“I know what you think of me, Grace. But maybe when I explain it all, it’ll help you understand this . . . Me . . .” Her words start to drift. Probably the anti-nausea medication she took on the way here. It always knocks her out when she’s this weak. “Maybe you won’t hate me so much.”
“I don’t hate you.” A lump forms in my throat. “But I can’t do this anymore. I can’t walk through our front door every day, wondering if it’s going to be the day I finally find my mother dead. Do you know what that does to a person?”
Silent tears meet my words.
Minutes later, she’s fast asleep.
And I’m left with a thousand questions.
I open the adjoining door and find Noah’s side already open. He’s sitting in a chair, his legs splayed, his frown shifting from the sheet of paper in his hand to Cyclops, who’s sniffing through the backpack in the corner. “How is she?” Genuine concern fills his voice, and it pulls at my heart despite my fiercest attempts to keep my anger fueled.
“Asleep.”
“She wasn’t looking good back there.” His gaze skates over me from head to toe. I know I’m covered in soot and I should shower.
But first, I need answers.
“Tell me everything, Noah. Everything.”
* * *
“She said Betsy’s name?”
Noah nods solemnly. “I think it had something to do with the papers she burned in the sink. There was a piece left, with a date. April something, 2003. I can’t remember which date exactly, but it wasn’t too far off the day Abe died.”
I guess we’ll file that under “suspicious things Jackie Marshall was hiding.” The list is growing. “But why is ‘Betsy, 2002’ written on the back of my mom’s school picture, then?”
“I don’t think that’s your mother.”
“That’s impossible. Look at her.” I hold up the picture for emphasis.
“People write names and dates on the back of school pictures to keep track. Your mother was in her midtwenties in 2002. That girl is way too young to be her.”
I stare at the youthful face, comparing it to my memories of my mom before all the drugs started ravaging her, aging her terribly. Same eyes, same color hair, same jaw structure. Her nose looks daintier and her cheeks are fuller, but that’s not unheard of for a girl that age. “Then who is she?”
“I’m hoping Dina can tell us that.” Noah drops his gaze to his hands. I note the way his shoulders sag, as if burdened by an enormous weight. Have they always been like this, and I hadn’t noticed, too wrapped up in my own turmoil? “Did she say anything about the box while you were in there with her? About what was in it?”
“Nothing useful, but she’ll be awake soon. She can’t sleep for long stretches when she’s detoxing.”
He sighs, setting the copy of the newspaper article on the bed beside him. “I’ll see if I can track down anything about this bust when I get back to Austin. Harvey Maxwell is an ADA at my uncle’s office.”
“And you think he’ll tell you the truth, if he did something shady?”
“There’s got to be a good explanation for this.” Noah’s forehead wrinkles with worry.
More like he’s praying for a good explanation. He likes this Maxwell guy.
“You mean a good explanation, like there must be a good answer for why your mom had my dad’s gun holster?”
Noah bows his head.
He’s not at fault here, I remind myself. “When are you going back?” I ask with a softer tone.
“I don’t know. Soon.”
Despite Noah’s lies and evasiveness, disappointment pricks me. I push it away as I study the picture of the man with the sloped forehead and squinty eyes, who Noah recognized but didn’t tell me.
I wonder how long he would have kept that to himself, had my mother not run from the hospital today.
Noah fumbles with the leather band around his wrist. “I’ll run out and grab a pizza for us, and some soup for Dina.”
I snort. “Good luck getting her to eat.”
“We have to try. And food for him, I guess.” He scowls at Cyclops, who has made himself comfortable on Noah’s bed and is busy gnawing at an itch on his back leg. The bedspread is covered in sooty paw prints.
I sigh. “Come on. I need your help, before you go anywhere.”
“With what?”
“Something you’re not going to like . . .”
* * *
Noah frowns at the half-full tub of warm water. “Shouldn’t we be using dog shampoo?”
“Do you have any?”
“I can buy some.”
“No point adding extra stops. You need to be here when my mom wakes up. We’ll only get a small window of time where she’ll feel up to talking.” I grab one of the towels off the rack. “Hold him down for me.”
With a heavy sigh, Noah reaches over his head and pulls his T-shirt off, tossing it on the counter.
Leaving me staring at his bare chest. “What the hell are you doing? I said hold him down, not get in with him!”
“You think he’s gonna be calm about this? That shirt is all I have left.”
“Fine, whatever.” I peel my eyes away, feeling my face burn as I recall a naked Noah in this very spot yesterday. “Cy, come here!” I whistle.
The mangy dog trots into the bathroom, oblivious.
“I hope Vilma was wrong about the rabies,” I mutter, lifting him in.
With a soft curse, Noah kneels beside me and seizes Cyclops’s wiry body. Cyclops lets out a low growl as he squirms, and Noah’s arms cord with tension.
“Quiet. Unless you want to go back to the Hollow alone,” I warn in a sharp voice.
As wild as the dog is, Cyclops stops growling, as if he understands.
The combination of water and soap releases a putrid smell of soot, wet dog, and things we’re probably better off not identifying. “Oh, God.”
“Yeah,” Noah agrees with a grimace.
I try not to breathe through my nose, shifting my gaze away. It skates to Noah’s bare shoulder beside me, to the thin silver lines decorating the muscular contours. How a dog Cyclops’s size could fit its jaws around that shoulder is hard to believe, but I’ve now seen how scrawny Noah was when he was little.
And yet Noah’s here to help me, unhappy, but with barely a complaint.
“Thank you.”
“If the little asshole is gonna make my bed his, then I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“Thank you, for getting him out of there.” I feel like I’ve been saying those two words to Noah a lot lately, and yet not nearly enough.
His eyes land on mine. They’re all the more striking up close, a kaleidoscope of blues that draw me in like a cool pool on a blistering-hot day. “Your neighbor makes me nervous, too. She basically forced me.”
“The ninety-year-old shrunken woman who might break with a strong wind and doesn’t speak English forced you? How exactly did that go down?”
His mouth curves into a playful smirk. “She’s persuasive.”
“I’ll bet.” I picture Vilma going head-to-head with a guy Noah’s size and can’t help but chuckle at the mental image. “Anyway . . . He would have been a goner if they had caught him. So, thanks.”
Noah’s gaze drifts to my lips. “I figured that would bother you.” His voice is softer, deeper, and it stirs something inside me.
“Yeah, it would have.” It would have more than bothered me. If Noah had sat there and let it happen, I doubt I would have forgiven him, regardless of his childhood stray trauma.
Cyclops starts squirming.
“He is one filthy animal.” Noah’s nose crinkles at the blackened water as he holds on tight.
“This is probably his first bath . . . ever.” I laugh as I scrub the dog’s neck and back, unable to avoid Noah’s hands. Quietly reveling in the feel of them beneath my own. “Here—I need to rinse him.” I pull the plug and get the handheld sprayer.
Noah manages to hold him down for another ten seconds before he snarls and twists his body to snap at Noah’s wrist. With a curse, Noah scrambles away, falling onto his back. Allowing Cyclops to leap out of the tub, knocking me over in his mad, soaking-wet dash out of the bathroom.
I lose my balance and tumble on top of a sprawled-out Noah.
“Well, that was fun,” he mutters, his head falling back to thump against the tile.
“Did he get you?” I’m hyperaware of how smooth and hot Noah’s bare skin feels against my hands as he inspects his wrist.