The Tiger in the House

by Jacqueline Sheehan

  “I have a favor to ask you. Can she ask you a few questions?” he said.

  “Did you bring me anything to eat? Did you forget what I need?” she said, turning her entire body to John.

  “Oh. I forgot, I mean, I wasn’t planning on coming today or I would have stopped to get them.”

  “I can’t talk with her without them.”

  What could be so important to Courtney? What food would possibly induce her to respond to his request for a favor? But Delia knew that John would do anything to keep his link to Raymond alive.

  He forced a smile. “Courtney likes a special kind of donut.. . .”

  “Chocolate covered cake donuts,” said Courtney, curling back into a corner of the chair, looking satisfied now that she was sure John would comply.

  “I can run out and get them now,” he said. To Delia, “The donut place isn’t far from here, but Courtney is still required to stay within the house for the next two weeks.” He jangled the car keys in his pocket and left.

  No matter where Delia went, food was the carrier of comfort. Just how muddled was Courtney’s thinking? She was relieved that John was off on a mission; it would be easier without him here, having to buffer his grief.

  “I’m looking for someone, and I’m hoping you can help me.”

  Courtney turned her head at an odd angle, more like a bird than a human. “Everyone is looking for someone.”

  The door to John’s car thudded shut. How long would it take him to fetch donuts for Courtney?

  “You knew Raymond, at least that’s what John told me. Did you know Emma Gilbert too?” How much should Delia skip? She could ask her so many things, but the only thing she really wanted was the location of Hayley’s mother. Or her name.

  “Do you think I’m like Emma Gilbert? No, wrong again. Emma wouldn’t have even been in this story if she hadn’t poked her nose into my affairs with her goodie-goodie questions. ‘I’m worried about you. Why are you so sleepy all the time? I care about you. I only have one sister and it’s you, Courtney.’”

  The police report said nothing about Emma Gilbert having a sister. They had spoken with her family in Florida. “She was your sister?”

  “Big Brothers Big Sisters. Big college girl was assigned to me from on high,” said Courtney. Her body stayed in a kind of small, erratic motion. Her torso rocked from side to side. She tapped one foot, then the other.

  Delia remembered the language of metaphor from her father and no one spoke it more fluently than a person in the midst of delusional thinking. Or was Courtney being obscure on purpose?

  “Did Emma know you when you were a kid? Did she visit you as part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program?” Courtney was still so young; being a kid was not that long ago.

  Courtney looked at the door. She nodded yes to Delia. “Emma wasn’t like us.”

  How far away was the donut shop? “Like you and Raymond?”

  She whipped her head around toward Delia. “Do you have a phone?”

  Even someone as adept as Delia struggled to keep up with Courtney’s pathways. Courtney popped out of her chair and sat down cross-legged next to Delia on the couch. “What do you have for music?”

  Going on instinct, Delia handed over her phone to Courtney, who tapped her way through it until a torch song by Adele came on. Courtney rolled her eyes in disappointment. She set the phone against a stack of magazines while the song played.

  “Listen to me,” she hissed, testing the volume of her voice against the music. “I was Hayley’s nanny.” The music masked their conversation. Courtney didn’t want anyone else to hear.

  Delia turned to the girl, her heart pumping madly. “Go ahead.”

  “You understand that Hayley was the leverage, right? So, just think about it; leverage for what? Keep thinking. You know that her mother was being held in the naughty place? Raymond loved that name, The Naughty Place. But what about the father? What could the heroin business squeeze out of the father by holding his wife and daughter? Come on, I won’t have time to tell you everything.”

  Delia took a chance and restated the obvious. “You know that Raymond is dead, that Emma is dead, along with some other guy?”

  The twitch in Courtney started with her face, ran down her neck. “I only know about Emma and Raymond. There was no other guy. This is so messed up.” She tugged at her hands, pulling from each wrist to the ends of her fingers. “Someone, or a couple of someones, are looking for that little girl. And I’ll tell you why, and this might help you a little bit, more than a little bit if you’re smart. Are you smart?”

  “I’m trying, Courtney. I want to find Hayley’s mother. Otherwise we have to put Hayley into the foster care system, and I don’t want that to happen. And I’m very worried about Hayley’s mother.”

  The girl’s eyes were wide, frantic. “The police are looking for the carriers of the heroin pipeline. They might catch a few, they might slow it down on Tuesday only to have it surge on Thursday. But really, once heroin slid along the granite covered kitchen islands of white America, the police should have called the game on account of not being able to win.”

  Courtney was sounding totally lucid. Why had she been acting so confused before?

  “Ray, by the way, had everything given to him. But he was after some kind of financial superpower and he saw a road that looked almost too good to be true. And say he sets up someone like me, after he introduces me to his hand-picked oxy, and I advance to heroin in record time, and I’m the nanny to the little girl. I don’t want to distract you with how I thought he loved me, because even I don’t believe that now.”

  Courtney pounded her thin thighs with her fists and rocked back and forth. “Good girl, Hayley. Good girl. I’ll take good care of you. Don’t be afraid.”

  Courtney wasn’t pretending. She dropped in and out of psychic pain like a swimmer, coming up for air only to have a wave crash over her and push her down.

  “Aren’t you glad that you can put all this into your little caseworker file? You only want to know where Hayley’s mother is and you think that will fix everything.”

  “You’re right, that is really what I care about. I’m not the police, I’m not your counselor. Courtney, please. Those two things. Where is her mother? What is her name?”

  “Don’t we care about the father? Look at Ray’s father. He’s . . .” Courtney swallowed hard. “He’s sad. All the time. Not like Ray.”

  “Yes, okay, the father, the mother, the name. I know John is sad, but he’s trying so hard to help you. Please, Courtney. John will be back soon and I think that you don’t want to say any of this in front of him. Those donuts are on the way.”

  “I was the nanny,” said Courtney, looking again at the door. “Let’s see, the father could be a pharmacist. Nashville is the drop-off place from the link in Mexico. What could the father do that would need such extreme persuasion, like kidnapping his wife and child? What happens when you dabble a bit in something like opioids, say stretching out an OxyContin scrip for some of your friends who were cut off by their nervous doctors? The friends should know better but they can’t imagine getting addicted to something that pours honey directly into their brains. Hang onto that thought. I didn’t say this was going to be easy.”

  “I’m following you,” said Delia.

  “How is it that Emma had to show up right when we’re ready to take Hayley and her mother, right at that exquisite moment? That was pure Emma, ever on guard for something she could fix. Raymond said, ‘Who the hell is this?’ and I said, ‘She was my Big Sister.’ And he said, ‘We can’t let her go; she’ll tell someone. ’ And because, even if I am shooting heroin five times a day by then, I’m worried that Raymond might really hurt her, I say, ‘Bring her with us. She can help us.’”

  “Raymond used you to kidnap your employer and her daughter? And Emma interrupted the plan by coming to see how you were.” One of the first things that Delia learned in graduate school was to restate what clients had said, first to acknowle
dge that she’d heard them and then to verify if she had understood them correctly.

  “Yeah, that is basically what happened. You can’t imagine how high I had been the night before, and Ray arranged it so that I wouldn’t get another bag of heroin until Claire and Hayley were stashed in the van. And then Emma had to show up, with, her ‘Hey, I’m so proud of you, I was just driving through visiting friends from college and thought I’d stop by....’ See, I had written to her ever since high school.”

  Oh, my God, Hayley’s mother had a name. Delia kept her voice even. “Her mother’s name is Claire.”

  “Emma whispered to me as we drove away with Hayley and her mother tucked in the third row seats of the van. ‘Are you crazy?’ She watched me shoot up and I told her about the oxy and the heroin, and she started to cry and I said, ‘Why are you crying?’ because it didn’t seem that bad right then because heroin had become so essential like part of my blood. It still is. We drove all day and Emma was quiet as anything. That night, she said to me, ‘You have to get help, right now. You’ve gone too far and you may not be able to swing back, but here’s what you’re going to do.’”

  Any minute, John was going to pay for a bag of chocolate covered donuts, the kind that J Bird scoffed at. The clerk was going to put on plastic gloves, pick out the donuts, and put them in a white paper bag. He’d pay for them with cash, check his watch, maybe call his wife to say that the traffic was hell, he was going to be late, and then drive back to The Phoenix House.

  “What did you do?”

  “We were spending a few hours in a hospital parking lot so Ray could sleep. They let you park a van in some hospital parking lots and don’t hassle you, that’s what Ray said. All the doors were locked and Hayley was asleep. Claire wouldn’t look at me and Ray told her not to speak. I did what Emma told me. I found another bag of heroin when Ray was asleep and I took a bigger hit than I’ve ever taken. Emma told me that the hospital had Narcan, they all do now, and that I wouldn’t die because Narcan reverses the effects. She said that after the hospital took care of me, I had to go to the police and tell them about Raymond and Hayley and all of them.”

  “Emma told you to overdose?” Should Delia believe her? This was incredible. But what would she have done if she were Emma?

  “She said Ray would dump me out at the hospital; she’d make him do that. I don’t remember what happened, but I woke up in the hospital. After the Narcan, they released me. It was some hospital in Philly. I needed another hit. Someone like you wouldn’t know how the brain screams for heroin, it’s louder and stronger than any other voice. Five hundred times stronger. I hear it right now.” She touched the side of her head with her pointer finger.

  “You never called the police?”

  Courtney rocked back and forth and hummed a dirge-like tune, repetitive and disturbing.

  Delia took this as a no, the police were not called. “You kept doing heroin. How long ago did this happen? When did you and Ray take Claire and Hayley?” Delia pictured Courtney on the streets of Philly, doing whatever she needed to do to score a bag of heroin, making her way back to Nashville.

  The sound of their names seemed to violate Courtney and make her cringe.

  “It was cold in Philly. The shelters took me in at night, but in the day, I had to find someplace to be. Maybe March. Yeah, I think March.”

  A car door slammed and both women startled. “Where did he take Claire? And what is her last name? Hurry, Courtney.”

  “The bacca barn, I told you, the naughty place! That’s all I know. He said he bought property and that it was perfect. He never loved me. He dumped me out like garbage, that’s what they said in the hospital, not even in front of the ER. He left me in the parking lot under a lamppost.” Courtney’s eyes filled and her nose instantly began to run.

  “Where is the bacca barn? Here in Tennessee?”

  The front door opened. Courtney whispered, “Way past New York, that’s what he said. It was a perfect place.” She curled back into a corner of the couch and whimpered like a pup.

  Footsteps. “What’s going on in here?” said John. He glared at Delia. “What did you do? She’s sick. This is a treatment center, not an interrogation room.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset her,” said Delia. She turned off the torch songs of Adele from her phone and stood up.

  “I think you should go,” he said. John sat down on the couch next to Courtney. “Come on now. I’ve brought your favorites.” He reached for a box of tissues on the side table and pulled out several, handing them to Courtney.

  “Thank you, Courtney,” said Delia. But Courtney was already tucked into the arm of her benefactor. Delia picked up her bag and left the room. In the entryway, the workman had unscrewed a light switch and wires poked out. How long had he been there? Had he heard the conversation or just the music from her phone?

  “These older buildings need a lot of upkeep,” he said, keeping his head down and pointing a screwdriver at the socket. His hands were pale and soft. He wore a kind of aftershave or cologne; if it had a color, Delia would have to say it was burgundy, the color of spilled wine ruining a new sweater. Heavy, cloying, and if a smell could be belligerent, this one had its fists up.

  Delia left The Phoenix House and hurried to the safety of her red rental car, letting the thick air drape over her. She had a name! Hayley’s mother had a name and it felt like music. But now Delia had to betray John and take away the tiny thread of connection to his son. Courtney had participated in a crime, kidnapping Claire and Hayley. She had to tell Mike, which would start the dominoes falling, one after the other, for Courtney.

  She pictured police entering The Phoenix House, taking her away in handcuffs, the terror on Courtney’s face, the skinny girl wedged between two cops, her mind vacillating between reality and the crumbling structure that Delia had just witnessed. One phone call would put it all into motion. She pulled her phone out of her bag and tapped the protective edge of it with her finger. John would stay with Courtney longer, she was sure of it. Once he saw how upset Courtney was he would call his wife again, beg for more time due to more traffic delays, and keep a comforting arm around Courtney. Delia could give them the benefit of a few more hours. She put the phone back on the passenger seat.

  All the talk about donuts stirred rumblings from her belly. She hadn’t eaten since morning and now the last rays of daylight slanted off the sides of the Phoenix House. She had to find something to eat on the way to the motel that she’d booked. The address to her motel was already entered into her phone GPS. She’d find something to eat along the way and then she’d make the call to Mike.

  CHAPTER 41

  Juniper

  As Juniper watched Ben drive away, her core turned molten, refusing to firm along her spine. If Delia sat beside her instead of Baxter, Juniper would turn the whole problem over to her, like she had so often done in the past. The six years between them felt generational when she’d been a teenager. But now at twenty-six couldn’t she handle a crisis by herself at least for one day while Delia was out of state? Besides, she was worried about Delia.

  How could Ben have slipped into addiction with pain meds? Street oxys, for God’s sake. It wasn’t like Juniper hadn’t been around drugs before; the restaurant world was dusted with cocaine. She’d known more than a few restaurant owners whose successful businesses floundered while they were facedown in a pile of coke. But if you had a parent with schizophrenia, you didn’t have the freedom to experiment. That’s what Delia had drilled into her. “What if one street drug was all it took to derail our brains like Dad’s? Don’t ever do it, J Bird.” Juniper had kept her drug sampling to a minimum.

  Ben, their father’s best and last friend, had been the rock, the one she could always turn to. He had swept in after the fire, making sure the girls were safely housed, attending all the events that warranted graduation gowns, always saying, “I’m so proud of you!”

  Had she been too harsh with him? She knew enough about drugs
to realize that Ben had to be the one to take the reins of this galloping addiction. She couldn’t force him to do anything. But she wouldn’t stand by and let him lose everything.

  She could just text Delia. And say what? “Our super-uber stand-in dad is addicted to oxy and he’s buying street drugs in front of the J Bird Café and I’m so terrified that I can’t stop shaking. Love, J Bird.”

  No. Delia was transporting a child from Denver. She had enough on her hands and she’d be back soon enough. Her sister might even be past her maximum safe stress levels. When Delia wasn’t available, she’d always gone to Ben. Now what? Should she say something to his colleagues at the vet practice? Was he no longer competent to take care of his furry patients? She had to give him more time to wrestle with this on his own. She’d given him an ultimatum and she would hold him to it.

  Juniper wasn’t due at the Bayside Bakery today. It was Monday, her day off, the slow day for restaurants and bakeries, if they were open at all.

  Restless energy gripped her. Baxter sat in the passenger seat, offering his commiserating look, his head tipped to one side.

  “Your answer for everything is a walk on the beach,” she said.

  The golden heard walk and beach, part of his essential lexicon, and joy returned to his world. He stood up in the seat, congratulating Juniper on her wise choice by wagging his tail and igniting his best retriever smile.

  She drove from the parking lot of the convenience store, across town, and over the short expanse of Casco Bay Bridge, out to the edge of land in South Portland. Willard Beach was bracketed on either end by lighthouses, both stationed high on rocky promontories. Juniper knew every inch of the beach, was in tune with the rhythms of the high and low tides, but today she saw none of it. She threw sticks for Baxter like an automaton, and her thoughts whirled around Ben, who was sick and struggling and, from the looks of it, losing the fight. She couldn’t lose another dad.