But Jace was screaming over her. “I hate you!” he shouted to Billy, thrusting his tiny palms into his thighs. “I hate Mommy!” He shot around the coffee table toward his sister, who’d been watching the scene unfold with wide eyes. “And I hate January!” He shoved her so forcefully she fell backward, her hip and shoulder colliding against the hardwood with two painful-sounding cracks. She burst into tears. Jace ran out of the room.
The next night, as Krissy tucked her into bed, January turned onto her side and Krissy spotted a bruise blossoming on her shoulder. It was right on that tender spot beneath the bone, almost the size of a fist. It was then, as she stared at the dark splotch on her daughter’s body, that Krissy realized she was afraid of her own son.
* * *
—
Now, standing across from Jace in the doorway of their hotel room, Krissy thought of everything she’d done last night to protect him, every lie she’d told Billy and the detectives to keep him safe. And she wondered, as he gazed back at her with those flat, serious eyes, if she’d made the right decision, or if protecting him had been a horrible mistake.
FIFTEEN
Margot, 2019
It was just after eleven on Monday morning and Margot was driving to the hardware store to make a copy of Luke’s house key when her cell vibrated from the seat beside her. She stole a glance at the screen, and when she saw the name at the top, she grabbed it.
“Hi, Linda.”
On the other end, she could hear the sounds of Shorty’s, the loud murmur of an early lunch crowd, ice clinking in glasses, the TV playing in the background. “Margot?” Linda nearly shouted her name and Margot yanked the phone from her ear. “Hey, hon. You okay? You sound tired.”
“I’m fine.”
It was a lie, though. Margot had slept poorly the night before, tossing irritably on the futon as her mind pinged from Luke to January to Natalie Clark then back to her uncle again. She was beginning to feel that she was in over her head when it came to helping him out, unsure how to navigate the choppy waters of his condition and guilty for not being more available, more competent, more…everything.
The previous evening, after her string of interviews that day, Margot returned to her uncle’s place, eager to eat, shower, and crash, only to find she’d been locked out of the house. She rattled the doorknob a few times to be sure, nudging the door with her foot, but it wouldn’t budge. She closed her eyes. Making a copy of Luke’s key was on her to-do list, of course, but it had been languishing at the bottom, seemingly nonurgent beneath the other tasks like making sure he had food to eat and preventing him from falling behind on his meds.
She knocked loudly on the door, then waited, but nothing happened. The house remained quiet and dark. “Uncle Luke!” Margot called through the door. “Are you in there?”
She gazed at the closed garage door, envisioning its one and only clicker clipped on to the visor in Luke’s car. Then, with a pang of panic, she realized she didn’t even know if his car was in there. He rarely drove places these days, but what if he had today? What if he had an episode on the road? What if he forgot where he was going, got flustered, and had an accident? Margot shouldn’t have left him as long as she had. She should have researched what to do when it came to his driving. She should have made a copy of the fucking house key. All the ways in which she’d failed her uncle began to stack one by one on top of her shoulders.
She banged her palm against the door. “Uncle Luke! It’s me! Your niece, Margot.”
Nothing.
“Uncle Luke! Are you there? Please open the door.”
Still, nothing.
“Shit,” she hissed. She pulled her phone from her backpack and called his cell, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t answer the house phone either. “Shit, shit, shit.”
She stepped off the little concrete landing onto the ground next to it, then tromped around the bushes lining the house’s exterior. When she made it to the window that looked into the kitchen, she pressed her face against the screen, cupping her hands around her eyes to peer inside, but the kitchen was dark and empty. She walked around the corner of the house, the bushes scraping against her thighs through her skirt. Along this wall was another window, but the ground had sloped down and she had to stand on her tiptoes to look through.
When she did, her shoulders sank in relief. “Thank fucking God.”
There, in the living room, sitting on the couch and watching TV, was Luke.
Back at the front door, she knocked again. “Uncle Luke!” she called, trying to make her voice both loud and calm. “Can I come in? It’s me, Margot.”
And then, finally, there was the thunk of the dead bolt, the creak as the door slowly opened. In the sliver of space between the door and its frame, Luke peered out at her.
“Kid?” His gaze darted from her face to the yard and the road behind her. “Thank God you’re here. Come in.” The hard, worried line between his eyes made Margot’s heart beat faster. What was going on? He ushered her through the doorway quickly, and the moment she was inside, he clicked the door shut and twisted the dead bolt back into place. “Where’s Rebecca?” he said. “I thought she was walking you home from school today.”
Margot blinked, reorienting. While she always felt a sting to discover her uncle was lost in another time, what she felt most keenly now was relief. She was relieved to have him home and safe, relieved to know where exactly he was in the past. “Oh,” she said. “I was fine by myself.”
Luke shook his head. “No. I don’t like you walking home alone. Not now. Not after what happened to January.”
The name struck Margot like a slap. She swallowed, nodded.
“There are bad people in the world,” her uncle said, his voice uncharacteristically hard. “Okay? You have to be careful.”
And even though Margot knew he was stuck twenty-five years in the past, even though she knew none of what he was saying made sense anymore, his words still slipped up her spine like a shiver.
In the car now, she switched her phone from one ear to the other. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she told Linda. “I just had a long night. What’s up?”
“Mm,” Linda said. “You know my cousin swears by that pill. What’s it called? Ambien? Says it makes her sleep like a baby. You could try that.”
“Yeah. Maybe I will. So…what’s up, Linda?”
“Well, little miss busy bee, I think I might’ve found you a lead.”
“To Jace? Wow. You work fast.” It’d been less than twenty-four hours since she’d asked Linda for her help.
“Told you I was good.” Margot could hear the smile in her voice. “I spread the word to a bunch of people yesterday, and a few minutes ago, Abby Mason—you know Abby, don’t ya? Knows everything about everyone?” Before Margot could respond, Linda had already continued. “Anyways, Abby just walked in and told me that she heard from Brittany Lohman who heard it from Ryan Bailey that I said you were looking for Jace Jacobs. She said that Jace was kind of a loner, but she remembers one guy he ran around with. Name is Eli Blum.”
Margot scanned her mental catalog of kids she’d gone to school with. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Well, it wouldn’t. He and his folks moved here ’bout five years after January…” She trailed off. “You two were ships in the night. Anyway, Eli’s a bit of a…odd bird, if you know what I mean.”
Margot did not know what she meant. In a place where anything other than mainstream Christian Americana was odd, the possibilities were endless. “Right. And did Abby have any idea where Eli is now?”
Linda chuckled. “I keep forgetting you been gone for so many years. Everybody knows Eli Blum works at Burton’s on West Waterford.”
Margot raised her eyebrows. She’d assumed an “odd bird” would’ve moved away by now, but West Waterford Street was three minutes away, tops. It was, she realized, on the way to the hardware store. She shot an anxious glance at her backpack pocket where she’d stashed Luke’s house key. She didn’t ever want a repeat of last night, but talking to Eli wouldn’t take long. She’d just pop over to Burton’s and make a copy of the key after.
“By the way,” Margot said. “What’s Burton’s?”
“Well, the DVD rental place, of course.”
“Right. Of course.”
* * *