by Julie Daines
She put her school ID card and a pack of bubble gum we’d bought in Hood River on the counter.
“Listen up,” Detective Parker said. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney,” he cocked his head in a patronizing way, “one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Morris, as a minor, you also have the right to have a parent present during questioning.”
Great. That’s just what I wanted. One more reason for my dad to look at me then look away disappointed.
“Becket, you’re not a citizen of the United States, so you have the right to call your consulate before any questioning.” In a softer voice, he added, “Do you understand what I’ve just explained to you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m blind, not stupid.”
Parker jerked his head back and glared. “Let’s go.”
“What about my phone call?” I’d have to call him now. Call my dad. There was no way around it. “I want my phone call,” I yelled.
“Easy there, cowboy. You’re not under arrest. I’m just holding you while I look this over, in case I have more questions.” He cast me a slick grin. “I think you watch too much TV.”
He herded us out a back door and down a hallway into a room where jail cells lined both sides. A solid cement wall separated the individual cells, and the fronts were steel bars. The first cage was full of gang-bangers all tatted up and wearing their pants below their bums. They cat-called at Scarlett as she passed. Across the aisle sat a man in a suit with his tie hanging loose around his neck, the dark circles below his eyes making his sockets look hollow.
The cell next to him was empty, and Detective Scott Parker waved us in like he was showing us to a room at a five-star hotel. When the door clanged shut, Scarlett jumped. At least he didn’t separate us. I don’t know what she would have done locked in a cell alone.
Parker walked away without a word.
Scarlett stood still, her face drained of color. Her cheeks had flushed with pink when we’d been ice-skating, and now they were the color of the ice.
I hugged her, holding her close and tight. “Hey, it’s gonna be fine. We didn’t do anything wrong.” I had no idea what “detained for questioning” meant. Was I still a suspect?
Scarlett’s body sagged. Once again, I’d blown it for her. I guess that was my life’s purpose—to let everybody down. She deserved so much better.
The guys in the first cell were still jeering at us. I moved Scarlett to the back of the cell. We sat down on the bench sticking out of the wall, out of sight from the other inmates.
I put my arm around her. “Look on the bright side. At least we’re safe from Connor in here.”
She snorted. “I s’pose that’s something.”
“Seriously. Don’t worry. We’ll be out of here in no time.” Although I wasn’t sure how since I didn’t get a phone call.
“In a chivvy,” she said.
“What?”
“We’ll be out of here in a chivvy.”
Another Brit lesson. I gave her a weak laugh. “Sure, then. We’ll be out of here in a chivvy.”
She put her fingers on my face and touched it like she had the night before, when she wanted to see me. Was she looking for fear? I forced a smile, and her fingers lingered on my lips.
Did she not know what a turn-on that was? She tipped her head up, and I slipped her sunglasses off. Her eyes were red and tired. I couldn’t concentrate with her fingers soft on my face like that. I pressed her sunglasses into her hand to give it something else to hold.
“Scarlett, I am so sorry. I feel like I’m making everything worse for you.”
“Ha,” she said with another sniff. “Thick as mince, aren’t you? I’m the one ruining your life. Wouldn’t be here locked up for murder if it weren’t for me, would you? Wouldn’t have gotten hit either, right?” She set her glasses on the bench beside her. “How old are you?”
“Almost eighteen.”
“Why did you leave your dad?” She put her hand on my face again. It must be her way of watching people. How else could she sense the subtle changes in a person’s countenance—expressions of sadness or joy. Or lies.
I tried to ignore how it made my breathing falter and my blood melt away. “My mom died when I was a kid, and my dad sort of checked out and never really checked back in. At least not into my life. I’ve lived with him all this time but totally alone. In his mind, I don’t exist.”
Nothing. That’s what he’d called me. And that’s what I was. “He remarried a year ago. Gloria. She just wants his money. I think he knows that but doesn’t care. He works late every evening, comes home, drinks his expensive wine, then goes to bed. Months will pass without a word to me. Without even a look.”
Scarlett took her hand off my face and leaned against the wall. “All parents are berks.”
Another word I didn’t know, but judging by the venom in her voice, I agreed. She closed her eyes and let her head fall against my arm.
According to the Miranda, I had the right to a parent and a lawyer. In my case, they were one and the same. I dreaded that phone call—if they ever let me make it. But I still couldn’t quite figure out my dad in all of this. Why did he call me after I left? What was the point in taking up pretense now, when he could’ve at last been rid of me?
I think Scarlett dozed off. We’d been sitting there over an hour, freezing our fannies off on the cold metal bench, when Detective Parker came back.
“Morris, someone’s here for you. You’re free to go.”
“What about Scarlett?”
The detective cast a questioning look down the hall to someone I couldn’t see. What if it was Connor and Deepthroat? Here to bail us out of the frying pan and into the fire? I went to the front of the cell and followed Parker’s gaze.
“Who is it?” Scarlett asked.
I gripped the cold, steel bars. “It’s my dad.”
Chapter Eight
Christian vs. The Ice Man
My father stood in the entrance to the jail room, wearing his usual dark gray suit. Our eyes met, and he looked at me for the first time in a long time. The air whooshed out of me like when I backed my car over a basketball. There was nothing left but a limp hide covering an empty, concave shell.
“Sir?” Detective Parker asked my dad. No wonder I didn’t get my phone call. Apparently, Parker had made it for me.
My father gave him a nod and walked away. Was he mad? Disappointed? Indifferent? I couldn’t tell. He always wore the same infuriating, expressionless mask.
“You can both go,” Parker said.
I went back for Scarlett. She put her glasses on and followed me out. Parker handed me a manila envelope labeled Christian Morris/Personal Effects. He had a similar one for Scarlett, only smaller and very thin. He held it out to her.
I took the envelope from him and touched it to her hand. “Here’s your stuff,” I said.
My dad waited in the lobby of the police station. “You ready, then?” he asked when I stood in front of him.
“Yeah,” I said, not sure what else to say.
Scarlett cleared her throat.
“Oh, um. This is Scarlett. Scarlett, Richard Morris.”
My dad reached out a hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said.
Scarlett didn’t respond. I lifted Scarlett’s hand into his, and they gave a quick shake. His mask faltered, and he looked at me with surprise. I caught a glimpse of something else too, but it was gone before I could identify it. We walked to our cars in silence. He’d parked next to me.
* * *
“Where’s Gloria?” I asked when we entered an empty house. Scarlett hung on one arm, and I carried her bags of new clothes in the other.
“I sent her to Vegas with her mother for the weekend.”
No regrets on my
part. Maybe she’d strike it rich on roulette and never come back.
I was halfway up the stairs with Scarlett when my dad said, “Christian, after you take her to her room, you’ll come see me in my study.”
He turned away before I had a chance to answer. He’d never demanded a one-on-one before. This didn’t bode well. Not that I had a choice; he’d just bailed Scarlett and me out of jail.
Our house had four large bedrooms on the upper level, each with its own bathroom. Mine was in the northeast corner, where I had views of the city and the rose gardens to the east and the West Hills to the north. At one time, a nanny had occupied one of the bedrooms. She had stayed with us for a few years, cooking and tending. Then Dad let her go. Another painful memory I wished I didn’t have: I had won Best in Class for a drawing I did in ninth-grade art, and they were displaying it at some stupid afterschool art show for all of the kids and their parents. Nanny Mavis plucked up her courage and suggested to my father that he should go. He refused, dismissing my existence by using the nothing word again, and told her she had one week to find another post. That was the last time I’d had anything resembling a parent.
I led Scarlett to the nanny’s empty room. I showed her around, guiding her to the bathroom and setting her bags out so she could unload them. She took off her jacket and laid it across the plush reading chair in the corner. She set her sunglasses on the dresser, feeling and touching everything as she moved through the room.
“Is there anything else you need?” I asked, hoping she’d need something that took a really long time—like a road trip to Miami. I’d rather do more clothes shopping than face my dad in his study.
“Food,” she said.
Of course. It’d been at least nine hours since we’d had a drive-thru breakfast-slash-lunch on the way back from Hood River. “Do you like pizza?” I asked. Tomorrow I’d have to add some fruits and vegetables to our diet before we died from carb overload.
“Love it.”
I pulled out my phone and sat on the bed, texting in a pizza order to the restaurant a few blocks away. “It’ll be here in about twenty minutes. Is that okay?”
“Brill.” She plopped down on the bed next to me.
I laughed, even though my nerves were at the breaking point. Suspected of murder and my dad waiting for me downstairs. I wasn’t sure which was worse. And then there was Scarlett. Not that I put her in the same category as murder and lousy fathers. Not by a long shot. But what was I supposed to do with her and all her pink hair and diamond nose stud and nonsensical British idioms? “You know, half the time, I don’t really know what you’re saying.”
She reached up and put her hands on my face then kissed my cheek in a slow, deliberate way. “Do you know what I’m saying now?”
I turned to look at her, my face inches from hers. I lived in a desert, completely parched and withered from lack of affection. I’d had girls interested in me before, but they’d always seemed more excited about my money than my actual self. Scarlett’s gentle touch, her lips on my cheek, they were different. The floodgate opened, and I soaked it up, thirsting for more. I leaned down and kissed her. She moved into me, her mouth soft and warm on mine.
I was exhausted from the day, and my guard was down. I didn’t trust myself, so I pulled away. “Scarlett, I don’t think this is a good idea.” I searched her eyes, looking for an emotion to let me know how she felt. They didn’t show anything, just a blank wall of velvet brown.
She sighed and leaned back. “Sorry. I guess that wasn’t fair.” She sounded upset. Or maybe hurt. Her feelings were so hard to read. I’d seen Scarlett frown and smile, and her chin quivered when she cried. But she didn’t reveal any emotions through her eyes.
I lifted her hand to my face, hoping that would help her know I meant what I was going to say. “Not because I don’t want to, but I just can’t right now. My dad’s waiting for me, and I should go get that over with.”
“Right.”
“I’ll come get you when the pizza’s here.” I glanced around her room. What could I give her to do while she was alone? My books and magazines were worthless. The TV? “Um, do you want some music or something?”
“No. I’ll just unpack and stuff. You best be off.”
I started for the door, but she called me back.
“Yes?”
“Thanks for the best day ever.”
I raised my eyebrows and remembered for the hundredth time that that was pointless. “If starting the day hiding in a garbage can and ending it in jail is the best day you’ve ever had, your life is worse than I thought.”
I turned and lumbered down the stairs, dragging my feet over the slate tiles of the main hall toward my dad’s study.
The door was closed. I stared at the knotty grain in the wood. I hadn’t been in his sanctuary for over a year. After I’d turned sixteen, I’d summoned all my courage to knock on this door and ask if I could borrow his car to take a girl to junior prom. He was reading some notes on a yellow legal pad. Without glancing up, he fished the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to me. “Not a scratch,” he said.
The next day he came home with the Range Rover. “Here’s your own car.” Interpretation: Now you can leave me alone.
That was the last time we’d spoken—until now, when he’d summoned me to his study. If only we were closer to Mount Hood. Then, with any luck, some boiling lava from the volcano would bubble up through the floor and swallow me.
I clenched my fists and knocked twice with my knuckles.
“Enter.”
He’d taken off his suit coat and draped it over the back of his leather desk chair. His room was spotless, not even a stray sticky note to show he ever used it. Black and white photos of glacial mountains, all snow and jagged rocks, hung on the wall above his head. On the opposite side, in shelves of wrought iron and steel, rested volumes of legal books.
I noticed for the first time that his black hair had steely-gray flecks around the temples. I got my height and solid build from my dad. The rest of my looks came from Mom. The brown hair, blue eyes. He motioned for me to sit in a chair across the desk from him. It was like I was back in the police station with Detective Parker. Only the police station felt friendlier.
I lowered myself down onto the shiny metal chair frame and black sparsely-padded seat cushion. I folded my arms and examined my shoes. My cool, expensive shoes that all the kids in my high school wished they had. I owned a pair in every color.
“Why did you leave?” he asked.
That was his first question? He was a brilliant man who made his living by dragging the truth out of the hardest of criminals. He must have already known the answer. How could he treat me like this for eight years and then not have a clue why I left? Anyway, how was the motive behind my running away more interesting than why were you in jail for murder?
I shrugged, concentrating all my efforts on keeping my face impassive. “I’ll be eighteen in two months. I thought it would be better to leave at the beginning of the school year instead of partway through.” For years, I’d planned that the moment I was legal, I’d be gone. Last week, I moved plans forward a few months.
That answer didn’t fully explain the why. But since I wasn’t under oath, I felt no need to divulge more than absolutely necessary. If I wanted to maintain any level of composure, I couldn’t think about the real reason—the one sitting on the other side of the desk.
I lifted my gaze from my stylish feet and found him staring at me, his lawyer eyes drilling into me.
“Tell me about the girl.”
I started with the same story I told Connor in the restaurant. “I found her on the side of the road. She was alone. I took her to Shari’s for a meal. While we were there, some guys came in looking for trouble. We left, and the next morning the waitress was found dead. The guys in the restaurant told the police I killed her. We went to the police because those thugs were still harassing us, and the detective slammed us in jail.”
It was the bare-bon
es truth, and I kept steady eyes on my dad. Already, this was the longest conversation I could remember having with him in my entire life. I cursed the beads of sweat betraying me on my forehead and the way my throat kept getting tighter and tighter.
“Where is she from?”
“London.” This was really beginning to feel like the courtroom.
“Why is she here alone?”
I looked back at my shoes. He knew how to ask the important questions. The ones that cut to the core without wasting time on the periphery.
Should I tell him she was kidnapped? Scarlett seemed hesitant to bring that up. I could lie. Even if he knew I was lying, I doubted he’d do anything about it. But I didn’t want to lie. Regardless of all the emptiness between us, he was my dad. I wanted to tell him the truth. I wanted him to know that killers were chasing me, that I cared about the girl upstairs. That my life was so chock full of misery, I’d ended up on the bathroom floor.
Then he finds me in jail. Isn’t that when dads are supposed to ask questions like Are you okay? Do you need help? Not my dad. He wanted to know about the girl.
Why couldn’t he see me? What was so wrong with me that he didn’t care about me at all? Come on, lava. There had to be some magma churning under Portland; we weren’t that far from the volcano. Boil up and save me.
I blinked hard, working my jaw to get back in control. “She doesn’t have a family.” I lost it on the last word and had to grit my teeth to steady my voice. Who even knew what a family was anymore? Not me. I steeled myself before meeting his gaze. He seemed not to notice that his son was falling apart. He must’ve seen it in the courtroom every day.
The doorbell rang, and I stood up. “I ordered a pizza. We haven’t eaten in a long time, and Scarlett gets hungry.”
He walked around the desk and held my chin with one hand, tilting my head to get a better view of Connor’s handiwork. His hand was warm and gentler than I’d expected. It wasn’t the father’s touch I longed for, but it was so much better than the nothing.
I ached for that hand to pat me on the back, to give me an awkward, father-to-grown-up-son hug, a squeeze on the shoulder. Anything. Anything to indicate he cared more about me than he did about the icy mountain peaks framed behind him.
