Grizzly curses under his breath and puts his hands in the air, his palms white as ivory. Probably sweaty too. He’s human after all, then. “I told you, lady. I don’t want no trouble.”
“Crazy Krandel used to wake me up with the army’s bayonet drill. Want to hear it?”
He shakes his head no. As if I care. “I’ll tell you what you wanna know,” he says. “All of it. I swear.” But even as he makes his pledge, one of those beefy bear paws drops beneath the counter. Like he’s pinning a sockeye salmon beneath it, readying himself to take a bite.
“It goes like this. Kill, kill, kill without mercy . . .” No time to waste, I stalk toward him, raising the bayonet. I hear myself laugh, and it sounds as distant and strange as those brass bells on the door.
He raises his hand, slow and measured. Turns out he’s caught a pistol. Not a fish. And he waves it at me. “Damn, woman. You are as nutty as a fruitcake. In here, I’m in charge. And there ain’t nothin’ for free. So, if you wanna make a deal, I’ll bite. Otherwise, you can take your old man’s knife and stick it where—”
Luci charges from behind a rack of fishing hats, aiming her cell phone right at him. “Hablas mucho. You’re a big talker, aren’t you? Go ahead, keep talking. I’ll bet the cops would like to know there’s an ex-con working in a store that sells firearms. And I have him on video brandishing a gun at a woman who lost her only child. Whose side do you think they’ll be on? What will Fernanda think, seeing you carted back to prison?”
Maybe it’s only my imagination. But Grizzly’s chin seems to tremble, and along with it, his beard. It reminds me of my father’s squirrel pelts shivering in the wind. How something so dead can look alive. He lowers the gun and deposits it on the counter.
“Alright. Alright. That guy with your daughter . . . he had a—” I flinch at him, just to watch him squirm. “A burn mark. A burn mark on his arm.”
“Now, was that so hard?” I slide the bayonet into my back pocket and snatch Dakota’s photo from the counter, my hands shaking with a life of their own. “If you say anything about this to anyone, I’ll send Crazy Krandel up here.”
Luci waves the phone in his face, taunting him. “And the video goes viral, chiloso.”
“Got it?” I ask.
He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. Which I figure is as good as a yes.
“Next time, don’t be an asshole.”
I follow Luciana to the door. But before I leave, I toss the bells onto the concrete and stomp them beneath my heel just because I can. Because it feels good to be the owl swooping down to take what it wants. To be the destroyer. Rather than the bits of gristle and fur left behind.
****
Neither of us speaks. Luciana pulls her feet onto the seat beneath her, leaving the bayonet alone on the floorboard. She rolls down the window and lets the night air buffet through her fingers. Like she’s flying. It reminds me of the black bird on Dakota’s shoulder, leaving the confines of its cage behind. Had Dakota felt like that? Had I caged her?
Every so often, Luciana wipes at a tear trail down her cheek and sniffles. Confused, I do what I always do. Turn on the radio. Slayer is scream-singing about the skin of the dead and what it feels like when they steal your soul. The guitar and the yelling and the beat of the drum blow my mind clean. Banish Grizzly to his steel-barred cage in the corner.
“You were a badass in there, Luci. A total Thelma. What happened? What’s wrong?”
“You should’ve warned me. That was muy loca. You know I don’t like violence. We both could’ve gotten hurt. Or worse. Now I won’t sleep for a week.”
“Well, you said you wanted to be Thelma,” I say, hoping for a half smile at least. “That makes me Louise. She’s the one who killed that guy, Harlan.”
Luci shakes her head. But at least she stops crying.
“I didn’t plan it. It just . . .” There’s so much wrong with what I’m about to say. I’d never let a patient get away with it. “It just happened.”
“¡No me jodas! Things don’t just happen. You’ve been acting crazy. You pulled a knife on that guy.”
“Yeah, and he deserved it. He’s a bully with a gun. And he insulted you. You were afraid of him. I could tell. He reminded you of Mateo.” She groans, a vocal eye roll. And I know I’ve gone too far. Therapizing her. Even if it is true.
“That was not about me.”
“Luci, I had to know. Whatever he was hiding. It was important. I’m glad I did it. Because I was right about Boyd.”
“Boyd?”
“Who else do you know with a burn mark on his arm?”
She sighs, still not meeting my eyes. “La coincidencia. Have you ever thought it might be just that?”
“But you don’t believe in coincidences. You’re the one who told me to go there in the first place. Never ignore a jumping card. Remember that?”
“I told you to go see your father. Not to turn into an idiota.” Finally, she looks at me, still shell-shocked. “Did your dad really do that? Yell that every morning?”
“Not every morning.”
“You never said anything. I knew you and him had your differences, but that . . . ay, Dios mío. No child should suffer that way.”
“He wasn’t always crazy.” Crazy Krandel shoots ’em dead. Smack in the middle of the forehead. Crazy Krandel fries ’em up. Then Mollie eats them squirrels for sup. The title track of my childhood beats in the back of my brain like a tiny fist. I almost find myself humming along to the tune of my destruction. “Dad turned nineteen in Vietnam. Can you imagine? It figures he came back with severe PTSD. My mom thought it would go away, but it only got worse when they had me. As I got older, he refused to take his meds, and he’d have these episodes of extreme paranoia. After a while, the episodes got longer and longer until he was just full-time Crazy Krandel. He did things then. Bad things.”
Luciana lowers her head. Like I’m a poor, pitiful wretch. She can’t even bear to look at me. “Did he hurt you?”
Hurt. Such a small word. A word that could’ve fit in the pocket of my father’s corduroy jacket, tucked next to the Swiss army knife he’d carried. A word so small and so sneaky it could seep into the cracks of his mind without him ever knowing. Hurt people hurt people, my mom would whisper in the early days, before she’d given up on him. With the sounds of my father’s rage clamoring in the background. And then there was the silence. The faraway look in his eyes, as if he existed in another world. His body, just a shell in this one.
“He smacked me around a few times. But mostly, the hurt happened in here.” I tap my head with a sad smile. “Psychological warfare.”
“And you lived with him? What judge would agree to that? Hombre estúpido.”
“My mom tried. Maybe a little too hard. A year or so after they’d split, she helped me make up a lie about my dad to tell the judge. She wanted it to be the worst thing possible, so they’d have no choice but to grant her full custody. But it didn’t work. I wasn’t a very good liar, and the judge figured it out. Plus, he was partial to my dad anyway, being a Vietnam vet himself.”
“Lo siento mucho.”
“It’s alright. It’s over now.” As if that could ever be true. Some part of me had gone on living at Mol’s long after I’d run away. Some part of me still existed there—a second, secret, shivering heart—buried in the woods among Roscoe’s bones. Barely beating in the dark earth beside his basset skull, which would be smooth and perfect by now, save for that single bullet hole.
I’m speeding, hurtling down the freeway, toward home. But mostly away from Allendale, my personal dystopia. Next to me, Luciana clears her throat.
“My grandma always told me to honor the past. That it’s our legacy. But, you know what I think? The past is the worst gift I ever got—worse than the time Mateo gave me Jessica Rabbit seat covers for Boludo—and it just keeps right on giving. What’s that
old saying? It ain’t over till it’s over.”
I nod. “Or until the fat lady sings.”
We both laugh, but I know exactly what she means. Some things are never over. Never can be. Never will.
****
I go alone to Cuttings Wharf. To the house tucked at the end of the cul-de-sac with its mint-green siding and its dismal plastic Santa toppled over in the front lawn. In another two months or so, they could stand him up again and no one would be the wiser. But the cracks in his faded red suit tell me he hasn’t been upright for a while. That Christmases passed with him lying here. Summers too.
I envy that Santa. Because my stomach curdles at the thought of another Christmas without Dakota. The first had been bad enough. Like I’d been dropped in the middle of an ocean with a cannonball chained around my neck. But last year—the second Christmas—was the worst. Because by then, I’d learned how to keep my head above water. Still, there was no shore in sight. Only circling shark fins, an infinite horizon, and the burn of salt in my throat.
I pause on the front stoop, swallow a sob, and let my tears distill to fury. Then I step from the shadows into the glow of the porch lamp and rap at the door before I can rethink it. Boyd Blackburn deserves what’s coming to him. Just like Grizzly.
From inside, I hear a steady thump that grows louder and clearer until the door cracks open.
“Who is it?” The real-life Martha Blackburn appears, with a voice as sweet and fragile as a candy cane. She inches her walker a bit closer and peers up at me through the gap, smiling. This might be harder than I thought.
I smile back at her, and she lets the gap widen, revealing a hallway. And then a living room. A plastic-covered sofa, a well-worn armchair, and a grandfather clock presided over by a muted, forty-two-inch Judge Judy. “Uh, hi. I’m a friend of Boyd’s. Is he home?”
“Oh.” She looks me over skeptically. I wish I’d worn the Trust Me, I’m a Jedi T-shirt Cole had left behind. Or at least a pressed button-down shirt and my reading glasses. “Do you go to ITT too, dear?”
“Something like that,” I say. “He’s tutoring me, actually.”
“Now that’s my Boyd. Always wanting to help a fellow student. And a pretty one at that. What class?”
I freeze in the spotlight of her question, my heart rattling around like a pebble in a steel drum. And for a moment, I see it. The way I’ll toss her aside like a bag of bones, her walker clattering against the hardwood.
“Oh, silly me.” She ushers me inside, oblivious. “It must be Computer Forensics. He told me he’d made a few friends in there. Am I right?”
I let out a shaky breath and follow her. “Absolutely. Computer Forensics. It’s my favorite.”
“His too. Goodness, I’ll bet he’s tickled pink that you two have so much in common.” She waves me over to the sofa and hands me a folded stack of T-shirts and underwear. “Take this down to him, will you? I can’t climb those stairs like I used to since the knee replacement. And Lord knows he won’t relocate the Overbridge for me.”
I take the warm stack in one hand, averting my eyes from the Hanes briefs, size L, bleached white and smelling of lavender. “The Overbridge?”
“It’s from Star Wars.” I recognize her tone. Equal parts exasperation and fondness. Standard mother-ese, the language that’s lost to me now. “I’ll let him explain it to you, dear.”
I don’t tell her I already know about the Overbridge. That Cole had insisted on giving me, and then Dakota, a proper Star Wars education, which meant watching all the films in order every May fourth. But then that day became like any other, with me seeing patients at the hospital and Dakota at swim practice and Cole on call after surgery. I couldn’t remember when we’d stopped, only that we had. Now it seems crucial. The beginning of the end of our family. The fine cracks that would grow into fissures that would break open the ground beneath me.
Martha points to the door at the end of the hallway. “Right down those steps. Technically, it’s the basement, but I play along. Boyd always did have an active imagination. And after his accident . . . well, I really think that’s what got him through it. All of his best friends were make-believe.”
I march ahead, unflinching, stopping short just before I reach the doorway. I pretend to adjust the picture hanging crooked on the wall. I want a better look at it, and I squint in the dim light to make it out.
“Who is that?” I blurt. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t realize Boyd had a—”
“Oh, no, dear. Don’t worry. That’s not his girlfriend if that’s what you are thinking. She’d be a bit young for him anyway.” She taps the pretty face behind the plexiglass. “This is Amanda. Boyd’s half sister. She goes to some fancy private school.”
Martha mistakes the little cave of my open mouth for curiosity. Instead of what it really is. A sudden shock. A tectonic shift of my core. Boyd had been telling the truth. It makes me question everything. Maybe Cole was right about me. Maybe I am paranoid.
“My ex remarried a woman half his age with quadruple his bank account. Some high falutin’ lawyer. He decided he wanted to be a daddy again. Can you imagine? A brand-new baby at age fifty?” There’s something familiar in her sigh too. She’s a scorned woman. A woman left behind. Not unlike myself. “Listen to me. Talking your ear off. I’m sure you want to get to your studies. Boyd will be so happy to see you.”
She calls out to him, “Boyd, honey. You’ve got company,” squashing the element of surprise beneath her orthopedic loafers.
I descend into the Overbridge one creaky wooden stair at a time, anticipating the humming swipe of Boyd’s light saber cutting through the darkness. But what little I can see in the glow of a lava lamp is more craft-store than Death Star lair. Martha’s a champion scrapbooker, it seems, with a mountainous tower of storage containers marked SCRAPBOOK SUPPLIES. At the base of the steps, I pass a tangled jungle of Christmas lights and cautiously traverse the plains of broken-down cardboard boxes.
I set the stack of laundry on a card table and approach Boyd from behind, his neck slim and pale as a swan’s. I tap his shoulder.
A quick glance back, and he scrambles up from his recliner. Noise-canceling headphones tossed aside. “Whoa. What the—” He stumbles toward the bookcase in the corner, steadying himself with one hand and clutching his chest with the other, breathing audibly in the dank quiet. “What the hell are you doing here? How you’d get in?”
I put a finger to my lips. “Your mother thinks we’re studying computer forensics. And she’s very happy you have a real friend. So let’s not disappoint her.”
Keeping his eyes on me, Boyd grasps at the floor to retrieve his headphones. They’ve tumbled partway under the computer console, and the sleeves of his ill-fitting bathrobe don’t quite cover the burn on his arm. It’s worse than I’d thought. Near the crook of his elbow, his arm is disfigured. Like the fire took a great big bite. Twig-legs protrude from the bottom of his robe. One look at the Wookiee slippers on his feet makes me certain.
Boyd didn’t kill Dakota.
But I push the thought away. I don’t trust my eyes anymore. Napa State taught me that, at least. I’ve seen too many baby-faced men with mile-long rap sheets. Too many sheep with wolves’ teeth.
“I know you lied to me,” I say.
“I told you. My sister has a different last name. I can show you if you don’t—”
“Not about your sister. Your mother was kind enough to explain all that.”
“What then?” Boyd paces from one end of the room to the other, and I follow him with my eyes. He stops in front of the wall and stares up at A New Hope movie poster, Darth Vader’s face looming in the background.
“For one thing, you don’t have a dead kid. And two, you know my daughter better than you let on. Knew her, I mean.” That word sinks like a barb into my chest and sticks there. “You went looking for her at Whitetails and Whoppers.”
Boyd shakes his head so fast I can’t tell if he’s denying it still. Or if the truth has possessed him like a spirit, rattling his brain and demanding its way out. I walk to him, slipping my father’s bayonet from my back pocket, where I’d concealed it beneath my sweater.
In that moment, I understand better than I ever did how easy it is to become someone else. Someone who’d bare her teeth and brandish a knife twice in one day. I remember what one of my patients at Napa had told me once, something I’d branded as a cognitive distortion. A way to minimize the forty-three knife wounds he’d cut into his mother’s body. It wasn’t me that stabbed her. But it was. That’s the part I can’t get over.
Knife in hand, I get it now. My soul rolls end over end like a tossed quarter—dark to light and back again. Who knows where it’ll land?
Boyd’s high-pitched scream startles us both. But I silence it fast, clamping my hand across his mouth. His lips squirm beneath my fingers.
“Everything alright down there?” Martha calls from the top of the stairs.
Tell her it’s fine, I mouth to him, holding the knife where he can see it. Apparently, the quarter landed. Shadow side up.
“It’s fine.” But his voice squeaks out, and I narrow my eyes at him, taking a step closer. A step that compels him to try again. “I just tripped over Yoda.”
“Didn’t I tell you to turn on some lights down there? And keep her in the cage. You’ll break your neck one day. Or hers.”
“C’mon, Ma. We covered this already. Technically, she doesn’t have a neck. She’s not like other vertebrates.”
After another of Martha’s drawn-out sighs, the door shuts, leaving us alone. With Yoda. Who I’ve spotted coiled next to the recliner. Her spotted skin a perfect camouflage against the brown carpet.
“A snake? Really?”
He murmurs against my hand before I lower it, allowing him to speak. “She’s a ball python. They’re really shy, so she won’t hurt you. Even if I wanted her to.”
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