Take and Give

by Amanda G. Stevens

  Lee stepped toward him. “What are you doing?”

  He labored for breath.

  “Marcus, do you need something?” He wasn’t moving toward the bathroom.

  He shook his head. He took another step, slow, firm, certain. The next one wobbled on his damaged knee. His free hand fisted and pulled into his side as he steadied himself.

  “What are you doing?”

  Another head shake.

  Lee moved beside him to take his weight. Stiffening, he withdrew, and the knee gave out. As he pitched toward the floor, he reached for the wall and found nothing to grip. Lee stepped into his fall and planted her feet. A cry burst from him as they collided. She held him up. His back was warm, almost feverish, under her hands.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve got you.”

  He turned his face away and tried to pull back, but he lacked the strength to resist her. The sound that seeped between his lips was half growl, half moan, wholly helpless.

  Lee dragged his spent body to the bed, but he pushed away from it. She took him to the stuffed chair and lowered him as gently as possible. One arm circled his ribs as he rocked forward.

  She should talk to him. She shouldn’t want to break out the windows, pound a hammer into the walls, shatter the mirror and the television. She retrieved a water bottle and the Motrin from their place on the nightstand and brought them to him. He’d be ready for another dose in an hour anyway. He took the pill without argument. Lee went to the small refrigerator and pulled out a gel pack. The unit didn’t have a freezer, so the gel was soft.

  She crouched in front of him. “Can you sit up?”

  He shut his eyes and uncurled slightly. Lee held the cold pack to his side.

  “What were you doing?” she said.

  “Getting … stronger.”

  “Obviously not.”

  In one blink, the depleted haze left his eyes. “No. You don’t get to do this.”

  “I’m only pointing out—”

  “You can’t be angry I’m not strong enough. And then be angry I’m trying to fix it.”

  Was that how he saw this? “I’m not angry, Marcus.”

  “That’s crap.”

  Fine. He didn’t look inclined to give up her chair, so she settled on the bed where Austin had slept and opened her book.

  “Lee. I get it.”

  Not likely. Lee tossed the book onto the bed. “I want your permission to sedate you, should the Constabulary search the hotel.”

  His eyes blazed.

  “You’d prefer to be delivered to Mayweather in handcuffs?”

  The blow struck center mass, as she’d intended. He punched down on the arm of the chair.

  I’m sorry. Yet not, if it convinced him. “Please. Let me do this.”

  “No.”

  The look held. Knowledge and trust see-sawed between them.

  “It’s a simple way out, Marcus. A sensible way out. You won’t be denying anything.”

  “I’m telling you,” he said. “No.”

  They passed a silent hour. Marcus tipped his head back against the chair and shut his eyes, but strained respiration gave away his wakefulness. Lee stared at her book and allowed the words to blur. While Marcus had struggled around the room, his ribs hadn’t been the main source of pain until she’d caught him around his torso. She evaluated his every sign in her mind’s eye. She waited until he stirred … and leaned forward to grip the inside of his knee. Nothing like a patient’s actions answering her question before she could ask it.

  “Is the pain constant?” she said.

  He looked up, then down at his knee. “I don’t know.”

  “There was no swelling when I first examined it. I assumed the injury was minor.”

  An error on her part. The injury was old, past the point of swelling, but it could still affect function if the original damage had been severe. She was a trauma nurse, not a physical therapist, and the dangers of the pneumonia and rib damage had superseded anything else at the time. No excuses, though.

  Marcus shrugged.

  “Can you tell me now how it happened?” she said.

  His eyes dimmed. He shook his head.

  Lee pushed off the bed and crouched beside him. “Can you point out the specific location of the pain?”

  “My knee.”

  Tread lightly. Even that obvious confession drew a blush of embarrassment up his neck, into his cheeks. He’d bury this subject any moment. All right, then, she wouldn’t require words. She pushed the lounge pants up to his mid-thigh. Her pulse throbbed in her thumbs, in her chest, as she placed her hands on either side of his knee.

  “Tell me if this causes you any further pain. Will you do that?”

  He nodded.

  For ten minutes, she massaged. Marcus’s head fell back against the chair cushion, and for a moment she hesitated, but the crinkles that formed around his mouth, his eyes … no, not pain. Relief.

  “Marcus?”

  “It’s helping. I think.”

  Lee kneaded lower, into his shrunken calf muscle, knotted with disuse. He breathed harder when she dug her fingers in, but she massaged his entire leg, down to the ankle and back up, then moved to the other one. The atrophy in those muscles was no less severe. He’d lain immobile for weeks, probably months. Finally she worked the injured knee through a few gentle exercises, and Marcus gritted his teeth and let her. Therapists had tests she didn’t know, but a valgus and varus stress test was an obvious choice. And telling, when she applied stress to the inside of the knee. He had probably injured the MCL. Somehow, he’d bent his knee inward.

  She could rig up a moist heat pack from hand towels and water that ran from the tap until it steamed. But first, after the exercise, she should massage a few more minutes. The bones of his knee ground against her palms, a knee that had carried him all his life, allowed him without a second thought to run the park paths, jog with Indy, hop up into his pickup truck, pace her living room rug …

  She was touching Marcus.

  “Lee?”

  Her hands had retreated to her lap. Her gaze was fixed on his knee, but she was seeing … his body. Unclothed, lathered, rinsed, bruised, shivering … his. His hair between her fingers, stiff and oily, then softened and wavy after the shampoo.

  “It’s okay.”

  Lee blinked and looked up. His eyes held hers, steady, seeing. “I …”

  It’s not that I don’t want to.

  “I know,” he said.

  33

  Violet had made it to Grace Bible Church. Austin trailed her there, out of sight, not leaving until she’d been inside for an hour. He tried to make himself go inside, but the doorway seemed too narrow, and he imagined the questions they would ask him. He shouldered his bag and wandered without anything like a destination.

  The town was the sort that made you want to smile even if your life had recently gone up in flames. Black lampposts held guard duty along the commercial streets, while oak trees older than his favorite music groups shielded the neighborhoods. Every pedestrian he passed waved or smiled or said hello-and-how-about-this-weather. And the space. The sparseness of the population revealed itself in more obvious things like the non-existent traffic, but there was also this strange sense that everyone here had plenty of room. Real front yards, buildings constructed outward, not upward. Nowhere Austin walked did he ever feel crowded. In Michigan—the southeast suburbs, anyway—these people would suffocate. He passed too many churches, a children’s learning center, a library, a volunteer fire station, an actual “general store,” and more churches.

  Austin kept walking.

  By the time dusk settled, his stomach was growling. Two hundred thirty-five dollars nestled in a white security envelope in the zip pocket of his bag, alongside his wallet and gun. Technically his money, since his was all they ha
d left, but …

  Forget it. He was hungry.

  He fast-walked back to Third Street and watched for a fast-food place, but there didn’t seem to be a single one. At last he found Rosita’s Burritos. He’d rather have a steak burger, but this would do. He shouldn’t text Violet. She’d been clear, and she wouldn’t go hungry at a church acting as a shelter.

  The restaurant was brick, like most everything around here, set across from a quilt shop and alongside, wow, another quilt shop. He’d have called that a small-town stereotype if he hadn’t seen it for himself. On its other side was a furnace/AC business.

  While he ate Rosita’s chimichanga with ground beef, sitting in a white metal chair at a cement table outside the café-sized restaurant, he reassembled his phone. It involved frequent napkin use, but whatever. He wanted his phone back.

  He used the last bite of tortilla to wipe every hint of signature sauce and sour cream from the plate. He wiped his hands on the paper napkin and pressed the home/power button.

  By the time he disposed of his trash, the phone was vibrating and pinging and generally overloading. Eleven voicemails, twenty-nine texts, a few emails. At least his social media apps were set to the least aggressive settings. He had to check those to know if anyone had messaged him.

  Of the voicemails, a few were buddies wondering what was up, one was Tamara, that girl from Elysium, and six were, of course, Esther. Of the texts, she had about the same ratio. She had even emailed him once:

  big bro,

  please let me know if you’re dead. j/k …… right?

  middle sis

  He listened to every voicemail, waiting for the words. “We’re perfectly fine.” She’d say them for the first time now, while he was thousands of miles away. He couldn’t move while the phone played each minute-long tirade, all starting the same way: “It’s me, big bro, and we’re all clear.”

  Her last message wasn’t boisterous or demanding or sarcastic. She had left it two hours ago.

  “It’s me, big bro … um, we’re all clear … I—I’m getting scared, Austin. You don’t do this to us. Olivia has it all figured out, that you went undercover on some big Constabulary mission and you couldn’t tell us about it. But you would never do that. Even if your boss said, ‘don’t tell a single living person,’ you’d tell me. I know you would. So … if you could … call me? Please?”

  She hung up without a good-bye.

  He almost hurled the phone against the table. Esther was right. He would somehow find a way to tell her about a deep cover mission, if the Constabulary ordered such things. So why hadn’t he found a way to tell her about this?

  Because you were running for your life and any contact would have probably gotten you killed?

  It didn’t seem like much of an excuse. He drew in a shaky breath and pulled up his phone contacts. A breeze wrapped around him, cooling as the sun dipped away, but the chill up his back had another source. Jason would be watching for this number to ping somewhere. Monitoring their phones, Mom and Esther and Olivia, even his Elysium friends and acquaintances, figuring at some point he’d commit the ultimate living-off-the-grid sin and call someone for moral support.

  Well, it didn’t matter. Jason had no jurisdiction here.

  He thumbed the number and listened to the ringback, something obnoxious and synthetic. It was new. Probably only been in the Top 40 for a few days. Esther wouldn’t delay. He smiled as it looped. He’d have rolled his eyes at it last week.

  “Uh … Austin?”

  “It’s me, middle sis.”

  “What the—” A stream of words he’d never heard from her followed for several seconds. “What is wrong with you, what did you do, drop your phone in the toilet? And your computer? And then take off to Europe with some porn star?”

  “Esther, listen—”

  “Because your apartment has been locked up with your car in the lot for at least the last four days, and I totally thought you were totally dead!”

  “I’m not dead. Totally or otherwise.”

  “Shut up.” A sob burst over the line.

  “Okay.”

  She cried into the phone, hiding nothing. Austin blinked hard and looked up at the indigo void above him, shot through with waning pink sunbeams. In a minute, Esther sniffled and said, “Tell me why I should forgive you.”

  “Olivia was … about twenty percent right.”

  “You’re undercover?”

  “No, not that part.”

  “Your boss told you to swear off your family and give your all to the cause and focus on your cases?”

  “Um … Olivia came up with all that?”

  “No, numbskull, this is me mouthing off at you. Can’t you tell the difference anymore?”

  Austin propped his arms on the table and let the cement grind into his elbows. An elderly couple, both with walkers, shuffled into Rosita’s and angled curious glances at him as they passed.

  “You’re not going to tell me anything about it, are you?” Esther said.

  “This is what I can tell you. I’m not in Michigan right now”—he didn’t let her gasp turn into more cussing—“and my job is the reason I had to leave. And I don’t know when I’m coming back, but I won’t have to go dark again. You can call me anytime, and I’ll answer.”

  “Is it the same time zone?”

  She might figure it out, but anyone who could use it against him already knew. And can’t get to you here, anyway, remember? “I’m an hour earlier than you.”

  “So … west, but not as far as, say, Colorado.” But that topic must not hold much interest at the moment, because she continued before he could determine the wisdom of blurting out his location. “And you left because of your job, but not because of undercover. Was there danger?”

  Austin sighed and stood up. He shivered. Maybe he ought to try to find some shelter for the night. A few bucks on a fast-food-priced chimichanga was one thing. A hotel room … no. Maybe Grace Bible Church wasn’t the only place offering aid, though it soured his insides to consider begging.

  “Well, was there?”

  “You need to let it go, Esther.”

  The laugh she barked in his ear was one that wanted to be angry instead of hurt, the one she’d been using since the day Austin moved out. “Sure, that’s fair. You up and disappear and I let it go.”

  So easy to forget she was still a kid. She’d grown up as fast as he had … well, maybe not quite.

  “I’m totally entitled to …” A quiet gasp, and her voice dropped. “This is about that guy, isn’t it, the dirty con-cop. Samuel Stiles.”

  The man’s name hit him in the chest, the last thing he’d said to Austin. “Guard them well, that’s all I ask.”

  And here he sat in solitude, guarding no one. Sorry, Stiles. I’ve mangled the whole thing.

  “Well,” Esther said, “you can come home then. He’s in jail.”

  “I know he is. But he’s not the reason I have to stay … away, for a while.”

  “Austin—”

  “Hey. It’s your turn to shut up.”

  She was silent.

  “This is not because you’re fourteen, honey. It’s because I am not able to talk about it. To anyone. It’s for your protection, my protection, and the protection of some people …”

  “Some people you care about.”

  What? No. That is, not other than Violet. “I guess I do.” All right, maybe a little.

  “So … I should get someone else to take me to the concert this weekend.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  She sighed.

  Austin paused in his trek down Third Street to eye the lit sign to his right. St. Jude Assistance Mission. He walked toward the door, and his feet froze to the concrete. Esther’s voice in his ear, her image in his head, tucking the purple stripe of hair behind her ear and rolling he
r eyes rather than succumbing to disappointment—he couldn’t check himself into a homeless shelter while her repaired faith soaked through the phone line. Prying and pouting and all, Esther still believed in him.

  “Esther, I have to go.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? That’s a big bro promise. We need to catch up.”

  “Okay.” Her voice perked a bit. “And I can tell Livvy and Mom that you’re okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Bye, then.”

  “Bye.”

  He shoved the phone into his pocket. He gulped down whatever pride he had left. As he opened the door, a bell rang above it. From nearby, a faucet ran, dishes clanked, and quiet chatter tried to embrace him. No, thanks.

  A woman approached from around a partition wall. Older than him by multiple decades, she wore a ruffled yellow apron over her jeans and sweater and dried her hands on a dishtowel.

  “How can I help you?” She smiled.

  Austin glanced around, up, down, anywhere but her eyes. “I was hoping you could … I mean, I thought if you had something … Actually, I only need a …”

  If he finished any of those sentences, he could never call himself a man again.

  He returned the woman’s smile and tried to smooth his voice. “I’m sorry, I’ve made a mistake. Thank you, though.”

  Her voice followed him out, but the roaring in his ears muted the words. He broke into a run, slung the handle of his bag over his shoulder and gripped it while he retraced the steps of the day. Headlights passed on his right, and at least one person tried to offer him a ride. He ran faster.

  Until he reached that vacant parking lot and dropped to his knees beside the rock pile. He tossed his bag down and pulled out the shirts, the jeans, and layered them over his body. He left the gun unloaded but settled it near his right hand, in case a bluff was necessary. Then he lay back with his head on the mostly empty bag that barely pillowed him from the blacktop. He shut his eyes and, for the sake of exploring every angle, tried to find reasons to stay in this country that didn’t want him.