CHAPTER

31

A BLAST OF wind followed Jamie inside the trailer. It rustled the papers spread out on the kitchen table where Loyal was adding up columns in his ledger and working to empty a quart of Jack Daniels. He said, “Goddamn,” and she hurried to shut the door.

He picked up a postcard that had blown on the floor, folded it in half, and stuck it in his shirt pocket. The map he liked to look at sometimes—creased to show the eastern coast—sat next to the ledger.

“Get another postcard from Mr. Bobby?”

“Not your business.” He folded the map and stuck it in the back of the ledger.

She turned away to hide her smile. Over the years that guy had probably sent a hundred postcards and Jamie had read them all. They had their own language, nicknames, a bunch of code words that hinted at their old days together. Inside the fridge she found bologna and a tub of mac ’n’ cheese, made a roll-up with it, and ate it over the sink. “Why don’t you have friends that live in town?”

“I got plenty of friends.”

“No, you don’t. You got the judge, the guy in Key West, and that lady friend.” She rarely mentioned the woman from the Piggly Wiggly, but she and Toby always joked about how Loyal had been screwing her in the back seat of his truck for God knows how many years. She didn’t understand this man and it nagged at her. How had her life come to such shit in just nineteen years? She had gained nothing by keeping quiet.

He stared at the ledger, wrote down some numbers.

“I’m just saying. You’ve lived in this town your whole life. I got more friends than you.”

He looked up from the ledger. “Maybe I been busy. You ever think of that? Huh? Maybe I been raising two kids weren’t my own. Maybe I been working real hard for ten years to keep the two of you out of foster care.”

Foster care. Whenever Jamie heard those words she remembered the couple that had wanted them, but when she tried to conjure their image all she saw was a green lawn, a white picket fence, and the vague shape of two adults. “What’s so bad about foster care?”

“What’s so bad about it? Kids get fucked in foster care. Literally. Don’t you know that? They get separated, farmed out for labor, not fed right.”

“What are you talking about? That shit doesn’t happen anymore.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

“But there were people who wanted to adopt us.”

He pointed at her. “You, Goddamnit, were raised by family. Not strangers! Do you know how much I gave up to stay here and keep the two of you? No, you don’t. You have no idea.”

“Staying here? You grew up here. Your life was here way before me and Toby.”

“I was moving down to Key West. Had it all planned out. Instead your mother goes to jail and leaves the two of you to me. Drug-stealing bitch. And whatever you think you know you can be sure you’re wrong. You know nothing about the whole thing.”

“I know you got a lot of stupid pride. Probably why you run so low on friends.”

This seemed to hurt him and she felt a little good about that. He rubbed his eyes like his vision was blurring, like he did when he’d had too much whiskey. It could go either way now; she’d get another backhand or he’d stumble to his bedroom and sleep it off. Not for the first time she imagined ducking the slap, catching him off balance, and her coming around with a blow to the back of his head. He started to stand and she flinched, but then he leaned back in his chair and shook his head.

“Keating is not my friend. I paid him a great deal of money to keep the two of you out of the system. A great deal. And I never took a dime of that welfare.”

“What? We sleep on camping cots in a storage room!” He was deluded, telling himself he’d done a good job, being so damn proud. “We could’ve used some welfare.”

“You had enough and you were raised by family.” He pointed at her. “And you know where you came from.”

She should’ve run when she’d had the chance. What was the good of knowing where you came from if you came from shit? Not knowing had to be better. “Yeah. I know where I come from. My father’s dead and my mother’s a thief.” And my uncle’s a con man.

“Welcome to the real world. It’s about time you grew up.”

He offered her the bottle of whiskey and she drank from it.

“Did you see Toby?” he asked.

“Yeah. I saw him.”

“How’d he take it?”

“What the hell do you care?”

He stared at the bottle for a moment. “Huh. Maybe I don’t. What I do care about is tomorrow. Make sure you get some sleep, be sharp for the game.”

He started to stand but a car turned into the driveway out front, its lights shining briefly on the wall behind him. The lights went off and a woman stepped out of the car and into the porch light.

“Goddamn.” Jamie said, “What’s Jilkins want?”

The only reason the woman would show up unannounced at this hour was if Toby was in trouble. Opening the front door, Jamie had the urge to flee down the street. Instead she met Jilkins’s eyes and asked, “What happened?”

“Toby’s been moved to medical detention.” Jilkins climbed the last step and stomped the sludge off her shoes.

“Why, was there a fight?” The bologna turned inside Jamie’s stomach.

Jilkins came inside. “No. It wasn’t like that. No one thought he was a danger to himself, so the guards left him alone. I’m sorry to have to put it so bluntly, but he tried to hang himself.”

Jamie’s mind flashed with a vision of her brother dangling from metal bars, loose-limbed and dead. She braced herself against the wall. “Is he dead?”

“No. He’s not dead, but he’s hurt.”

Loyal sat at the kitchen table, mute and seemingly unfazed. Jamie knew by the look in his eye that he wasn’t just done with Toby—he was done with both of them. He pushed himself to his feet and thudded down the hallway to his room.

Ms. Jilkins led Jamie to the couch and got her a glass of water. It was a small act but the woman’s kindness was almost too much to handle. She swallowed some water, felt the sting of tears. The burnt hole on the couch, the one Toby had picked at until it had grown to the size of a fist, was right there at her fingertips. She picked up a loose thread, felt the room begin to fall away, heard a warm buzz in her ear and realized Jilkins was talking.

“I see it all the time. Kids like Toby are like a tidal wave that just rolls over you. Parents think they’re creating something better than themselves, something beautiful and wondrous, but it isn’t like that. Kids are their own form of grief—if they don’t pull you under, they show you what you’re made of.”

In his bedroom, Loyal dropped his boots, one after the other, on the floor. She heard the clunk of the lid of his lockbox drop to the floor. He’d be snoring soon and Jamie hated him even more for that.

“How? What did he use?” Jamie asked.

Jilkins sank into the couch. The movement rippled Jamie’s brain and the room spun. She looked at the woman’s face, needing the steady sound of her voice, but lamplight fell across her face, making it look like a skull.

“I don’t—” Jilkins halted. “I don’t have all the details.”

What did it matter anyway? Shoestrings, sheets, his ripped-up T-shirt—there were only so many possibilities. “How bad is he?”

“His windpipe is crushed. It isn’t good, but he’ll recover.”

Her thoughts spun out as if she had no control over them. Toby in that jail cell, his face red, his eyes distant and vacant. Why hadn’t she just taken his hand? “Can I see him?”

Jilkins seemed so far away, but when Jamie tried, she was able to focus on the shadows falling on her face, the familiar sound of her voice.

“No. He’s an injured minor in custody. I’m sorry, but the only people the police will allow in will be a parent or a guardian.” The woman exhaled. She seemed deflated. Her lips trembled slightly, and Jamie wondered how much of this she felt. She’d known them going on eight years.

“He’s heavily sedated, anyway, and on a breathing machine. And he’s going to need months of rehab.” Jilkins looked at the ceiling. “I always worried something like this might happen. Don’t get me wrong. Toby is a beautiful kid, but he was always in motion, never at peace, and the cards were always stacked against him.”

Were they? No, not always, but it would seem that way to Ms. Jilkins, someone who had only seen the hard years.

“I wanted better for you two,” Ms. Jilkins said. “But all I could do was keep an eye on you. I never understood why the judge decided to leave you here when there was that family waiting for a boy and girl.” She glanced darkly down the hallway. “I mean, look at this place. Your uncle was clearly unprepared to raise children. Even with all that government assistance. It seems like that money would have gone further than this.”

Jamie had never thought of Jilkins as having kept an eye on them. She only seemed to come around to cause problems, but now Jamie wondered if she’d had it wrong. Maybe Jilkins had come around only when problems came up. Jamie had never told Toby about the couple who had wanted them. Foster care might’ve made the difference. Maybe he wouldn’t have been such a bully if they’d gone to live with a real family. Maybe they would’ve gotten adopted, gotten a different name, grown up without the Elders curse.

“I mean, why didn’t he go all the way and grant Loyal custody?” Ms. Jilkins continued. “Why keep Family Services involved?”

“Loyal would never have accepted a dime of welfare.”

“It wasn’t welfare. It was Social Security benefits for your father’s dependents. Once your mother went to, uh … away, your uncle got those payments. I filed the forms for you and Toby myself. That’s why I wanted you to get in college right away. Those benefits run out at twenty-one if you aren’t in school.”

Jamie stared at her hands as the pieces slid together in her brain. I paid him a great deal of money to keep the two of you out of the system. Their benefits had been funneled straight to Keating’s reelection campaigns while she’d lived most of her life feeling like a burden, like a criminal for needing Pop-Tarts and pencils. Loyal was deluded saying it was family duty and pride. It wasn’t. He protected his gambling operations by bribing the judge and Keating kept Family Services involved to keep Loyal in line. To keep the donations coming in. She thought the word out loud. “Donations.”

Ms. Jilkins looked at Jamie blankly. “What donations?”

“Never mind.” Jamie looked around the trailer at the broken windows, the ruined couch. She’d been a fool. He’d been so enraged when he found out she’d flunked that first semester and now she understood why. The benefits. Pride had nothing to do with it.

“You poor kids.” Ms. Jilkins picked up a framed photo of Toby off the coffee table, his high school portrait, and ran her fingers over his face. “None of this would’ve happened if your mother hadn’t taken that prescription.”

Jamie was tired of hearing how her mother was a thief. She took the photo from Jilkins and wiped the glass with her sleeve. Another smaller photo sat in front of the portrait. Toby and Jamie about the time of their dad’s funeral, her arm draped over his shoulders, his eyes shut, wearing a goofy smile.

She’d never meant to leave him on his own but she had. All those nights she’d spent with Jack, ignoring Toby, thinking he was finally big enough to take care of himself. Without knowing when she’d done it, she had taken on the responsibility to see him grow up. But Jack had come along and she’d gotten distracted. She tried to remember her last conversation with Toby. Was she the last person to have talked to him or seen him? Why hadn’t she been kinder?

Jilkins pulled a tissue out of her pocket, blew her nose. “He must have been desperate to rob that man.”

The words banged inside Jamie’s head. “He didn’t rob anyone.”

“The police think he did.”

“And you believe them?”

“Why else would he try to take his own life, Jamie? People get hurt in robberies. For all we know, that man is dead.”

“It didn’t happen that way.”

Goddamn. Had Toby confessed? He’d been so worried about Phoebe’s happiness after Jamie told him about Keating. It had been stupid to implicate Phoebe while Toby was locked up. He might have tried to take the rap for this thing just to close down the investigation. But Jamie couldn’t tell Jilkins any of that.

“The man’s been missing for days.” Jilkins rubbed the back of her head and sighed. “But, of course, you know your brother best.”

Ms. Jilkins yawned and Jamie saw the dark circles beneath her eyes. “It’s late. You should go.”

“Will you be okay? I hate to leave you like this.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Really. I’ll call if I need anything.”

“Try and get some sleep.” Ms. Jilkins picked up her keys and purse. At the door, she said, “I’m just a phone call away.”

The lights of her car flicked over the walls as she backed out of the driveway. Jamie sat for a while staring at the hole in the couch, the dismal walls, her brother’s picture.

She couldn’t settle. She walked to the front door and then back to the kitchen, where she poured some water over the dried-up potted ivy on the windowsill. Every noise spooked her: the fridge compressor kicking on, a squirrel scuttling across the roof, a pinecone falling on the front porch. This place could never be her home again. She texted Jack hoping he was still at the store, turned on the TV to drown out the silence.

In the back room she saw that Toby had left in a rage. The window over his cot had been kicked out. Shards of glass were on the floor and his pillowcase. A draft blew in through the opening.

Diesel engines idled in the street outside. Yellow utility truck lights pulsed against the night. The neighborhood dogs barked in their kennels. A worker climbed into a cherry picker as three men watched, their faces lit by intermittent lights, their hard hats casting long shadows on the road. The generator kicked on as the truck lifted a worker up to repair the streetlight.

Toby’s muddy sneakers, laces broken, stuck out from under the bed where she made him keep them because they stank. His clothes were where he’d left them—thrown on the floor, slung over the metal footboard, half jammed under his pillow. His science book was sticking out from under his cot, gathering dust. His Game Boy sat on the dresser, grimed with Doritos cheese muck. She ripped the Army poster off the wall and tore it in half. She untied the length of rope he used to practice knots and stuffed it under his bed.

Inside the dresser, she found the wallet she’d given him for Christmas, the one he didn’t use because he loved the one Phoebe had given him for his eighth birthday. He used the new one to save things in, the one letter his mother had written from prison, pictures he loved. Jamie knew them all by heart: Toby on his first day of school, his skinny arms wrapped around a gigantic book bag, refusing to smile for the camera; the pocket-sized version of his seventh-grade portrait. He looked just like their uncle with his hair slicked and combed back, though Jamie would never mention that to his face. A snapshot of him blowing out birthday candles at the kitchen table, Phoebe sitting next to him smoking a cigarette. Probably the last cake she ever baked.

A square of plastic fell out of the wallet. A condom, the kind the science teachers handed out on AIDS awareness days. She almost wanted to cry, wondering if he’d ever had the chance to use one, if he would have even bothered, or if he just liked the possibilities that came with keeping one in his wallet.

The last photo was of her and Toby. He was laughing maniacally while her mouth gaped and she looked wildly at the space above the camera. Phoebe had taken the picture just after he’d poured ice water down the back of Jamie’s shirt. She’d hated him in that moment, hated Phoebe, too, because it had been her idea. It was always like that with the two of them.

The Elders clan time bomb ticked in his DNA, and Phoebe had done nothing to keep him safe. Always in on it, always encouraging his pranks. Like she didn’t know all that would lead a boy like Toby straight to juvie or the ICU.

On the TV in the outer room, Lena Bangor was on the local news. The newscaster said charges were pending against a juvenile suspect, already in custody. Lena held up a photograph of her father, announcing a reward for information leading to his whereabouts.

How basic was it, this need to bury the dead?

She picked up Loyal’s empty whiskey bottle and started to throw it in the garbage, then set it back on the table. If she didn’t get out of here now, her future was more of this, more of this place, more cleaning up after him. She sat in his chair at the kitchen table, opened the ledger. On the front pages he’d written the locations of every coin pusher, slot machine, and fake lottery ticket dispenser. Thirty-seven locations.

There was another set of numbers in the back. A column with her name and one with Toby’s along with monthly deposits into a checking account. Over one hundred entries. Enough money to have hired a team of lawyers for Toby.

A bank statement sat on top of the stack of mail she’d brought in. She opened it, read the balance. Twenty cents. There were only two transactions. The day after the state’s deposit had come there was a corresponding withdrawal. The bastard had given every cent of it to Keating and, according to what Jilkins had told her, he’d been giving Keating that money every month for eight years. All that money, while she and Toby had nothing.

She went into Loyal’s room. He was passed out facedown, one arm dangling off the side of the bed, the latest postcard from Bobby showing under his pillow. The streetlight blinked on and lit the room in a yellow haze. His pack of cigarettes and an overflowing ashtray sat near where his hand rested on the floor. He’d tossed his belt on a chair.

His shotgun stood in the corner next to a box of shells. She kicked over the box and the shells scattered across the floor. He didn’t budge. She picked up one, loaded the shotgun, and felt the weight of it in her hands. A sweat broke out on the back of her neck. His sleeping head fit neatly in the shotgun’s sights. Jamie stood there panting.

This was exactly what the world expected from her, the Elders girl gone bad. She wavered. A plan began taking shape. A new idea. She decided on it. Lowered the gun. He snored and mumbled something in his sleep.

She laid the gun down on the bed next to him where he would wake up next to it in the morning. In the outer room, she found Keating’s cell phone in the bottom of her backpack, did what she needed to do, and packed up.