Tell Me to Go

by Charlotte Byrd

  In his third email, he just writes:

  Olive,

  Where are you? Are you okay? Why aren’t you writing me back? If you’re mad at me, tell me, just please don’t go dark. I’m your older brother and I’m worried about you.

  Love,

  Owen

  I know I can’t not write him back again. But when I put my fingers to the keyboard, I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know where to begin.

  I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.

  I stare at the words. That’s all I can really say without obfuscating the truth, but this is not nearly enough.

  If this is all I send then he’ll think something is wrong.

  I never write back two sentence emails.

  I never not explain.

  I never not go into details.

  I press my fingers to the keyboard and try again.

  I met someone. It’s a long story but I’m actually in Hawaii right now visiting him. He’s great, and fun, and amazing. Sydney insisted on coming with me since it’s such a long trip. That’s why I haven’t written earlier. I’m sorry.

  I read over the words.

  There is only one lie in it.

  Great, fun, and amazing are not words that I would use to describe Nicholas.

  A dark, dangerous enigma is much more appropriate. But how much of the story can I really tell him via email?

  My phone rings.

  It’s a private number.

  My fingers immediately start to tingle. I blink rapidly as I try to decide whether or not I should answer.

  I press Accept.

  I bring the phone to my ear. A robotic voice on the other line says, you have a call from the Massachusetts Correctional Institution.

  15

  When a secret slips out…

  I bounce my foot on the ground as the operator tells me that I will be responsible for all charges. By the time I hear his voice, my hands are damp with sweat.

  “Are you okay?” Owen asks, his voice is rushed and out of control.

  “Yes, I’m perfectly fine,” I say as calmly as possible. “I’m sorry I haven’t replied. I was just writing you now.”

  He takes a deep breath. A sound of metal being dragged across the floor makes me cringe.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  I touch my face and clear my throat.

  “I met someone. We really hit it off and we’ve just been hanging out for a bit.”

  I’m not a very good liar, especially to people who are at all suspicious.

  I’m not sure why this is the case given that I’m good at sleights of hand, shoplifting, and other tricky behavior.

  Or maybe I’m just not very good at lying to him.

  I tell him a little bit more about Nicholas, staying as close to the truth as possible. My voice changes in pitch and tone from nervousness but I hope that he attributes these changes to giddiness about my new relationship.

  “So, how did you meet him?” Owen asks after a while.

  My mouth becomes cotton.

  “At a coffee shop near work.”

  I rub one hand with the other, noting how rough the skin is around my knuckles and how soft it is around my palm.

  “So, what does he do?” he asks.

  “What’s with all of these questions?” I get on the defensive.

  “I’m just curious. Because you never not stay in touch.”

  “Listen, I doubt that any of your cellmates in there have their sisters writing them every other day. So, I got distracted for a bit. So what?” I reply, defensively.

  He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and we both listen to the loud chatter going on around him. I can’t make out any of the words, but there’s yelling and agitation.

  “Mom came to see me,” he says.

  Nausea shoots up my esophagus and I almost gag when I taste something on my tongue.

  My hands become outright clammy.

  Cold sweat drenches my underarms.

  “She told me that you paid her debt to Marlo,” Owen says. His tone is an odd combination, both accusatory and thankful.

  “Where did you get fifty-thousand dollars, Olive?”

  “Did she also tell you that she hired some idiot to shove a gun in my face so that I would turn the money over to him?” I demand to know. “Did she tell you that she tried to con me out of that money? That I had to track down Marlo on my own?”

  There’s a pause on the other end. Our mother, of course, never mentioned any of this.

  Why would she?

  In her mind, there is only one version of events - her version.

  “She tried to steal the money from you?” Owen asks in a quiet whisper. “How did you find out?”

  “I found Marlo and asked her. I wasn’t sure how to do the exchange with that guy and make sure that he let Mom go so I thought I’d go over his head to the source.”

  “I can’t believe that she would do that,” Owen says. I clench my jaw. He has always had a soft spot for her. Maybe it’s because the last time he ever saw her in the free world was almost ten years ago. Or maybe it’s just nice to believe that your mother is a good person no matter what she does.

  “Why did you still pay the money?” he asks.

  That’s the question I’ve been wrestling with ever since I got back. At first, it seemed so obvious but then…I started having doubts.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have,” I say slowly, “but I had the money and she still owed the debt. She had no way to pay it back. I wasn’t sure what Marlo would do so I just paid it.”

  “That was a very nice thing to do,” Owen says. “Thank you.”

  I shrug without saying a word. Tears well up in my eyes, but I push them away.

  “Olive, are you there?” he asks.

  “Yeah, sorry, yeah, whatever.”

  “So…I still don’t get it…where did you get the money?” he asks.

  “From this guy,” I mumble.

  “Wow, he must have some serious money,” Owen says after a long pause. “What does he do?”

  I shrug again but know that I have to answer.

  “Finance,” I mumble. “Real estate. He’s got a few companies.”

  “He’s not some old fart, is he? Some sixty-year-old taking advantage of you?”

  I can’t help but laugh.

  “No, not at all. He’s our age.”

  “So, his daddy must’ve set him up very nicely.”

  Owen’s judgement makes me angry. Nicholas sent me fifty grand to help our deceitful mother out of yet another jam and here he is sitting in a penitentiary and judging him.

  “He made every penny on his own,” I say proudly. “Don’t be such an asshole.”

  “Really?” Owen asks, his tone oozing in skepticism.

  “He’s also a local boy. From our neck of the woods.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s from Boston.”

  I realize that I’ve made a mistake only after the name of the city escapes my lips. But it’s too late. I can’t force the words back into my mouth. I can’t make Owen un-hear them.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  I want to scream at the top of my lungs.

  16

  When he tells me a story…

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Owen demands to know. “Your boyfriend is Nicholas Crawford from Charlestown?”

  Earlier I had mentioned that his name was Nick Crawford but made it seem like he was just visiting Boston. It’s a generic enough name to pass it off and Owen didn’t question me. But now…FUCK!

  I don’t know what to say so I say nothing.

  “Olive? Tell me you’re not fucking Nicholas Crawford. My Nicholas Crawford.”

  “I am not fucking Nicholas Crawford,” I say. That part is true, at least. But his name used to be…”

  “You don’t know the first thing about him, Olive. He’s a very, very dangerous man.”

  Goose bumps run up my arms.

  “I used
to run around with Nicky C, that’s what he went by back then. We had the same boss but we had different associates.”

  “It’s not the same person,” I say, trying to make him stop.

  But another part of me wants to hear everything that he has to say.

  “Nicky C was ruthless. I’ve seen him execute a man point blank. That was something that pleased the boss and he rose through the ranks quickly.”

  I touch my calf muscle and feel it tighten with every word that I hear come out of Owen’s mouth.

  “Who was your boss?” I ask, wanting corroboration, proof, something that will tell me that he’s telling the truth.

  “You know I can’t tell you that,” Owen snaps. “They listen and record everything that’s being said.”

  I read between the lines. What he’s really telling me is that they (the authorities) already know everything about this. Nothing he is telling me now is secret information.

  “Eventually, Nicky C was in charge of all of the insurance scams,” Owen continues.

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “A restaurant or a business doesn’t pay their monthly fee once, twice, three times. The boss gets agitated. The only way he’ll get back the money that’s owed to him is through insurance. So, he sends in Nicky C and his crew to start a little fire. It can’t have multiple points of ignition, otherwise it will be suspicious. Nicky was an expert in this. Whenever he started a fire, it was always small but powerful. It spread quickly. When the firefighters arrived, they took care of the rest.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “They’d point their hoses and spray the whole place with water. They never try to preserve anything, just put out the fire. Most damage that’s caused by fires comes from water. Whenever Nicky C started a fire, the insurance company always paid out.”

  I lean back in the chair and take it all in.

  What are the chances that he’s talking about someone else?

  What if he’s wrong?

  “I don’t think it’s the same person,” I say after a moment.

  “Nicky C vanished one day after his partner showed up dead,” Owen says, ignoring me. “The boss thought that he just decided to take some time off, maybe went down to Florida for some rest and relaxation. But days turned into weeks and Nicky didn’t come back.”

  “This isn’t the same guy,” I insist.

  “It took a few months before we all figured out what happened. The two of them had a side job of breaking into wealthy homes out there in the country while the owners were away in Martha’s Vineyard or wherever the fuck they went. At first, it was a few pieces of jewelry, some antiques but then their hauls got bigger and bigger.”

  I put my hand on my chest and listen to the way my breath bursts in and out.

  “To say that they were good would be an understatement. They broke into secure homes with guards. They broke into safes. After casing the joint, the job took two trips. The first they would photograph and measure everything they found so that they could make replicas and, on the second, they would return for the pieces and make the switch.”

  “How do you know any of this?”

  “They found the guy who made the replicas,” Owen says.

  “The police?”

  He laughs. “No, our boss.”

  My body starts to rock from side to side. I don’t want to believe this but I can’t ignore the truth. His approach hasn’t changed much. I’ve seen it in action. I was an integral part of it.

  “The replicas were an integral part of the plan,” Owen explains even though he doesn’t have to. “Without them, the owners would know immediately that the jewelry was missing. They’d call the police. They’d hire a private investigator. But with the replicas, months would pass before anyone noticed. The jewelry was just as heavy. It looked the same. The only thing that was different was that it wasn’t made of real diamonds.”

  I curl my shoulders forward, caving my chest in.

  This can’t be true.

  This can’t be my Nicholas.

  “My boss has been looking for him ever since he disappeared. The rule was that you were supposed to hand over seventy percent of whatever you took in on the side, since side jobs weren’t exactly legal. Neither Nicky C nor his partner ever gave him a cent.”

  “Well, they were their hauls,” I say quietly.

  “The last thing that the replica guy made was a Harry Winston necklace worth over two million dollars. The night that they broke into that estate on Nantucket to make the exchange, they found his partner’s body in the Belle Isle Marsh.”

  “I don’t know why you’re telling me all of this.”

  “Because you’re with him and he’s a dangerous man. He killed two people that I know of and who knows how many others,” Owen says.

  “It’s not him,” I say under my breath. “Crawford isn’t even his real name.”

  Without missing a beat, Owen says, “He used to use his biological father’s real name, Reed. But when he was in high school, he changed it.”

  I rub the back of my neck. I’m drowning under the flow of information unable to come up for air.

  “You don’t know if it’s the same person,” I insist. “Nicholas Crawford is a generic name. Besides, why the hell would he still use that name if everyone knew it?”

  “Everyone knew him as Nicky C. Besides, he was always cocky, and an arrogant enough bastard to keep his old name. As a fuck you to the boss, to his associates, to me.”

  “You?” I ask.

  “I’ve had some…dealings with him myself. We didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  There’s a long pause.

  “You know I can’t talk about any of that here. I’m due for a parole hearing soon. I can’t implicate myself in anything. But it was nothing illegal.”

  I furrow my brow until I realize that he had added that last sentence for the recording. His previous statement was a sidestep, it wasn’t anything that he should’ve said.

  “You need to stay away from him, Olive. You need to just ghost him until he stops calling. He probably doesn’t know that I’m your brother. You did just meet in the coffee shop, right? Just ghost him for a while until he gets the point. He has a short attention span when it comes to females.”

  I clench my jaw. I’ve always hated the way some men refer to women as females. The word is so scientific and cold.

  “I can’t do that,” I say quietly.

  “Why not? Because you have feelings for him?” he says in a mocking fashion. When I don’t reply, something occurs to him.

  “Oh, shit, I forgot. You took fifty grand from him. Fuck!”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “You took Mom’s debt from Marlo and now you owe Nicky C a debt. That’s…that’s not good, Olive.”

  I hear a tinge of fear, something that I’m not used to hearing from Owen.

  “I don’t owe any debt to Nicholas Crawford or this Nicky C,” I explain. “He doesn’t even know the details of why I needed the money.”

  A robotic voice interrupts our conversation. “You have one minute remaining.”

  “Get the fuck out of the city, Olive!” Owen says. “Drive, drive out west. Buy some new documents. Start a new life. Run as far as you can!”

  17

  When he asks me for a favor…

  Owen’s words reverberate in my head long after he hangs up. It’s exactly the advice that I gave our mom when I heard about her debt. I cradle my phone in my lap and run my fingers around its soft corners.

  His words come back to haunt me. I try to convince myself that he’s lying. No, not lying, wrong.

  Nicky C is not Nicholas Crawford.

  It’s a common name and he wouldn’t be stupid enough to use it if he were trying to live under a different identity.

  But that’s a big if.

  My attempts to convince myself fall flat.

  Nicholas Crawford
is Ashley’s brother. We all grew up in the same neighborhood and city.

  He told me that the reason he wasn’t there for her was that he was running the streets.

  That’s a euphemism for being in a gang, or part of some sort of organized crime syndicate.

  He didn’t try to hide it. In that case, chances are he knew Owen, or at least of him.

  Does that mean that he wanted me to tell Owen? Does that mean that he didn’t care if he were found out?

  Besides these and about a million other questions, there is the undeniable truth. Nicky C worked with replicas and only stole things that he could replace with these fake trinkets. That’s exactly what Nicholas Crawford did to get Kathy Moreno’s bracelet.

  But what about that story he told me? It came out so naturally. So effervescently. Like he didn’t have to think about it once. As if it was the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  That’s what people like us do, though, isn’t it? We lie.

  We cheat.

  We deceive.

  So, why wouldn’t he lie to me?

  My phone rings again. My body jolts from surprise. It’s another collect call. Owen got more time.

  “What are you going to do?” he asks, his words dripping with fear.

  “I don’t know. I’m sitting here trying to figure it out.”

  “You need to run, Olive.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You need to get out of Boston.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not there,” I say quietly. “I’m in…Hawaii.”

  “What?” he snaps.

  “Maui, to be exact.”

  He takes a deep breath. “Why the fuck are you in Maui?”

  “Nicholas invited me. We’re here on vacation.”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Owen whispers under his breath.

  “Listen, I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me. Nicholas is…a really great guy. He has this amazing house here and we are really getting along.”