by Erin Healy
“I never promised love. But that’s the beauty of this, see? I can promise you obsession, which is even greater. She will never let you go.”
Bitterness, Warden believed, was the most stunning of all human emotions. It was multidimensional, multifaceted, multifunctional. It was the most effective emotion he could call upon in his line of work, the emotion that brought him the most success.
“What do you want out of this, Warden?”
“The satisfaction of helping my friend extract a little well deserved revenge.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You’ll have influence over her forever,” Warden whispered.
“I never wanted influence. Just happiness. Was that so much to ask?”
“Not at all, friend, not at all. But we take what we can get. Let me tell you what I’ve set up.”
{ chapter 19 }
Lexi’s hands shook as she poured the rock crystals into the toilet, then dropped the plastic bag in too. A little water had splashed onto the rim, and she wiped it down with a piece of toilet paper. She flushed, then opened the window and turned on the fan and flushed two more times. The street value of the tiny packet probably would have taken care of a few bills, a thought that sickened Lexi almost as much as the existence of the bag itself.
She tore apart her bedroom looking for more. One anonymous tip to the authorities was all it would take for them to sweep through here with dogs to smell what she couldn’t see. She imagined them barking at light fixtures and floor vents and dusty ceiling fans, then receiving rewards while their handlers slapped cuffs around her wrists and dragged her off, away from Molly. Lexi wondered how much time Ward would have had to hide more yesterday while Alice let him wander the house. She wondered if she could afford to wait until her mom left the house or Molly went back to school before she searched the other rooms.
She had a little less than week, if Ward stuck to his word. A week before Norm’s hearing, a week to talk Grant into producing twenty-five thousand dollars. This truth calmed her a little. Warden was only showing her that he was serious. It was likely that there were more drugs hidden around the little apartment in places she’d never think to look.
For now, she decided, she would spend her energies on getting that cash.
Lexi leaned against the edge of the bathroom sink trying to figure out next steps. Ward’s demand that she get the money from Grant still didn’t make any sense. How was it that he thought she had more influence over Grant than he did?
She could make a plea directly on Molly’s behalf. Did he want contact with her badly enough to pay for it?
The implications of that arrangement frightened Lexi.
Ward’s accusation played itself over in her mind. You should have chosen me. Even this made little sense. Ward had never made a play for her that she could recall. Unless she was so blinded by her attraction to Norman that she never noticed it. That possibility was unbelievable to her now, repulsive even. Clearly, she’d been blinded to so much more during those months. So, even though she couldn’t make sense of Ward’s motive, if he meant what he said, he would take pains to make her life difficult, rather than Grant’s.
How was she going to talk Grant out of twenty-five thousand dollars? Maybe it didn’t all have to come from him. Maybe none of it had to come from him.
There was Alice.
Lexi sighed.
Her mother. Lexi would have to tell her some of what was going on. The fleeting thought that she could talk Alice into taking Molly away from Crag’s Nest for a few days crossed her mind. If only Molly were more mobile. She might be safer anywhere but here.
Lexi went down the hall. Alice was sitting on the sofa, reading the paper.
“Where’s Molly?”
“Gina’s room. She was up for a bit and ate something, then said she was tired. I set her up in my bed rather than disturb you.”
Lexi detected disapproval in this information, as if she should have gotten up with Molly much earlier.
“She misses you,” Alice said. “She’s growing up without you.”
“I have to pay the bills.”
“There are other jobs. Jobs that wouldn’t make you stay out so late. It’s danger—”
“I get to take her to school and pick her up. I’m with her during the day on weekends. I do what I can.”
“When a child is sick, her mother is the only one who—”
“We need to talk about Grant,” Lexi said, leaning against the wall. “Seven years ago you were the first person to tell me it was best that he left, that he wasn’t good for me or Molly. Next thing I know you’re passing notes to her from him and having dinner with him where I work. I want to know what that’s all about, Mom, because what’s really going on with Molly right now has nothing to do with my job or my hours.”
Alice folded the newspaper and set it next to her on the seat cushion. She removed her reading glasses.
“Four years ago I was in Los Angeles covering the Chinese new year— they had a related food festival going on in Chinatown. I was sampling something from a street vendor, I can’t even remember what it was now, when I noticed a man carrying this beautiful little girl who looked exactly like Molly when she was about three.” Alice gestured at her hair and face. “That thick chocolate hair and full cheeks. She was crying her eyes out, and the man was trying to calm her. It was Grant.”
Lexi had often wondered where he’d gone after he left Crag’s Nest, but Chinatown had never occurred to her. It wasn’t hard to imagine him being paternal, though, in spite of what he’d done in leaving.
“The girl had been separated from her parents, and he stood with her in the same spot until they found her again. He kept saying, ‘The best way to be found is to stay where you are. They’ll come back. I won’t leave you.’”
Alice put her reading glasses on the end table. Her story made Lexi ache. Molly had been that little girl once. She wasn’t old enough to ask about her dad until a couple years after his departure. By then, Lexi didn’t dare suggest he might ever come back, because she didn’t trust herself to know what to do if he tried it.
She still didn’t.
Alice shook her head. “I didn’t know what to make of the scene. After what he did to you. I didn’t know whether to talk to him, and the girl’s parents came back before I decided. The mother was hysterical and the father . . . I don’t know. It was so clear what Grant was doing, but when parents are afraid for their children they don’t think straight.” She caught Lexi’s eye briefly, then lowered hers to her lap. “I thought at the time the father believed Grant had something terrible in mind. He grabbed his girl out of Grant’s arms and punched him in the face. Grant blacked out I think. Everyone was shouting or crying.” She shook her head. “The man gave the girl to his wife, and she ran off. Then he bent over Grant and went through his pockets. He pulled out Grant’s wallet, pulled everything out, then threw it on the ground. Who wants to get involved in a situation like that? People watched, including me. More people turned away. No one wanted to interfere. It wasn’t clear what was going on. Someone must have called the police, though.
“Grant was out cold for a few seconds. Half a minute at most. When he started to come around, this man was kneeling over him. He pinned Grant’s shoulders with his arm, like this, and he was holding something over Grant’s face. A bundle like a sachet. It was white and tied off with a wire twist. The guy was shouting. Not in English. I don’t know what it was. Something Slavic.”
“In Chinatown.”
“He wasn’t Chinese.”
“Grant doesn’t speak anything but English.”
Alice shrugged. “Anyway, they stayed like that until the police arrived, and when they did, this guy switched to English, said he was a private investigator who’d been tracking Grant and found him in possession of cocaine—apparently that was what was in the bag.”
Lexi rubbed her eyes and took the seat that Angelo had occupied, Gina’s reading chair.
&nbs
p; “He accused Grant of trying to kidnap his daughter,” Alice said. “I thought the guy was crazy.”
“Did you say anything?”
“I’m ashamed to say I didn’t.”
“Ashamed?”
“Don’t look so incredulous. It was an awful thing to witness, no matter what he did to you.”
Lexi supposed that separating victims from offenders was a sometimes a matter of perspective. But this was her mother talking. Lexi managed to hold her tongue.
“I should have spoken up. Instead I found out which police station they were taking him to, and I followed. He was more than a little surprised to see me.”
She fell silent, maybe remembering, maybe deciding how much to say. Questions ricocheted around in Lexi’s head.
“I posted his bail on the condition he tell me why he left you and Molly, and what he’d been doing in the meantime.”
“That’s the biggest waste of money I could have dreamed up.”
“You didn’t tell me he’d been dealing, Lexi.”
Lexi leaned forward in the chair. “There was no point in telling you. What were the chances you’d see him go down in a deal gone bad? Don’t make your choice to bail him out my fault. You saw enough yourself. Did you think the guy who knocked him down was making it all up? After what Grant did, Mom, couldn’t you believe he was capable of anything? Molly doesn’t know. I don’t want her to ever know.”
Alice extended her hands in a gesture meant to calm Lexi down. “I wasn’t blaming you. I heard how he spoke to that child when he thought no one was listening. He wasn’t there to take her away. He was helping her. It was a fifty-fifty chance from my point of view that this so-called PI had set Grant up.”
“What did Grant tell you?”
“That the man was a client, not a PI. They’d completed a deal that morning, and it was a beyond-bizarre coincidence that Grant happened upon his lost daughter that afternoon. When the man saw Grant with her, he lost it. He thought Grant was going to use her as a pawn in some unfinished business— I don’t know what that was all about. It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“If he was a client, he wouldn’t have testified against Grant.”
“He didn’t have to. Grant pled guilty to everything. Didn’t even have a trial. I think he wanted to go to prison.”
“Of course he did. Free room and board, probably greater access to all the illegal substances he wanted.”
“Lexi, stop.” Alice’s gentle voice chastised her daughter without judgment. “Listen to you.”
She did stop, even though she felt no less justified in her opinion of what Grant had done. Why should a criminal have every need met in prison while his victims scraped by on the outside, barely pulling together a living?
Lexi wondered how much the bail was but couldn’t bring herself to ask. The number, no matter how great or small, would only have made her more upset.
“How long did he stay with you?”
“Three days.”
“And this was enough time to change your opinion of him.”
“Yes.”
The answer grew big in the silent room. Lexi felt betrayed by it. She wanted to know the details and yet she knew they’d crush her. Her own mother, allied with her drug-dealing husband!
Lexi finally said, “You shouldn’t be upset with me for not telling you he was a dealer, not after all you’ve withheld from me.” She meant it to be an accusation, but it sounded more like a pout. “Have you kept in touch with him all this time?”
“No, not the whole time. He was sentenced to five years, and when he went in, he cut ties with me. I tried to see him once or twice, but he refused. And I was working. Traveling. I meant to get back to Los Angeles in time for his release, but he got out early. Everything’s overcrowded there, you know. They don’t keep the small offenders as long as the rest.”
“I thought drug dealers got tougher sentences than killers,” Lexi said. “Not that Norman and Grant are any indication.”
“I think that’s changing.”
“So he looked you up when he got out?”
“He found me in Las Vegas a few weeks ago.”
“Why? Did he tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘I want my daughter, will you help me get her?’”
“First he wanted to know about you. If you’d remarried. How much you despised him. He used that very word, despised.”
“Did you tell him I’d welcome his back with open arms?”
Alice got a short laugh out of that remark. “I discouraged him at first. I told him you weren’t even on speaking terms with me. That gave him pause.” Alice hadn’t looked at her more than a couple times during the course of this conversation. Now, she gave Lexi her full attention. “I’ve never seen a man more convinced he was in love with somebody.”
“I have,” she said. “Dad was always that way about you. He still thinks he is.”
Alice stood and walked to the front window. “He’s not in his right mind.”
“He might be, if you hadn’t run away from him like you did.”
Lexi knew which words would bring out the upset mother in Alice Grüggen, and she selected them as her way of getting even for her unbelievable betrayal. Once Alice was angry with her, the conversation would be easy enough to end without having to take any blame. Lexi waited for her “how dare you” or “watch your tone of voice, young lady.”
Instead she broke down.
“I did. I turned my back on your father because it hurt too much to see what Tara’s death did to him. What he’d become.” She still could not look at Lexi. “I know you feel you lost them both, but I did too, Lexi. And then to have you so angry at me! I always thought you didn’t understand, but I realize you were only going through the same loss. When Grant found me, he woke me up. Here he was, trying to find his way back to you, and I realized I was no different from him, the way I’d run off.” She sniffled and looked helpless without a tissue. Lexi got up and fetched the tissue box from the kitchen, not knowing how to respond to this side of her mother. The transparency scared her a little. Lexi offered the box and Alice took it.
“The thing with Grant . . .” Alice dabbed at her cheeks. “He’s changed. I believe him with my whole heart. Something has changed in him, and I was so convinced by it that I encouraged him to write to Molly. I thought she’d be more . . . open than you. But me, I haven’t figured out how to change yet, Lexi. I don’t know how to go back to your father.”
“He’d take you in an instant,” Lexi said, groping for something kind to say to stop her from saying more. She shifted her weight on her feet and looked out the window “He doesn’t have a clear sense of time. He probably doesn’t realize how long . . .” The lame remark didn’t deserve to be finished.
The pair stood there for a few minutes.
“I’m angry at you for going behind my back,” Lexi said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t believe Grant has changed.”
“You haven’t spent any real time with him.”
She almost said, I don’t want to. But Lexi could see a new argument regenerating itself out of that. Also, she wasn’t sure anymore what she wanted. Instead she said, “How do you know he’s not still dealing?”
Alice frowned. “Grant’s been testing every three weeks for everything under the sun. Just to prove himself to me. He’s clean.”
“Who’s paying for that?”
“I am.”
“How?”
“Your dad took very good care of me before Tara . . . he was a good longterm planner. That’s how we’re paying for Dad’s care, Lexi. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Have you loaned Grant money?”
“A little.”
“Has he paid you back?”
“Are you worried about Molly’s hospital bill? Because the state will take care of that. The accident was their fault, after all. But even if they don’t, I can help out. I can—”
“No, Mom. I mean, I’ll have to see w
hat it is when I get it.” If the state somehow dodged its obligation, there was no way Lexi could pay the bill, not after having lost hours Friday night, not while other modest bills were beyond her means. The fear that struck Lexi then was the emerging truth that Grant might not have two quarters to rub together for Ward. And if he didn’t have it, and she didn’t have it, and Alice was taking care of everyone else . . .
“Give Grant a chance, Lexi.”
She didn’t know how. She didn’t know if she dared. After all these years, her distrust would not budge. “I can’t,” she said.
Molly’s voice came out of nowhere. “What’s this?”
Alice and Lexi both jumped. Molly balanced in the hall on crutches. How long had she been there? She looked tiny and fragile and lopsided by the splint that was nearly the diameter of her waist. A white postcard was collapsed in her fist. She held it out to Lexi. “Did you write this?”
Lexi took the paper from her hand.
Grant, thanks but no thanks. Don’t bother asking me again. Molly. (Just plain Molly.)
Her skin went cold. She looked at her daughter.
“You wrote that, didn’t you?”
How had it gotten into Molly’s hands? Lexi’s mind explored several possibilities in half a second.
“Molly, you have to understa—”
“I hate you,” she screamed. Her arms were rigid, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “I hate you more than anyone else in the world!”
{ chapter 20 }
Scrubbing toilets at a facility where most of the people who used them had lost their minds wasn’t the career Grant aspired to. He’d been in prisonbased detox centers that required less elbow grease. But it was work.
And work was what Grant needed, especially after his disastrous weekend. If he couldn’t come here, God only knew where he’d be, and what he’d be doing. So he tried to drum up some gratitude in spite of the voice in his head that said he belonged here among the mindless droolers.
He’d only worked at the Mental HealthAssistance Residence for a month, Monday through Friday, and after the first week he’d adopted a hokey little ritual that would have looked ridiculous to anyone but meant something to him.