Building a Family

by M. K. Stelmack

  Easy enough. He opened his pocketknife and sliced through the plastic sheeting. He stepped inside square onto a book. There were books everywhere. Not textbooks but novels, upside down, spread out like flopped birds. Books and pens and paper. With drawings of fantasy characters. Ones with pointy ears and fire for clothes and waterfalls spilling from hands and all of them looking peeved and dangerous. The exact expression on Ariel’s face right now.

  If she was anybody else, he would’ve said that the pictures were brilliant. As it was, he shook her quilt and sent a book flying.

  “What are you doing? Do you think I sleep with the drugs?”

  He didn’t answer but stripped off the pillowcases. When he cut the pillow open with his pocketknife, only hypoallergenic fluff swelled out. She shrieked, “You’re freaking crazy! I’m texting Auntie Connie right now.”

  He waited until she’d pulled her phone free from her jacket before he knocked it from her hand and snatched it up. “She doesn’t need more of your lies.”

  “Lies? You think all I got is lies? How about this for the truth? You don’t have a thing on me, and you know it. In fact, you’ve admitted it’s the other way around.”

  His grip on the pillow tightened. “I’ve done nothing to get you away from Connie. I’ve kept my end of the bargain.”

  “Changing your mind about marrying her is interfering.”

  “You’re taking a personal matter between Connie and me and turning it into something about you. Which it isn’t and never was.”

  He threw open her top dresser drawer and saw her underwear. Slammed it shut. No way was he going through that.

  “Auntie Connie’s taking it seriously. She promised me you would take the paternity test.”

  She’d told Connie that he was her father. Worse, Connie had believed Ariel enough to want it proven. She didn’t trust him. He didn’t look at Ariel because he couldn’t and not smash something, everything.

  He needed to get to Connie. Their engagement was off the table, but that didn’t mean he wanted her thinking the worst of him. Two sides to every story, right?

  But first, Ariel.

  He walked to her mattress, got a good grip on it. “In case you didn’t notice, I became an adult long ago. I make my own decisions.” He hoisted it up in one smooth move. Nothing there. He let it drop with a deadened whump.

  He scanned the room for more possibilities.

  “Are you done?” Ariel pointed to the dresser. “Can I have my phone back now?”

  He picked it up. Her wallpaper was a pic of her and Miranda, a close-up selfie. Miranda’s face was thin, her hair scraggly, her skin papery. The only big part of her was her smile. Her head rested on Ariel’s, who had her cheek mushed against her mom’s shoulder.

  He felt Ariel coming, and he twisted away before she could strip the phone from him. “Give it back.” And then, “Please.”

  Tears hung wet in Ariel’s eyes, and Ben felt a surge of regret. He handed her the phone. Her tears convinced him what her room with its books and fantasy drawings had already told his gut. She didn’t have the drugs.

  If—and this was a big if—she also didn’t know where they were, then the only logical conclusion was that Trevor had somehow misplaced them or they’d been stolen from him, and now he was trying to lay the blame at Connie’s feet until he could locate them.

  Or he had deliberately planted them on Connie so that—well, so that what? Ben leaned against the dresser, which was about the same height as his workshop bench. Why would Trevor plant drugs and then ask for them back? Was he counting on Ben and Seth and everyone else believing that they were Connie’s? Make his point, and then exchange them for the ring? What kind of weak revenge was that? Ben remembered the Trevor that night at the bar. A man in love who’d felt wronged. Ben recognized the feeling well. Only his faith in Connie had prevented him from going down the same dangerous path of vindictiveness.

  Something didn’t add up.

  Best find the drugs fast and clear them out of the house.

  “I’m going to Connie’s room.”

  He felt a jolt of surprise when Ariel’s boots clomped behind him on the wooden stairs.

  Ariel’s room was a Spartan prison cell compared to Connie’s. He’d forgotten how much she could fill a space. There were traces of her on every square inch. In the textbook on the floor with a nail file as a bookmark. With the half a dozen shirts and skirts on her bed. Or the jewelry boxes with bling spilling out. Her scent, too. Caught in her lotions and nail polish and makeup and bottles. It was like burying his face in the crook of her neck.

  “Where do we start in this mess?”

  Ariel had a point.

  He strode to the bedside table and yanked open the drawer, sending a collection of lotion and creams tumbling together. Inside was other typical Connie stuff—a loyalty card to a manicurist, hair elastics, a few pocket-size steno pads, a wedding invitation—then, tucked to the side, was a Ziploc bag, folded and taped with a pile of small, mud-green pills.

  Taped up. Which meant Connie wasn’t using but didn’t confirm whether or not she knew about it. He held it up for Ariel. “This it?”

  If possible, under her Goth makeup, Ariel paled. She took two hesitant steps toward him, her gaze fixed on the bag like it was a dangerous, alien creature. Squinted.

  She stepped back and cursed.

  He held up a warning finger and she glowered. “You’d swear, too, if you knew what that was.”

  “How about we test that theory? What is it?”

  “It’s not Trevor’s.”

  “Okay,” he said, drawing out the word expectantly.

  “It—it—” Ariel stumbled and dropped to Connie’s bed, sending one of Connie’s books thudding to the carpet.

  Ariel’s eyes were wide with what in anybody else would pass as panic.

  “It means they’ve found me.”

  “Who? Out with it, Ariel.”

  She shook her head and her face crumpled. “I need to see Auntie Connie. I need to see her.” She spoke like a kid wanting her mother or an arrestee requesting a lawyer.

  Or someone who feared for her life.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ariel wants to talk with you. Bringing her now. McCready has the ring. There in 15.

  CONNIE READ THE text and then looked at the four faces turned to her at the dining room table. They’d been about to start crafting a Welcome Home, Mr. and Mrs. Greene banner for Seth and Alexi’s return the next day. She’d rustled up glue, construction paper, tissue paper, markers, string, tape and more tape and these ultra-awesome fake gems with a super easy peel-and-stick backing.

  This banner was her humble offering to the kids for having slouched off for most of the day. After motoring Ariel to school that morning, she’d intended to give them a full day of nonstop excitement, but she’d fallen asleep on the couch during the puppet show they’d specially prepared for her. She’d woken an hour and a half later to a silent house and torn outside, screaming her head off. All four kids emerged from behind the barn, where they were constructing an outdoor village from the recyclables heap.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Matt, who would’ve had to keep an eye on all of them. “You could’ve woken me.”

  He’d shrugged. “’S’okay. Not much into puppets.”

  Right now he didn’t look as if he was into banner-making, either, if his fists in his cheeks was anything to go by.

  “So, Ariel and Ben are coming out right now,” Connie said, as if this was the news they’d all been waiting for, “and I’ll need to speak with them for a little bit. Are you guys all right to start on your own?”

  Her answer was slumped shoulders and pouty lips. From outside, she heard the crush of gravel under the wheels of Ben’s truck. “I owe you one,” she said to Matt, who held up two fingers. “Fine, two.”

  On
the porch, the wind sliced into Connie’s skin, though any thought of returning to the house for a jacket scattered after at the sight of Ben and Ariel. She appeared ready to puke on her boots and Ben—well, Ben looked like the reason for Ariel’s state.

  He climbed the stairs, his heavy step vibrating through the wood and into the soles of her feet.

  “Where are the kids?”

  “Inside. At the dining table. Making a craft.”

  He positioned his back to the kitchen window. From his pocket he withdrew a sandwich bag of green pills. Fentanyl. Connie whipped to Ariel, who gave her a murderous glare.

  “McCready came by with the ring,” Ben said. “He said he’d give it back in exchange for these. I found them in the drawer by your bed.”

  “In my—” Connie grabbed the bag and examined it. Bands of masking tape over the seal protected against easy tampering and doubled as a label. “100” and “XOXO” was written on the tape. Hugs and kisses? What was the bag doing in her drawer? She opened that drawer every day because of the list. Except, other than the morning after the wedding, she’d not been home for two days. Two days in which her already rickety life had come tumbling down.

  Connie thrust the bag out to Ariel. “Trevor gave you these?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “But they are his?”

  She dragged her fingertips from the corners of her eyes down her cheeks, her black eye makeup scoring lines down her face like tear trails. “Maybe. But they’re not his stuff.”

  “Talk.”

  Ben crossed his arms and squared his feet, a physical mirror of Connie’s demand.

  Ariel banded her arms across her stomach. “Mom and me, we went to Calgary in November when she ran into trouble in Vancouver. We moved into this fourplex, and it had a reputation for being kind of a drug house.”

  “What do you mean ‘kind of—’” Connie peeked at the kitchen window for big ears “—‘a drug house’?”

  Ariel shifted from one black boot to the other. “Customers came and went, okay? One of the apartments was the warehouse and then they sold out of the one above.”

  “They?”

  Ariel pointed to the “XOXO.” “Hugs and Kisses.”

  “There’s a gang called Hugs and Kisses?”

  A bit of the normal sarcastic Ariel poked through with an eye roll. “Yeah, the guy who named the gang thought it was ‘ironic’ because he liked to think they were really tough. Anyway, he was as good at running the operation as naming it. He was wrecking it for everybody and it was set to blow up in all our faces.

  “Round about then, Mom checked herself into the hospital. So, I stepped in. There wasn’t much else to do. School was not going to happen, not with Mom so sick and me having to do strange hours. And I needed food. I couldn’t steal everything all the time, you know.”

  Connie didn’t know, hadn’t ever really known. She’d always had somebody. She had chosen to run wild; she’d never been forced. She glanced over at Ben who wore an unreadable expression. Surely, he had to feel something for this girl who could very well be his daughter.

  “Anyway. It didn’t take long for me to get in with them. Not even a month, and everything was passing through me on the way to the da boss.”

  Connie shook the bag. “This stuff?”

  Ariel shrugged her “yes.”

  “You know what this stuff does to people. It kills them. Sooner or later.”

  “Yeah, well, starvation kills, too,” Ariel flashed back. “And stealing is a crime, too. And I didn’t make the customers buy this stuff. They came to me!”

  “There were places you could go where you could’ve got food and shelter.”

  “Yeah, and they’d tell me I couldn’t see my mom.” Ariel’s mouth twisted. “She was dying, all right? The hepatitis had damaged her liver and turned cancerous. Mom had no money. I needed to live somehow. Not everything is pretty like how Alexi and Seth make it for those kids.” She pointed with her chin to inside the house.

  Connie had heard only bits and snippets from Alexi and Marlene about foster care, but she’d gathered it wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns. The foster parent could mean well, but the kids knew they were ultimately a paycheck. Ariel must feel like that now. Living in a place where she didn’t belong. Guilt washed away Connie’s anger. First thing when this was all sorted out, they’d put up proper walls in Ariel’s bedroom. Even if Ben wouldn’t be putting them up.

  “I take it you got into trouble with the gang,” he said to Ariel.

  “The hospital called. I had to get there fast but I was waiting for our supplier to bring our order. I turned it over to the best guy there. I showed him the money to give, how many packages it was for. I told him twice and then I left.”

  Ariel spoke in hollow, precise words. “When I got to the hospital, they’d put Mom in a room by herself, and I knew what that meant. I asked and they said, ‘Soon.’ Hours? Minutes? And they said, ‘Yes.’ All I could do was swab her mouth and make sure her oxygen was okay.

  “I fell asleep without even meaning to. I woke up to the nurses taking off the tubes. I saw her hand, not her face, and there was a nurse beside me. And I knew.” Ariel scrunched her face, pain compressed to every line.

  “They let me look at her, like it was my duty. I did, and, yep, she was dead. I couldn’t afford a funeral. So I left her there.”

  Connie hugged her. It was like wrapping her arms around a statue. No give. Ariel didn’t turn into her, or put her arms around her. She stepped away.

  “You could afford an obituary. It said your mom was cremated,” Ben said.

  His quiet voice held an accusatory edge Connie didn’t appreciate. Ariel answered tiredly. “I paid for the obit because it would be my only proof to the world that she lived. I said she was cremated because that’s what she’d wanted. I don’t know if that’s what happened.”

  Connie hugged the Ariel statue again. “When this is all over and papers are finalized, the next step is to find your mom, okay?”

  Ariel gave a shrug and a nod, the long side of her hair shielding her face. Connie released Ariel, and Ben seemed to interpret that as a signal for him to continue his interrogation.

  “You went back to the gang,” he prompted.

  “Yeah. The deal had gone sideways. The guy hadn’t counted right. He took one more package—” she jutted her chin at the bag Connie held “—than what was agreed on. And because I only had the exact amount of money, it wasn’t like he paid for it, either. It looked like we stole it. My second dead body that morning.”

  “You were blamed?”

  “Technically, I was in charge, so yeah. This kind of job doesn’t allow for personal emergencies but I had to take the risk. And lost.”

  Ben made a disgusted noise and looked away, as if he couldn’t stand the sight of Ariel. “And you brought your mess with you?”

  “I didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address. Hugs and Kisses deals in the city. In the north end. Some of those kids haven’t even left the city in their whole life. I figured they wouldn’t chase after people who leave.”

  “And yet they’re here,” Ben stated.

  Ariel shifted on her feet. “The guy who runs the gang, he might’ve heard Mom and me talking about Spirit Lake. He might’ve figured out that I’d come here. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to connect with Trevor.” Ariel’s fingers, with their chewed nails, raked down her face again. “He wants to become a one-percenter—you know, with a biker club—and he might’ve found out that Trevor’s brother is one so he’d work even harder to get in with Trevor.”

  Connie fought to track Ariel through her twisting tale. “This gang—what? Leader?—put them in my drawer?”

  “He might have, or Trevor might have. Either way, the reason’s the same. To tell me that they know where I am, that—that there’ll be payback.”
>
  Ariel’s fingers tapped against her ringed lips, as if thinking. They were also trembling. Connie wanted to hug her again.

  “You did bring your mess here,” Ben said flatly.

  What was the matter with him? Why keep badgering Ariel?

  “There is nothing wrong with a daughter wanting to be with her dying mother,” Connie snapped. “There is nothing wrong with someone trying to run from a bad situation. There is nothing wrong with someone running to the only person she knows who might give a flying flip whether or not she lives or dies.” She stepped in close to him. “You, of all people, should understand what that feels like.”

  He stepped in even closer. “And you should understand what it is to take care of family.”

  “Auntie?” Callie’s face was at the window. “Do you have glitter?”

  “We’ll deal with this later,” she directed Ben and Ariel. “Ariel, go inside.”

  Ariel wordlessly obeyed. Callie’s disappeared from the window.

  “I’ll deal with this now,” Ben said. He held out his hand. “Give them to me.” She hesitated and he said, “Connie. You can’t have those around the kids.”

  “And you can’t have them, either.”

  “I don’t intend to keep them.”

  “Take them to the police.”

  “With your record?”

  She bit her lip. Everyone, especially the police, knew she was to blame for the charge Seth had taken on himself. She was guilty of a lot of other juvie stuff, though. And she’d been a recreational user who’d associated with dealers. It wouldn’t look good.

  “And even if they’re persuaded to believe it wasn’t you, then they’ll blame the girl. And as much as I really don’t appreciate how she didn’t care to fill us in about the trouble she was in—”

  “She was scared, Ben. Of what we might do.”

  “Such as go to the police?”

  Okay, point taken.