And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(21)

“You don’t think you should warn her about sexting me?”

“Does she sext you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

Sean reached forward to adjust the dashboard vent away from him. “She’s an interesting person. I’m not sure she has much use for people outside the purpose she assigns them. My purpose is to make her eyes roll back in her head every couple of weeks.”

Packard drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, thinking. “Jenny left without any of her diabetes supplies. She and her boyfriend both left their phones behind. It doesn’t make sense.”

Sean said, “We should all run off and leave our phones behind. The Lakota didn’t even have a Native word for ‘smartphone’ until recently. Omás’ap?ela.”

“Why’d it take so long?”

Sean gave him a raised eyebrow. “Near the start of the twentieth century, the U.S. government actively suppressed Native customs and language while it continued to disregard treaties and push the tribes off their land. Indian kids were sent to boarding schools where they were forced to speak English and beaten when they didn’t. A hundred years later, the number of motherfuckers sitting around, thinking up new words for shit is pretty small. They only meet once a year. They’re a little behind.”

Packard was embarrassed by his thoughtlessness. “That was a good answer to a dumb question. Sorry.”

Sean had his hand on the door handle, ready to go. “That’s all the Indian wisdom I got for you, Chief. You need anything else from me? Are we good?”

“We’re good.”

“Do me a favor and keep me out of this if you can. I care about Susan and I hope nothing bad has happened to Jenny, but I don’t need the words ‘Sean White Cloud’ and ‘sex offender’ on the lips of everyone in town. I’m two years from the end of my registration period. After that I should be free and clear. I don’t need this hanging over my head for the rest of my life.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Sean paused before he slid out. “Is it irony when you’re on the sex-offender list for child pornography but in real life you’re banging a middle-aged white woman old enough to be your mother?”

“Sounds like irony to me,” Packard said. “The Lakota have a word for that?”

Sean White Cloud shook his head.

Packard put on his sunglasses. “Maybe next year,” he suggested.

***

Packard went through the Arby’s drive-through before heading back to Wellards to pick up Ann by the loading dock. She climbed in the passenger seat and took the white bag he handed her. Two of her coworkers smoking by the dumpster watched them drive away.

Ann ate the fries and peeked at her sandwich on the way back to the house. “You didn’t get me cheddar cheese?”

“You didn’t say beef and cheddar. You said roast beef.”

“It’s just plain meat.”

“That’s how they make ’em. There’s Arby’s sauce in there.”

“Arby’s sauce,” she said, disgusted.

It took only minutes to get back to her house. Packard pulled up to the curb in front. The mountain bike was still on its side by the front door.

“There was a boy in there when I stopped earlier,” Packard said. “Short hair, lots of zits. No shirt.”

“That peckerwood,” Ann said. She grabbed her soda from the holder between them and pushed open her door. “Come on. I’ma kill his ass unless you stop me.”

Packard followed her up the front sidewalk. Ann walked, shoulders hunched like it was raining hard. He pictured her walking that way her whole life, from a little girl in a dress to the woman he saw now, like she was marching into the wind, into battle.

Alissa met them at the front door. She’d put makeup on the rest of her face. A lot of it.

“What are you doing home?” She sounded like she was confronting an inconsiderate roommate. “Why are you here again?” she asked Packard.

“Get out of my way,” Ann said and pushed past her.

Packard kept his mouth shut and came in behind her. Over the top of Ann’s head, he saw the boy slumped at the end of the couch, his head in one hand. He’d put on an orange T-shirt. He looked pissed but there was no fight in him.

Ann stared at him and her daughter. Her nostrils flared. She took a drink of her soda through the straw. “Smells like cigarettes and fucking in here,” she said.

“Mom!”

“You,” Ann said to the boy, “do not have permission to be in my house when I’m not here. Ever. If you’re not out of my sight in ten seconds, you will leave here without your dick.” She turned sideways and showed him the box knife in its canvas holster on her belt. “I’ll nail it through the head to the wall. See how much fucking you do then.”

The boy wrenched himself up from the couch and went out the front door without a word. Packard watched him pedal away, sitting low in the bike’s dropped seat.

“You’re supposed to be sick,” Ann said to her daughter.

“I am sick.”

“You ain’t sick if you can spread your legs for that boy.”

“Stop saying that.”

“Why? Is this how you want to live for the rest of your life, Alissa? In a house like this? Having nothing? Keep it up. Have a baby when you’re fifteen. You’ll never get out of this prison.”