The Tenderness of Thieves

by Donna Freitas

  “I like Miles more and more,” Michaela said with a grin.

  “Be nice,” I said, leaning back. A big wave crashed onto the beach, and I was suddenly tempted to swim. It was really hot out.

  Bridget put her head on my shoulder. “Oh, to have two hot boys, one rich and one bad, fighting over me.”

  I shrugged her off. “Are you joking? Aren’t you the girl with three rich boys fighting over her?”

  “Sadly, they are not,” she said with a sigh.

  “Liar,” Michaela said, just as a little boy on the walk behind us threw a big handful of snaps onto the ground and we all flinched. Michaela turned to glare at him, and he hurried away.

  “I’d be happy with just one boy fighting over me,” Tammy said from Michaela’s other side.

  “If there’s only one boy, there can’t be any fighting,” Michaela observed.

  “How about fighting for me?” Tammy went on. “You know, to win me over.”

  “Well, you already have that in Seamus,” I said, shaking my head. Wishing Tammy would just acknowledge what was going on with Seamus already. There was another loud boom from behind the wall, and the four of us jumped.

  Michaela turned once more to see who’d set off the firecracker, but this time she didn’t find the source. “Someday someone in this town is going to lose a hand.”

  Tammy nudged her. “Always the mother.”

  “I am not,” she said. “I’m just prudent.”

  Bridget laughed. “Ooh, SAT word.”

  I shifted positions so I was sitting cross-legged on the wall, the sandy cement rough against the skin of my legs and feet. I zeroed in on Tammy. “Can we talk about Seamus and you?”

  “Yessss, I suppose,” Tammy said, like it was a lot of trouble to acquiesce to this request. But then she turned to me, the look on her face serious. “Though, shouldn’t we talk about, you know, the rest of your night at the O’Connors’ house first?”

  “Was it difficult to be there?” Michaela asked before I could respond.

  I sighed. I knew this was coming at some point, so I might as well get it over with. “Yes and no,” I began, my eyes on the wall underneath me, my fingers pushing a tiny pebble around its surface. “I mean, yes, it was scary, and if I wasn’t careful, you know, if I wasn’t trying hard to control what was going on in my mind, I’d have these terrible flashbacks. Images of my dad. And the sounds of everything, like I could hear it happening all over again. Like I was there—”

  Bridget put an arm around me. “Jane, that sounds awful.”

  I nodded. “But even though I hadn’t wanted to go and I’ve been avoiding that house for months, it was good to get it over with. I’m kind of proud of myself for going.”

  “You should be,” Tammy said.

  I picked up the pebble and pressed it into my palm. “Thanks,” I said.

  “Did you remember anything new?” Michaela asked.

  I laughed a little and looked at her. “Spoken like a cop’s daughter.”

  She smiled sadly. “Takes one to know one.” Her voice was soft.

  “I didn’t,” I said. I rolled the tiny rock around the center of my hand. “Well, that’s not true. I almost remembered something. It was weird. When I went up to the library, which is where, you know, it all happened, it was like there was this memory that wanted out, but I couldn’t let it come back. My mind was almost reaching all around it, but then couldn’t quite get at it.”

  “It’ll happen,” Bridget said. “You just need time.”

  I could feel her eyes on me, but I kept mine on the ocean. Opened my palm over the beach side of the wall and let the pebble fall into the sand. “I think it might have been a smell. Cologne,” I whispered.

  Michaela’s eyebrows arched. “Cologne? Would you recognize it if you, like, went to the store and started testing them out?”

  I thought about this. It was an interesting idea. But then I shook my head. “I don’t know. It wasn’t just cologne, though. It was kind of a combination of smells, but cologne might have been mixed in there.” I sighed long and heavy. Pressed my hands into the side of my head. “I hate this,” I groaned.

  “Don’t push yourself,” Tammy said. “You’re taking steps forward, and that’s all that matters. And we’re here for you.”

  Bridget gave me another squeeze. “Absolutely.”

  Michaela turned and hopped off the wall onto the sidewalk and came over to the place I was sitting, still staring out at the waves. “You should really see a therapist. You should have a long time ago. Right away after it happened.”

  “Maybe they could hypnotize you into remembering,” Bridget said.

  Michaela laughed. “I think that’s only on the television shows, B.”

  “No, it’s not! It’s in real life, too.”

  I didn’t have to turn to know that Michaela was giving Bridget a roll of her eyes. “All right, Ms. Expert,” she said to Bridget. “But I meant that it might help you move forward,” Michaela went on. “Not that it would help you remember. Though if that happened, too, it wouldn’t be so bad.”

  I shifted my place on the wall so I was facing Michaela. “Maybe. I’ll think about it. My mother wanted me to go, but I just, well, I just haven’t.”

  Tammy hopped down and joined Michaela. “If and when you’re ready, J,” she said. “And only then.”

  I nodded. “We’ll see. But back to you and Seamus . . .”

  “Oh God,” she said. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “If we did, you’d continue in your severe denial of his interest,” Bridget was saying, when my attention snagged on a group of guys hanging around at the far end of the seawall.

  It caught on them because theirs seemed caught on me. Or maybe it was on the four of us. I had a feeling it was me, though, and I shifted my sunglasses from their place holding back my hair to cover my eyes so I could take in those boys without them knowing I was staring so directly. I recognized one of Handel’s brothers, Colin, the one closest to him in age. The resemblance between them was startling when I let myself go there. They had the same build, that same dirty-blond hair and rough, suntanned complexion. They even had the same features, the shape of their lips and cheekbones, and those piercing eyes. Despite these similarities of face and body, I could tell that Colin was nothing like Handel. Handel might carry his brothers’ bad boy reputation in his genes, but he had enough good in him to tip the scales in a favorable direction, whereas his brothers didn’t. At least this one didn’t. He was bad all the way through.

  I had to admit, this frightened me a little.

  It made me wonder if the bad was something that bubbled up higher with each passing year, to push out the good. If Handel might someday turn into his brothers, or if maybe he was already on that path. Colin was only older than Handel by a couple of years.

  Worse still was one of the other boys with Colin. Handel’s friend Cutter terrified me, and he seemed to be everywhere I went. A cigarette dangled from his mouth, and his eyes kept traveling to the place where the girls and I were sitting, like he didn’t care if I noticed. I looked away, not trusting the cover of my sunglasses any longer. While I sat there, my back to those boys, unable to forget they were there, watching, a hot July gust of wind burst across everything, and quickly—so quickly I thought I might have imagined it—a scent wafted my way, filled my nostrils with something sweet and bitter and ugly. Just a trace of it.

  Then it disappeared.

  No.

  Could it?

  Was that?

  Cutter? Colin?

  Right then a loud, ominous boom broke through the air, followed by a series of sharp crackles. I gasped and jumped, almost so much that I fell from my place on the wall. Bridget grabbed my arm, steadying me.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, a shiver running
up through my shoulders, as though I could physically shake off the attention of those boys. Pebbles of fear, of worry, of confusion had piled up underneath the bare skin of my legs on the wall, pressing into me. “Now what were you girls just saying about Tammy and Seamus?” I asked, returning to our conversation, deciding my focus was better served on my own friends as opposed to Handel’s.

  • • •

  When I got home, I was glad to find my mother alone in her sewing room.

  I stood in the open doorway, and before I could lose my nerve, I asked her, “How do you know when you’re in love with someone?”

  My mother put down her work, the gray spill of silk cascading off the side of her chair like a waterfall. “Are you thinking you might be in love with Handel?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s a big deal, sweetie.”

  “I know.” I leaned against the door frame for support. Talk of love and Handel almost made me feel faint. Then I asked something else, the thing that was really weighing on my mind. “What do you know about his family?”

  My mother gestured for me to come sit on the chair reserved for clients, so I did. “What does Handel’s family have to do with whether you love him?”

  I hesitated, not sure how to answer this myself. “I don’t know that they matter really. No, that’s not true,” I backtracked. “I wonder how all those brothers affect Handel. His brothers have a reputation, Mom, and it’s not good.”

  “That doesn’t mean Handel is anything like his brothers.”

  “But how do I know that for sure?”

  “Jane, why are you even asking this? Did something happen?”

  “No,” I said, maybe a little too quickly. “I just . . . see them around town. Well, one of them more than the others, and this friend of Handel’s, too, and I don’t like the look of them. And don’t tell me you don’t know anything about the Davies boys, because I won’t believe it.” I looked around my mother’s office. “This sewing room has heard all the town’s secrets and probably from multiple angles.”

  My mother ran a hand along the gray silk she was working on. “I don’t like gossip.”

  “But do you have any?”

  She sighed. “I haven’t seen Handel’s mother in a long while, and the last time she was here was for a funeral.”

  I nodded. “Handel’s uncle. He told me.”

  Carefully, she set the delicate fabric aside on the table and looked at me intently. “All I’ll say, sweetheart, is that she was sad about her family. About the business they were tied up in—that’s what she called it—and sad not to see a way out of it. The only thing that seemed to give her hope was her youngest, and that would be Handel.”

  I tried to read my mother’s expression. “Aren’t you worried that I’m getting mixed up with a Davies? Everyone else is.”

  “I try not to judge someone I don’t know,” she said. She leaned forward, everything about her posture imploring. “And I trust you, sweetheart. I trust your judgment.”

  “But what if I’m wrong?”

  “I hope that you’re not,” she said. “I don’t want to see you get your heart broken on top of everything else.”

  “I don’t want that, either,” I said. “But Handel’s not that guy. What he feels for me is real. I can tell.”

  “Then you should hang on to that. Doubt can ruin everything, especially when it’s not warranted.”

  This consolation was running through my mind as I got up from the chair and left my mother to her work, even as I wondered whether my own judgment was as trustworthy as my mother believed. I knew she was right about one thing, though. I’d been through a lot, and I didn’t want to get my heart broken on top of everything else.

  But maybe I wouldn’t.

  Handel was too good to me to let that happen.

  • • •

  Later that evening, I stood facing the mirror. Tried to see the Jane I used to be, not just the one the boys were looking at today or the one before tragedy struck. But the Jane even before that, who had walked the world as though it was only and wholly good, as though nothing bad could ever happen as long as I did what I was told, as long as I always chose what was right. I was that Jane for so many years, almost the entirety of my life, yet I could barely see a trace of her in the dark circles under my eyes and the faint expression of distrust on my face.

  Then I wondered what Handel saw when he looked at me, if he liked the long dark hair that fell past my shoulders, almost reaching the crook of my elbow, my limbs that Bridget always said were willowy, the swell of my chest underneath the tank top I wore. I tried studying my face like Handel might, its oval shape, the swollen arc of my lips, the fan of lashes framing wide- set eyes.

  I wondered what other people saw in me now, not just Handel but everyone, not at all sure what I was seeing. I turned sideways, as though my profile might reveal that long-ago Jane, but instead all I noticed were the curves of my body, the ones that might be partly responsible for my appearance to Handel this summer, that somehow had called out to him, grabbing his attention without my having to try.

  Then my mind went to the memory of his fingers tracing those curves, of his hands on my bare skin and how I’d wanted them to travel farther, lower, to that place just below the flat of my stomach that ached even now as I imagined the possibility. How touching his skin and him touching mine in the most intimate of places would make me feel changed yet again, a third Jane or maybe even a fourth one, a chameleon of a girl who morphed and shifted with each new significant experience, one of them tragic, certainly, but others surprising, even thrilling. I liked this thought, that I didn’t have to be defined by tragedy, that though sadness and loss might be written onto my skin, there were other things that could be written over it, things dominated by joy and desire and pleasure. I wanted to be different again, to rewrite the Jane I was today so the tragic one would recede even further away.

  I knew exactly how that would happen, too. How it could be done.

  Tonight would be the night I’d sleep with Handel, I decided. I was in love with him after all, I reminded myself.

  I took one last look at the Jane I saw in the mirror now, smiled at her, said good-bye, since tomorrow, I knew, there would be yet another Jane in her place.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I WENT STRAIGHT TO his house.

  Handel was sitting on the front porch when I arrived, staring out at the water across the street, smoking a cigarette. It was like he’d been waiting for me.

  “There’s no one home,” he said, like a warning.

  “Is that a problem?” I asked with a laugh and some relief, too.

  “No. I suppose not.”

  I stood in front of him, willing him to admire the Jane I’d just seen in the mirror, wanting him to think the same thoughts I’d had only a few minutes ago. He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray on the table, and when he looked up again, he smiled in that way that did me in.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said, and I believed him.

  I sat down on the wicker couch. Let my fingers dance on the cushions right near his leg, but not so close that we touched. “Me too.”

  “Is there anything you want to talk about?”

  This question caught me off guard. Maybe Handel wanted to know about my dinner at the O’Connors’ house, but I didn’t feel like discussing it. “Not particularly,” I said. My fingers stopped their dance. “I just needed to see you.”

  This made Handel smile again. “Needed?”

  I nodded. Smiled back.

  Then we talked for a long time as we sat there, the sky growing dark. We talked about all kinds of things. My relationship with my mother. His relationship with his father. My going to college. His going to college. What books we loved and which ones we didn’t. Music. Movies. Hopes and dreams. Mine. His. The conversation went on and on, vibrant and l
ighthearted at points and full of feeling and sincerity in others.

  I thought to myself on more than one occasion:

  There are so many ways to love someone, sometimes just with words.

  The moon came out, the stars were bright, and both soon provided the only light in our comfortable darkness on the porch. Handel got up, and I followed him around to the back of the house, down the steps into a lush garden I never would have dreamed was there, a beautiful secret thriving behind it. Flowers growing everywhere, vines winding around trellises, penned in by a tall fence that could barely hold it all back. It was something out of a book. Too magical to be real.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “It’s my mother’s,” Handel said. “She calls it her haven.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, and thought about how Handel may be related to those brothers of his, but he’s related to the woman who created this, too.

  Handel looked at me, traced a finger down the side of my face and along the curve of my jaw. “I’ve never shown anyone before. I’ve never brought anyone here.”

  “No?” I asked, everything about me like petals opening to the sun.

  He shook his head.

  “Thank you for sharing it with me,” I said.

  “Jane, there are things I want to tell you,” Handel began. “Things you need to know before we can—”

  But I couldn’t wait anymore, and I kissed him then, in the cloak of the garden, kissed him in this way that was . . . suggestive. Pressed myself against him all the way to my knees. I felt delirious with love after all our talk, intoxicated with the sweet scent of flowers hovering in the air around us, freed by the darkness. I stopped being Jane altogether in this surreal place, alone with this beautiful, mysterious boy named Handel, and instead became some wild, confident nymph. Put his hand to my chest and made sure he found out quickly that I hadn’t worn a bra. I wanted whatever came next.

  I was ready.

  “Jane,” he said, lifting his lips from my neck, his voice hoarse.