Probably should’ve told Aunt Midge what I’m doing, seeing as I hate lying to the woman, but she’s like an endless vacuum of worry. Besides, I need the time to process everything. Between Giulia and Mr. Goodman, my head is spinning like a hurricane. Snippets of conversation stand out like a word cloud, but none of it makes sense to me.
You don’t trust Lucian?
He has asked me for things. To cut him.
Tell me what you know about Lucian Blackthorne. A man like Lucian Blackthorne can’t afford the blood on his hands with the kind of past he has.
I want to believe that these are all as much rumor as everything else on this island, and that I shouldn’t trust any of it any more than I trusted the idea that he kept a refrigerator of human blood, but my head is swimming in lies and facts that flit past like quick minnows in the shallow. I can’t grasp anything, and the throbbing ache in my temples is a migraine about ready to wreak havoc on my skull.
Crossing the neighbor’s front yard, I finally arrive home, and jog up the stairs to the front door. Locked.
She finally started locking up? Only took the death threat of a drug dealer.
I fish for the key I stuffed in my pocket earlier, and push inside to find the house still and dark. As much as I try to shake it off, there will always be a small part of me that feels uneasy without a knife in my pocket.
When I came to live with Aunt Midge, she insisted that I leave the knife at home, because a fifth grader carrying around a pocketknife at school is a no-no. We compromised, and I began sleeping with it under my pillow. Aunt Midge didn’t particularly like the idea, but that’s the thing about growing up as a kid from the streets--people treated me a little differently. I got to eat lunch in the library, while my classmates played at recess. I got out of gym in middle school because I didn’t want to change in front of the other girls, and of course, my counselor assumed something had happened to me to make me that way, so he excused me from the elective. In high school, nobody gave me a hard time, when I skipped the occasional class to sleep in, or read at the park, because I had decent grades, and at least I wasn’t plotting to shoot up the place.
I’ve always been, and felt, different thanks to my mother, who gifted me with ten years of constantly having to defend myself against whatever predicament she got us into. It doesn’t go away, either. The instincts. The edginess. I feel it even now, padding through the empty house toward the attic. Like something might jump out at me any second.
Tugging the hook on the attic door, I yank it down and slide out the ladder. I can’t remember the last time I ventured up here. Years ago, it was a place where I hid away with books to read, undisturbed.
The small, cramped space smells like damp wood and mothballs, and my muscles twitch at the possibility that I might stumble upon a small critter up here.
I tug the chain, and a naked bulb casts a dull light over the room. Most of the stuff in here belongs to my grandparents. Old dresses and costume jewelry, tucked away in wooden crates and bins. I head toward the back, where Aunt Midge’s old trophies for softball are set out on a shelf above a stack of cardboard boxes. I pull the first one down and rifle through pictures, and posters of bands from the eighties sporting ratted-out hair and endless spandex.
One particular picture catches my attention, and I lift it from the stack. My mom and Aunt Midge. My mom must’ve been fifteen, or so, seeing as she wasn’t pregnant. That I can tell anyway.
While living on the streets, she didn’t keep any pictures from home, so I never really got to see what she looked like as a teenager, aside from the couple of school pictures hung on the walls downstairs.
Long, red hair hangs loose around her shoulders in lazy curls, and her bright eyes are framed by thick, dark lashes that look like she’s wearing mascara. She had an exotic beauty, and paired with her slim, developed figure, it makes sense to me that she’d draw the stares of hardened fishermen on this island. Like bagging their own mermaid.
Tossing it back into the box, I continue my search, and after about ten minutes, I find the yearbook buried at the bottom.
Any pictures your mother is in.
I flip to the index and search for her name, finding three pages where she’s listed. The first is her yearbook picture, in which she smiles between long, red, side-swept bangs. So young and vibrant back then. The second is a picture of her in choir, and in it, she wears a long, purple gown, with a black stole to match the school colors. The third is a National Honor Society picture.
I had no idea my mother did well in school. She never talked about it much, and neither did Aunt Midge. I stare down at her, where she stands amongst a small group on risers, and I scan the other faces, coming to a stop on one very familiar.
Holy shit.
Mayor Boyd stands at the opposite side of my mother, that too-white smile stretched across his face. The darkness of his hair puts him somewhere around forty, I’m guessing, which would make him the only adult in the photo. A mentor, I bet.
I flip back to the index to look up his name, and find him on a few pages, as well. A staff picture whose caption is ‘Government’, the National Honor Society picture, and a third: track, which he apparently coached. Below the picture is a list of names, and one catches my eye. Not pictured: Jennifer Quinn.
The woman in these pictures is nothing like the one I’ve come to know. It’s like looking at her doppelganger, or something. As I tuck the book under my arm, I catch the dimming light through the porthole window, telling me it’ll be dark soon.
I climb back down the ladder, fold it up, and push the door closed. When I spin around, a figure is waiting in the living room, and I let out a shriek.
My mother sits on the couch, flicking her cigarette into the ashtray on the coffee table. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Midge … she doesn’t know I’m here.”
“How’d you get in?”
“She gave me a key.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out what looks like a wad of cash, which she holds out to me. “I just wanted to drop this off.”
I don’t accept it, but keep my feet planted where I’m at.
She drops the cash on the table. “Just thought it might help out.”
“Now, you’re suddenly interested in helping out?”
She bites her lip and scratches her head with her cigarette-toting hand. “How you been? Heard you, uh … got a job working at Blackthornes.”
Instead of answering, I let her keep on with her one-sided conversation. I have no interest in telling her anything.
“Midge says you been spending a lot of time with Lucian Blackthorne.” A smile creeps across her lips as she raises her cigarette. “Like mother, like daughter, eh?”
“I’m nothing like you.”
“You’re more like me than you know,” she says around a mouthful of smoke that she blows off to the side. Her gaze falls to the bracelet on my wrist, and I’d be willing to bet she’s calculating how much coke she’d score for what it’s worth. “That’s a whole lot of power for a girl so young. Be careful with a man like that.”
As if she has any room to advise me on men. “So, what is this? Redemption? You think a little cash is going to make up for dumping me on her doorstep?”
“I’m … just trying to make things right. Get my shit together.”