CHAPTER

38

“THERE’S ONE MORE thing I need from you,” Garcia said once they were inside his car.

“I need to stop by the hospital and see my brother first,” Jamie said.

Garcia gave a glacial sigh and shook his head no. “There’s a family waiting for their father and husband.”

“I just gave you the biggest arrest this town has ever seen and you just took my last dollar.”

“What you gave me was a list of illegal gambling sites. Your uncle just got arrested and if he has any information on Bangor he’ll play it right away. I’m guessing you have a very short window of time to get out from under whatever part you played in this.”

“All I need is ten minutes.”

Garcia turned south on Main and pulled into the hospital’s emergency drive. He got a letter out of his jacket pocket and held it open for Jamie to see. “Sign this right now or I can’t help you.” The car doors clicked locked.

She pushed the paper away and tried the handle. “I’ll be right back.”

“You aren’t getting out of this car without signing this first.” He handed her a pen.

“Christ, Garcia. What is this?” Jamie took the form and saw her name on the first line.

“This makes you an official informant in your uncle’s illegal activities and lets me give you protection and keep you anonymous in an investigation. Whatever your involvement was, I know you were a pawn to these people. Sign this form and I got your back.”

There was that word again: protection.

“But Keating would never agree to something that helps me. Where’d you get this?”

“He has no influence with the state’s gaming commission, and Bangor’s disappearance seems connected. It’s too suspicious. This is their jurisdiction now.”

Jamie sank in her seat. “This makes me an official snitch?”

“That form puts you on the right side of things and is likely to keep you out of jail. The courts tend to take illegal gambling operations seriously. Sign the bottom line.”

“Is this how you deal with your own daughter? Because it probably pisses her off.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I never had children.”

She didn’t see another option. He was offering protection and, real or not, no one else seemed to even care. It was her only play. She took the pen and signed her name.

He unlocked the doors and pulled a lighter from his pocket. “You got till I finish this cigarette.”

A cop was stationed outside the ICU and told her she wasn’t allowed inside. Through the glass wall she saw Phoebe sitting next to Toby’s bed, holding his hand, her clunky white sneakers sticking out beneath her ridiculous high-water jeans. Except for the single tube protruding from his mouth, Toby looked like he was sleeping off an all-nighter. Jamie tapped on the window and Phoebe came outside.

“How is he?”

“His eyes opened when I took his hand. I think he might’ve smiled at me.” Phoebe’s eyes glistened. “The doctor is optimistic, but the nurse said he’ll be in county rehab and it will be weeks before he’ll be able to talk.” She lowered her voice. “Come on, let’s get away from this cop.”

The two of them went to the vending area for whatever the snack machine had in it. Jamie sank onto a plastic chair near the window, stared at the dingy hospital walls while Phoebe dropped coins into the coffee machine.

“Interesting thing you’ve done with your eye makeup,” Phoebe said, and Jamie bristled.

What did she have in common with this woman? Love for a self-destructive boy? DNA? A mutual fate? Neither of them had ever had the freedom to make their own choices in life, and they’d fought back as best they could, with a tendency toward theft. That’s what they had in common. That’s what she’d inherited. She didn’t want to be near her mother, the source of her dark side, but she wanted answers.

“Why did you steal back then? How was that so much more important than playing it straight, staying out of jail so you could take care of your kids?” The question came out angry and she hated how it made her sound like a child.

“That was a long time ago.”

“Seems like nothing’s changed.”

“That’s not fair.”

“You’re leaving here without explaining anything. I might never even see you again.”

Phoebe tilted her head and turned away. “It was hard to make ends meet, you know. Your dad didn’t leave any insurance and I was broke. Toby got a bad fever and I took him to a walk-in clinic. It was six months after your dad died and I hadn’t filled out the paperwork for Medicaid yet. When the nurse found out I had left you home alone, she threatened to call Family Services. They handed me a bottle of antibiotics for Toby and I snuck past the front desk without paying. They wanted two-hundred and eighty dollars for one bottle of antibiotics! Next day a cop comes knocking on my door with an arrest warrant. There were other misdemeanors, bad checks, petty stuff. Back then I made one mistake after another. I was already on probation. The DA worked out a deal to get me a reduced sentence if I pled guilty and saved the town the cost of a trial. I knew Loyal would take you two in until I got out, so I took the deal.”

It took a moment for that to register, and when it did, Jamie’s voice was not much more than a whisper. “Antibiotics? That’s what you stole? A bottle of pills for Toby?”

It had never occurred to her that Phoebe might have stolen drugs to help one of her kids. Jamie had just assumed oxy, and in eight years no one had said a thing that made her think differently. “No one told me.”

“Yeah, well. I’m sure Loyal spun it to make me look like a bitch. But you were a kid, and people? People believe what they hear.”

Jamie and Toby had never talked about their mother stealing drugs. Despite small-town rumors, she’d hoped to keep that one thing from him so he’d grow up believing in his mother’s innocence and see himself in that same light. She’d hoped to get that one thing right. But it had been a stupid plan because she herself had never believed. All she knew was that she’d been abandoned and that made her angry. Angry enough to assume the worst and never question it.

Phoebe handed Jamie a cup of coffee. “You hungry? They got chocolate chip.” She dropped more coins in the machine.

“But eight years? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, prison was rough. I made the wrong friends, got punished for things I did and framed for things I didn’t. Got into fights. Pissed off the guards. They added months, years, before I figured out how to keep out of trouble. Some people get along inside, some don’t.” She reached down to retie a shoelace. “It took me a long time to learn. Strange, though, I almost miss it. It’s not so different outside. I work hard all day, six days a week, but all I got either place is a meal and a cot. Except one thing. Out here I got at least one kid that needs me.”

Phoebe’s smile seemed defeated. “It’s okay, Jamie. We’re family. We don’t have to be friends.”

Jamie thought about that night she and Toby had gotten picked up as runaways—the steel grid in the back seat of the police cruiser, the tidal wave of anxiety. The sight of those bars still left her breathless. She couldn’t imagine living inside them. She handed the coffee back to her mother. Her mother stared out the window, her reflection stark and plain. It was frustrating, this anger, and never being able to place blame.

“But, that man—”

“It was self-defense. Jesus. He was angry, drunk. He recognized me from the poker game. He lunged at me and, I don’t know. I jumped and my gun went off. Then there was a bloody hole in his stomach and he was dead. You could tell from his eyes, the way he stared at the ceiling. It was horrible. Keating went ballistic and I knew right then I was screwed. So, I took the ring, because I knew I would need money if ran. But it was Keating who started the whole thing, getting him to bet that stupid ring.”

Phoebe shivered and took the chair opposite the window. Neither of them would ever be completely free of the images from that night.

“Do you know what it’s like? To think your life has taken a turn for the better, that you might have a future? And then watch it fall apart because two men get into a pissing contest? Keating’s a powerful man in this town. Do you really think I could tell him no? He changed my life completely once and he could have done it again. He’d been nice to me, gentlemanly. I let myself hope that maybe I’d found a home, a real home. I let myself think that for a whole day and half of one night. I wanted to get back a little bit of what I’d had with your father. Is that so much to ask?”

Jamie’s memory of those days existed in the form of snapshots. Her mother and dad and Toby at a picnic. Her parents sitting together on the couch watching reruns. Briefly, they’d had it all. Jamie put her hand on her mother’s arm, surprised by how thin it was. It startled them both, this sudden intimacy, the small bones of the woman’s forearm feeling like a wing Jamie could twist and break. She pulled her hand back. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

Phoebe shook a cigarette out of her pack, said nothing.

“You can’t smoke in here.”

Phoebe lit it anyway. Silence hung between them, thick as the smoke clouding her mother’s face.

“I never lied to you. Your whole life, I never told you one lie.” Phoebe pocketed the lighter. “I’ve done a lot of bad things, but the one thing I never did was lie to you. That’s what happened that night. You decide to believe it or not.”

An aide pushed an empty gurney around the corner and Phoebe crushed the cigarette under her sneaker. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m not leaving, not now, anyway.”

“You’re staying?”

Her mother stared at the floor, her face stern and gaunt with something it took a moment to recognize. Determination. Between the bad luck and the bad choices, the woman was down to nothing but her own free will.

“The cop said they’ll let me visit him for fifteen minutes, twice a day. I’m broke but I still have my job, my apartment. When I got out of prison I thought I was getting a second chance to get things right. But I was wrong. This is my chance. My only chance.”

“I thought you were afraid to stay.”

Phoebe stood up and stretched her back. “What I am is tired. There’s not enough to pin it on me unless Keating testifies, and what’s for sure is that he doesn’t want anyone to know he was screwing an ex-con.”

“But once the body is found, some other piece of the puzzle will give.” Jamie searched her mother’s face for some evidence of truth and saw it, right there, in the steady way she held her gaze.

“It was Keating’s house that got broken into. He picked a fight with that man when he swindled him out of the ring. That cop saw it. And Keating’s the one who got Loyal to cover everything up.”

Jamie squared that with what she already knew. Keating had gotten rid of the guns because the gun Phoebe used was registered to him.

Her ten minutes were almost up and Garcia was waiting.

Jamie handed Phoebe the necklace from Toby along with the bus ticket. “You should keep this and get a refund on the ticket.”

“You never even thought about coming with me, did you?”

Jamie shrugged. “Not really.”

“I guess it was silly to hope. You’ve been a good sister to him, you know? But this is my time to try and be a half decent mother.” She lowered her voice. “Did you get rid of that ring?”

“Not yet, but I got a plan.” She made a zipping motion over her mouth. It was the only thing linking Phoebe to Bangor, but Jamie knew exactly what she needed to do with it.

“Fair enough. How did the tournament end?”

“I found that queen of spades you tossed down in the alley and played it against Keating.”

“Ha! I was going to slip that to you just to keep things interesting. Don’t tell me you won with it.”

Jamie laughed darkly. “I hit a flush.”

“And won?”

“I won, but Garcia busted Loyal’s operation and confiscated the prize money.”

“Loyal got busted and you’re broke? Jesus, kid. The curse lives on.”