Saving Toby

by Suzanne McKenna Link

  Saving Toby

  A Novel By

  SUZANNE MCKENNA LINK

  Copyright © 2013, Suzanne McKenna Link. All rights reserved.

  Except as provided by the Copyright Act 2013 no part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  eBook cover design

  by Stephanie White/Steph’s Cover Design

  www.stephscoverdesign.com

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author would like to thank the following people:

  My editor, Enrica Jang: My first tough critic. Thank you for the countless hours of read-throughs, for sharing your knowledge and for helping me sharpen my craft. I have become a better writer for knowing you. It was with your guidance that I was able to 'save Toby.'

  My dear friends: a never-ending source of encouragement.

  My family: the lights and laughter that replenish my soul.

  My husband, Brian: Thank you for your nutritional support and enduring patience throughout the process of creating this story. It is your love and steady support that allows me to stand on my toes and reach for the stars.

  “It always seems impossible until it is done.”

  ~ Nelson Mandela

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Saving Toby

  Prologue

  1. Claudia

  2. Toby

  3. Claudia

  4. Toby

  5. Claudia

  6. Claudia

  7. Toby

  8. Toby

  9. Claudia

  10. Claudia

  11. Claudia

  12. Claudia

  13. Toby

  14. Claudia

  15. Claudia

  16. Toby

  17. Claudia

  18. Toby

  19. Claudia

  20. Claudia

  21. Toby

  22. Claudia

  23. Toby

  24. Claudia

  25. Claudia

  26. Toby

  27. Toby

  28. Claudia

  29. Toby

  30. Claudia

  31. Toby

  32. Claudia

  33. Toby

  34. Claudia

  35. Claudia

  36. Claudia

  37. Toby

  38. Claudia

  39. Toby

  40. Claudia

  41. Claudia

  42. Toby

  43. Toby

  44. Claudia

  45. Toby

  46. Toby

  47. Claudia

  48. Claudia

  49. Toby

  50. Toby

  51. Claudia

  52. Claudia

  53. Claudia

  Prologue

  “Good Lord! What happened?”

  Julia’s eyes went wide when Al and I burst into the kitchen. She stopped putting birthday candles on the cake and tightened the belt on her bathrobe.

  My face was bleeding.

  Al threw a roll of paper towels at me and then turned to our mother.

  “He cracked his chin open on the coffee table.”

  I wadded a dozen sheets and pressed them to my gushing chin. My jaw ached—there wasn’t a spot on my body that did not—but I just shrugged.

  “I’m fine.”

  “There’s so much blood.” Julia came closer, but I could tell she didn’t want to look. She hadn’t been feeling well, and the sight of the blood seemed only to make her more squeamish. She glanced back at Al. “You look at it. Tell me how deep it is.”

  Annoyed, Al came over and yanked the towels away. He pushed my chin up to inspect the gash with his big hands, and a new stream of blood flowed down my neck.

  Julia turned away, and I knew she’d seen the cut anyway.

  “He’ll need stitches,” she said. “Take him to the emergency room, Al.”

  Al grunted. “What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you take him?”

  “I’m not feeling well,” was all she said.

  Al wouldn’t stop. “Maybe while you’re at the hospital, the doctors can finally figure out what’s wrong with you.”

  I stepped forward. “Leave her alone. I don’t need stitches.”

  “Yes, you do,” Julia insisted. “Let me get dressed. I’ll take you.”

  “I’ll take him,” Al barked, snagging his car keys from the hook near the back door. “Get in the car, you pussy.”

  “Fuck off,” I snarled.

  Dwarfed between us, Julia held up her hands and pleaded, “Boys, please stop fighting.” She turned a distressed grimace on me. “And Toby, your profanity upsets me.”

  I lowered my head. “Sorry, Ma. I’ll go with Al. Just relax.”

  Like yesterday, Julia was having a ‘bad’ day. Today, trying her best to be upbeat, she’d roused herself out of bed. Still, she hadn’t managed to get dressed.

  She rubbed my arm. “When you get back, we’ll have your cake.”

  * * *

  Fourteen stitches for my sixteenth birthday—and a scar I’d probably have the rest of my life. As Al drove me back from the hospital, I got a call from Dev.

  “We’re hanging out in town. Come down, we’ll celebrate your birthday,” Dev said.

  I told Al to drop me off in front of the donut shop on Main Street.

  He pulled the car alongside the curb. “Mom wanted you home for cake.”

  “I’ll be home later,” I said and got out. Leaning back in, I saw that his right cheek was swollen. At least I’d gotten in a few good shots before he’d taken me down.

  “Hey, thanks for the birthday present.” I patted my bandaged chin.

  Al didn’t reply. Before I had a chance to shut the door, he floored the gas pedal. I pulled back, narrowly avoiding being decapitated, as the car’s heavy door slammed shut.

  “Asshole!” I gave him the one-finger salute as he drove off.

  From outside, I could see through the windows into the donut shop. Ed, one of the local beat cops, was at the counter. He eyed me through the plate glass, his stare fixed on my ridiculous bandage. I glared back.

  “Get your donut and get out of here,” I muttered under my breath.

  Rounding the corner to the back, I saw Dev in the shop’s small parking lot behind Main Street. He was with Ray—the two of them mostly concealed by a large commercial dumpster.

  Just then, three younger, elementary school kids rode by on their bikes, skirting the edge of the walkway doing wheelies and slide tricks over the curb. Dev shot out from behind the dumpster, growling savagely, as he gave chase. The unsuspecting boys shrieked and took off down the block, pedaling as fast as they could. Winded, Dev picked up a handful of pebbles from the ground and chucked them in the boys’ direction.

  Near the entrance to the donut shop, four freshmen girls from my class babbled incessantly as they sipped overpriced iced coffees. Only mildly interested in Dev’s idiotic performance, their attention turned to me as I drifted towards my friends. I scanned them, hoping to see the familiar shape of this one girl I’d been dying to tag. She wasn’t among the crowd.

  I was lighting up a Marlboro when the cute, dark-skinned girl from my Earth Science class, April, sidled up to me and smiled.

  “What happened to your chin?”

  I took a drag and said, “Skiing accident in Utah. Bad fall out of the helicopter.”

  She laughed. I immediately liked that she had a sense of humor.

  “Hey, how come I haven’t seen your friend around school?”

  She sighed, loud and dramatic. “Claudia? Her parents sent her to St. John’s. Can you believe that?”

  “Bummer.” Though I hadn’t been close to making anything happen with her, I was disa
ppointed with the news. Tucked away in private school, there was little chance anything ever would.

  “Want me to tell her you said ‘hi’?” April offered.

  I squinted at her, wondering if she was yanking my chain, but she seemed sincere.

  “Okay,” I shrugged. Even as I began to move away, I saw her reach for her cell phone to relay the message as she walked back to her friends. I didn’t kid myself that anything would come of it though.

  Dev stepped up to me, looking over my shoulder at the girls.

  “Think they’d hang out with us?”

  I didn’t even bother considering it. “No.”

  “Even if we tell ‘em we got some ganja?”

  “No.”

  Alone, I might’ve been able to hang with those girls. Unlike most of my classmates, I wasn’t plagued by acne, and I’d grown two inches in the past year. An unexpected bonus to the constant battles with my brother was the way my once weedy body was morphing into a powerful fighting machine. I liked the change in my appearance—and girls seemed to like it, too.

  Alongside scrawny Ray, who could barely string two words together, and Dev, built like a massive tugboat, doing stupid shit like chasing down defenseless little kids on bikes, the odds were ridiculous. Getting with any of the girls here tonight would take a whole lot of clever chitchat and persistence. Normally I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity, but I was still wound up after the throw-down with my brother.

  I was itching for a good fight, and if there was anyone who could find one, it was Devlin Van Sloot. He was as predictably reactive as a lit stick of dynamite. Even without a fight, we could always get lit. Ray’s house was stocked, and his mom was generous with her booze.

  1. Claudia

  “This is an extraordinary list of service credits.”

  Bill Ramsey, the managing director of Sterling Senior Care, was looking over my recently updated résumé. Listed were all the organizations and service clubs I’d been a part of over the years as well as the titles I’d held within each association. There was not one paid position.

  From the corridor windows, the flowering March daffodils had been only a yellow blur in my dash to the director’s office from the activities room. I had just finished getting my butt whooped in two straight hands of gin rummy by one of the senior residents, adorable Mr. Ricci. In anticipation of discussing a new opening with Bill, I’d rushed the length of the building to his office with my résumé tucked under my arm, protected in a manila envelope. I was excited about the possibility of taking on a real job.

  “The position is a home companion of sorts for a cancer patient, a woman in her fifties. Part-time, three nights a week,” Bill explained.

  “But I’m not licensed for that sort of work.”

  “You don’t need to be licensed for it, and as wonderful as this is, they probably won’t ask to see it either.” With an apologetic smile, Bill passed my résumé back to me. “They want someone to be home with the woman and maybe do some odds and ends around the house. I assured them you were reliable and would be a perfect fit for their needs.” He handed me another sheet of paper from atop his desk.

  “Joan Reitman, 563 Roosevelt Avenue,” I read. The local address was familiar, but not the name.

  “Yes, a family, right in town, so your father should approve,” he said.

  I was used to these kinds of remarks regarding my father. Dad was a decorated Suffolk County police officer. Though my weekend position as junior coordinator of activities at Sterling was only voluntary, Bill had to meet my father’s rigorous stamp of approval before I was permitted to work at Sterling.

  “I believe it’s only for a few months until she gets back on her feet. Which made me think it would fit in nicely with your schedule. Probably finish up just before you leave for Los Angeles.” His expression softened. “Any news from USC yet?”

  Bill knew I was planning on transferring out of my current school to the University of Southern California in the fall.

  “Just that they have the application.”

  “So, I guess it would be pointless to ask if you’d made any headway with your father?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “I hope you told him that the Davis School of Gerontology is one of the finest programs in the country.”

  I appreciated his interest in seeing me get into the program.

  “Across the country is not an easy sell. Unless I can drive there in under forty minutes, it’s practically useless to talk to him about it. I only hope when my acceptance comes in, I can figure out a way to get him on board.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you,” Bill smiled.

  “Thanks,” I sighed, knowing I would need more than crossed fingers.

  I hated going behind my father’s back. After the divorce, my mother had followed a job to California, and my dad and I had become a team. We'd weathered three years without her, still in the house I’d grown up in, about a half-mile from the Great South Bay on the south shore of Long Island, in the small town of Sayville.

  My dad was always my hero, chasing away monsters from under my bed and kissing my scraped knees. Even though I didn't need him to baby me like that anymore, to my ever-growing exasperation, he was insistent on being a part of my every decision. He wasn't buying into California. It was too far away for him to keep an eye on me.

  I suspected that the bigger issue, the one that made him practically foam at the mouth, was that I’d be much closer to my mother. Dad had never forgiven her for leaving.

  I put aside thoughts of sunny L.A. that Monday as I drove down Roosevelt Avenue, a few minutes before my five o’clock appointment with Mrs. Reitman. The neighborhood, in the same town, was just over a mile northwest of my house. The streets ran north of the railroad tracks and apartments, near the soccer fields where I, and just about everyone I knew, played as a kid. The houses were closer together and on smaller lots, some up-kept, some not.

  I pulled up in front of house number 563. Two small, compact cars were in the driveway beside the faded red-shingled house. A rusty, chain link fence ran the perimeter of the property. The two-story house appeared exhausted, as though it had lost the fight against time and the elements.

  I’d never actually been there before, but something about the house was familiar.

  And then I remembered.

  I had only a little time, but I fumbled for my cell and hit the first person on my contact list.

  “Hey, chica,” my friend April said, in her usual cheery greeting.

  “You won’t believe where I am.”

  “Outside my salon in a stretch limo with piña coladas and two first-class tickets to the Caribbean, where we’ll dance the nights away under the stars?”

  “Not quite,” I laughed, looking out my windshield at the overgrown bushes and a weedy, dead lawn. “I’m interviewing for a job at the Fayes’ house.”

  “The Fayes? You’re kidding!”

  The things that happened to the Faye family were the kinds of things folks in small towns loved to gossip about. As the daughter of Police Officer Donato Chiametti, I had the scoop on most of the town buzz. Back when I was in middle school, Mrs. Faye became a widow when her husband drove his pickup truck into oncoming traffic, killing himself and the two people in the other car. There was a lot of local controversy and anger over the accident, mostly because Mr. Faye had been drunk. After his death, Mrs. Faye quietly retreated, vanishing from all community involvement.

  “Did Mrs. Faye remarry?” I asked April.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything about her since Al Junior was convicted of killing that guy last year.”

  Al Junior, the older of the Fayes' two boys, was a rough character four or five classes ahead of me. I remembered him as a schoolyard bully. He grew up into a big, beefy guy with a temper. That he’d killed someone with his bare hands during a bar room brawl shocked the town, but most weren’t surprised that Al was capable of it. Last I’d heard he was serving out a
long prison sentence upstate somewhere.

  “And Toby?”

  Though the youngest Faye was a year older than April and I, he’d been in the same grade. Toby had gotten into his share of trouble but wasn’t known to have an angry, intimidating personality like his brother.

  After eighth grade, my parents had me transferred to a private high school. April, though, had gone to Sayville High School with Toby.

  “I haven’t seen him since graduation,” April said.

  I glanced at my dashboard clock.

  “I have to go in. I don’t want to be late.”

  “Good luck. Let me know how you make out.”

  Promising to call her back tomorrow, I said goodbye and scrambled out of my car. I walked through an opening in the fence where a gate should have been and up the pitted cement walk to the front door. The antiquated scrollwork on the black railings of the porch steps was peeling and rusted dry in more places than not.

  A moment after I knocked on the dark wooden door, a slender, serious-faced older woman answered. She was not Mrs. Faye.

  “Mrs. Reitman?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m here about the job. We spoke on the phone.”

  “You’re Claudia?” She pursed her thin lips when I nodded. “You’re so young. I thought the residence would send over someone a little more mature.” She stepped back, her manner almost patrician, as she allowed me to enter.

  I was a little deflated by the quick judgment, but tried to turn it back. “I’m pursuing a career in health care. And I take my work very seriously.”

  She blinked at me before her face settled into a gentler expression.

  “I’m sorry, please forgive me. Mr. Ramsey did speak highly of you,” she said, and signaled me to follow her.

  To the left of the doorway, a large bay window in the living room flooded the foyer with natural light.

  She led me through the quiet house, down a wide hallway. We passed a tidy den and a staircase with faded mauve carpet. Her stride was quick and sure, and she didn’t look sick, so I asked, “I’d be your assistant?”

  “Me?” she glanced back with furrowed brows. “No, I’m as healthy as a horse.”