The Sweet Dead Life

by Joy Preble

  Then Manny confirmed those worst fears for me. Mike Samuels was out there, all right. Not just out there. Close. In Texas. Working as a groundskeeper at a ballpark for some rinky-dink minor league team, the Round Rocks.

  I might not be remembering that correctly, by the way. I was too terrified to remember anything clearly. Besides, Manny might have been lying.

  At first I’d planned to poison Holly, to use her as bait.

  But Jenna’s boots were lying on the living room floor. Every time I ever saw that girl she was wearing those boots, except for this one day. Maybe that’s why I made the spot decision. It was dumb luck. No father could resist coming to rescue his daughter.

  While Holly was in the bathroom, I spiked the inner soles of those boots with the poison I’d intended to use on Holly. My plan was to make Mike Samuels come out of hiding. And that’s all I can tell you.

  I don’t know what happened at the Galleria. But I suspect it’s the beginning of a process I deserve and have had long coming.

  Dr. Stuart Renfroe, MD

  “JUST LIKE YOU guys suspected,” Amber said, folding the papers and handing them to Casey, who then handed them to me.

  “You should have dropped him,” Casey said. His voice was low and I could see his jaw tighten. “You should have let the bastard die.”

  I reached across Amber and patted his thigh. “No wonder he made the miracle snake venom diagnosis,” I said. “He’d given it to me. Of course he knew what it was.” Guess that was one way to interpret that Hippocratic Oath. I blinked several times. My eyes were stinging. There was suddenly a lump in my throat the size of a baseball, but I choked out: “Dad might be in Texas.”

  “Exactly,” Amber said. “I wanted to show you this first before I told you the rest. I talked to some of my cop friends at the station. Friends through Terry.” She flushed and glowed a little.

  (Note to self: If Terry wasn’t to Amber what Lanie was to Casey, he was pretty damn close.)

  “Anyway.” She took a deep breath and stood, turning to face the both of us. “They’ve found someone matching his description, with his name, in Austin. But they haven’t contacted him yet.”

  The room spun dizzily. I clutched at the bedspread.

  Casey just kept shaking his head. “So why hasn’t he come home yet?” he asked in a small voice.

  That was a good question. But I could tell by the silence the three of us had already guessed the answer. Dad really had forgotten about us.

  “We need to go to Austin,” I said.

  Amber nodded.

  “Yeah,” Casey said, “except for one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Mom. You still can’t tell her about me. Can’t tell Dad either, if we find him.”

  I was about to argue, but stopped. “Okay,” I said. I wiped my eyes and straightened. That preacher at Maggie’s church, the one who had talked about slippery slopes and telling the truth, had also told us about forgiveness. You can’t move on until you forgive, he said. When it came to Dr. Renfroe—who had smashed our family into crooked bits—I had a feeling I’d be stuck for awhile.

  But I didn’t want Mom to be stuck, too. Not any more than she already was.

  So yes, I would keep Casey’s secret from her. And I knew right then that I’d also keep Renfroe’s. I would never tell her that he changed his mind at the last minute and poisoned me instead of her. I didn’t give a damn if Mom ever forgave Renfroe. But I knew as sure as I knew anything that she would never forgive herself, not for what happened to either Casey or me. Even if it wasn’t her fault, she would still feel responsible. That’s what parents did.

  At least parents whose brains hadn’t been scrambled.

  Maggie and I exchanged Christmas gifts early. I told her I was going on a road trip to Austin and I wasn’t sure when we’d be back. Maggie made me open hers first: a black tank top with an array of sparkles and sequins on the top that she’d designed herself. I almost choked on my own spit when I realized the design was of an angel.

  “Don’t know why I thought of that for you,” she said. “But I was arranging the sequins and suddenly there it was. Not too hokey?”

  I hugged her tight. “Perfect,” I said. “Really.”

  She unwrapped my gift to her. Presents were tricky. We were still broke, although Mom had started applying for jobs. Oak View had closed for now, but the Med Center was a big place. Hopefully someone would be in need of a speech therapist who was now a specialist on memory issues. But in all honesty, we had no idea if Mom would ever be totally herself again. I guess none of us would.

  “Yum!” Maggie said. “And also perfect!” I had given her two gifts: a pack of press-on tattoos of famous artists (the Van Gogh tattoo had only one ear) and a tin of homemade snickerdoodles. Mamaw Nell had shared her recipe.

  When she asked why we were going to Austin, I replied, “A change of pace.”

  It wasn’t the truth, but it was hardly a lie.

  AT FIRST WE didn’t tell Mom why we were going to Austin, either.

  Casey and I met Amber for kolaches to discuss a possible ruse. Amber had already staked out a table at the doughnut shop when we arrived, a huge box at her feet.

  “For you,” she told me.

  The label read Bubba’s Boot Town.

  Inside was a shiny new pair of Ariats, pointy-toed like Amber’s. They were red and tan leather, and the inside was lined with blue.

  “Texas girls need their boots,” Amber said. “Besides, it’s high time you returned those borrowed purple clogs to Nurse Ed.”

  Of all the things I’d ever expected from Amber Velasco, I had never expected her to make me cry. I swallowed, hard. I tried to think of funny things. It didn’t work.

  “Thanks,” I croaked. The boots fit just right: tight at the instep and giving a little at the heel. Cow leather, not snakeskin, which was fine by me. She had also included a bottle of leather conditioner. My feet felt like dancing. If I had been Amber, I’d have spread my wings and flown around Sundale Donuts in happiness. Instead, I scarfed two sausage kolaches and sucked down a container of chocolate milk.

  “So here’s what I’m thinking,” Casey began. “We—”

  His phone rang. When he checked the caller ID, his eyes lit up.

  Amber heaved a sigh. “Go ahead. Get this out of your system.”

  Casey made no comment, just hightailed it out of the doughnut shop, his cell already clapped to his ear.

  “Want to split this last one?” Amber pointed to the remaining sausage kolache. All of a sudden I noticed that she was back in her EMT outfit today.

  “You really are an EMT?” I asked. Yes, I trusted Amber Velasco now. But I also knew that she would never tell us the whole truth if she could help it, about anything.

  Amber shrugged. “More or less.”

  I frowned.

  “Like your brother going to school still.” She slurped some more coffee. Pressed her finger to the kolache crumbs on the napkin and licked them off. “It’s a cover. I’m a part-timer when it suits my purposes. Right now, it does.”

  I kept frowning. “That’s it?”

  She flashed a half-smile. “Jenna, come on.”

  I glanced out the window at Casey, blabbing on his cell, as happy as I’d ever seen him. Did he not know that the whole Lanie thing was never going to work out? Or maybe it was. That was the problem. I just didn’t know. About Lanie. About how long Casey would stay here. About the wings and how he’d used up his flight saving me. But Amber had used hers up, too, hadn’t she?

  And that’s when it happened: everything that I still didn’t know came burbling up and out. Question after question after question …

  Amber didn’t look upset in the least. She folded her arms across her chest as I spilled. When I was finally done, I took a deep breath and flopped back in my seat. She stared at me for few long beats without saying anything. Then she glanced wistfully out the window at Casey.

  “Everything you overheard at Mario’s is tr
ue,” she said. “I mean, you want to know about me, right? I was living with my boyfriend. It was my senior year and I’d just finished my med-school applications. Someone broke into our apartment one night …” Amber stopped talking. Her gaze went somewhere that I couldn’t go.

  “Were you in love with him? Your boyfriend?”

  “Yeah,” Amber said. “I was.” She eyeballed Casey again, then shifted her gaze back at me.

  I leaned forward. “And is he still alive? Is he—”

  “He’s not an angel,” Amber said, “if that’s what you want to know.”

  What I wanted was the rest of the story. What had happened to her? Who had done it? What had happened to her boyfriend? Was it Terry? How had she ended up with wings? But I understood that this was all I was getting. At least for now.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” she said. She wrapped her hands around her Styrofoam cup of coffee. Lowered her voice. Her perfect bangs looked just the tiniest bit flatter today, tired out. “Something your brother doesn’t know. I’d rather you not tell him, but I’ll leave that up to you.”

  I nodded.

  “I know I should have, but I didn’t give a rat’s ass whether Renfroe killed himself. He’s not why I flew out there, Jenna. Justice or no justice. Anyone who could do what he did, no matter what his reasons … I flew to catch you, Jenna.” She raised the cup to her lips, then set it down without taking a drink. “But when I saw that Casey was already one step ahead of me, I had to make a choice. Your brother was going to suffer for what he did either way. He was already out there, already committed. There was no turning back. So I did what I had to. I let him come for you and I grabbed up Renfroe instead. Might as well get some benefit out of it since I’d already taken the leap. Jenna, your brother might have lost his chance to fly while here on Earth. But he did it to save you. I needed to let him have that.”

  My cheeks were suddenly wet. I sniffed and nodded again. Thanks, I mouthed.

  You’re welcome, she mouthed back.

  The Aggie 12th Man, I thought. That was Amber Velasco. Even if she and Casey were now effectively benched with the wing debacle. She was there no matter what.

  Casey burst back into the shop, grinning from ear to ear. “We need to find time to get to the mall,” he said. “I have to replace that gift for Lanie.”

  “What about Mom?” I asked.

  He blinked at me. Then he shrugged. “Screw it. Let’s tell her the truth. If we find him, she’s gonna find out, anyway.”

  BACK AT THE house, we decided to let Mom lead the conversation. We started with how she was feeling.

  As usual, her memory still came and went. But it was getting stronger. Now she knew why. And she remembered other things too: if I’d forgotten to give her a vitamin (and sometimes I did forget) she started feeling better. She would fight the fuzziness. In those times, she would call and email anyone who knew Dad. Something deep inside, something not even the drugs could destroy, had told her that the cops were wrong, that if Dad was alive, eventually, he’d come back. If not to her, than at least to a place that was familiar. People didn’t easily let go of their strongest and best memories. Something would draw him back and if she kept asking around, she’d find him. That was the hope.

  I didn’t question her logic on this. Nor did I remind her of all the memories she’d tossed to the wind. It seemed pointless and cruel.

  Here is what Mom said when we told her that the police might have found Dad. The thing that shocked us all.

  “I thought about going to Austin, too. We met at UT, remember? That’s why he always wanted to go back there.”

  She didn’t so much as bat an eyelash.

  Truth? I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or troubled. Had Dad wanted to go back to Austin? Had we just forgotten that in five years? What had he liked to do? Was he crazy about the UT Longhorns like Mr. Collins was about A&M? I remembered something about breakfast tacos—there was a place in Austin that he loved. Or was I just imagining it? For some reason, I pictured him saying the word “Taco” over and over again and laughing. “Taco Taco Taco …”

  “Minor League Baseball in Round Rock,” Mom told us in the heavy silence. “Your dad was a crazy person for minor league ball. He said it was purer than anything else these days.”

  “Oh,” Casey said. “Huh.”

  I avoided my brother’s eyes. We hadn’t told her that part of Renfroe’s confession. Nor had the police. Casey had convinced them that if Mom knew Dad had been so close, it would only make things worse.

  Of course, it turned out I wasn’t the only one who’d saved one of Dad’s sports columns. Casey had one, too: the one he’d loaned Bryce to show to Zeke, the second photo, just to be sure.

  Before Mom could add any more, Casey ran to his room to get the article. Together, the four of us read it and re-read it as we prepared to bring this thing to an end. And as we did, I knew they were all wondering the same thing I was: How clues to a person could sit there in plain sight without ever being seen.

  THE COLUMN WENT on, but we stopped reading here. I think we all figured we’d learned as much as we were going to.

  THE NEXT MORNING we headed out in Amber’s Camaro, before five to beat the traffic. The Merc was at Lonnie’s Body Shop. If we were going to keep it, we needed it worked on. I had no idea how we were going to pay for this. Not that the Merc was a particularly high priority.

  Mom agreed to stay home, although she didn’t want to. Her new doctor—who was hopefully not a crazy whack job—insisted. Dr. Kara Chang wanted Mom’s system and chemical balance back in order. Period. She was totally humorless, like a cyborg. She wanted no trauma. She wanted no travel. Recovery might happen quickly; it might take a while. So Mom needed to stay put. Renfroe had confessed a lot, but as yet, he’d refused to divulge exactly what he’d mixed together in those fake vitamins. We were lucky that Amber’s lab friend Terry had done his testing. Otherwise everyone might be even more flummoxed.

  Secretly, I agreed Mom’s staying put was for the best. I knew what it was like to get your hopes up about things that never happened. Mom wasn’t strong enough for that yet. Still, I hated the way her eyes spilled over with tears when she waved good-bye to us. It was still dark out. It took all I had not to just drag her into the Camaro.

  We stayed strong and stuck with the plan.

  WE HIT AUSTIN a little before eight in the morning. I was starving.

  “Are you serious?” My brother leaned forward from the back seat and poked at me. Amber had let me ride shotgun. “You know, just because you’re hungry again doesn’t mean you have to eat every five minutes.”

  “Making up for lost time,” I told him. “Come on, let’s just stop at that taco place up there.” The sign read TACO TACO TACO. I guess they didn’t want any confusion.

  (Note to self: If I ever owned a taco place I would come up with a more creative name.)

  ANYWAY, I NEEDED to fortify. We had a long day ahead of us. The lead Amber’s cop friends had provided hadn’t included an address. Our plan was to walk the campus at UT and any other place that Dad used to go. We would talk to people. Show them his picture. It was a long shot, but it was the best we could do. After that we’d head over to Round Rock. Baseball season was over, but we’d show his picture around. See what turned up. Mom’s cell phone record had shown one call from an unknown number a few weeks back. She swore to us that it had been Dad.

  Here is what I didn’t say to Casey and definitely not to Amber:

  What if Dr. Renfroe was telling the truth? Had Dad recovered his memories of us and still not come home? Things happen that we don’t expect and don’t understand. Like why people watch Dancing with the Stars, or why my brother is now my guardian angel. I can accept that. I didn’t know if I could accept a man who had remembered his life but not gone back to it.

  I will always believe that those thoughts were what caused what happened next. I had come to accept Maggie’s philosophy of life. Things happen for a reason.


  I shoved open the door to Taco Taco Taco, Amber and Casey walking behind me.

  His back was to us at one of the little tables. He was eating something from a basket and sipping a mug of what smelled like really strong coffee. Potato and egg, I decided, still thinking about my breakfast. Definitely guac on the side.

  When he turned around, time stood still. Just like it had for a few crazy seconds in our squashed Prius when everything in my world went to hell and then to another place and then back to me. Just like it had when I’d tumbled through the open air of the Galleria atrium. My heart flew from my chest, whisked away in the morning breeze.

  The man at the table was older than I remembered. His face had more lines. I had expected him to be thinner, but he was thicker, in all ways. Like everything that had happened had settled its weight on him.

  I heard Amber clear her throat. She nudged me in the back.

  “Go on,” she said. “It’s time.”

  Casey took my hand.

  “Hey,” said the man at the table. It was as though he was expecting us. Maybe in some way he was.

  “Hey Dad,” Casey and I said together. We crossed the space between us.

  I wish I could write in this journal that after we found Dad in Taco Taco Taco (really, where else could we find him?) he came home with Casey and me and we all lived happily ever after. But our car accident had made that impossible, even if everything else had gone right. Which it did not.

  “Did you leave us the Manny’s gift certificate as a clue?” Casey asked him.

  Dad looked at him blankly. He had no memory of it, and only the vaguest phantom sense of writing that final note to us, something he thought he had done while still in Houston. Just flashes were left: His hand holding a pen. A piece of paper. Someone (Dr. Renfroe he thought) telling him what to write. Maybe even saying “Good job,” after he finished. Eventually we figured that Renfroe had left the Manny’s gift certificate, either by accident or on purpose. He was after all, a conflicted crazy man with access to Dad’s house keys. Note to self: When we get home, we need to change the locks.