Veronica eyed her as she popped a crab puff into her mouth. “Eat up, sis. This night is for you, after all.” She dabbed her lips with a napkin and selected another. “Too bad your boyfriend had to bolt. What's up with him?”
Samantha caught the challenging gleam in her sister's eye and the deliberate insinuation in her words. Could Ronnie be privy to knowledge she wasn’t? She sidled over and leaned into her, wrinkling her nose at the smell of her cloying perfume in the process. “Leave it alone,” she hissed in her ear.
Gina watched their exchange with thinly-veiled interest. When Darlene and Cash went back to the living room with their plates of hors d’oeuvres, she moved over closer to them. “You should clue her in, Ron.”
“She has a right to know,” Mandy whispered.
“What should I know?” Samantha blushed, afraid she already did.
“Tell you later,” Veronica said with a self-satisfied smirk.
Samantha clenched her fists, longing to whack the smug grin off her sister with one blow. This little celebration in her honour had transformed into one she would just as soon forget.
But then her father phoned to wish her a happy birthday. Chatting with him helped dissolve some of her irritation. By the time she hung up, her mood had improved to the point where the yearning to clobber Veronica had weakened. At least a bit.
Kalen came back in an hour, and by then their gathering was another person short. Cash had helped an inebriated Darlene to her bedroom to lie down, although she protested as vehemently as Henry had at first. The rest of them looked up at Kalen in expectation as he entered. He avoided any eye contact as he slouched down beside Samantha and accepted an ale from Cash's outstretched hand.
“Sorry I took so long,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.
Are you for real, Kalen? No explanation, no nothing, only a lame apology. Samantha bristled, moving away from him on the couch.
When Cash served her the ice cream cake he’d picked up from Dairy Queen, she still fumed inside. She blew out the candles and pretended to enjoy the birthday chorus, though she sensed Kalen knew her heart was no longer in it. She pushed away her plate, her helping half-eaten and melting into a chocolate and vanilla puddle. Kalen attempted to lighten the mood for her by bringing in his guitar from the trunk of his car and playing a couple of her favourite songs.
His efforts proved useless. She was determined to find out his secret, and if he didn't come clean tonight when they got home to his place, she was guaranteed to get Veronica to spill what she knew tomorrow.
But neither Kalen nor Samantha were prepared for what greeted them when they unlocked the front door of the house on Hayward Avenue. As soon as they stepped inside the foyer, they knew someone had gained entry in their absence. Every item of outerwear from the coat closet lay ransacked, pulled out and thrown on the floor. They stepped over the disarray of shoes, boots, and a couple of coats to see that whoever had broken in had dumped out the storage bin of hats, gloves and scarves from the closet shelf as well.
“Holy God,” Kalen whispered.
The worst of the wreckage waited inside. All of the kitchen cupboards stood open, with torn cereal boxes, broken dishes, and every can and package of food strewn over the floor in a large, colourful mess. The cutlery drawer had been pulled out and flipped bottom up, its contents flung down in a metallic heap. Kalen ran into his bedroom, which hadn't fared much better, with the mattress overturned, drawers gaping open and emptied, and closet trashed.
“They swiped my cash!” he shouted, pawing through the socks and underwear on the floor that had been pulled from his top drawer. “Five hundred and fifty bucks. Gone!”
Samantha glanced at his Gibson in its carrying case he’d tossed aside in his panic. “I bet they would’ve taken your guitar if you had left it here.” Then she had a frightening thought. “Kalen, what if they're still in the house?” she whispered.
His head whipped around and he stared at her, stricken. Sprinting back to the kitchen with Samantha close behind, he picked through the chaos of items on the floor until his hand came up with a large carving knife. Brandishing it in front of him, he stepped his way through the rubble.
“We should call the police,” Samantha said.
Kalen stopped in his tracks, acting more alarmed than ever. “Oh damn—” He spun on his heel and fled through the kitchen and to the rear of the house, where the door to the basement stood ajar.
“What is it?” she cried. A nameless terror gripped her. Nevertheless, she tiptoed through the disorder after him as he flicked on the basement light switch and descended the stairs. “Be careful!” Stealthily, she followed, but stopped and crouched low on the stairs three quarters of the way down.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Kalen dropped the carving knife on the concrete floor with an echoing clatter. He stood in front of the old wardrobe Samantha had noticed down there when she'd laundered the bedsheets that day in February. Except this time, it yawned wide open and the lock lay broken on the floor in front of it. An axe had been dropped next to it. From where she lingered on the stairs, the wardrobe looked empty, save for a bare hanging rod with a couple of naked wire hangers.
“They stole it! They stole every damn bit of it. I'm finished.” He dropped to his knees on the bare concrete and continued to swear in one long stream of oaths.
Samantha went to him and inspected the empty wardrobe. “Please don't tell me you were keeping your money in there. Your inheritance?”
“It's much worse than that. I'm a dead man!”
An icy chill flew up her spine and prickled the hair at the nape of her neck. “Kalen, what did you keep in the wardrobe?”
He didn't answer, but kept on moaning.
“What was in it? Tell me!”
Kalen stood up. His shoulders slumped in defeat, he moved past her to the bottom of the stairs and gripped the wooden rail, his knuckles white. His eyes lowered and squeezed shut. Samantha had never seen him so frightened.
“Drugs,” he said, as if the word was being wrenched out of him. “A whole mess of drugs I’m now on the hook for.”
Samantha's hands flew to her mouth and she gasped. This confirmed her suspicions about him.
“And,” he muttered, “I can't call the cops for that.”
Chapter Fifteen
“There is always a 'but' in this imperfect world.”
― Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
What do you do when you are so confused about something and you need sound advice, pronto? Most people Samantha knew would go to a parent or a trusted friend. Some others would turn to guidance from an older sibling; a big brother or sister who might give them sensible and helpful input into the situation.
Samantha ruled out her parents at once. Darlene would likely freak out and go on another bender. Telling Cash would be risky; he might tell her mother. Her father would never understand and would be terribly disappointed in her choice of a boyfriend. He, too, would then drag Darlene into it, if only to accuse her of poor parenting. Allison might give biased advice if she called her, because Kalen was her cousin. Besides, her friend lived in another province, hundreds of miles away, just as her dad did. She didn't want to discuss such a thing over the phone anyway.
That left one person. Veronica.
Wonderful. But what choice did she have? Her mental state since the horror of last night was a mix of fear, anger, empathy, love, and doubt about everything she thought she knew. After much insistent probing, Kalen had confessed to her what type of drugs he had sold and what had been swiped from him: close to forty-five pounds of marijuana and two pounds of cocaine.
Should she say farewell to her boyfriend and stay as far away from him as possible and never look back? Or should she stick by him because he needed her support and feared for his own safety? If she ended it with him, would it be akin to kicking him while he was down, and paint her as heartless and cruel? Should she stay and give him the strength to turn his life around and get out of this me
ss of his own making? Or should she cut her losses, say to hell with him, and take care of her own ass?
Last night, after the discovery of the break and enter – they found out the intruder had gained access by smashing a basement window – and Kalen's discovery of the missing drugs, Samantha had refused to stay in the house. As a result, they left together in Kalen's hatchback and drove around all night, trying to figure out what he could do.
Running away got tossed on the table as one possible avenue. Samantha wouldn’t have anything to do with that proposal. Flee the city with a second boyfriend? She’d learned her lesson too well about how that plan might turn out.
Next, Kalen suggested an attempt to find the thieves and steal back the drugs, but Samantha dismissed it at once as complete insanity.
“Who do you think you are, Kalen? Some badass like Scarface or the Terminator?”
“I thought I’d throw it out there.”
She asked him if he had any of his grandparents' money left. He admitted to having some, but far from enough to cover the cost of the drugs. She reminded him he would have to give up his place if he couldn’t afford the rent anymore. Had he signed a lease?
“No, thank God for small mercies,” he’d said, shaking his head. “Yippee, I might get to move in with my mother again. Providing Rita will have me. But not if I'm already murdered, of course,” he muttered.
As the sky brightened and the sun dawned over the city, they parked in a lot next to the deserted softball field in Victoria Park. Sitting low in the front seat and sharing a heavy blanket from the trunk, they stared wide-eyed and silent, each of them nursing a strong cup of coffee from a nearby 24-hour service station.
Samantha broke the silence first. “What about mercy, from the person you got the drugs from? Any chance of him letting you pay it back in increments?”
Kalen laughed, his tone derisive. “Are you dreaming? The guy I get it from is another dude my age, who gets it from some older dude. It's a strict business with tons of money on the line and hard and fast transactions. There's zero wiggle room. And definitely no mercy. If I am one day late with their share of the earnings, there can be repercussions.” He peered sideways at her. “And you don't want to know what they are.”
Exhausted and hungry, they were without a plan. Kalen dropped off Samantha on Kitchener an hour later, just as Henry woke up the house. She dropped her shoulder bag in the hall, picked up her nephew, and hugged his pint-sized body, still warm from his bed and holding his Elmo doll close with one arm around its neck.
“Are you having breakfatht with me?” he asked her.
“I sure am.” She plopped him down at the table. She was pouring milk over two bowls of Cheerios when Veronica walked into the kitchen in her bathrobe.
“I need to talk to you,” Samantha said, nervous all over again. “In private.”
Veronica arched a sculpted eyebrow in her direction. “Sure.” After she dropped two halves of an English muffin into the toaster, she went to work making a pot of coffee.
“Momma,” Henry said, dipping his spoon in his cereal bowl.
Veronica yawned. “Yes, my little monkey?”
“Thammie liketh Cheerioth too.” He crammed a heaping scoop of the milky circles into his mouth. His clear blue eyes smiled at Samantha as he chewed.
“That's nice.”
Cash strode in, looking freshly shaven and showered. “Good morning, all. I'm off to work, to make sure Bambury’s is still standing. Darlene is sleeping in, I dare say.”
He always made that joke about his pub when he got Theresa or another part-time employee to close in his absence. “See ya later, Cash,” Samantha said.
After breakfast, Veronica dressed Henry, sat him down with his Star Wars figurines in front of the television, and switched on his children's programs. She suggested to Samantha they talk in the kitchen.
Over their second cups of coffee, Samantha began, speaking in a low voice.
“It concerns Kalen. He could be in a ton of trouble.”
Veronica sat stock still. “I was afraid it might be about him. What happened? Did he do something stupid, like get himself arrested for dealing?”
“No, but he’s gotten quite a scare.” To put it mildly. “But that reminds me. What do you know, exactly, about his shenanigans?”
“He’s the go-to guy for weed among some people I know. I heard he had other drugs too, harder stuff, but I don't know anyone who uses that sort of thing. Do you know what kind? Coke? Ecstasy? Oxie?”
“Cocaine,” Samantha admitted. With her focus locked on her coffee cup, Samantha divulged the whole sordid story of what went down since she and Kalen left after the party last night. She scarcely paused between the sentences, her words tumbling out, hushed but full of raw emotion. When she finished, she asked, “What would you do if you were me? Think of you in my shoes and caring a lot for the guy.”
Pushing her empty mug away and standing up, Veronica pursed her lips. She turned around, then sat down again, her expression earnest.
“As I said, I already knew he sold weed. But I didn’t know how much, or that he pushed coke, too. Jeez, that stuff is serious shit and expensive, so, yeah. He's in a world of trouble if someone stole it.” She gripped her sister’s hand. “You have to stay away from him. I’m serious. If you don't, you could be in real danger.”
Samantha nodded and let out a trembling sigh.
“This is the last kind of worry you need in your life, Sam.”
Her words of warning didn’t surprise Samantha at all. She admitted to herself she’d only needed to hear someone say what she’d known all along. What she knew she had to do to protect herself. The possibility of her getting hurt by Kalen's supplier, whether on purpose or by accident, genuinely concerned her. She felt like an actor in a crime movie, where the outcome could be dire and nothing ended well.
Except this was real life. Hot tears formed as the leaden weight of impending loss crushed down on her. “I have to tell him though,” she said.
“Momma!”
“Yes, Henry?”
“My poopy! I gotta do my poopy!”
“Hang on, I'm coming.” Veronica jumped to her feet. “Can you hold it until we get to your potty?” She wrinkled her nose at Samantha as she rushed to help her son.
Samantha crept down the hall to her bedroom. Her sinuses throbbed, her body engulfed in a flood of weariness. Complete exhaustion overtook her thoughts as well. Without brushing her teeth or undressing, she crawled in under the bed covers and pulled herself up on her side into the fetal position. Sleep came, instant and merciful. She thought she dreamt of a pair of hands tucking the blankets around her, a sad face that looked down at her, then moved away, and the faint click of the door as she was left alone.
Hours later and fresh from the shower, Samantha found Darlene in the kitchen, stuffing a chicken with breadcrumb dressing. The smell of savoury and onion hung in the air.
“Oh, you're up,” her mother said. “It’s unusual for you to sleep in this late. You and Kalen pull an all-nighter or something?”
Spot on, Momma. “Something like that. Ronnie at work?” Poking around in the fridge, she settled on a few leftover finger sandwiches from the night before. She brought her plate to the table, filled a tall glass with tomato juice and sat down.
“She goes in at seven. She and Henry went to Gina's where he's staying tonight. I have work tonight too.” Darlene washed her hands at the sink and slid the roaster into the oven. “Got a phone call from Ben Swift before you got up. He sounded odd.”
“What do you mean, odd? Wait! Is he in town again?”
“No, he called from Halifax. But he sounded all business, not friendly at all. Said he needed to speak to Veronica about something but was unable to reach her at Gina's. I told him I'd give her the message.”
Samantha wrinkled her forehead as she sipped her juice. Had the option for a DNA test returned for consideration after all? “So, did you?”
“No one answered a
t Gina's when I called. I'll try again in a bit.”
Samantha brought her dishes to the sink, then went to the bedroom to straighten her hair. Her thoughts were already mired in worry over one guy. Now this.
She had to talk to Kalen today; she disliked putting off matters like this. As much as it depressed her to think of it, she had to stop seeing him. For once, she and Veronica agreed on the direction of her life.
“Getting a bath,” her mother sang out before she shut the bathroom door.
Staring out the kitchen window at the rain, drizzle and fog that had moved in while she’d slept, she considered for a moment handling the nasty deed over the phone. Distasteful and cruel, yes, and not the way she would ever want to hear it from anyone, but she had to think of her own safety now. Before she could change her mind and Darlene got out of the bathtub, she picked up the receiver and dialed Kalen's number.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?”
“Sam! I'm at Rita’s. Listen, I might have good news. Can I pick you up?”
“What good news? What happened?”
“I don't think we should talk about it on the phone. I'll drop over for you shortly.”
The line went dead. What could be good news after the events of the night before?
Samantha got ready, concluding after more thought that if Kalen failed to convince her he was safe, she would break up with him on the spot and in person. She justified her decision by thinking it her best action anyway. Even with his criminal venture and his unbelievably poor judgement, he deserved that much from her, didn't he?
As she zipped up her hoodie, Veronica burst through the front door, her eyes ablaze and her lips pressed together in a thin line.
“Where's Momma?”
Darlene came out of the bathroom, tying the belt of her robe. “What's wrong? Did Ben get a hold of you?”
Veronica kicked off her ankle boots, sending them flying into the wall of the entryway. “That jerk will never leave me and Henry alone, no matter how many times I've told him. Guess what the arsehole's gone and done now?” She stomped into the living room, pacing back and forth in front of them like a caged animal.
Calmer Secrets: Calmer Girls 2 (Calmer Girls Series) Page 13