by Neliza Drew
I shook my head. “My mother was never much for churches.”
“And your dad? Most military men I know believe in God.”
My biological father had been a musician in San Francisco. My “uncle,” the Marine, had suffered a falling out with God somewhere between his sexuality and his survivor’s guilt. “Not so much, sir.”
“Then it weren’t God holding you back from shootin’ that man.”
I started to remind him of my lie.
“Don’t give me that. Everyone watches enough TV to pull a trigger. Might not have any aim, but they can squeeze.”
I set the washcloth on the table. “I think I should go.”
“Feel free to stop back by.”
The dog hauled itself to its feet and ambled after me. The man held out a hand. “I’m Bob.”
That cleared that up. “Thanks.”
Chapter twenty
I walked back toward Charley’s house via the road. I kept a lookout, but didn’t see anyone. As I rounded the corner I saw the Mustang was gone. I noticed my Toyota was gone, too.
I decided to deal with that later and entered Charley’s cautiously. The inside was dim and I let my eyes adjust before I moved too deep into the domiciliary abomination.
I called Tom from the living room. “Sorry.”
“What the hell, Davis? I thought you were dead by now.”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“Yes, you think I’m your daughter and you care, but I’m not. You care too much, Tom.”
“No such thing.”
“The only one who ever gave a damn about me before was Nik. But we’re adults now.”
“Being an adult doesn’t mean your loved ones stop loving you.”
I had no answer to that.
“Davis?”
“I’m here.”
“It’s okay. For people to care.” His voice sounded warm, grandfatherly.
“I guess I still don’t know why you do.”
“Frankly, I don’t know either except by now I’ve known you long enough I feel invested in the project.” He sighed into the phone. “Guess that’s not so funny. Truth is, you have a good heart and a warrior spirit and I appreciate that. Not too many like that.”
I didn’t know what to say so I shook the warm fuzzies free. “Did Charley own a car?”
His tone turned businesslike. “Wouldn’t you know that?”
I made a face he couldn’t see into the phone.
“Right.” Clicking followed. “Chevy Impala. A ninety-five. In blue.”
“Then where is it?”
“That, I don’t know,” he said. “What’s going on, Davis?”
“I don’t know, but I have an overwhelming hunch that Lane’s paying for my mistakes.”
“Davis?”
“Eric Wright owns the company Billy Guthrie worked for. Lane was friends with Billy and his girlfriend. According to the dog-collar-wearing Sylvia, Lane is also friends with Vince Zellner. Zellner used to be friends with Wright. Super-close friends. Like the kind that are always together. Even when Eric was dating Jackie, Vince always seemed to be, I don’t know, lurking. Like they’d be in the bedroom making out and Vince would be sitting on our couch, staring at me like he was waiting for them to be done. It was creepy. Weird.”
“That doesn’t mean they had anything to do with Guthrie’s death.”
“He didn’t go to the college. Worked the port.” I touched the scar behind my ear. “And now he’s some kind of manager at Wright’s.”
“Makes sense.”
“Except, what’s he doing hanging out with teenage girls?”
“I know you can remember girls in high school chasing after college boys. Wright’s twenty-five. Zellner’s only a year older. Small town like that? Not that weird.”
I knew he was right. Billy and Amber had been a few years apart, enough that in some states he could’ve been arrested, but I also knew most high school boys were impossibly immature. “It just feels wrong.”
Silence on his end told me he knew I’d done far worse than date a guy a few years older.
“If I give you some dates, can you see what you can dig up?”
“Yes. Anyone in particular I should look for?”
“Me.” I told him the dates I’d lived in Boone.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m sure I’m not, but it won’t stop me from lying about it.”
• • • • •
The house was a mess, but no more so than it had been before. In my old bedroom, I counted the guns. All the boxes were there, but another one felt light. I picked it up and shut my eyes as I opened it. When I looked, all that was left was the outline of a SIG Sauer P226 pistol. Another handgun floating around in the hands of either a teenager or a sociopath.
“Fuck.”
Two hours later, I’d methodically searched the house. I’d found, among other things: Charley’s stash and Lane’s address book; three bongs and seventeen pipes of various sizes; five burnt spoons; a pile of used lighters; several empty bottles of cheap booze; more than a dozen pill bottles; and Lane’s journal, which appeared to be little more than a wire-bound notebook covered in faux Satanic symbols and pot leaf doodles. I flipped through it, but the last entry was three years old.
I rummaged through the four dressers until I found a pair of jeans that fit and a long-sleeve shirt I’d last seen when I was a high school junior. In my duffel bag, I shoved Lane’s journal along with my dwindling supply of clean clothes.
When I finally checked my phone, I discovered it was getting close to midnight. The thought made me consider raiding Charley’s stash for an upper before common sense kicked in.
If I wanted my brain to work right, I had to feed it and not do Charley-esque things to it.
On the other hand, I had no car and I had at least one person who wanted me dead.
“Double fuck.”
I called the Sheriff’s department and asked who was on duty before reporting my car stolen. It wasn’t the elusive Murphy, so I decided to take my chances. While I waited, I dug out Lane’s journal and read through her days of hating English and gym and a girl she called Bucktooth Becky.
The man who showed up drove a pickup with the Sheriff’s department logo, but without light bars or other signs it belonged to the office. He wore brown polyester pants, a tan shirt, and a belt with entirely too much stuff on it, like he’d increased his girth just to accommodate a few extra gadgets.
“You called about a stolen car?”
“Yeah. It was parked over there. Two hours later, it was gone.”
“Isn’t that the old Hathaway place? Why’d you park there?”
I checked his face for wrinkles, but only found small creases around his eyes. If he spent much time on the water they’d be deeper, even at his young age. “Someone was in the driveway here. Didn’t want to block the car in.”
“Who was here?”
“Friend of my sister’s.”
“You own this place?”
“Belongs to my mother. Not sure what that has to do with my missing car.”
“Missing? Or stolen?”
“Well, if it’s missing and I don’t know who has it, stands to reason it was stolen. You need the registration information?” I opened the door more so he could come in while I went to the couch to dig my wallet out of my purse.
“I’m not sure sarcasm is in your best interest, Ms… Groves?”
“Davis Groves.” I handed over the registration, my license and insurance card.
“I heard you were dead.”
“I’m not dead.”
“I can see that. Just tellin’ you what I heard.”
“I guess I’m Mark Twain.” I waited for him to write down the information in his report.
“Huh?”
“The report of my death was an exaggeration… Never mind.”
“Oh.” He finished writing and handed back my papers. “Why
are you here if you’re from Florida?”
“Visiting my mother.”
“She’s in the hospital, right?”
Small-town gossip traveled so fast, I was a little surprised I had to tell him my car had vanished. To avoid sarcasm, I simply nodded.
“I hear she’s…” he lowered his voice and even ducked his head slightly, “not well.”
“You mean she’s a jolly drug addict with a suicidal streak? Yeah, that’s Charley.”
He turned red.
“You arrested her for soliciting yet?”
He turned redder.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure you will. How do I get a copy of that for my insurance company?”
“Stop by the station later today.” His tanned skin slowly fought back the embarrassment.
• • • • •
I shifted my bag on my shoulder and cut through the woods to Bob’s.
His lights were out, but when I got about a foot from the porch his hound went crazy and every light in the trailer suddenly blazed like Christmas at the Griswolds’.
He came banging out the door with his shotgun, dog yapping at his heels. “Who’s there?”
“Davis.”
“Davis?”
“We met earlier. Do you think you could point that shotgun somewhere else?”
“Not ’til I knows who you are!”
“Redhead from Florida.”
He lowered the gun. “Why didn’t you say so? What’s up?”
“Car disappeared.”
“You been gone hours.” He scratched his head, scratched the dog’s head, and held the door open for me to come in.
I nodded as I came up the steps. “Yeah, it was there. And then it wasn’t.”
“Weird.”
“I agree.”
“You look like you got something else on your mind.”
“I do. You have any old newspapers?”
“Sure. Come on in, girl. You want a fried egg?”
My stomach nodded enthusiastically. My mouth watered. I shook my head. “I don’t want to impose too much. I just need to look something up and the library’s closed.”
“Ain’t you got a computer or something? Thought all the kids your age were like robots by now.” He led me into the living room, where he had a stack of Carteret New Times on the cushion under the window.
“I left my computer at home.” I smiled, pretending I was warm and friendly. “Who steals a beat-up Corolla anyway?”
He got a cast iron pan off the dish rack and set it on top of an ancient stovetop. “Kids’ll do anything these days. Breakin’ inta places ain’t got no place to be in. Doin’ drugs at the schoolhouse. And that’s just the stuff makes the papers.”
I picked up a couple from the stack of papers and followed him to the kitchen, watched him pour oil in the pan and crack an egg on the side.
“Shouldn’t you be getting some sleep? You can borra the couch if’n you want.” He stared at me while waiting for the toaster to pop. “Butter?”
“No thanks.”
He handed me the dry toast with a look that said he suspected it wasn’t really food without butter.
I looked at the paper I’d picked up. “Know anything about this Wright’s Seafood place?”
“Other people think he’s great. His grandpa was okay. Younger one’s kind of a mixed bag. I mean, what I hear, he treats them workers okay. Didn’t make such a bad commissioner. Can’t keep a woman, though.”
I flipped through the latest paper while he plated the egg. Aside from the story about Billy’s death, there was no other mention of violence.
He set the egg in front of me. “Eat. You look thin. And scared.”
“That obvious?”
He nodded and sat opposite me.
“I’m not.” I sat up straighter. “Not really. I’m pissed. I’m…resigned.”
“You need some rest.”
I put down the paper and picked up another. “It’s not right of me to burden you with all this. It’s my baggage. I need to carry it.”
He got up and poured himself a finger of amber liquor out of a Mason jar. “You talk like a soldier. You ain’t.” His voice got faraway and I wondered where he’d gone in his head.
I left him to his memories and scoured a few articles.
He eventually patted me on the shoulder and wandered down the hall. I heard his bed creak and then the sort of wall-rattling snoring that would probably kill him one night.
The idea of dying in my sleep sounded better than any of the ways I’d nearly been killed so far. Certainly sounded better than Uncle Phil’s prediction that I’d die violently, painfully. I had a feeling he’d been right, but at the time I’d wondered what had possessed him to tell a teenager that. I knew what had possessed Charley to tell me the same thing.
Chapter twenty-one
Thursday, February 9
The smell of rot permeated the air in the dimly-lit trailer. The curtains covered the boarded-up front windows, smashed or shot by something long before us. We’d been there two weeks. Long enough to call it home. Not long enough to think we’d stay.
We dropped our bags and books, called Charley’s name, and set out in our predetermined directions. Nik headed toward our bedrooms. I headed past the kitchen to Charley’s. Lane stood in the doorway, holding a stuffed monkey, waiting for us to make sure her mother was still alive, still present, still out of jail.
I found her first. Charley. Sprawled across her bed, leopard panties bunched around her knees, pink bra with broken straps, aspirin bottle spilled on the floor, half empty bottle of Ruskova on the nightstand next to a couple of quarters. I checked her neck for a pulse. When I found one, I went to her dresser, to the top drawer, the one that was always closed and currently sat ajar. I knew, feared, what I’d find when I opened it. My throat fell to my stomach as I stared at the underwear, shoved aside to reveal the cardboard cigar box, once full of twenties and tens, now empty except for a school photo of Nik, still stamped with the photographer’s logo.
I turned to Charley. Fear and revulsion waged war in my head. I knew in my gut, just looking at her, what had happened. I knew I wasn’t supposed to resent her. But I did. I wanted to turn her over and slap her until I’d transferred all the pain inside me to her.
I heard Nik coming back down the hall and yanked Charley’s panties up as best I could, pulled the corner of the sheet across her still-bare ass.
Nik ran in and her eyes raked the room. Stopped on the dresser and then again on Charley. “No.”
I knew her tone. I heard the same sadness, the understanding. I shoved my anger further down. “She’s a hooker.” Apparently not far enough down.
Nik delivered a slap so hard I tasted copper. “That’s not an excuse. It’s never an excuse. And she’s our mother.” Tears welled and spilled on her face.
I focused on the copper. I ignored being thirteen and knowing as much about hooking and its disadvantages as Charley.
“I’m going to make coffee. Find some crackers.”
“She needs an ambulance,” I said.
“No one will believe us. Her. They’ll lock her up again.” She pulled back the sheet, all business. Some part of her walled off after that slap, as if she’d hit herself.
I grabbed Nik’s wrist. “That’s destroying evidence. That makes us accomplices.”
She pulled me into a hug before giving me her sternest mom look. “We can’t let Lane see her like this.”
I looked over her shoulder at Charley and hated her as much as myself.
I woke up with my face stuck to a damp newspaper and an urgent need to pee. The stove clock said it was nearly four. I pushed the dream, memory, out of my head. No one knew who’d attacked her then, maybe not even her. Because of Nik and me, no one bothered trying to find out.
Time hadn’t removed the sick feeling I got when I thought about it.
I glanced at the notes I’d made. I needed to get out of there.
I grabbed a tee shirt out
of my bag and padded down the hall to Bob’s bathroom. I wanted a shower, but I didn’t want to wake Bob or the dog. Instead I peed and stared at myself in the mirror. The person I saw looking back at me had newsprint on her face, a crease on her cheek, twigs still in her hair, scratches on her forehead. She looked sad and tired, the guilt almost visible on her shoulders.
Something wasn’t right about Billy’s death, but less was right with everything else.
I knew Tom would tell me I was focused on the wrong thing. That I needed to find Lane an attorney and get Charley some help. Except, something was pulling me down a rabbit hole.
Lane.
I’d read in her journal the night before, but it wasn’t helpful. She’d started it when we’d moved to NC. She’d been eight, had little girl problems. Why didn’t Samantha invite her to a birthday party? She didn’t want to eat meat after her class read Charlotte’s Web.
How did a little girl that concerned with Wilbur grow up to shoot a guy in the face?
But then, she’d had our problems, too. Why did Charley have so many boyfriends? Why didn’t Santa come to our house like he did Samantha’s? Why were we teaching her how to check for track marks between Charley’s toes?
Eventually, the differences grew, drove a wedge between her and the girls she wanted to be, left her feeling alone.
Nik and I had been largely blind to Lane’s isolation. We’d known about her acting out here and there, but we hadn’t understood. Even when we’d hid things from each other, she’d been there. She’d known things she shouldn’t.
When we’d left, we’d thought we’d set her up with a pretty good life — better than what we’d had. Except, I’d been selfish, lost in my own world.
And then I’d almost died. And she’d been sent to the hospital with Jackie’s mother. And she’d met Vince in the lobby, waiting around. And he’d made her feel special. Even though, at twenty-one, he was too old to be making a kid feel anything.
I thought about the first time I’d left. I’d gone to college in Wilmington because I’d thought Jackie needed my help, my protection. Her mother, obsessive and overprotective, had filled her with worry — and the mission to find a Christian husband.