by A. L. Woods
Rhode Island had come and gone, then Connecticut and its painful reminder of the best friend whose pregnancy I would miss, whose presence in my life for the last decade had been my saving grace, my reason to survive. I barely noticed the scenery of New York and New Jersey. And finally, Steel City opened up to me.
Philly reminded me a little of Boston in the sense that its presence was formidable and old, yet not impervious to the stench from the garbage, pollution, and the Passaic River that bordered Newark Penn Station. It didn’t bother me. Not really. It was nice to concentrate on anything but the twenty-pound bag I was toting around that housed all of my worldly possessions, including Sean’s scent.
The pungent scent and the smog of the air was a welcome reprieve on my temporal lobe as I walked hurriedly through the nearly empty underground station. It was New Year’s Day and everything was operating on a holiday schedule.
Few people were trying to get anywhere today.
The woman working the Greyhound counter looked miles away, like she would have preferred to be someplace else—not that I could blame her. When I’d conceived ideas of New Year’s morning a week ago, my mind had focused on waking up in a plush oversized bed, naked with Sean’s bare chest against my back and the scruff of his chin grazing against the space between my ear and my neck. A slow morning, with even slower sex, the kind known as lovemaking, that was sweet and sensual and filled me up on the inside with emotions I never could have conjured up. Watching him at the kitchen counter, tracing every smell, dip and swell of muscle that delineated his body…eating bacon directly from his hand and drinking enough coffee to fill a diner…lazing on the couch all day and spending the solitude of the day wrapped up in each other’s existence.
Instead, my shoulder protested under the strain of the duffel bag. The impatient woman at the counter hummed the Jeopardy! theme song as I struggled to get my vocal cords to cooperate.
“Los Angeles, please.”
She heaved a bored sigh, shuffling her mouse to coax the slow monitor to life. Her long acrylic fingernails tapped against the keyboard. “Return date?” she asked her screen.
I swallowed. “None.”
“Economy class arriving in Los Angeles on January third at three p.m., departing in forty-five minutes, is a hundred and seventy-four dollars and sixty-six cents. Approximate travel time is two days and seventeen hours—cash, credit, or debit?” She spoke clinically. This was just another day for her. A job. A dollar.
For me, it was the rest of my life.
I fought the shiver that rolled through my body as I fished my wallet out of my small handbag. I counted out a hundred and seventy dollars in bills, sliding it to her through the opening in the plexiglass.
“Thanks,” I muttered, collecting the ticket and thirty-four cents in change.
Following the arrows on the overhead signs, I hurried to the terminal. Settling against a cold metal bench, I let the tears I refused to allow to fall when I’d left Boston clear the barrier of my lashes and descend the stretch of my cheeks. Then I chased after thoughts of warm air, palm trees, and a world where Sean Tavares didn’t exist.
Just like Penelope and I always planned.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I hadn’t slept in days.
No bullshit.
My eye bags had eye bags. They were as dark as the cindered remains of the Heritage Park house. I struggled to register the burst of cold air that blasted from the west, but I heard the shiver rock through Dougie’s bones and the chatter of his teeth tapping against each other.
“God, you can still smell the gasoline in the air,” Dougie mumbled, kicking at a rogue rock with the toe of his shoe. The sound of the rock skipping across the street cut through the silence of the neighborhood. The news vans had gotten bored two days ago and, save for the inquisitive glances from nosy neighbors from their second-story windows, no one came out to ask us about the ongoing investigation.
Whoever did this had been hell-bent on ensuring that no part of the house survived. They completely doused it; emptied enough gasoline and kerosene before sending a Molotov cocktail through a window. The amount of combustible liquid could have set this entire neighborhood ablaze if this happened in the summer and the wind had blown east even for a beat of a second. Half of Eaton’s heritage homes could have found themselves engulfed in fiery flames, ripped families from their shelter, and displaced children from their memories. The mere thought deepened the existing bottomless pit in my stomach.
I didn’t care about the material aspect of the house. The insurance company was working in tandem with the police’s investigation, and I knew I’d recuperate whatever investment we made in the house. We could replace things. People were irreplaceable.
But it didn’t change that this whole thing was downright odd. When I wasn’t turning over my breakup with Raquel in my head repeatedly like a dog without a bone, I was recalling what the cops said to us.
“We have reason to believe that the fire was set intentionally.”
By whom? Someone pissed off about our plans? Conservationists had the tendency to be prickly, but everything had been approved and vetted by the town before we started work. Was this some twisted form of retaliation? Some pissed-off pyromaniac who didn’t like that we were changing the interior? No, that was extreme. Still, none of this made sense.
In less than six hours from the start of this fucked-up new year, my entire life had gone up in flames, leaving me with nothing but lungs that felt heavy, as if they were smoke-filled.
“What kind of sick fuck does this?” Dougie asked, folding his knitted hands atop of his head like a crown. “There was enough flammable liquid here to blow up this entire street.”
My arms folded across my chest; I cleared my throat. “Don’t remind me.”
We’d come back here twice since New Year’s Day. The first time, I wasn’t able to muster up the balls needed to get out of Dougie’s truck, so we just sat in the idling gas guzzler, looking at the open casket of what would have been our livelihood for a few more months.
There was nothing for my crew to return to this week, and they wouldn’t have work from me until the fire adjuster and the insurance company concluded their investigation. So that meant they were out of work, and I would end up losing them to other contractors, construction firms, snowplow companies, or they’d simply go on unemployment for the rest of the season till things picked up in the spring.
My cellphone vibrated with an incoming call, pulling me out of the vines of my thoughts. I hated that I always rushed to pull it out in case it was Raquel calling.
It never was. We all took turns calling her, being greeted by a message prompting us that the number wasn’t in service. We had no clue where the fuck she’d gone. It was more kindling for my mind every night, trying to figure out where the fuck she might be…or with who.
Trina’s name danced on the screen of my phone. I silenced it with a deft press of a button.
She had been trying to talk to me for days on end. She texted, emailed, and called with a persistence I wish Raquel possessed—but I’d ignored my sister. There was nothing left for me to say to her. Sometimes, I felt bad about it. I was responsible for her actions in some small way—I’d influenced it, hadn’t I? My decisions, my choices seemed like the precursor to her own. In the end, we’d both lost.
Maria deigned to confront me with her unannounced presence, but I’d left her on the front porch, pounding on the door for twenty minutes before she yelled, “You can’t ignore us forever; we’re your family!” The beauty of locked doors and window coverings meant that I would, for the foreseeable future, ignore them. At least I’d had the excellent sense to remove the spare key I usually left sandwiched in the garage door’s weather seal.
I watched her check from a small sliver in the drapes that covered the window in the family room.
Livy was the only one I indulged. She wasn’t criminally liable for any of this; she was guilty by association only. A point she argued—wi
th the decorum emulative of Julia Roberts’ performance in Erin Brockovich—wasn’t fair. While she agreed with me that what our sisters did wasn’t a victimless crime, she thought the depth of my reaction was “a bit of a stretch.”
Funny, I’d implied the same thing to Raquel.
No familial harassment would be complete without the influence of our matriarch and figurehead—so naturally, my ma called, too. I answered for her. I didn’t trust that she wouldn’t show up and try to beat me within an inch of my life if I didn’t. No structure or lack of key would have kept that spitfire out.
We didn’t talk about it, and I was glad she didn’t ask. I remained indifferent to her heaving disappointed sighs for what I knew was her concession that my relationship hadn’t resulted in an engagement, like she’d hoped and prayed for. In exchange, I pretended not to recognize her dismay and made up an excuse—with enough gravel in my voice to choke me—that I had to go. I never cried in front of my ma, and I wasn’t planning on starting now. I’d been her pillar of strength for all these years; why destroy the illusion that I wasn’t infallible after all?
Space was what I needed, and as much as I could have afforded a hug from Ma, what I didn’t deserve was her noble attempt at mollifying guilt that was my burdened cross to carry. I did this. Not anyone else. Me.
I knew I couldn’t stay mad at them forever; it wasn’t sustainable and eventually, my birthday would roll around and my ma would lure me back home with the promise of fresh malasadas, and they’d be waiting there, too. As inevitable as spring in New England, I would take the bait because I’m not a sociopath, and no one with functional tastebuds could say “no” to fresh malasadas. Not even those who objected to refined sugar and steered clear of it like I did most of the time.
So that gave me until the end of March to get my shit together.
Dougie shook his head as his eyes raked over the remains, like he was seeing it for the first time. I rubbed my thumb against the seam of my phone, my throat worked with nerves, before I could voice the question I’d been struggling with since he picked me up.
“Has Penelope…” I hedged, regarding Dougie from the corner of my eye.
His exhale came out in a puff of vapors that evaporated on contact with the brisk air. “No.” His brows folded inward like he was just as puzzled by it as I was. “She hasn’t heard from her at all. Security footage from the lot near South Station showed her with her things… she’s definitely out of state.”
My next inhale was sharp. There were no doubts I was struggling without Raquel around, she was…she’d been my girlfriend. But she was Penelope’s best friend. Raquel’s disappearance must have been just as brutal for Penelope as it was for me.
I appreciated that Dougie was as committed to refraining from the usage of Raquel’s name as I was. Saying her name out loud made it real, and I was still knee deep in the denial stage.
Some part of me still thought she would appear out of thin air. I’d already gone back to her apartment in the Dot. The broken door remained, so I’d gone to her landlord. Some biddy who looked barely legal answered, her eyes raking over me. She leaned forward, pushing her ample chest in my direction, but I’d committed to speaking to her equally generous forehead instead.
Turned out, she was Deadbeat Tony’s barely legal wife (she then informed me she was also, “eighteen, y’know.”) She had teeth that were too big for her mouth, and she’d smacked her gum around like a horse. As far as she knew, the tenant from unit 403 “skipped town,” and “hadn’t even given us notice, can you believe it?”
I did believe it, because Raquel never asked permission. She just acted. I just wish I knew where she’d gone. I wanted to talk to her, even though I knew talking about it wouldn’t fix it…but in the fleeting moments when sleep came to me in short bursts, I dreamed that I made it right. That she forgave me, and we put this whole thing behind us for good.
Maria called in a favor with a guy at the BPD who did an attempt to locate on Raquel. A few hours later, they did locate her…on a video surveillance from the lot near South Station. Deadbeat Tony’s wife was right; Raquel did skip town. I spent the night with a much cheaper bottle of whiskey in my lap. Was what I did really bad enough to warrant her needing to leave the state? Was my deed that unforgiveable?
The sound of Dougie’s footsteps edging away from me had my mind snapping back to the present. I watched him as he followed the curve of the yellow caution tape that bordered the perimeter of the property line. He came to a stop in front of the dip in the curve that bled into the driveway, his concentration fastened downward.
“C’mere a sec,” he called, carving the air with the cupped motion of his hand.
Every footstep I took toward him was a reminder that I was beyond fatigued and desperately needed a solid ten hours of uninterrupted sleep. My legs plodded, but every step felt like a negotiation. I needed to rest; I knew I did, but it was hard to slow my thoughts down at night when the house was quiet without the help of an Ambien.
That’s when I missed Raquel the most. Even when she said nothing, her presence ate up the silence.
“What?”
Dougie squatted, pointing to a patch of mud from a piece of grass that had given in to rot as fall and winter bled into earth, leaving behind a patch of exposed dirt in its wake.
He gestured with his thick pointer finger. “You see that?”
My eyes followed the line of his finger to a distinct footprint that appeared fossilized in the ground. I could pick out the distinct circular rings of the print that was once just a stamp on the soft earth before the frost must have set in.
“That’s a running shoe,” he said plainly.
The muscles in my face set into a frown. “Who would wear running shoes here?”
“Someone not worried about having a new asshole torn.”
“Adam, maybe?” I suggested, conjuring up a memory of Adam’s general attire. The poor fucker had two first names as his full legal name.
“Nah,” Dougie said, pursing his lips. “That guy is straighter than a Catholic nun when it comes to following the rules. Personal grievances aside, we both know he wouldn’t be caught dead showing up here in anything but steel-toed work boots.”
He wasn’t wrong. Adam was a sponge and respected rules like they were his religion. You only had to tell him something once. It was his psychological conditioning that I only now understood was thanks to a short stint in prison for beating some guy within an inch of his life a few years ago. Whatever had happened to him back then had permanently scarred him for life, so he stayed on the straight and narrow now.
It was a detail Trina revealed to me like a bargaining chip for my mercy when she tried to explain how she even found herself in the position to tell Raquel what Maria and I had done. It boggled my mind that she had taken part in the very thing that she had chastised me for. Her results were very much like mine, too. Adam Ryan rightly told her to beat it. He handed in his notice a few days ago…even though there wasn’t exactly any work to come back to.
I pushed up on the yellow tape, dipping underneath it like a reverse limbo, eliciting a grunt of objection from Dougie.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that.”
I ignored him. I wasn’t Adam. Rules were suggestions. I needed a better look at that footprint, and the angle from my positioning at the lip of the curb and driveway wasn’t helping. Crouching on the asphalt, I bent my head closer to the ossified earth, defying the outcry from my limbs that were promising they’d give out on me if I didn’t stand up right now.
But even if I was getting nine hours of sleep a day, and Raquel was home and things were normal—I would struggle to stand back up. Realization of what I was staring at slammed into me, rooting me in place. My balance wobbled, and if it hadn’t been because I felt hyper-concentrated on my discovery, I probably would have eaten shit already.
The first laugh I’d experienced in days shot out of me like a bark, dry and hoarse. Pushing off the grou
nd with an outstretched palm to right my spine and legs, I bracketed my forehead with the other like a visor, avoiding Dougie’s wide-eyed appraisal.
I’d seen these footprints before. I knew I had—because the impressed evidence of them existed on the disorganized sheets of paper that made up Raquel’s manuscript that I’d stowed away in a box in my garage. The sheets I looked at every single day since she had left. It had stamped those footprints on my memory.
My laugh deepened until I felt it vibrating in my rib cage, my entire body shaking under the force. Retaliation? This wasn’t retaliation. This was fucking war.
Dougie cleared his throat noisily. “You want to tell me what’s so funny?”
I heard what he was implying: do you need a Valium and a one-way ticket to the sanitarium? Are you finally about to snap?
I wouldn’t snap, no—although I’d come close several times. And I didn’t need a straitjacket or a little white pill under the tongue to make it all better, either. Revenge was a dish best served at another’s misstep, and that tasted sweeter than anything I could have ever done to that dumb fuck.
I knew that prick would cause his own downfall someday; I just didn’t expect it to come so soon. He thrived on cheap shots and fire, but I thrived on getting my retribution in another way.
My chin tilted skyward, looking through the thick tufts of white clouds that reminded me of cotton candy against the gray sky above us. The sun reared its head for the first time in days, another frigid breeze rolling in, tickling the sleeves of my jacket.
My fists uncurled for the first time in days, and my shoulders dropped when I turned to toss a manufactured grin at my best friend.
Who was the clown now?
CHAPTER EIGHT
February
I tasted my first sip of alcohol when I was seventeen. If you ask anyone, by Southie standards, I was a late bloomer. There were girls on my block already on baby number two by the time they saw seventeen, and I was never that interested in drinking. It wasn’t like my ma would have ever so much as spared me a drop, regardless if she wasn’t cognitive half the time, a bottle of something sandwiched between her thighs on most nights. I hated how drinking made her an even worse person than she already was, and that it stoked the inferno of so many of my parents’ fights.