“Oh, that’s a shame.”
I shrugged. “That’s life.”
“Should—should I go?”
“That’s up to you. They won’t be back until tonight, so you’ll be stuck with me.”
He smiled, but I hated it. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
We said nothing even as the coffee finished brewing and I poured it into clean mugs. I could feel the coffee grow colder from outside the ceramic mug, the only thing indicating the passing of time. Every now and then Adam would look at me and open his mouth to say something, but it wasn’t happening. I had the greatest idea going out again to buy some sleeping pills and wasting the day away in my lumpy mattress. The sadness seemed more justified today. If Dad and Robbie were in mourning, then I could be, too.
“Maybe you should go—”
“I need to apologize to you,” he said abruptly.
When I didn’t say anything, he sighed. At least he was as uncomfortable as I was.
“I should have kept in touch better over these last weeks. But I knew you were upset, and work was-”
“Don’t bother.”
“I think maybe you were right.”
Now my interest was starting to pique. “What made you see the errors of your ways?”
“Jessica.”
At my expression he paused to explain further. “My girlfriend. She helped me figure out why I was feeling guilty.”
I nodded.
“You were my first major case, Addie. And with the success rates of retrieving kidnapping victims so low—I, well, I guess I felt responsible for you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yeah,” he scoffed. “I know. You were homeschooled and leaving home couldn’t have been easy. I probably just made it a lot worse.”
I took another sip. “Take comfort in the fact that my roommate appreciated all of the extra male company around the dorm.”
He laughed. “Living away from home can be tough the first time. I didn’t have to invade your privacy.”
“Are you saying that because you know you’re wrong or because nothing came out of your investigation? Did you get in trouble for wasting time?”
Despite my attitude he still smiled. “Can it be a little bit of both?”
“No.”
He laughed. “Listen, at least let me make it up to you.”
“No.”
“Anyone ever tell you how stubborn you are?”
I stiffened, turning my back to him. He had hit a nerve without even knowing it. Notwithstanding, I couldn’t let it show. I wanted to take Charlie’s secrets with me to the grave. Like so many other things, it hurt, and I wished for the blackness to take over. I had broken so many promises… as Adam moved I saw his belt-line from the corner of my eye and another idea came to me. One that was absurd, but I liked how it was flavored with the potential for accidents and self-destruction.
“You want to make it up to me?”
He nodded eagerly. “If you’ll let me.”
“I guess so.”
This cheered him up immensely. “Well, let’s go do something,” he said excitedly. “Anything you want, just name it.”
“Good.” I turned back to him, trying to imitate the firmness in Dad’s voice. “I want to go to the shooting range.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” I went to work doing all three of the dishes in the sink. I thought that if I acted casual then he might not hear the desperation lurking just beneath. I mentally crossed my fingers and hoped.
“W-what? No. No way. I—I hear there’s a bird conservatory around here. We could—”
“I don’t want to look at birds,” I pouted. “I want to shoot a gun.”
“Your father might kill me.”
“His other child is already well versed with a firearm, why shouldn’t I be?”
“If you just want to learn how to aim, the boardwalk has all those shooting games.”
“No.”
“You know there’s a ghost town? We could—”
“No.”
“Lighthouse?”
“No.”
“Whale watching?”
“Now you’re just getting desperate.”
We played this game during the drive to the shooting range. Once again I was also lectured on the basics of safety. I nodded, acknowledged the rules that I already knew and kept my mouth shut while we signed in. The guy at the counter asked for my ID but nothing else. I counted the lenses of the cameras blinking out of every corner. I counted the sale posters on the bulletin board, the steps in front of me, and the steps left behind.
I clipped the ranger badge on my tank top, indicating that I was a beginner and more or less a potential hazard to the health of others. The ear muffs took the sound of the world away and I liked it immensely.
“Safety goggles.”
“Really?”
“We can leave.”
I sighed, put them on and resolved to a glinted world of rosy tint. “What are we shooting?”
“9MM,” he replied “Standard weapon for law enforcement officials.”
“Neat-o.”
“I shouldn’t give this to you,” he said, slipping on his own ear muffs. “You should do your first shooting with a BB gun. At least learn to aim with one.”
“Sometimes you have to be bold.”
“You don’t need a gun for that.” He sighed.
“Do you see me filing for a permit somewhere? Am I looking for a trade show? No. I’m just interested.”
“Why the sudden interest in firearms?”
“I don’t know,” I lied. “Maybe between Dad and Robbie, I feel left out.”
“I thought you might be thinking self-defense.”
“I thought we were dropping that subject.”
He paused. “Right. Sorry.”
I said nothing and re-aimed, the bullseye may have been in my sights, but the rest of me was way off.
Adam nodded. “Not bad.”
I was skeptical. “I didn’t hit anything.”
“Try again.”
I reloaded the clip with perfect precision. “Yes.” I nodded. “I will.”
I let the safety off and let fly.
We spent a couple of hours shooting at imaginary enemies, and maybe it was the fresh air or the thrill of a genuine weapon in my hand, but I was famished for the first time in weeks. The black parasites let off enough so that I felt the grumbling in my stomach, and while I probably should have ignored it, I didn’t want to. Despite the long-term misery, I actually wanted to eat.
“Say,” Adam said, sliding the safety goggles down a return shoot. “Are you hungry by any chance?”
I laughed. “That’s funny you’d say that.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I was just having a very insistent daydream about bacon and eggs.”
He laughed while holding the door open for me. “That sounds like a really good idea—the first good one you’ve had all day, I might add.”
“Hey, I hit the target a few times.”
His eyes rolled at me. “No offense, Battes, but I wouldn’t exactly want you out there in the field with me.”
“None taken. I wouldn’t want me out there, either.” I took control of the gauges and turned off the air conditioning, opting instead to roll down the window and let the sea air take control of my hair.
“Now in the prosecutor’s office, on the other hand…”
It could have been the sunshine, the hidden compliment, or a combination of both that made me smile. “Yeah, I don’t know about that.”
“You don’t have to go to law school, Addie. I just think with your first hand experience and your smarts—how’d you do on your finals, anyway?”
I looked back at him. It was a legitimate question and yet I didn’t know how to answer. At that point, I hadn’t even bothered to login to the school’s website and never opened the letter when it came to the house with my semester’s grades. For the first time in my
life, grades truly didn’t matter; they weren’t something I could lean back on because grades were a part of the future. A future I couldn’t possibly have.
“I—I, ah, don’t know, to be honest. I’m not as obsessed about that stuff as I used to be.” And though it was a simple statement I knew it was true the moment I said it. It simply didn’t make a difference. I also didn’t fail to realize that the high from the statement probably came out of the notion that it was one of the first really true things I had said in a long time.
The first diner we came to was crowded with lost tourists and truck drivers, but we stopped there anyway, both deciding we were too hungry to try and find another place in the dinner hour.
“I think I could eat a horse,” I mused.
“Too chewy.” He glanced at me over the menu. “Doesn’t go well with anything.”
“A pig, then.” I laughed. “I want ham, and bacon, and pork roll…”
“You mean you want a heart attack.”
I dipped a straw into my ice-water. “With cheese and ketchup.”
We laughed.
I didn’t order quite as much as I claimed I would, settling on a bacon omelet and orange juice, but even that seemed to be too much. After a few bites I slid my plate over to Adam’s side of the table but he smirked over a mouth of French toast.
“You can’t be done yet.”
I nodded.
“You eat like a bird.”
I considered this statement and grabbed another bite of hash brown. “Good point.” I wiped the grease from my mouth. “How am I supposed to get a heart attack at this rate?”
“You shouldn’t joke about that.”
I shrugged. “Why not?”
He paused; he seemed to consider something, musing over saying it out loud and whether or not to keep it to himself.
“You’ve changed a lot in the last couple of months.”
I was offended but didn’t know why. “People change,” I said. “Evolution.”
He smiled a little. “You’re a little—”
“A little what?”
“Bitter.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t know if this Hays situation is the cause or—”
“You really know how to beat a dead horse, don’t you?”
I sunk into my chair and immediately dumped out the cartridges of little jams and jellies and began stacking them. It gave my hands something to do, and kept my mind steady. From the corner of my eye, I counted the number of earrings in a waitress’s earlobe, the number of breakfast cereals on display.
“Okay, but can I say one more thing?”
“If it’s the last thing you ever say about it, ever.”
“Good people think they’re responsible for others, but sometimes you can only take care of yourself.”
“What are you? A fortune cookie?” I regretted the words as soon as I said them. “I—I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be so nasty.”
“It’s okay.” Adam poured more syrup over his food. “It’s just the high cholesterol talking.”
I smiled at his plate. “Better than diabetes.”
“W-what I’m saying is, you aren’t responsible for what Hays did. You have to do what’s best for you and no one is judging you for doing what you had to in order to survive.”
I scoffed but immediately stopped myself. He was right, I did sound bitter.
I went over Adam’s words as we drove back. I had no doubt he intended to comfort me, but he had gotten to me again, reminding me that I was probably the source of Charlie’s misfortunes. I would have to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life.
“I had a lot of fun today. I hope you did, too.”
“Actually, today is the best day I’ve had in…” I choked on my own half-truth. “…in a long time.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
I looked back up and smiled. I was no longer so sure.
We got back to Baybreeze just as the settling sun was starting to send people home for the day. Grumpy adults and sunburned children scampered around us, fathers struggling to carry umbrellas, coolers, and overloaded bags of toys.
“I don’t envy him,” Adam said.
“Reminds me of when Robbie and I were little,” I mused. “Makes me miss my mom.”
“Your mom would be proud of you…” He trailed off, but I didn’t like it. Who was he to say Mom would be proud of me? He had only met the woman through the photo album. He had no right to just assume she would be accepting of me and automatically proud of the decisions I had made. I had known her my whole life and still remained unsure if she would support the relationship Charlie and I had. What I had done to be with him, what I hadn’t.
“You don’t know that,” I said. “I’m not the person I should be.”
He laughed. “No one turns out the way they’re supposed to,” he said. “From what I understand, your mom was a good person. I can’t imagine she wouldn’t be happy with the way you turned out.”
I flinched. I very much doubted Mom would be happy with the fact that I may have contributed to murdering, or at the very least, seriously injuring the one I loved.
So instead I only said, “She was a great mom. Great moms tend to love their kids unconditionally.”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “No matter how lousy an aim they have.”
“Or how high their blood-sugar is.”
It was nice to part with Adam on good terms. Somehow it made me feel lighter, like some of the weight had been lifted from my shoulders. A part of me hoped he sort of felt the same, while the other part of me still instinctively wanted to look out for Charlie and the guys. I relived the conversation in my head, trying to figure out if I had let anything give, if I had let too much get out. I was satisfied that I probably hadn’t. And it suddenly seemed so strange that Adam would even still care. All these months had passed and there had been no new developments on my case, so why was he still so interested in my welfare?
Maybe it was like he said, I was his first “big break” and he felt responsible for me. But that didn’t mean he had to come out here today, that didn’t mean he had to keep my secret about freaking out from Dad. I usually wasn’t so oblivious, but maybe Charlie had been right, maybe Adam wanted something more. Obviously that would be something I could never give him, or anyone else. I’d always belong to Charlie whether I wanted to or not. But what in the hell was wrong with me? I had laughed with Adam, had fun at the shooting range, even. Worse yet, I hadn’t been lying when I said it had been the best day I had had in a long time…
Except that I didn’t deserve easy days. I didn’t deserve peace, or any kind of reprieve from my sorrow. If I really was the reason Charlie was behind bars, the reason he had tried to hurt himself, then I had no right to be smiling and eating, enjoying the sunshine when Charlie couldn’t. I had no right at all. Life was a privilege, and I had given it up the second I’d let Charlie down.
I had been considering it for longer than I wanted to acknowledge, since Charlie had been moved from section A of the paper to B, C, then not at all, since the rumors that he was dead were the only ones I heard until I didn’t hear any at all.
I considered that it might get easier still and I hated it. I didn’t deserve easy. I didn’t deserve peace. If I had just been smarter, more clever, honest, then none of this would have happened. I could try to pin the blame on Adam, or Melinda being noisy, the FBI being ambition, but really it was just me. I was a selfish little girl who was too concerned with what others thought to just do what was right. I had wanted to be with Charlie, to be happy and live forever in the ocean where no one could ever touch us, but instead, I deserved the pain, the suffering, and every insurmountable torture I could inflict on myself.
But my family didn’t.
I had subjected Dad to worry for weeks, probably ruined Melinda’s spring semester, taken the air out of Robbie’s sails. I was weighing all of them down. And while I deserved to feel the hurt, they certainly didn
’t. I thought about how gracious Melinda had been and her brand of tough love. We may not have been friends in a traditional sense, but we were roommates, and she had followed her own code to a T. I couldn’t say I would have done the same if the situation had been reversed. Even Adam did his best to make amends, trying to win my friendship. Though he had only ever been decent to me, I’d only ended up disappointing him.
Disappointment made me think of Dad. What would he say when he found out I hadn’t registered for the fall term? It was a surprise that he wasn’t fed up with me already.
I imagined they would all be eventually.
I ran from the beachfront properties and took off for the boardwalk. While it was early in the evening, the lines for rides were already starting. Couples I passed held hands, while girls tried deciding what tattoo to get. Children with ice cream faces clung to their parents and young men staggered in and out of the bars…all of this life was going on without Charlie, without anyone but me ever knowing how much he loved me and how wonderful he was, how he had saved my life and changed me.
Pretty soon it was about to go on without me, too.
Chapter 16
The lifeguards went off duty at sundown, and after that, swimming was at one’s own risk. Even as I walked out to the pier I could see big signs in Spanish and English, emphasizing the danger and listing the shifts of lifeguards. Only a halfwit would be bold enough to try and swim on a night like this, when the tide was low and rip currents were probable. I wondered if Dad and Robbie would believe that I had gone for a night swim.
I moved a few inches closer, counting the wooden boards of the boardwalk before looking around. There weren’t any couples making out, or homeless people leering around, I didn’t think I had seen anyone under the pier either, making my escape even more flawless. There was so much hurt, the sense of a moment became like a suffocating wave of its own. And as I looked out at the ocean, I thought about how truly horrific it all was, how awful it was to fall asleep without any warning and stay trapped there.
Was drowning as painful as I imagined? Did the water flood the lungs when panic set in? I closed my eyes and imagined the muscles of arms and legs giving out, giving up. It was all so clear, so certain.
Conviction (Wated Series Book 2) Page 20
