garlic cloves, making certain to discard the outer shells. Rose placed a spaghetti squash in the oven. Tom and Rose exchanged stories of the boys’ childhood, providing a vocal tour of the stories told by the photos framed throughout the house. I listened to gain more understanding of Tom, but I couldn’t help but wonder what Piper was doing. She was still a mystery to me, and my reporter instincts compelled me to learn more.
I excused myself from kitchen duties and walked toward the bedroom. “Piper, are you still here?” I called out.
“Yes. Just shutting down your computer,” she answered.
Wow, I thought. She’d been in the bedroom on the computer for the entire two hours we were in the kitchen. I guess that wasn’t unusual for a girl her age. Made me wonder though, I must admit. What was she doing in the bedroom so long? Was I having mommy thoughts? Oh my God. I was. I felt responsible for watching out for her. Maybe I needed to put parental controls on my computer and cable TV box at home. What had I gotten myself into? What I knew for sure was I needed to learn more about her. I entered the bedroom just as she folded the computer together.
“What have you been up to?” I queried.
She cast a wary eye in my direction and answered, “Nothing, just looking at some more New Orleans videos. If I’m going to live there, I’d like to learn as much as I can about it.”
I sat on the bed beside her. She was still sitting cross-legged with the computer on her lap. I scooted on the bed and placed the computer on the bed beside me. She watched me carefully, shifting her eyes back and forth from me to the computer. She gauged my movements, wondering if I was going to fire up the laptop to see what sites she’d been visiting.
I placed my hand on her knee. Her eyes locked on mine. She had a deer-in-the-headlights look. Not fear, just wondering what was next.
“Tell me about your mother,” I said.
She froze. Except for her labored breathing she remained completely motionless for a few seconds. Her deep blue eyes watered. Her face fell. She shifted her eyes to her lap. She whimpered, “No, not now. Not with all of them here. I’ll tell you later when we are alone.”
I didn’t crowd her. She wasn’t ready. Besides, Rose announced supper was ready, and there would be plenty of time on the plane to discuss Piper’s mother. The smells coming from the kitchen were drawing us in, so we followed our noses, our mouths watering, to join the rest of the family. We had an amazing dinner courtesy of Chef Rose: homemade marinara sauce over spaghetti squash pasta and eggplant parmesan. I dined like a California princess. I didn’t realize that healthy food could taste so yummy. Tom and I washed the dishes and crawled off to bed. Tomorrow was going to be a big day for all of us.
I decided I couldn’t wait till the flight to New Orleans, so I planned to learn more about Piper and her mother tomorrow.
Chapter Seven:
Dysfunctional Family
Tom shook me from a deep sleep. “Hey, Alexandra, wake up. I have to get ready to go.”
Slowly I slid down the tunnel to consciousness. We’d only been in California for two days, yet I had adjusted to the two-hour time difference. I guess I needed the sleep. Immediately my thoughts turned to Piper.
“You need to go wake Piper up, Tom,” I said. “She needs to tell you what needs to be sent directly to New Orleans from Chicago.”
Tom’s blurry figure slinked off through the bedroom door. I missed my New Orleans coffee routine. The California version didn’t offer enough caffeine. No worry, we’d be home soon and my morning routine would commence again. Maybe not exactly the same, because now I would have a teenage girl to deal with.
When Tom returned, I’d brushed my teeth and made the bed.
“Piper was hard to wake up,” he said. “My guess is she’d been up all night.”
Just then I noticed my laptop wasn’t in the room. She must have taken it last night, that little rascal. What the hell did she look at on the web? I added that question to the list to ask her today. She’d be trapped with me all day. Nowhere to hide, little girl, I thought, my investigative journalist mind in overdrive. She was cagey but no match for Lois Lane.
It was a glorious day to be in Northern California. The temperature was a brisk fifty-two degrees, with clear skies and a high of seventy, perfect weather for a long walk.
After I helped Tom pack for his trip to Chicago, he put his strong arms around my narrow waist. His smoldering blue eyes looked into mine. He lightly brushed his lips across my slightly puckered lips and then over the smooth surface of my face. He gradually slid his hands down to my rear. His lips returned to mine firmer, more forceful this time as our tongues entwined. My thoughts staggered through my mind like those of a partying teenage girl. Where was he going with this? I wondered. I didn’t have to think about it long. Soon we were interrupted.
“Alexandra, Alexandra,” shouted a voice from the next room—by now a place far, far away. “Come here. I want to show you something.” It was Piper. Oh shit, not now, I thought.
Tom broke our embrace. “You’d better go see what she wants, Mrs. Mom,” he whispered, and I laughed and swatted him.
I guess I’m going to have to get used to this, I thought, still vibrating in my naughty places.
I made my way down the short hallway to Piper’s room. There she was propped up in the bed with my computer open.
“Come sit by me and see what I’ve done,” she said.
I scooted next to her. She was on my blog. At least I thought it was my blog, but it didn’t look the same. She’d added a section on the left margin below the menu with images of missing girls fading into each other, one after another. Below each photo was a short paragraph detailing the salient facts of each girl’s disappearance.
“Not so boring anymore, right?” she asked.
“How were you able to change the format of the site?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, I kinda hacked the site. Hope you don’t mind.”
I was totally caught off guard. I loved the new addition to the site. I didn’t approve of her hacking it, but I was impressed by her skills. I feigned anger. “You can’t just hack people’s sites without their permission.”
“Sorry, Alexandra. I thought you wouldn’t mind. I only added an RSS feed to help match missing girls with inquiries from your blog visitors. I had to combine feeds from several websites to make them stream into one on your blog. What do you think?”
My mind bounced back and forth like a ping-pong ball between anger at the intrusion and pride at her accomplishment. And what the hell was an RSS feed anyway? Her grin, showing more of her teeth than I’d seen since we met, melted my heart, making me reach out with both arms and draw her in.
“It’s spectacular,” I said.
“Look how many people have commented,” she added.
A quick look at the blog posts revealed a plethora of approvals. It was true, she’d made the site much more interesting. Just like my life with her was likely to be much more interesting. I shouted to Tom, and he made his way down the narrow, darkened hallway to Piper’s room. He focused his eyes on Piper first. Then he examined the blog like a stern father reviewing a student’s progress report.
“You’ve been up all night, haven’t you?” he asked. “You can’t do that when we get to New Orleans. You will be in school. You will have to get your homework done and go to bed by ten o’clock. You won’t be able to just do what you want when you want. We will have rules in the house, and you will follow them. You can stay up till eleven on weekends, but you’ll have to be up with your bed made no later than 10:00 a.m. You can’t be up all night and sleep all day like a vampire.”
Piper recoiled from the parental onslaught. “You aren’t my father. You can’t tell me what to do,” she shouted.
“That’s where you are wrong. I will be your legal guardian. You will be under our roof and will live by our rules,” he said in a raised voice.
Piper’s face sagged and her jaw dropped ever so slightly. Her eyelids sunk in despair. Her face, still partially defiant, revealed her unwelcome resignation to her plight. Her shoulders slumped, and her head dropped down. She reminded me of a defendant who’d just been sentenced to life in prison on one of those dramatic TV crime dramas.
Tom angrily wheeled around and stormed from the bedroom without giving her any chance to speak again. I could hear him in the other room throwing around his suitcase preparing to leave. Petite tears worked their way down Piper’s smooth cheeks, and she raised her head, shifting her eyes toward mine.
“He’s just like Victor,” she said.
“Victor, who’s that?” I asked.
“Nobody. Just a friend of my mom.” It was clear to me she didn’t want to talk about Victor, and she certainly wasn’t trying to compliment Tom. I decided not to pursue the subject now. She’d reacted to Tom’s tone like a dog who had been beaten repeatedly, and I wanted to know why.
“Tom is right about having rules,” I said. “We’ll have to work on his delivery. You did a fantastic job, Piper, making my blog come to life, but you are a beautiful young lady and you have to get your sleep. Agreed?”
“I guess so,” she responded.
“Stay right here. I’m going to help Tom pack,” I said.
I stepped out of Piper’s room and leaned against the white, textured hallway wall. I needed a minute to process my thoughts about what just happened. Why did Tom come down so hard on Piper? It was true, she did need structure, but was this the right time to start? She had just lost her father, and she hadn’t had time to grieve. What about Tom? He’d lost his brother and was suddenly cast in the role of a father. Not what he wanted at this point in his life. He had to be struggling with his new responsibilities. Though they’d drifted apart, Ethan was still his brother. There was no point in starting an argument about parenting with him now, when he had such a painful task ahead. I’d better let sleeping dogs lie. I’d learn more about Piper while Tom was in Chicago. Maybe I could find a way to get through to her.
When I entered the room, Tom’s face was still red. He directed his steely blue eyes to me, making me freeze, not knowing what to say.
“What are we going to do with her?” Tom asked, clearly frustrated. “She’s going to be a real problem. No one has taught her any discipline. She’s out of control, and I’ll not have it in my house.”
Tom was venting and I knew it. I didn’t think he knew how he really felt, but I couldn’t blame him. I was also going to have a little trouble adjusting to our decision to take Piper back to New Orleans with us. I didn’t know much about her yet. She seemed defiant and streetwise, and that could be tough to handle. I’d heard enough woe from older friends to realize that a troubled teenager can drive the best parent to distraction, yet at the same
time she was fragile and fractured. I wondered, had we gotten ourselves in over our heads?
No. We could do it. Piper had nowhere else to go. We had to find a way to deal with this. For all her defiance, she still had hope, so it wasn’t too late.
“Tom, you go to Chicago and take care of wrapping up Ethan’s affairs. I’ll learn more about Piper while you’re gone. She seems very confused to me. I don’t think we should give up on her. We can make this work.”
Tom reached out his arms to me and drew me in tightly to his chest. He held me for a few seconds while I lovingly wrapped my arms around his waist. I felt the emotional conflict in him as he slightly trembled. “Alexandra, I’m scared. I’m afraid our lives will be consumed, and I fear our dreams for the future are lost. I don’t want that. Then, I also worry that we will fail Piper and she will choose to lead a useless life.”
“You’re looking too far ahead. We’ll get through this,” I said. “We’ll find a way together. You, me, and Piper.”
Tom slowly pushed me back so our eyes could lock together without breaking our embrace. “You are the most wonderful person I’ve ever known, Alexandra. I am so lucky to have you in my life. Just when I think I can’t love you any more than I already do, you do something to double my feelings for you. You are amazing.”
He leaned in and pressed his lips to mine. We lingered in our kiss, knowing our connection was solid and could never be broken.
“You’d better get on the road. Don’t want to miss your flight,” I said.
James helped Tom load his luggage. Rose joined Piper and me in the kitchen.
“We’ll be back late tonight,” Rose said. “James and I are going to see Tom off at the airport and then do some sightseeing in Sacramento. You two know where everything is, so make yourself at home.”