“Hi,” she said, handing him a pie box. Her nerves practically rolled off of her. “I didn’t make that.”
He laughed. “That’s okay.” He pulled her in for a kiss. She didn’t resist but she didn’t fall into him, either.
“I’m nervous,” she whispered against his lips.
“I couldn’t tell.”
Her laughter was a sweet-smelling gust over his lips.
“Ms. Monroe!” Shelby jumped back, but Ty turned more slowly, keeping his hand on Shelby’s back.
“Hi, Casey,” she said.
“We’re tearing down the curtains!” Casey held up the lace curtains from the kitchen. “Wanna help?”
“Go ahead,” Ty said. “I need to finish dinner.”
“Go ahead and vandalize your house?”
“It’s our home, isn’t it?” He felt like an explorer planting a flag in foreign soil. He didn’t know what was going to come, what would be revealed, but he was here and he was going to stay.
“I guess so,” she said with that bright, revealing smile.
As she walked past he patted her butt, because he figured maybe he could. Because he wanted to. Because this moment really could only be improved upon by touching this special woman’s butt as she walked by.
But then she glanced back and winked at him and then … then his life was complete.
Crap. Like double crap. Like all the crap in the whole world.
Casey walked the length of the field, pushing down the tall grasses as he went. He’d had this kind of half-baked idea that he’d track Mrs. Monroe, that he’d find her footsteps from when she’d crossed the field before and just follow her.
But it was too dark and he couldn’t find any footprints, so he just kept walking back and forth across the field behind his house hoping he would miraculously run into her.
He hadn’t seen her out here for the last few nights, so he wasn’t sure when she stole those keys Officer Jenkins had been talking about.
But there was no doubt that it was her.
And he’d been about to tell Ty about it, but things were so cool between them now. Even after he found that drawer full of stuff Casey had stolen. And tonight, with Shelby … she told him he could call her Shelby when they weren’t at school, and that was awesome. The whole night was freaking awesome.
Mom hadn’t called again.
School was going better.
Scott was a pretty cool guy when he wasn’t with John.
And Ty said that he loved him.
He shook his head, because the thought did weird things to him. Made his head buzz. Mom always said she loved Casey, but Casey wasn’t stupid. What his mom felt for him wasn’t love. But Ty … that was different.
Yep, life was pretty good.
Except Shelby’s mom was breaking into houses stealing keys and he was the only one who knew about it and he’d made the old lady a promise, and now, if he told someone he wasn’t sure if she would get in trouble.
Kind of seemed like she had enough bad stuff going on. Did they send crazy old ladies to jail?
So Casey’s plan was to catch Mrs. Monroe and tell her she couldn’t do this stuff anymore. That the cops were on to her. That if she did it again he was going to have to tell his dad.
He liked the sound of all of that. It sounded very adult.
There was rustling behind him and Casey whirled toward the sound.
“Mrs. Monroe!”
But it wasn’t Mrs. Monroe. It was Scuzz, the dog. Looking skinnier than ever.
“Hey!” Casey whispered. The last few weeks he’d kind of forgotten about Scuzz, but when he came out here tonight, he’d grabbed some of the leftover dinner steak Ty had sliced up all fancy and shoved it in his pocket.
Casey threw the dog a strip of steak and Scuzz snapped it out of the air with his long white teeth.
“We still haven’t figured out your name yet, have we?” Casey asked. “George?”
Scuzz stepped closer and Ty tossed him another piece of steak.
“Charlie? Rex?” Scuzz kept coming closer, which was weird. Casey threw him another piece of meat. “Buddy?”
His ears perked up at that and the dog cocked its head.
“Buddy?” Casey asked.
The dog whined.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Really? Can I just keep calling you Scuzz? It’s a much better name.”
Scuzz lowered his muzzle to the ground and started to growl, deep and low in his throat.
All the hair on the back of Casey’s neck went up. In school the other day they’d talked about the fight-or-flight instinct, and Casey was now experiencing some serious flight instinct. He suddenly remembered all the times a grown-up had told him not to get too close to these dogs. That they were vicious.
“Hey. Don’t get mad. I’ve got lots of steak.” Casey pulled all the steak out of his pocket and threw it at the dog, while at the same time slowly backing up.
But Scuzz ignored the meat, his eyes fixed over Casey’s shoulders.
Dimly, he heard bells. Not like the bell choir at church, but little tinkling Christmas bells.
I’m totally losing my mind.
But the bells were getting louder and coming from behind him. He turned in time to see Mrs. Monroe coming through the tall weeds in her nightgown and rain galoshes but with a belt of bells around her waist.
“Mrs. Monroe, what are you doing with those bells?” he asked, but she wasn’t watching him. She was looking at Scuzz. And Scuzz barked.
“Hey,” Casey said. “You’re kind of freaking Scuzz out, so maybe—”
But then she grabbed him, yanked him by the arm, and for such an old lady she was strong and he fell, shoulder first, onto the rocky ground and pain exploded across the shoulder he’d landed on. Hot sweat burned across his forehead and then cold, and the whole world swam for a second.
When he got his breath back, he rolled over and sat up. His arm hung at a weird angle off his body and he gagged at the sight of it, limp and gross.
Scuzz growled again and slowly advanced on Mrs. Monroe, who was standing very still.
Oh God. Oh God this was bad. He reached for some of the steak he’d thrown, wincing as the pain blasted in his shoulder. The edges of his vision went black for a second but he shook it off, picking up the dirty meat with leaves and yuck on it and tossing it at the dog, but it didn’t notice.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Over here, Scuzz!”
“Casey! Don’t!” she cried. But when she looked over at him, it was as if Scuzz was waiting for just that moment and he jumped on her, knocking her into the bushes.
Heart pounding in his throat, Casey scrambled to his feet and ran over.
Scuzz was standing on her chest, his teeth clamped onto her arm. She was crying and screaming, pushing the dog away, but he stayed on her chest, snarling and snapping as if trying to get to her throat.
Casey yelled and kicked at the dog, but it only worked harder to kill Mrs. Monroe. And she was getting weaker, her screams turning to sobs, her arms barely holding him off.
There was blood everywhere, the arm of her nightgown going totally red.
He spun around in a circle, kicking over the beaten-down grass and weeds looking for a big rock and finally finding one. He picked it up with one hand and threw it as hard as he could. It hit Scuzz in the back, knocking him off Mrs. Monroe. Sobbing, Casey found another and another, throwing pebbles and weeds and anything he could get his hands on until Scuzz yelped and took off running.
He waited a second, breathing hard, lights flashing at the edges of his eyes.
Don’t pass out, he told himself and managed to listen. But just barely. Don’t do it.
Scuzz didn’t come back and he crawled on his knees and one hand, his other arm hanging down from his body like it was broken, though he couldn’t feel it anymore. He couldn’t feel anything.
Mrs. Monroe lay still in the grass, her bloody arm cradled against her chest. She was staring up at the sky, blinking, her mouth
opening and shutting.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Mrs. Monroe?” He reached out to touch her but didn’t know where. Or how, without hurting her.
And then a bubble—red with blood—popped on her lips.
In his dream, Ty was making out with Shelby in the cab of Pop’s old truck and they were out by the river where he and Casey had gone fishing that first weekend. And she was warm and moaning in his arms and then she wasn’t. And then she was back, but it was a version of her made entirely of static.
“Dad!”
Ty ignored the kid calling for his father and kept kissing Shelby until she wasn’t static anymore, until she was sweet and real.
“Dad!”
Christ, he wished that Dad would answer the kid. It was kind of ruining his mood.
“Dad! Help! Please, I need your help!”
Ty snapped himself out of the dream.
I’m a dad.
And then he heard the frantic thump and stomp of someone coming up the stairs.
“Dad!” It was Casey, sobbing and freaking out, and Ty tore from the bed, racing to meet him in the hallway outside his room.
“What?” Ty asked. Panic was a white-out blizzard in his head and he couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. The way Casey was holding his arm, the blood and dirt and tears on his face.
“Help me,” Casey sobbed, and the white-out vanished and the world was in crystal focus.
“Where are you bleeding?” He sat his son down on the top step and searched over his body for the wound. One of his shoulders was dislocated, but nothing seemed to have broken the skin.
“It’s not me,” Casey whimpered, pushing Ty’s hands away with his one good arm. “It’s Mrs. Monroe—”
“Shelby?”
Casey shook his head. “Her mom. In the field behind the house—she’s been bitten by a dog.” Casey’s face shattered, his body rocking with sobs. “It’s so bad, Dad. It’s really, really bad.”
“Stay right here,” he said. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
Ty ran down the stairs, grabbed his phone from the charger in the kitchen, shoved his feet into his boots, and was out into the field looking for Shelby’s mother and calling an ambulance at the same time.
He found a trail in the tall weeds, and he followed the broken plants forever it seemed.
Finally, he found her.
Still. Quiet. Her white nightgown saturated with blood. Her hands, bloody and raw, clutched over her chest as if praying.
Shelby came running into the hospital wearing slippers and a robe, her face awash with terror. Ty stood up from the plastic seat by the window where he’d been holding his vigil, waiting for her. Waiting for word on Mrs. Monroe. For Casey to wake up after the doctor had set his shoulder.
It had been an hour since he was awakened from that dream. An hour and a lifetime.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, baby.” In front of the reception desk he caught Shelby’s elbows in his hands, but she shook away from him—on purpose or not, he couldn’t tell. She was manic. Shaking so bad it was amazing that she’d been able to drive.
“Where is she?”
“Surgery.”
She sagged and he grabbed her arms again, thinking to hold her, to help her into a chair, but she pulled away again, this time clearly on purpose, choosing instead to stand up on her own wobbly legs.
Oh honey, don’t do this.
“I told them you were on the way, that you’d be with me. If there are any updates they know where to find you,” he said, trying to answer every question as it appeared on her face, in the way she held herself. “Everything that can be done is being done.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Your mom was bit by one of the strays. A fractured arm, broken rib, and a punctured lung.”
Shelby gasped, her hand at her throat, like there just wasn’t enough air. Ty knew the feeling.
“What … what was she even doing out there?”
“Apparently …” Ty let out a long, slow breath; he was exhausted and scared and running on fumes, and maybe because he’d found out about all of this only an hour ago it still seemed unreal. “Apparently your mom was the one walking into people’s houses. She stole some keys the other night.”
“No way.” Shelby shook her head. “That’s ridiculous. Mom doesn’t wander.”
“Casey saw her.”
“Casey?”
“He says he saw her three different times.”
“He saw her and didn’t say anything?”
Ty nodded. The truth shocking to him, the ramifications of it devastating to all of them. All they could do was try to sort through this. Hopefully together.
“That’s a little convenient, isn’t it?” she asked and he knew where she was going with this, only because he’d thought the very ugly thought himself. But it didn’t change the raw smack of it; her lack of faith in Casey hurt him. “He’s been stealing stuff all over town since he’s been here, but now he claims it’s my mother breaking into people’s houses?”
“I know it’s hard to believe—”
“It’s impossible to believe.”
“Then what was your mother doing out in the field tonight?”
“I don’t—” She stopped, pressed her shaking fingers to her lips.
“Casey says she had bells on her waist. A belt of bells.”
“Melody.” Shelby breathed. “Melody must have done that.” She turned away, her shoulders painfully rigid under the worn fleece of her robe. He put a hand on her shoulder, felt the ice-cold skin of her neck against his fingers before she shrugged away.
His hope that she would walk into the hospital and fall into his arms and they could survive this night together, leaning on each other, had been the height of foolishness.
She hadn’t had time to get used to him walking beside her; her instinct would be to go it alone, and that sucked. For both of them.
“Why didn’t he tell anyone?” she asked. “He sees an old woman wandering around in the middle of the night and doesn’t say anything?”
“He said he promised her he wouldn’t tell. That he always made sure she got home safe—”
“That doesn’t make it okay!” she snapped, and he stepped back. “It’s winter, Ty. What if she got lost? What if he wasn’t there to get her back to her house? What if she wandered onto the highway? He needed to tell someone!”
“He knows that.”
“Does he? Does he really?”
“Listen, my son is terrified and hurt and feels terrible already—heaping more blame on him isn’t going to help.”
“Someone has to take the blame!” she cried. “Someone—”
She reeled back as if Ty had punched her, and he saw her thought process flicker across her face in shades of guilt and shame. She was the only one to blame.
“Don’t, babe. Don’t do this to yourself. It was a shitty accident.” He reached out to touch her, but she flinched away and he stood there with his arms, never so useless before, at his sides.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed. “What I said about Casey—”
“It’s okay.”
Dry-eyed, she stared right at him. “No. It’s not.”
“Excuse me? Wyatt Svenson?” A nurse in pink scrubs approached them. “Your son is awake and asking for you.”
Ty glanced back at Shelby and that self-contained universe of hers that had seemed so appealing, like a puzzle he couldn’t wait to figure out and experience from the inside—he saw the reality of it.
The cold reality of it.
No one got on the inside.
And he could stand here and take the time to melt her, to make her see that she didn’t have to shoulder the blame for all of this, but his son was asking for him.
That date of theirs, her faith—it was a product of sunny weather. It was easy to open yourself up to the good times, but opening yourself up to the bad? A to tally different story, and she clearly didn’t have the guts for that.
“I thought I could break down all your doors,” he told her. “I could break your locks and force my way in, but you’ll always find more, won’t you? Something bad will happen in our lives and I’ll be right back on the outside looking for a way in.”
Nearly imperceptibly, she nodded.
His heart, under the too bright lights, shattered against the flecked linoleum floor, right at her feet.
“I’m going to go.” He jerked his thumb back down the hall toward his son’s room.
“That’s for the best,” she told him.
And they both knew he would be going on without her.
Any illusions that she had been doing all right, that despite her failings, on the average her care for her mother had been good—they were all shattered like the windows at the factory. Watching Ty walk away, leaving her alone with all of those things, big and small, that she’d done wrong, she wanted to melt into the linoleum.
She wanted to just stop.
But instead, after a few moments she followed Ty’s footsteps to Casey’s room and stood just outside of it, listening to the quiet hum of the nurse’s voice. The rough reply of Ty’s.
Casey was silent.
Shelby understood that her instincts right now were wrong. That she was living out the programming her father had given her when she was too young to understand. Too young to know that he was sick.
Despite knowing all that, she stood outside Casey’s hospital room and knew that this was her fault. The boy in there. Her mother in surgery. Ty’s barely contained anger and grief. It was all her fault.
Because for a little bit, she’d been happy.
The nurse stepped out of Casey’s room, giving her a quick, understanding smile. It was a marvel, that smile, in all that it managed to convey. Sympathy, a willingness to help, a certain businesslike distance—all of that at the same time.
Shelby wasn’t sure she could hold all those feelings in her body—all those opposing forces.
Taking a breath, determined to do at least one thing right, she knocked lightly on the cracked door. Ty turned to look over his shoulder, saw her, and stood up, blocking her view of the bed. The room was dark, the curtains pulled against the windows, the lamp over the bed on the lowest setting.
“Yeah?” he asked, almost as if she were a stranger. As if in the walk from reception to here he’d shed all his knowledge of her like a skin.
Between the Sheets Page 28