Indigo: The Saving Bailey Trilogy #2 (22 page)

“No tricks, just treats,” Spencer says holding the door open for me.

We cross the muddy ditch connecting Circle K and Goodwill. It’s full of wriggling tadpoles and mosquito larvae from a recent torrential downpour.

“I windexed the jewelry display case while you were chatting with your new friends,” Spencer says. He pushes a couple of flimsy medical books toward me and smiles lightly. “No offense.”

I sit on them, not the least bit offended. His truck must have cost upwards of fifty grand, and the leather seats are real, as real as my vintage leather boots at home.

A truck with rusted exterior and missing tailgate is smack dab in the middle of Spencer’s driveway like a fountain centerpiece.
He got me a rusty, old truck?
That’s the surprise?

“No, it’s not the truck,” Spencer says reading my mind. “Your surprise is inside. Hurry up!” He picks me out of the truck and spins with me to the front door.

“Is it for me or you?” I giggle. “You’re more excited than I am!”

“It’s just that I’m about to make you smile real big and I can’t wait.” He opens the front door and peeks inside before letting me in. I walk in slowly, keeping my eyes peeled. I look on the kitchen counter, and there next a bowl of giant grapefruit, is my locket.

“Where is he?” I run into the kitchen and scoop the locket into my palm. Instantaneously, Dad pops out from behind the counter; his arms open wide for a hug, I spring into them and stick to him like cooked rice to carpet.

“I’m happy to see you, too,” Dad says, laughing.

All of the sudden, I burst into tears, an uncontrollable flood of tears
.
Not happy tears or sad tears, but worrisome tears.

Spencer comes behind us and unlocks my arms and legs; he takes me from my dad, even though I cry harder. His hands firmly gripping my shoulders, he steers me into his bedroom and has me sit on the bed. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m worried,” I say, wiping at my tears.

“About what?”

“That Mom will take me away from him. I’m scared that when I go to live with him it won’t even be a day before my mother rips me from his arms. It’d be like living the same nightmare all over again. Spencer, I can’t go through that a second time!”

“Bailey, you’re an old soul. You worry about every little thing. I say be a kid for once. Don’t worry about what your mother is going to do. Just believe that your dad is going to take care of you, no matter what happens.” He grabs my face and pushes back my bangs. “You go with your dad, okay? He loves you a lot. I promise, Bailey, you’re going to know what love really is.”

“I already do,” I say, “you’ve shown it to me, not once but a thousand-fold.”

We’re leaning in for a kiss when the door opens, Dad stepping in. We snap our heads from each other at whiplash speed.

“Is everything okay?” Dad asks, looking at me.

I squirm under his concerned gaze; tears threaten to fall from my eyes again. “I’m just overwhelmed,” I say.

He comes to sit on the bed beside me. “Darling, you don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to.”

“Of course I want to,” I say. “I wouldn’t want to live with anyone else.”

“Not in the mountains with me?” Spencer asks.

I grin at him sheepishly and say, “There’s still time for that.”

“Okay,” he agrees. “You should go get your things from Sarah’s room.”

B.B. put her foot down after the third night of Spencer and I sharing a bed, so, I’ve been staying in Sarah’s room. She’s standing in the middle of it, my boots swinging in her hand by the one, white shoelace that she has painstakingly raveled through the both of them.

“Your shorts,” I say, loosening the knotted string.

“No, keep them,” she says. “I have lots.”

We’ve grown close over the week; sharing the same bed can do that to people.

She hangs my boots over my shoulder.

“I have to go, Sarah. Thanks for sharing your room with me.” I give her a quick embrace, and leave to find Dad and Spencer.

They are sitting a good distance from each other on the couch; Dad fumbling a picture that he nearly drops when I walk into the living room.

“Ready?”

“Ready,” I say.

Spencer smiles at me wryly. “Don’t be a stranger.”

I give him a kiss goodbye and hold a hand out to him, my dad pulling me through the front door by my other.

Dad’s truck smells wet and moldy, like it has been dragged up from the bottom of the ocean. The seats are damp and stained; the air conditioning blows hot air. McDonald’s ketchup packets and foil hamburger wrappers cover the dashboard. Pepsi cans and sweaty T-shirts litter the backseat.

“Sorry about the truck,” Dad says.

“Vintage,” I say.

“Huh?”

“That’s what Mom calls things that are old and beaten up.
Vintage
,” I explain.

“Oh,” he says, combing his fingers through his hair. “There’s a lot I need to learn about you and your mother.”

I close up right then. There’s no way I’m going to let him in on all of Mom’s abuse.

“Spencer didn’t tell me anything; he said you would explain it all… the reason you aren’t staying with your mother.”

I clear my throat to let him know that I am listening.

“You were your mommy’s princess before I left. Do you guys argue? It must be hard getting along because you’re a teenager now.”

You don’t know the half of it.

“You don’t have to tell me yet,” he says.

I wasn’t planning on it.

I’ve become accustomed to awkward silences shared on long drives; I’m practically a professional by now. Sneeze, cough, grunt, and tuck your hair behind your ear; bodily functions that let the driver know you are alive but not quite up for chit-chatter.

“Eleven years,” Dad says, reminiscing. “You know how many TV series I’ve missed? I’m gonna have to spend the next twenty years in front of the television just to make up for it.”

I laugh a little.

“Do that again,” he says.

“Do what?”

“Laugh just liked you used to when you were little… remember the claw
?
” He gives me a sideways smile.

“The Claw?”

“The Clawww!” He growls, curling his fingers. I shift in my seat and press my back into the door. I giggle as he tries to reach me while still holding onto the steering wheel. He stretches his arm and catches me in the side, tickling me until I figure out that by crawling into the backseat I can escape him.

“I wouldn’t go back there, might be bugs or who knows what,” he says, the claw fishing for me as I move from side to side.

“I like bugs,” I say. “Flowers don’t mind insects.”

“I forgot about that flower… I forgot a lot of things about you. Things that I never got the chance to forget because I wasn’t even there to remember them.”

“Well, you are now,” I say, swiping his hat off his head.

“Give me that!” He chuckles, his hand blindly searching for it. I put it on my head and grin at him.

Without warning, he tears up.

“Okay, I’ll give it back, sheesh don’t cry,” I say taking it off.

“It’s not that,” he says. “I had a flash back of a time when I put this same hat on you and you were swimming in it…
it fits you now
.”

“You wore this hat on that night…” I say, putting it back on my head.

He nods, a fleeting melancholic expression on his face.

I rest my head on the edge of his seat and stare absent-mindedly out the window. I hope I fell asleep in Spencer’s arms, because when I wake from this beautiful dream I’m going to be devastated, and his thumbs are the only ones capable of wiping away tears that stain with a bad memory.

There’s a trampoline and swing set in the backyard, but what really has my attention is a small wooded area on the outskirts of the property. A narrow creek trickling in the middle it, ebbing over rocks deliberately placed; percolating around a torn T-shirt once red, faded pink.

It reminds me of a crime scene, the T-shirt having belonged to a homicide victim; evidence to be zipped up in labeled plastic baggies. The creek taped off with caution tape- yellow plastic wrapping over tree limbs and weaving through the swing set. I see the wheel of tape bounce against the surface of the trampoline, unraveling.

“Well, that’s odd,” Dad says, picking the shirt out of the creek. The back end, slimy and green like the underside of the rocks at the bottom of the creek, pinched between his forefinger and thumb at a distance. “Must be from the owner.” He drops it back in the creek with a
plop
and a splash. “Come on, sweet pea, I want to show you something.”

My eyes linger on the shirt as we walk away.

“Wait,” he stops short. “This isn’t going to
overwhelm
you, is it?”

“How can I be sure if I don’t know what it is?”

“Okay, I’ll show it to you but you don’t have to get on it.”

“Is it a pony?”

He steers me around the trampoline to a storage room below the landlord’s own two-story apartment. Inside are a couple of jumbo coolers, jumper cables, and old work tables, but against the left wall along with some hung up rusting tools, is a 1990 Harley Davidson motorcycle. Thin, red flames curl around the gas tank. The bike is a dolphin-grey, the metal sparkling in the sunlight that has broken its way through a single window covered in a thick layer of dust.

“Can we ride it, Daddy? Can we take it to the beach?” I ask, and I can barely keep myself from fiercely clapping my hands and jumping up and down like a three year old.

“And get ice cream from Dairy Queen.” He winks.

Wheeling the bike around to the front of the apartment, he parks it beside his truck. “Let me get my riding jacket on and I’ll be ready to go,” he says. “Stay here and watch Harley for me.”

“You named it Harley?” I ask, as he enters the apartment, returning in a brown leather jacket that looks and smells like it is made of beef jerky.

“It seemed to fit,” he says, sounding undecided on the name.

I swing my leg over the motorcycle and settle on the back. At first I keep my hands clutched around the edge of my seat but as the bike starts up and jerks forward, my arms end up around Dad’s torso. I see him smile in the right mirror and feel his head nod as I rest mine against his neck.

“Take us to the moon,”
I whisper in his ear as we take off down Fairweather Lane. The sun will leave the sky soon, the moon taking over for the night shift. Stars will sprinkle the sky like metallic confetti and light us home just as they used to when I was little.

“So,” Dad says and I barely hear him above the roar of Harley. “Why aren’t you with your mother?”

“Because I’m with you,” I say sidestepping the question.

“What did she do, Bailey?”

“I can’t tell you, I just can’t.”

“Why can’t you tell me?” he asks, his voice sweet as molasses, sucking me in.

“I tried to—” I start. “I did something…”

“I don’t care what
you
did. I want to know what
your mom
did,” he says, his sweet voice roughening around the edges and losing me.

“She hit me.”

“She slapped you?”

“In the head with a frying pan,” I say, “twice.”

We are coming around a bend; Dad slows the bike to around fifteen miles an hour and turns sharply as if he’s angry at the turn and means to slice into it with the bike’s front tire.

I see his face change in the mirror, first angry then terrified. My eyes brim with tears; I have ruined what could have been a wonderful night. Even in her absence, Mom has spoiled everything.

Dad takes a quick look at me in the mirror and, saying nothing, puts his eyes back on the road. His silence will kill me long before we reach Fort Myers Beach. To lose the sound of his voice a second time is too much to bear, so I try my best to clear the silence that I so often welcome with open arms.

“Daddy, please say something. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, only I am to blame for this,” he says.

I invite the silence back.
Mom, the blameless angel. Mom, the innocent bystander. Her hand not attached to her body, her words not attached to her mouth, her actions all a ghost playing tricks on the living.

“It’s never Mom’s fault. She never has to take responsibility for what she’s done. You don’t know how many times her ‘drugs’ and ‘alcohol’ have slapped me till I bruised, or hit me till I bled… please, Daddy, I beg you, don’t let Mom slip free this time.” Tears return to my eyes, joining hands at the edge of my lids, forming a pact prepared to leap onto my cheeks—a suicide mission. “Daddy, say something…” I choke back my tears.

“What can I say?”

Say you will fix me.
Say that you can repair me like a broken toy, all it will take is a screwdriver and glue. Say the truth—there are just some things that can’t be fixed. Say anything to slaughter the silence, rebuke its invitation.

I lean back, gripping the seat again. I turn my head to the side and will myself to suffer the rest of the ride in silence; after all, I’m the one who invited it. We drive past beachside shops where mannequins hold surfboards under the crooks of their arms in display windows. Glass elevators look out over bathing suits and sand toys.

Orange bubblegum balls, a picture of an alligator printed on the packaging. The sand strainers and molded plastic shapes- crabs, lobsters and castles that never actually work because the sand has to be just right. That perfect combination of water and dry sand that makes it stick together but not harden like cement, forever entombing it in the mold.
My childhood is sand in my hair, seashells clenched in my sweaty little fists, and bruises from a fresh beating that fade into my sun-kissed skin.

The bike rolls to a stop. Dad gets off and takes a handful of quarters out of his back pocket. Taking my time, I ease myself off, scared of knocking the bike over. By the time I’ve unglued myself from the bike, Dad has already finished feeding quarters into the parking meter. He wipes his hand on his jeans, sweaty from holding the coins, and offers it to me.

It might look odd—a teenaged girl holding her father’s hand as they trample in the sand together—but I couldn’t give a flying goose what others think. All I know is that my hand fits perfectly inside of his like the final piece to a puzzle.