Chapter 12
Blake
I felt different when I woke up that morning, although it took me some time to put my finger on exactly why that was. I wasn’t in my own bed; that was my first clue. I was naked, which instantly triggered my memory of the night before, but when I looked, Silver was missing.
“Hey, honey …” I called to her, wishing she’d stayed in bed with me for a little morning reunion. She didn’t answer. “Hey, honey …”
I was pulling on my pants as I went into the hallway and didn’t see her. I looked out to the pool but she wasn’t there, either. I figured she’d probably had some guilt about the night before and had maybe gone for a run. I put on the coffee and waited.
She didn’t come back. I knew something was very wrong and decided to go looking for her. Maybe the heat got her; she wasn’t used to the climate here yet and probably went out without enough water or anything over her head.
I ran to my room to get my keys and that’s when I found the note and the keyring.
I’m no good for you—you deserve better. I didn’t expect the drop-off. I took five hundred dollars; figured it as wages due. Please don’t look for me. ~Meli (Silver)
I felt gut-kicked. The breath went out of me and I got dizzy, swirling pictures of Silver went through my mind. The day at the park when we’d danced at the wedding, when she snapped my picture at the event, her in the pool, at the stove and then, beneath me in bed.
I grabbed my keys and went looking for her, no matter her request. The Escalade sat mutely in the drive. There was only one road leading to my ranch and I drove ten miles in both directions: she couldn’t have gotten further than that. I headed downtown to the bus stop and she wasn’t there, but there had been two buses out of town already that morning. The guy at the ticket window wouldn’t tell me anything; even when I tried to bribe him. I drove to Jill’s apartment and banged on the door until she finally came and opened it.
“She’s not here,” she responded to my question. “You guys have a falling out already?” She seemed a bit bitchy in this remark, as though it somehow made her happy to hear it. I left in utter frustration.
I went back to the bus station to get the routes for the buses that had left. I chose the more likely, which was headed north where she would be going back to familiar territory. She was a gorgeous woman; I knew men would remember her. Stop after stop I followed the route but no one who was still hanging around could remember seeing her. The guys at the ticket windows were equally unhelpful, but finally one guy burst my gut entirely. “You know, fella,” he said, “she could have gotten off anywhere. A hundred different places. You can ask the driver to let you off anywhere along the way, not just the official stops.”
I headed back to the ranch, knowing that every inch I drove past could have been where she’d stopped. Hell, she might be sitting in a window somewhere watching me drive by that very moment. I felt sick at my stomach and so entirely useless. At the same time, I was beginning to realize how much I loved that woman. I’d never said those words to anyone before, not even my own mother. It was that one thing I’d saved back my entire life. To me it was like a talisman, because once I said those words, that would be it … for life.
When I got back to the ranch, I dug out the bottle of whiskey I’d kept in the back of the kitchen cupboard. It was considered the same for me as bottled water and dehydrated food would be for a prepper. At that moment, it was the only thing that would keep me alive.
I must have passed out about three quarters of the way through the bottle. I woke up on the floor and I’d been sick as the stench surrounded me and caused me to lose it again. I couldn’t remember ever feeling that miserable; not even when the bulls had kicked in ribs, lacerated my gut, or knocked me into month-long headaches. Nothing compared … absolutely nothing.
I checked my phone for messages, made sure the volume was as high as it would go and that it was completely charged. There had been nothing. I had called her number a hundred times in the previous hours, and she must have blocked me because it continued to go to voice mail. I was worried how she would survive. She had practically no money on her. She’d left the clothes she’d bought with my money and had no transportation.
I went for a soak in the pool, aching to see her come through the slider and smile, call out, “April Fool’s,” and then leap into the water beside me. The doorway remained empty.
I got things cleaned up and went back to Jill’s. I banged on the door and when she finally answered, I held out a thousand-dollar bill. “Here. I’m hiring you,” I told her. She snatched the bill before saying a word.
Cocking her head she asked, “You’re hooked, aren’t you?”
This was no time for pride. I nodded.
“What do you want for the money?” came the suspicion in her voice.
“Find her for me. If you do, and I can get to her, there’s another five thousand in it for you.”
I was pretty sure I had Jill pegged. She was a sellout, obviously, judging by the string of assorted company that filtered in and out of her bedroom. I counted on her need for money and what it could buy her to be stronger than her loyalty to her sister.
A slow smile came over her face. “Why does she always get the good stuff?” she said to no one in particular. “So, when did she leave?”
“Sometime early this morning.”
“Did you screw her?”
“Yes.”
“Did she want it?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did she leave?”
“She said she wasn’t good enough for me.”
“Agh, that old shit again,” Jill said, and didn’t seem surprised.
“What’s that all about?”
“Did she tell you anything about our childhood?”
“Very little.”
She looked at me, waiting. I peeled off another thousand-dollar bill and she motioned me inside the stinking filth that was her abode.
Jill motioned to the couch and I sat, if only to get her going.
“Our mother was a whore. Mostly sailors who made port in the harbor, but that’s what she did to take care of herself. Meli and I are only half sisters, different dads, neither one known. Me? I deal with it. Her? She can’t. It has ridden her ever since she was hold enough to understand what a whore was. One of the sailors came after her one night. I don’t think he screwed her, but he came damned close, and that’s when she ran. She was gone for days and finally showed up at my school one day, just as I was leaving for home. She begged me to come with her; said she’d found a place for us to live. I loved her more than our whore of a mother, so I went with her.
“Turned out to be a Chinese restaurant. They had a little apartment upstairs that constantly stunk like soy sauce and rancid grease. We cooked, we cleaned the place and we lived like two mice in an attic. In winter we just about froze to death and in the summer, there wasn’t a breath of air. It was hell, cowboy—hell. We were always on the run from the people at the child welfare offices. They suspected we weren’t living with our mother and tried to grab me at school. Meli is six years older than me, you see. She was old enough to drop out, but not me. She forged papers and moved me from one school to another until I was finally old enough to drop out. After the Chinese restaurant, it was a Jewish delicatessen, and then a whole string of other places. Always the same gig, always the same problems.”
I felt my stomach turn at what she was telling me. I had no idea from Silver’s behavior that she’d gone through what she did.
Jill wasn’t done. “Well, finally one day I’d had enough. I told her I was getting out of town, going south to where it was warm. I hitchhiked and walked and finally found myself here, in Dallas. I went back to the same restaurant gig until I could afford this place,” she held out her arms to indicate the apartment. “Meli somehow got herself into a GED program and then City College. She graduated with honors because she’s damned smart. Must have got that from her bastard father. She was with Jeremy and then he dumped her and she came down here with me. You know the rest.”
“Find her for me, Jill.” It was all I could think to say, and she was the only one who knew her sister’s tendencies well enough to pull it off.
“Won’t be easy, cowboy. She goes to ground without thinking twice.”
“I can have her driver’s license tracked,” I realized aloud.
Jill laughed. “Where did you get the idea she has a driver’s license? She’s smarter than that, cowboy, and anyway, she’s a New Yorker. People in our income bracket don’t own cars in the city. You don’t have a hope in hell of finding her if that’s the way you’re gonna think.”
I stood up and pointed my finger into Jill’s face. “Find her,” I said evenly and left the stench behind me.