Harkham's Case (Harkam's #1)

by Chanse Lowell

  He nodded and they went to work, scrubbing and telling lame jokes.

  “I tried to get clean for you, ya know,” he said as they finished putting away the last disinfected dish.

  “Why would you do it for me? Do it for yourself.”

  “I don’t care about me. Nobody does. You think my dad gives a rat’s ass if I’m falling down drunk on the couch?” He snorted.

  “I suppose not, but you can leave. Get out of this place. Graduate, figure out what you want to do.” She nudged him with her shoulder, then handed him a garbage bag to start filling.

  “I have no idea what I want to do.” He shrugged.

  “Start a mechanic shop. Fix cars. You fix yours all the time.” She grabbed her own bag and started throwing trash in by the handfuls. She moved toward the table. She was determined her dad would eat there tonight.

  “I hate fixing that piece of scrap metal. It sucks. I only do it because I can’t afford to pay for a mechanic.”

  “You do it because you waste your money on drugs. Stop paying for that fucked up shit, and save your money. Come to Phoenix. Go to school there. Open a shop where there are plenty of customers. This is a go-nowhere town. There’s skiing and nothing else. You and I both hate skiing, so there’s nothing for you here.” She tripped over the corner of a ratty old throw-rug. She’d try to wash that thing later and see if it was salvageable.

  “What about you?” He shot her a wry look. “What does Princess Mari plan to do after she’s done with high school? You don’t seem to like Phoenix that much at all.”

  “What I’d really like to do is backpack across Europe. They like women with meat on their bones—they don’t expect women to be impossibly thin with big boobs.”

  He laughed, and she tossed a tennis shoe at him. His reflexes were good, and he dodged it.

  “But since I don’t have the money for that, I’m hoping to join the peace corps for a few years if they’ll have me.” She shrugged with her right shoulder.

  “What happened to wanting to be a teacher? You used to talk about it all the time, how you wanted to teach kindergarten.”

  Her left eyebrow rose, her lips pursed and her right hand landed on her hip. “What do you think?”

  “Oh, yeah . . . Right. Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “But if that . . . incident hadn’t happened, would you have become a grade-school teacher?”

  She sniffed, moving the bandanna to cover more of her nose since it was slipping. “Probably. I love kids. Always have—always will.”

  “Maybe someday you wi—”

  “No, Victor. That dream’s dead. I can’t ever be around kids for any length of time on my own. It would kill me.”

  “I hear ya. And just so you know . . . I do feel guilty. Every damn day, and it’s worse when I see Owen or Claire. They look right through me like I’m glass.”

  “Do they still talk to you?” She got a little choked up just thinking about Owen and Claire. They were such good people. They’d simply made some poor decisions when they were younger.

  He paused and sat on the floor. “Yeah. They try to act like it never happened, like their baby Megan never existed, but I can see it in their eyes. They keep talking about going away to college together, but they don’t. I think they worry if they leave, they really will forget their baby girl.”

  “I doubt anybody will ever forget her. I know I never will . . .”

  They went silent and resumed cleaning.

  The work went so much faster with Vic here to lift heavy objects and help her clear surfaces.

  They were three fourths of the way through the kitchen when her dad came through the door, a gun pointed at his daughter.

  “Put that bag down,” her dad said through clenched teeth. Tears squished into the creases on his rounded face.

  “I’m helping you, Dad. That’s all I’m doing,” she said and carefully stuffed a sock into the bag.

  “These are my things. I want to keep them.” He stepped closer, the gun steady.

  “You’d shoot me to protect your stuff?” She shoved in an empty can next. “You’d pick objects over your own flesh and blood?”

  “I don’t know you anymore. You’re a stranger to me. You come here, bully me by kicking me out and then throwing away the treasures I’ve collected over the years.” His hand shook now as his eyes went to slits. “A lot of the stuff I own is invaluable—very priceless. And I found them. Me! I took the time to discover them—worked hard to collect all of this.”

  “I didn’t kick you out. You left.” She frowned.

  Victor was slowly making his way to stand between her and her father.

  She shooed him away with her hand behind her back. This was nothing he needed to be involved with.

  “I helped you! I’m the one who made sure they didn’t press charges when you murdered that little baby. I’m the one that fed you, clothed you, helped you to get over it all.” Her dad’s face turned red as he shook all over.

  “No, Dad. You’re the one who tried to medicate me with fatty food like you were doing to yourself. It didn’t make me better, it made me worse. I started doing more drugs so I wouldn’t gain more weight.” She settled the bag on the floor, put her palms up so he could see she stopped. “I was miserable, but I knew it hurt you to see it, so I pretended everything was fine for your benefit. When you weren’t looking, I was out partying with my friends, getting hammered.” She shifted to the side to block Vic’s view. She opened the collar of her flannel shirt so he could see the scar on her chest. “I tried to kill myself. I used a knife, but I missed. Mom never told you. It happened after rehab, after I ran away and came back. I wanted to die, but did it wrong, because I knew I deserved to live in my misery.”

  He dropped the gun, hunched over as his eyes scrunched tight and he covered his mouth as he sobbed.

  Victor bolted after the gun and ran outside with it.

  She refastened her shirt. “It was all worse than you thought.” She approached her father and stroked his greasy hair. He reeked of BO and had the beginnings of a beard.

  “I didn’t know . . . I really didn’t . . . It was that bad?” he choked out.

  “It was so bad I had no idea how to exist without either drugging myself up or hiding.” She crouched down next to him. “But I’m better now. That’s why I didn’t want to come here. Too many bad memories, too many friends here that are still on drugs, wanting me to join them. This place is no good for me. And I wish I could get you out of here, too.”

  “No. This is my life. This is where I was born and raised. I have friends here,” he said.

  She pushed off her knees to stand up straight. “Who is that, huh? Who do you hang out with and spend time with? Nobody comes over, because you won’t let anybody inside the door. You’ll probably die here when your junk avalanches on top of you and you can’t move to call for help.” It was cruel, but he had to hear it. “I love you, Dad, and I’m sorry you had to watch me self-destruct, but I learned that from you. Time to stop doing this to yourself. You’ve been slowly killing yourself for years.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He strained to get upright, but when she tried to help him, he jerked out of her hold. “I’m fine. I haven’t had time to clean lately, that’s all.”

  “Why? Because it’s some other sports season you can’t escape from? Because your chair has swallowed your ass?”

  He shoved a finger in her face. “You’re my guest here, and you won’t talk to me like that.”

  “Then you’ll let me finish cleaning your kitchen, cook you healthy meals while I’m here, and I won’t touch any of your other rooms. I’ll even keep quiet about our issues, and we’ll go back to pretending like they don’t exist, even though they’re bigger than the mounds of crap in this house.”

  He gripped her shoulder and leaned forward. “You do that, and tell Victor Acedo—that asshole—I want my gun back.”

  “No.” She held her breath for a second. “You can have your gun bac
k after I leave.” She shrugged his hand off her.

  “I have more in the house.”

  “I know you do, and I can get to them before you do and have them tossed out a window before you can do anything about it.” She smiled.

  “You’ve become nothing but a tormenting snob, just like your mother.”

  “I took the worst traits from both my parents—lucky me.” She turned and went out the side kitchen door to find Victor.

  He rejoined her after stashing her dad’s gun in his car, and they finished cleaning the rest of the kitchen over the next hour, trying desperately to ignore how thick the tension was in the air.

  When they were done, Victor took her grocery shopping.

  She cooked them all a healthy meal, and both men complained about it.

  When they were done eating, Vic left without even saying goodbye.

  It was no big deal. She didn’t blame him. It was her job to clean up the mess by herself. Fine by her. She needed time to think anyway.

  After the kitchen was clean, her dad was asleep in his chair, so she went through the entire house, documenting on her phone how her father lived.

  It made her heart crash to her feet to see the stuff he thought was worth spending money on and keeping under his roof.

  Boxes of old magazines nobody cared about were filling closets. Old rusted bicycles with missing seats or handle bars were hanging from the ceiling of his bedroom. The windows were cracked in there because he had crates of vinyl records and VHS tapes that had at some point collapsed into the panes.

  Mountains of useless objects were everywhere. It was amazing he hadn’t fallen already and broken a leg.

  As she went back out to the living room, she saw for the first time how swollen his feet truly were. The poor man’s ankles were bulging, and the rest of his feet were covered with red blotches—the skin all dry and cracking. It looked painful.

  She kneeled down and examined closer. There were ingrown hairs that looked infected.

  She almost gagged when she smelled that putrid odor.

  Jesus. Why hadn’t he done anything about this?

  And what the hell was he doing to himself to make it get to this point? She got up and walked swiftly to her room.

  The minute the door was closed, she had her arms across her torso and shook with each silent sob.

  This was what she could have turned into. If the drugs hadn’t taken her, then food would’ve.

  She’d rather eat dirt every day of her life than be this.

  Chapter 14

  Adam refused to believe her first email. Today’s would be better.

  He opened it and read:

  Adam,

  I told you I’d share everything, and I will. But first, look at these photos I’ve sent you. This is my dad’s house. There’s also a picture of him asleep in his chair. I want you to see what it’s like here, and why I don’t want you to join me in this pit.

  Once you’ve done that, pretend you’re sipping a soda on a full stomach while I tell you more.

  I told you I missed baby Megan’s funeral, and I did. But what I neglected to say was I tried to go to her grave many times, but I never could bring myself to do it. Maybe someday I can be brave like you and find a way to get there.

  For now, I tell myself she’s in a good place. One I’ll never be in.

  That’s okay, though—I accepted my fate long ago. Today I realized even though it’s too late for me, I can help save other people. I want to tell you about a friend of mine, Victor.

  Adam’s gut tightened and he felt sick. He pulled the laptop closer.

  I did a lot of bad things with him. He was my drug dealer, and as I told your dad, I exchanged drugs for sex. At first it was fun. I felt needed and wanted. Victor was funny and so were his friends. They didn’t treat me like a stupid twelve-year-old even though he was fifteen when I met him. He let me party with him, and I was hooked. Anything to be away from my dad. It was depressing to watch him eat, drink beer and watch sports all the time.

  Dad trusted Victor and his group of friends. Vic lives with his dad at the ski resort, where his dad pretty much runs the place. Needless to say, his father’s busy, and adult supervision is lacking. I could stay up all night, get drunk, smoke pot. No one minded.

  And then I got to know his good friend Owen. Owen and his girlfriend Claire had a baby when she was sixteen. Their daughter Megan was rambunctious but so sweet. You actually remind me of her in a lot of ways when you’re laughing and carefree. I really loved that little girl, but I loved Owen more. I had been intimate with him a few times when we were high, and I thought he loved me. I thought some day he’d leave Claire for me.

  I was naive. He told me one night when I was babysitting to ignore the baby if she cried after I put her in the crib to go to sleep. So I did. I had no idea that she was choking on her vomit.

  I think you’ve figured out now why I have episodes when I throw up or somebody else around me does. It thrusts me into a spiral where all I can see is her lifeless body lying in her own mess.

  Well, Vic was with me that night as I told you in my email yesterday. The problem is he feels guilty, too. He’s trapped himself here, still does drugs and drinks a ton. I want to help him get out of here and have a life. I’ve told him to get his GED and come to Phoenix since he dropped out of high school years ago. He can become an auto mechanic since he’s good with his hands that way, and maybe someday he’ll open his own shop. I believe he’s more than capable of doing these things.

  It’s you, though, Adam. You’re the reason I want to help him and my dad. Victor came here to apologize to me today for hurting me the night I arrived. He said some nasty things to me on the way from the airport to my father’s house.

  Tears soaked Adam’s shirt, and snot dripped onto his lip. He barely wiped it away before continuing on with reading. How dare that guy be mean to her? She’d been through enough! His hands shook as he held onto the laptop.

  I’ve forgiven him. It doesn’t matter. I want him to get better. I want my dad better, too.

  Today Vic and I cleaned out my dad’s kitchen. It took hours, and I’m exhausted because before that I was cleaning out my bedroom. My dad hates me right now. And before you shake your head and say he doesn’t—he held a gun on me. He cried, like I told you he would, and we agreed I wouldn’t throw away any more of his stuff if he’d let me keep the kitchen cleared and cook him healthy meals while I’m here.

  He has no desire to make a new life for himself or get out of this hole here, but I can’t stop hoping he’ll change his mind when I leave. But then I hoped maybe you’d do the same when I left—change your mind about me. Last time I talked to you, it sounded like that wasn’t what had happened. I’m still hoping.

  He needs help. He’s probably over three hundred and fifty pounds. I know I’m not one to talk. I’m sure you went through my phone when you had it and saw I used to be over two hundred myself. At least he had an excuse. Not long after my mom left him, he was doing a routine stop for a speeding ticket and when he approached the car on foot, they ran him down, hurting his back. He’s had chronic back pain ever since and exercising is excruciating, so he packed on the weight. My only excuse was I felt better when I ate, and I love donuts just like you do. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I have an addictive personality, and I had a sugar problem like nobody else you’ve ever met.

  My mom says I’m addicted to exercise now, and I push myself too hard. You witnessed that when I barfed all over in the parking lot. I’m sure she’s right, but I’d rather be thin and have people at least not have to judge me for being fat on top of all my other issues I keep hidden inside me. She nags me about it each chance she gets. That’s why I don’t eat dinner with her. She’ll glare at me and my salad while she eats a burger she bought at McDonald’s. I don’t eat with my dad either—not because he lectures me, but because it makes me want to cry when I see what he’s putting in his body. He’s killing himself slowly, and he doesn’t want m
y help.

  Be happy you have a family you can eat dinner with. I have no idea what that feels like . . .

  I love that your family does that and Samara makes it a priority in your house. Thank her for me for doing that.

  Okay, enough for now. I’ll save my story of drugs, sex and rock and roll for tomorrow if you can handle it.

  Love,

  Mari

  His heart clenched. Her pain oozed out of her writing. It was crippling to know she was stuck there in that mess. The photos were shocking—especially of her father. He looked half-dead in that chair of his.

  Thoughts exploded in his head of Victor at her side helping her, then it morphed to singeing, burning numbers. His eyes hurt and his ears stung.

  “Naaaaagh!” he howled, picked up his chair at the desk in his room and smashed it into the window. He screamed numbers and threw anything heavy he could find. Glass was flying around him.

  There was the faint whisper of something Mari had told him about turning the numbers into notes and humming music. But he didn’t want to do that. He wanted to be Victor—he wanted to be at her side in the mess, elbow deep in sludge and vermin if it meant she was smiling at him, trusting him to get through it with her.

  Somebody screamed behind him for him to stop, but he had a baseball bat in his hands and rammed a hole into the wall. Drywall flew past him in chunks. Just as he went to repeat that action, tight arms were around his and locked onto his chest. He was wrestled down onto the bed. “Stop it, man,” Zach said in his ear. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

  “I don’t care! She’s with somebody else—not me!” Adam cried.

  “I’m gonna let go, and you’re gonna talk to me without destroying anything. I’ll even help you clean this mess up before dad gets home, but you have to tell me what’s going on. All of it. I’ll help you . . .” The arms slowly loosened and Adam scampered off the bed and threw himself into a corner where he contained himself into a little ball and cried until his guts were about to come out.