“Something like that,” I said and closed my laptop. The USB stick in the drive flashed green.
“Yeah, I just, uh …” Lyle smiled a little smile that was sweet by design. “I just wanted to say hey. I haven’t seen you for a while. Since the funeral, I mean.”
To which he hadn’t been invited. But I didn’t want to be mean, so I didn’t say that. Instead, I nodded and managed a disinterested “How have you been?”
Lyle’s usual monologue began, the same one I’d heard at least a couple of times a year in every one of the five or six years since he’d gotten out of juvie. The theme was always different, but the message was always the same: “I know the last thing didn’t work out, but now I’m doing this other thing that’s really awesome, Sis, and you gotta check it out, I mean it’s freaking amazing. And, you know, we’re taking investments!” And that’s where I’d frown and pull the laptop closer, and he’d say, “I mean, not just yet, you know, we’re working on a business plan, but a month, two months tops, and we’re totally in the game and we’re gonna make bank.” And that’s when I’d smile and nod and say good luck and back away and try not to notice the hopeful, hangdog look he always gave me. Because that just ruined me, that look that said, “Nothing’s gone right yet, but I’m still tryin’. My big brother may have abandoned me, my mom may have driven off a cliff, but I’m still tryin’.” That look just ruined me. And he knew it.
But this time—miraculously—this time was different. This time, he was halfway through the usual story when I looked out the window and across the street and saw Sophie ducking out of Crystal’s schmaltzy little tourist shop. Sophie with her cell phone at her ear and on her face the intense, lip-biting look of someone who’s talking to someone she’s really into, someone she’d really like to screw. Just the look I wanted to see on my fifteen-year-old’s face.
Lyle twisted around, his grimy-nailed hand spread on the gold-flecked Formica.
“What are you looking at?” he said, still all excited. Then he added under his breath, “Oh shit.”
“What?” I snapped, glaring at him like he was fresh meat.
He turned back toward me, his icy-blue eyes wide. “I am the worst uncle ever.”
“That’s news?” I said it without thinking, then immediately regretted it.
No use kicking the underdog, I thought. It was something my father had said about a lot of people, not just Lyle. But even though Dad knew Lyle, even though—hell, maybe because—he knew where he came from, what he came from … Let’s just say that Dad was a helluva lot nicer to him than I was. And much as I hated the circumstances, he was the only other family Sophie had left.
“Yeah,” Lyle said, drawing the word out to at least five syllables. “I totally forgot her birthday. I mean, I haven’t hung out with her for a few weeks. Been busy with the new bizness. Shee-it, I even forgot to call her. It was last week, right?”
“Two weeks ago. Two Wednesdays ago.”
Lyle’s eyes darted back and forth, to me, to the window, to the grease-coated photo of Lake Chelan on the opposite wall. Then he slammed his hand on the table.
“I know! I got it!” Lyle shouted. Everyone on our side of the restaurant stopped and stared, including my snarly waitress. “I’ll come by tonight.” He pointed one long, bony finger at me. “I got the perfect thing for Soph.”
I didn’t have time to stop him, to persuade him to forget it. He slid out of the booth faster than he’d arrived and darted out the door, the smell of unwashed clothes and stale pot trailing behind him. I watched him walk out of sight, then looked for Sophie again. But she was long gone.
* * *
Rhonda took off at four thirty; I was there behind the counter for the afternoon rush. Five customers picking up beer for the evening and another two filling up their tanks. Soon, I was up one hundred and thirty-nine and change, plus a little completely bullshit gossip about the dead kid.
Around six thirty, I started sweeping up, pushing the wide, frayed broom across the worn wooden floor, down one aisle, around the corner, and down the next. As I worked my way around the room, a sedan pulled up in front of the mart. The engine shut off and a kid too small and mousy to be driving his mother’s old Ford stepped out and strolled to the open door. I had seen him just that morning, driving with the windows down and the breeze from the road still ruffling his hair as he slowed to turn into the driveway of Ed and Christine Beale’s place just after I pulled out. I had waved and he had waved back.
That evening, he walked into the mart quietly, respectfully. He even said, “Good evening, ma’am,” before going to the cooler and pulling out a glass bottle of Mexican Coke. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, not quite sure there was a family resemblance. But he had his dad’s hair, minus the gray, and his mother’s thin face, and the same squared-off shoulders—even if they were a lot sharper—as his older brother.
“I’ll be right there,” I said, then turned down the last aisle, shuffling the push broom in front of me.
“That’s alright,” the kid said quietly. He set the soda on the counter and waited, his face toward the wall and his back to me. His spine was rigid, his shoulder blades sharp and bony beneath his red T-shirt.
I finished up, then leaned the broom against the wall beside the office door.
“It’s, uh, it’s Mrs. Scott, isn’t it?” he said when I got to the register.
My eyes shot up, angry, startled. I had never been—would never be—Mrs. Scott.
“No,” I growled.
The boy stepped backward, raised his hands. “You’re, um … you’re Sophie’s mom, right?”
Oh. Sophie Scott. I didn’t have any reason to think of her that way. To me, she was just Sophie, my girl Sophie. And since my parents had custody, because the state had made them her guardians … Until that May, until my father died … God, it had been years—years—since I’d even thought of her last name. Scott. Like her father, Oren Scott. Like her uncle, Lyle Scott. But sure as hell not like me.
“Ma’am?” the boy said, his eyes round as a deer in my headlights. “Ma’am, are you alright?”
I shook my head, scraped my fingers along my scalp. “Yeah, I’m Sophie’s mom.”
“Sorry.” The boy’s face flushed pink, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
“No, I’m sorry.” I held out my hand. “You can call me Camille.”
He shook my hand, his fingers long and strong, his grip good, better than I’d expect from a kid as wiry as he looked.
“Whatcha got there, then?” I said and nodded to the soda bottle in his hand.
“Just a … just a Coke.” He put it on the counter, then stepped back again.
I nodded and rang up the sale.
“Is she around?” he said, his voice small, nervous. “Sophie, I mean.”
I reached under the counter for the bottle opener and slid it across to him, dodging his question. “You’re Ed and Christine’s boy. The younger one.”
The kid glanced out the door to his mother’s Ford. Then he nodded. “I’m Todd.”
“I was sorry to hear about your brother.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his skinny neck. He nodded.
“Were you close?” I said without thinking, then regretted it. “I mean—”
But the kid just shrugged and kept staring out the window.
“You go to school with Sophie?” I tried.
“Yeah.” He nodded, then turned toward me again. “I mean, yes. When we start back in a couple of weeks.”
“Do you have any classes together?”
“I’ll be a junior.” When I stared at him, clueless, he smirked and said, “I tutored her in Spanish last year.”
I swallowed, fought the blood staining my cheeks in embarrassment. I knew she had just finished her freshman year but had no idea she took Spanish. Not that I would ever admit that.
“Sophie was Patrick’s friend too, right?” I asked.
The kid nodded again, looked
away, but I saw the shadow cross his face. Interesting.
“I never met him,” I said, hoping Todd would fill the silence by filling in the gaps.
He frowned. “Really?” His disbelief was angry, scornful. “They were, I mean they used to—”
“What?” I said, more intensely than I should have. When the kid backed away, I felt myself leaning forward, my shoulders tightening, my fingers spread on the counter, ready to pounce. Quickly, I pulled back, shoved my hands in my pockets, smoothed the edges off my face.
“Sorry.” I tried to laugh. “It’s been a long day. What were you saying?”
He swallowed hard, watched me warily. “They were dating. Or they used to, anyway.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t want to get Sophie into trouble.”
“She’s not in trouble,” I said too quickly. “I’m just curious when it was, that’s all. Was it before he got that job?”
Todd Beale shook his head but then turned the shake into a nod. He had dark blond hair that flopped a little when he did. It needed to be cut, but not as badly as his brother’s had needed it. Or his dad’s. In a flash, I wondered if anyone would ever think something like that about me and Sophie. How similar we are, I mean. But, no. No, they wouldn’t.
“Yes, ma’am,” Todd said, his voice certain and a little—yes, a little angry. Righteous anger? His parents weren’t quite Bible-thumpers, but not far off. Or was he jealous that his brother had a girlfriend and he didn’t? “They were dating before that. It was February when they got together, and he moved out in April.”
“Were they still dating then?”
Todd nodded. Something more passed across his face, something dark.
“Was it a good job?” I asked as though I was just curious. “Did he like the people he was working for?”
“Yeah. He hung out with them a lot. I heard him say they had good parties.”
“You ever go to one?”
Todd shook his head, his eyes unreadable.
“Not your crowd?”
“No, ma’am.”
“He ever introduce you to anyone he worked with?”
Todd shook his head again. “I saw him driving through a couple of times. Him and another guy. They gave him a nice truck to drive, a Dodge.”
A Dodge truck. A Dodge truck like the black Dodge on the fourth day of the footage from the mart’s camera.
I smiled tightly. “He ever let you take it out for a spin?”
Todd shrugged. “No. I guess it was just for work.”
“Nice truck for farm work.”
“He wasn’t working on a farm.”
“Around here? What else is there to do?”
“He said it was supply chain management, distribution, something like that.”
“Distribution,” I said carefully. “What, like the guy who delivers the beer?”
“I guess.”
“And the other guy did runs with him?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know him? I mean the guy he worked with.”
“No,” Todd said. “He had long hair. Patrick was saving up to get a tattoo like his.”
“Yeah?” I said. “What of?”
“A snake, I think.” The kid grimaced. “He said the guy had a snake tattooed on his neck.”
All the scenes in the barn flashed across my mind’s eye: walking in on the kid hanging from the wire noose, the helicopter landing in a cloud of dust, Darren and Moreno staring, Jeremy Leamon’s face going from pissed off to shocked, to sick. And then the field examination with Doctor Fleischman, painstakingly taking notes of everything she said, every detail she noted. She hadn’t said anything about a tattoo. Patrick Beale hadn’t even had enough time for that.
Across the counter, the kid reached into his pocket, pulled out a brown wallet, said, “What do I owe you?”
I looked up, startled. Todd, not Patrick. Todd, whole. And alive.
“I heard he had a nice place down in Omak,” I said, to keep him talking. “Did you ever visit?”
“No, ma’am,” Todd said firmly, but there was that shadow again. He’s lying.
“Really? I thought you were close.”
The kid’s jaw flexed. “Yeah.”
“Your parents go down to visit?”
“No.” At least that appeared to be the truth.
“But he was still dating Sophie when he moved out.”
I turned my head toward the window, watched a spit of dust rise behind a passing truck and blow away. The shadow across Todd’s face appeared again, and this time it didn’t lift.
Todd dropped the cash on the counter, thrust his hand in his pocket, and pulled out the keys to the old Ford sedan. He grabbed the neck of the bottle of soda and turned and walked toward the door, his heels pounding into the old board floors with every step.
* * *
An hour later, I was locking the doors when a dirt bike pulled into the lot, the noise bouncing between the few buildings in town and shooting out across the fields beyond. In the orange light I saw the rider dismount by the gas pump. I opened my mouth to tell him the pumps were off, but then he took off his helmet.
“Hey, Sis!” Lyle said, pushing shaggy, sweat-soaked hair back from his forehead. “Is Sophie around?”
“Yeah. But, listen—”
“Sophie!” Lyle shouted, his hands cupped around his mouth. “Soph! Where you at?”
In the still air, I heard Sophie’s heels hit the floor upstairs. “Lyle?” she said out the window in her best, girliest voice.
“I got a present for you!” he shouted, then loped around the corner.
I sent the deadbolt home on the mart’s front door and hurried after him. When I got to the back lot, beside the big metal feed tub full of leggy basil that had gone to seed, Sophie was tearing cheap wrapping paper off a shapeless mass while Lyle, a sloppy grin on his unshaven face and an empty green backpack held limply in his hand, watched. The wrapping paper drifted to the gravel, and Sophie jumped into Lyle’s arms, a stuffed animal bouncing off the back of his head.
“I love it!” she squealed, stepping back and holding the bear up. It was nothing special, really: a brown teddy bear with shiny plastic eyes and a bushy tail. But it wore camo gear and chunky black boots and an M16 strapped across its chest. If I had given it to her, she would have called me a fascist, but from Lyle, it was an adorable toy from her favorite—her only—uncle.
I stood a few feet away, my hands in my pockets, watching them chatter, Lyle showing her how to put the gun in Teddy’s paws. He laughed when she pretended to shoot up the side of the mart, then laughed harder, his faded T-shirt rising and falling over his knobbly rib cage, when she pretended to let off a few rounds into his chest. Where he’d gotten the bear at such short notice—why he’d gotten it—I had no idea, but Lyle had always been strangely resourceful, even when he was just a little kid tagging around after me and Oren back in the day.
Then Sophie hugged the bear to her chest and said earnestly, “You ready to go?”
“Yeah,” Lyle said. “Let’s do it!”
“Where are you going?” I asked from the sidelines.
Sophie rolled her eyes, but Lyle turned, buoyant as ever, grinning widely. “Ice cream! You wanna go, Sis?”
“You know, that sounds good. I’ll drive.”
I don’t know how Sophie managed to toss her head and stomp off in a way that screamed so much annoyance and anger and impatience, but she did it then, like she had so many times in the four months since we’d been thrown together again.
“Awesome!” Lyle exclaimed. “I’ll just bring the bike around back. You don’t mind if I put my stuff in your place while we’re gone, do you?”
I was still staring at Sophie, still fighting to keep the rage bottled up. “What?” I said, refocusing on him.
“My stuff? Is it okay if I put it in your place while we’re gone?”
“No. Put the bike in the truck. You can go home from the ice cream place.”
/>
* * *
Summer in Chelan can be a little crazy. The tourists come out from the cities with their motor boats and their beer kegs and their money. They buzz around the lake on water skis and have house parties and puke in the brown grass around their rentals. I’m not saying it turns into Vegas or something. I just hear from the boys in the Sheriff’s Office that the city people can run a little amok.
But there are others—the young and the sober, I guess—who are good for business. They buy the trinkets in shops like Crystal’s and rent canoes and take their kids out for sundaes at the only good ice cream place in town. And just about the time the little ones are packed off to bed, the teenagers descend, keeping stools inside and out, and even the concrete curb, occupied until the owner, a sinewy guy from Idaho called Hank, kicks them all out.
By the time we got there that night, the crowd was a seething mass of sugar and hormones. Sophie and Lyle, who had been chattering about nothing I could follow the entire way there, fell silent, their heads turning as the truck drifted past the big neon ice cream cone that clung to the side of the A-frame building.
“Omigod,” Sophie said suddenly.
“What?” I asked, still looking for a parking place.
“Nothing.”
I glanced at her sitting next to me, her skinny butt wedged in the middle of the bench seat. She looked at her uncle, who raised his eyebrows at her like he didn’t know what she meant, but before I looked away, I swear I saw him wink.
After standing in the twenty-person-deep line to order, then escaping from the deafening din and sickly sweet air inside the place, Lyle and I waited for a table and our ice cream outside while Sophie flitted from table to table. I didn’t know any of the dozen different kids she hugged quickly, urgently, or the second dozen she engaged in furious, enthusiastic conversation. Her face lit up with every loud giggle, every time a kid leaned in with some new story. Who was this girl?
Finally, a couple vacated half a table, and Lyle and I swooped in. A few minutes later, our number was scratchily called over the loudspeaker. Lyle went to pick up the ice cream and Sophie. She ate hers—bananas Foster with a mountain of whipped cream—while perched on Lyle’s knee, then got up and said she was going to the bathroom.
Little Falls Page 6
