“My dad’s?” My throat suddenly dry, the words came out a croak.
“To hear your own flesh and blood’s got darkness in them,” Schwartz said, “Is to believe in your own darkness. And no one likes that.” He thought for a second. “I believe that’s Shakespeare.”
And in that moment, I hated this man more than anyone else in the world.
“But no,” Schwartz said. “It wasn’t your dad’s.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Not likely.”
“Is that why you took the blame?” I said. “Because you couldn’t prove it wasn’t your gun?”
“Please,” Schwartz scoffed. “I can’t prove it ‘cuz it was ten years ago. But back then, yeah, I could prove it. Police know whose weapon is whose, you know.”
“So—why did you say it was yours?” I struggled to understand.
“Because I was in on it,” he said. “I was just as fucking guilty. They were the good cops, yeah? They had that St. James case to back them up, keep their reputations intact. Me? I was a corrupt cop who’d taken grift for years. It’d be their word against mine. I was an easy scapegoat. So I took the fall, and they made sure the gun disappeared so I wouldn’t do time.”
“Whose gun was it?”
Schwartz shook his head. “Uh uh. That’s not part of the deal.”
Chapter 23
I drove back to Beacon Falls simultaneously furious and relieved that Schwartz wouldn’t—or couldn’t—tell me more.
The closer I treaded to the truth, the more terrified I got that maybe I didn’t want to know it after all.
I thought about what Schwartz said about believing in your own darkness. I believed in my own darkness, all right. I’d been struggling with it for years. First with what I said to mom, then how things went down between me and Zoe, then the abortion, and finally how I shut dad out until we barely knew each other.
I thought about Zoe and my heart ached. Just another example of what a shitty person I was.
We had both just turned fifteen: Zoe in June and me in August. In the years since my mother left, we’d grown closer, leaving our dads to joke about how they each gained a second daughter. Mrs. Mitchell, for her part, adored me, and the feeling was mutual. She fed me, comforted me, and even sat me down with Zoe one awkward afternoon to go over the details of menstruation.
Things were good. I was happy when I was with the Mitchells.
But that all changed that day in the woods.
Zoe and I were returning from the store where we liked to spend our allowance on things like candy and toys and makeup. This afternoon, we’d combined our money so Zoe could purchase a stuffed giraffe with big doe-eyes and a little bow in its hair.
School had started two weeks ago, and we were busy talking about classes and teachers and gossiping about our friends.
The path from the store to Zoe’s house ran through a narrow but overgrown stretch of trees between two housing developments. It was cool in the shadows and we often lingered there, enjoying the break from the relentless sun of early September.
This afternoon, our conversation quickly turned to boys, as it often did of late.
“Myles said hi to me today in history,” I said, butterflies lighting up my stomach. I’d had a crush on Myles for years, but he was a cool kid and I was not.
Zoe didn’t say anything. She dropped her backpack next to a fallen log and sat.
“What’s wrong?” I sat next to her.
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just—"
“What?”
“Mom and dad got in a big fight last night,” she said after a moment.
Although they never argued when I was there, I had picked up on the tension that prickled through the house as soon as Mitch’s cruiser pulled into the driveway. In the last few weeks it had gotten to the point where I made excuses to return home before Mitch’s shift ended.
“I’m sorry, Zo-Zo,” I said, taking her hand. “I know what that’s like.”
“I love you,” she said, her voice soft.
I pushed her with my shoulder. “Love you too.”
Zoe looked at me gratefully, eyes full of tears. Then before I knew what was happening, her mouth was on mine.
It happened so suddenly that it took several heartbeats for me to react. When I did, it was instinct. I shoved her away.
“What are you doing?” I cried. My mouth tingled where she’d pressed against it. I ran the back of my hand across it. “Yeccht. Jeez, Zoe, are you nuts?
Zoe’s eyes filled with tears, her face a sea of red. She grabbed her backpack and took off down the path.
In the movies, this is when I would call out, run after her, apologize and beg forgiveness. But I was too horrified and angry. Since my boobs developed, I had struggled to navigate the unwanted attention of boys. The last thing I wanted was to feel that same pressure from girls. Especially my best friend.
A cloud swallowed the sun, throwing the path into darkness. I hadn’t meant for my words to come out so angry, but all I could think about was what our classmates would think if they found out. Rumors of our lesbianism had always circulated, rumors that hadn’t really bothered me much—until I heard a boy say he would never ask me out because I was a “dike.”
I stared in the direction Zoe had gone, emotions that I didn’t understand coursing through me. I turned in the opposite direction. My foot kicked something. Zoe’s giraffe lay in the dirt, bits of leaves stuck to its face.
Zoe and I never talked about what happened, but it opened a crack in our relationship that grew until the only thing Zoe and I had in common was the reputation of being “easy” among the boys. I don’t know why Zoe slept with so many boys, but there were rumors that she’d also slept with a couple girls. I, on the other hand, felt I had something to prove, in more ways than one.
What happened between us never sat well with me, but pride and shame kept me from apologizing all these years. I watched as she spiraled into drugs, and still I did nothing. I’m not saying I was the reason behind her decline, but I was the one who'd introduced her to Staci Connor, the party girl who was known to try any drug put in front of her. And when Zoe needed me most, I was the one who abandoned her. Just like my mother abandoned me.
Chapter 24
I pulled into dad’s driveway, feeling weak and jittery. The emotions of the day were catching up to me fast. There was nothing I wanted more right now than to curl up in dad’s La-Z-Boy with a beer.
I grabbed my phone and texted Chris to call me. I hadn’t talked to him since he’d helped with the battery. Was that only yesterday? I rubbed my eyes, which were scratchy with exhaustion. So much had happened since then.
I was halfway up the front walk when I saw it: the front door was open. I froze.
Where was Remy?
Positioning the house key between my fingers, as dad had taught me, I pushed open the door, its hinges squeaking slightly. The air in the house was still and seemed filled with tension.
“Rem--” My voice choked. “Remy!”
Deep in the house, the dog barked. Someone had locked her in the back bedroom.
“Hey!” I shouted, “I’m calling the cops!”
A drawer slammed and footsteps sounded a heartbeat before Elly Williams appeared, her face flushed, a half-crazed, desperate look in her eyes. “Don’t,” she said, breathless. “Please don’t.”
“Elly? What are you doing here?”
Her pale skin flushed red. “I can explain.”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“Your dad was helping me,” she said, the words coming out in a rush. “He was helping me!"
“I’m calling the cops.”
“No!” Her eyes widened, her hands outstretched. “No, Mady, please just listen.”
I dropped the grocery bags and waited, one hand poised over my phone.
Elly’s shoulders slumped. “He was giving me his oxys. To stave off the dope sickness.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true!”
“You mean you were stealing them? That’s why I saw the empty container in your house.”
That surprised her, but she recovered quickly and said, “No. He gave them to me. Mady, I swear.”
“You’re lying. Bye.” I pivoted to return to my car to call the police.
“Mady! Wait.”
Something in her tone made me hesitate.
“You dad hated oxys,” she said. “He said they made him loopy.”
Hackles rose on my neck. Those were his words: loopy.
“That’s why he gave them to me,” she said.
I turned around slowly. “Let me get this straight. My dad got a doctor to prescribe him a drug that he then gave to you?”
She nodded, the skin of her face pallid and stretched. “I know it’s crazy but he—he felt responsible.”
My heart stopped. The boy? Sweat dripped down my back. “Responsible for what?”
Elly shifted. Her arms twitched. “My problem.”
“Your problem?” That was a funny way to describe your child.
“My drug problem,” she said. “He felt responsible for my drug problem.”
“Oh.”
“After we broke up,” Elly went on, “I hooked up with a guy. I was looking for—something. I don’t know what. It started with molly, then progressed to other synthetics. Before long I was doing heroin on my lunch break.” She bit her bottom lip. “Then I got pregnant.”
Something must’ve shown on my face because Elly gave me a funny look and said, “What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly, my cheeks warming. “I mean—the timing was right and I…” I trailed off, feeling like an idiot.
Her shoulders rolled involuntarily, twitching and uncontrolled. It must be terrible to have so little control over your body.
“I got on methadone while I was pregnant,” she said, “But once Derrick was old enough to walk," her face dropped, “I fell back into it. I tried to get clean again. For a couple months. But. I don’t know. I had trouble getting to the clinics.”
I knew that one of the biggest hurdles to addicts was access to proper resources, but I never thought Beacon Falls, with its proximity to so many cities, would have such a problem.
“I tried to get some oxys from my doctor, but he knew my history and refused to give me more than ibuprofen. I went to the streets.” She dug at a fingernail. “It’s where your dad found me.”
What must it have been like for dad to see Elly on the streets like that? Knowing she had a son who needed her?
But I knew what that felt like. I'd felt the guilt and regret all these years as I watched Zoe Mitchell descend into the darkness after the way I treated her. The difference was: my dad tried to do something about it. I never did.
“How’d he wind up giving you his pills?” I asked.
“I moved in for a while,” she said uncomfortably. “While I tried to get clean.”
“You moved in? Here?”
Elly didn’t answer, but went on, “He took some time off to watch Derrick and take care of me, but I don’t know if you know what it’s like to get dope sick.” A shiver passed over her. “It’s hell. Pure hell. You’ve got fire on your skin and ants in your blood and nausea and you feel worse than when you’re giving birth because at least when you’re giving birth, they give you something to take the pain away. With dope sickness, the only thing that’ll take the pain away is the very thing that caused the pain in the first place.
“We made it three days.”
I hated that she used the word we.
“But it was killing your dad, Mady, watching me like that.” She grabbed one hand with the other. They were both shaking. “He found the oxys from when he hurt his back. They were expired, but they worked. I felt a little better.
“A week later, he helped me rent the doublewide.”
“And he got more pills from his doctor?” I said.
She nodded. "I thought maybe he'd gotten some more before he..." She trailed off, her eyes filling with tears.
I knew I should be angry, but there was something so sad in her expression, her desperation, that I couldn’t hold on to the anger. “What are you going to do now?”
She clutched her arms across her chest. “I don’t know.”
I pictured her detoxing in her run-down trailer, her boy watching as she went through the shakes, the vomiting, the sweats, the hell. It made me sick to think about.
Behind me, a car pulled into the driveway. I turned to see Chris Savine stepping out of his cruiser.
I looked back at Elly. Fear strained her already pallid features.
“Mady?” Chris Savine, still in his police uniform, looked between me and Elly. “What’s going on?”
I could only imagine what it must look like to him. I was outside the house, Elly inside, looking to all the world like she owned the place.
“Elly was just leaving,” I said.
The relief on Elly’s face nearly broke my heart. She darted around me, barely glancing at Chris, and hurried down the driveway. We watched her until she was around the bend, then Chris turned to me.
“What was Elly doing here?”
I didn’t answer. Chris looked more haggard than I’d seen him, deep hollows under his eyes, the skin across his face stretched thin. There was a wary edge about him I hadn’t noticed before.
“Why did she park down the road?”
I tried to come up with some kind of explanation but failed. “I guess she wanted the exercise,” I said, lamely.
Chris raised an eyebrow. “You know she’s an addict, right?”
“Yeah, I know.” The adrenaline was wearing off, leaving me even more weak and exhausted than I had been.
Chris followed me inside. I opened my bedroom door. Remy streaked past me, barking furiously until she saw it was Chris. She skidded to a halt in front of him, dipping her head, her rear high in the air. She wanted to play.
"Can you put her outside, please?"
As Chris played a few rounds of catch with Remy, I grabbed a beer. What Elly had said about my dad, at once incredibly sweet and achingly painful, filled my head, making me dizzy. Derrick wasn’t my father’s kid. Chris had said as much but even so, the letdown hurt a lot more than I expected. I was once again alone in the world.
“Mady.”
Chris came back inside. Not wanting him to see me on the verge of tears, I dug around in a drawer. Where did I put the church key?
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I know I had that damned church key somewhere.
Chris came up behind me. He leaned in, and I smelled the sweet scent of his aftershave, felt the press of his body heat. He slid the church key toward me from where it sat on the counter. “Here.”
Neither of us moved. My heart thudded against my chest. I wanted more than anything to turn and let him enfold me in his arms, tell me it was going to be okay. Feel the warmth of him, the comfort and security of another human being so I didn’t have to face all of this alone.
But before I could, he moved away. Feeling stupid, I hurried into the living room. Chris followed and eyed me wearily. “Are you gonna tell me what happened?”
I took a long drink of beer. “Where to start?”
He waited.
I sighed and began, starting with Davis driving by yesterday and then finding out about our old house.
“I found this.” I held out the photograph.
Chris leaned in to stare at in. “Who is it?”
“It’s Mary Trelany.”
Chris jerked back, eyes going wide. “Oh shit.”
“Why do you think my dad had it?”
He was silent for a long time. “I don’t know,” he said. “Did you tell Mitch? Maybe he knows.”
“He doesn’t. He just kept saying my dad was complicated.” I scoffed. “As if any of us aren’t.”
Outside, Remy barked at something. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
&nb
sp; “So I went to talk to Eric Schwartz,” I said.
“You what?”
“He admitted the gun wasn’t his.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Mady.” Chris shook his head, trying to absorb what I’d just said. “Hang on. You went to Eric Schwartz’s house? By yourself?”
I shrugged. “What’s the big deal? You said yourself that he’s dying. He had an oxygen tank and everything.”
“That wasn’t safe, Mady. Did anyone know you were there?”
I pressed my lips together in annoyance. “It was fine, Chris. I’m fine.” I put my hand on Chris’s knee to get his attention. “But he said it wasn’t his gun.”
This time, it sunk in. Chris paled. “What do you mean he said it wasn’t his gun? Whose gun was it?”
I shrugged. “He wouldn’t say. He claimed he took the fall for it in exchange for them making the gun go away.”
“Who’s them?”
“I don’t know. The Vice Squad?”
Chris rubbed a hand over his face. “Jeez, Mady. This isn’t good.”
“Do you think it was my dad’s gun?”
Chris shook his head, his mouth slightly ajar in disbelief. “I don’t know. But I think I know how to find out.”
Chapter 25
After Chris left, I paced the house restlessly. He said he was going to go dig around in evidence storage to see what he could find out about the brothel case.
When I asked him about the possibility that dad had found out whose gun it was and they killed him to keep it quiet, he said, his face a mask of pity, “Don’t you think it’s more plausible that he knew whose gun it was all along?”
Those words stuck with me as I paced the house, going from room to room to room, a half-empty beer clutched in my fist. Remy followed with her ears down, sensing my unease.
I had to do something. I couldn’t just stay here, in a house that was the embodiment of my all my father’s shortcomings.
So I drove to Elly’s house. If she was in such a bad state that she’d break in looking for drugs from a dead man, there was no telling what else she might do to get herself a fix. Maybe I could offer to watch Derrick for a little while or drive her to rehab or…I don’t know. What can you do for an addict spiraling into withdrawal?
The Things We Keep Page 10
