In Your Dreams

by Amy Martin

  Chapter 16

  “Wow,” Kieran breathes, shaking his head as if he’s trying to make the image in front of him go away.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Just…it’s weird, you know?”

  I scroll past the photo so we can focus on the text without Morgan Levert staring at us.

  “Says here he’s twenty-two,” Kieran notes, pointing at the text on the screen. “He was barely nineteen when I was born. Nineteen.” He sits back and lets this bit of information sink in. “I can’t imagine having a kid a year from now. I can’t even take care of myself, much less a baby,” he says.

  “No kidding,” I agree, before clarifying “I don’t mean you specifically. I mean anyone who’s young.”

  “I know. I’m kind of a walking special circumstance on most things. But, yeah, it would be pretty hard taking care of a kid as a normal nineteen-year old. My issues would just add an extra layer of suck to the proceedings. Of course, I can’t imagine myself committing armed robbery at twenty, either. Or ever.” Kieran adds, referencing Morgan’s other big accomplishment from that time period. “What kind of messed up do you have to be to try to rob a liquor store when you have a kid to take care of?”

  “Maybe they did it because they had a kid,” I point out, laying blame on Jenna Bradley as well. “I mean, some people around here start having kids before they’re ready and they can’t find a job or don’t have any skills to get one. They think they can score quick cash making meth, and they end up trashing their whole family in the process. From what your dad said, Morgan had been in and out of trouble for a while, so that kind of life was probably all he knew. I guess if he needed fast money to support you and your mom…”

  I don’t finish the sentence because I don’t need to. Kieran leans forward again and scrolls through the rest of the article. “It just mentions Jenna was killed and Frank Dozier had already been convicted,” he relates, although I’m reading along with him. He sits back in the chair once more, arms folded across his chest and a blank expression on his face, and I have to ask him “So, is it real now? Seeing him somewhere besides your journals?”

  “Don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “I thought it would be, but I guess it’s not the same as if he were, like, right in front of me. I mean, you—I can’t deny you’re real. You’re here. I can touch you.” As if he needs to prove to me that he can, in fact, touch me, he turns and places a hand on my shoulder, pulling me to him for a brief kiss.

  “Have I mentioned I’m pretty happy I’m here and you can touch me?” I say when we part.

  “Makes two of us.” He grins, but his expression quickly hardens again. “Hopefully, Morgan Levert will never be right in front of me where I can see him as a real, live, three-dimensional human being. So in some way, maybe he’ll ever be truly real for me.” Kieran turns back to the grainy photo on the screen. “I guess it’s kind of interesting to find out what he looked like when he was younger, though. I mean, he’s basically a grungier version of me.”

  “You’re better looking,” I offer. Kieran gives my knee a grateful squeeze as he grabs the mouse. He clicks back to the search results and scrolls down to an article entitled “Search for Robbery Suspect Continues,” which informs us that the police were still searching for Morgan after the robbery, although they had solid leads as to his whereabouts. This article makes reference to Frank Dozier cooperating with police in the search, and notes Jenna Bradley was killed when she fired on police from inside the store. My eye hits upon the sentence “Levert and Bradley’s minor child was removed from the home and placed in foster care until other relatives can be located,” and I point it out to him. “Yeah. Just read that,” he says. His eyes blink at the computer screen, his mouth pressed into a tight line.

  I can’t tell what he’s thinking, and so I flat out ask Levert and Bradley’s no longer minor child “So, what’s it like, reading about yourself in a New York newspaper?”

  “Surreal,” is his simple answer. I wait for him to add something else, but he doesn’t, instead using the mouse to draw lazy circles with the on-screen arrow over his father’s mug shot—from some teenage crime, I guess. While a minute ago I’d told Kieran he was better looking than his father to make him feel better and because to me, he’s more beautiful than anyone on the planet, studying Morgan’s face in close-up tells me that objectively, Kieran is definitely the handsomer of the two. In this photo, Morgan wears the vacant stare I’ve seen on the faces of tweakers wandering around the convenience stores out near the interstate when I’ve stopped to get gas. It’s a hollow-eyed, “I’ve been up for three days and I want to lie down here in the junk food aisle and go to sleep” face, complete with disheveled hair—no ponytail this time—and chapped lips. Even though he’s a young man in this mug shot, Morgan’s face shows lines and crevices suggesting someone much older, someone who’s seen and done things people probably shouldn’t have seen and done at his age.

  Kieran tires of staring at his father and clicks back to the search results. He pulls up two articles in a row relating the details of the robbery with no pictures, and finds a third story featuring a photo of the liquor store, but none of the criminals themselves. All of the other articles we find about Morgan’s trial and conviction only have pictures of Morgan, and when we go back to the list of articles, the linked headlines and their accompanying summaries reference Frank Dozier, but not Jenna Bradley.

  “We might not find any pictures of your mother,” I point out. “Considering all we’ve seen of your dad so far are court pictures and mug shots, maybe that’s a good thing.”

  “I don’t remember my not-dad saying anything about her being arrested before, either,” he adds, clicking on a link titled “Arrest Made in Attempted Armed Robbery.” Before we start reading, Kieran leans forward, head in his hands. “Tired?” I ask.

  “A little.”

  “Go ahead and rest,” I tell him. “I’ll keep reading. If I find anything interesting, I’ll wake you up.”

  Kieran gives in, bending his right arm at the elbow and lowering his head to his forearm. I rub his back for a few seconds before returning my hand to the mouse so I can scroll through the article about Frank Dozier’s arrest. Again, I don’t uncover anything new. I do learn, however, that Frank Dozier was nineteen at the time of the robbery, and once I’ve scrolled to the end of the article, I’m treated to a black and white mug shot, the caption telling me I’m staring at Frank Dozier.

  Only his shoulders on up are visible, but Frank appears tall and stocky, very little of the wall he’s been photographed against showing behind him. His eyes aren’t much more than slits, the skin underneath and around his eyelids seeming almost swollen. Frank’s a teenager in the shot, but he’s already balding, his hair buzzed close to his scalp, the stubble indicating a hairline high on his forehead.

  Leaning in closer to the computer, I study Frank Dozier’s photo, squinting at his hairline, the shape of his face, his sunken, narrow eyes, all of which look vaguely familiar. Once the recognition of whom I’m staring at sets in, I fall back against the chair as if he had just reached out from the screen and punched me in the face.

  “Oh, God,” I wheeze, my hand on Kieran’s shoulder, shaking him awake. “Kieran, wake up. Wake up. You won’t believe this.”

  Kieran raises his head and glances back at me. I point at the computer screen, and he sits up in the plastic chair, blinking. “What am I looking at here?”

  “Frank Dozier,” I tell him.

  I wait an eternity of seconds for him to put the puzzle pieces together. Just as I did, he leans closer to the screen and squints at the photo. I watch Kieran’s expression as he focuses on Frank, staring, staring, his eyes gradually widening, his face registering all the shock I was—am—feeling.

  “Are you kidding me?” he whispers, turning away from the computer screen to look at me, his expression wild. “He’s been here this whole time?”

  And that’s when I know for sure he’s r
ealized what I have—Frank Dozier’s the burly guy who waits on us every weekday at the Downtown Diner.