by Willa Hart
That’s exactly what I’d been telling myself all my life.
Just a dream.
Chapter Two
The chill of the fridge didn’t do much to wake me up as I peered into the soft light, rubbing my bleary eyes.
“Second shelf down, dear, probably under the butter,” Aunt Shirley said as she fussed with bacon frying in an ancient, crusty cast iron skillet.
The eggs were right where she said they’d be. I set the carton on the counter next to her and poured myself another cup of black coffee. Shirley glanced over, then turned her attention back to the eggs. I had to give her credit for not giving me shit about my caffeine addiction. Adults just loved to nag me about it, but not Shirley.
I popped two slices of thick-cut bread in the toaster and pressed the lever, then my stomach rumbled loudly in anticipation. Shirley didn’t even bother holding back a laugh.
“Want to rethink how many eggs you want? I don’t think two is going to cut it.”
“I think you’re right. Maybe I’d better have the whole dozen.”
“Good grief! Your appetite is as big as your uncle’s.”
I shrugged and glanced out the kitchen window into their minuscule backyard. “If this weren’t L.A., I’d suggest you get your own chickens.”
“Why would I do that when Ralph’s is two blocks away?”
I had no idea who this Ralph guy was, but the way she said it made me think I should know. Maybe it was a grocery store, like Fred Meyer back in Oregon. God, I missed Freddies!
“How do you like your eggs?” she asked as she laid the bacon on paper towels to drain.
I snatched up a piece and popped it in my mouth before she could stop me. She pretended to be shocked and appalled, but reading people has always been easy for me, and she was amused more than anything. I never would have tried such a thing at any of my other homes for fear they’d send me back, but at seventeen, I had no more fucks to give. If she and Uncle Max gave me the boot over a rasher of bacon, I’d just fend for myself until I aged out of the system, then get a job.
But I wasn’t going anywhere, I could see it in her twinkling eyes. At least not yet, anyway. It helped that Shirley and I were related by blood. Some distant aunt twice removed or something. Whatever. As long as they were nice to me, I’d stick around.
“Scrambled,” I said through a mouthful of bacon. This was a crucial moment in a new house. If we couldn’t come to an understanding about my egg-based needs, it was a surefire sign things weren’t going to work out very well. “And as much spice as you can pack into it.”
“Well, alrighty then.”
“Seriously,” I said, concerned her smile meant she thought I was joking. “Black pepper, crushed red pepper, jalapeños…there’s really no limit here.”
Aunt Shirley gave me a conspiratorial smile, raising an eyebrow and reaching for her spice rack. The shaker she pulled out was filled with ominous rusty-red bits. The label read “Ghost Pepper Flakes”.
“Never underestimate me, Favor,” she said with a wink, then nodded at the cupboard in front of me. “We have a few hot sauces I think you’ll appreciate too.”
I rummaged through the selection, all of which were tasty enough, if a little mild. “Tabasco…Tapatio…Cholula… No Sriracha? Oh, there it is. Thank God!”
“It’s so nice to have some youthful energy around the house again,” Aunt Shirley said as I set the bottle of Sriracha next to my plate. “At my age, you forget how people your age can get up and just go.”
“Happy to be of service,” I said, though the yawn that escaped me at the end of the statement undermined it a little. I wasn’t much of a morning person, but when I’d lived in houses that had other foster kids, I’d always been the one to wake up and start shuffling around first.
I didn’t consider myself energetic — everyone else was just lazy.
Every time I arrived at a new house, I usually didn’t show much of my personality. After twelve years of bouncing around the system, I’d perfected the “angel child” act and could keep it up as long as needed. But I already felt more comfortable with the Novaks than any of my previous homes. Maybe in a few weeks I would loosen up and make a joke about being a huge bedbug, like I’d wanted to, but instead I took the compliment and rolled with it.
“Max and I met later in life and neither of us had children of our own,” Shirley continued. “Living with the same person for so long can make you forget how fast everyone else in the world can move. Gosh, that makes us seem like terrible homebodies, doesn’t it?”
“With a home like this, I wouldn’t leave much either,” I lied.
The house was okay — definitely not the worst I’d ever lived in, not by a long shot — but it was nothing special. A tiny stucco two-bedroom that probably hadn’t seen a remodel since the late ‘50s. It didn’t even have a garage, just a sun-beaten aluminum carport. Thank goodness Shirley had yet to learn when I was being sarcastic.
“Oh, you’re sweet,” she said as she thrust a plate nearly overflowing with eggs, bacon, and buttered toast at me. “Do you think all this will be enough for you?”
“Enough to put me into a food coma for the rest of the day, you mean? Yeah, I think so.”
“Hope you saved some for me,” came a deep, gravelly voice from the entry to the kitchen.
Uncle Max limped into the kitchen and took a seat at the table, giving me a gruff nod in greeting. The man had a large presence — tall, a little on the paunchy side, salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a hippie-style ponytail, and sharp brown eyes — but it wasn’t just physical.
When he walked into a room, the air rushed out and everyone in it turned to him, as if they’d been waiting for him all along. I’d seen it happen several times already, from the bus station, where he’d picked me up a few days earlier, to a little taco stand he’d taken me to that first day. Even though he had to be in his sixties, he possessed an undercurrent of strength one might expect a private detective in Los Angeles to have.
As if his profession wasn’t mysterious enough, his limp and the fading bruises peppering his face only added to the mystique. The limp could be explained away by his advanced age, but those bruises really got my imagination going. Of course, I couldn’t just come out and ask about them, so I had to accept my curiosity might never be sated.
“Don’t worry, love,” Shirley said, setting a similarly overloaded plate in front of him. “There’s more if either of you want it.”
Max grabbed her hand and pressed his lips to it, then gave her a quick wink. She blushed like a schoolgirl and grinned down at him. As Max and I tucked into our eggs — which was spicy enough to at least tickle my throat a little — Shirley bustled about the kitchen, cleaning up.
“Favor,” she said with a small sniffle, “I just feel awful that you spent so many years growing up with perfect strangers.”
Not again.
It was pretty clear from how many times she brought up the subject that Shirley felt a crushing guilt over the whole situation. Quite honestly, I had no idea how to react to that. In all my years of bouncing around, I’d always felt as if I owed my fosters something. This was the first time one felt as if they owed me something, and it threw me for a loop.
“We had no idea,” she said for the third time in as many days. “We were told you died in the car accident that took your parents, otherwise…”
Uncle Max cleared his throat meaningfully and Aunt Shirley trailed off. I couldn’t have been more grateful for him at that moment. Both of them meant well, but things were going to be a little rough around the edges, no matter what. Reliving the past wouldn’t help any of us.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say that might comfort either of us. It did indeed suck that I had spent so many years living with strangers. But I was with family now, and I really wanted to make it work. “That’s life, you know?”
Shirley gasped. “Dear, you’re far too young to think that way. Seventeen-ye
ar-olds should be full of righteous indignation, not wise as an old owl. If you grow up too fast, you’ll start sounding like Max’s nephews.” She sighed heavily as she scrubbed the egg pan. “It’s such a shame they don’t drop by anymore. I sure do miss them.”
“Next time, crisp up the bacon more,” Max interrupted, his tone inexplicably grumpy.
His normally tanned, leathery cheeks reddened slightly. Hopefully he was irritated about something other than the bacon, because that would make him a bit of a jerk in my book. The cold glare Shirley shot at the back of his head told me this was an old argument.
“I know they don’t work for you anymore, love, but I sure do miss them. Maybe we could host a dinner to welcome Favor to the family.”
Max swiveled in his seat to glare back at her. I prayed this wouldn’t be like some of my previous homes, where knock-down-drag-out fights were the norm. When he sighed heavily and turned back to face me, I knew my prayers had been answered.
“My great-nephews used to work for me,” he grumbled as he shoved his half-full plate away. “All five of them. You don’t find five eggs from the same basket who can handle P.I. work, you just don’t. They were good. Then they had to go and betray me like that. I’m too old to be taking knives to the back anymore.”
He frowned and looked down at his plate, sniffing a bit. Since I’d met him, Max had barely shown any emotion. This display, if one could call it that, was practically an emotional breakdown.
“They left a few months ago to work for one of Max’s competitors,” Aunt Shirley explained softly. “They’re good boys, they just got a little…overambitious, if you ask me.”
“I had big plans for them and everything,” Uncle Max grumbled, now talking more to himself than anyone else. He glared so hard at his eggs, I thought they might burst into flames. “Now that’s all gone to shit, thanks to them.”
“Maximus Novak!” Aunt Shirley snapped. “Don’t use that kind of language around Favor.”
Max rolled his eyes and gave me a flat look. “Favor, have you ever heard that word before?”
I couldn’t hold back a snicker. “I’m pretty sure I have, yeah.”
“There you go,” he said to Shirley with a triumphant smirk, then pulled his plate of food back and dug in.
Aunt Shirley huffed as she finally sat down at the table with her own breakfast, shooting a perfectly wicked smirk at me.
“Max, now that you don’t have the boys helping you, maybe you should take Favor on as your new partner.”
Both Max and I choked on our eggs. Shirley took the opportunity to sell us on her plan.
“She’s graduating high school in just a few months, and as soon as she turns eighteen, she could get her P.I. license. You could have her answer the phones part-time until then for a little pocket money. Give her the L.A. experience.”
Uncle Max managed to swallow and object before I could. “I, uh… It’s just that things are a little… I don’t know…”
Finally getting a handle of my own out-of-control emotions, I joined him. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly. I’ve never worked in an office before and my phone etiquette is pretty bad. I’m sure the last thing potential clients want to hear is the voice of a teenager answering the phone. I’m better suited to bussing tables at Wendy’s.”
I appreciated Shirley’s gesture, but clearly Max didn’t want me anywhere near his business. And who could blame him? A respected private investigator would be smart to remain cautious and vigilant where his new, parentless ward was concerned. I certainly didn’t want to impose on him, but more than that, I didn’t want to get too comfortable.
The Novaks were the first of my fosters who actually felt like family. And it was more than the simple fact Shirley and I were related by blood. I liked them more than any of my other families, but that didn’t mean this whole thing would work out. I had to protect myself, just as I’d done all my life.
The Novaks were old, there was no way around that, and I was a teenager. Even young couples had trouble with fosters my age. Sooner or later, I would become a burden, and inevitably, I’d have to find another place to live.
Permanence just wasn’t in the cards for me.
Aunt Shirley’s gaze bounced between us, as if she was formulating the perfect comeback, but before she could spit it out, my phone buzzed. Pulling it out of the back pocket of my jeans, I smiled at the sight of my best friend’s name at the top of the Snapchat notification.
Zoe was the one person I’d somehow managed to stay in touch with since childhood. We weren’t together often — or at all, since she dropped me off at the bus station in Portland a few days earlier — but distance didn’t affect our friendship in the slightest. She was more like a sister than a friend, the one person I could truly depend on.
“Newfangled technology,” Max grumbled.
I excused myself from the table and darted out of the room before playing it, just in case Zoe used her usual language. I didn’t want Shirley and Max’s heads to explode so soon.
“I totally miss the fuck out of you!” she started out, with a big, old pout. “Can’t wait to see you in a couple of months. We can move into a super-cute studio until we become famous actresses. Joking, not joking. Love you!”
Chuckling at Zoe’s unbridled enthusiasm, I returned to the kitchen. Shirley stopped whispering the second I came into view, but didn’t stop glaring at her husband. His eyes dropped close in defeat, then he sighed heavily before looking up at me.
“Since you’re not starting school for a couple more days and you don’t have any friends to do anything with, I guess you might as well come to the office.”
Part of me wanted to spit out something sarcastic at his disingenuous offer, but it was way too soon for that kind of behavior. I settled for, “Oh, I can keep myself entertained.”
“Nonsense,” Shirley said, a tinge of triumph in her voice. “Max would love to show you around the family business.”
“Anything’s better than rotting your eyes out with that thing,” he snorted, nodding toward the phone sitting next to my plate.
Aunt Shirley caught my gaze and we both rolled our eyes in unison. Happiness bubbled up in my chest for the first time in a long time.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Chapter Three
Uncle Max led the way through a crowded parking lot. From the outside, the small strip mall his office was situated in appeared old and tired, as though it was built upon a foundation that was simply too exhausted to keep holding it up for much longer. Every aspect of the place spoke of age, of years left mostly untouched except for the day-in and day-out routines that people like my uncle seemed to track across it.
The building clearly hadn’t been remodeled in a long time — probably ever. It seemed odd in a town like Los Angeles, where I’d always imagined everything was constantly being remade to stay shiny and new. But as I was quickly learning, that wasn’t always the case, especially in this part of town.
I stood behind Max as he unlocked the glass door, checking out the odd selection of neighboring businesses — a nail salon, a bail bonds place, a dingy donut shop. Not a Starbucks or Pinkberry in sight. The whole place looked as if it was stuck in the past. Then I stepped inside Maximus Investigations and was transported to a land before time.
“Here we are,” Max said, looking around with proud satisfaction.
That’s when the smell hit me. It reminded me of one of my old foster homes, the one with six other foster kids and not enough beds. As the newbie, I’d been assigned a sleeping bag in the cold, dank cellar, as if I was some kind of root vegetable stashed away for the winter. Max’s office smelled a little like that cellar, even though it did have the benefit of natural light coming through the windows.
The sunshine, combined with the flickering fluorescent overhead lights, managed to illuminate five mismatched ancient desks crammed into the room. Not even the crappiest of the crappy public schools I’d attended over the years sported desks tha
t junky. The industrial gray paint, the sturdy metal, the chipped and stained Formica tops — they looked as if they stepped out of a 1950s furniture catalogue…from Communist Russia.
“That’s where the boys sat before they abandoned me,” Max said, perching on the nearest desk and crossing his arms.
I could tell he was trying to not sound too bitter. I wasn’t about to tell him how badly he was failing.
“My office is back there.” He jerked a thumb toward a short hallway and a closed door. “You can take your pick of desks out here.”
Some choice. Do I want to sit at this ugly desk or this one? No, maybe that other one. I’d always thought everything in L.A. was new and glamorous, but not in this dreary little corner of the city. Dropping my purse on a desk at random, I skimmed my hand across the surface, grimacing at the crazy amount of dust I smeared around. Hastily wiping my hand on my jeans, I pointed at a big brown contraption sitting in the middle of the desk.
“What’s that thing?”
Max balked. “Are you telling me you’ve never seen a typewriter before? That right there is an IBM Selectric Two. Top of the line. Cost more than your cellular telephone, I can tell you that much.” He crossed his arms and gave me a hard look that reeked of elderly disdain. “Top of the line.”
I stopped myself from asking when it was top of the line and continued my visual tour. A huge rectangular mirror hung on the back wall, the reflective surface so cloudy with age and grime that my face looked like a ghostly apparition, an echo of my true self. The floor was chipped and stained linoleum in a pattern of muted red and gold splotches, the occasional royal blue thrown in for variety. The style must have been considered attractive at some point in history, but certainly not during the current century.
The whole place summoned images of curvaceous women in pencil skirts and chunky black heels, their hair shaped into shiny pinwheels, horn-rimmed spectacles perched on pert noses, and lips slathered in bright red lipstick. It harkened back to the age of secretaries who went to typing school, men in straight suits and slicked-back hair, everything smelling thickly of cigar smoke. I could imagine the bumping doo-wop beat of “Mr. Postman” jangling from a radio on someone’s desk, amid the click-clack of feverishly typing fingernails on the old typewriter’s keys. The mid-century motif carried over to the lighting, as each of the five desks held an old-fashioned lamp made of tarnished brass and a bottle-green glass shade. I bent down to squint under the shade and was not at all surprised to discover the lightbulb was not LED or even compact fluorescent. Totally old-school incandescent.