Seasons of Change (15 page)

When I get home, as the sun is only just starting to rise, I go over my options and realize that there aren’t all that many. But I’m running out of time and I need to do something soon, before it’s too late to help Jake. Then all of a sudden a thought occurs to me—Ryan had said that I couldn’t get in touch with Jake but he hadn’t said anything about talking to the Summers family. The Angels can’t be keeping
all
of them under surveillance 24/7—they weren’t
that
organized. It was a risk but, as my dad used to say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I have to wait until a more reasonable time of day, when the shops are open and I know that Sally will be working the counter at the post office. I fix my mother some oatmeal for breakfast; it’s easy to swallow, so it’s less of a fight to get her to eat it.

I sit in front of her dully, spooning the food into her mouth and I’m struck, not for the first time, at how the tables have turned. She’s playing the part of the baby and I’m being the mom. I used to feel as if I resented her for it, for forcing me to grow up too fast and to take care of her when I could barely take care of myself. But I am beginning to understand how she must have felt when dad died.

How she must have wished that she could just disappear, how she didn’t feel like she could go on without him. That’s how I feel when I think about anything happening to Jake. If the Angels take him away he’s as good as gone, anyway. They’re so focused on him and so desperate to get him that there’s no way that they’re going to let him just serve his time and then go back to his real life. Once they had their claws in him, that would be it—he would be theirs, which meant that he would no longer be mine.

I take a shower, as cold as I can stand it to keep the heat of the day at bay, and I set off in the direction of the Post Office. It’s still early, but I know that Sally always gets there before the doors open and I want as few people to see me as possible.

As I approach the building at the end of the street I can see that the Closed sign is still hanging up, looking all lop-sided, and my stomach drops as I wonder if today is Sally’s day off or if it’s the one time in her life she’s called in sick. But my fears are unfounded.

“What are you doing here?” Sally’s voice comes from behind me and I jump.
What is it with people sneaking up on me at the moment?
I ask myself.

“Oh, hi Sally,” I say to her, smiling automatically at the impossibly sunny, positive woman in front of me. She’s tall like her husband, but blonde where he’s dark. Jake doesn’t really look anything like her, but he takes after her in his gentleness and his kindness. Sally’s probably the nicest person that I’m ever likely to meet. “Can we talk inside?” I ask, looking around at the empty street, and there’s something in my tone that makes her realize this isn’t a social call.

“Sure thing,” she says, hurrying to get her keys out and open the door before ushering me inside and locking the door behind us. “What’s going on, Aimee?” she asks, looking at me warily, clearly wondering why I’ve turned up at her place of work without so much as a heads up.

“It’s… it’s complicated,” I try to explain, not knowing where to start.

I ask myself why I hadn’t figured out what to say to Jake’s mom before I’d made my surprise appearance.

“Do you want to sit down?” I ask, motioning towards the chair that the security guard normally sits at by the door.

“Aimee, you’re scaring me a little now,” Sally says, shooting me a smile, but there’s no laughter in her eyes—only fear. “Are you in some kind of trouble? Is your mother alright” she asks, trying to read the expression on my face. She’s going through all the possible scenarios in her head of why I could be here.

“No, it’s not me,” I tell her, reassuring her. “And Mom’s fine, don’t worry,” I add. “It’s about Jake.”

“Oh Jesus,” she says quietly, covering her mouth with her hand. “I knew there was something going on; he didn’t say anything, but something has been eating him for the past couple of weeks.

Then Bill told me that you hadn’t been stopping by at the shop and I figured you two must have had a fight. I hadn’t thought that he might have got himself mixed up in something,” Sally says, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.

“No Sal, it’s not like that,” I tell her, and then realize that I can’t tell her the whole story.

I wouldn’t want to worry her any more than she already is. Not only that, but she also has Jake’s little brother, Jonah, to think of.

“Jake hasn’t done anything,” I assure her.
Not yet at least
, I add mentally. “It’s just that I need to speak to him and it’s really important that I do.”

I choose the words slowly, clamping down on my desire to tell her everything. The more she knows, the more danger she’ll be in and the more likely it is that Suzie’s intelligence will get back to the Bleeding Angels. Then it won’t be long before they figure out who the heads up came from.

“So what do you need me for?” Sally asks, not understanding. “If you need to speak to Jake then why are you here talking to me, Aimee?” She searches my eyes for the information I’m trying to withhold.

“It’s not quite that simple,” I say, pacing up and down as my eyes are drawn to the clock hanging on the wall, and I can see that I don’t have much time until the Post Office is officially open and people start flooding in.

“Because you two had a fight?” Sally asks.

“It wasn’t really a fight,” I admit. “Things got a little out of hand between us and I guess neither of us really knew how to deal with it.” I tell her honestly, not wanting to meet her gaze.

“Oh,” Sally says in that knowing way that she has. “I was wondering when the two of you might start getting a ‘little out of hand’ together.” She chuckles cheekily and I feel myself blush. “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything to Bill. I don’t think he would have thought about it, but it’s something I’ve been hoping would happen for a long while now.” Her tone is happy as she hugs me close to her. “That boy cares about you more than anyone in this whole world,” she whispers to me.

“He’s my best friend,” I say, shrugging as if that explained it all.

“He’s more than that, isn’t he?” Sally asks, looking me deep in the eyes, but I don’t answer.

after all, that’s not what I came here for and the longer this conversation goes on, the more confused I’m getting and the more likely it is that someone will try to walk in and see the two of us talking. And people in this town talk, even if they don’t really mean to. Information is the currency that everyone uses, whether they realize it or not.

“Sally, I don’t have much time. I just need you to get him to meet me at my house tonight, once the sun goes down,” I instruct her, looking her straight in the eye so she knows that I’m not messing around. “He needs to make sure that no one sees him. He should come the back way, through the field that we used to play on as kids. He’ll know what I mean,” I tell her, and then I see the fear start to bloom in Sally’s eyes again as she realizes the significance of my serious nature.

“You want to make sure that he can’t be followed by a motorbike,” she says faintly as she starts putting two and two together.

I nod slowly, hoping that Sally doesn’t choose this moment to crack, but I should have known better than that. Sally is way too strong for that. “His birthday,” she says after a few moments, as if she’s just realized what this is all about.

I nod, not saying anything else. Not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. I’ve never heard the Summers talk about what was inevitably going to happen to their two boys when they turn twenty.

It was never discussed when I was in their house, and I was there more than I was in my own. Maybe it’s because it’s just too hard for them to imagine what their sons are going to have to do, and what they may turn into when they become a patched member of the angels. Or perhaps it was because they wanted to believe that something would change, that things would be different for them somehow.

“It’s really important Sally. No one can know I was here or what I’ve told you—not even Bill or Jonah. Please give the message to Jake and only to Jake,” I plead with her.

“I promise,” she agrees, clasping my hands in hers and holding them tight. I exhale a breath that I hadn’t even realized I was holding and I can feel some of the tension in my shoulders relax.

“I have to go now Sally,” I tell her, seeing the hands of the clock move closer and closer to opening time. “Tell him that the key is in the usual place,” I add, squeezing her hand before I turn to head out of the front door.

“Not that way,” she says abruptly. “You’ll be seen by everyone looking out onto the street. Follow me,” she instructs as she weaves through the aisles of envelopes and flat-pack cardboard boxes towards the back of the store.

She unlocks the door quickly, fumbling with the keys in her hand as she does. “This’ll take you out into the back alley. If you take a right you end up two streets over. No one will think that you’ve been here,” she assures me, and I have to marvel again at the strength of this woman.

I have just told her that something is about to go down between Jake and the Bleeding Angels and she’s still able to think clearly enough to give me an escape route.

“Aimee, get him out of here,” she says quietly. “Don’t let them take him.” Her voice breaks. I realize that she must have known the plans that we had made to get out of town. All the secret conversations that Jake and I had were clearly not as secret as we wanted to think they were.

“I’ll do what I can Sal, but recently he hasn’t been all that interested in listening to what I’ve got to say,” I tell her, looking down at my feet, sending a wave of desert dust up in the air as I draw circles in the sand with my sandal.

“You’re probably the only one he really
will
listen to, Aimee,” Sally says, putting her hand on my shoulder, and I feel a little of her strength as if she’s passing some on to me. “If he doesn’t do this for you, then I don’t know who he would do it for,” she tells me, and I have to trample on the little flare of hope that my stupid heart sends up when I remind myself Jake had already said “no” to me once about getting out of Painted Rock.

I’m not sure what else I could say that would make any difference to him. “And don’t worry about your mom, sugar. We’ll look after her, we’ll make sure she’s alright,” she tells me comfortingly, and I all I can do is nod my gratitude to her. I’m afraid that if I say anything close to what I want, I’ll just crack.

I start to turn out of the door, but stop abruptly as a thought comes into my head. I figure that Jake’s mom is probably one of the few people that might know the answer. “Sally,” I ask after a beat, “Do you know why the Angels want Jake so badly? Do you know what it is about him that makes him so special to them?” I ask, and I can see from the shade of white that her face turns that she does know—all too well.

“Aimee, I can’t.” She says the words as though they’ve been ripped out of her. “I want to say, I’ve wanted to tell Jake for years, but I can never seem to…” she trails off.

“Find the right time?” I ask. “There’s a lot of that going around,” I mumble, not wanting to push Sally but at the same time desperate to know the secret that might be so important to Jake’s situation.

“I don’t know if he will ever forgive me once he finds out,” Sally says, shaking her head, her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

“Of course he will,” I assure her. “You’re his family and he loves you all,” I tell her. “He loves you all so much he doesn’t want to leave Painted Rock because he knows what the Angels will do to you guys if he runs,” I confide in her, hoping to prepare her for the possibility that Jake may refuse to get the hell out of town like I’ve been trying for him to.

But Sally is shaking her head. “They won’t hurt us,” she tells me, and there’s so much certainty in her voice.

“How do you know?” I ask, pressing for answers now. “How could you possibly know that?” I wonder if I’m jumping to completely the wrong conclusion, or if the idea forming in my mind is possible after all.

“Don’t make me say anymore Aimee,” she pleads with me. “We were all young and we’ve all made mistakes,” she admits. “Some just last longer than others.” She looks sadly at me. “Look after him,” she adds before she closes the door behind me, leaving me standing in the empty alley, wondering what to make of everything.