Hold Me Like a Breath

by Tiffany Schmidt

  I stared at the pictures on page seven: grim-faced officers standing beside the estate’s fence, which was decorated with police tape and also flowers and teddy bears. From clients? I couldn’t hold the paper steady enough to read the article, but I caught headlines and quotes and pieced together some of the horror.

  Mick Ward was still in the hospital with a head injury and a gunshot wound. He’d been found in the gatehouse, knocked unconscious and shot through the arm.

  Mother—dead on the patio. Killed first.

  Father—dead in the hallway outside the library. The gunshots and blood patterns indicated he’d crawled inside the house while the killers continued to shoot.

  Caroline—killed with a single bullet to the back of the head in my bedroom.

  They still hadn’t identified her—she was still listed as me. She’d been buried as me—the funerals had been yesterday—there was a photo from that as well: Garrett in front of a gravestone. His face a shattering portrait of unchecked sorrow. Al standing behind him, a tight-knuckled grip on his shoulder, his head bowed.

  I wasn’t dead.

  I wasn’t.

  That night I left the chair in the living room and slept in the bedroom—not the spare with the gun, but in the bed that had been Carter’s. It was also the first night my nightmares weren’t just blood and grief, but also choking panic and tinted bruise-purple. It had been almost a week; what if no one ever came for me?

  I needed a plan. An ally. I couldn’t do this on my own. Around five a.m., when the pale pinks and buttery yellows of a new day began to seep through the blinds, I thought of one. It required a repetition of yesterday’s risks: random corner, turning on my cell, retrieving a number from my contacts, shutting it off, and wandering until I found a pay phone.

  I dialed, bit my lip harder with each ring.

  “Hi.”

  I knew the number was correct, but the voice on the other end was wrong.

  “Um, is Kelly there?” I held my breath and imagined the worst: she’d changed her number, lost her phone.

  “Sure, hang on,” said the girl’s voice, “I’ll go get her.” I heard the garbled sound of someone covering the mouthpiece and a holler of “Kelly! Where are you? You left your phone in the kitchen again.”

  Caleigh. It had to be Kelly’s sister, Caleigh. She was my age, but my only connection to her was through Kelly’s stories. I breathed out a wish for a life like hers: school, friends, health, safety. In every political ad and campaign stop she’d practically glowed with happiness. Even the media hadn’t found a way to pick her apart.

  “Hello?”

  I let go of stupid wishes and smiled. Kelly’s greeting was all sunshine and innocence and unlimited friendliness. “Hi! It’s Penny.”

  “You can’t be Penny.” All the excitement drained out of her voice, leaving her sounding pinched and sad. “Penny died.”

  “No, wait—” but the line was dead and she didn’t answer when I called back. I slammed the phone down, catching my palm on the hook of the receiver and cursing with frustration, pain, and fear. I couldn’t get hurt right now, couldn’t be careless. Yet my skin was already splotchy red.

  I vowed to call Kelly again the next day and the day after that. As many days as it took. I had to make her listen, had to get her father on the phone. I had no other options.

  Day two of my calls landed me at a pay phone in the lobby of a hospital. I badly wanted to go up to the desk and ask if they’d give me an infusion. Or a CBC. It had been nine days since I’d had either, and my dropping counts were depicted all over my body—the daily bumps and contacts of city life transforming my skin to abstract art in shades from lilac to indigo.

  I wasn’t at the stage where I could draw on skin with the slightest pressure, but I was close. The seams of my pants were imprinted in purple on my legs. And I was exhausted. The drenching fatigue of grief compounding and exaggerating the toll of my body fighting against itself.

  If things weren’t dire yet … they were close.

  I dialed. “Hi, Kelly. It’s really Penny Landlow. Please let me talk to your father.”

  “No,” she said in a voice that cracked. “He says you can’t be Penny. Stop being mean. Stop calling.”

  My emotions crossed from desperate impatience to guilt. I wished I could stop being mean, stop torturing the girl I considered a friend, but the next day I hunted down yet another pay phone—this time in a subway station—and pressed each number with regretful fingers.

  “Kelly, please listen—”

  My explanation was cut off midsentence by an angry voice from the phone’s speaker. “I don’t know who this is, or how you got this number—”

  “Vice President Forman, it’s me, Penelope.”

  “Penny is dead.” His words seemed to echo despite the footsteps, the turnstiles, the beeps of MetroCards being swiped, the coughs, the conversations.

  “I can prove it,” I whispered urgently. “My full name is Penelope Maeve Landlow.”

  “That’s public record, and I’m hanging up.”

  “Would public record show you were the one who told me Maeve might mean “delicate,” but it’s also the name of a warrior queen?” I spit the words out in a rush, expecting to hear nothing—the empty sound of an empty line. And the line was silent—except for a sharp intake of breath. “Or how every time my father sees you—saw you—he’d ask Kelly if she was enjoying her kidney?”

  “Penny?”

  “Or how, just to annoy him, I ‘forgot’ to call you by your title. Even though you’ve told him and me a thousand times—”

  We finished the sentence together, “She can call me Bob.”

  “Penny, how?”

  “It was a nurse. Did you ever meet Caroline? She looked like me, but not enough to fool anyone for more than a second.”

  “How has this not been discovered?”

  My heart sank. “I don’t know, sir. I was hoping you’d have some insight.” Caroline might not have been part of my family, but she deserved so much more than this. I’d spent hours lying awake, wrapped in guilt, and wondering how long her date had waited before deciding he’d been stood up, and whether friends, neighbors, or anyone had noticed her disappearance yet.

  “I’ll get people on it,” said Bob. “But the fact that—” He cleared his throat. “There are more immediate issues: Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “I-I can’t tell you where I am. I don’t dare.”

  “Yes, that’s probably best. How are you calling? Not your cell, I hope.”

  “No, a pay phone. I’ve only used pay phones.”

  “Those still exist?”

  “A few. They’re not easy to find.”

  “What do you need? How can I help?”

  I leaned against the dirty metal surface of the phone. Relief unhinged my knees, made my voice go thin, filled my eyes with tears. In any other setting, people might have worried, they might have intervened or asked if I was okay. Here, no one noticed. I wasn’t worth a second glance—less interesting than the person with the patriotic-colored Mohawk, or in an eighties prom dress, wearing a chain-mail shirt made from safety pins, the immaculate businessperson holding hands with a Goth, the homeless man toting bulging garbage bags, the guitarist pouring her heart into folk songs, the toddler screaming for a lollipop. I was part of the scenery; we were all part of the scenery.

  I took a deep breath and answered his question. “Immunoglobulin. My platelet count is getting low—” I’d had a nosebleed that morning; it had taken forever for it to clot. And petechiae were spreading like poison ivy from my feet to my calves. “I need an infusion when my count drops below thirty thousand, and it’s got to be under that, but I don’t know what to do. It’s not like I can walk into a hospital and give them the name of a dead girl.”

  “I’ll figure out a way to get some to you. Are you safe?”

  “I think so.” I paused and considered this, then modified my answer. “I hope so.”

  “Do you
want me to come get you? You know you’re welcome to stay with my family. The girls would love to have your company.”

  Kelly would. But his second wife, Imee, whom I’d never met, and Caleigh, the spitting image of all-American perfection—I’m not sure they’d enjoy having their lives turned upside down for a criminal’s daughter. Then there was the damage a connection with me would do to him.

  “It would ruin the Organ Act. You having ties to the Landlows. Especially now.” It was why Kelly’s transplant had always been the most sacred of secrets. He could only be the public face of the movement to legalize the trade of human organs if no one knew about his daughter’s black market past. “It would destroy your whole career if anyone found out.”

  “If you’re not safe …” His hesitation answered all my questions. “Penny, I’d … I can’t bring you to the vice president’s residence, but maybe my house in Connecticut? Kelly’s in DC with me, but Caleigh’s there whenever she’s home from school. We could attempt to keep you off radar.”

  “I don’t want to put you in that position—not unless I absolutely have to.”

  “But you must let me help you.”

  This I would agree to; though beyond the medical, neither of us had a clue how. As I pumped the last of my change into the slot, he promised to assign more FBI resources to my parents’ case. Then he hesitated again. “I wouldn’t ask this if I thought I could get a trustworthy answer any other way—but Kelly’s antirejection medicines, should I go to one of the other Families for more? I don’t even know who’s leading your Family now; do you?”

  “It should be Nolan, but …” That wasn’t safe to assume. Not with how the others regarded him. Not with his priorities being ideals first, Family second. Had he even returned from DC to attend the funerals? Or had he seen the murders as an opportunity to further his cause?

  Maybe he’d even …

  I choked on the idea. “Have you see Nolan Russell?”

  Bob laughed. “The man’s stuck tighter than a barnacle. He’s a bit of a lost soul without your father. I’m not sure if he’s turning to me for mentorship or just pouring his grief into a cause, but every time I turn around he’s got new Organ Act literature or events for me. He says he hasn’t talked to your Family at all. I don’t think he has any plans to lead it.”

  I considered Bob’s question. Could he trust what remained of my Family with his secret? Miles? Al? Frank? Ian? Could he trust the other Families at all? Kelly needed those drugs; all our patients did and would for the rest of their lives. “What’s your supply?”

  “Six months, like your father always insisted. I’ve heard rumors the Everlys are sniffing around some of your Family’s former clients, and the Zhus.”

  That couldn’t be true—the client lists were confidential. Other than Kelly Forman and Tom Tanaka, even I didn’t know any of their real identities. And that’s if Mr. Tanaka was his real name.

  “Call Dr. Castillo directly. Talk only with him. He should be able to get Kelly’s meds. And tell him I’m okay, please. He’ll be able to give you specifics about what I need too.”

  “It’ll take me a few days to coordinate the logistics of procurement and delivery. Can you wait?”

  I swallowed a bitter laugh; waiting was all I could do lately.

  “Yes,” I answered, hoping it was true.

  “Call me in three days; that should be sufficient.” The vice president gave me his direct number. I wrote it on the inside cover of my memory journal. Thanked him. Hung up the phone, relieved some of the responsibility and fear had been lifted off my shoulders.

  Three more days and I’d have immunoglobulin, but how many more days until my identity was mine again? Until “Penelope Maeve Landlow” wasn’t a name on a gravestone or a walking target? Until I could figure out who she was in my post-family world.

  Chapter 22

  Routines are dangerous.

  This was Family Facts 101. It was why Carter had changed up the route he drove back to college, and the ones he took across campus to his classes. He’d varied the restaurants he ate in, the cars he drove.

  Don’t form favorites. Don’t develop habits. Don’t get attached.

  These had never applied to me before. There were only so many ways to walk from the house to the clinic. My lifestyle made me immune to most of the Family rules; it had been built on structure and routine—useful for surviving years of monotony, but I was having a hard time giving it up.

  I went back to the diner to get updates on Shanice’s son and his no-good girlfriend. Byron, the manager of my favorite coffee shop, teased me as I sipped through his list of flavors—so far my top pick was iced coffee with butterscotch syrup. I had a favorite dog park where I liked watching the pups scamper and play—and watching the dreadlocked and trendy owner of a dachshund and the librarian-chic owner of a Pomeranian fall for each other while holding leashes and lattes. And I loved taking the longer walk down to the Museum of Natural History in the mornings when the crowds were at their thinnest and it felt safe to be engrossed in the dioramas and displays.

  Maybe routines were dangerous, but so were unpredictable environments. The whole city felt like a threat, so I forgave myself for carving out pieces of normal.

  On day two of my wait, the dachshund’s owner let the Pomeranian’s enter her number in his phone. I left the park smiling. They’d started talking last week because I’d seen her practically drool as he flipped his neat dreads out of his face, and I said, “I’m not sure who’s cuter, guy or dog. What do you think?” When I caught him checking her out, I’d been more blunt. “She’s interested. Go talk to her.”

  It had taken nudges and encouragement, but they’d exchanged numbers, then both turned toward the bench where I sat with my cinnamon coffee; he winked, she mouthed “OMG.”

  So maybe I was too busy self-congratulating my matchmaking skills. Or too distracted by the feelings they stirred up—how much I missed Garrett, my MIA knight in shining armor. Or too caffeinated. Or too careless.

  The excuse didn’t matter as much as the result—that when I saw my parents’ picture on a TV in the window of an electronics store, I ran toward it.

  I ignored the city noise: the beeping the yelling the conversations and steam and buzz and clip of shoes on sidewalks—I tuned out everything but the screen. It was a photo from a Family wedding last spring. One that hung framed above the mantel in the den. Who had given it to the media? Shouldn’t they have had to ask permission before turning Mother’s favorite family photo into something sandwiched between garish headlines—NEW LEADS IN THE LANDLOW MASSACRES—and a scrollbar of sensationalized facts?

  But whom could they ask? Everyone in the photo—Mother, Father, Carter, me—was dead.

  The photo changed, the headline too: THE BODYGUARD SPEAKS above a candid shot outside a hospital. Jacob was helping Mick into a car. His head was bandaged, his arm in a sling. Garrett stood alone by the driver’s door, his expression so lost it made me ache.

  I ran—desperate to get close enough to read the smaller print before the news changed to selling someone else’s tragedy. And then—in an instant—I wasn’t running, I was reeling from a collision.

  My forehead smacked into a chin, my face slammed into collarbones, chest to chest. I’m sure Nolan taught me the physics that explained why the guy kept moving forward like a teenage Asian wrecking ball, and why I ricocheted off him and would have fallen if his hand hadn’t shot out to grab my shoulder. Something about forces, objects in motion, momentum.

  He’d hit me. Hard. But when the guy reached out to steady me by cupping my elbow with his other hand and I met his eyes, I swear it wasn’t just dizziness caused by the impact. I’d known plenty of guys in the Family—the ones that weren’t truly my family—and they were not unattractive. But looking up at this guy, my breath was literally stolen.

  “Are you okay?”

  I blinked a few times. Trying to clear my head in the moments my eyes were shut and then swooning anew each time they o
pened.

  “That was some hit. I’m sorry.” His fingers on my elbow slid around my arm, became a circlet of sensation as he tugged lightly, pulling me out of the crowd and against the building. Through the thin cotton of my red T-shirt, I felt rough brick at my back. He’d let go of my arm; was leaning one shoulder against the wall, shielding me from the crowd. “I’ve been hit like that before—in sports. It knocks the breath out of you. If you drop your chin a little, it will make it easier to breathe.”

  I obeyed. Dropping my chin meant not looking at him. It made it easier to breathe. Easier to think. And, oh, I hurt. From shoulder to stomach was a flaming line of pain. Inhaling deeply made me gasp. And the ache was radiating in larger and larger circles. This was not good. This was days-in-the-clinic-with-Dr.-Castillo-hovering bad.

  I looked up at this stranger and my head swam again. It was the light. The contrast of the sunlight on his black hair. The way it played across his golden skin, the ridges of his cheekbones, and the depth in his eyes.

  “You’re not okay, are you? I’m so sorry. I really should’ve been paying attention where I was walking. What can I do?”

  “I’m …” I coughed, shook my head, tried to chase away the dizziness. “I should get home.”

  “Let me take you.”

  “I’m fine, really.” Except when I tried to straighten, I stumbled, scraping my elbow and forearm on the rough wall.

  My blood was nearly the same color as my shirt.

  “I’m sorry, but you don’t look fine.” He crouched slightly, peered into my eyes as if he were looking for a mystery. His irises were the rich color of coffee beans. At least I thought they were? It was getting harder to concentrate. Things were kaleidoscoping in and out of focus. “I wonder if you have a concussion. Did you hit your head? Maybe I should take you to the hospital?”

  “No.” My thoughts crystallized for a moment, long enough to concentrate on what that would mean. “I just need to get home. I’ll be fine …” I tried to stand again. Still couldn’t. The blood was dribbling down my arm, dripping off my wrist. “… in a minute.”