I looked at my lap, unable to gaze at them any longer. “You’re right. That’s exactly what I did. I did nothing. I did nothing. Nothing. When I should have done something.”
“It was an accident.”
“Nothing is an accident, though, is it?”
“Not true.”
I ignored him.
“I need to forget this. I have to forget this. I don’t want to remember this.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Will you stay near me?”
“Of course,” he whispered.
We sat still and silent for a moment.
“When I’m with you, it’s easier to forget.”
His head lolled back and forth on the back of his seat. “You’re not supposed to forget, Lily.”
“I want to, though. I don’t want to remember ever. I can’t even look at them”
“And what does that get you? What does forgetting do for you?”
“It takes away the guilt.”
“Wrong,” he argued, “it only makes it worse later.” He turned his head toward me and I looked up at him. “Eventually you’ll remember, and it will hit you hard and fast. Face it now and head-on or it will resurface when you least expect it. It’ll paralyze you.”
I opened my door and the fresh smell of dirt assailed me, making me feel sick. I felt Salinger behind me as we climbed the small hill to my mother’s graveside. When I crested the hill, there stood a few of my friends, including Ansen and Katie, the old priest, two adults, dressed well with their hands on my sisters’ shoulders, and my sweet sisters.
I ran to them. Fell on my knees before them and brought them to me. They held on to me with everything they had and I did the same.
“I’ve missed you, Cal,” I told her, kissing her head. I moved to Eloise. “I’ve missed you, Wheezy,” I told her as well and kissed her head. “I’m working so hard on bringing you back home. I’m going to bring you home.”
They didn’t respond, just held on to me as tight as they could, shattering my heart into a million pieces, into so many fragments I didn’t think it could ever be reassembled the same. I breathed into their necks and gathered enough strength to stand.
I held their hands, refusing to look at their foster parents.
“Oh God, whose blessed Son was laid in a sepulcher in the garden—” the old priest began.
I squeezed my sisters’ hands for the entire funeral, never letting go, not once, and when our mother was interred, the stone placed, I fell beside them once more and held them for as long as they would let me. They had to pry me away from them.
“I will come for you,” I promised them. “I’ll bring you home.”
I watched the two strangers take my sisters away. I thanked the priest.
Ansen, Katie, Noah, and Court hugged me and I thanked them for coming. They told me they were taking me to lunch and I couldn’t say no.
And Salinger was there, always near me. He told me he would stay near me and he delivered on his promise.
He poured me into his Jeep and we followed Ansen and Katie, Noah, and Court.
Lunch was pleasant. Quiet, but pleasant.
“I have to go,” I told the table, thinking of the sadness in Callie’s and Eloise’s eyes. “Thank you for being there for me. Thank you for lunch.”
I started walking out and felt Salinger right behind me. He didn’t say anything, just steered me toward his car and held the door open for me. He drove me home. I took off Katie’s dress.
And I got to work.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I TOOK THE PAINT buckets and decided what discarded paint colors would look best and where. Salinger helped me paint the entire inside of the house and cabinets and it transformed it. I cleaned windows, pulled all the weeds, planted seeds, used old river rock to border the beds, and mowed the lawns myself with Alta Mae’s old hand mower. I looked online for alternative fence options and decided to do a horizontal plank fence because it required less wood, would cost less, and still looked good.
Over the next few days, Salinger took me to my voluntary drug test at Legal Aid. We picked out marked boards at the hardware store, boards they couldn’t sell at their full amount due to small imperfections, and dramatically reduced in price. Over the following two weeks, the store workers helped us gather enough of that cheap wood to tear down the front and back porches and rebuild. Noah and Ansen helped us with that. I power washed the old siding of the house, removing all the old paint, then painted the entire house a pretty blue with cream trim. That cost me an entire week’s paycheck, but it was worth it to see it all come together so well.
We played chess every single day together and I started to feel a little more human again. I missed my mom ferociously, but I was learning to compartmentalize. I had a set order of things I wanted to accomplish—finish the house, get visitation, get the girls, mourn our mom, deal with Trace.
Faye the social worker came to inspect our progress and even she wasn’t able to deny the improvements we’d made. She recognized my clean drug tests as well and promised to evaluate visitation rights.
That morning, after we’d worked, Salinger and I were feeling so good about ourselves, he treated me to take-out.
“Enough ramen already, Lily,” he’d said and I didn’t disagree.
We sat in my living room, enjoying how different it all looked and felt.
“Only a few things left now,” he said.
“Yeah,” I sighed, feeling calmer than I had in a long time. “The floors, right? Maybe some new beds for the girls, and that’s it.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, flipping through the television stations.
“Thank you for all your help, Salinger.”
“Of course,” he said, and flipped up his laptop. “Just checking to see what grade I got on this pysch paper.” He leaned into the screen. “Nothing yet.”
I smiled at him. “You’re pretty amazing,” I told him.
“Not at all,” he said.
“Are you kidding? You work five days a week, go to school, and you’re helping me with all of this stuff. You’re just… You’re amazing.”
It started raining and I shrieked then jumped up.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Well, uh, we’ve got a few leaks. I’m grabbing the rain buckets from the hall closet!” I called out, running to the hall.
“How bad are the leaks?” he asked.
“Pretty bad,” I said, shoving a few buckets in his arms.
“How bad?” he asked.
He followed me all over the house, helping me place them where the leaks were the worst. We glanced between the rooms, checking for new leaks.
“Uh, this is insane,” he said, glancing all around the living room, where we’d ended up.
I blushed red. “Yeah, a little.”
“We need to replace the roof.”
“Okay,” I said, running my hands through my hair. “What is that going to cost?”
Salinger looked a little sick. “I can’t do a roof, Lily. Too much. You’d have to hire someone, and that can be thousands of dollars.”
I nodded. “I’ll save then.”
“That would take you months,” he whispered.
“I don’t have that much—” I began, but I was interrupted when we heard someone knocking on the front door.
I scaled the buckets and opened it, but there was no one there. Attached to the new screen on the screen door, though, was a taped note. The door creaked as I pushed it open, pulled the note off, and brought it inside.
“What is it?” Salinger asked.
“I don’t know,” I told him. I peeled open the envelope and took out its contents.
It was a note. I scanned the message.
“It’s… I think it’s from Trace.”
Salinger searched my face. “What does he want?”
I handed it over to him.
“You went to the cops after I told you I didn’t mean any of it. What the fuck is wrong with you? Stupid sk
ank,” he said, reading it out loud. “Is this guy for real?” he asked me.
“They must have followed up on my statement. I didn’t think they’d actually do that.”
“I think they have to or they’d lose their jobs. Plus, you know, it was the right thing to do?” he bit.
“They’re all so tied into their good ol’ boy club, I didn’t think they were afraid of following procedure or whatever. I only did it so I could have something on record for when I try to get the girls back, not that he doesn’t deserve to be prosecuted, but I’d given up on that happening.”
“No shit. I hope he gets jail time, the asshole. That’s probably it, though. The state is probably looking into those statements.”
My hand went to my mouth and I bit at my thumbnail. “I can’t think about this right now.”
He searched my face. “I think you should, Lily.”
“I can’t right now. I’m close to getting the girls home,” I said, falling back onto the couch. “I just have to lay low for a little while, try to find a way to get the cash for the roof.”
Salinger sat beside me, picking up his kimchi, and crossed his long legs on the coffee table. “Maybe stay at my apartment for a few days while I have a talk with this moron?”
“Maybe,” I said, biting my nail again.
“You know,” he said, swallowing a bite of food. “I know a way you could pay for the roof and floors.”
“How?”
“You could go to five or six regional chess tournaments, make some cash in a couple weeks, if you don’t mind traveling. You win every tournament you enter, you’d have more than enough, I’d think.”
I sat up a little, my heart racing. I tucked my legs under my rump. “Traveling? Like where?” I asked him.
“You could go all over the US, but we can stick to local stuff for now. We’ll register you with the USCF. I think it’s like thirty-five bucks or something. Anyway, you can start building your rating.”
“What is USCF?”
“The United States Chess Federation.”
I nodded. “I need a rating?”
“Yeah.”
“What are the levels?” I asked.
He set his food down. “So, before your first official tournament, we’d choose a tourney that had a wide range of rating players and as high as we could find so we could get your initial rating up as high as possible.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because once your initial rating is set, it’s hard to advance as quickly. You can only jump so many points each tournament. The last thing we’d want is for you to have to bump up slowly because you started out with too low a rating.”
“Okay, go on.”
“Every time you compete against a player, you have an opportunity to improve your rating.”
“Who decides who I compete against?”
“It’s done through a computer program for optimal pairings. If there’s a lot of players up, like most of the regional stuff, they’ll use a Swiss-system tournament. So you’ll get paired with people who are at your same rating level, and you can work your way up from there. You never play the same player twice and the player with the highest aggregate points wins the tournament.”
“How do you earn ratings?” I asked.
He took a swig of the beer he’d been nursing. “Okay, so, say you play someone who’s got, for instance, a similar rating number as you do and you win. You’ll get around thirty points, but if you lose, you actually go down thirty points. If you play someone at least three hundred points above you, and win, you’ll get sixty points. Lose? They deduct nothing. Lose against someone three hundred points below you, though? And they’ll deduct that sixty. Get it?”
“Yeah, what if it’s a draw?”
“If it’s a draw against a someone with similar ranking, pretty much no change. If you win against someone at least three hundred points below you, you’ll get nothing. A loss against someone three hundred points above you yields you no change in rating either, though.”
“I got it,” I said, staring at the coffee table. I brought my eyes up to him. “What is your rating?”
“I’m sitting around twenty-four hundred,” he said, trying to fight a smile.
I smiled for him. “Is that good? What are all the ratings?”
“Anything two thousand and up is considered an expert. Twenty-two hundred is a Chess Master. Twenty-four hundred is a Senior Master and the minimum you have to own to compete in the National Tournament.”
“Does it go higher?” I asked him.
“Yeah, a twenty-five-hundred rating is a Grandmaster. The current world champion sits at 2836.”
“That’s freaking amazing.”
“It really is, especially since you can beat me without even trying, Lily.” He smiled so wide and shook his head before taking another swig. “Freaking amazing.”
While he flipped through channels, I took out a pen and paper since it was all I was allowed to use in terms of communication with the girls. I wrote them a letter telling them how much I loved them, how I hoped they were doing as well as they possibly could be doing, and how I was fixing up the house. I even included pictures so they could see our progress. I wanted to give them hope. I wanted to show them I loved and cared for them. I wanted to let them know I was fighting for them.
When I was done, I sealed the envelope, placed a stamp, and walked toward the door to my bag near the window. I put the letter in my purse and just as I turned I saw Trace pacing outside my house.
“What the hell,” I whispered.
“What?” Salinger asked.
“It’s Trace. He’s outside in the rain. He looks crazy.”
Salinger stood. “Stay in here,” he said, opening the front door.
I followed him but stayed in the doorway.
“Who the hell are you?” Trace asked Salinger.
“What are you doing here?” Salinger asked, ignoring him. His hair grew drenched and stuck to his neck.
“I want to talk to Lily,” he answered.
“That’s not a good idea,” Salinger told him.
“Lily!” Trace yelled over Salinger’s shoulder. “Come talk to me.”
“What the hell was that note all about?” I yelled down my new porch.
The sound of rain punched against the thin tin of the roof.
“Come on! Come out here!”
“She’s not coming down here, dude,” Salinger said.
“I don’t understand why you went to the cops, Lily!” Trace yelled up at me.
I crossed my arms and leaned into the jamb of the door, my foot propping open the screen door.
“Trace,” Salinger said, “you took some pretty fucked-up pictures of her when she was obviously passed out. That’s really fucking creepy, man.”
Trace’s hands went to his head. “I didn’t know what I was doing!” he screamed at us. “I don’t even remember doing that.”
He made like he was going to come up the porch, but Salinger swung his hand out and pressed it gently against Trace’s chest. “No, stay where you are.”
Trace backed off. “You gotta believe me, Lily!” he yelled up at me.
I opened my mouth to say something, but Salinger beat me to it.
“Why are you stressing about this?” Salinger asked him.
“Dude, they’re trying to charge me with sexual assault.”
“You did!” I yelled at him in disbelief.
“I didn’t know I’d done it. I swear!” he answered me.
“You’re lying,” Salinger told him.
“Fuck you, dude, you have nothing to do with this!” Trace bit back at him.
“Any time a dude takes advantage of a girl, I make that my business. What did you expect when you came over here, huh? Even if she wanted to drop the charges, she couldn’t. The state picks them up even she doesn’t want to prosecute. They can’t have creeps like you running about town, can they?”
Trace looked like he wanted to murder Salinger. He sucke
d in air as if he tried to control himself, fisting his hands.
“Don’t, dude,” Salinger said. “I’ll drop-kick you before you even reach me. Just go home. Leave her alone. Take your misdemeanor and chalk it up as a life lesson. Maybe, you know, not take advantage of girls you drug? You know, maybe not drug them either, you prick?”
“She willingly took that blunt!” Trace tossed more my direction than Salinger’s.
Salinger bit out a caustic laugh. “You think we’re stupid? You fucking knew it was laced and kept your mouth shut. You drugged her! Think about how fucking gross that is! And we know you called CPS, asshole!” Salinger seemed to be losing his cool, so I scaled down the steps quietly. “You drugged her and accosted her and then have the fucking audacity to try and discredit her by calling CPS after she just lost her mom? You really are low, you know that? Scum of the fucking earth right here!” he yelled to no one, pointing at Trace. “If you were smart,” he spoke softly, eerily. “If you had even a brain cell left in your pathetic head, you would get out of here while you still had the chance before I show you exactly what I think of you.”
“Go ahead,” Trace said, puffing up his chest and bouncing on his feet. “Let’s go. I want you to hit me.”
Salinger pulled forward toward Trace. Trace’s eyes blew wide, not expecting Salinger to react that fast, I guessed. I luckily caught Salinger’s shoulder and brought him back toward me. We toppled down on the new steps, the edges of the wood still sharp and square, though. They scraped my back and stung pretty bad, but I kept my mouth shut. He fell between my legs and I wrapped both arms around his neck and chest.
“Stop,” I whispered in his ear. I could feel Salinger’s chest rise and fall with each deep, hurried breath. “This is what he wants. He’ll try to use this.” I raised my head. “Trace! I’m calling the cops,” I said, holding up my phone. “Should we add stalking? Threats?”
“Stupid bitch,” he bit out, making Salinger jump forward only for me to try to reel him back, which proved a struggle for me.
Trace took the hint then, knew I wouldn’t be able to hold Salinger back for much longer, and started hauling ass down the block.
“What a coward,” Salinger said, still struggling with me. He managed to stand.
IDLE: Book Four of The Seven Deadly Series Page 12
