Thirty-three
We leave Alex on the sidewalk in front of his house with the tent and camping stove. I’m surprisingly disappointed that Sam didn’t offer to help stow everything away because I’ve never been to this side of town—the “nice” part of Granite Falls. The two little redheaded girls running around on the lawn in front of the giant blue house are like miniature, feminine versions of Alex in their matching green dresses. I’ve never pictured him as a big brother.
“So I’ve been thinking,” I say when we pull away from the curb. “The first thing I want to do when we get to L.A. is go to Disneyland.”
Sam chuckles. “I was kinda hoping you’d want to go to Magic Mountain. The rides are supposed to be awesome.”
“And the beach. I want to go to the beach, too.”
“Only if you let me buy you a bikini,” he says with a sly grin. “Can’t go to a California beach in all those clothes. The sun will be good for you.”
I scowl at him even though I’m loving this conversation. He’ll have to work a lot harder to get me in a bikini. Still, it feels incredible to be talking about our future together like this. Like maybe things are going to be okay. “We’ll pick one up right after you buy me a guinea pig.”
“The dog I plan on buying will eat your guinea pig. Sure that’s a good idea?”
Grinning, I slide my hand across the center console to his knee, my fingers tracing a path of hearts up his thigh. “All of my ideas are good.”
When my hand reaches its destination, Sam jerks the car into a gravel parking lot. I barely register the store in the distance before he has me unbuckled and in his arms. This intense desperation is one of the things I love about Sam. Drowning in it—in him—keeps me sane.
Unfortunately, I’m losing sight of the goal. “So about that bikini…”
“You play dirty,” he grumbles. “Finish this and you can wear whatever you want and have your damn guinea pig.”
“Deal.” With a triumphant grin, I pull away and buckle my seatbelt.
“I meant now.”
Sam’s smoldering gaze could burn down a forest, and for a second, I consider giving him what he wants right here in the parking lot of Shop Mart, but no. I want all of him and we won’t have that kind of privacy here.
“Take me home, and I’ll more than finish what I started.”
We reach my street faster than should be possible without a rocket-propelled car, but the two red lights and four stop signs Sam runs probably has something to do with it. How could I have ever thought he didn’t want me? I laugh as he careens around the last corner and hits the gas. Thankfully, it’s a quiet Sunday afternoon and most of the town is holed up in one church or another.
“Wait!” I gasp.
He sees it at the same time I do—a beige, unmarked police car, the same model and color all the undercover cops in Granite Falls drive—sitting in front of my house.
“Should I keep going?” he asks. “We could go back to my place.”
It’s too late for that. The cop saw us the second we skidded around the corner and will probably pull him over for running the stop sign anyway. All I can think about is James. His truck isn’t out front and I have no idea where he is. Was there an accident on the way home? Did the cops finally bust Leslie while my brother was with her?
We pull up to the house, but the cop stays in his car. Weird. Maybe he’s not here for us? Keeping my head down, I follow Sam up the driveway.
He slides his chain out from beneath his shirt and stoops low enough to unlock the front door with the key I gave him last week. Before I slip inside, I glance over my shoulder at the car and the hulk of a man hunched over a notepad inside. He looks up, as if sensing my eyes on him, and shuts off the engine.
“Hurry!” I all but shove Sam into the foyer, then slam the door behind us.
Now that we’re inside, I should feel safe. I should, but I don’t. A film of stale nicotine clings to the walls like a ghost, stacks of boxing magazines litter the end table, and my father’s recliner still waits for us in the living room.
No, I’ll never be safe here.
Rap-rap-rap.
The sharp knock sends me scrambling into Sam’s arms. “What do we do?”
“We answer the door,” he says calmly, “and ask him what the hell your brother did now.”
Rap-rap-rap. “Miss O’Brien?”
Sam pries me from his body and moves us toward the door. One of my hands grabs for one of his, while the other dutifully reaches for the knob.
A man about my father’s age, at least six foot four with jet-black hair and the body of a weightlifter, towers like an enormous totem pole on the porch. He pins me in place with his dark brown eyes. “Sarah O’Brien?”
My mouth drops open in an attempt to answer the man, but my brain isn’t keeping up. There’s no way this guy is an undercover cop—everything about him screams ex-boxer! The way my father talks about it, they’re like the mafia, which can only mean one of two things: he’s here to kill my father, or my father sent him to kill me. Before he has a chance to make a move and just as my knees threaten to give out, Sam wedges himself between us.
“Can I help you?”
The man produces a black leather wallet that flops open to reveal a shiny brass police badge. “Detective Lilly, Granite Falls police department.” The wallet vanishes and a small spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen materialize in its place. “Your name and relation, for the record?”
“Sam Donavon. I’m a friend of Sarah and James.”
Detective Lilly nods once and scribbles down the information. “I’d like to speak with the O’Brien siblings. Individually, if possible. Is James home?”
I shake my head, but Sam must still be stuck on the first half of the statement, because he says, “I’m not going anywhere unless Sarah wants me to. What is this about?”
Those intense brown eyes give Sam a onceover before turning to me. “May I speak freely in front of Mr. Donavon?”
“Yes,” I squeak. My mind races through everything James might have done to get himself in trouble. A drug bust at Leslie’s, buying an illegal weapon, getting into a brawl at work, doing one of his stupid brake-checks in the wrong neighborhood…
“All right,” Detective Lilly says. “An investigation has been opened with regard to your mother’s death. We’d like to gather some information from your family. See if we can’t piece together a more accurate picture of what happened that morning.”
Though he’s standing in front of us—in front of Sam, who is still shielding me from the brunt of Detective Lilly’s presence—speaking directly to me, my brain struggles to process the words coming out of his mouth. An investigation? As in, maybe they suspect the same thing I do? Sam fumbles behind him for my other hand and gives both a tight squeeze.
“So,” Detective Lilly says, snapping his notebook shut. “Shall we go inside or would you like to answer my questions out here on the porch?”
I let Sam direct the detective into our living room and trail behind them both. We sit silently on the scratchy beige couch that never gets used and wait for Detective Lilly to finish perusing my father’s memorabilia.
Finally, he stops walking and smiles at us—a terrifying facial expression that resembles a grimace more than a smile. “I know your father,” he says. “Knocked me out on more than one occasion during my boxing days. How’s he doing?”
No matter how hard I try, the smile I try to give him refuses to stick to my face. “He’s fine.”
Detective Lilly keeps right on smiling, his dark gaze boring into my skull. “Good to hear. No trouble around the house then? No problems at work that you know about?”
I can feel the blood draining from my face. He knows—somehow, someway, he knows. The realization is paralyzing. Sam nudges me, which catches Detective Lilly’s eye. The man doesn’t miss anything. “James says he’s gotten in trouble at work a few times,” I say to deflect his attention. “We don’t know why. They keep James away from our father at the mill.”
Sam nudges me again. When Detective Lilly reaches for his notebook, I pinch Sam’s leg to shut him up. If the detective notices Sam jump half a foot off the couch, he makes no sign of it. Instead, he settles into my father’s rust-orange recliner and flips through the notebook.
“Tell me about the medication your mother was taking. Are you aware of how many she took? How long she’d been taking them?”
As clear as if she’d died this morning, I can picture the open pill bottles lined up like dozens of unorganized military men on top of James’s old dresser. “I know there were a lot. And she’s been taking at least some of them for as long as I can remember.”
“Who picked them up for her? Or were they mail-order?”
Uh-oh. “James brought them home.” Along with cartons of cigarettes and God knows what else he slipped into those brown paper bags. I don’t know how he pulled it off before he turned eighteen, but he’d faithfully delivered everything to her door once a week since his sophomore year in high school. Maybe that’s how he met Leslie.
Detective Lilly nods and scribbles something into his notebook. “Where did he pick them up? Which pharmacy?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Okay.” More scribbling. “Any idea why your father didn’t pick them up? Or do you not know that either?”
“Sorry.” I’m starting to feel uncomfortable—more than when he showed up and way more than normal, which is saying a lot. “James and I have never been close to either of our parents,” I say. Hopefully that explains enough without actually explaining anything.
Beside me, Sam is getting antsy again. I can feel the tension in his body and have a pretty good idea what he wants me to do. And why wouldn’t I turn my father in? He’s not here to stop me, and I don’t have to worry about my mother getting hurt when he finds out. Even James would be proud.
But what if I tell Detective Lilly and he doesn’t arrest my father? It’s my word against an adult’s, and I have firsthand experience how badly that ends. When I was in second grade, my teacher saw the edge of a bruise I hadn’t been able to hide completely with my too-short sleeves. She coaxed the barest of information out of me—enough to deduce I hadn’t fallen down a flight of stairs or something—and hauled me straight to the principal.
Who called my father.
That had been a Friday. Even with James’s protection, I couldn’t walk until Sunday night. The memories from that weekend, how battered both James and I had been, and of having to watch my father drag our mother around the house by her hair while she screamed, keeps me from ratting him out.
I’m pretty sure that was his intention.
Detective Lilly stares at me while I replay that horrible weekend in my mind. My whole life, James has been able to read my face. I hope it’s a brother thing and not a transparency thing, or else I’ve just given the Granite Falls police department exactly what I didn’t want to tell them. Shifting closer to Sam, I try to make my face blank.
With a flick of his wrist, the detective flips his notebook shut and stows it wherever he’s been pulling it from behind his back. “Thank you for your time, Ms. O’Brien, Mr. Donavon,” he says, suddenly all business. “If I think of anything else, I’ll come by again. Do you have any questions for me?”
“No,” I say at the same time Sam says, “I do.”
I gape at him, but he grabs my hand and pulls me off the couch with him.
“Why are you investigating a suicide?” he asks. “That’s not normal, is it?”
For several long seconds, I don’t think Detective Lilly is going to answer. I don’t blame him. Sam’s question sounds like a challenge.
After trying to stare Sam down and losing, he says to me, “Your mother had been using depressants for a very long time from what the medical examiner can tell. He collected eight separate non-prescription depressant drugs from her bedroom, ones your brother has somehow been refilling for years, if what you say is true. The drug she overdosed on was an amphetamine—a powerful one, and an extremely high dose of it.”
He uses that dark gaze of his to bore into my skull again. “And yet, there was no trace of that drug anywhere in her room.”
Seemingly oblivious to my silent horror, Detective Lilly pretends to tip a hat he isn’t wearing and stalks out the front door.
I lose my mind the second the door closes.
“I knew he did it!” My whole body trembles, and I cling to the front of Sam’s t-shirt to keep me upright. “I knew it the second he looked at me that morning. I knew he did it. Oh my God!”
Sam holds me tightly against him. If there were a way to climb inside his skin and hide in his warmth and love, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Anything to take away this horrible ache in my chest. All the fighting and the burns—I didn’t think he’d kill her. Me, sure, but her?
“This is my fault,” I sob into his chest. “If I didn’t always hide or if I’d made James stay away, maybe letting him hurt me would’ve been enough. Maybe he would’ve left her alone. Maybe she’d still be alive.”
“Yeah, but you wouldn’t be,” Sam says. “I’m sure she’d rather it be this way.”
Thinking about her protecting me makes me cry even harder. My whole life, she shut herself away in her room. She heard my screams and not once did she try to stop my father, no matter how many times I cried her name. I can’t believe she’d die so I could live. I won’t.
“Your brother will be home in a couple hours,” Sam says when I’ve cried myself into exhaustion. “Want to rest for a little bit? I’ll stay awake.”
I don’t want to rest. I want to escape. I lead him back to the scratchy couch and ignore the troubling fact that he seems to know where James is and I don’t. Not even his soothing presence or the safety of his arms wrapped around me can touch the dread gurgling in my gut.
You’re next, my father’s look had said.
I know I am.