Creeping Beautiful

by JA Huss

  Ha! Haha!

  Then what are you going to do?

  Um… exactly what I have been doing.

  So you’re going to just be a criminal your whole life? Is that what you’re saying?

  Look who’s talking.

  I’m a doctor. I have a job. And a life.

  Do you have a girlfriend?

  Several, actually.

  Well… I didn’t know that.

  You don’t know anything about me,.

  So it seems.

  But that’s beside the point. We’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about you. And what was happening in the living room when I walked in the house.

  Adam was gonna choke Nathan to death, that’s what was happening.

  But why? What did he do?

  How do you know he did something? Maybe Adam did something?

  Indie. You’re making me tired.

  I’m just saying!

  What. The fuck. Happened?

  …

  Indie?

  I think you should just… talk to McKay.

  Why?

  Because I told him everything already and he didn’t freak out. It’s not a big deal.

  But you’re here. In front of me. Why can’t you just tell me?

  It’s just not a big deal. OK? Things just… happen. Sometimes. Accidents, you know, and—

  Oh. My God. No. Tell me this is not—

  It was an accident! I swear! And I didn’t even know for sure until last week!

  You’re pregnant, aren’t you.

  We only did it once and he didn’t even come inside me. He came on my—

  Oh, my God. Nope. Nuh-uh. I don’t want to hear this. This interview is over.

  SESSION #WHO-GIVES-A-FUCK NOTES

  SESSION NOTES

  These notes will be informal since this wasn’t a regular interview. More of a fact-finding mission. Indie and I did talk more after I turned the recorder off. She didn’t want to go back out and face Adam, but she did want me to check on Nathan. So she waited in the office while I went out and made sure Adam and McKay didn’t kill that little fuck.

  Unfortunately, they did not.

  So when I came back in, I told Indie he was fine. Which was a slight exaggeration because it was clear that Adam took a hit to the face, and that means that Nathan took at least one punch, if not more. And there was no way to find out how much damage Adam did. Also, McKay was missing. So he might be over there killing the asshole as I record this.

  Indie is up in her room and Adam is sitting on the porch, making sure she does not sneak out. She admitted that’s how she met up with Nathan the night before she left for school.

  I feel bad for Adam. I really do. He’s doing his best. Indie has not been the easiest child to raise. I might’ve painted the earlier sessions in a slightly optimistic and positive slant.

  She has been… difficult. And while she is mostly settled now, and reasonable, every once in a while, she does something reckless and harmful. To other people, but also to herself.

  I’ve been reluctant to go into detail about those incidents because they all happened after the Company went down and I figured this was no longer a professional study, but more of a private one meant to help her and not be a guidance document for future generations of Company kids.

  I think what I’m trying to say is… we maybe all forgot who and what she really is. And now she is most definitely pregnant. She showed us her little pee stick she managed to buy a few days ago while she was still at school. And actually, she had six of them. Apparently, she didn’t want to believe she was pregnant, which leads me to conclude this actually was an accident. But… Company kid gets pregnant and has another Company kid—that was the one thing Adam and I were trying to avoid back on that day when he bought Indie. I will spell it out for you—she was not meant to be a concubine and have good little Company babies.

  And now Adam is telling me that Nathan is probably Company too. Never trained, obviously. But it’s not the nurture I’m worried about here, it’s the nature. His genetics with her genetics equals Company kid.

  I want to fucking drink myself into unconsciousness right now.

  Bottom line: Nathan St. James is a problem. We can deal with the baby, but he’s a whole other matter. Because it’s clear from the incoherent babbling I got out of Adam before I came back in here to write notes that Adam thinks that kid is up to something.

  I will find out more later, but right now Indie has priority.

  SESSION NOTES: (cont.)

  OK. McKay didn’t go kill Nathan. He went into town to buy another pregnancy test. He needed to see it in real time, I guess. And… yup. She’s pregnant. From what she told me, that happened the night before she left for school, so my handy-dandy doctor training tells me she’s about fourteen weeks along.

  She will not be getting an abortion. This was the only thing the four of us agreed on during our little emergency family meeting.

  Adam sat in the dining room with his head down on the table, while the rest of us sat in the living room. But we could see him from where we were sitting and let me tell you, it wasn’t a pretty sight. He’s taking it hard. Very hard. Even McKay is handling this better than Adam. And if I had to make a prediction about which of us would freak out most should Indie ever come home pregnant, I’d have picked McKay every day of the week.

  But he’s had the most practice with Indie’s bouts of insubordination. And OK, maybe calling a baby insubordination is a little bit callous, but… this was not in the plan. So it is what it is.

  McKay is dealing.

  Adam is not. I think he really was coming up with ways to kill Nathan St. James without Indie finding out. But there is no way. There is no way to get rid of that kid without one of us getting the blame.

  SESSION NOTES (cont.)

  New development. Nate’s grandfather died the day after Christmas.

  Indie wanted to go to the funeral.

  Fucking wonderful. That’s how that went.

  Just to clarify, that was irony. It sucked. Because Adam made us all go with her.

  Once a team, always a team.

  SESSION NOTES (cont.)

  Indie ran away. Well, not exactly. She went to Nates and then she called me and said she wasn’t coming home.

  Adam is going to kill Nathan St. James with his bare hands.

  McKay now thinks we should poison him.

  I’m… on the fence. But leaning towards bare hands.

  SESSION NOTES (cont.)

  Nathan St. James has been arrested for statutory rape.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - ADAM

  6.5 YEARS AGO

  Let’s just be clear. That little fuck had it coming.

  I can’t exactly pinpoint the reason why I hated Nathan from the first moment I realized he was helping Indie when she was living in the woods those first few weeks after I bought her, but I don’t really need a reason.

  He helped her. I should’ve thanked him for that. He fed her. Made sure she wasn’t tripping over the snakes or swimming with the gators. If he had not been there, who knows what she would’ve done. Maybe gone into the marsh and never come out. Not because something bit her or ate her. Not because she starved or died after drinking dirty river water.

  She could’ve just kept walking and taken her chances. She’d have been caught by someone eventually. But with no birth certificate or parents she’d have ended up in foster care and by the age of seventeen Indie Anna Accorsi would’ve been a statistic, or a drug addict, or some deadbeat criminal.

  And I do get the irony. I made her a criminal too. But we’re not deadbeat criminals. She has been trained, and she is safe, and I did everything I could to make sure she grew up understanding limits.

  So I owe him.

  I do. And I get that.

  But I do not like him, and I do not trust him, and that boy is eighteen and my girl is seventeen, so… that little fucker had it coming.

  Of course, the charge did not stick.
Nathan St. James is already home. And now the fucking town of Pearl Springs, Louisiana has taken an interest in us. I do have a birth certificate for her, and papers from the Bahamas saying I am her legal guardian, and she has a US passport. On the surface, everything is in order. But things are not in order. The documents are bogus and if they take a good look at our paper trail for Indie lots of red flags will start popping up.

  She is allowed to have dual citizenship in the Bahamas until she is twenty-one if she was born abroad. Both her passports say she was born to a Bahamian father and an American mother in the US Virgin Islands. Thus, she is a legal citizen of both countries. Whether that is true or not, I have no idea. But all the papers I use to prove legal authority over her here in the US come from the Bahamian courts.

  Which is fine, as long as no one looks too closely. And so far, no one has.

  But Indie, pissed off as she is, has filed a request for emancipation in the town of Pearl Springs. She is, right at this moment, outside screaming at McKay that the minute that order is granted she and Nathan are getting married.

  I’m sitting at the dining room table with my arms crossed and my legs kicked out in front of me, listening to Donovan, sitting across from me, go on and on about how this is just a threat. She’s not serious. She will come around. McKay will handle things. And I should just leave her alone.

  I almost laugh. Because I wasn’t even the one who went into the fucking Pearl Spring Police Department and filed a complaint against Nathan St. James.

  Donovan was.

  I glare at him now. “You do realize that the town of Pearl Springs will be all up in our business over this shit?”

  “It’s nothing we can’t handle.”

  “How, exactly, will we handle this, Donovan? Are we going to kill them? Are we going to blow that whole town up? Wipe it off the map and pretend it was never there? There is no more Company. That town was never Company. Never has been, never will be now. I don’t know a single goddamned person on the city council. They are not gonna ignore us. They might not be able to take her away or charge us with anything, but they will find us… interesting. They will take notice. This is not gonna blow over. Some teenage girl who they have no record of—never attended public school, never took part in anything but church three towns over”—I’m so fucking pissed right now—“doesn’t have any friends except for this boy she got pregnant by. And lives with two men, both of whom are over thirty and neither of whom are related to her. You don’t think that’s gonna draw some attention? What the fuck, Donovan? What the actual fuck were you thinking?”

  “I just thought—”

  “And she thinks I did this.” I cut him off because my question was rhetorical and I’m not really interested in his fucking psychobabble right now. “She is seventeen and a half, OK? In six months, she could leave and never come back.”

  He sighs. Rubs the side of his temple with the palm of his hand. “Maybe that’s not a bad idea.”

  I stand up. My chair goes flying backwards. And I pound my hands on the table as I lean over and stare him in the eyes. “What the fuck did you just say?”

  “Maybe… it’s time for her to go off and find her own way?”

  “Her own way doing what, Donovan? Is she going to college? Is she gonna… waitress down in New Orleans? What exactly will she be doing as she’s finding her own way?”

  He, of course, has no answer.

  “She’s going to kill people, Donovan. That’s what she’s gonna do.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “She’s gonna lose her fucking mind, and get bored, and start doing jobs on her own. And then one day that job will go bad and her instincts will kick in and that’s it. It’s over. She will revert back to who and what she really is and this world will not be a better place because of it.”

  He grinds his teeth for a few moments. Stares past me while he thinks. And then his eyes finally meet mine. “Maybe she should come live with me?”

  “With you?” I laugh. Very loud. “With you?”

  “At least I can help her.”

  “Help her do what?”

  “Deal, Adam. That’s why I’m here, remember. I keep her sane.”

  “You don’t keep her sane! I keep her sane. McKay keeps her sane. You just come and go like this girl is your hobby. You’re busy living in LA working eighty hours a week on this plastic surgery dream. You’re not even qualified to treat her mind. You never were.”

  He huffs and leans back in his chair. “I’m more qualified than you. And you seemed fine with it for the past seven years.”

  “Because we were a team. Because we were under Company protection. Because I had no other choice, Donovan.”

  “And what choices do you have now?”

  I point at him. “Fuck you. She is not leaving. She is not marrying that boy. She will have this baby here and we will take care of it.”

  Donovan has the nerve to smirk at me. “And how do you think Nathan St. James is gonna feel about that?”

  “I don’t give one flying fuck what Nathan St. James feels.”

  “Is that so?”

  I whirl around and find Indie standing in the archway between the front hall and the dining room with her arms crossed.

  “Yeah. That’s so.”

  McKay is standing behind her, shaking his head. Warning me to shut up. But I don’t feel like shutting up. I have things to say. We are gonna have a come-to-Jesus moment with this girl. Right here. Right now.

  “Listen to me, Indie Anna. And listen good. You’re a good kid. A really good kid. But the only reason you turned out this way was because we had you on a tight leash.”

  “A leash?”

  “It’s a figure of speech, and you know that. No one put a fucking leash on you, Indie. We’ve given you everything you’ve ever needed. We made sure you didn’t have to worry about anything—”

  “You turned me into a killer.”

  “No, baby. You were born a killer. We”—I point to me, and McKay and Donovan—“we keep you in line. Without us—”

  “Without you what?” She is in a very mean mood right now. So when I don’t answer her, she keeps going. “I’m gonna tell you how this will go down, OK? Because the moment you walked into that police station and filed that complaint against Nathan, I chose a side. And I chose his side.”

  I could tell her it wasn’t me, it was Donovan. But she wants it to be me. She can deal with me betraying her like that. But Donovan? I don’t think she could handle that. She trusts him most. She might even love him best, I’m not sure. It’s a close one between Donovan and McKay. The only thing I do know for sure is that I am not her favorite. And if I betray her, she will get over it. Hell, she probably expects me to betray her.

  So instead I say, “What does that mean, Indie? You’re taking his side?”

  “It means I’m moving out for good, Adam.”

  “To where?”

  “To Nathan’s house. His grandfather is dead. He’s all alone over there. It will give me some space.”

  I ponder this. It could be worse. A lot worse. She could say they’re getting an apartment in town. Or fuck, they’re moving to New Orleans. That would be a disaster.

  “McKay has already agreed.”

  I look at McKay. He just shrugs at me with his hands.

  Then I look at Donovan, who is nodding his head. “I’m all for this, Indie. I think it will be good for you too.” Then Donovan looks at me. “And she’ll be just right across the lake. Hell, that house used to be part of this property. It’s… it’s… this is good. Trust me.” He looks back at Indie. “But you still need to meet with me.”

  “Why?” Because for some reason, I’m angrier about Donovan’s offer to take Indie to LA than I am about Indie’s announcement that she’s moving in with that punk, Nathan. “Why you, Donovan? You’re not even here.”

  “Because she has to talk to someone. And what are you gonna do? Huh? Where else are you gonna take her for therapy? You just gon
na waltz into some counselor’s office and say, ‘Hey, my kid here was brainwashed by some psychotic secret organization when she was little and we need someone who can talk her down off the ledge when she gets the urge to kill people?’”

  “OK.” Indie huffs and throws up her arms. “That’s enough. Here is my final decision. I am moving out. Today. I will withdraw the emancipation request so we don’t get too much scrutiny in the local courts. But I’m not meeting with you anymore, Donovan. I’m fine.” She directs her gaze to me. “I’m grateful for everything you guys have done, but I don’t need therapy anymore. I’m over it. I’m over the jobs. I’m over the killing, I’m over the Company. They’ve been gone now for two and half years. It’s done, you guys. We’re rich, we’re still alive, and we’re done. I want to marry Nathan St. James, have his baby, and be a mother. You can stop worrying about me now. You did a good job and I will never be able to repay you or tell you how much I appreciate you. I love you. All three of you.”

  Her eyes dart to mine when she says that. And I know she loves me. She just doesn’t tell me much. So she wants me to hear this.

  “I’ll be right across the lake. It’s barely moving out. And I’ll probably be over here every day anyway, because Nate still has one more semester of high school.”

  High school. The fucking dumbass is still in high school.

  I want to kill that kid with my bare hands. I want to wrap my hands around his throat and look him in the eyes while I choke the life out of him.