Identity

by Shawna Seed

  But the look Mitch Lowry gave her was more confused than accusative. “I wondered if Brian got into drugs himself, you know, and somebody made him do this because they had their hooks into him. One of our neighbors, her nephew up in Dallas got addicted to cocaine, and when he couldn’t pay for it anymore, he stole from his own grandmother.”

  Mitch put his glass on the table. “Could it be something like that? Is Brian on drugs, and he needed money for them?”

  “Brian’s not on drugs. He couldn’t have hidden that from me,” Sharlah said, not quite believing she was having this conversation with Brian’s father. “I see all his paychecks. I pay the bills and I know where all the money goes.”

  She didn’t tell Mitch that she’d taken over their finances after the one big argument she and Brian ever had. She filled out Brian’s deposit slips and balanced his checkbook, because he tended to get numbers turned around.

  Mitch nodded slowly, looking relieved but also sad. “It’s hard to realize you don’t know your own son,” he said.

  Sharlah almost felt sorry for him, but she couldn’t help thinking that if he didn’t know Brian, Mitch Lowry had no one to blame but himself.

  “Well, I’ve taken enough of your time,” Mitch said. He started to rise, but then he sat back down.

  “Sharlah, you’ve got to make Brian understand how serious this is. His lawyer told me that if he doesn’t take a deal, he could go to prison.”

  Mitch’s voice broke. “He’s my baby, Sharlah, and I’ll do anything to protect him. He’s only 21 years old. He has his whole life ahead of him. We can’t let that happen.”

  “It won’t,” Sharlah said. “I’ll make him see, Mr. Lowry.”

  Mitch sat for another second, hands resting on his thighs, then he sighed and got up. “I guess I’ve kept Renee waiting long enough. I appreciate you hearing me out.”

  Sharlah walked him to the door. “Could you explain to Mrs. Lowry that I didn’t know anything about this?”

  Mitch opened the door and glanced outside. “Brian and his mother, they’ve always been oil and water. Renee loves him, don’t get me wrong, but right now she’s so angry that it just… she says things she doesn’t mean. Don’t take it to heart.”

  Brian looked smaller in jail.

  That was the first thing Sharlah thought when he came shuffling through the door and sat down on the other side of the glass.

  He picked up the phone receiver on his side of the glass, and Sharlah did the same.

  “Hi, Brian.”

  “Hi. You need to know they tape all the calls here.”

  “I know, they gave me a whole list of rules to read while I waited.” She mustered a smile for Brian. “Sorry I missed you at court. I was late getting away from work. I had a whole table of old biddies who kept wanting coffee refills.”

  “I’m just glad to see you.”

  The rules said they’d have only 20 minutes, so Sharlah decided she’d better get straight to the point.

  “Brian, we need to talk about what you’re going to do.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” Brian said, looking miserable. “I’ve been so worried about you. Are you OK? It scared me, the way you cried yesterday. You never cry.”

  That was just like Brian. Here he was, sitting in jail with no prospect of getting out soon, and he was worried about her.

  “I was upset about Missy.”

  Brian’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m sorry you had to see that. All that blood.”

  “I only saw her foot, and then I ran for help,” Sharlah said. “Did they tell you it was really bad?”

  “They showed me pictures.”

  “They showed you pictures?”

  A guard walked into view and pointed at Sharlah, then held his finger to his lips.

  Chastened, she lowered her voice. “Why?”

  Brian stared at the table, and his voice was so soft Sharlah struggled to hear it. “They said it was my fault. My lawyer made them stop.”

  “Brian, that’s not right,” Sharlah said. “Look at me.”

  Brian slowly raised his head.

  “I know you never would have let that happen. You were a good friend to her,” Sharlah said.

  Brian shrugged, like he wasn’t convinced.

  “You got out of bed to change her tire that one night. And what about that time she cut her foot at the beach and you piggy-backed her all the way to the car?”

  “You were mad at me when I did that.”

  “I wasn’t mad at you, I was mad at her for flirting and trying to make Cliff jealous.”

  Brian frowned at the mention of Cliff, and Sharlah thought her guess about Cliff’s involvement was probably right.

  Brian sighed. “This is such a mess, Shar.”

  “I know it looks that way right now, Brian. But we’ll figure it out. We’re a team – us and your lawyer. You need to listen to him.”

  “Are you OK for money? You should get Kevin to pick up my last check.”

  It was nice to know Brian was worried about her, but Sharlah was frustrated that he kept changing the subject.

  “I’ll call Kevin. And I have that money in the bank. I’ll be fine.” She wasn’t sure that was true, but it was what Brian needed to hear.

  “That’s for you to take classes,” Brian said. “I don’t want you to spend that.”

  “I’ll see about extra shifts. I can get a second job, at night after I get off at the diner.”

  Brian slumped in his chair. “I don’t want you working in a bar, guys hassling you.”

  “I’ll figure something out,” Sharlah said. “We need to focus on getting you out.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Brian…”

  Brian slowly shook his head from side to side. “I really screwed up this time, Shar.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “What’s done is done. You need to listen to your lawyer and do what he says, Brian.”

  “You know the worst part? It’s not my parents, because they expect me to screw up. It’s…” Brian’s voice cracked, and he swallowed hard. “I let you down. I told you I’d take care of you, and I let you down.”

  Sharlah didn’t want to cry again in front of Brian and make him feel worse, so she tried hard to smile. “You know me. I’m tough. I’ll be OK.”

  After a painful silence, Brian took a deep breath and composed himself. “I was going to replace your clutch over the weekend. How is it?”

  “OK. Maybe a little mushy.”

  Brian grimaced. “Somebody should look at it. It’s going to go out on you.”

  “You shouldn’t be worried about stuff like that right now,” Sharlah said. “You need to be looking out for yourself.”

  Brian went quiet. He seemed to be thinking about what to say.

  “There’s all this stuff I promised you. We were going on that trip to Austin. You weren’t going to have to work nights ever again. I was going to help you go to school. I was supposed to fix your clutch and that squeaky board in the living room.”

  “Brian, it’s OK. Really. None of that matters.”

  “It does matter,” Brian said. “I wasn’t just blowing smoke, Shar. I meant all that stuff – all of it. It’s important.” He leaned forward. “It’s all really important.”

  A buzzer sounded, and Sharlah jumped in her chair.

  “I think that means we have to wrap it up,” Brian said. “I’ll try to call you tomorrow. We get calls on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  Brian looked over his shoulder. The guard had opened the door to the hallway.

  He managed a smile for Sharlah and mouthed one final message.

  “I love you.”

  Sharlah stopped by the library on the way home. She still had the books she’d meant to return Sunday in her car, and Mistral’s Daughter was going to be overdue soon.

  She also needed something else to read. The only book she had left from her last batch was the one Jeanie at the library pus
hed her to try, and Sharlah didn’t feel like tackling something big and complicated right now. She wanted something familiar and satisfying, the book equivalent of a hamburger.

  Jeanie was helping another person check out. Sharlah put her books on the return pile and quickly walked away. She didn’t know whether Jeanie had seen the story in the paper, or whether she’d make the connection that the Brian Lowry with a long list of charges after his name was Sharlah’s Brian.

  Jeanie spotted her and waved enthusiastically.

  Sharlah pasted a smile on and headed back to the counter.

  When she’d first met Jeanie, Sharlah thought she must be Assembly of God or some other strict religion, because she always dressed so plain and never wore makeup.

  Today, she had on a white blouse with a little round collar, buttoned up all the way, and an old-fashioned slip underneath it. Her brown, shoulder-length hair was pushed back behind both ears. She could pass for 14, but Sharlah knew she had to be at least 22 or 23. She’d already been away to college and come back home.

  If Jeanie was religious, she didn’t let it affect what she read. She wasn’t too keen on Sidney Sheldon or Judith Krantz or some of the other writers Sharlah liked, but plenty of the books she recommended had sex in them.

  “Did you read it? Did you love it?” Jeanie asked as she sorted through the books Sharlah had stacked on the return desk.

  “I haven’t started it yet,” Sharlah said.

  Jeanie looked up from checking in books. “But you’re going to read it, right? Sharlah, I promise you’re going to love it. It’s amazing!”

  Sharlah scanned the spines on the desk. Technically, people weren’t supposed to take books off the return pile, but Jeanie usually let her. “Is Cinnamon Skin back in yet?”

  She had recently discovered the John D. MacDonald series featuring Travis McGee, and now that she was caught up and ready to read the latest book, it always seemed to be checked out.

  “I’ve been keeping an eye out, but it’s not back yet.” Jeanie transferred an armload of books from the counter to a rolling cart. “Why don’t you start on Styron, and when MacDonald comes in, I’ll bury it on the bottom of a return cart for you?”

  Sharlah grabbed a book off the counter and held it up. “Would I like him?”

  Jeanie wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Try the Styron.”

  “It looks so long,” Sharlah said. “I’m not sure I’ll even get it.”

  “It’s worth it,” Jeanie said. “And it’s not over your head. Don’t be silly. There’s a lot of New York City – you’ll like that. Really, just read 25 pages and see if you don’t love it.”

  Sharlah called Brian’s folks when she got home, figuring they’d want to hear about the jail visit.

  Renee answered and didn’t even let Sharlah say four words before she cut her off.

  “You have no right to call here,” Renee said. “I can’t stop Mitch from being played for a fool, but I won’t be a party to it. You ruined Brian’s life. Don’t call my home again.”

  Then she hung up.

  Hands shaking, Sharlah slammed the receiver down. “Bitch,” she muttered.

  Once her anger subsided, Sharlah realized nothing had really changed. She’d always known Renee hated her. It was good, in a way, to have the cards right there on the table.

  She ran her finger down the phone list taped on the wall, found Kevin’s home number and dialed.

  Lynn answered, and she and Sharlah chatted for a few minutes while Kevin came to the phone.

  Sharlah hadn’t seen Lynn since May; she’d had a miserable pregnancy and mostly stayed home. Brian said Kevin complained about her, saying he had to get out of the house a lot because Lynn was crabby, but Sharlah had a hard time picturing that.

  As far as Sharlah could tell, Lynn was nice to everybody. She invited Sharlah to the wedding – wrote her name on the envelope with Brian’s and everything. Brian’s mom said Sharlah couldn’t come, because it wasn’t “appropriate,” but it meant a lot to Sharlah that Lynn had asked.

  When Kevin came to the phone, Sharlah told him about her conversation with Brian and asked him to update his dad, because Renee said she couldn’t call the house.

  “Huh,” Kevin said, but he didn’t really sound surprised.

  She also told him what Brian said about getting his last check from the contractor. Kevin said he’d look into it but he didn’t know when he’d have time. He acted like it was a favor she was asking, rather than his brother, and that made Sharlah mad.

  “Kevin, this isn’t me asking,” Sharlah said. “It’s for Brian.”

  That seemed to get his attention. “Sorry – I’ll see what I can do,” he said. Then he said Lynn needed him and he had to go.

  Sharlah was the first to admit that she wasn’t an expert on how families were supposed to work. But she really didn’t get the Lowrys sometimes. Maybe it was like Mitch said – the whole mess had everybody on edge.

  After the phone call, she sat down on the couch and opened her book. Then she got back up without reading a word.

  The house was too quiet without Brian around. “Too quiet,” Sharlah said aloud, just to hear the words echo in the empty house.

  People thought Brian wasn’t a big talker. But he was good at helping her figure out how to get along with the girls at work, making her see the other person’s side and realize when she took things the wrong way or was holding a grudge.

  He had a way of teasing her out of a bad mood. The way he did it wasn’t mean, and Sharlah never felt put down by it. It was more that he really knew her and could see the funny side of her faults.

  Sharlah flipped through their albums, thinking music would make her feel a little less lonely. She finally settled on Journey and put the record on the turntable.

  Brian always said Journey sucked; her taste in music was one of the things he made fun of. Sharlah didn’t really care. She loved the song “Open Arms,” because it reminded her of the way Brian accepted her and all the messed-up stuff in her life. She thought of it as their song, although she would never say that to Brian.

  Tonight, though, it just made her sad. She turned the stereo off and went back to reading in silence.

  After 90 pages of Sophie’s Choice, Sharlah knew that Jeanie was right about the book. She’d managed, while she was reading, to put her worries about Brian aside. But she needed to go to bed. She had a bad habit of getting so into a book that she lost track of time, and then she’d be miserable when her alarm went off.

  She washed her face and brushed her teeth, and her thoughts returned to Brian and what she could say to change his mind. Maybe she could make him see that cooperating was a way of keeping his promise to take care of her. The most important thing was fixing his situation, not her clutch or the living room floor. That might work.

  She put on one of Brian’s old T-shirts for bed. She checked the back door and turned off the lights in the kitchen.

  She was replaying the whole jail conversation in her head as she checked the front door and crossed the living room to turn off the lamp.

  Her foot hit the squeaky floorboard in the living room, and she stopped.

  The thing was, Brian had never promised to fix the squeaky floorboard.

  When she’d asked him to do it, he’d told her it was too much work. It would take practically a whole Saturday, he said, and she should just avoid stepping on the board if it bugged her so much.

  So why would Brian say he’d promised to do it?

  Sharlah shook her head. She read too many mysteries. Brian was probably just feeling bad about blowing off something she’d asked him to do.

  But then she remembered the way he’d leaned forward, insisting that all the things he’d promised were really important.

  Sharlah double-checked that the curtains were closed tight, then she moved the coffee table. She rolled up the rag rug, a castoff from Kevin and Lynn.

  She studied the squeaky floorboard for at least 10 minutes. After loo
king at it from every angle and seeing nothing amiss, she decided the whole idea was crazy.

  Brian was going to have a good laugh about that when he got home.

  Sharlah was rolling the rug back into place when she noticed a nick in the floorboard next to the squeaky one. She sat back, thinking about a Saturday when she’d come home from work and found Brian – who never cleaned – putting the broom and dustpan away. He told her he’d spilled potato chips.

  She needed something to pry the board up. Brian’s tools, unfortunately, were in his truck, which was in the police impound lot. She tried three different table knives from the kitchen, bending one nearly in half, before she decided that wasn’t going to work. She needed something stronger.

  Her pocketknife would do the trick. Sharlah got the knife and went to work on the board. It took a little effort, but she finally got the angle right, and one end popped up.

  She tugged the floorboard loose and peered down, through a hole in the sub-floor, into the dark crawl space under the house.

  Brian kept a flashlight in the kitchen junk drawer. Sharlah fetched it and aimed it into the hole.

  Something was down there, something metal and square.

  Sharlah rocked back on her heels. “Oh, Brian,” she whispered. “What did you do?”

  She shined the light into the hole again and tried to gauge the dimensions of whatever was down there. Another floorboard was going to have to come up.

  She checked all the adjacent boards and found the one Brian had pulled up – it had a nick in one end, too. She pried it up and set it aside, then reached into the hole.

  She couldn’t quite reach. Brian, at 6-2, had much longer arms than she did at 5-3. Lying face down on the floor worked, though. She ran her hand over the cool metal until she brushed against what felt like a handle. She grasped it and hauled with all her might.

  It was a metal briefcase, like something out of a James Bond movie. It was covered in cobwebs and a layer of grime.

  A car door slammed on the street, and she startled. Sharlah got up and peeked out the curtains. The neighbor across the street was headed up his sidewalk with a six-pack of beer under his arm.

  Spooked, she lugged the briefcase into the bathroom and locked the door.