Within These Walls (22 page)

29

Saturday, April 3, 1982

Eleven Months, Eleven Days Before the Sacrament

A
VIS WAS DIGGING
in the vegetable garden with Sunnie and Robin—Shadow romping about the yard—when the topic came up.

Sunnie stabbed her fingers into a bed of peat moss and black soil, then let her head loll to the side like a rag doll’s and contemplated aloud: “I wonder when we’re gonna move on.”

That simple pondering nearly stopped Avis’s heart. There had been times when she, too, had wondered whether Jeffrey and the family would pack up what little belongings they owned and say it was time to go. But that was before the garden and the lovemaking and the various little improvements the boys had done to the house. Deacon and Noah had painted the window shutters. Kenzie had cleaned the dead leaves from the gutters and had been paying close attention to the landscaping. Surprisingly, the strangely frenetic boy had a soft spot for roses and spent his free time tending to a couple of old bushes close to the front of the house. Even Clover and Gypsy had pulled up the rugs and beaten them with brooms.

Those weren’t the actions of people who were intending on packing up and leaving anytime soon, and so Avis had stopped worrying
about it. At least up until the moment Sunnie suggested the idea wasn’t as impossible as Avis thought it to be.

To wonder meant to want, if only in some small way. Avis knew those types of yearnings were contagious. They would spread from person to person until, at last, everyone would be ready to bid Pier Pointe a fond adieu.

Sometimes she tried to imagine waking up to an empty house, no pills to dull the pain of loneliness—at least not until her next refill. If they wanted to kill her, an unannounced departure would leave her dead of a broken heart. All Jeff had to do to end her was disappear.

“Move on,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Where would we go?”
We,
because she couldn’t let them go without her.

Sunnie shrugged a little, then gave Robin a look as if searching for help. Robin frowned, unhappy with having to explain. “The pantry’s pretty sparse.”

It hadn’t taken long for Avis to burn through almost all her savings feeding ten people instead of one. That, and Shadow still had to eat. She was trying to stretch the money as far as it would go, hoping that the vegetable patch would help. But ten people plus a dog was a big number, one big happy family with an emphasis on
big
.

Her mind jumped to her dad in his fancy suit and shiny shoes. She’d tell him she was in trouble. Something about the car not working. Or a broken appliance. Or an unexpected vet visit. Something that would have him pulling out his wallet with a sigh, but nothing severe enough to garner too much attention. She didn’t like asking him for favors, but if it was a matter of either swallowing her pride or losing everyone, she’d choke it down and ask for seconds. Another sacrifice, another way for her to secure her place within the clan.

“My dad has money,” she said. “Just give me a few days.”

Sunnie and Robin looked at each other. Avis half expected them
to re-explain the fact that they weren’t supposed to talk to their old families anymore; that, really, Avis didn’t
have
a dad. Audra did. But this was a special case. This was for the good of all.

An hour later, Avis stood in front of the open pantry chewing her nails, trying to get up the nerve to call her father the way she had promised. Jeffrey sidled up to her and brushed his mouth against her ear.

“Don’t you dare,” he whispered. “You ask
him
and you compromise everything you’ve fixed about yourself.”

“But it’s for the good of everyone,” she argued. “A sacrifice . . .”

Jeff shook his head. “Relying on someone like that for help is as good as chaining yourself to their ankle.”

Except, wasn’t the house a form of reliance? It was costing her father money he could otherwise be collecting from a paying tenant. Unless, the way Jeff looked at it, after everything she had tolerated, her father allowing her to live there rent free was the least he could do. But she refused to give up on the idea so easily.

“He’s rich,” she explained. “I just need to make something up, something believable that won’t make him suspicious.”

Jeff turned Avis to face him and looked her square in the eyes. He was ready to protest, to tell her
no, absolutely not.

“I can’t lose you,” she said, her bottom lip catching a quiver. “I’ll leave everything behind and go with you, but what’s the point in that? What’s the point in living in tents and eating out of trash cans if we can have a house, a kitchen, a safe place for everyone to live? Are you going to make them go through that hardship? For what?”

“For you.”

His reply lit the ends of her nerves on fire. They hissed like Fourth of July sparklers, spit gold and silver flakes of flame across
her fluttering heart. He’d sacrifice it all, put the ones he loved out on the street for
her
.

Because she was important.

Because he didn’t want to use her.

For once in her life, she truly
mattered
; perhaps—dare she even think it?—more than he had ever thought she would.

Jeff pulled her into a tight embrace, the kind of hug you give someone to say thanks but no thanks.

“I won’t allow it,” he insisted. “We would rather never see you again than thrust you back into the life you’ve just escaped.”

Over the past few weeks, she had told him everything. The neglect as a child. The way her parents bought her off every Christmas and birthday. How her mother had screamed at her while still on the phone with the emergency dispatcher. The way her father had looked at her with muted disgust as she lay in the hospital, both of her wrists bandaged up like giant Q-tips. But she had also told Jeff that she wasn’t sure whether it had been her imagination or whether her parents truly did hold some sort of contempt for her. She wanted to believe it was just her illness manifesting those delusions of hatred and ill will. But as soon as she suggested that maybe her parents weren’t as bad as she had made them out to be, Jeffrey struck the idea down.

It’s not you, it’s them.

He used words like
manipulation
and
mind control
and
false love
. He told her that they had brainwashed her into believing they were good despite her obvious knowledge that they were anything but. He brought up Stockholm syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, codependency. All his points were valid. Everything he said made sense.

“I forbid it,” he said. “The moment you start asking for money, they’re going to wonder what’s going on.”

Avis knew her father was impulsive. At times his anger seemed to have no bounds. He was the type to act first and consider the consequences later. There was no doubt in her mind that, if he did discover Jeff and the others living in the house he owned, it would end in a screaming match. She would storm off into the unknown and her father would bid her good riddance. And while Avis wasn’t fond of her dad, it wasn’t the way she wanted it to play out. She wanted him to fade into the shadows of her past rather than see him again for one more heaving, ugly fight.

“Then we’ll have a family meeting,” she said, determined. “We’ll explain the situation and we’ll all go into Pier Pointe and start picking up job applications. There are ten of us, so if only five of us score work, we’ll be fine, right? Even part-time work will pay for groceries.”

Jeff exhaled. His wary smile gave him away. He was keeping a secret. “We’re drifters,” he finally said. “At least that’s what we call ourselves, because ‘drifter’ sounds better than ‘vagrant.’ But at the end of the day, that’s what we are. We live off the land, off people’s generosity. But sometimes the land doesn’t provide what we need and sometimes generosity runs low. What we’re not, Avis, are blue collar workers. We don’t toil for money, and we don’t spend our lives scrambling toward our own unhappiness. It’s against everything we stand for. Money is the root of all evil.”

Avis couldn’t help but narrow her eyes. “So what does that mean?” she asked.

“It means that we do what we have to do to get by.”

“But what does that
mean
? You’ll at least have the courtesy of telling me that.”

“Some breaking and entering here and there. Nothing serious.”

Those two words made her body tingle with alarm.
Theft?
Jeff sensed her dismay. She watched the muscles in his jaw tense.

“Being part of the family means you do what needs to be done without compromising our beliefs,” he said. “Most of the time, we don’t even have to break in. You’d be surprised by how many people leave their doors or windows unlocked. We go in and take some food—nothing they’ll miss. That was the way we kept ourselves fed for years, and it looks like that’s what we’re going to have to do again.”

“Did you ever get caught?”

“We had a few close calls, but we never got busted. Even if the home owners would get back earlier than expected and call the cops, there wasn’t much to report. We never really stole anything. I mean, one time Noah and Kenzie decided to take someone’s car for a joy ride. I couldn’t blame them. It was a Porsche.” Avis gaped at him. “But they returned it ten minutes later, not a scratch on it. The owner reported the thing stolen, but by the time the cops showed up the car was back in the driveway, keys in the ignition, an extra few miles on the odometer.” He gave her a boyish grin, like it had been the most innocent thing in the world. “It’s partly why we move around so much. People notice a big group like us, especially if we’re out on the streets or living in tents.”

But now they had a safe house. They even had a car. It was no Porsche, but at least Avis owned it. She certainly wouldn’t be reporting it stolen if someone decided to take it for a drive. As far as Pier Pointe was concerned, it was the polar opposite of paranoid. This was a laid-back coastal town, ripe for the picking. And they’d expect
her
to pick it with them. Another initiation. Another way to prove she was worth their time.

“Come on,” he said, his fingers squeezing her shoulders in encouragement. “You can hold your own, can’t you? You’re more than just some fancy congressman’s daughter. Or are you going to run back to Daddy every time the going gets tough?”

Avis squared her shoulders and steadied her gaze onto his. He was right.

It’s not you, it’s them.

She took a breath and gave him a slight nod.

“I know someone who doesn’t lock their doors,” she said. “And I know when she isn’t home.”

30

T
HE BOX OF
photos that Echo brought over was like something out of a daydream, a time capsule that transported Lucas from the present to 1983.

The photographs made him feel like a Peeping Tom. It was as though he’d stumbled on a family’s most intimate artifacts, inspecting them with a voyeuristic pleasure.

There was twenty-five-year-old Nolan Wood with his startling blue eyes and childlike naïveté. Derrick Fink, with his disturbing intensity and eccentric style, tipping his cowboy hat toward the camera. Georgia Jansen, also known as Gypsy, was the dark-haired girl who didn’t seem to know how to smile; a striking contrast to a nineteen-year-old dewy-faced Laura Morgan with her red hair and wide-spaced eyes. Kenneth Kennedy didn’t look like much more than a class clown, pulling faces or striking poses whenever someone pointed the camera his way. There was Roxanna Margold, who accented her plainness behind stringy hair and homely clothes. The baby of the group, fifteen-year-old Shelly Riordan, fit her group-given nickname of Sunnie by brightening up every photo with a wide, sunshine smile. Chloe Sears, on the other hand, wore a dead-eyed, drugged-out stare.

And then there was Audra Snow, as ordinary as Roxanna and blond like Chloe and Shelly—an unremarkable girl who had stumbled headlong into notoriety.
Someone’s Virginia.

He spent hours flipping through the sixty or so photos Echo had stuffed into that old envelope. A picture was worth a thousand words, and the images were telling him a novel’s worth of information. Certain members of the group were always clustered together. Others stood in certain ways when Halcomb was in the shots. Audra was always at Jeffrey’s elbow like an obedient dog. Foresight was a magical thing, having the ability to turn the most innocuous snapshot into a picture of imminent doom. Jeff’s arm around Audra’s shoulders was a dark promise of things to come. The hope Lucas saw in her eyes turned his stomach.

He grabbed for the coffeepot at the corner of his desk and tipped it to pour a cup, but found it was empty. It took him a minute to step away from his desk to get more water; when he finally did, he was struck by just how late it was. Yet another day had faded to a bruised purple. The house felt empty in the twilight. In the kitchen, a half-eaten pizza crust sat on an abandoned plate. Jeanie never did like crusts. Lucas smirked at the habit his daughter had yet to outgrow. He slid his coffeepot onto the island next to her plate and turned back to the living room, then headed up the stairs.

He poked his head in Jeanie’s room. She was in bed and, from the look of it, had been there for quite some time. She’d draped her favorite blouse over the back of her desk chair. He hadn’t even noticed she had been wearing it earlier.
Ah, shit.
That’s how miserable of a father he had become. He quietly closed the door behind him.

Downstairs, he ate cold pizza in silence, feeling like an asshole for having been so transfixed by the pictures Echo had brought. He’d made Jeanie an offer he had immediately retracted. Caroline had warned him about that—
take her into town, don’t lock yourself up.
She had been speaking from experience, having suffered through his bouts of nonstop work. When Lucas found himself in “the zone,” he may as well have been an astronaut traveling at the speed of light.
He stayed the same while everyone around him aged a hundred years in a day.

Washing down his pizza with a swig of beer, he was just about to head back to his study—the driving impulse to continue staring at those photos and rereading old articles impossible to refuse—when the sound of the front door shutting roused him from his late-evening daze.

Lucas started at the sound of the latch strike clicking inside the frame.

His pulse quickened as he left his plate and half-drained beer on the kitchen table. Peering into the living room, he squinted to see better, his hands balled into nervous fists.

There were a few good reasons to leave this house behind. Jeanie knowing its history was first and foremost. But his nagging suspicion that there were people milling about in the darkness was another.

Lucas crossed the living room, paused beside the front door. It was shut tight, dead bolted in place. Pressing his hands flat against the wood, he looked out the peephole. Nothing.

Except for the sound of two girls laughing behind his back.

Lucas’s eyes widened. He veered around, his gaze immediately darting to the upstairs hall. It was dark. Jeanie’s door was closed.
She’s asleep. You
know
she’s asleep.
But before he could make a move toward the kitchen to investigate the laughter, it was gone. There one second, gone the next, as quick and disjointed as a momentary hallucination.

And what he was seeing
had
to be a hallucination, because he found himself standing at the top of the two brick foyer steps, his attention transfixed.

By some dark magic, the kitchen table was now dead center in the living room. Four chairs arranged perfectly around it. His pizza plate and beer bottle exactly where he had left it. Only, somehow, halfway across the house.