Just Try to Stop Me

by Gregg Olsen

  “And all the people you talked about were alive.”

  Kendall suppressed an ironic smile. “Not really. But that’s another story to revisit another time.”

  Birdy introduced Kendall.

  “I love True Detective on HBO,” Cici said. “The first season anyway.”

  “Me too,” Kendall answered, while producing the invitation she’d carried in her oversized black leather purse. She wondered why everyone referred to that cable show as such a favorite. She couldn’t get into it at all.

  Cici took the invitation.

  “Nicely done,” she said. “You looking to get something like that printed? Old school thermography. My dad told me to drop it, but I don’t know . . . I’m a tactile kind of girl.”

  “Did you do it here?” Kendall asked.

  Cici didn’t think so. “No,” she said, “I haven’t done any thermography printing in more than a year. In fact, I can’t even think of the last time that I did anything like that. People don’t want to wait for things now. Just wham, bam, get it done.”

  “Do you know of any other places in the area that use the process?” Birdy asked.

  “A place up in Silverdale, maybe,” Cici said. “Not sure about that, though. My dad knew everyone and everything. I can go look it up. Follow me.”

  They followed the illustrated shop owner past a tiny employee break room to an even tinier office where she rummaged through a file drawer.

  “I love your unicorn,” Kendall said, though she really didn’t. The tattoo was just so in her face when Cici dropped to her knees and bent over to retrieve the files.

  “Thanks,” Cici said, standing back up and turning with a smile. “It’s my favorite. Next to the Lord of the Rings panorama I got last year.”

  Kendall didn’t want to see that. Neither did Birdy. Cici waited a beat in case they were going to ask. She loved showing off what she’d had done. Her body, she told friends and strangers who asked, was a work of art. She often lamented that she was sorry that she was slender, as her body type didn’t allow for as large a canvas as she’d wanted.

  “Yup,” Cici said, tapping a finger on a sheet of paper pulled from the file. “Print It Right Now in Silverdale does thermography and foil, too. Cool, I didn’t know that!”

  Birdy looked over at the employee bulletin board where three photo ID badges hung from purple sateen ribbons.

  Kendall caught her gaze.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Birdy took one of the badges from the peg and looked back at Cici. She knew the face on the photograph.

  “Does Amber Turner work here?” she asked.

  Cici grinned at Kendall. She’d overheard the remark when the two of them first entered Justin’s.

  “You do know everyone, don’t you?”

  Kendall took the ID card.

  “Not everyone,” Birdy said. “But I do know Amber. Does she work here?”

  “Yeah,” Cici said. “She works weekends. It’s hardly work, by the way. We’re lucky to get two customers the whole day. Dad says that I need to be open seven days a week or I should just close up for good. People depend on you, he says. Can’t let them down by not being open when they really need you.”

  “Back to Amber,” Kendall said, “does she have a work space?”

  “Yeah. Over here.”

  They followed the owner across the hopelessly ink-stained print-shop floor, past a bank of Macs of various vintages, mostly older. Way older. Cici lingered a second there as though she was giving a grand tour to a potential client.

  “We build cool websites at half the cost of our competitors in Seattle,” she said. “Very, very current. In case you’re ever interested. Everything’s going digital. I keep hoping printing will come back like vinyl records. So far not so much.”

  Birdy acted interested just to be nice. Later she wondered what in the world she’d promote on a Kitsap County Coroner’s website (“Watch the autopsy in real time!”).

  The print shop’s second-generation owner stopped in front of a workbench facing out to the street.

  “Here,” Cici announced, while pointing to a Rubbermaid style bin, under the counter. “Amber keeps her stuff—work in progress, time fillers, and the like—right here.”

  The bin was marked with Amber’s name in a curlicue style of font and mountain scene that she’d probably drawn there on one of those boring Sundays when no one came into the store.

  Kendall sifted the contents in the bin, laying some items out on the bench. It was apparent that Amber had been experimenting with greeting card designs. She had several Christmas cards in production, as well as a birthday card.

  Birdy indicated the green of the conifers on the snowy Christmas card. The raised surface was pitted, yet shiny, and it was unmistakable how the effect had been achieved.

  “Thermography,” she said.

  “Hmmm,” Cici said. “Now that you mention it, I gave Amber a lesson on how to thermog for a card she wanted to make. She said she was looking to create something special for an Etsy store she was going to open. Unique is the word that comes to mind. I love unique. I showed her some samples, and she loved the one my dad made for the homecoming of one of those repulsive aircraft carriers in the shipyard. The graphics looked so structural. It was pretty cool. For one of those hideous ships, anyway.”

  Kendall picked through the remainder of the bin, hoping to find a sample that matched the invitation.

  “Too easy,” Birdy said, seeing what her friend was doing.

  “Or just flat-out wrong to even think it,” Kendall said. “How well do you know Amber Turner anyway?”

  “Not well. Like I said earlier, Elan likes her. She likes him. I don’t think they’re in love or anything. I mean, he’s only seventeen.”

  Kendall shifted her weight and stopped looking through the bin. “Probably just a coincidence.”

  “Right,” Birdy said. “Life seems to be full of those lately.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  A ping signaled that a text message came late that afternoon. Birdy had just completed the autopsy of a drug overdose, a teenage boy, found in a park in Bremerton. She hated a life lost young more than anything, especially when it was the result of drug abuse. She’d grown up with so much of it on the reservation. Even so, it never seemed anything less than tragic.

  The boy she’d weighed and measured, whose tissue samples she’d keep for a year, was another casualty of a world that didn’t see the troubled, hurt, and lonely for what they were. She didn’t speak to the boy, at least not aloud. She telegraphed to him as she sewed him closed that she was sorry that he hadn’t known the beauty that could have been in store for him if he’d found his way out of what he was doing.

  I know you wanted away from something. I feel it. You knew you were trapped in something from which you sought escape. All young addicts do. Your mother and father will mourn you. I mourn you, Lonny Roman.

  The text that pinged while she was working on Lonny was from her sister, Summer:

  If you want to see mom one last time, come now.

  It won’t be long. Bring Elan.

  She’d been expecting a call or text from her sister for the past few days. When one hadn’t come for a while, she wondered if Summer was not going to notify her until it was too late for a visit. Summer could use their mother’s death as the final opportunity to prove that she’d abandoned them all for her “fancy life” on the outside. Yet, she had let her know.

  Birdy texted Elan that he needed to get his schoolwork from his teachers for the next couple of days.

  Your mom says Natalie is about to die. We need to go up there.”

  She used her mother’s name because her role in Elan’s life was a complication that had recently unraveled. Natalie was not his grandmother, but his mother. His “aunt” Birdy, not his aunt, but his sister. While she knew that the switch in roles was merely a shell game of names that had no bearing on her love for and acceptance of him, it was still a fresh wo
und.

  Elan texted back:

  I want to stay here. I need to be here for when

  Amber comes back.

  She answered him:

  Kendall will keep us posted. We’ll know everything and anything first. Promise.

  She watched while he answered.

  K

  Birdy showered, dressed in her street clothes. She called Kendall and got her voice mail.

  “I’m heading up to Neah Bay to see my mom. Elan’s coming. I told him that you’d keep us in the loop on Amber and the other girls. It was the only way that I could get him to come. He’s a wreck over this whole thing. So as I head up there with him tonight, the phrase ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ comes to mind. Take care. Reception is good up there, so no excuses.”

  Elan was waiting on the front steps at Birdy’s house on Beach Drive.

  “Locked out?”

  “Nope. Just anxious. I packed a shirt and a toothbrush.” He pointed to his backpack. “Homework’s here, too.”

  “Great,” she said. “Give me a minute. Have you eaten?”

  He rolled his shoulders. “Not hungry.”

  She understood, but she wasn’t about to bring him all the way there on an empty stomach.

  “We’ll stop on the way,” she said.

  Five minutes later they were on the road heading out of town.

  “I realize you’re worried about Amber,” Birdy said. “I am too.”

  “I know,” he said, looking out the window as Port Orchard faded away behind them. “I’m sorry about Grandma,” he added.

  She was glad that he called her that. It was familiar. Rewriting an entire life in the last act was an impossible task.

  “I talked to Mom today.”

  The disclosure surprised Birdy. “You did?” she asked, to be sure that she heard correctly. “How was she?”

  Elan gave Birdy a quick look. “Okay, I guess. Sounded a little drunk. You know, pretty much like always.”

  It would have been easy for another sibling to use that setup as opportunity to spike some kind of a put-down at her alcoholic, cruel, angry sister. But that wasn’t Birdy Waterman. At least not on that day. There had been times, especially when they were younger, that a lunge for the jugular was the most satisfying move she could make.

  BOOK THREE

  KELLY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  It was hard to know what time of day it was. With none of the markers—sunlight, the cool of early morning air, the sound of birds—none of the girls knew how long they’d been kept in isolation. Chloe alternated her crying jags with a soft whimpering. So did Amber. Blake felt around the interior of her stall until she knew every sliver, every crack. Kelly sat in silence, certain that for some reason she’d be the first to die.

  Because she deserved it. At least in her escalating delirium brought on by the darkness and with a stomach empty of food and water, she allowed herself to believe that she deserved a kind of payback for all the bad things she’d done.

  She thought of her sister Kimberly and how she’d told her that she had their father’s bone structure and she was sure to grow up without pretty calves. She regretted that comment because it had devastated Kim the morning of the cheer invitational. If it was the last thing that passed between them, Kelly was sure that her sister would forget all the good times they’d had and the closeness they’d truly shared.

  Kelly shut her eyes, though she needn’t have bothered. There was nothing but darkness all around her. Closing her eyes allowed her to concentrate a little. She braced herself. She wanted to fight, but she had the sinking feeling that struggle wouldn’t get her anywhere.

  God, she thought, did I really do something so terrible to deserve this?

  * * *

  Summer’s old, dented pickup was parked in front of their mother’s place, next to Natalie’s blue Ford Focus. Birdy parked behind the Focus and repeated a warning she’d made when they had stopped at a burger joint.

  “Grandma’s very, very weak.”

  Elan lowered his eyes. “I know.”

  “I need you to prepare yourself,” Birdy said.

  He was a sensitive kid. Always had been. That was one of the reasons he came to live with her. He’d felt beat down, abused, ignored by his mother and father.

  “I’m prepared,” he said. “I can handle it.”

  She touched his knee.

  “Your mom too?”

  “Right. Mom too.”

  “Good. Let’s go inside.”

  “Should I bring my stuff?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “We can get that later.”

  Birdy braced herself and turned the knob on the front door. Her relationship with her mother had always been complicated. Now more than ever. She knew that times like this often only exacerbated the rift between family members as they jockey for the status that comes with being perceived as the one who cares the most. Birdy had abdicated that to her sister, long ago. How could she not? Summer had been there for their mother’s ups and downs, medical and otherwise. While Birdy had a medical degree, she was careful not to question anything that her sister was doing to make their mother more comfortable.

  Natalie Waterman’s alcoholism and emphysema had already weakened her considerably over the past few years. She no longer did the things that made her a part of the community. No bingo. No woodcarving, which she’d taken up after her husband Mackie died. No hunting for heart-shaped stones on the shore in her “secret” spot just north of Ruby Beach. She let her black hair turn white, though she didn’t cut it. The blackened tips looked like ermine tails, and she seemed proud of that.

  Summer had recounted what their mother had said during one of those rare phone calls they’d shared. “After I’m gone, you should sell this hair. Someone could make something very interesting with it.”

  The stage-four lung cancer diagnosis had been recent. In the way that the sick often avoid all the warnings they’d had until it was too late, Natalie admitted to Summer that the pain she’d felt deep inside, the shortness of breath, the blood she’d coughed up one day, had been more than the usual annoyance.

  “I hurt like a son of a bitch,” she said. “But for a while I thought it was just me getting older,” she said.

  “You’re not that old,” Summer said.

  “Old enough to know that that there’s no point in fighting to live. What for? More TV? They’ve changed hosts on QVC. With Lisa Robertson gone, I just don’t care anymore.”

  Summer stood when Birdy and Elan came inside. A cigarette dangled from her fingertips.

  “Your fancy car is so quiet,” she said. “It’s like you go around sneaking up on people, don’t you?”

  The greeting was bait. Birdy ignored it.

  “Hi, Summer,” she said.

  Natalie lifted her hand.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “She’s not waving,” Summer said. “She wants a puff.”

  Summer put the cigarette up to Natalie’s lips. The ember glowed for a flash.

  “Don’t judge,” Summer said to her sister. “Remember, you don’t get to judge.”

  Elan moved closer, unsure of what to say or do.

  “You too, Elan,” Summer said. “You don’t get to judge. Come here and give your mother a hug and say hello to Grandma.”

  The hug that passed between them was no longer than the fleeting ember on the cigarette Summer had given to their mother. It was stiff, awkward, but Birdy was glad for Elan’s part in it. He wasn’t going to let his mother tear him down, hurt him, control him.

  He wasn’t going to let Summer do all the things that their mother had done to them.

  Birdy’s eyes moved to a hospital bed that had been wheeled into the living room.

  “She wants to die on her own sofa,” Summer said, watching Elan as he tucked himself into the space between where she sat and Natalie lay.

  “Grandma, it’s me, Elan.”

  “I know who you are,” she said, her voice
a smoky dry croak.

  “I came to tell you that I love you.”

  Her eyes traveled from his to Birdy, who stood behind him.

  “I see you brought Miss Smarty Pants with you,” she said.

  Elan knew what she was doing. She was being Grandma. She was tough, cold, and indifferent when it seemed to matter most. It was as though the only joy she’d been able to conjure for as long as he could remember was by sparring with someone. It was who she was.

  “Mom,” Birdy said, “I came to be with you.”

  “Last trip to the reservation,” she said.

  “This is my home, Mom. You, Summer, and Elan are my family.”

  “This isn’t your home. And you need to find a new family. I’m about to die. Your sister hates you. And Elan doesn’t belong to you.”

  Birdy had told herself that she wasn’t going to cry, no matter what her mother said.

  “Look, Mom,” she said, keeping it together, “let’s focus on some of the good things. Yes, you are going to die. Someday we all will die. I don’t want you to leave this earth without knowing how much I love you.”

  Natalie coughed out a laugh. She took a crumpled tissue from where it was resting on her chest and dabbed at her mouth “That’s funny,” she said.

  “What’s funny?” Birdy asked.

  “You lie. You always do. You’re here for you. You know it. I know it. Be gone with you.”

  Birdy stood there. Quiet. Thinking about what to say but absolutely not crying.

  “Mom,” Summer said before Birdy could come back with anything, “Elan and Birdy are here because I asked them to come. I want them here for me. For you too.”

  Natalie shrugged a bony shoulder and waved her hand again.

  “I need another puff, Summer.”

  * * *

  While Elan did his homework in Summer’s old bedroom, Birdy and Summer sat with their mother. Natalie had taken a dose of morphine for the pain and was asleep. Summer played with their mother’s hair awhile, but it wasn’t really an effort with a style or even an endgame.