Tom let out a heavy sigh. But he pulled out his wallet and dropped a twenty on the table. “Let’s go get your car.”
We rode in silence through the dark, wet streets. The traffic lights made streaks in my vision like vapor trails. I knew I needed to say something, but my thoughts were a blank white square. As we pulled up behind my car on the access road, Tom said, “What are you going to do?”
“What am I going to do?” I repeated. “About what?”
“Well, you just told me you got arrested trying to sneak through a fence,” he said, nodding at the wrought-iron fence caught in the glow of his headlights, “presumably this one, and I just want to make sure you aren’t going to try that again.”
I stared at him, irrationally annoyed at the implication that he had the power to make sure I did or didn’t do anything at all. “Whatever I decide to do, it’s not your problem.”
He made a face. “I’m trying to help, here. That’s not what I was saying. “
“No, it was,” I said. I felt the tug of gravity in this conversation, a free-fall plummet. But I couldn’t stop. “You think you get to give me a lecture because you got me out of a jam, is that it?”
“No—”
“Well, I don’t need it. I don’t need a lecture and I don’t need any help. I don’t even know why you answered the damn phone.”
“You called me.”
I put my head in my hands as he spoke.
“I don’t know what this is really about, but I’m not playing a game with you. Don’t call me if you don’t want me to answer,” he said. “Because I’m always going to.”
“Stop it.”
“If it makes you feel any better, it’s because I promised.”
“You didn’t promise anything,” I said to my lap.
“I promised Frank,” he said after a minute, his voice softer. “I promised Frank. That I’d look out for you.”
I took in his profile in the dashboard light for a second, my heart hammering in my head. The last person I wanted to hear about in this moment was my father. I got out of the car and steadied myself against the rain-dotted hood.
Tom opened his door and got out too. “Roxane, come on.”
“You promised?” I said, spinning around. “What did you even promise? And when? He’s bleeding to death and he asks you to babysit me? Is that what we’ve been doing for the last nine months?”
“No, of course not—”
“I don’t need you to do me any favors, okay?” I said. “I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can.”
I was going to crawl out of my skin. “Then why are you throwing that in my face?”
His eyes were worried and confused and a little mad too. “I’m not throwing anything in your face,” he said. “I’m concerned—you’re not acting like yourself, you’re honestly not making sense, and—”
I couldn’t hear any more. “Thanks for whatever you said to them, at the police station,” I said curtly. I fumbled through my pocket for my car keys, my hand shaking.
“Roxane, wait.”
His voice made my chest hurt. I knew I was being unfair, but I didn’t know how to stop. “Take care,” I told him. I ignored the hand he skimmed along my arm as I walked over to the driver’s side of my car. He didn’t say anything else and neither did I.
There was a parking ticket on my windshield. I snatched it off and threw it into the ditch. Then I got into the car and felt for the bottle on the floor of the passenger seat, still aware of Tom’s headlights shining on me. I ripped the cellophane off the top of the bottle, waiting for him to leave. I didn’t dare look up into my rearview mirror. Finally, he pulled a three-point turn on the access road and went back down to Clover Road. I took a long swallow of whiskey and squeezed my eyes closed. I thought of the first time I’d ever tasted Crown Royal: I was nine, sneaking a sip from the liquor cabinet in the middle of the night, curious about what it was that my father liked so much better than all of us. It burned my throat and my gums, a forest fire that made me cough so hard I saw stars, so hard that I didn’t hear my father coming down the steps to see what was going on. “You like that, huh?” he said, startling me. I expected him to be mad but he wasn’t, just tiredly amused, probably still drunk himself. “Tastes nice and quiet, doesn’t it?” he added. I didn’t know what he meant by that at the time; there was nothing nice or quiet about the big, ugly flavor of that sip. He sent me back to bed after I swore not to ever touch anything in the liquor cabinet again, a promise I thought I’d have no trouble keeping even into adulthood. But at some point I forgot how gross I thought it was, and at some point after that I realized he was right. It did taste nice and quiet. It was the only thing that did. Now, in the car, I swallowed a little more and tried to pretend that everything would be okay.
For a second, I could almost believe it. The liquor was warm going down and it numbed everything it touched. Unfortunately, that didn’t apply to my brain. Or to my white-hot anger, my anger at Tom, at the Belmont cops, Kenny, my father, myself, everyone, no one. I had no intention of driving anywhere yet, but I turned on the car and cranked the heater. I felt around in the dark for the cord to my phone charger and plugged the device in, but the screen told me it needed to charge before it would turn on. I dropped it onto the seat beside me in disgust.
And then I saw a figure dressed in black coming quickly down the hill toward me.
TWENTY-EIGHT
He opened a gate in the fence. I didn’t have time to process the existence of this gate and how it might have changed what happened yesterday. I automatically shook my gun from its holster and was out of the car just as he reached me. “Take another step and I’ll shoot you right here,” I said, aiming at his chest. The gun, I realized, felt curiously light.
“Whoa,” Kenny said. “Holy shit. What is that. No, I just—”
“Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Roxane, whoa, come on—”
“Do you think I’m kidding?” I said, stepping forward. “Because I’m not.”
His thin face was white with fear. Real fear. “I just wanted to see if you were okay,” he said.
That threw me. “What?”
“I was worried! I saw what happened yesterday,” he said. “Like from the windows upstairs. You can see all the way down here.” He gestured around atmospherically.
“What?” I said again. There was no space in my head to understand this. “You saw what happened. Me getting arrested.”
“Yeah, I saw it, and I was like, I wasn’t dressed yet. So by the time I got dressed and came out here to say it was okay, he didn’t have to take you in, you were already gone. But I saw your headlights just now and I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
I stared at him. This didn’t exactly fit with my theory. But then again, Kenny had been fooling people for years. He hadn’t fooled me though, which was why it felt strange that he seemed credible now. I’d already determined his poker face was shit. “Kenny,” I said, trying to sound calm, “where is Veronica Cruz?”
“I don’t know Veronica Cruz.”
“Yeah, you do. You drive up and down her street. Providence Street.”