by Snow, Nicole
She breaks off, lowering her eyes. I don’t need her to finish that sentence. I reach across and cover her hand with mine, squeezing gently and offering a smile. I don’t want to make her any promises, but in my own way, I need her to know I’m trying.
Her eyes well wetly, and she offers me a brave smile, turning her hand to squeeze back. “You’re a good man, Gabe,” she says. “I see why Sky likes you.”
My blood heats. I don’t know if it’s guilt, embarrassment, or the idea that Sky might actually like me instead of just keeping me around for convenience.
Her family knows her. They know her well enough to know what she’s feeling, what she’s thinking, her little signs and signals and I suddenly want to ask them if they think this could be forever.
I can’t drop the mask just yet, though, so I just hold Monika’s hand tightly. “Some days I ain’t so sure of that,” I tease. “But she hasn’t killed me yet.”
Monika trails into a trembling laugh, and Eva strokes her shoulder. “None of that now, darling dear. It’ll be all right.” I can see both strength and love in her touch, plus the patented Szabo stubbornness that makes me adore all these goddamn women, even if it’s a pale light compared to the fire I feel for Sky. Eva turns a warm look on me. “I’ll find out about the ring size, don’t you worry. There are jewelers in Napa Valley; you go on back. Don’t you leave my granddaughter alone when you don’t have to. I’ll call after I’ve dug something up.”
“Sure thing.”
I don’t get out without another sloppy lick from the dog, a weepy hug from Monika, and a firmer one from Eva.
It's official: I'm a shit-heel. Lying my way through this and then lying some more.
I gotta cover Sky’s lie, too. I hate being dishonest with these wonderful people, but I ain’t gonna bring more fear or worry into their lives, either. Not unless it’s necessary.
Finally, I pry myself away and head out to my truck. For a minute I just sit there and catch my breath, rubbing at my temples and then thunking my head against the steering wheel. I’d hoped to just get some confirmation Sky’s all right, but if she’s not even picking up for her grandma, then something's fucked.
Guess I’m driving up to Redding, and just hoping if I’m thorough enough, I can track that little firecracker down.
Leaning back in the seat, I pull up my phone’s GPS and the quickest route to Redding, then lean forward and slip the phone into the dash holder.
As I lean back, a hint of purposeful motion catches my attention.
I scan down the street and catch sight of that neighbor guy, Jim. I’d already half-forgotten him, just slotting him away as one of those weird but harmless older fellas.
Still, there’s something in his face right now that captures my attention. Looks almost like recrimination, disgust, as he lifts the lid on his curbside trash can and dumps the entire wrapped bundle of pastries he’d just taken from Eva’s house into the can.
“Thought they were going to another neighbor?” I whisper to myself quietly.
Old Jim just stands there, staring down into the can for a tired moment, completely unaware that I’m staring at him. That uneasy feeling I’d started to get at the house ramps up right now, and suddenly he doesn’t seem all that harmless.
Not when there’s something heavy and haunted lingering around his brow, and he’s got bitter lines carved around his mouth that make all this kindliness a lie.
Hell, or is it another lie?
That he was going to drop those pastries off where they belonged instead of canning them?
Something stinks real bad, and it sure ain't the garbage.
Why? Why’d he go and get himself so fired up about taking the pastries back if he was just gonna toss 'em?
I have to find out what's really going on.
* * *
I wait till after dark. Ain’t no good sneaking up on a man’s front walk in broad daylight. I can’t hang around here with Grandma Eva’s eagle eye watching, as she’ll wonder why I’m parked outside her place and not making tracks back to Sky where I belong.
I drive a few blocks away, settle in to wait, and send Skylar a few more texts. Nothing. Nada. She still won’t answer the phone, but this time I leave her a voicemail.
“Sky, we gotta talk,” I say. “It ain’t about us. It’s about Joannie. Forget our fight. This is important. I think I found out who’s been throwing us off the trail. And I need to know everything you know about that neighbor of yours. That Appleroth guy.”
I hang the phone up, close my eyes, and count to ten, waiting, pleading.
Hoping she'll listen to the voicemail even if she won’t answer and call me back ASAP. Either I need her to tell me something that lays my fears to rest, or I need her sweet ass back here quick as flyin', because suddenly I feel like a swinging guillotine’s hanging over my head.
My head, and Joannie’s.
The wait's a killer. Even after dark I hold on. Don’t want the guy to look up from dinner and see me skulking around.
Last thing I need is a tangle with the cops. You can be damned sure when it comes to kindly old Mr. Conductor there, I’m gonna come up looking real bad, terrorizing an old man.
He’ll probably drop off early, though, and then I’ll have my chance. I spend the time Googling him, turning up nothing. Not uncommon for guys his age to have a ghostly presence on the web, but it doesn't do a damn thing for helping my suspicions. I'm sending Sky more texts, too.
A whole heaping lot of 'em.
Sky, I know you’re ignoring me. I know.
But please come home.
I got a bad feeling about this Appleroth guy. He’s acting all funny, and he came and took these really smelly pastries back and said he was gonna give them to a neighbor, then I caught him throwing them away.
Maybe it’s nothing, but it’s more of a lead than we’ve got.
That last bit...I wish I hadn’t said it, but it’s already sent. Reason we started fighting is because I doubted her leads and said we had nothing.
Because I took away her hope.
I’m trying to give it back, but I wonder if I’m grasping at straws, too. Doing just what she’s doing and seeing what I want to see, because I need there to be a villain other than Harmon.
I mean, c’mon. It's gotta be my imagination.
The only crime that guy’s probably guilty of is being as mild-manneredly creepy as John Waters.
Still, I need to be sure. Need to look under every rock.
When the clock’s ticking up on half to midnight, I let myself out of my truck, lock up, and go for a little old mosey around the block.
I keep it real casual.
Just a normal fella out for a night stroll, making his way down the sidewalk. Neighbors might not recognize me, but people get visitors constantly, so it ain’t that weird as long as I act natural.
I stroll up the street toward Appleroth’s house. That big moving van in front’s going to be a blessing since it blocks off most views from the street.
His windows are dark. Good.
Probably already drooling into his pillow.
I steal a quick look around. The street’s quiet, only a few crickets and the occasional car cruising past, nobody interested in me.
I don’t see any blinds parted with peeping eyes, or silhouettes moving past windows. It’s a quiet, sleepy neighborhood, the kind of place where you just don’t expect to have a kid snatched up or be living right next door to a kidnapper.
Perfect camouflage, if you really think about it.
Once I’m sure the coast is clear, I hustle over to Appleroth’s trash can and lift the lid. There’s the wrapped pastries.
I tug the cloth out of the way just to be sure it’s the same thing and not something else he bundled up in the same wrapper. The smell hits me first, powerful enough to overwhelm the general garbage funk.
Sweet Jesus.
My eyes nearly water from the cinnamon, strong as mustard gas, and I start to turn away and clos
e the lid before a bright splash of rainbow color underneath the pastries catches my eye.
A semi-translucent trash bag lies underneath, tied off and filled with bits and bobs like tissues, plastic spoons, old Ensure bottles.
And diapers.
Tucked up neatly in a little ball. I can’t quite smell ‘em, but I know baby diapers, and these are too small for an adult. And wedged in among them –
Fuck.
A teething ring. A little rainbow jelly thing, looking like it’s been mangled beyond belief, no good for anyone but the landfill anymore.
My brain rabbits, trying to look for any explanation other than the one right in front of me. Appleroth said he didn’t have any family here.
He’s on the move. In a hurry to get to Montana, way out in the asscrack of nowhere. Some tiny, off the radar town where he’ll never be found again. And from what I saw in the news articles, Joannie’s the right age to need diapers and would probably be teething and upset.
It’s a miracle we haven’t heard her crying all up and down the street, unless...
I can’t breathe. I’m gonna be sick.
I can’t fuckin' believe it’s been right here under our noses this entire time, just a few blocks down the street from her mother.
Jim Appleroth took little Joannie.
He's the kidnapper.
And if he hurt her in any way, I’m gonna rip his throat out with my teeth.
17
Don't Lose Hope (Skylar)
It’s just like me to leave without a phone charger.
I’m the mistress of contingency planning and forward thinking, but it’s always the little things, the human things, that trip me up. Ask me to think like a soldier or planner, and I’ll leave no stone unturned.
Ask me to think like a human and I’ll show you a million ways to escape a locked room, but forget to pack a phone charger and a change of clean underwear for a long trip.
To be fair, I was upset when packing.
Screaming at Gabe, to be precise. I just shoved stuff in a bag and stormed off without looking. It’s not until I go to make a phone call after a useless, exhausting day and night muscling people for leads – and trying not to think on that nagging, crazy idea about Jim – when I realize my phone is dead.
And when I roll my eyes at myself and head back to my hotel room to rummage out the charger it hits me that I don’t have that, or a toothbrush, or a single pair of clean panties to change into after a shower.
Yeah. The stress is really wearing on me.
One trip to Wal-Mart later and my phone’s on the charger while I shower off, rinsing away a long, tiring day. I feel like I wash away the last of my resolve with the sweat and the grit.
I’m so exhausted I feel it down to my bones, and as I change into a tank top and panties for bed I once again feel a pang as I stare at that horrible patterned coverlet on this hideously empty bed.
I’d never realized just how much those nights with Gabe restored me.
It’s like he was this endless well of comfort and strength. Just by holding me he bled his strength into me until I was replenished, at peace, whole.
When I think about it, that makes me sound – and feel – like a parasite.
Always taking from Gabe while he was always so very, very giving.
God.
I drop down on the edge of the bed and bury my face in my hands. I’ve been awful. Selfish.
Some might say I have a right to be with everything crushing down on me right now, but I never wanted to be that person. That huge, cagey asshole who takes their problems out on other people and makes them suffer for things that aren’t their fault.
I have to talk to Gabe. I owe him an apology. A real conversation. An opportunity to say his piece.
A chance.
A chance for something real with someone who genuinely wants to try, rather than with the snarling little rage bucket I’ve been for months.
I’ll call him soon.
My phone’s got enough of a charge to turn on now, at least. I flop back onto the bed and wait for the Samsung and Android logos to roll past, then flinch back from the cacophony of buzzing, trilling, and jingling blaring out of my phone.
So many missed calls and text notifications. One sound doesn’t have a chance to stop playing before the next starts rolling over it.
Wincing, I thumb through the notifications. Alarm pricks my skin first, but when I see only two calls from Grandma and a couple of texts from Monika, I calm down.
Until I realize every other call and text is from Gabe.
My stomach clenches. He must have found something, because I know like hell he’s not the stalker type to blow my phone up being all creepy and obsessive when I don’t answer.
I make myself go through the notifications in order.
First Nika. Wait’ll you see Gabe again, her text says.
Meanwhile, my Grandma's voice mail is really odd. Something about how when I was a little girl I could never eat Ring Pops because they kept falling off my slender fingers.
Then Gabe – a voicemail. Just a few words in his sweet, sexy drawl that stops the breath in my lungs.
Can we talk, darlin’? I don’t want to pressure you but...call me.
I melt like a fool when he calls me darlin’ even though if you’d asked me a week ago, I’d swear I hate it.
Screw his Southern charm for getting under my skin.
But I’m not thinking about Southern charm anymore when I start reading his texts.
Texts asking me about Jim.
His texts telling me about Jim coming to my Grandma's house to get those disgusting pastries.
Something’s not right.
Jim’s been in the back of my mind this entire time, but my common sense, my need to have faith in someone, keeps telling me no.
No, not him. Anyone but him.
When I’ve had my guard up for so long, it was nice to have one person outside my family that I could trust to be there, to be safe, to look out for Monika and Grandma when I wasn’t there.
I can’t face the thought of that kind of betrayal, and I’ve been avoiding it all day, all night, chalking it up to paranoia. But it’s not paranoia if Gabe suspects something, too. Especially when a flashback hits in force.
* * *
Sixteen.
I’m sixteen, small and angry and quiet, and still full of hurt when I’m still living the day my parents died, still living that moment when my father promised he’d come home and then neither of them did.
Not until they showed up in a box and I was staring at them like they were dolls instead of real people who'd been living flesh and blood, empty of whatever made them my parents.
That moment lives inside me, and I’m living inside it, and anything that takes me out of myself is a relief.
That’s why I’m tagging along with Grandma Eva today.
I’m not good at having friends, but I’m good with Grandma, and when she decides to go to the community center for Mr. Appleroth’s cooking classes, I go with her.
It’s where I first start seeing Mr. Appleroth not quite as family, but as safety.
Hell, it’s where we met him. We’re living in this dirty neighborhood full of burnt-out buildings where it seems like there’s a new crime scene every night, but there are nice people at the community center who come from other neighborhoods to volunteer their time.
It’s Jim who, years later, helps make the decision for me when I’m finding somewhere safer to move my Grandma and sister. He’s someone I trust, and I want them near somebody who makes them feel safe. I want them near someone who's the first man in a long time who doesn’t make me feel like he’ll let us down. Just like that puke Nika got herself wrapped up with, Harmon.
But here, back in time with my sixteen-year-old self, still furious and stinging after Casey Hicks, the community center is where he teaches me how to make stir-fry, how to make steamed vermicelli, how to make a number of delicious and simple dishes.
&n
bsp; Making simple things good is his specialty, but he stays away from spices. It’s over kneading bread dough one day that he tells me he lost his sense of smell in Vietnam. Something about breathing in smoke from burning napalm fires damaging the nerves and receptors inside his nose, so he can only smell things if they’re really, really strong.
“That’s why I never cook with nutmeg or cinnamon,” he says sheepishly, leaning in as if it’s a conspiracy between us, a secret for my ears alone.
It makes me feel special in a way no one has since my Dad used to take me on slow rides around the neighborhood on his bike.
“Be mindful of the spices. Always. They require a delicate hand and a nuanced sense of smell, and that, my dear, I do not have.”
* * *
He’d never have even tried to make those pastries, not even for a neighbor who loved cinnamon. He wouldn’t make them unless he was desperate and had no other option.
Like if he was trying to calm down a teething, upset little girl who loves apple cinnamon and needs something to sink her aching gums into.
Probably a good way to slip her sedatives, too, to keep her quiet when he can’t be around to make sure no one hears the coos and gurgles and screams of a baby coming from his house.
I'm shaking, clenching my phone tighter. I taste metallic blood on my tongue as my teeth dig into my bottom lip.
Gabe’s next text, as I keep scrolling frantically through, sends chills down my spine.
A photograph inside a trash can. A tray of pastries half-wrapped in cloth, and past them a trash bag with diapers and a gnawed-up teething ring.
Everything inside me crashes together like angry bells. Like the commotion Grandma said the old church bells made when the Soviets came and blew them up for subversive meetings or whatever.
And my chest is caving in. Ruined. Destroyed.
I grasp at the front of my shirt, struggling to breathe, then curl forward and press my forehead against my knees. I’m hyperventilating, choking, scared, elated, hopeful, hopeless, hurt, furious, betrayed.
I’m everything and nothing, this white-hot screaming firework of emotion about to fizzle out if she doesn’t get herself under control.
