by Scott, Eliot
It’s so quiet that for a moment I wonder if they can hear me breathing nearby.
“Okay.” My father says. “Let’s go tighten that other side. I heard a car pull up, and I’ll just bet my daughter is up in her room tearing up that make-up drawer that’s full of gunk and slathering it all on her face. I’m also sure she’s expecting you to change into something that isn’t covered in dust and oil for tonight. Do you have to pick up flowers?” He chuckles. “I feel for all guys on dance night. How I hated getting those things worked out. Corsages and neckties are the worst. Do you need advice on any of that?”
“I think I’ve got it, sir.” Alex grunts through his words, and I can tell they’ve gotten back to work. “I’m lucky because Jojo’s different. She doesn’t like the usual stuff.”
“Neither does her mother. Care to enlighten me? I can see if you’re heading in the right direction.”
“I got us matching fishing lures. I know it’s silly but I had them engraved, and I’m pinning it to the center of a wrist corsage.”
“Damn, Alex. You do know my girl well.” My father’s voice is full of admiration. “She’s going to love that. She’ll love to have something to keep forever as a memory of the night.”
Tears spring into my eyes at the sound of his words. My heart’s beating so fast because I’m going to love these fishing lures with all of my soul.
Feeling terribly guilty that I’ve overheard Alex’s surprise to me, I wait until they’re gathering up the tools and clambering down the stairs on the opposite side to make my escape.
Alex’s gift is so very…perfect. It’s perfect, just as all things he does for me are. My hands will be empty when he gives me my gift, and that doesn’t seem right.
I’ll make it up to him in kisses. Kisses and more, so much more. I’ll wait for when we go to the lake. Or maybe, because it’s getting colder, and it may be raining, I’ll do something in his car. We’ve never ever done stuff in his car before. Either way, I’ll give him his own forever memory. I blush, thinking of me and Alex and all that we do when we’re making out. I know he’s been wanting more. He would never ask, so I’ll surprise him.
My feet fly down the granary steps faster than how I went up.
I’m flying across the yard on butterfly wings now, and my galloping heart is setting the pace. Tonight, I don’t want to be the girl Alex is used to being with. I’m not going to be Jojo the tomboy, Jojo covered in mud. I want to be beautiful and maybe a little glamorous—with hair and makeup, and this dress that I hope will knock him off of his feet.
“Mom!” I shout, elated and excited when the screen door slams behind me. “I’m going to need some help getting ready.”
“Sure, honey.” My mother comes out of the laundry area. “Did they like the dress?”
“I decided to make it a surprise. Can you help me? Make me look like one of those magazine girls, sexy, and beautiful and—you know—like you?”
My mom’s low laughter rumbles out of her chest as she hugs me. “Jojo. You already do look exactly like me.”
19.
Jojo, Present Day.
Kicking my feet into the dirt and crumbled concrete, I wander the old kitchen floor plan in my mind, reaching out and turning as if I'm walking through my past, smelling my mother's stew and looking over my father's catch of the day on the imaginary paint-faded table that used to be next to the hose, way behind the back porch.
I know I've lingered too long, and my tiny fantasy world falls apart as it's interrupted by the sound of tires crunching slowly along the gravel.
My house, my parents, and my bliss fade away until it’s just me standing alone and unprotected in an empty lot in a place that was once mine.
A long whistle cracks through the silence. “Well, look what the cat dragged in…”
I don't turn to see who it is. I know it’s Grady without looking. His voice and those stupid phrases he says, and the way he always thrives playing the villain—my skin is crawling.
I kick myself for not expecting him to make an appearance in the Sinclair-stalking roster. May signed off, so it must be Grady’s shift now. Spying aside, I should be used to this—him. Grady’s always had an odd obsession with me.
Since the day Alex and I first rode the bus together, Grady’s always been there, lurking around, trying to curse anything beautiful in my life, to ruin it or take it away.
I think, just like his father, Grady’s always been searching for opportunities to torment me. Somehow he was wronged in life, and in his twisted mind, I’m the way to get back to even.
"Get off my land, Wallace girl, or I'll have you arrested," Grady barks out, his meaty elbow hanging out of the window of his giant SUV.
I don't answer him. I know he’s dangerous, so I’m plotting the best route back to my car.
Safety.
"There's a lot that could happen to a woman alone out here. That's why I've posted all of those NO TRESPASSING signs. Maybe you didn’t see them. Or maybe…maybe you’re still so dumb you just couldn’t read them.”
His voice is cold, and I don’t look over at him as a string of harsh laughter barks out next. I hear his vehicle door open, followed by the sound of his heavy feet slamming into the ground.
“I get it. I’m leaving, Grady.” I hide my panic and swallow my anger. Just like him to rub it all in my face like this by calling me a trespasser.
“I think you need to be punished for breaking the law. And since we Sinclairs are the law, I feel it is my civic duty to step in.” His words scare me.
When I turn toward him, I notch my chin up high and keep my face impassive, because I know Grady loves it when people are afraid of him. He gets off on it. “You're not going to hurt me. I said I’m going now. You will let me.”
He shakes his head, and his eyes elevator up me and back down. He puts his hands to his chest as though my words have offended him.
The sound of his hitched breathing, like he’s suddenly out of breath, snakes into my ears. “I like how you said the word, ‘please’ to me just now, Jojo. So…if you want to work back some of your land starting right now?” He motions to the grassy area by the mailbox. “We could come up with a program where you could earn back, say, half an acre at a time. All you have to do is say please to me while on your knees. Then flat on your back. Then sitting on my face.”
I lose all composure and control. “Fuck you, Grady Sinclair!”
His eyes glitter, and he steps forward a few feet, sneering at me in that way he always has, like I'm fast food and he's really hungry for it, but he doesn't understand why I won’t serve it up to him just because he wants it.
“Such language from that pretty mouth of yours, Jojo.” He shrugs like he’s not offended and steps forward again. “It’s a turn on.”
I move back, my heart racing faster as he continues with, “Since you’re the one who brought up the word ‘fuck’ first, I think I could oblige you.”
“Grady, seriously. Just shut up.” I shake my head and try to skirt toward my car while he lets out a long breath of air.
“Jojo, you don’t have a choice, I think. Unless you can outrun me.” He glances around the empty lot. “My father's dead. And my brother seems to be finished with you based on how he ignored you at the funeral and after. It’s about fucking time, if you ask me. I don't have to get anyone’s permission anymore, either. So you can step into my car if you want to make this easy and more comfortable. Or you could run how I hope you do, and you could try to fight me." He wiggles his brows up high and says words I never wanted to hear again. "We Sinclairs love girls who fight.”
If I didn't have my daughter to think of I'd reach into this bag, pull out my gun and shoot him dead for making this same threat he’s made to me since the first week we met, but I don't dare let on that I even have a gun because Grady’s huge and he will be able to overpower me. If he’s serious, I’ll have to be smart, but I hope he’s just fronting. Grady was a master at threats and fronting in the past, and peo
ple don’t change that much.
Because I’m so scared right now, though, I tell my mind that’s what this is—a front on the face of a coward. I just need to be smart, keep cool, and get to my car.
Just in case I'm wrong, I grip the gun inside my bag as I try to push past him, saying calmly, "Again, Grady. I’m leaving. You won’t hurt me.”
His laugh grows more sinister, so I spin to walk backward and face him. He tilts his head back and laughs hard, bending at his belly. His body is still thick, fit like the meathead athlete he always was. But somehow his size feels even more suffocating now. His eyes are wild—dark and possessive.
“Oh you dumb little girl. Golden boy Alex always got first dibs, got the better shit, got our mom to fight for him, always got his way. But my plans for you, they were always better. It’s my turn, Jojo. And I’ve waited a long time for it.”
He spits at the ground, leaning forward and taking a lumbering stride toward me. I continue my slow and careful path backward, waiting for my time to zig-zag bolt to my car.
“Alex know you’re here?” I ask, like what he’s saying isn’t scaring the shit out of me. I could always use his brother’s name to push Grady’s buttons and send him off kilter.
Grady shrugs off my question, but his face darkens with annoyance, so I know it’s worked.
“How the fuck would I know. I’m just finishing out our father’s plans for the place. Whatever that will says—and even though Father made Alex the CEO—I have just as much of a right to what’s under here as anyone does. More. I’m the eldest heir. I worked for it—did all the dirty work in the past. I’m still doing it, too.” He pauses and smirks at me again, his upper lip sneering like a bull as he adds a kick into the dirt. “Bet you still don’t know what’s under here—stupid, stupid Wallaces, living like paupers for no reason.”
“I know all about the water! A lake as big as Tahoe. I always did. You were the idiots who fell for our games—not the other way around.” I shout the lie at him, hoping to throw him off more with my newfound knowledge. The Sinclairs get off on their secrets, and if I can act like I knew all along, maybe, just maybe, I’ll make it to my car.
“Bullshit.” Grady’s brows sink lower and crinkle while his black eyes go blacker. A tuft of his curling brown hair falls across his forehead. I’m backing up toward my car, and trying to process what he’s said about Alex being the CEO, but I’m still feeling too unsafe to bring that up directly, so I push him by pretending I know even more.
“Hell yes I know about it. And I’m mentioning it to you right now because I don’t care about the water, Grady. I don’t care about the money or what’s in the past. I just came here to have a look around, get a last look at my home, visit the past and prove how strong I am. This visit is for nobody but me. That’s all. I know it’s all yours now, and I’m good with that. I don’t want or need anything from your awful family. But I can guess that during the last six years, Alex was made CEO because Alex will know what to do with it—and you don’t. That must hurt, huh?”
Grady jerks his head back at his car. “Alex has no clue! He wants to keep it as it is. But under the aquifer there’s an oil deposit bigger than what they were finding in Northern Alaska back in the eighties. And I will get that oil out before a fucking earthquake drains it—or before the water gets into it and ruins it. It’s an inevitable fact that eventually that quake’s going to hit this region, and I will have both the oil and the water drained out of here long before.”
I raise my brows high. I know Grady will read my shock and surprise as some sort of admiration, but I can’t help but whisper out. “Oil…”
“If we do it right, drain and bottle the water first and sell it, because it’s pure, and we simultaneously get the oil out, the Sinclair family will be set for hundreds and hundreds of years ahead. I will live like a fucking king! So, who’s got the brains now?”
He’s smug, but I’m relieved he’s no longer threatening in a physical way.
“What about the environment—there’s no way you can do what you’re planning without trashing the lands around here for hundreds of miles. It will become a wasteland. Both the water and the oil has to be millions, if not billions of years old. You’re talking about disturbing a whole ecosystem.”
“It’s all our land.” He shrugs. “Who the fuck cares how it looks after.”
I shrug, but inside I’m livid, even more horrified by the signed letters and the transfer of property form hiding in my purse. I manage to keep my shrug as careless as his was, and bluff out, “Like I said, I don’t care. Like you said, it’s your land. But, I’m holding with what everyone knows. Grady Sinclair has the muscle…Alex Sinclair has the brains. That still stands, so whatever happens, it’s gonna be your brother’s call—not yours.”
His nostrils flair with my punishing insults, which is when I startle him by bolting.
I’m almost within a hand’s reach of my car when his hand circles my upper arm and yanks me back until my head snaps.
“I’m going to show you some muscle, you pretentious little bitch!” The words stench as he grits through his teeth. “I’m going to stick it so far up into you that you’ll never say something like that to me again.”
20
Alex, Present Day.
Once Will told me which papers Jojo had taken out with her, I didn't have to follow her to her next location. If she read the letter her mom had written, then I knew exactly where she was going. The farm.
And this meant I needed to meet her there. On her own turf, in a non-threatening way, which is why I thought I’d walk in on the pathway from the lake how I used to meet her.
I speed like a maniac to my house and park the car by the lake. I picture how it will go…how I hope it will go. She should have been just a bit ahead of me driving in directly, but she’ll need a minute or two on her own alone to process and to be quiet with the memories she has of that vacant lot. That is her way.
For me, it’s a short hike to her place—and I’ve already started running it, because now that I’m heading toward her, I don’t have the patience to walk. I’m ready to talk to her. I want to talk to her, and maybe now she’s going to understand just why I want her to leave here again. There’s nothing left for her here except the carnage our parents left for us to clean up.
As I walk along the path, I have this idea that I want to be nice to her—to come clean, which is an impossible idea. I want her to forgive me, but that’s selfish. I also don’t know if I’ll ever be man enough to tell her all that I was involved in on behalf of my father.
I don’t deserve her forgiveness. I never will. I’m too evil, done too much.
At least she knows now that her mother was responsible for the farm house burning down. I know she thought that it was us, completely—more specifically, me. Which, hell…despite it being her mother’s plan, it was me executing it.
Father didn’t care where the idea had come from, he simply wanted it taken care of. He wanted me to do the job, then lord it over Jojo. In Father’s mind it was the dramatic type of huge-yet-cruel closure that he loved.
I’m sure he also saw me lighting up the Wallace farmhouse as a symbolic and appropriate gesture. It made me just the right kind of Sinclair, because by then, I’d been lying to Father about how much I hated the Wallaces. I played the part and gave him what he wanted to see and hear.
I talked about how much I couldn’t wait to be rid of Jojo. That, in a twisted way, was also true by the end of senior year. I was so full of self-loathing, nearly sick every day with it, that I couldn’t wait for her to be out of Tacoma. I couldn’t wait to have her far away from us, where I hoped, finally, she’d be safe.
At the very least, safer.
Mrs. Wallace knew her daughter better than any of us did when she wrote the command to burn the house down in her letter. She understood just how sentimental Jojo would be about the farm house. She knew in her heart that her daughter might leave the farmhouse for college, but every quarter s
he’d want to come home. She’d want to make a life here and stay after. She would be attached—endangered.
I suspect Jojo didn’t take the document to report it to the news or anything. She’s also not the type to discuss it with anyone she doesn’t trust. So, for now, that means she will probably only show it to her Aunt Shelly. But what Jojo doesn’t know is that even her dear and beloved Aunt is not innocent of all of this.
My father and I made sure Aunt Shelly knew everything that was going down years ago. Jojo’s mother sealed it by confirming it all on her deathbed. Aunt Shelly knowing but remaining silent is what has kept Shelly and Jojo breathing. Jojo’s aunt would have moved away along with Jojo, but my father made it impossible. He made her a prisoner here in Tacoma.
She was our father’s collateral.
He locked up the woman’s money by trashing some of her investments. And he threatened her so badly, all she could do was breathe in, breathe out, live her quiet life, and sell antiques. She wasn’t allowed to visit Jojo, and Jojo wasn’t invited here. The deal was, if she did all of that with a straight face, she would be left alone to live a decent life while her one surviving relative, Jojo, also stayed alive.
No one could be happier about my father’s death than Aunt Shelly. She also was the first one investigated by the police as the most probable murder suspect.
None of us expected Jojo to slip away from school and run how she did. Even Shelly didn’t know exactly where she’d been because Jojo made a point of not contacting her for more than four years. Nothing—not until a few months ago, and right before Father was murdered. I’d heard something about him having tracked her to Ohio, and I know he had been trying to locate her address. He even told me straight up once that he was getting close. He was obsessed with the idea that she would challenge us and somehow fight for this land. Even more, though, he was obsessed with finishing something he started.
