Jump The Line (Toein' The Line Book 1)

by McFarland, Mary

  Like Ang said, I should have Googled this . . . this . . .“Pig,”I say, hissing toward Aidan’s retreating back.

  My cell phone in hand, I call Robin. Like always, he doesn’t answer.

  I punch in his speed dial, call again.

  No answer.

  I’ve got to get to his overnight bag before the LEOs find it, so I make a run for my apartment, and then I do the unthinkable.

  I call Berta Colby.

  * * *

  This is the phone call I’ve been dreading since I first moved away from Goshen. I had my diploma in one hand, my scholarship in the other, and Robin in my beater car I’d bought with money scraped together waitressing at the Fried Pickle, my grandmother’s restaurant.

  This is the first time I’ve spoken with her in four years, but I have no choice. It’s possible Robin might be hiding at her place.“Mom, it’s me.”

  “Where the hell are you? Why haven’t you called or visited? Too good for me, huh?”

  I remember why Mom and I haven’t spoken, or at least one reason why. “Mom, stop yelling,”I say, interrupting her rant.

  “What’s wrong? Are you too good to call yourself a Colby? Four goddamm years, and I don’t get one word from you, my only daughter, my baby girl . . . not one fucking word—”

  “Mom—”

  I can’t get her stopped. “Shut up,”I yell, feeling a dam of anger bursting inside me. “You want the truth? You were never there for me. Never. What reason do I have to call you or come see you? What reason do I have to call you my mother?”

  Silence. Neither one of us says anything. I’m expecting the usual violent reaction, her curses and crying, a ploy for my sympathy. “White trash drama,”Ang called mom’s dysfunctional behavior, although Ang never knew I wasn’t one-hundred percent white: I never told her. And she’d been right every time, except this one. I get a surprise.

  “I’m sorry, Laney,”Berta says, sounding defeated. “I’ve been waiting all this time for you to call, and what do I do? I piss you off again. Please accept my apology, baby girl—”

  I hear the sorrow in her voice and feel like a little shit for punishing her with my absence all this time. She really sounds like she means what she’s saying. It’s a first. Her sobs sound real. “I’ve earned that,”she blubbers on. “I can’t believe I hurt you the way I have. I’m sorry, honey—”

  I don’t disagree with her. I also don’t lighten up. “Yes, you’ve earned it, Berta, and more.”

  What about me, though? What’ve I done to earn her respect?

  Something that’s been breaking loose inside me since I was a little girl, those tiny gravels that prevent me from saying the L word—love—or having good solid relationships, all the little emotional blocks holding back the avalanche of emotions, bursts loose and starts tumbling free.

  Yeah, she’s an addict.

  She’s never been what anyone would call a good mom.

  Our ratty trailer in Goshen isn’t a Home-a-Rama model.

  Berta Colby is no Martha Stewart, although both have done hard time.

  Berta’s a heroine addict.

  But none of that’s the point.

  The point is I’ve been hurting for the past four years, same as she has, or to be brutally honest, I’ve been hurting all my life. But I’ve only got one mom, and I’ve ignored her, pretended she didn’t exist for my own selfish reasons, afraid of how my friends might react to her coarseness. It’s time to put on my big girl panties, try to change the terrible dynamic of my family’s relationship. I figure the best place to start is with her.

  I need her help.

  I need my mom.

  I’m not sorry for calling her out, but I’m sorry for not stepping up to the plate and talking to her, for not being a bigger person four years ago. “Mom, I’m sorry. Can we start over?”

  I’m shaking, feeling like I want to cry, but I can’t. “I’ve missed you, too,”I hear myself saying. She’s all I’ve got in this world. Who else could I turn to right now?

  We’re laughing and talking, and I’m trying hard, but I can’t cut her short. “It’s your fault I’ve not called, Mom.”

  She laughs. “No, it’s yours, Laney.”

  When we talk, we try to show whose ideas are best. I think mine are. She knows hers are. We argue in circles until one of us gives up, usually me.

  She coughs. Cigarettes have been turning her lungs to tar pits for years. “What’s going on, Laney?”she asks. “Why’d you call? Not that I’m not glad,”she adds.

  I’ve got another decision to make before I can answer. One more thing to forgive Berta for, to forgive myself for. When she was pregnant with me, she jacked heroin into her veins. I was born a club foot as a result. I’ve held my disability against her, blamed her, looking only at the negative. I need to focus on the positive. I’m an honor student. I’m preparing to become a LEO, to enter a field that will enable me to support my rag-tag little family. I’m twenty-one, soon to be twenty-two, and finding my own path in life. Who do I know with those handicaps, especially the messed-up ankle, who could even think about making a tryout video for the Rockette’s jump-the-line competition?

  No one. That’s who.

  So why can’t I just get over myself, quit blaming her and be the bigger person? Yeah, it’s true. I’m working two jobs and taking care of myself and Robin. Yeah, my life’s rougher than hell, but so what? All of this I’ve done on my own. For me. Alaina Colby.

  Can I forgive her?

  I take a deep breath. “Mom, when I can I’d like to see you and talk about something that’s been bothering me for a long time, but right now I’ve got to know if you’ve seen Robin. The cops’re looking for him.”

  She doesn’t sound shocked. She’s a Colby. But she does sound grieved. “Why’n hell would they be lookin’ for Robbie? He’s a goodboy.”

  “Mom, I think . . . he’s involved in something really bad this time, like you were with . . . Daddy—”

  I don’t finish. I don’t have to remind her: I was there that night, hunkered down with Robin in the closet behind the laundry basket, listening to the terror of my parents unleashing their anger. But that doesn’t matter. Whatever Berta did, it’s in the past. It’s going to the grave with us—our secret. Mom’s. Daughter’s.

  For a second, my old anger flares. Why am I giving her a pass? All of a sudden, the woman who shot my dad, who got by with murder and afterward lived so high on heroin she’s never been able to be a good mom, is now freakin’ worried? And I’m down with that?

  “My Robbie would never harm anyone, uh, I mean he’d never break the law—”She amends, trying to be more deferential to her daughter, a future LEO. “I know my son—”

  “Mom, shutup. If you stop yelling, I’ll explain what Aidan told me.”

  “Aidan?” Cough-cough. Silence. I can smell the suspicion brewing in her nicotine jacked brain. “Who’s this Aidan? What’s he got to do with mybaby boy?”

  Sweet hells. I roll my eyes, wishing I was anywhere but in this mess. “Mom, he’s a . . . um, a . . . cop with Newport PD. Homicide. He was here this morning when the other cops arrived—”

  “Here where?”

  “In my apartment. What difference does it make?”

  I’ve just built back a bridge I burned with my mother four years ago. I don’t want her to know how Aidan used me, how Berta Colby was right all along: I never should’ve slept with a LEO, and definitely not the one who’s going to help put my brother in prison for my best friend’s murder.

  But I did sleep with him. Boy, did I ever. I flush the heated memories. If Berta finds out how I feel about Aidan, I can forget about burning bridges. There won’t even be a steel girder left to un-scorch, much less a bridge left to burn. But something in my voice has prompted her to pry. “It makes a difference,”she says. “You’re my baby girl.”

  “Now you know your trashy daughter’s terrible secret, Mom. I’ve—slept with the law.”

  “Don’t get smart-mouthed, La
ney. You know my reasons. Do I have to spell them out?”

  “I know,”I say. “You’re hell bent I don’t end up like you.” I reiterate all the reasons Berta told me why I should never sleep with a cop. They used her as their snitch, for sex, for whatever else they wanted, and then they cut her loose. That’s what cops do.

  “Alrighty then,”she says, in the grip of another coughing fit. “But I won’t have my baby girl bringin’ home no cop. Just you remember that.”

  I wait. She’s accepted what I’ve done with Aidan with less rancor than I expected, but I know this woman: she’s sneakin’ and whatever else she’s thinking, or planning, she’s not sharing it with me. When she finally stops coughing, I hear her lighting up another cigarette, unfiltered.

  “Just don’t tell me you’re marrying no damn cop,”she says,“or shackin’ with him. I won’t have my baby girl cohabitatin’ with the law.”

  “I think”—my breath catches, a deep ache forming—“you don’t have to worry about that now, Mom.” In fact, you don’t have to worry about it ever. I doubt Aidan will have anything to do with me after this morning, unless it involves my testifying against Robin.

  It shouldn’t matter. I want to deny how hurt I feel, but can’t.

  “I never want to see him again.”

  “I see,”she says,“so that’s how it is?”

  “That’s how it is,”I say, listening to her draw smoke into her lungs, mulling over her daughter’s tragic, illicit liaison with a LEO. And then she wheezes,“Have you talked to Robin about this . . . Aidan? Does Robin know him?”

  This is the hard part, having to tell her I’ve failed to care for my brother. “Mom, I can’t find him. The reason I called is I thought he might be with you.”

  “Hon, he ain’t here. Ain’t been here since he got out of the joint. Told me he was tryin’ to go straight and didn’t need no bad influences, like his poor old mama, bringing any more shit down on his head.”

  She pisses me off every time she opens her mouth, but my mom never—ever—lies to me. She told me once that telling us the truth, no matter how much it hurt to do it, was her way of making up for being a loser mom. She wasn’t always there for me or Robin, but we could trust her to tell us the truth, however harsh or brutal.

  Robin’s not with her? Then where is he?

  “I don’t do drugs no more,”she says. “I finally got cleaned up. Had to. I’m on oxygen,”she reveals, coughing out the news. “COPD.”

  “Oh, mom, shit,”I say, running back the hallway toward my apartment. “I’m sorry. Is the oxygen permanent?”

  “Well, yes, but it ain’t that damn bad. The doctor says I’ll have to—”

  Listening to her describe her treatment, I suddenly stop in my tracks. Up ahead, two cops are cordoning off the entry inside the rear foyer of my apartment building. I stare down the hallway toward them. I’m roped in like a corralled animal. “Mom, I’ve got to go. I don’t have time to explain. I’ll call you later.”

  “Sure you will,”she says, refusing to say goodbye. “Right now, though,”she says,“how about we finish our little pow-wow about this Aidan Hawks—?”

  Why, after four years of not being able to dispense advice, does she choose now to start making up for lost time? “I can’t. Not right now. There’s LEOs crawling all over my building, Mom. I gotta go, okay?” I’m willing to forgive her for past sins, but I know better than to think I can count on her for any real help in this mess, and I’m out of time. I’ve got to get to that overnight bag of Robin’s before the cops do.

  “I know, baby girl,”she says,“I know what it looks like where you are. Remember, I’ve been in hot water myself a time or two. Don’t panic.”

  For a moment, I’m comforted.

  “The cops ain’t looking for you, too, are they?”

  “Mom, no!”

  Waiting until the cops down the hall turn their back, I sprint toward my apartment. When I arrive, the door’s standing wide open.

  Hmmm. That’s odd.

  I take a step into the entrance hallway of my apartment, and then stop and listen. Hearing nothing, seeing no one, I tiptoe in and ask my mom,“Do you know a good criminal lawyer?”

  She laughs so hard she goes into another coughing spasm. “Good one, baby girl.”

  I get why she’s laughing. Berta Colby’s slept with every lawyer in Goshen, Ohio, all two of them, maybe three, plus their fathers and brothers. To them, she’s trash, got no money. A criminal defense lawyer, a Melvin-fucking-Belli mouth piece, costs tons of money. “Never mind,”I say,“sorry I asked.”

  As I’m tiptoeing toward Robin’s bedroom, I hear real concern in Mom’s voice. “Listen to me, Laney. I ain’t got no money, but I know this system. It’s a monster. I also know our Robbie’s in a world of crap. The only way you can help is by doing exactly what I say.”

  Like I’m going to listen to you—Mother. I think it but don’t say it. When it comes to criminal affairs and dealing with the law, Berta Colby is an authority, or at least she’s experienced. She knows her stuff. I’ll take whatever help I can get from her.

  “Okay,”I say. “What do you want me to do?”

  I do a rapid visual scan of Robin’s bedroom. Nothing looks out of place. He’s a neat freak. The years of using meth made him develop Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. His Guns‘n Roses DVD collection is stacked on a stand beside his bed, precisely in the same spot it always is. There are business cards of people he doesn’t know. He collects them and alphabetically orders them, and then takes the collection apart and reorders the cards every day, ten or twenty, maybe a hundred times. He says it calms his nerves. He also keeps all his food, peanut butter and bread and canned tuna, in a zippered overnight bag.

  But I don’t see it. “Where is that damn thing?”

  Mom waits while I rummage through Rob’s closet. Finding no overnight bag, I run into my bedroom. Listening to my recently-turned motherly mom on my cell phone giving me advice, I ransack in search of Robin’s overnight bag.

  “Don’t say anything to the cops, not a word. You hear me? And Laney?”

  “Mom, what?”I hiss,“I gotta go. I gotta find a lawyer for Rob. OurRobbie’s a murder suspect,”I say,“in case you forget what that feels like.” He’s a wanted serial killer, I wisely don’t add. I can’t wrap my head around that: I’m sure even Berta would have trouble, too.

  “Here’s what you do, baby girl. Do exactly as I say,”she orders, her gravelly voice sharp. “I know Robin ain’t no murderer, but if he’s going to be charged with murder, the State of Ohio will do it.”

  Or Kentucky. Or both.

  “So they’ll have to give him a free mouthpiece,”she says, sounding defeated by this fact, but like every poor person I know a public defender is our only hope for Robin’s defense.

  I groan, knowing what this means. My brother is going to die from lethal injection. “This is all Aidan Hawks’ fault.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “Nothing, Mom. Do you know the Hamilton County prosecutor?”

  “Do I know him? Huh-huh. He’s only the biggest rattler in six counties.”

  “You don’t know him . . . not thatway? I hope?”

  She laughs. “Naw, Crip . . . uh, I’m sorry. Laney, I’m sorry. That slipped. Mind me now: I won’t call you that again. I never should’ve started, but you was cute as a button, even with your messed up ankle—”

  “Mom!”

  “Sorry. Okay, now listen up, baby girl. That prosecutor’s mean. So mean he’s out of my league.”

  I chide myself. My mom, the only woman on earth who’s been made by more cops and lawyers than Al Capone. As Stoke would say, Yeah? So. I have no right to judge her.

  “I’ll see who I can find to defend Robin,”I say, frustrated, wondering if Robin stashed his damn overnight bag in my living room. I can’t find it, I’ve got a Newport cop I’m falling for who thinks—knows—my family is criminal trash, so what else could possibly go wrong?

  I should
not ask. Never freakin’ ever should I ask.

  Chapter 39

  “Miss Colby, what are you doing here?” She charges toward me.

  I brake. “Uh, I live here?”

  Officer Barbie and I size each other up. Or since I’m inches shorter, I’m the one being sized up. She’s staring down at me like I’m a toad hopping across her path.

  “Mom, I’ll call you back,”I say, my gaze glued to the tall, blonde LEO.

  “Is that a cop? Don’t talk to the cops,”she says. “Don’t say one damn word.”

  “Uh-huh,”I say. She has no clue who just stepped into my bedroom, although I’m happy she now knows who stepped out of it earlier this morning. I’m tired of hiding who I am from my mom. Not that being the only Colby who wants to graduate college and be on the right side of the law matters anymore. I’ll never see Aidan again, unless it’s to visit Robin in lockup.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you, Laney.”

  Berta Colby saying she’s sorry is like me saying I’m going line dancing. It’s a difficult statement for her to make, but she just did. Hearing those words melts my tattered heart.

  “It’s okay, Mom.”

  “I love you, baby girl.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Officer Barbie’s listening to my every word. I can’t say much, but I think it.

  I love you, too, Mom.

  Right before I cut her off, she says,“Listen, I don’t want to wait another four years for your phone call. You need me now. I’m coming to help you out of this mess, Laney.”

  “No, mom, please. I can handle this.”

  “You can’t. You’re dealing with pit vipers, baby girl.”

  Like I don’t know that?

  I cast a sideways glance at Officer Barbie. “Mom, I’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Laney.”

  That remark sets my teeth on edge. Or maybe it’s just my Colby genetics making me argue with my mom as I stand facing Officer Barbie. No matter. Berta Colby, denied the chance to prove a point, is a more formidable threat than Officer Barbie, who stands facing me. “Mom, seriously, you’re sick. Let me handle this.”