by Cole McCade
“You should have called me before this.”
“I know.” She deflated with a sigh, sagging; sun-heated brick scratched against her back. “I know, I just…hoped I’d find something. Not even the temp agencies are calling back. And I know he’s not your father, but—”
“But he’s yours. Don’t worry.” Dev’s own sigh was heavy and slow. “It’s okay. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you. I’ll pay it back—”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“But Dev—”
“I said no.” A touch of steel, deepening his voice, until he sounded more like a man than the rash, impulsive boy she remembered. A boy who was now the head of a multibillion dollar corporation, when she wasn’t even sure he could stop tearing himself apart long enough to notice the company crumbling around his ears.
“Dev…”
“I’m not arguing about this, Willow. I’ll take care of you. I should’ve taken care of you and your father a long time ago. That’s what family does.”
“Is it? I wouldn’t know.”
He let out a harsh, cracking laugh. “Yeah…fuck. Me neither. But I’ll get you the money, okay?”
She swallowed hard. “Okay.” Okay, because she couldn’t say anything else. “And thank you. But seriously—tell me the truth. Have you been okay?”
“Am I ever not?”
“Devon.”
“I get by.” She could hear the smirk in his voice: cynical, bitter. “I’ve got everything I could ever ask for. I’m sitting on Scrooge McDuck levels of bank, and every man in Boys’ Town wants to fuck me. What more do I need?”
A family. Not to throw yourself away. It won’t bring him back. I miss him too, but…it won’t bring either of them back.
But she only said, “Yeah…guess so.”
He remained silent for several heartbeats. “…it’s not fair, is it?”
“What isn’t?”
“How things went with Mom.”
“Yeah, well…” She shrugged. She couldn’t be bitter about it; she’d tried, but she didn’t have the heart, didn’t have the energy left. She didn’t have the energy for anything anymore. At twenty-four she was already a dry vessel, bled of everything that made her a woman, that made her alive…but still she kept tipping that jar over and shaking it, trying to squeeze out just one more drop. “No one makes Mom’s choices but Mom. Have you heard from her?”
“I don’t even know if she’s alive. Roan’s getting out of prison, though.”
Her heart beat harder—only once, but that once was an explosion against her sternum, the slam of a crashing fist. “I…oh. When?”
“End of the month.”
Her mouth went dry. “Should I…?”
“I think he’d like to meet you.”
She rubbed at her chest, and the ache that still pounded restlessly under her shirt. “I should have gone to visit him before.”
“He didn’t want that.” Devon’s voice softened. “He didn’t want to meet his sister for the first time from behind prison bars.”
“…yeah.”
Silence. A lingering and heavy silence that said she should hang up, because there was nothing to say. She never knew what to say to her brother; they lived in different worlds, worlds that didn’t intersect, and she could barely even see his high-rise penthouse in Blackwing Downs from the dingy little house in the Upper Nests where, if she made herself small enough, she could pretend she’d fade into the floorboards and become the nothing she so often felt like.
Devon cleared his throat. “So…how’d you lose your job?”
Her head came up. She blinked. “You haven’t watched the news lately, have you?”
“I try really hard not to. Half the time I’m in it. Pretty sure I’m the sole reason TMZ’s stock is so high right now.”
“Oh. Um.” She worried at the corner of her mouth, probing it with her tongue. “You remember that guy I was working for? Van Zandt?”
“Yeah. The nanny job. With that investment trust prick. What was the kid’s name? Eric?”
“Elijah. He…” Breathe. Breathe. “He got kidnapped.”
Devon whistled low. “What? How?”
“I let him.”
“Willow. What the fuck?”
I’ve been asking myself that since I did it.
Especially after she’d lied to the police. She’d told them she’d gone to the bathroom for five minutes, and when she’d come back the woman—Clarissa, only the name was all wrong for her when she was Leigh, wild mad Leigh with that trapped, crazed look in her eyes—had been gone, and so had Elijah. She hadn’t told the police the excuse she’d made to Leigh about having to go get her father’s meds, when she’d only gone around the corner, sat in the park, stared and trembled and told herself she was doing the right thing. She didn’t tell them about the money Mr. van Zandt had paid her to watch Leigh—money that was the only reason she’d lasted this long since he’d put her out, slamming the door in her face.
And she didn’t tell them how long she’d stared at an empty swing, still swaying with the momentum of little feet, and counted the seconds until she was certain, when she went back, she’d have no hope of finding Leigh or Elijah ever again.
“You can’t tell anyone this,” she hissed. “Promise me, Dev.”
“I promise.”
“I’m serious.”
Something in his voice darkened. “So am I.”
“The woman who took him is his mother.” She glanced up and down the street, but there was only a hawker a few yards down near the turnoff for Maxi’s pawn shop, pushing a cart with fried flatbread and ringing his bell with the sluggishness of a summer afternoon, his broad, youthful face shining in the sweat of the sun. She kept her voice low, partially covering her mouth and the phone with one hand. “She’d been gone since he was just a few months old, but she came back for him and…” She thunked her forehead against her bent knee. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to stop her. Mr. van Zandt told me to watch her, but I let her go. I deliberately looked away and let her go, and I’m supposed to feel guilty for it but I can’t.”
“Wil…why? Why would you do something so fucking stupid?” He cursed under his breath. “Since when does Miss Goody Two Shoes risk five to ten for aiding and abetting? You’re lucky you didn’t go to jail.”
“Could’ve spent some quality time with Roan.” She laughed, a hissing sound that made her uncomfortable when it didn’t sound like her. Her nose was too full, too thick, clotted and threatening to turn into sniffles. She rubbed at it, easing its prickle. “I don’t know. I want to say it’s because Mr. van Zandt was abusive. I think…I think he raped her. And that’s part of it, but…I think part of it, too, is that she came back for him. She came back for her son. She’d left him, and then she came back.” She stared up at the clear cloudless sky, the sun so bright the blue had a strange yellow cast; electrical wires crisscrossed overhead while crows shuffled their black, hooked feet along the lines, their feathers drooping in the heat. She stared at them, counted them, four-five-six, not quite enough to be called a murder.
A murder of crows, she thought dreamily, and wondered as she’d wondered since she was a little girl why the flock of iridescent, sharp-eyed black ghostlings was so very murderous.
“Do you know how many times I wished Mom would come back for me?” she asked.
“Yeah?” Dev snarled, the rough sound of an animal in pain. “Well, I haven’t. I wasn’t good enough to stay for. I don’t want to know what is. She wanted to be gone, so she’s gone. She can stay that way.”
“Dev—”
“Don’t. She’s as much a stranger to me as she is to you. She threw us both away the same.”
Willow sighed and rubbed her temples. “…you miss her, don’t you.”
His harsh, derisive bark sounded like the start of an argument—but trailed into silence. Trembling, painful silence, before he murmured, “…I say I don’t.”
She s
miled faintly. “You’re a really bad liar, Dev.”
“That’s why I said I say I don’t.”
“Yeah.” Willow chuckled. God, her brother was such a mess of thorns. A cactus who needed a hug, but couldn’t stop stabbing in every direction. “Listen…I’d better go. Need to revamp my resume for the tenth time.”
“Sure thing. I’ll have a check sent by courier. Should be there by morning. Same address?”
“Same hole in the wall,” she said. “And Dev?”
“Yeah?”
“I…” She wet her lips. “I miss you.”
“You know what I miss?”
“Hm?”
“What we could have had.”
“Yeah,” Willow said, and pulled the phone away from her ear. “Me too.”
She dropped her phone into her pocket, then sighed and sagged down the wall, pressing the heels of her palms against her forehead. She’d done the right thing, she told herself. She had. For Leigh, and for Elijah.
For everyone except herself.
The door of the bar opened with a faint jingle. Maxi stumped out, then draped herself against the wall next to Willow, her ragged jeans catching on the shoulder of Willow’s shirt. They lingered in silence for a time, watching the crows land on the wires and take off again, and Willow wondered if the metal and rubber were too hot. If it was like landing on a string of molten lava, and trying to get a grip.
That’s what my life feels like, right now.
Molten lava, and trying to get a grip.
Maxi heaved a sigh, deep as a bellows. “You could’ve asked me for help.”
“I know.” Willow draped her arms over her knees and leaned in hard. “It’s just easier to ask family.”
“I’ve known you since you were knee high to a cricket. If that don’t make us family, what does?”
She smiled. She couldn’t help herself; Maxi was always so matter-of-fact and to the point, and there was no room to brood when she was around. “Thanks. Seriously. But Dev will take care of it.”
Maxi made a humming sound with her lips pressed against her teeth. “Could’ve taken better care of you to start with.”
“That’s not his responsibility.”
“Ain’t it?”
Willow closed her eyes. No, she wanted to say, but Maxi wouldn’t see it her way. Wouldn’t see that she couldn’t stand to be someone else’s responsibility, this unwanted thing they only took care of because they had to.
Instead she wet her lips and asked tentatively, “Maxi…? What was she like?”
“Who?”
“Leigh.”
“That crazy ghost girl?” Maxi snorted. “Gary be able to tell you better’n me. I only saw her the few times she came into my shop. She loved that boy, though. Had a phone just overflowin’ with years’ worth of pictures.”
“Yeah?” She smiled faintly. “Maybe it’s not so bad, then. What I did.”
“Only one as can know that is you, girl. But lemme ask you: was doing something better than doing nothing?”
“I think so.”
“Then you ain’t did wrong.” Maxi pushed away from the wall with a groan, hefting her shoulders. “I’m heading back to the shop. You want a ride to your uncle’s?”
“Yeah,” Willow said, and picked herself up off the concrete. “Sure.”
CHAPTER TWO
SHE SHOWERED AT HER UNCLE Wally’s, the first shower she’d had in days, and used his Maytag to wash her clothes and a few of her father’s things. While her jeans and t-shirts went through the spin cycle, she rinsed the oily, greasy patina from her hair, nearly groaning under the soothing spray. It wasn’t fair, she knew. Her father couldn’t sneak off to Wally’s for a shower, and dinner that wasn’t out of a box or a can. Her father was waiting at home, confined to his bed and waiting for her to bathe him out of a bucket and bring him a dry, room-temperature meal of whatever she could cobble together.
But if life was fair the water and power wouldn’t be off in the first place, and assholes like Jacob van Zandt wouldn’t have everything handed to them without caring about the people they ground under their feet.
She wondered what that must be like, as she turned under the spray and sluiced water across her chest and shoulders; her palms followed the path of slicked droplets over skin like oiled silk, softened by the damp and pounding heat. What must it be like to be born in a cradle of gold, and never know what it was like to do without?
That’s what Devon has.
But that was never mine.
And she wondered, too, if she should resent him for it. But when she stepped from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and found one of her uncle’s shirts waiting for her, draped across the bed…
She didn’t think she’d give up the life she had, the family she had, for a penny of Devon’s riches.
Uncle Wally’s shirt wrapped around her in a froth of cream with too many ruffles, and fell to her knees in silky layers. If she pressed her nose into the collar she could almost smell the scent of hay under a blistering sun, the dusty animal scent of the circus, the cloying sweetness of cotton candy. She lingered in his bedroom, and traced her fingers over the faded, dry paper of the posters, their corners curling and their colors the washed-out shades of forgotten dreams. Uncle Wally had looked so happy back then, with his moustache so twirly and his top hat so tall.
And in one of the posters her mother smiled, perched on a trapeze like it was a playground swing, with her graceful legs extended and her smile lighting her face.
Once the hair curled in finger waves against her mother’s temples had been as deep a red as Willow’s—but time had turned the poster’s ink to rust and fire, the same shade as the bold, brassy letters proclaiming SIREN OF THE SKIES! MIRIAM THE AMAZING FLYING WOMAN!
Willow traced her fingers over the smile on her mother’s lips. She couldn’t have been any older than Willow, in this picture. Maybe younger. Twenty, twenty-one, and she’d already flown so high.
So high, she’d flown right away from anyone who could pin her to earth.
Willow padded downstairs, her steps punctuated by the chunk-a-chunk-a-chunk of the washing machine. Still lopsided, then. Her uncle kept swearing he’d fix it, then forgetting about it until it was shaking the house. She found him in his kitchen full of doilies and laces and little knit things, dapper and slim with his shirt-sleeves cuffed to his elbows and his pinstriped slacks stovepipe straight. His oven mitts were a blinding pastel pink. The scent of blueberry muffins filled the room, and he bent to pull a muffin tin from the oven, lined with fluffy golden-brown mounds glistening with sweetness and running with dark berry juices.
He straightened, then smiled when he caught sight of her at the foot of the stairs. “I thought you could use a little nosh.”
“A little nosh?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know what it means.”
Willow laughed and padded across the kitchen to drop into one of the wooden chairs, with its little cushions tied on with floral-print bows, the wood edges cold against the undersides of her thighs. “I know what it means. Do you know you’re not British?”
“Nonsense. The Queen’s English isn’t for the Brits alone.” With a theatrical flourish, he delivered the steaming tin onto the counter and began gently tapping muffins out onto a plate, piling them into a pyramid. “Milk, coffee, or tea?”
“Milk, please.”
“A little girl’s guilty pleasure.” He swung the refrigerator open grandly—everything Uncle Wally did was grand, with the stage airs of the ringmaster he’d once been—and poured out two glasses of milk, then joined her at the table with the plate of muffins. His eyes twinkled, small and dark and yet full of more brightness than any one man should be able to hold. “An old man’s guilty pleasure, too.”
She laughed and reached for a muffin, delicately peeling back the paper cup from the edge and taking a bite. Moist, yielding cake exploded with bursts of tart berry sweetness, and she nearly moaned. She hadn’t eaten anything but rame
n and Vienna sausages for a week, and her uncle’s muffins were the best.
They ate in companionable silence for a time, little crumpled muffin-wrappers piling up, dotted in stains of deep purple-blue and stacked next to glasses ringed with the skim of milk-printed lips. When only a few remained and Willow was nursing a full belly and the last of her milk, Wally folded his long, thin hands together, watching her with a certain kindly curiosity that she could remember for as long as she could remember anything. Uncle Wally was one of her earliest memories. Not her elusive mother; not her father, back when he could still walk without his permanent crutches and didn’t live in constant pain. Just Uncle Wally and the way his smile always looked like a cartoon’s, wide and warm and sweet.
Even if she felt guilty that she always ran to Wally, when she couldn’t stand the idea of going home.
She shouldn’t feel that way. She knew it.
But that hard little knot of resentment was her secret, dark and ugly inside her.
“So.” Wally cocked his head. “How’s the job search going?”
She groaned and slumped back in the chair. “Oh God, don’t. Don’t have the dad talk with me. I’ve got one of those waiting at home.”
“I’m just asking.” He raised a hand. “I promise that’s all it is.”
Willow eyed him, then sighed and tangled her fingers in her hair with a shrug—as if she could act like she didn’t care, when it was all she ever thought about. “It’s not. I don’t know if my resume is crap with all the college jobs and the nanny gig, or if word’s gotten out about what I did. The nanny agency won’t even return my calls. Probably thinks every kid on a milk carton is a casualty of my stupidity.” She snorted. “‘Willow Armitage, serial neglectful nanny.’ Who knows what they’re telling people.”
“Now, now. I doubt there’s anyone skulking in the streets, ambushing potential employers to tell them of your misdeeds.” Wally chuckled. “It’s a down market, dear. Jobs are hard, even in Crow City.”
She propped her chin in her hand and thbbpted her lips together. “Maybe I’ll push a flatbread cart on the corner. That’s about all I’m good for.”