by Sasha Dawn
She likes the flowers I picked for her.
I click the picture just as she’s up on her tiptoes to kiss me.
She’s not much into dancing, which I suppose I learned at the rave, but that’s okay, because I’m not either. It’s enough just to be there together. We grab a table near the back, where the rest of the wallflowers are gathered, and watch my teammates take over the dance floor. Novak cuts a rug, like he just caught the winning pass in the end zone.
“You coming over later?” Aiden pulls up a seat. Kai sits right on his lap, despite the fact she’s obviously pissed at him about something.
She crosses her arms over her hardly-contained chest and sticks her bottom lip out in a pout that could rival my sisters’. “He smells like weed and chocolate.”
Of course he does. It’s Aiden.
“Small gathering,” he continues. “Just the four of us.”
“Okay,” I say.
He grins. “And about twenty other people.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and look at the caller ID. Rosie. I decline the call.
“I’m so tired.” Chatham lies across the center console of the Explorer and pulls my right arm over her.
It’s an awkward angle, but the discomfort is well worth it because I’m still holding her. “If you’d rather skip Aiden’s, we can.”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
God, is she kidding? Houseful of people smoking chronic? Or tight quarters with Chatham? I stop at a red light and glance down at her.
She isn’t looking up at me, and I suspect her eyes might be closing fast. She worked early at the diner today, and it’s after ten now.
I brush her hair from her forehead, amazed at the fact that she dropped to the sand at our beach blanket last month, a complete stranger, and now, she’s all I think about.
A contented sigh escapes her. I could listen to sounds like that forever.
She can’t see me, but I’m smiling. I’m just so happy. And I’m draping a curl behind her ear, so I can see her pretty profile, and—
Wait.
There’s a patch of light hair there. At her temple.
The reflection of the red light casts it in an almost-pink glow, but I’m pretty sure . . . there’s something there . . . I flip through the events of today:
The letter from the U.
Damien at the Tiny Elvis.
Damien at the Churchill.
The brawl in the bathroom.
The hair color kit in the bathroom trash.
“My God. You’re blonde.”
“What?” She jolts up.
I’m looking at her, imagining what she must look like as an all-over blonde. “Wow, I just never—”
“What do you mean, I’m—”
“I saw the hair color kit in the bathroom, but I didn’t—”
“So?”
“I’m just surprised.”
But it’s more than a surprise. It’s another question mark. Alone, the dyed hair doesn’t mean much, but add to it everything else . . .
Chatham has Savannah’s journal, her backpack, her money.
Savannah ran away, and even though Chatham said she came here looking for her sister, it’s apparent Chatham is hiding out, too.
Chatham needed an ID. Who leaves home without an ID?
I can’t find any information about Chatham Claiborne online. No profiles on any social media.
I can’t find a Chatham Stevenson, or even a Chatham Goudy, online either.
And she called the hotline . . . This is Chatham Claiborne. No one came to get her. No one followed up.
Is Chatham even her name? Could it be that Chatham Claiborne is a figment of her imagination? An alias I helped her perpetuate when I provided her with a driver’s license?
And the hair . . . If she’d left her hair light blonde, she might be harder to miss in a crowd. Would Chatham dye her hair to remain inconspicuous? Would she assume another name to keep herself hidden?
And then there’s Savannah and the girl at the rave. They kissed. Would Chatham pretend not to know her sister so even I wouldn’t know the truth of what they’d run away from?
I take a deep breath. “You’re blonde,” I say again. “I just never noticed.” I try to regroup, to pull it together. “I just never pegged you for—”
“For what?” She cranes back, crosses her legs away from me, and the way she’s looking at me . . . “Why does it matter what color my hair is?”
“It doesn’t.” My phone starts buzzing again. I don’t bother to check it before silencing it.
The light turns green.
She shifts in the seat, faces front. “Maybe you should just drop me off at home and go to Aiden’s, all right?”
“No. Not all right. I don’t see what the big deal is. So you colored your hair.”
“I like it dark.”
“So do I.”
“Just take me home, okay?”
I ease off the brake and inch ahead. I have three miles to make this right. “I don’t want to drop you off.”
“Of course, you want to come in.”
“Of course I do, but Chatham, I . . .” I think of the condom I stashed in my back pocket just in case and suddenly feel like a pompous ass for doing such a thing. “I don’t expect anything, all right?”
“This was a mistake. I don’t even know how long I’m going to be here, and . . . I don’t know what we were thinking, getting attached like this.”
I feel like I can’t even draw a full breath. “Chatham. What did I do?”
“Nothing, Josh.”
Josh. Great. She’s never called me what my mother calls me.
She won’t look at me now. “Let’s just forget it, okay?”
My phone buzzes again.
In my peripheral vision, I see it’s my mother. “I want to talk about this.”
“Your mother’s calling. Again.”
“So, she can leave a message. Again. Chatham, I want—”
She grabs the phone. “Hello.”
My heart sinks. She really wants this night to be over if she’s willing to answer my mother’s call.
“No, honey, it’s Chatham.” She looks at me and puts the call on speaker. “It’s Margaret. Something’s wrong.”
S l i t h y T o v e s
“Keep talking to me, Maggie Lee.”
“He’ll hear.” She’s whimpering, or maybe that’s Caroline. “Joshy, just come.”
“Almost home.”
“Not home. Daddy’s.”
I glance at Chatham. “You’re at your dad’s place?”
“Just come.”
The line goes dead.
I pull a U-turn, and let out a roar of frustration and pound on the steering wheel as I drive in the opposite direction. In a matter of seconds, I piece together what must have happened. Rosie had to go into work tonight after all, probably because she called in sick last week. When she couldn’t reach me because I kept ignoring her, she called Damien and dropped the girls at his place.
But . . .
“Why would Maggie Lee have Mom’s phone?” I wonder aloud.
“This isn’t your fault.”
“The hell it isn’t! God dammit! I should’ve answered the phone! I should’ve—”
“You’re scaring me.”
“We have to get there.”
“We can’t help them if we don’t get there alive.”
I hadn’t wanted to forfeit this night, the night that began so perfectly and turned itself upside down in the space of a few blocks. But now, Chatham’s pissed for some stupid fucking reason about her hair, for God’s sake, and she wants to go home, and doesn’t want to invite me in, and my sisters . . . let’s just hope they’re okay.
“Should I call the cops?” I glance at the girl who, up until two minutes ago, I saw as my salvation.
Her eyes are rimmed with tears. Like she’s really scared.
I ease up a little on the gas, and drop a h
and on her thigh. She doesn’t flinch away, but to my surprise, grips my hand.
“Say I call them,” I say. “It’s null and void, then. The order of protection. The judge can revoke it because my mother voluntarily violated it. Right?”
“I don’t know.” She gives my hand a squeeze. “Probably.”
We need that court order of protection. I can’t risk canceling it out.
We just have to get there.
Stones spin out beneath my tires on the rocky lane that leads to Damien’s place, which is way off the beaten path. Memories flood back to me; I remember the last time I traveled this road, two years ago, when I thought I wouldn’t ever have to travel it again. The feeling of liberty, the hope that at last we had a chance to live a normal life . . . I knew then that that chance required a certain measure of self-sacrifice on my part. I remember feeling as if I’d do anything—anything—not to be there, falling prey to him, anymore.
Skip school when the girls are sick?
Okay. Even though Chatham handled the most recent occurrence, it was me staying home all last year.
Stand guard throughout the night when the dirt bag threatens to come over?
Who needs sleep, anyway?
God, how could I have forgotten?
No matter what Chatham says, I’m here tonight because I forgot how important it was to put my sisters first.
Damien’s shack of a house sits right along the creek for which this town is named, and it’s far enough out of the way that no one can hear the turmoil erupting within it.
As I approach it now, it looks just as run-down as ever. An old, 1940s fishing cabin, with gray paint peeling from the clapboard siding, and a faded red door. One bedroom. The smallest bathroom you’ll ever see, with a shower you can barely turn around in. A tiny kitchen and living area, where Damien hung on the wall the collar of our departed dog. And a loft, where the girls and I slept.
Another memory flashes in my mind: Damien, drunk and belligerent, holding two-month-old Caroline over the railing, threatening to drop her onto the floor below if we didn’t all just shut the fuck up.
It all blares in my memory like a siren: Rosie’s scream. The babies’ uncontrollable wailing . . .
I pull into the gravel horseshoe driveway.
Chatham’s holding my arm now. “Wait. I don’t feel good about this.”
“I have to go get them.” If she were in my head, watching events of the past play out, she’d understand. I toss her my phone. “If I’m not out in two minutes, call the police.”
I leave the car running, and approach the door. It’s locked, so I pound on it.
The door opens, and the first thing I see is my mother’s hair in Damien’s fist.
My gut tumbles when I see her face. Her left eye is swollen shut.
God, if only I’d answered the phone five minutes earlier . . . maybe she wouldn’t have taken those blows.
He’s dragging her by her hair and shoving her out the door. “Take this fucking cunt home!”
My mother falls into my arms, and it’s not that I don’t want to hold her up, but I have to get the girls. She slips to the porch, sobbing, when I lunge through the door. I hope she has the sense to get herself safe, to go to the car, and let me get my sisters.
“Maggie Lee! Miss Lina!”
Damien has me by the throat now that I’m in his house, and he slams me into the closest wall. “All I have to do is squeeze.”
I swallow over the pit of fear accumulating in my throat. “Just let me get my sisters, and—”
“They’re my daughters.”
“You don’t want them here tonight. I’ll take them.”
“You couldn’t let well enough alone, could you? You had to tell your fucking mother about what you saw.”
“Seems you taught her a lesson. She knows her place now. I just want my sisters.”
He tightens his grip a bit, I can barely breathe, and now I’m really starting to get scared.
“The police are on their way,” I manage to get out, even though it’s a lie. “Just let me go, and . . . they don’t trust my reports anyway. Damien, please. They’ll get here. We’ll be gone. Please.”
“Big man now, aren’t you? Begging me.”
“Please.”
“You want I can do to you what I did to your fucking dog? Huh?”
“Please!”
“You ever take a swing at me again, your mother won’t get up. You hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll teach your ass!”
“Yeah. Yeah, I got it.”
He screams in my face: “Get out!” Strings of saliva hang from his teeth, his eyes are bloodshot and yellow, the vein in his forehead bulges. But ultimately, he shoves off me and lets go of my neck. “Get the brats and get out.”
I cough and gasp when I draw in a full breath. And as soon as I’m able, I call their names. “Come on, girls. It’s okay.”
They appear a split second later, both bawling and running at me.
“Cops come around here, and I’ll put your mother—better yet, I’ll put your sisters—in traction!”
I catch both my sisters by a hand, and we’re almost out the door when I feel a size twelve work boot in my back. I stumble, but manage to regain my footing and prevent a fall.
I hike Margaret up in my arms, and a second later, I go to grab Caroline, but Chatham’s there, and she’s already pulling her into the car. We don’t bother to strap the girls in before I peel away.
“We should get your mom to the hospital.” Chatham pulls the seatbelt around her and Caroline, and Rosie’s working on securing Margaret in the back.
“No,” Rosie says. “No hospital.”
I glance at her in the rearview mirror. This isn’t the worst I’ve seen her. There were days both her eyes were swollen.
“I’m sorry, babies,” my mother is saying. “Mommy’s sorry.”
I swear, I’m holding my breath all the way down the rocky road. I don’t breathe until we hit the first stoplight, and this is when I finally take it all in:
My mother has taken a few blows.
Margaret is still gripping my mother’s phone.
Caroline looks so small and helpless in Chatham’s lap. I reach over and wipe a tear off the tip of her nose. “It’s okay now, Miss Lina.”
She extends a hand toward me.
I go to take it, but instead of little-sister-hand, I find something else. “What is this?” It’s an old photograph. The light turns green, but I glance at it.
It’s brittle and yellowing.
Old.
I’ve seen one like it before. It’s a picture of the same girl in the Polaroid tucked into Savannah’s journal: the little blonde girl. “Chatham.” I show it to her.
She gasps.
Our glances meet. She nods in confirmation.
“Where’d you get this?” I ask Caroline. “Did you get this from Chatham’s bag?”
“Uh-uh. Daddy had it. In the closet.”
T r u e C o l o r s
“You should take your girlfriend home.”
I fixed a cup of tea for my mother, and I bring it to her now, at the table, where she’s holding an ice pack to her swollen eye. The swelling’s gone down a bit now, but the corner of her eyeball is all red and veiny where it should be white.
I can’t take Chatham home. In fact, I’m wondering if she should ever go back to the Churchill again, now that Damien knows where to find her and what she means to me. He was spying on us; he saw her in bed with me.
And the whole mess with the photograph is another thing. How is it that he had a photograph of the same mysterious girl whose picture Savannah tucked into her journal? And she is the same girl. Chatham and I compared the two side by side.
That photograph is a direct link between whatever happened at Chatham’s family farm and my ex-stepfather . . . and maybe Rachel Bachton, if Rachel happened to be the phantom girl under the floorboards in the stables.
Chatham’s dow
n the hall in the girls’ room now, reading to them. And I don’t know how Rosie’s going to react, but I’ve already decided that Chatham should stay here with us until she can find another place, a safer place, to stay.
“How long have you been together?”
“Long enough.”
Rosie sips the tea. “Why didn’t you tell me about her?”
“Would it have mattered?”
She doesn’t reply beyond the shrug of a shoulder.
Silence buzzes between us.
I hear Chatham’s rendition of Dr. Seuss, and it makes me smile, despite all the turbulence in the air tonight.
“So, you going to tell me what happened?” I ask. “Or am I going to report the scene that’s on repeat in my head?”
She meets my glance. “Report.”
“You’re not seriously considering not telling the police, are you?”
The look on her face tells me that’s exactly what she’s considering. “Damien called me, Josh, and offered to make dinner for the girls and me. I went willingly.”
“Why would you do that? Didn’t you see the pictures I texted?”
“Yes, Josh, but you know how Damien is. You have to let him think he’s in charge. Look. If I’d started ignoring him, he would have kept coming over. I needed things to be on my terms, okay? So I had it all planned.”
“Was the black eye in your plan?”
“I figured I’d go, and I’d tell him that I knew about the other girl, and if he wanted, I’d just let him have her on the side.”
I shake my head. Disgusting that she’d simply look the other way.
“You don’t understand,” she says. “I know why he has that girl. Because it makes him feel good to be getting away with something. I took that away from him.”
“So tonight was—what?—a success?”
“Do you always have to be such a smartass?”
“You shouldn’t have taken the girls.”
“Well, I couldn’t get a hold of you. You said you’d be here for the girls. You said—”
“It’s Homecoming,” I remind her. “There was a dance.”
“Oh.”
“What’d you think? We were just out at a party, dressed up like this?”
“I’m sorry, Josh. You have to tell me these things.”
“I swear I did.”
