Scare Crow

by Julie Hockley

  Until the plane landed, Frances hadn’t said a word to me, but kept glancing my way. I glanced back every time, looking her in the eyes.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she finally said as passengers grabbed their carry-ons from the overhead compartments. “You would actually give us all that money. No strings attached.”

  “Not would. Will. What’s mine is yours.”

  She looked at me for a while, though it felt more as though she were looking through me.

  We had two hours to get out of the airport and to the bank before it closed, and Frances was walking so slowly she was practically going backward. You’d think I’d never offered her all of Bill’s money. I thought I was going to scream when she said she needed to use the washroom, but she looked like she was going to be sick so I resisted.

  When she finally returned from the washroom, I expected her to be in full Oscar attire, but she actually looked worse than when she had walked in.

  “You’re looking a little green,” I noted.

  She winced. “Last night’s pizza is coming back to haunt me.”

  Luckily, Caribbean taxi drivers are as crazy as they are in the States. We got dropped off in George Town in front of the bank with time to spare.

  Cayman International Bank seemed small on the outside, but as soon as you walked in, you could smell the money. The floor was of white and burgundy marble tiles, each big enough to fit an entire car; gold-sprayed columns adorned the sides, and the Caribbean sun came reaching through the domed ceiling. It reminded me of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, though perhaps the god being worshiped here (money) was a little different. Perhaps not.

  At the end of the church of money, where the pope would have sat, was a gray marble counter with clerks standing behind it. And there was an over-the-hill security guard practically falling asleep at a small desk posted by the entrance. I could see a couple of younger guards having a smoke in the small storage room behind him. Maybe what I smelled wasn’t money, but tobacco and arsenic.

  When Frances and I walked to one of the clerks at the counter, I handed him my passport and the piece of paper that Henry Grimes had written on. The clerk had what seemed like fourteen extra letters after his name—bachelors, masters, doctorate—and I could have sworn all the clerks were wearing matching gray Armani suits. These clerks were not the minimum-wage, cleavage-busting clerks of Callister City Bank. Still, they looked just as bored.

  “There’s a password on the account, Miss,” the clerk told me, trying to withhold a yawn.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a password on the account,” he repeated, because saying exactly the same thing twice was enough explanation.

  “You need me to tell you the password?”

  He arched his brows and forced a smile, as though I shouldn’t have been let outside my padded room.

  “How many tries do I get?”

  He looked at me strangely.

  I stepped away and found an empty seat so that I could think.

  Frances scanned around and sat next to me, grabbing my elbow. “What’s the password, Emily?”

  It was hard to think when she was pressing me like that. “Give me a minute.”

  I put my face into my hands, closed my eyes, and let the images flash through my brain. My childhood. My unorganized, immature, fart-jokes big brother. The feeling of isolation, of abandonment after Bill died. The feeling of having that last bit of laughter stolen from me with his last breath. Being angry at him for leaving me (for dying). Being angry at him for leaving me a stupid pendant, as though it was supposed to be enough to replace him. Feeling guilty for feeling all that I was feeling and for not having been there to hold him, to comfort him when he died.

  I went back to that day—that last day, that last hour, that last minute—Bill trying to smile as he handed me the stupid angel pendant. Bill telling me, telling me, telling … What the hell did he tell me again? I searched my brain, trying to find a small needle hidden in a stack of painful memories. “Hold on to this and don’t ever forget about it,” he had said. I took the pendant into my hand and pressed it in until it left an imprint in the skin of my palm. But that wasn’t what he had meant. We were sitting on my bed, and he had brought something else of his from his room. Something else that was totally valueless. A stinky, disheveled bear. It only had one eye. And my brother had named it Booger.

  My eyes shot open.

  I sprang from my seat and got to the desk of the excessively educated clerk just as he was pulling out his closing sign. “Booger. The password is booger.”

  The guy at the counter scoffed, swung his head to the screen, and typed in the word he had probably not said aloud since he was five years old.

  I could see that the screen had changed color from the reflection that bounced off his face.

  He cocked his head to the side. He looked at me, he looked at the screen, he looked at me again.

  “Please excuse me for a minute.” He hopped away and into an office, where he took a seat and spoke to a man in an even more expensive suit. They both glanced back at me simultaneously.

  “You got it wrong,” Frances whispered feverishly to me, as though I hadn’t already figured this out myself.

  “What’s going to happen now?” I wondered.

  Frances glanced around her, her eyes stopping at the front entrance. Two men were on alert, watching us. They were dressed in jeans and suit jackets, as though this was supposed to make them look like regular Joes who were supposed to blend in with us, the other regular Joes. They reminded me of mystery shoppers or undercover rent-a-cops.

  “Miss Sheppard?” a voice disrupted our worst thoughts. The man from the office had come out to the desk. With an open palm, he bade me to follow him. Frances and I marched ahead.

  “I’m sorry. We only allow the account holders in the safe room.”

  Frances held on to my arm protectively. But I couldn’t turn back now. It was like driving for months to get to the Grand Canyon and keeping your eyes closed when you got there. My eyes were wide-open.

  “It’s okay. I’ll be okay,” I told her. After all, a room that was dubbed “safe” couldn’t be too dangerous—could it?

  She held on to me for a second longer, then let me go.

  The so-called safe room consisted of a beige-walled room with a table and a chair. I was left alone for a few minutes until the man came back with a metal box.

  He placed it in front of me and opened it to reveal a container made of some kind of foam.

  “The box is sealed. Once the seal is broken, all contents must be removed. We are not responsible for any forgotten items.” He said this mechanically. A speech prepared by overpaid lawyers. “Do you recognize the signature, Miss Sheppard?”

  I smiled as he pointed to the signature on the seal. “I do.” It was Bill’s.

  He cracked the foam as though splitting open a thoracic cage. He left, closing the door behind him.

  Inside, there were two envelopes. I ripped open the first one—the thicker one. I would have deemed myself a rich woman had it not been filled with pieces of paper. Parking receipts, movie tickets, a bubble-gum wrapper, a piece of paper with a telephone number and the name Brandi with a heart over the “i” written on it. I pulled each piece out, one by one, until I came to a letter-sized, sealed envelope. It was addressed to Carly.

  I gritted my teeth and opened the second envelope. Two more sealed, skinny envelopes lay inside. One was addressed to me, the other to Cameron. I immediately opened mine.

  It wasn’t money. It was a letter. In Bill’s messy, half-illegible handwriting.

  “Emmy,” it started.

  I hungrily started drinking in his words, knowing that the bank was about to close. Each word, each revelation sank me deeper into my brother’s mind and into his screwed-up world.

  I didn’t even hear Frances come in until she grabbed my arm and shook me awake.

  “How did you get in?” I asked, stuffing th
e letter back in the envelope.

  “I snuck in while they were busy with a rush of customers. Looked like all the local business owners wanted to do their ridiculous insignificant money deposits before the weekend,” she said with a smirk. “Did you get our money?”

  I saw her. For the first time, I saw her. The wench. The goddamn greedy, deceitful, murderous bitch.

  “There is no money. Just letters. Sentimental stuff.”

  The man who had let me into the room appeared in the doorway, throwing annoyed glances in Frances’s direction. “Only the account holder is permitted in this room. I’m calling security to have you escorted out.”

  “We’re leaving,” I snapped.

  “Please ensure you have collected all your belongings before exiting the room. We are not responsible for forgotten items.”

  I left nothing behind.

  “My cell phone died while I was talking to my mom. Can I borrow yours?” Frances asked me as we made our way back to the front of the bank. The face of an angel. A wolf in lamb’s clothing—designer clothing.

  She glanced at the two envelopes in my hand. I gave her my cell phone, knowing that she would be grabbing for the envelopes next.

  I could have screamed. I could have yelled, “There are bad people after me!” The police would have been called. People would have been questioned. I would have been questioned. More time would have been wasted. In the meantime, the underworld would be looking for me, and the first place they would go searching would be the last place the whole world had seen me: on television, hugging Griff the Grappler Connan. After Griff had hopped out of the ring, it had made headlines across sports news networks the next day—our faces splashed everywhere as the joke of the day.

  The more time I spent answering questions, the less time I had to get back to Griff before they did. And I definitely didn’t want the police involved in my and my big brother’s nefarious affairs.

  “How could you?” I asked Frances as I held my hand over the baby inside me. I wasn’t crying. I was steaming, raging mad. Like an angry sea ready to swallow an entire ship.

  I looked Frances in the eye. She glanced longingly at my belly and let her hand slip down to her own empty womb while she gripped my wrist even harder with her other hand. She said, “Imagine having one of your limbs ripped from you and watching it, feeling it grow on someone else like it was never yours in the first place. Then imagine being handed the opportunity to get it back.”

  “You mean, buy it back. With Bill’s money. With me and my child.”

  Her mouth stretched thin. “You don’t know what it’s like to have your child taken from you. Love for your child being used against you, making you do the very worst just on the promise of being able to see your baby for a few minutes every week. Years go by, and your child doesn’t even know you’re his mother.”

  “Victor did that to you. And now you’re making it happen to me? Is this some kind of retribution?”

  “You’ll do anything for your child. I’m no different than you.”

  “I don’t deserve this, Frances. My baby doesn’t deserve this.”

  She sneered. “Have you ever even had a cavity, Emily Sheppard?”

  It always came down to that, didn’t it? My so-called charmed life. The life that would make me deserve misery for the rest of my days. And now make my unborn child deserve this same misery.

  I followed Frances’s gaze to the front of the lobby.

  The two jeaned mystery shoppers I had seen earlier had their eyes fixed on me. They didn’t work for the bank, I realized. They worked for Frances; rather, they worked for Victor. I noticed the hint of a gun peeking through one of the men’s suit jackets.

  The bank was about to close. Most of the doors of the bank had been locked, except for the one in the middle where the old guard stood, ensuring that no one else came in. Outside, past the windows and doors, traffic went to and fro, as though everything were fine. I stopped and turned to face Frances. Her features were cold and determined.

  “How many men are with you?” I asked her.

  “I had no other choice, Emmy. Someday, you’ll understand that.”

  As she called me Emmy, I wanted to spit in her face. “How many?”

  “Other than the two waiting for us at the door, there are two more waiting by the car outside. There’s nowhere for you to go.”

  “And Victor?”

  “He was in Canada when you came around and couldn’t make it back on time. He was afraid you were going to disappear with the money if we didn’t stay close. Besides, there are too many cameras in the bank and at the airport. He couldn’t risk being seen when this happened. But he’s waiting for you in Callister.”

  “He likes to get pretty girls to do his dirty work. That man is all bravery,” I said with an indignant smirk.

  The same knowing smirk came to Frances’s lips.

  “At least you’ll have a good alibi,” I told her.

  A quizzical look came over her face, right before I yanked my upturned hand to her expensive nose, feeling it break under the pressure of my palm. I followed this by twisting my whole body, the way that Griff had showed me, to get my wrist out of her grasp.

  While Frances tried to recover, I ran toward the sole exit, directly in the path of the two men. They took a few steps forward and smiled apathetically at me.

  “Oh my God! Those men have guns! Everybody get down,” I shouted at the top of my lungs, pointing my dainty finger at the men out front. There were screams from the patrons in the back.

  My voice was so loud that the old security guard was already running on his slow feet, pointing his gun at the two men before he had even fully woken. An alarm went off just as I got to the door that was being held open by a customer—who had probably been happy to see the guard leave so that he could sneak in and get his banking done before the bank closed but was now standing in a stupor at the action unfolding in front of his eyes. From my peripheral vision, I could see that two more guards had come to take down my intended abductors. Once I was on the street, I did a quick glance to my left and right. A woman was stepping out of a taxi a few feet away. Two men were running toward me, and I was already winded from my run out of the bank. But I ran, mustering up every inch of breath I possibly could. I was within the men’s grasp as I reached the taxi, barreling onto the backseat.

  “I’m out of service,” the driver tried to tell me. But I had already thrown my last two hundred dollars at him after locking the passenger door.

  “Airport. Quickly. Please,” I said, holding my pregnant stomach.

  Our gazes met in his rearview mirror, and he sped forward, leaving two angry men on the sidewalk.

  It should have taken us an hour and a half to get to the airport. But forty-five minutes later, I was in the terminal and threw my passport at the airport attendant. “Next flight to Callister, New York.”

  Pain shot down my back and into my legs, making my knees buckle. I had to hold on to the edge of the counter.

  The woman behind the counter got on her tiptoes and looked over.

  “How far along are you?”

  “I’m desperate,” I told her, trying not to cry. I felt as though the world were watching. Every passerby who happened to look in my general direction was the face of an impending enemy. Trying to lie to her while keeping an eye out for the world was too much.

  The woman watched me. She had a ring on her finger, her hair was pushed back in a tight bun, and she was of my mother’s age. My heart sank.

  She kept my passport in hand. “You’re already booked for a flight in three hours, Miss Sheppard.”

  “It’s Emily,” I snarled. If one more person addressed me as Miss, I was going to tip over the edge. “And I know. I’m asking you for your earliest flight. When is that?”

  “They have already boarded.” She arched her brow. “Does your mother know where you are, dear?”

  I laughed, and a tear escaped the edge of my eye. I was exhausted, physically, emot
ionally. My head fell into my hands while she kept on working, typing, picking up the phone, muttering as though my life didn’t depend on her.

  It was only a few minutes later when I heard, “Ma’am?” This time it was a male voice. I couldn’t raise my head, but a tap on the shoulder forced me to. An airport usher was standing next to a cart. “We can get you through security immediately. The plane is waiting on the tarmac for you.”

  I turned to the attendant behind the desk.

  She smiled. Like a mother would, should. “Have a nice flight, Emily.”

  Despite my waddle, I was afforded several nasty glares on my way to find my seat on the plane. I was sitting between two old ladies. While they bickered over me, loud enough so that their hearing aids could pick their voices out of the crowded plane, I opened Bill’s letter to me once again, savoring every blotch of ink.

  Emmy,

  How do you start writing a letter when you know your words will be your last, be the final voice, the final time your little sister will hear from you? I can tell you that there are not enough words in this world when you know they are your last.

  I hated you. I never told you this, but when you were born, I hated you and wished you would die. Your mom pranced you around—this thing that was covered in pink frills—as though you were the Second Coming. My mom had just died, and nobody cared; they came to see you and celebrated. They wouldn’t let me anywhere near you, which was fine with me because all you did was cry and cry and cry. Anytime anyone picked you up, anytime visitors came around, you cried.

  Eventually, they all got sick of you crying and disappeared. You were alone in your room. You were screaming as usual. It was the middle of the night. I went up to your crib with Booger. I dragged a chair and peered over your bassinette. I put Booger next to your face, not sure if I was going to put him over your face. You stopped crying. You looked at me and stared. I put my finger in, and you grabbed it and shook it. I never left you after that. You cried with everyone else. Never with me. You had my heart the minute you looked up at me. No one has ever looked at me the way you did. The way you still do.