Hold Me Like a Breath

by Tiffany Schmidt

  It was a humbling thought as I stood in front of the counter and traded bills and a fake name for a plastic keycard and information about checkout times and a question about my lack of luggage.

  “The airline lost it,” I answered, cutting off further questions with, “I’ll let you know if I need anything, but right now I need a nap. Jet lag. You said the elevator was over this way?”

  My apologetic smile was halfhearted as I accepted a city map and quashed any other niceties by crossing the lobby and jamming the Up button.

  Room 1306 had windows, curtains, a bed, bedside table, chair, TV, bathroom, generic art print, and an air conditioner that rattled loudly. I noticed these things as I swept the room for “danger”—the kind that was unnamed, came in quotation marks, and could be just about anything, anywhere.

  The kind I knew existed but had never been trained to identify or defend against. So I looked under the bed, checked the closet and behind the shower curtains. Stupid, waste-of-time, elementary gestures that didn’t make me feel even slightly safer.

  I locked the dead bolt, slipped the chain into place, dragged the chair in front of the door, and sat in it with my bag in my lap. I held Carter’s letter in both hands. If I didn’t open it, I could tell myself there was still one more point of contact with him. If it stayed sealed, I could imagine it saying anything. And I’d never be proven wrong.

  My hopes were so sky high I knew the envelope could only contain disappointment, but he wouldn’t have mailed it if it weren’t important. I stuck a finger under the flap and pulled it open, ripping the cube into two jagged halves.

  The sheet I pulled out looked like it had been torn from a notebook similar to the one I’d been filling with memories. It was folded crookedly, and the handwriting started rushed and sloppy and became almost illegible by the postscript.

  Hey Pen—

  I’ve only got a minute. I’ve got to do this now before I lose my nerve or get caught. And maybe this note is straight-up paranoia, but I don’t know … Things don’t feel right.

  I’m about to go torch my clinic. MY clinic. Yeah, I have one. Father doesn’t know. It’s a cadaver clinic—like the Everlys. It’s a mistake.

  But if things go wrong, then I need you to RUN. Get off the estate and go. Go to the place I showed you tonight. Trust no one but Maggie Vickers. I wrote her number on the back.

  I wish I had time to write more. Hopefully I will. Hopefully we’ll be eating doughnuts soon.

  I love you, kid. More than I ever told you.

  Carter

  P.S. In September I want to be the one to drop you off on your 1st day of senior year. You’re not too cool to be seen with me, right?

  I ran, Carter. Now what?

  Chapter 34

  Carter’s letter was full of too-late warnings and empty of answers. All I could do was hold it and think of him and Char.

  Three a.m.

  That’s how long it took for my emotions to drain away one at a time: despair, disappointment, confusion, shock, betrayal, grief, desolation, loneliness, longing.

  All that was left was hardened rage that sat in my stomach like the last glowing ember in the middle of a forest fire’s destruction.

  And enough energy to pick up my phone and dial Char’s number, determined to deliver a razor-tongued speech. I’d scribbled a draft on hotel stationery with pen that had punched through the paper. I would make him hear I wasn’t fooled by him anymore. That he hadn’t shattered me.

  I may be splinters and fragments, but it wasn’t because of him. I hadn’t given him that much power.

  The pieces of me he’d received had never been whole to start.

  And when he’d pretended—

  He’d pretended.

  We’re sorry. The number you have dialed is no longer in service.

  The automated message brought a flood of exhaustion and helplessness. Why? Was he scamming me? Did he recognize Magnolia? Was this some new trick to unbalance me in a world where everyone already felt like a threat?

  I made a nest in the bathtub and slept there. If anyone did find me in this no-name hotel, they’d enter the room and go right to the bed—passing the bathroom door. It wouldn’t buy me much, but maybe those seconds could be used to slip out unobserved. Tomorrow I’d go on the offensive. Tonight my mind needed to shut down, shut out the all questions and uncertainty. Forget Carter’s postscript and the life we could’ve had if things had gone differently that night.

  It seemed like I should fall apart. Like when I woke up stiff and sore in a bathtub with my head full of fresh grief and betrayal, that all that was left to do was fall apart.

  And if I’d truly cared for Char the way I thought I had—I should be immobilized by this, trapped in bed by a box of tissues and a broken heart.

  My heart still beat within my chest. Each pulse a painful reminder of what I thought I had, what I’d thought was real. No, it was real, at least my part of it had been.

  But I was alive. I’d survived so much worse than heartache, and I wasn’t going to dishonor my family by letting Char be the thing that broke me.

  If he was in New York to kill me, why had he waited? Why had he kissed me and held me and wrapped his life around me? Why had he shared about his father and defended mine? Was that whole conversation in the coffee shop some sort of cruel test to see if I’d react?

  What had he wanted?

  My gaze fell on the map the clerk had given me. I grabbed a pen from the bedside table and started tracing our walks. Maybe they weren’t mindless. Maybe we weren’t weaving back and forth without a purpose. Maybe Char was looking for something.

  We’d taken three walks. If it hadn’t started raining, we might have taken a fourth yesterday—and I’d bet all the cash in my purse, the fourth would have included some portion of 95th Street, because the first three all overlapped there.

  I picked up my phone and dialed the digits Carter had written on the back of his letter.

  “Hi, Maggie.”

  “Thank God! Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “I’m fine. What’s on 95th Street between Columbus and Broadway?”

  “No idea. You? Do you need me to come get you?” Either she was a good liar, or, if my hunch was correct, there was something Carter hadn’t told her. An address.

  “No.”

  “You can’t disappear. Not again. Is this a number I can use to reach you? I’m writing it down, hang on. The one Carter gave me goes to a full voice mail.” I practiced feeling numb, determined, whole, for the seconds she was gone. “Okay, I’m back. Come home, okay? We should talk. I’m sorry if I shocked or scared you yesterday, but we should really talk.”

  “It’s not safe at the apartment anymore.”

  “Of course it is,” she said. “No one will bother us here. Just come back.”

  “Don’t you get it? Char—er, Ming tracked me down in New York City—he knows where the apartment is.” I paused to take a breath, to steady my voice. “If he killed the rest of my family, I’ve got to be next.”

  “Ming did not kill your family, Penny. Come home.”

  “Fine, he didn’t.” Even now I couldn’t see the hands that had held mine being the ones holding a gun or a knife. “But his Family did.”

  “What possible reason could the Zhus have for hurting your family?”

  I’d thought about this a lot last night while listening to the shower drip. “Artificial organs.”

  “In that case, why would they be going after your Family? No offense, but you haven’t even entered the artificial organ race. Mine is the one to beat there, and no one in my Family’s been threatened.”

  “But if mine had come out in favor of the Organ Act, that would tie up everything.”

  “Look, I’ve been in every one of my Family’s council meetings, I know what I’m talking about. No one was really concerned about that,” said Maggie.

  “It has to be them.” Because if it wasn’t, then why had he … “No! It does. Carter’s body was
carved with the Chinese characters for ‘warning.’”

  “Penelope, stop. Just stop. That was tattoo Chinese—the type of thing a drunk spring breaker gets inked on his body. Then, when they’re sober, someone tells them it’s not a real word or that it says ‘mountain sister green.’ It’s not the Zhus. Believe me. My dad and Mr. Zhu have been in daily contact since your parents’ murder.”

  “Then who?”

  “Come back. We’ll talk.”

  Chapter 35

  “Here’s the thing, Maggie, I’m glad my brother was happy with you, and I’m so grateful you brought me his letter, but …” Despite the number of times I’d rehearsed this speech during my walk back to the apartment, I couldn’t quite finish it now that she was in front of me.

  “But you don’t know me? We’re not friends?” she prompted. She put her hands on her hips, but it was hard to take her seriously with bed head and while wearing a hot pink and black zebra-print pajama shorts set.

  “Yeah, kind of. And I don’t have time to sit down and make new friends. It’s not that I don’t want to, or I don’t like you, or we can’t ever do this … it’s just, I need to figure things out first.”

  “Like what? You need my help.”

  “Like if the guy I thought I loved was really trying to kill me.” Char’s roses were still everywhere. Blood red, police-tape yellow, tombstone white.

  “Which one? If you’re talking about Ming, he thinks you, as Penelope Landlow, are already dead. He attended your funeral, we both did. And he didn’t have anything to do with your family’s murders, so let’s move on, m’kay?”

  But that didn’t change the fact that his phone was disconnected and he’d disappeared.

  “So … it’s about Dead Meat, isn’t it?”

  “Thank you for catching up! See, you do need me.” Maggie sat on the coffee table, crossing one long leg over the other and taking a sip of something from the travel mug I’d bought at Byron’s. “I just wish he’d actually gotten to burn the place down.”

  “So who was it? The Everlys?”

  “What? No. Catch up, Penny. Haven’t you been watching the news?”

  “Um, no. Been a little busy trying not to die.”

  “The Everlys are DOA—not literally, but between the dead teacher case and a clinic raid all their power players are behind bars. There’s not anyone left to be a threat.”

  “Then who?”

  Maggie opened her mouth, but I was already turning away, both from her and the idea forming in my head. Not the Zhus. Not the Vickers. Not the Everlys.

  Dead Meat.

  It all came down to this. My brother’s legacy according to Garrett. The cause of his murder, according to Maggie. A mistake, according to Carter.

  “Go take a shower and get dressed,” I told her. “We’re going to visit Deer Meadow.”

  “I don’t know where it is.”

  “I do.” And I was going to get some answers.

  But first I got his gun.

  It was right where I’d left it, in the bottom drawer of his desk. My reaction was the same too: revulsion, the contents of my stomach wanting to crawl out my throat, my fingers wanting to slam the drawer shut, my feet wanting to back out of the room.

  Instead I picked it up, felt its weight on my palm, the heaviness of its capabilities on the tips of my fingers. I flipped the safety off, then flipped it back on. It was loaded. I didn’t even have to check. I’d heard Al Ward say it enough times, “The only dangerous gun is an empty one,” and “There’s no safety in a gun without bullets.”

  I grabbed the wad of cash too. Who cared if it was blood money—my whole life was blood-soaked.

  I slid both into my bag and left. Carter had kept this address from Maggie and kept her a secret—instinct told me not to bring her there. And there wasn’t time to hesitate. There wasn’t time to second-guess or talk myself out of this. Or answer whatever question Maggie called from behind the bathroom door, her words drowned out by the pounding of my pulse in my ears. The pounding of my feet down the stairs, and then the crash-dash-stumble of almost slamming into a man as I flew out the front door.

  A man who wasn’t Char.

  Ming.

  Whatever.

  It wasn’t a repeat of our once upon a time, not-such-a-fairy-tale-after-all meeting.

  And I didn’t hit this man. At least, I didn’t hit him. My bag did. Mints and keys and wallet went flying. The gun didn’t. But did he feel it? Could he tell from its shape or weight that there was danger and illegality sitting in the lining of my designer purse?

  I scrambled to shove things back in my bag, needing to be gone before Maggie caught on, to not be noticed, and thus not noticing when he followed me for a few yards.

  “Wait! Wait! These are yours too.”

  I didn’t want to make eye contact, barely let my glance flicker from his Yankees cap to his palm before I grabbed the lip balm and piece of paper he held out and shoved them in my pocket. My “thanks” was a mumble over my shoulder as I kept walking. Pausing felt like stopping, and I needed to do something for once. Something. Anything that felt like it was helping my brother or avenging him or anything but waiting around in a life without purpose. Without anything but waiting.

  And hoping they—the “they” that wasn’t Zhu/Vickers/Everly and had to be internal, the “they” that must have sat across from me at dinners, walked the halls of my house, seen all my moods, and known all my weaknesses—didn’t kill me first.

  Chapter 36

  It could have taken hours to search the block and try to figure out which building was Deer Meadow; Maggie could have remembered my mention of 95th Street and tracked me down; I could have been wrong about the goal of Char’s walks.

  It didn’t. She didn’t. I wasn’t.

  The facade of the building was exactly what I’d expected: elegant stonework set with arched windows, graceful iron railings trailing down immaculate steps. But no sign with DEER MEADOW in classical calligraphy. Instead, in light blue on a gold background, the same stag’s-head emblem as the key I’d found in Carter’s apartment. So, not for the freezer.

  I was debating going back to the apartment to get it, knocking, or doing the smart thing and calling Bob, when I looked up and saw Garrett shutting the leaded glass doors behind him and walking down those steps.

  “Penelope?” His face was ghastly white. I wanted to tell him to sit. Put his head between his knees. Breathe into a bag. Wondered if he would benefit from a platelet infusion. Questioned my own lack of reaction and whether I could be in shock.

  Slowly he closed his gaping mouth and reached out to touch me. His fingers brushed my sleeve lightly and he inhaled with a gasp, seizing my arms and crushing me to him. “Is it really you?”

  “You’re hurting me.” My words were flat, dead things. My head buzzed with white noise. Shock was likely. Shock, or I’d already used up my entire supply of the brain chemicals that caused emotions. Char would’ve been able to name them and tell me if that were even possible, but he’d abandoned me.

  The thought made me sob—just once—before I fell back into numb.

  Once was enough, Garrett’s fingers released immediately. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” I’d learned more about my limits these past weeks, and the two handprints already blooming on my arms no longer had me scrambling for the clinic.

  “Look at those bruises. I’m so sorry, princess. I just—I just can’t even believe it’s you. I thought …” He paused to swallow and swallow again. Ducked his head and passed a hand over his eyes. “They told me you were dead.”

  “Who did, Garrett?” Dozens of people should have been able to identify that body as not mine.

  He glanced over his shoulder up at the door. “Let’s walk and talk.”

  We headed into Central Park. It took him a block to find his voice again. A block plus a few minutes of staring at me, mumbling incoherent things like, “Your hair— I can’t believe— It’s reall
y—” And another hug, a gentler hug, with a broken, “Oh, princess.”

  I couldn’t push him. He wouldn’t talk until he’d processed this—lessons from our time tethered together that grated at my impatience.

  “How have you …” Garrett looked around the sidewalk, crowded with strollers and joggers and dogs on leashes and people on cell phones. He stepped back so we were out of the flow of traffic and gestured to a park bench, but I didn’t sit. I didn’t like the idea of him leaning on a lamppost, towering above me. “It is so good to see you. It’s taking everything in me to not keep hugging you, just so I can believe you’re real. Where have you been? And how have you been surviving? Penny, you’re … you. Just the idea you were out here—alone—makes me feel sick.”

  The story of Rapunzel flashed into my mind. The gorgeous illustration in my anthology, and Carter’s voice reading it to me while Garrett waited impatiently out in the yard to play catch. I couldn’t remember how old I’d been, but I remembered Carter warring with his desire to be a good brother and keep me company and his need to go out in the sunshine and enjoy the day. At some point during the reading he’d slipped up and said, “Penelope, Penelope, let down your long hair.”

  I’d hated the story ever since. Seen my own face in the illustration. My own golden-brown hair reflected in the coil the princess spilled over the bone-colored stones of her tower.

  My hair wasn’t gold anymore. I’d escaped my tower, and I’d never let anyone lock me up again.

  “I’ve been fine.”

  “You don’t belong out here. Penny, you’ve got to come with me. I can keep you safe. I promise I can keep you safe.”

  He knew better to reach for me with his hands, but his eyes did. His gaze wrapped around me like manacles. The word “safe” was a lot like “careful,” felt a lot like “prison.”