“I know what it is.” I grew up in one. I thought that was as bad as it got. Until they shipped me off to the foster-care mill. Until I started taking the things I wanted—candy, sneaks, bikes, cars—and graduated to juvie. “What time do you have to be there?”
“You actually want to go?”
I would clean toilets with you, Gwendolyn Shaw. “Uh, sure. It’ll get me out of the house at least. Plus, I can break in my new ride.”
“Now we’re getting the real story.” I pictured her with the phone pressed to her ear, the cord curled around her fingers, a smirk playing on her lips. The lips that would be mine. “Pick me up at eight. Grizzly Peak Boulevard…” I jotted down the address, gleefully. I knew that street. I’d egged a house on it once. Okay, three times, and the eggs had been more like rocks. That’s where Francis Conway, the CEO of Y-Trax, laid his pathetic little cue-ball head. Smack dab on one of the wealthiest streets in the Oakland Hills, where the other half lived. The half that included the most beautiful girl I’d ever laid eyes on. “Unless you’d rather I come to you. My dad can drop me off before his tennis lesson.”
“Nope. I’ll be there eight o’clock sharp.” As if I’d ever been on time for anything. Mom always teased I’d be late to my own funeral. My social worker, Maria Rodriguez—the first in a long line of social workers—had made sure I’d been on time to Mom’s. They’d been buried on the same day, my family. Three deep holes side by side in the earth. Pinned in place by Maria’s tight grip on my arm, it was the first time I’d felt the need to run. To keep running.
“Oh, hey, where do you—” I hung up fast, like the phone was on fire, before she could finish, my face hot with shame. I knew what was coming, the question she would ask, and I shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t answer. Because I still had a chance, and I wasn’t about to blow it with the truth. Where do I live, Gwendolyn? In the Blue Bird, the no-tell motel where I’ve been staying since I turned eighteen and the group home kicked me out. Like there was some kind of voodoo—a visit from the responsible adult fairy—that happened between seventeen and 364 days and that magic number, eighteen.
“Sorry, Butch,” my social worker, seventh after Maria, had said, patting me on the shoulder. “As unfair as it seems, you’re responsible for yourself now. Try to make good decisions.” What she meant: I was too young to have a clue, and old enough to screw it up. Too old to stay.
I flopped back on the bed and reached for the remote. Free cable. A perk of motel living.
Next door, Wade and Peggy were already going at it. Whether they were killing each other or making up, it was usually hard to tell till the next day. Wade always left his mark, but I kept my mouth shut since he let me bum cigarettes and beer whenever I wanted. Something heavy thudded against the wall, and I ratcheted up the volume, ogling a half-naked blonde in a music video. If I squinted my eyes a little, the picture blurred just enough I could pretend she was Gwen. Dancing just for me.
****
And that’s how I ended up fighting a serious case of déjà vu on the porch of Port in a Storm. If I’d been there before, I didn’t remember it. I’d laid my head in so many places by then, I couldn’t tell them apart. They’d blurred into an ugly smear of well-meaning smiles and empty promises. Hot tears and holes punched in walls so thin I could hear that nobody wanted me. This place was no different than the others. It felt familiar. But also, unfamiliar. Because for the first time—standing beside Gwendolyn Shaw—I was winning.
“Thanks for coming with me,” she said as we headed toward the front door, its white-washed wood chipping and peeling like even the paint couldn’t stand to be there a second longer. I took her viola case from her hand, trying to prove I was a gentleman. She rewarded me with a sweet smile. “It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”
I shrugged. Casual, devil-may-care Butch. That’s the face I wore then. She couldn’t have known it was all an act—could she?—but she slipped her fingers into mine and squeezed my hand, reassuring me. My whole body thrummed as if it didn’t belong to me anymore. Just like the lyrics of that KISS song, “Love Gun,” I thought, grinning wide as a hyena. Back then, everything was a KISS song. I might have even hummed a few bars under my breath as we walked inside. No place for hidin’ baby, no place to run. Gwen had me locked and loaded, her red-polished finger on the trigger…of my love gun, love gun.
I followed her inside, watching her skirt swish as she walked. On the ride over, the wind had caught the hem, almost blowing it up, and she’d yanked it down just in time. But not before I’d glimpsed the paleness of her thighs, the soft white hair above her tan lines. And a single freckle, a sprinkle of cinnamon, I longed to touch. A solar eclipse of a freckle that obliterated any trace of buyer’s remorse. That car was so worth it.
“Come on,” she said, tugging me inside the door—she knew the way—and to a room just off the entrance with polished hardwood, wall-to-wall bookcases, and an old piano where a woman sat, singing. The kids, a room full of them, sat wide-eyed, transfixed by the woman or the singing. Or both.
“That’s Cherice Currey,” Gwen whispered right up against my ear. The tickle of her watermelon breath jolted my groin like a cattle prod. I tried to think of something to say—and fast—so she would do it again.
“Curry? Like the spice?” Young Butch at his finest. And an epic fail, because Gwen only nodded. No whispering. No watermelon. No electric shock to my junk. I settled against the wall and listened.
Cherice was a beauty in her own right—the anti-Gwen—older, with chestnut skin and eyes so brown they were almost black. A scar ran the length of her cheek, raised and dark as a leech, out of place on a face that seemed otherwise unmarked. She had mystery and grit and a voice that came from pain. And the whole room, Gwen included, couldn’t look away from her. But that day, I’d hardly noticed her. Because Gwen had something I needed but couldn’t name and couldn’t have.
When Cherice finished playing, Gwen clapped, so I did too. Then Cherice stood in front of the piano, waiting for quiet. “Alright, kids, it’s the weekend, and you all know what that means.” She paused, and cast a conspiratorial smile in Gwen’s direction. “Our special friend, Gwen, is here to play the viola. And it looks like she’s brought a guest. What’s your name, young man?”
Loser. Just call me Total Loser. I didn’t speak until Gwen nudged me with her elbow. Nobody told me I had a speaking part. “Butch…uh, Butch Calder.” I’m not sure if Cherice replied. I was too busy hiding my beet-red cheeks, calculating how many cool points I’d lost. But I perked up when I heard Gwen addressing her audience.
“Butch plays the guitar. You have a guitar, don’t you, Miss Cherice?”
The Butch I am now could’ve talked his way out of it. Damn if prison didn’t make me a better liar. But Young Butch, poor sap, did all he knew how to do. He turned tail and ran. Out the door with its peeling paint and around the porch to the rear of the house. I had no clue where I was going. Just away from perfect Gwen who would figure I lied to her. Hell, maybe she already knew. Away from those eyes—at least twenty pairs of them—that would see me for who I was. More like them, castoffs, runaways, delinquents, than Gwen with her swishy skirt and her viola. I could’ve headed for the ’Cuda, and I still can’t say for sure why I didn’t tear off in a cloud of dust. I didn’t see it then. The fork-in-the-road moment. I chose, like we all do, unknowing.
Nobody came after me. But I wasn’t alone.
I stopped short of the backyard when I heard a man’s voice. Even now, when I think of it, he sounded like the devil himself. Raspy and cruel and full of fire.
“Do you really think anybody is gonna believe you, Evelyn? You’re a little freak. Evil Evie. Isn’t that what they call you?” The man who spoke looked familiar to me. Then, I’d wondered if I knew him and how. Now, I know he was a type. The type of guy I’d grown up with in juvie. Tatted, long-haired, skinny as a rail, but mean. The type who’d coldcock you for an
accidental bump in the chow line. The type who cut his teeth on boys like me.
“Well? Isn’t it?” He flicked his cigarette right in the girl’s face, sending a spray of ashes to the ground. She followed them with her eyes. “Cat got your tongue?”
“Just leave me alone, Trey.” She didn’t look at him when she said it, but her voice had gumption.
“Just leave me alone, Trey,” he mimicked, then guffawed like he was a real Jim Carrey. He ground out the ashes with his boot, still chuckling to himself. “Make me,” he oozed, moving closer to her, reaching out his long, bony arm with its skeleton fingers and grazing the side of her cheek. “You look just like your mama. Real purdy.”
I stood there frozen for longer than I should have. Truth, I was afraid.
“The kind of purdy men pay for. But you already know that, don’t ya?” His hand rested on her small shoulder. Jesus, she was just a kid. Twelve. Thirteen at most.
“Hey,” I said, finally, wincing at the way my voice cracked. “She said to leave her alone.” I stepped out from the side of the house and showed myself. Butch Calder, wannabe bad boy. Hair gelled within an inch of its life. Levis and Doc Martens that I’d dropped another Benjamin on last week. And the knowledge I’d never be good enough for Gwendolyn Shaw sitting like a rock in the pit of my stomach right next to that other unpleasant reality. I was completely and utterly alone.
“And who the fuck are you?”
No matter Trey’s demand, the girl drew my attention. She stared at me with eyes I wouldn’t forget—big and bright and green, but scared as a rabbit. “I’m nobody,” I said. “Nobody.”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Evie
January 14, 2017
Saturday
The officers stop me a block from the office—“I’m sorry, ma’am. Police personnel only”—leaving me to fend for myself in the quicksand between the past and the present. I listen to the sound of my own breathing, the ragged push and pull of it, to keep at least one foot in the now. Sebastian stands next to me, quiet. Watching. I want to ask him why he called it the hanging tree, but the more time that passes in silence, the more I think I imagined it all.
“Looks like a murder scene to me,” he says, finally. Which is obvious with the coroner’s van parked in front. The crime scene tape hanging loosely around the trunk of the tree, as if it can contain all the evil in the world inside its happy yellow lines. And the draped white sheet that conceals one thing. I study its shape—what I can see from here—measure the length of it in horror. It’s small enough to be a child. But not too small. Cassie’s height, I realize. The height of a soon-to-be, never-to-be adult.
“Do you think they’ll want to talk to us?” Sebastian asks. His voice registers. Barely. Then, his question.
“Of course not. We’ve done nothing wrong.” What does he know? What could he know?
“I mean us. Your group. Of sex offenders.” Nothing, Evie. He knows nothing.
I feel awful for making him utter the word, say aloud what he is, within earshot of the reporters circling like buzzards at the periphery. “Oh. Right. Um…I imagine they’ll probably be looking at everyone in the building.” After the words are spoken, I realize how ridiculous they sound. Like I’ve already decided somebody is dead. A homicide has occurred. A sexual homicide no less.
But I’m not the only one. “We’ll be the prime suspects. Who am I kidding? I’ll be the prime suspect,” Sebastian adds, in a flurry. “Obviously. Unless there are other convicted murderers meeting up once a week in your building, I’m totally screwed. I’m so, so…”
He’s talking fast under his breath, shaking his head like he’s ridding it of something. But when our eyes meet, I see focus there. Stillness. Like mirror-smooth water. I wait and watch, trying to make sense of him—even, it seems, as he’s watching me.
Finally, a reporter pushes by us, and Sebastian jumps, the still water broken and rippling. “Sebastian, you’ve got to calm down. We don’t even know for certain what’s happened here. Don’t work yourself up.”
“Right, right. You’re right.”
“You should probably go home. Being here will only make it worse.”
His face is stricken. “Wait. Wait a minute. You don’t think I had something to do with this, do you? Do you, Dr. Maddox?”
Another part of my job is lying. Or should I say, the avoidance of honesty. And in only twelve and a half years, my mother had made me an expert.
“Of course, I’m clean, Evelyn Anne.”
“No, Evelyn Anne, I didn’t take your money.”
“I can stop anytime I want, Evelyn Anne.”
She’d always used my full name when she lied, and by the time I graduated middle school, I’d earned my PhD in deceit. Of course, they don’t call it lying in grad school. “Wait until the client is ready to hear the truth,” they say. So, I do.
“You’re worried that I suspect you. It makes complete sense. You must be feeling vulnerable right now. But the reality is, neither of us have enough information to make a judgment.”
He bites his lip, nods. “I’ll see you on Monday then. I hope.”
I follow Sebastian with my eyes as he skirts the crowd and takes the turn toward home. He doesn’t look back. Not once. And when he’s finally out of view, I let myself think it. It washes over me like the tide—slow and secret—until I’m neck-deep in it and drowning. Whatever happened here, it could be him. Not Sebastian, per se. Or George. Or Vince. Or Antonio. Or even Danny. But him. The faceless man. Whoever he is. I spin around, scanning the crowd for a sign. He could be right here, right now. The hair on my neck prickles at the possibility.
And if it is him, then it’s also me. Because I’m to blame.
****
I hover near the media vans, my nerves a steady buzz under my skin. I’ve ignored three calls from Maggie. It’s been at least two hours since I left the house, but I can’t go until I know.
“What happened?” I direct the question to a man with a camera bag slung over his shoulder, but the woman next to him, a reporter, answers. Her heavy makeup cracks as she frowns, but her voice is as flat and colorless as the mud-puddled sidewalk beneath my feet.
“It’s a kid. A girl.”
“How old?”
She shrugs. “They’re not saying.”
“Murdered?”
A single bob of her head, and my mouth gets dry.
“Was she…you know…?” That word still won’t come out. Instead, it festers inside my mouth like an open sore.
“Raped, you mean?” Rape. I wince. “Probably. I heard she was half-undressed.”
I mumble a thank you and retreat, willing my legs to move. My car is back in the alleyway where I left it, probably towed or broken into by now. Before I take the turn around the corner, before the hanging tree disappears, I look over my shoulder. Two policemen are loading the coroner’s van. The white sheet is gone, replaced by a sturdy, black body bag. I imagine Cassie inside it. She would seem, at first glance, to be sleeping. But she’s too still, too pale for that. Her skin too cold. If you looked closer, which they would, you’d know something wasn’t right because of the marks on her neck. The tiny red petechiae where the blood vessels burst under the force of his fingers. Her eyes—opened by a gloved hand—also red. The hyoid bone, delicate as a bird’s wing, fractured.
I never saw Cassie dead, but she died. I’d watched it. From up there in the crook of the tree, still as a magpie, I’d taken it in. The hunger for air. Her small, wild hands reaching out and up toward me. Though by then, I imagine I was just a shadow to her. She’d stopped moving, but the man kept on. Fumbling with the button of her cutoff jean shorts, the ones we’d exchanged like sisters so that I couldn’t remember if they were hers or mine. I’d heard him grunting with effort. With pleasure. My last memory of Cassie is that vile sound.
“
Excuse me, ma’am.”
I must have stopped walking, because I haven’t moved. That’s what the past will do to you. Fix you in one spot like a stone statue. I meet a pair of familiar eyes. Brown and uncertain. Tired like mine. His stubble is still there, thicker now, but it doesn’t hide the razor-thin scar on his neck.
“I’m not sure if you remember me,” he says, “but I…”
“Mr. Calder, right? You’re practically my guardian angel. Of course, I remember. I hope your PO wasn’t too hard on you.” He lowers his head, kicks at an invisible pebble. I think I’ve embarrassed him.
“I didn’t want to bother you. I just saw you walking, and I thought I’d ask if you were okay.”
I catch him looking at the bandage on my forearm, and I fold my arms across my chest. “I’m alright, I suppose. As alright as I can be.”
“Did the cops catch that creep from last night?”
“Not that I’ve heard.” My gaze trails back to the yellow tape, and his eyes follow.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“It’s just…” The coroner’s van pulls away with someone’s body—not Cassie’s—inside. “That’s my office across the street.”
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I mean, it looks bad. Whatever happened.”
I intend to walk away, but there’s an urge. An impulse I can’t ignore. “Do I know you?” His breath catches, or maybe I imagine it. “I mean, from before last night?” He doesn’t reply. His face is blank, so he’s not thinking. Whatever the answer—yes or no—he already knows it. He’s known it. “Calder,” I say. “What’s your first name?”
“Butch.”
Remembering is a revelation. What’s gone one minute, lost and not even missed, is there the next. In splendid color. I remember Butch Calder. It’s a kind of miracle.
Evie
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