Part 8 (2/2)

”Yeah, if you want.”

”I'll be back.”

She left and came back in her h.e.l.lo Kitty pajamas and climbed into the bed next to me. I shut off the lamp and used the desk light to read. I'm sure May had grand plans of staying up all night, but she was dead asleep by eleven. When I started having trouble stringing the words together on the page, I closed the textbook, laid back, and let sleep take me.

I woke around two in the morning, spinning in the weird vertigo that comes from waking beneath an unfamiliar ceiling. May lay on her side, curled up next to me, chewing on her blanket in her sleep. I tugged it out of her mouth and sighed. She stirred but didn't wake. Then I heard the noise of an engine and light flashed through my window, which looked out over the backyard. I cracked the blinds and looked out.

The carriage house was open and Tom's big Mercedes rolled out, the headlights casting harsh shadows across the backyard. The car rolled on and disappeared, red taillights like angry eyes fading into the dark. I sat back on the bed and noticed May was awake. Her voice was very small, more a breath than a whisper.

”He does that a lot.”

”Does what?”

”Goes out in the middle of the night.”

”Any idea where?”

I regretted asking as soon as the words escaped my lips.

”No, but sometimes he's gone until the morning.”

”Good,” I shuddered, and leaned back into the bed. ”Just go to sleep. It's not our problem.”

May nodded and curled up, and was asleep again so fast I hoped she'd forget it even happened.

It took me longer. By the time I fell asleep again, the sun was starting to peek up and I could only find a hazy half sleep, tormented by dreams, or memories, of Hawk. It was not the first and not the last time I hoped this was all a horrible dream and I was napping on that last day of school. Any minute I'd wake up and he'd be at the door with his goofy grin, ready to take me on a real date and do what we should have done years and years ago. When I woke for real, my dream was left dashed on the floor. I woke May and shooed her out of my room, fell back on the bed, and dozed off until almost noon.

I dressed in my Sunday best, even though I was never a churchgoer, and descended the stairs. The house smelled right, warm and welcoming. There was a turkey in the oven and my mother fussing over a dozen dishes in the kitchen, and I decided it was a bad time. I ended up outside, on the back porch, for the next two hours, staring at nothing. I just wanted to be alone and outside was the best option. May came and tugged on my arm around two in the afternoon and I walked in through the kitchen.

”Help me get this ready,” Mom said.

Sighing, I joined in without argument. I mostly poured various dishes into serving ware and carried it out to the dining room. It looked like a Norman Rockwell painting, with potatoes and stuffing and creamed corn and real cranberry sauce, and the turkey on a serving platter in the middle of the table. Around two-thirty, Tom appeared with Lance in tow, both of them in ties. The last of the food was moved to the table, I place a bowl of warm crusty dinner rolls on the table, and everyone sat down.

The tension in the room was like an over-tight violin string, and it was plucked every time I looked at Tom. He hadn't spoken to me since the night before and I wasn't seeking him out. He didn't look tired or anything, he just looked around the room and sniffed the air.

”Smells delicious, honey.”

My mother beamed like she actually cared. Thanksgiving dinner for us came out of cans and boxes and we had some turkey lunchmeat cut if we were lucky.

When I was fourteen, the weather was the exact opposite. Thanksgiving day was twelve degrees in the afternoon, and a ma.s.sive snowstorm hit Paradise Falls that night, and ended up extending the Thanksgiving weekend for another three snow days the next week. We ate at home as usual, and the next day Hawk showed up at the apartment, bundled up in so much cold weather gear he could barely move. Mom told me I was crazy when I swathed myself in layers of sweaters and a coat and went with him.

I was still freezing the whole time. We didn't go anywhere special, just pushed through snow drifts and wandered around town for a few hours until it started getting dark and threatened to grow really cold. I still remember when were almost back to the apartment and I dumped a double handful of snow down the back of his coat and he hopped around like it was a hot coal, and ended up smas.h.i.+ng a big blop of snow into my back. The snow clung to his hair and melted from the heat of his skin, and dripped down over his face. He shoved me down and I made a snow angel in the middle of Commerce Street, then hit him in the face with a s...o...b..ll.

To this day, I don't know how he made it home without freezing to death, but the next day he was there again.

I shook myself out of it as Tom carved the turkey and laid a healthy slice on my place. After he carved up the bird, the dishes were pa.s.sed around. May piled up a plate of food bigger than her own head and managed to eat it all. I swear she ate half a dozen rolls, enough mashed potatoes for two people and she practically drank the gravy.

It was good, but to me it tasted like ash, and the ginger ale like smoke.

Tom and my mother drank wine.

A lot of wine. She was giggling like an idiot by the time dinner was over, and the table was strewn with the wreckage of a hearty meal.

Tom said, ”Kids, clean up,” and took my mother by the arm.

She had another gla.s.s of wine on her way towards the master bedroom.

Ugh.

I sprang to my feet and started carrying dishes into the kitchen. Kids did not include Lance, apparently, who rose and headed up to his room and left me and May to do all the work. I put the leftovers in containers while May sc.r.a.ped the plates and serving dishes clean and filled the sink. By the time we finished, I was exhausted, my fingers were pruny, and I noticed that Tom's office door was ajar.

Inside, I caught only a glimpse of dark bookcases and a chair. I shamed myself for even looking and rushed upstairs, behind May. I had more studying to do, more to occupy my time. Snooping around would be the worst possible thing I could do.

I couldn't stop myself.

Studying was a ch.o.r.e. My concentration was as fragile as gla.s.s, my eyes sliding off the page every time I tried to read. I was sleepy from the big meal but I couldn't get to sleep, and ended up tossing and turning. It was well after dark when I sat up and stepped out of my room. May was across the hall in her bedroom, crashed out on her bed, sleeping it off. I had no idea where Lance was. When I crept downstairs, I expected to run into Lance and try to casually excuse my presence, or worse run into Tom, or my mother.

I was alone. I poured a gla.s.s of milk in the kitchen and decided to take it back upstairs with another piece of pie, but left the pie uncut, chugged the milk and wiped my lips on my arm, and crept over to the office, my heart in my throat. The door was still ajar. I swung it open, my whole body as tight as a spring about to snap as I expected it to make a loud eerie screeching noise and give me away, but it swung open silently, the hinges smoothly oiled. I didn't dare turn on the light.

The absurdity of it didn't hit me until later. I walked into the lion's den without a plan or even an objective. What was I expecting, that on his desk I'd find a big piece of paper reading HAWK ITINERARY and his current location?

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. My stomach flipped and I wanted to throw up.

What if Tom... did something to Hawk?

Why was he going out in the middle of the night? Why did he give me the creeps? It was stupid to snoop, but at the time I didn't understand, truly, what I was getting myself into. I was still a stupid little girl playing detective. I walked around the guest chairs and c.o.c.ktail table and to Tom's desk. His computer was locked when I jiggled the mouse and I had no clue what the pa.s.sword might be, so I carefully went through the papers on his desk instead. There was nothing interesting, just stuff from his company. Payroll records, financial stuff, receipts, bank statements.

One thing I came across caught my eye. A bank statement for something called ”ZLBPCC LLC”. Whatever that was it had a lot of money coming in, and it was all listed under cash receipts. That stuck out at me, for some reason. It was a lot of money in cash. Tens of thousands of dollars a day, almost sixty for the whole month. I tried to place it back as best I could, and frowned. That didn't make sense. I didn't know anything about big construction projects, but my gut told me they weren't paid in cash, and on some kind of odd whipped off daily installment plan.

There was something really weird going on here.

I heard a creak and my heart jumped into my throat. Pressed against the wall, I made my way towards the door, not quite sure what I'd do if it swung open and Tom stepped in. There would be no way to slip past him, there was simply no way in or out. I waited, watching the light in the hallway, my heart pounding as I antic.i.p.ated seeing a shadow of the bottom of his shoes any moment, but there was nothing. I slipped around the door and darted to the bottom of the stairs without looking, and slowed myself after the first two steps, careful not to make a noise.

The stair just below the landing creaked as I put my foot on it. Sprinting to my new room, I locked myself inside and sat on the bed, watching my hands shake.

I said to myself, what are you doing, Alex?

This was bigger than me. Tom was creepy. There was something behind Hawk's disappearance that didn't add up and now this. Possibilities throbbed in my head. Tom was some kind of criminal, he was laundering money, crazy ideas coming at me: Tom is a hit man, Tom runs a secret criminal empire. I was probably reading too much into it, or I misread the paper, I decided. I paced my room wondering what I should do, if I should talk to someone.

The question became, who? My mom? She'd never listen to me and if she did, she'd take his side. May couldn't help me, Hawk was gone, Lance was a creep. I paced and paced and by the time I was done I decided that I was going to do absolutely nothing about it. I would go back to school, stay there, and quietly start looking for a way to stay the summer away from her. Leaving May behind made me feel sick, but if I signed up for some summer program or something and found a job, I could stay in the dormitories and drive up on weekends to keep an eye on her. We could Skype and talk on the phone and if May was having any trouble, I'd know it.

Sleep came late and left early and I rose on that Friday, unsure of what I meant to do with myself. The weather had swung around radically overnight, leaving my sinuses aching. I dug out a coat and decided I'd go for a walk. When I pa.s.sed the office, the door was closed. No matter, I decided; Tom rose early that day to get to work and locked himself in. Nothing amiss there, nothing out of the ordinary.

The air outside was crisp. It was a clear day, edging from coat weather into jacket weather, and the leaves were all down, swirling around the street in little dust devils. I set out with no destination in mind and ended up walking over to Commerce Street to the shoe store. I stood out front for a while, looking up at the narrow windows of our old living room. A year ago, if I was standing here, Hawk would show up. He wouldn't have to call me or text me. He'd just know I was here. That was always how it was. We could predict each other's moves that way.

For some reason I stood there as if he might show. He didn't. I started walking.

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