“Hand it over!” Blue barked the order as he shoved the bucket in my direction.
“I-I don’t have a phone.”
“Awe . . . a round of applause, everyone.” His mouth turned into a grin, flashing his white teeth through the open slit of the mask. “Princess wants to be a hero. Did you really think I’d believe a spoiled rich bitch like you wouldn’t have a phone?”
I wanted to correct his statement, considering I was far from being some rich bitch. Instead, I tried to be amicable. I held his gaze as I slowly lifted my palms up in surrender. “I promise. I really don’t have one on me.”
My fingers shook as I stared up at the man, pleading for him to believe me. I prayed for him to take my word.
“You remind me of my ex-wife. She liked to flash those same sad pathetic eyes when she lied to my face. But she always eventually told the truth. I made sure of it.” His lips twisted into a smirk. “Search the princess. She’s got that phone tucked away somewhere real tight in that dress.”
Shit.
Hollow Eyes came back over to me. The cross burned brightly on his forehead, but I knew nothing inside of him resembled a good person. In fact, I would have rather taken my chances with the man who hated his ex-wife. He seemed more reasonable of the two.
“Stand up and hold your hands above your head.” His voice clipped the words.
I carefully got up from my spot on the floor, trying not to trip on my dress. The yellow silk plunged deep in the front and clung to my hips until it cascaded into a flowy skirt around my ankles. Lifting my arms above my head, I did my best to stand still. Maybe it would go by quickly. Just a pat-down. No phone. And they would let me go.
“Come here, princess.” He sneered the word. “Turn around.”
I tried to be brave, to cooperate even as my body trembled. Taking a few steps in his direction, I faced the other hostages who were against the wall. I was the only one of us free now. Their faces all told different stories, different levels of fear, while some burned in anger, feeling powerless.
I glanced over at Blue. His eyes grew wide in excitement as his wiry frame twisted around to get a better view. The asshole couldn’t wait to see me get groped. Maybe a show of power or maybe just perverted amusement in the middle of this night of horrors.
Hollow Eyes moved directly behind me. He grabbed me by the waist, running his hands around the front of my stomach. I flinched at the contact. He laughed. Hot bursts of air hit my neck. Of course he would find my discomfort funny.
The sound system switched to the next song, creating a patch of silence. Crying. I heard sniffling hiccups coming from the hostages. The waitress, I assumed. She’d never stopped since the men had entered the room. And then a low hum of breathing coming from the man who touched me. The music kicked back on, and Frank Sinatra belted out Fly Me to the Moon.
Hollow Eyes moved to my breasts, rubbing his fingers over the exposed flesh before dipping down in my cleavage in search of the damn phone. He wore gloves. But it didn’t matter. I felt every touch like nothing separated our skin.
I looked out toward the wall. Toward the hostages. I didn’t want to see them, knowing they could see me too. He could see me. My face smashed and broken. My body tainted as a stranger groped me. Our eyes met for a moment. His cheeks stung red in anger as he wrestled with how to stop this from happening to me. A man who didn’t get angry. Now burning with an explosion.
I shook my head in a quick no. Intervene, and risk getting shot. We all knew it. I couldn’t let anyone get hurt over this stupid game. I could bare it. Turning my eyes back to the floor, I tried to focus on breathing. In my nose. Out my mouth. Bile burned the back of my throat, mixing with the taste of blood. I felt sick.
I wanted to cry, but I fought the tears. I couldn’t give in to this humiliation. I had to fight even if that only meant staying composed. I wouldn’t let this asshole see me cry.
His hands snaked downward toward my thighs. I assumed Hollow Eyes would do the pat-down over the skirt. But then he laughed. I panicked at the low threat in his voice. He was going to run his fingers underneath to check every crevice for a damn cell phone we all knew I didn’t possess.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Brenda’s hazelnut cheesecake. Deep breath. Block it out. I would eat all the leftover cheesecake when this was over. We would laugh. We all would laugh.
But then something happened. Hollow Eyes never got any further. The room filled with voices—all shouting at once.
“Get your fuckin’ hands off her.”
“You bastard. Get away from her.”
“¡Vete a la verga culero!”
“Shut the hell up.”
“Search me, pendejo. Come on.”
“Sit down.”
“I will break your damn hands.”
“I said shut the fuck up.”
And in the distance. “Let her go! This was not part of the plan.”
Summer
I WAS EXPECTED TO ATTEND Sunday dinners with my family. My grandmother had made the tradition mandatory back when I was a kid in pigtails. She said life was just too busy during the week and the good Lord made Sunday for a reason.
As I got older, I missed a few dinners when I worked nights at the hotel. But now that I lived with the Hawthorns, my plate would hopefully always be full at their table. I wanted to do something different with my life. But it didn’t mean I wanted to leave them behind. I loved my family dearly.
My Volkswagen made the forty-minute drive west of the city and then down the dirt road that ran parallel to the local trash dump. In this area, the dirt was red—it always stained our clothes when playing outside as a kid. Grams used to scrub it out of Tyson’s jeans and shirts.
My family also had a gated entrance; an old chicken-wire fence held closed with a small strip of baling wire. I got out of the car and propped the gate open next to a faded plywood board sign that read No Trespassing in streaked orange spray paint. Granddaddy put it up a few years ago to send cars in the other direction. Sometimes people got confused on the roads and tried to bring loads of bulging trash bags and tree limbs up to the house.
Granddaddy was retired now from the oil rigs. But he still worked at least forty hours a week at a refinery. Grams worked not far from the house at a little country grocery mart. They sold necessities to keep people from driving to the big grocery store.
Parking in the yard, I walked up the brick steps to the porch and opened the faded yellow door. Immediately, a pair of large arms grabbed me in a big hug. They lifted my body up from the ground. “There’s Fancy Pants.”
“Ty, put me down!” I laughed as my brother shook me around before letting my sandals touch the shag carpet again. Tyson Atwood might’ve been three years younger than me, but his large body towered over my head.
“I thought you’d skip out on us this week.” He flashed a broad grin. My baby brother was nothing but a teddy bear trapped in a grizzly’s body.
I shook my head and then circled my arms around his chest in a tight squeeze before letting him go. “Nah, I’ve always got time to kick your ass in darts again.”
“It only counts if I remember the game. And I was drunk last time.”
“If you could walk out of the garage, then you were not too drunk to forget that I beat you twice.” My fingers went up, taunting the number in his face.
He laughed, pushing my hand away. “Let’s just get this over with. Dinner ain’t done yet, anyway. And I’ll make a bet. Loser does dishes.”
“You’re on.”
I followed my brother through the old house. The pink wallpaper was coming unglued in the hallway leading into the kitchen. I saw Mama watching us from the doorway of the bathroom with her dress on inside out. I gave her a little wave. Her eyebrows cinched up as her lips turned into a frown, but she managed a sluggish wave back to me anyway. Maybe she recognized me. Maybe she didn’t. Sometimes I couldn’t tell.
“How is she today?” I glanced over at Ty.
He shut the door to
the garage behind us. “Well, she made pancakes by herself this morning. We thought that was good. But then I heard her talking. She sat down at the table and put a plate across from her. Granddaddy had the ladder out to fix a lightbulb. She pulled it over in front of the other plate. She sat there and ate her food. Whispering to that damn ladder like it was a person. So . . . yeah.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Maybe she needs to have her meds checked again. I could—”
“Stop.” He shook his head. My brother had the same identical brown hair I’d covered up with bleach. “I’m making her an appointment tomorrow. And you ain’t going to worry about it.”
“I know. But maybe this—”
“Nope. I’m not listening to that bullshit again, either. You made the right decision taking that job and leaving. You need to do this, Sarina. You’re better than all of us.”
“Don’t say that.” I hated to hear those words from my brother. I didn’t think I was better. And it bothered me to hear him say those things.
Ty walked over to the table by the wall and picked up the darts. “Yeah, we all know it’s true. Even the school counselor said it after he saw your SAT score. My ass barely got a diploma.”
“Whatever.” I let out a deep breath and looked back at him. “Did you check on the welding classes?”
“I did. But they’re gonna cost a shit ton. I don’t know if that’s a good idea right now.”
“That wasn’t our agreement.” I pointed one of my manicured fingers at him. “If I moved out, you said you would enroll. And I told you I would help pay for the classes. I’m making good money now and I practically live for free.”
“I know. So don’t fuck this up by giving it to me. I don’t want to see your bags sitting back on that porch out there.”
I shuddered at the thought. “That won’t happen.”
“Good.”
Up until a few weeks ago, I’d lived in this house too. The three of us had moved in when I was thirteen and Ty was ten, right after my father had died in a car accident on his way back from the western part of the state. According to the sheriff, he’d fallen asleep at the wheel and crossed the centerline. His pick-up truck hit a semi right in the grill.
My parents had been together since they were fourteen. She sat at the cemetery for three days straight after the funeral while we stayed with my grandparents. Grams brought her dinner and a blanket. Granddaddy eventually went and put her in the car and they came home.
The move was supposed to be temporary. But none of us ever left my grandparents’ house. My mama’s mental stability had fluctuated over the years. She’d suffered episodes of deep depression. It was like something had just shriveled up inside of her mind, or maybe it was her heart. For a while, she held down a job at one of the big grocery stores, stocking shelves at night. Her boss said, “As long as those cans are lined up straight, I don’t give two shits about what goes on inside her head.”
And Mama tried to pull herself together when around us kids. She didn’t want her children to see a woman losing touch with reality, but her efforts never hid the truth. We knew she was succumbing to what plagued her. Tyson and I talked about it at times. At least she wasn’t a drunk or hooked on meth like some of our neighbors down the road. Sometimes, though, I didn’t know which would be worse.
The episodes happened gradually. Mama lost her job first. She’d stopped stacking the cans. The grocery store didn’t want to pay someone who stopped working and stared off into space for hours. Then one night, things just shifted. I wasn’t sure if it was hallucinations or if her mind just got tired of fighting the hurt she felt in her heart. Granddaddy caught Mama standing in the kitchen, staring at a bowl of cake mix. She looked up and asked when my father would be back. He said, “Shelby, honey. You know he ain’t coming back.”
Mama threw the ceramic bowl on the floor and called him a liar. She went hysterical, rolling around in the broken shards. Granddaddy tried to get her off the floor, but she fought him something fierce. We didn’t know what to do.
In the end, Grams instructed Ty to hold Mama down in the backseat of the car and we all drove to the hospital. They stitched up her cuts and we had a long talk with the doctors. Mama had finally lost her mind for real this time. Her years of grief and depression had taken its toll on her permanent health. Sometimes a broken heart really did break a person’s mind.
We decided it was best not to leave her alone for long periods. The family took turns at first. But then the hotel threatened to fire me because I wasn’t able to balance the workload with home and school. So I quit taking classes. My boss lacked compassion and demoted me anyway. The asshole gave my job to someone I’d personally trained the previous year while sending me back to working the night shift at the front desk. Took my phone too.
I knew the change in my schedule really was for the best. Not for me. But for my family. It allowed someone to stay at the house during the day while they worked. The rationale didn’t make the change any easier to accept.
I didn’t hate my family. No, I loved them. But I hated the impending fate of my life. I had plenty of hours to contemplate my future as I spent day after day in the house, watching Mama and the clock tick down until it was time to go to work.
Minute after minute.
Slowly.
Suffocating.
And then I saw the ad from the Delsey Hawthorn. It was like a lighthouse in the storm. She was a celebrity. Local royalty. And I knew I could do the job. The competition would be fierce, but I just needed to get the interview. I could win her over and change my life forever.
Despite the excitement, I knew in my heart this was a terrible idea. My family needed me. They relied on me, but I found myself telling Ty about the job. And he said, “Go for it. Go impress the shit out of those rich bastards. I can handle everything here.”
I applied the very next day. When Delsey called to offer an interview, I barely kept myself composed on the phone. I had a shot. The tide had changed, and I was moving to a different future. I would live in one of the grandest houses in the city.
I just had to make them believe I had the talent and the look to fit into their world. I got ready for my big moment, making my résumé just a little more vibrant than my real life. I assumed she would see right through the pieces of truth. But the eccentric woman never even took the paper from my hand as I sweated through her questions. The whole interview process had been a game to her. And I’d done the impossible. I really had impressed the shit out of her.
On the following Sunday afternoon, I packed two small suitcases. Grams gave me a teary hug goodbye. Granddaddy told me he was proud. And Ty sat with Mama on the couch as I closed the front door.
“You ready?”
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I looked back at my brother. He worked nights as a janitor to make sure someone was present at the house during the day with Mama. He took my spot while I slept in a big bed at the Hawthorn estate.
“Yeah.” I grabbed the darts from his hand. “You might want to go pad that butt of yours with some Charmin because this ass-kick is going to be epic.”
He laughed. “You’re so full of shit.”
We played, taking turns throwing, laughing, getting caught up on what each of us had been doing the last few weeks. But his aim had always been better than mine. And my hand still felt cramped after writing two sets of invitations for Mrs. Hawthorn. Tyson beat me in a landslide.
“Yeeees! Take that.” He jumped around in a ridiculous victory dance. His tree-trunk arms moved around under the cut-off sleeves of his T-shirt as Ty pumped his fists in the air.
“You suck.” I rolled my eyes. “Go get us some beers so I might have a chance on the next game.”
“Sounds good. And you can tell me about your new boyfriend. The one you left—”
“Ty!”
He gave me an evil grin before shutting the door to the house. One casual mention of Javier and smoking cigars by the pool and now I was going to pay for
it with sibling torment. Boyfriend. The word tossed around in my mind. That man wasn’t even close to someone who would ever be my boyfriend. He was a Hawthorn. And he didn’t seem to be the type who kept an actual girlfriend. Besides, I needed to focus on the bigger game and keep my eye on the prize. This job would lead to a better job.
I sucked in a deep breath, feeling the stale heat in my lungs. Sweat ran down my back under my blue sundress. The air was hot in the old garage despite the big overhead door being open to the backyard, the wind blowing only slightly. I didn’t know what was worse: having no breeze or having the air filled with the scent of the trash dump when it came from the south.
I walked over to where a coffee table and couch sat in the middle of the room. Picking up the pack of cigarettes from the table, I didn’t even hesitate to flick the lighter this time. I sucked in a full chest of smoke and let it trickle out. The act felt invigorating yet calming.
After all, it was Granddaddy who’d taught me to smoke. It had been our thing after my father died. Grams didn’t like him lighting up in the house. So this was his spot. His couch. His table. And I would join him. He always came out here right before bedtime. He would savor his Marlboro to the very last puff. We’d shared at first. And then he started letting me have my own.
Pretty screwed up.
But it had been my favorite time of day, listening to his stories as the nicotine filled my soul with peace. I loved the way it smelled and the way it made me feel.
I pulled in another drag. But it wasn’t the same after tasting Damian on my tongue. Javier was completely right about those cigars. They’d ruined me forever.
A set of hands went around my waist. I was startled as a familiar deep voice whispered in my ear. “You save some of that for me?”
“Cole . . . don’t,” I protested, feeling his chest press into my back. Of course he would show up at the house today. Demon gremlins had that kind of power. I hated that Ty was still his friend. My brother could be a moron when it came to acceptable family dinner company.
The Hawks_A Novel Page 6