The Darkest Corners (9 page)

“Callie,” Maggie says. “That's enough.”

There's some indecipherable murmuring. Then everyone stands up. Jay slips his pen into his shirt pocket. “If Nick knows anything, better he comes forward now before things get messy.”

“What are you talking about?” Callie asks.

Jay's face is expressionless. “He's eighteen, Callie. If it was an accident and he admits it, things may go more smoothly for him.”

Callie's silent. I clutch the handle of the fridge.

Jay's message is clear: Nick Snyder is old enough to be executed by the state of Pennsylvania.

After the detectives leave, Maggie slips out onto the patio, house phone in hand. I can tell by her voice that she's talking to Rick; people have different voices depending on who they're talking to. Maggie's Rick voice is no nonsense, even though she's obviously rattled. I can tell because she's smoking a cigarette—I haven't seen her do that since we were kids.

I slip into the living room, where Callie is texting, fingers flying across her phone screen.

“This is such bullshit,” she says, not looking up at me. “They're wasting their time.”

I'd had a similar thought. The police know that Ariel was killed just how the Monster's victims were. Do they really think Nick planned to kill Ari and stage her body to make it look like a Monster copycat, or are they trying to make an easy arrest?

There was nothing in the news this week about a possible link between Ariel's death and the Ohio River murders. I picture the Fayette police commissioner on the phone with the editor of the local paper, telling her not to publish anything that could reignite rumors that Wyatt Stokes is innocent.

The Fayette area had never had as high-profile a case as the Ohio River Monster, and certainly not one they could solve. One of the detectives who'd found the denim fiber on Kristal Davis became the chief of police. The prosecutor who tried Stokes later became the district attorney.

Lots of people made it to the top over the Monster case. If it all comes apart now, they'll have a very long way to fall.

We all will,
I realize. If Maggie finds out that I kept the phone call a secret, she'll never look at me the same way again.

And Callie…I have to tell Callie. My sister doesn't need me to protect her anymore. She's done a fine enough job on her own of distancing herself from Lori's murder all these years. But Callie deserves to know about the phone call, especially now that we're searching for the truth together.

I just don't know how to explain to her why I kept it a secret for so long. At first I thought my sister would go to jail just like my father if I revealed that she'd lied to the police. I couldn't bear the thought of losing her, but when she ran away, the fear of living without her was replaced by something even worse.

What if my sister really did have something to do with Lori's death? And what if I accidentally helped her get away with it?

That would be even more unforgivable than lying about seeing Wyatt Stokes's face.

I look up at Callie, the words on the tip of my tongue.
I have to tell you something.
But her eyes are on her phone still.

“I'm going to Ryan's,” she announces. “No one can even get in touch with Nick. I have to know if everything's okay.”

“Okay,” I echo, feeling a little awkward that Callie didn't ask me to go with her. She slips out the door, calling out that she'll be home in a little bit. Maggie comes back inside, still in her pajamas; she gives me a weak smile and says she's going to take a bath.

I'm alone.

I can use the computer now.

First, I call Gram and leave a message on her machine saying that I won't be on the 3:59 flight to Orlando this afternoon. An old friend died unexpectedly, I'm staying for the funeral, don't worry, I'm fine. Also, I've been feeding the one-eyed cat that hangs out under the porch. Sorry. There are some cans of Friskies under my bed, if you wouldn't mind. Sorry again.

Then I call Jana, my manager at Chili's, and tell her I need some more time off because of my father's death. She tells me to take all the time I need. What I really need is the money, but I take her word for it that my job will be waiting for me when I get back—even though it's Orlando and there's no dearth of Disney rejects willing to bus tables at a chain restaurant.

If there's anything I've learned about life, it's that not everyone gets to wear the Mickey Mouse suit.

I wait for the sound of water running upstairs before I turn the computer on, the same Dell the Greenwoods had ten years ago. It's been through so many system restores that the thing runs like a lobotomized patient. Rick used to have a serious Internet porn addiction. The therapist Maggie made him see suggested online poker.

When the computer sputters to life, I search for the address on my sister's driver's license:
34 E Federal Street, Allentown, PA.

According to Google, 34 E Federal Street in Allentown is for sale. It's a foreclosure. The pictures show bare, poorly spackled walls. Carpeting that was probably beige, once. Kitchen with the appliances ripped out.

INCOME SUITE AVAILABLE!
the listing boasts. There are photos of an attached one-bedroom apartment.

According to the listing, the house has been on the market for eighty-four days. Whoever lived at 34 E Federal Street has been gone for a while. Joslin could be anywhere by now.

I click through every picture anyway. The place is a shithole by most standards, but I'm so jealous of Jos, I'm practically shaking. At some point, she lived here. On her own. She probably rented the apartment.

I think of Jos and me mashed together on a twin bed upstairs in our house. I think of the chopped-up rocking chair on our old porch, an act of desperation to fill the wood-burning stove in our living room. The house always smelled of smoke, and liquor, something foul in the carpets from the previous renters.

Jos got away from all that. Away from us.

I delete
34 E Federal Street Allentown
from the search history. Then, before I can talk myself out of it, I Google
Black Rock Tavern.

I get an address and phone number for a restaurant in Clearwater. It has an even lower average rating on Yelp than the Chili's I work at in Florida.

Anyway, it looks like my mother didn't get quite as far as Jos did. Clearwater is about a half hour north of Fayette. I dial, triple-checking each number as I punch it in. A man picks up on the second ring.

“Black Rock.”

When I decided I needed to find my sister, I didn't consider the possibility that I'd need to do it through my mother—a problem for two reasons.

One: The only person from my past I want to see less than my father is my mother.

Two: I'm a pussy.

I hang up.

My father wrote me a letter from prison, once. A single page front and back, detailing my life as he remembered it. He said I was a “screamer” as a toddler, and when he'd stick the nipple of a bottle into my mouth to shut me up, Jos would say, “No, Daddy, this way,” and demonstrate proper bottle use on her baby doll.

And then there were our daddy-daughter nights at the Boathouse, a restaurant on the river. We'd share a bowl of ice cream and play tic-tac-toe with the paper place mat and crayons on the table.

I remember everything differently. I remember my father shouting at Jos that she was almost ten and too old to carry a goddamn baby doll around everywhere. I remember him coming home every couple of months with a little extra money, and dragging me to the Boathouse before my mother got home from cleaning houses. He'd park me in a booth with a bowl of ice cream while he spent the rest of what was in his pocket on whatever the bartender had on tap.

And more than anything else, I remember how my mother reacted when she found the letter under my pillow, the edges stained with greasy thumbprints and the ink fading where I'd folded and unfolded the paper. She threw it into the woodstove while I sobbed for Daddy; she grabbed my shoulders and shouted, “Daddy is never coming back.”

I knew even then that it was what she'd always wanted, to have Jos and me to herself. My mom always wanted to believe we were more hers than anyone else's; it's probably why she resented Joslin and my father so much. Joslin turned out just like him, despite not even being his blood. Jos and my father both liked to laugh at crass things: episodes of
South Park,
my father clipping his toenails with a wire cutter while my mother shrieked about how disgusting he was.

Most of all, she hated that Joslin didn't need her. Whenever my mother panicked about us, like she often did when our cuts were deep or when one of us couldn't stop puking, my father would snap at her, “For Christ's sake, Net, pull yourself together. Kids are tougher than you realize.”

I always knew that he was really talking about Joslin when he said that.

I never did get another letter from him. My mom probably intercepted them and burned them.

In any case, I'm not afraid of my mother. I'm afraid of what I'll do when I see her.

She was all I had left, and she let Gram take me away from the only home I'd ever known. Time hasn't healed that wound. Instead, time has armed me with enough anger to self-destruct and take her down with me if I have to.

Time has made me more like my father.

I inhale and redial.

“Black Rock.” The man sounds annoyed this time.

“Um. Does someone named Annette work there?”

“Not in more than a year, no.”

“Oh. Okay. Sorry.” I tug at one of the threads in my jeans. “Do you know where she might be now?”

The Greenwoods' house phone starts ringing, nearly drowning out the man's response. I stick a finger into one ear.

“…living over at Deer Run,” he says. “But that was more than a year ago, like I said.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Deer Run is a mobile community, located on the outskirts of Clearwater. It's got its own Walmart, which means my mother wouldn't have had to venture to Fayette, famous for its mega-store skid row.

I can't say I'm surprised Annette wound up there; you'd have to head farther north for the cozy complexes of one-bedroom apartments for rent. Around here there's just empty homes with
BANK OWNED
signs on the lawns, and trailer parks. Lots of trailer parks.

It's quiet downstairs in the Greenwoods' house with Maggie still in the bath. For once, maybe I can slip out without having to explain myself. I don't like lying to Maggie, but I'd rather die than tell her the truth, that my mother hasn't called, written, or come to see me once in the past ten years, and I don't even know for sure where she's living now.

There's a creaking on the stairs as I'm getting ready to leave. Maggie tightens her bathrobe and cocks her head at me.

“Are you leaving?” she asks.

“Just…out for a bit.”

“You know, if you won't let me drive you, Callie's bike is in the garage,” Maggie says. “She hasn't used it in years.”

“Thanks. That would be awesome.”

I detour out of the living room and make for the door off the kitchen instead. The sunflower bike she rode when we were kids hangs upside down from a rack on the garage ceiling. An adult-sized bike—baby blue and retro-looking—with a white basket is in the back corner, propped against the side of Rick's tool bench. A daddy longlegs skitters out of the basket when I touch the handlebars. I kick away the cobwebs on the wheels and walk the bike out of the garage and down the driveway.

I haven't been on a bike since I was a kid. I swing myself onto the seat, overshooting my landing and almost falling to the pavement. I really hope no one saw that.

They say “It's as easy as riding a bike” for a reason,
I remind myself as I wobble down the street, willing myself into a straight path. After several pumps of the pedals I'm steadier, but I do a practice lap around the block just because I don't want to die today.

The ache in my calves and breeze on the back of my neck wake me up instantly. I'm thrilled not to be walking anymore. I raise the gears and pump harder; the chain groans beneath me, and it occurs to me that I should have oiled it if Callie hasn't ridden in years.

The light at the corner of Main Street sneaks up on me, and I skid to a stop, an unsettling
pop
sounding below me. The street is empty, but I carefully wheel the bike onto the shoulder of the road to inspect it.