by Mary Frame
I focus on the conversation at hand. I do not want to go back there.
“Book club?” I spear a strawberry with my fork. “I didn’t know there was a book club.”
“It’s not always active.” She shrugs and takes a large gulp of orange juice. “It keeps disbanding and then reforming.”
“Do I want to know why?” If there’s one thing I’ve learned since moving to Castle Cove, it’s to expect the unexpected.
“They keep disagreeing over what we’re telling people we’re reading.”
I have to repeat the sentence in my head for it to make sense. “Wait, what you’re telling people you’re reading? Not what you’re actually reading?”
She nods. “You see, we have to seem legit. So we tell people we’re reading, you know, works of literary genius like War and Peace, or The Martian, but really we’re reading something completely different.”
“What’s this month’s book?”
She leans forward a little and lowers her voice, glancing around before delivering the title like it’s a state secret or something.
“Lanie’s Choice,” she whispers.
“What’s it about? Is that like Sophie’s Choice? I haven’t heard of it.”
“No, nothing like Sophie’s Choice. It’s uh . . . it’s about a girl named Lanie.” She squirms a little in her seat, picking at her waffle with her fork and not making eye contact. “And she has to make a choice.” Her voice is strangled.
“Why are you being weird? What kind of choice?”
“Between . . . you know.” Her hand flaps at me. Is she blushing? “Some hot aliens or something.” The last words are muffled.
I laugh. “What?”
“It’s alien porn, okay? She has to choose between all these hot aliens with horns and giant dicks.” Her voice gets louder as she speaks, and the word “dick” comes out full volume.
The couple at the table next to us, in white polo shirts and expensive haircuts, shoots us withering looks.
“Mrs. Olsen wants to read that?” I ask.
“Wants to read that? She insists. There would be no book club if it weren’t full of smut. Last month it was were-dragons.”
Just when you think you’ve heard it all. “I didn’t even know that was a thing.”
“Well it is. It was pretty hot. So are you in?”
“What are we pretending to read this month?”
“Northanger Abbey. That’s the reason we disbanded last month. Mrs. Hale wanted to pretend to read Pride and Prejudice.” She nods like this makes so much sense.
“This sounds really fantastic. How many of the old biddies will be there?”
“Most of them. It’s either amusing or frightening, depending on their moods.”
I laugh and take a sip of my orange juice.
I really am going to miss this crazy town. I wonder if wherever Paige and I end up next will be half as entertaining. I wonder if there will be a Tabby, someone who forces their friendship on me like a rabid dog, or a goofball like Troy, or a Jared.
The rose on the table catches my eye again. My parents. They’re always there, between me and everything I want. They always got me a gift for my birthday, not because they actually cared, but so when they asked me to do stuff for them, they could use it as a reminder of how good they were to me. Their gifts were always passive-aggressive, like a super-expensive, brand-name shirt that was four sizes too small. And they always came with one more thing—a single red rose.
It was weird. I still don’t understand the rose. Maybe so every time I saw one, I would think of them.
It’s obviously working.
“Earth to Ruby.” Tabby snaps her fingers in my face.
“Oh, sorry.”
“Did you have a vision?” she asks, her voice awed.
“Sort of.”
“Was it anything good? Are we going to win the lotto?”
“No, nothing good.”
She makes a face. “Something bad?”
“It was nothing.” Time for a subject change, something guaranteed to divert her attention. “What’s going on with you and Ben?”
She impales a piece of melon on her plate with her fork, the metal utensil knocking the fine china forward a couple inches. “Nothing.” She shoves the offending fruit in her mouth.
“Nothing at all?”
She doesn’t answer, pointing to her mouth to indicate she’s chewing, her jaw moving up and down as if the poor little piece of melon is actually the world’s largest piece of taffy or something.
“You can’t avoid the question forever.”
She swallows. “Watch me. What are you doing after this?”
“Following you around until you tell me the story with Ben.”
“There is no story. There will never be a story. Hence the frustration. If we’re going to talk about this, then we’re also going to talk about Jared.”
I hold up my hands. “You win.”
She grins. “You’re so easy.”
“Don’t tell Mrs. Olsen.”
She laughs. “So really, what happened with you and Jared? He’s been all mopey and weirder than normal.”
Thinking about it makes me flush with embarrassment. He obviously thinks I’m insane. Hell, I think I’m insane.
I shove the shame away. It’s for the best, really. It won’t matter soon. We’ll be gone and he’ll move on. The thought makes my heart heavy.
“Nothing happened,” I say. “We’re friends.”
“Yeah, right. So are Ben and I.”
“And I totally believe you.” I inject my voice with sickly sweet sincerity.
She laughs. “You super suck.”
CHAPTER THREE
At one, I head to Paige’s school for the parent-teacher conference.
Castle Cove Elementary is the smallest school I’ve ever seen, even though it goes from kindergarten to eighth grade. Each grade has its own small room. Then there’s the office, the music room, and that’s about it. The grounds have one basketball court, one swing set, and a grassy yard.
It’s more intimate than what I grew up with, the few times I was allowed to go to school.
I meet Paige’s teacher in one of the classrooms. Watercolor paintings are taped up on one wall and a periodic table on another. The teacher’s desk is cluttered with papers, supplies, and a coffee mug that reads I’m a Grandma, What’s Your Superpower?
“Paige is a wonderful, bright student. Curious about everything,” Mrs. Downey tells me. She’s got to be at least a hundred years old. She has more wrinkles than a shar-pei and probably weighs less than a hundred pounds. But her eyes are kind and sharp underneath her thick glasses.
Paige has Mrs. Downey for most of her classes, but they have separate instructors for art and music.
“She’s too smart sometimes,” I say.
“She’s adapted very well. She always behaves and doesn’t have a bad word to say about anyone. It’s obvious she enjoys school and she contributes regularly.”
I’m a little surprised at that last bit. The parents drilled into us the importance of being inconspicuous. Never attract attention, never be memorable, yet here Paige is “contributing regularly.” Of course she’s going to spread her wings and shake off our parents’ teachings more and more. That’s a good thing. At least, that’s what I tell myself. This is an ideal place to raise Paige. The school and the town itself feel more like an extended family than a physical location.
And yet we can’t stay.
Will she “contribute regularly” at the next place we end up?
~*~
After the conference, I wait for Paige to finish her last class of the day so I can walk home with her.
“We have to talk,” I say once we’ve left the schoolyard behind and moved past all the waiting busses and children.
“About what?” She shrugs her backpack up higher on her shoulders and turns her face in my direction.
I hesitate. I need to tell her about the phone call. But I don
’t want to freak her out, and I don’t want to say their names, as if doing so will conjure them quicker.
They who shall not be named.
“Paige.” I take a quick breath. “I . . . got a call on the burner phone. A voicemail. It was Father.”
She halts in the middle of the sidewalk and I stop next to her. We’re under the shade of a large tree in a residential area, her face dappled by the sun shining through the leaves.
I glance around quickly, but no one is around or close enough to hear our conversation.
“What did he say?” Her voice hitches on the last word.
“He didn’t really say anything, it was more like he was talking to someone else when the voicemail clicked on and then he hung up mid-sentence.”
Her gaze focuses on the ground between us. “What does this mean?”
“I’m not sure yet. We knew they would look for us. They may have found our old phone number, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve found us.” I try to reassure her, but the words don’t erase the fear clouding her eyes.
“What are we going to do?”
“I’m not sure yet. But I’ll think of something. Don’t worry, I promise I’ll take care of you.”
She nods and we keep walking in silence, each lost in our own thoughts.
I hope I can keep my promise.
My whole life has been spent either doing whatever my parents told me or taking care of Paige. I didn’t really have a purpose until she was born, at which point I, too, was just a kid. Sometime over the years she became my sole focus. I hope I’ll find a way to make my promise come true. I’m afraid I won’t be able to.
The whole reason we left—finally, and without enough money—was my fault. I had to protect her.
The job was simple, but big, the biggest I had been involved in so far. We were working a con on an old, rich guy. I’d gotten hired as one of his many maids. We often targeted the wealthy, but this guy was insanely rich. The house was large enough to require a staff the size of a small hotel’s. And he was eccentric. Every corner of the house had to be shiny clean. If there was even a speck of dust left on a shelf, the house manager would be on your ass.
It was difficult to maintain both the actual job and the job my parents had assigned to me. My task was to scope the place out for anything of value—of which there was a lot—and then sneak Paige in to take the items when the rest of the house was occupied with staff meetings and such—which we had every other week.
Our parents had a fence to sell the items overseas, and then they’d have the balance transferred into an offshore account. It was more than that, though. They also had a guy to make duplicates of antique pieces. They could sell the same “priceless” antiques many times over to unsuspecting buyers. It was one of their favorite routines.
They kept a lot of their business hush-hush from me, but Paige is sneaky as a mouse when she wants to be. And she has ears like a bat.
I snuck her into the old guy’s house right before the staff meeting. I barely paid attention while the house manager droned on and on about keeping our uniforms impeccable—even though our job was to clean—and being inconspicuous and quiet and everywhere at once. During the meeting, my eyes flicked to the clock constantly. We had timed her mission multiple times. I had walked the halls, noting how long it took to get from one floor to the other. We’d mapped the most efficient route, gaps in security-camera coverage, places to hide if needed, everything. But on that day, right when I imagined Paige was probably in the owner’s bedroom grabbing some diamond cufflinks, the meeting ended early. Someone pulled the fire alarm.
I couldn’t warn her. It was the most stressful thirty minutes of my life from when the meeting ended until I could confirm Paige had exited the house without getting caught.
That night, our parents pulled me into the study. The room was decked in tall shelving with books they would never read, gleaming wood inlays they couldn’t afford, and a large mahogany desk straight out of a PBS period drama. Not that they ever watched PBS.
“Since Paige’s attempt failed, we want to try something else,” Mother said, sitting on the edge of the large desk while Father sat in the plush leather chair on the other side.
“What else?” I asked, already wary of their response.
“The old guy. He likes you,” she said.
The old guy was Wallace Jackson. His family had made their money in oil a hundred years ago and then invested wisely. He was a widower and almost seventy.
“I guess,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
They exchanged a glance and then Father spoke. “We’ve had people watching him, and they’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
“You’ve been spying on me?”
“Not you, Wallace,” Mother clarified. “They said he flirts with you. Is that true?”
“No, it’s not true. He’s nice to everyone. This is ridiculous.” My anger rose. They wanted to whore me out to some old guy? I guess I should have known better than to put anything past them, but they’d never done this before. “You know those types of cons only work in the movies. He’s not going to marry me without a prenup and the odds of gaining anything more than some jewelry is slim.”
“Well,” Mother shrugged one slim shoulder, “since Paige failed, we have to try something. Otherwise, we’ve wasted all this time. We don’t need you to marry him, just seduce him. Think of the time you’ll spend with him. It will give us the opportunity to find his weaknesses. He might give you gifts or even take you to his chateau in France. It’s not a big deal. You should be so lucky to get an old guy near the end. It’s perfect.”
“I don’t think we need to do this. Paige didn’t fail. No one caught her.”
“You’re right,” Father said. “And since she did manage to get the Ming vase and the Japanese lacquer box, they’ll be more suspicious. You won’t be able to sneak her in again. We need a new plan.”
“I’m not sleeping with Wallace.” I couldn’t even believe they would suggest it. They knew that the cops—and Wallace’s own security staff—would be looking for someone suspicious on the inside, and since the fake background check they’d provided me was, well, fake, it was only a matter of time until I was put in the spotlight.
They exchanged another glance.
Mother smiled at me, more a baring of the teeth than anything reassuring. “Fine. Since we’re running out of funds to maintain your lifestyle, and you refuse to do your part, we’ll have to use Paige for something else instead.”
My heart dropped into my stomach. “What do you mean?”
“If you won’t contribute to our household, I’m sure we can find a use for your sister.”
They wouldn’t . . .
There was a time, not quite a year ago, they’d had some friends over for dinner. Three men, all impeccably dressed. The leader of the group—obvious from the way Mother had preened all over him—had been an older guy, some big-shot attorney. The parents had made Paige serve drinks in the study after dinner and she’d told me the guy had looked at her funny. Made her feel weird. She’d heard them talking about girls, the guy ran some kind of business on the side, but she hadn’t understand what they were talking about.
But I had.
My parents were always trying to find influential friends to further their own agendas, but I’d never thought they would get into that kind of business. They’d used Paige’s happiness against me before, even sending her away once to mess with my head, but they’d always talked about her like she was their golden ticket, whereas mine was distinctly brass at best.
“What are you going to make her do?”
“What do you care? You won’t have to do it. Isn’t that what you care about most? Yourself?” Her voice was bitter and accusatory.
I should have seen it coming. This was what it always came down to. They used my love of Paige against me. They knew I would do anything for her.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll seduce Wallace.”
My dad pa
tted my hand, like I had agreed to babysit or take out the trash instead of screwing an old man. Both literally and figuratively. “That’s a good girl.”
I left his office knowing one thing for sure: we had to leave. Their requests would only get more outlandish and demanding, and even if I did what they asked, they would still use Paige to show me who was in control.
They’d used her to manipulate me before, but actually using her? If they tried to use her for . . . no, they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. She was too young.
But deep down, I knew better.
They would sell their own daughter if it got them what they wanted.
Paige and I had been saving money whenever we could, but it wasn’t happening fast enough. We could only hide a few hundred dollars at a time. But it didn’t matter anymore. I would rather starve on the streets than live with them for another moment.
I talked to Paige that night and we agreed to leave. No more waiting for the right time that would never come. After the parents were asleep, I used the computer in the study to hack into their Cayman Islands accounts. I transferred the money to a local bank in my name. It wasn’t a lot—a few thousand, enough to buy a cheap car and get us on the road. However, the only way I could get the money to transfer quickly required a hack that set off some alarms and locked the account. It didn’t matter. We were gone before the parents realized what we had done.
We walked into town and waited outside all night until the bank opened. I withdrew the money and immediately closed the account. Then we went to a local used-car dealer and paid cash for the car. Then we were free.
But are we still?
CHAPTER FOUR
Paige didn’t want to talk when I got home. She went straight to her room, shut the door, and only emerged to ask if she could spend the night at Naomi’s.
I couldn’t deny her request. We don’t have much longer to spend in Castle Cove. We always knew we would have to leave, eventually, before Ruby returned, but we both thought we would have more time.
