Better Left Buried

by Frisch, Belinda

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Pat parked in front of the police station door and left his cruiser running. “Are you sure you don’t know where Harmony is before I waste my night helping Bruce look for her?”

  Brea shook her head. “I told you, she’s been at Lance’s. Since she’s obviously not there, I don’t know where she is.” She hoisted Harmony’s bag onto her shoulder and went inside with Pat following closely behind her.

  The main room of the Reston police station was quiet, the gray walls and silence lending a miserable feel to a place that was already depressing enough. A disheveled vagrant slept handcuffed to a bench and smelled of urine, even at a distance. Brea tried not to breathe too deeply as Pat led her past him, headed toward the young officer at the intake desk, who was casting sideways glances at Lance, immediately identifiable by his tattoos.

  “Is Jim back? I have his niece.” Pat spoke softly to the man whose nametag read “Phillips”. He was young, early twenties, and had a lean runner’s physique.

  Brea thought about Bruce chasing Harmony through Oakwood and thought, if it had been this guy, she wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  Phillips shrugged. “I’m not sure. You want me to call back?”

  Brea couldn’t stop looking at Lance. She knew she should be quiet, humble, that she was in trouble, but something inside her had snapped the minute Pat spilled the beans.

  “No, I’ll just take her to his office. Let me know when Joan gets here, would you?”

  Phillips nodded and answered an incoming call.

  Brea had no doubt that her mother would announce herself.

  Lance sat, head in hands, with the dazed look of someone trying to shake a drugged fog. He clenched and unclenched his jaw and shook out his hands.

  “Come on,” Pat said, waving for Brea to follow him.

  She couldn’t walk past Lance without saying something. “You know goddamned well Harmony didn’t steal your car.” The accusation was out of her mouth before Lance knew what hit him. He looked up and she could see there was no spark of recognition. “You were supposed to be her friend.”

  Pat grabbed Brea’s arm and dragged her away. “Don’t say another word.”

  She tried to break his hold, but he wouldn’t let go. He was stronger than she would have guessed. She stopped struggling the second she laid eyes on her uncle. For as imposing a figure as Uncle Jim normally was, he was ten times more intimidating in uniform.

  Brea’s bravado melted away. She felt six-years-old, about to answer for spilled paint, instead of sixteen and being questioned about a stolen car. Her heart beat faster and the air seemed hard to breathe.

  “Sit,” Uncle Jim said.

  Brea collapsed into one of two chairs in front of his unadorned metal desk. His office hadn’t changed in sixteen years, probably longer. His worn leather chair told of long hours of being sat in, of dedication, and a single focused life. Dusty commendation plaques lined the walls, the only personal item among them being a framed picture of her and her mother from when she was three-years-old.

  Uncle Jim spoke to Pat in hushed tones just outside the door and dismissed him when he was finished.

  “I can’t believe I have to do this, Brea. Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is?” It was her family’s way to worry more about embarrassment than the sin that had caused it. “Where’s Harmony?”

  “I don’t know.” It took all of her courage to say it.

  “There’s no way I believe that. Not for a second. Where is she?”

  “Like I told Pat, she’d been staying at either Lance’s or Adam’s. If you can’t find her there, then I can’t help you because I have no idea where else she would go.”

  A door slammed, followed by the heavy footfall of high heels on tile.

  “Brea Allison Miller, where are you?” Her mother’s voice echoed through the precinct, the use of Brea’s full name a show of intimidation.

  “Joan, please, calm down.” Pat, who had said he was going to help Bruce find Harmony, stuck around, probably long enough to cushion the blow.

  Brea watched him walk toward her mother, arms outstretched for a casual, diffusing embrace. There was no way that was happening. Her mother was still screaming.

  “Don’t even try to stop me, Pat. Let me at her.”

  “Joan, she really wasn’t the one—”

  She waved him off, a bundle of well-groomed disciplinary energy. “There is no excuse for something like this. Not a one.”

  She looked nothing like one would expect for someone dragged out of bed to pick her daughter up at the police station. She wore a v-neck sweater, slim-fit designer jeans, and a pair of polished high-heeled boots. Her red hair was styled in a loose French twist and her face was freshly made-up.

  “There you are,” she said.

  As if her uncle’s office wasn’t the first place anyone would look.

  Brea made herself small in the chair, slinking down from the polished fingernail wagging in front of her face.

  “This is it, young lady. The last straw!”

  Pat moved between them, dragging the empty of the two chairs into the corner. “Here, Joan. Have a seat.”

  “I don’t want to sit! Jim, help me out here, would you?”

  “It’s going to be fine, Joan. Please, lower your voice. Pat, would you close the door on your way out? Thanks.”

  “Mom, let me explain.” For as much as Brea wanted to go on the offensive, there was no way to turn such a volatile situation around.

  Joan’s china-white complexion quickly grew red. “Explain? Do you have any idea what it’s like getting a call telling me that my daughter, who I think is sleeping in bed, has been arrested?”

  “Not arrested,” Uncle Jim corrected.

  “At the police station for pick-up?” Her mother checked to see if he agreed with her terminology. “I told you Harmony was trouble, Brea. The kind of people she comes from—”

  “People you were friends with, right, Mom? People with their own secrets about this family and about my father. What exactly are you all covering up here, huh?”

  Uncle Jim held his finger to his lips for her to be quiet. “Joan, you have to get her out of here. Now.”

  The panic in his eyes fortified Brea’s fight. “What happened between Dad and Charity, Mom?” She stood and moved within arm’s reach of her mother, fully expecting to be slapped.

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Then why was he a suspect in Tom’s disappearance?”

  Her uncle looked panicked. “Joan, get her out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving until someone answers me. You want to punish me for sneaking out with Harmony, fine, but don’t think for one minute that whatever you’re all so determined to keep away from me doesn’t have something to do with why I went.”

  “We’re not talking about this here,” Uncle Jim said. “Unless you can tell us something about the stolen car, we’re finished.”

  “Harmony didn’t steal Lance’s car. She borrowed it, maybe even while he was sleeping, but she’d have returned it. This whole thing is bullshit.”

  “Language!” Joan grabbed Brea by the sleeve. “Jim, let me know if you need me to sign anything, or what’s going on with this.” She waved her hand in Lance’s direction, which Brea found funny. She wouldn’t have expected her to know who he was. “Brea, let’s go. We’ll finish this at home.”

  As they headed toward the front doors, Adam came crashing through them.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  “You piece of shit!” Adam’s face twisted with anger. He flew at Lance and grabbed him up out of the chair. “Where’s Harmony?” He shook him, hard, and slammed him up against the wall. “Where is she?”

  Lance was six inches shorter than Adam and his feet dangled beneath him.

  Officer Phillips rushed around the intake desk and grabbed Lance by the back of his jacket, failing, initially, to get a hold of him.

  Uncle Jim flew across the lobby to back him up while Pat, wh
o still hadn’t left, stayed on the outskirts.

  “She’s seventeen-goddamned-years-old. You had no right.” Adam let Lance go and dealt a solid punch to his left eye. Lance’s head spun hard to the side and he returned the hit with little effect. “You asshole!” Adam shoved him and his breath caught when he hit the wall with a gasp. Officer Phillips moved between them, but the fight kept going. Lance came at Adam, who ducked and landed a solid punch to Lance’s gut. Lance doubled over and an unnatural wet noise rose from his throat. Adam kicked him in the ribs and was about two seconds away from taking a face full of pepper spray before he calmed down.

  “Stop this, right now!” Officer Phillips wrestled Adam to the ground with her Uncle Jim’s help. They pulled his arms behind his back and cuffed him.

  Lance collected himself and got to his feet, but he wasn’t standing straight and looked like he was about to be sick.

  The officers lifted Adam to his feet and he spat in Lance’s face. “You’re fucking pathetic.”

  “Cool off, all right?” Uncle Jim took over, directing Adam toward an empty bench on the far side of the room while Officer Phillips grabbed Lance some ice. “What’s going on?”

  It wasn’t the first fight inside a precinct and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

  Brea watched, waiting for her uncle to place Adam under arrest.

  Adam blew out a long breath and the vein in his forehead stopped throbbing. The color returned to his reddish purple face and as though he just noticed her, he locked Brea’s gaze.

  “Where is she, Brea? Is she okay?”

  Brea shrugged, knowing it wasn’t the time or place to tell him what she knew, and stumbled when her mother nudged her toward the open door.

  “Come on,” she said. “It’s late.”

  The car ride home registered somewhere between tense and angry, and neither Brea nor her mother conceded to the fact that they might have been out of line.

  “Did Dad have an affair?” Brea asked. There was no point in suppressing things when she was already in so much trouble.

  Joan sighed, the fire that had her so battle-ready at the station having died to a smoldering ember. “No, Brea. Your dad isn’t that kind of man. You should know that.”

  “Should I? I didn’t think he was capable of being a murder suspect, either. I’m not a little girl anymore. Mom, what happened to Harmony’s father?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Maybe he left, maybe he didn’t. Who told you about your father?”

  “Pat let it slip. I baited him, don’t get me wrong. He thought I knew.” She was tired of lying.

  Joan shook her head. “Where is any of this coming from? It’s been well over ten years. This should all be water under the bridge.”

  The fact that a ghost was involved was Brea’s most guarded secret.

  “That’s not an answer. Why do people think something was going on between Dad and Charity? How did he get caught up in Tom’s disappearance? Why isn’t any of this anywhere in the papers? Is this why Dad left?”

  “Whoa, hold on. Too many questions at once.” Her mother turned off the radio and slowed down. The car swerved back and forth in the heavy wind. “We were friends with Charity and Tom back then.” Joan rubbed her temple. “Uncle Jim said he told you about Charity’s accident, that Tom attacked Charity, and not for the first time. There was a party at their house that night, maybe twenty people, including me and your father. You were there, too, playing with Harmony and the girl who was babysitting you both. We all had a bit to drink, your father and Charity more than most, and she was “flirty”.” She said it as if she meant “slutty”. “I think if I had the sense back then, I’d have noticed her for what she was: loose and unstable. Maybe I’d have sided with Tom when he started spouting off, saying the things everyone else had been saying all along. There was nothing going on between Charity and your father, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying on her part. Your father felt bad for her. You might even say he led her on, and he felt worse when Tom started screaming at her for it. Things got awkward and people tried to step in, but Tom was a hothead. Worse when he was drunk. We decided it was better if we left, all of us, but we were wrong.”

  “Tom stabbed Charity because he was jealous of Dad?”

  Joan shrugged. “Jealous of Dad, angry with Charity—who knows? The fact of the matter was Tom had gone after Charity before. This was just an escalation. We went home and all your father kept saying was how he’d never forgive himself if something happened to Harmony. You girls have always been close and he saw a lot of you in her. Charity could defend herself to a point, but a three-year-old didn’t stand a chance. Your father went back to their house that night. I begged him to stay out of it, to call your Uncle Jim, but he didn’t want to get the police involved. He tucked you in and left. Charity had already taken off with Harmony in the back seat of Tom’s car. Your father didn’t know it at the time, but she was in a ditch not far from Reston Memorial by the time he got to their house. Your uncle called me to let me know what happened. Your father and Tom had a run-in. They got into a fist fight, not your father’s doing, by the way. He’d have never started something like that. The police found blood and the neighbors reported seeing our car there. Your father being a suspect was a formality. He just happened to be the last person to see Tom before he left.”

  “What about the car? If Charity put Tom’s car in the ditch, how’d he leave?” Brea didn’t mention that his car was still in the garage of the house at 6 Maple.

  “He hitchhiked, most likely. That was a popular way of getting around back then. Someone mentioned seeing a man matching Tom’s description hitching that night. It’s in your uncle’s report, but no one said they picked him up. He could’ve taken the bus to the Greyhound station for all I know. No one’s seen or heard from him since.”

  No one that she knew of, at least.

  “And that was it?”

  “More or less. We did what we could for Charity afterward, but there was no helping her. Call it the beginning of the end. She started drinking more, partying, and going out to bars. She was with a different guy every night and then started in with the drugs. Harmony went to foster care for a while and Charity and I grew apart. I mean, what kind of mother shuns her own daughter?”

  Brea shook her head. “The kind that’s been beaten and stabbed, maybe? How come none of this was in the papers?”

  “Uncle Jim kept as much of what happened out of the news as he could, in part to keep our family out of things, but also to see if he could flush Tom out. He knew if the stabbing was made public, Tom would stay gone.”

  “He stayed gone anyway.” Brea unfastened her seat belt. “And Dad left, too.”

  “The pressure was too much for him. A town as small as Reston, even the stuff that doesn’t make the news is news, you know? Your father lost his job and no one else would hire him. He said he had to leave, to get a fresh start. For what it’s worth, he wanted us to go with him. I just couldn’t leave my family. Grandma and Grandpa weren’t doing well and if we left, Uncle Jim would be alone. He wasn’t equipped to take care of them.”

  “So rather than Uncle Jim being by himself, totally his choice, by the way, you let me grow up without my father? Is that why you’ve been trying to keep Harmony and I apart all these years? You didn’t want me to find out about all this?”

  “No.” Her mother turned to her. “I don’t want you around Harmony because I didn’t want you caught up in her mess. I didn’t want you in trouble like the kind that you’re in right now. This car business, it’s the tip of the iceberg. Don’t think because we had this talk, because of what happened, that you’re anywhere near off the hook. I meant what I said, Brea. This is the last straw. I’ll get you a full-time police escort if I have to. I swear. Harmony’s dangerous and I can’t believe you still don’t see that. I don’t blame her, not entirely. Her mother is like a natural disaster. If it were up to me, Harmony would’ve been sent to Midtown years ago. At least there, I know she’
ll be away from you. That family has been sliding down the gullet of a sink hole for years, Brea, and I’m not about to let them take us down with them.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  It was sunrise by the time Harmony arrived at 6 Maple Avenue, the only place she could think to go. The dilapidated house looked as depressed as she felt and it leaned at an awkward pitch as if a strong wind might blow it down.

  There were boards on some of the windows and doors, but nothing solid enough to keep anyone out. They looked more meant to support things structurally until the house was knocked down. The swing she’d seen in so many photographs creaked back and forth in the breeze. She limped toward it. For somewhere she’d supposedly never been, no place had ever felt more like home. She sat on the edge of the front porch with her legs hanging over the side. Her shoes had rubbed her feet raw from running and then walking through the woods to avoid being seen as she made the miles-long trek across town. She pulled off her sneakers and peeled her right sock away from the ruptured blister that held the cotton with its sticky fluid and blood. There was no way she could put her shoes back on, so she took off the other sock and went inside barefoot.

  A fine layer of dust and mold coated everything in the exposed living room and there were footprints on the floor. Someone had recently been there, maybe her mother or one of Winslow’s workers. Maybe someone worse. Harmony set her purse on the kitchen table and sifted through the dozen or so pill bottles she had confiscated from her mother, looking for her pocket knife at the bottom of her bag. If squatters had been staying there, she’d be ready when they came back.

  Several damp boxes sat on the table, their lids open and their contents spread out. There were old papers, mail, and photos that stuck together. The happier shots confirmed what she suspected, that she had repressed her childhood memories and not all of them were bad. Looking them over, it could have been anyone’s family smiling and playing. The fact that she was in most of them meant nothing. She couldn’t recall a single one of those days.