The Other Side(64)

The wait is unexpectedly short and she’s blazing as she shakes it in my face. “What the hell is this? You really gonna put a grieving woman and a teenage boy out on the street, Johnny?” She’s playing the sympathy card, quite confidently at that.

I shake my head and it almost makes her smile. She thinks she’s won. “You’re the only one leaving. Toby’s staying here. He’ll live with me.”

The smile fades and all the things that a mother should say when faced with someone threatening to split her from her child, the kicking and screaming fight that should ensue, never materialize. This is the true test. She fails miserably when she says, “The little bastard is cursed. Good luck with that.”

Inwardly, I cringe at her label for Toby, but outwardly, I stand my ground. “Marilyn, I’m only going to say this once, so listen closely.” My voice is so menacing I almost don’t recognize it. I’m never particularly friendly, but I’m rarely outright threatening. “Leave and never come back. Now that Nina’s gone, I will not allow you to poison him any longer. I know she was Toby’s mother—”

Her eyes widen in disbelief as their secret is outed and she cuts me off, “How do you know?”

I bend over, hands on knees, until I’m eye to eye with her and I grit out, “She. Told. Me.”

She shakes her head and denial floods her. “Impossible.” More head shaking. “That’s impossible. Why would she tell you?”

I don’t answer her question, the indignant stare I pierce her with does though.

“Oh,” she whispers. “Oh,” she repeats as the realization sinks in.

She’s been defeated and she knows it.

“You have an hour to pack your shit and get out of my sight.”



Thirty minutes later, I watch Marilyn Page place a cardboard box and a duffel bag in the back seat of a cab, climb in beside it, and disappear from Toby’s life for-what-I-hope-is-ever.

She took a knife to her mattress and destroyed it, as well as breaking every last glass and plate from the cupboards on the floor. The place is a disaster, but I don’t care. I gather everything from Toby’s room, which is depressingly very little, in one trip and take it back up to apartment 3A. And I hope to God with each step that I don’t ruin him further.





Chapter Thirty-Six





Present, June 1987

Toby



It’s your last Friday, asshole.

“I know,” I answer aloud to show it I’m not scared of it anymore and am resigned to my fate. I’ve accepted and welcomed it.

I’m out the door, sweatshirt in hand, my pocket stuffed with the two dollars I have left. I haven’t seen Johnny this afternoon, so I haven’t been paid yet, but I’ll make do without digging into my savings. It’s not like I need much with less than twenty-four hours of existence remaining to endure.

Dan’s Tavern is as dark, dreary, and dismal as I remember it. It’s also unusually busy for six o’clock. Head down, I skirt the outer perimeter of the room and land on a stool at the far end of the bar. Johnny’s old stool—I guess it’s habit to gravitate to it. When I’m situated, I lift my eyes to find Dan in front of me. He doesn’t look mad that I’m here; he looks almost nostalgic, like he’s missed me or something. People don’t look at me like that. I’m not a person who’s missed, so I immediately drop my eyes back to the bar top and slide my state-issued ID across the counter toward him. “I’m legal now,” I add. My birthday was a little over a week ago. I ignored it. Until now. In my periphery I see his big, gnarled hand pick it up for inspection.

“Happy birthday, but the law changed to twenty-one this year. Your eighteenth birthday had to be before January first to be grandfathered in.”

I drop my forehead to the bar top and mutter, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I see my ID out of the corner of my eye when he sets it down.

“Nope. You want a Coke? It’s on me for your birthday.”

I nod slightly, my skin sticking to the tacky spillage of those who sat in this seat before me.

The familiar semi-clean pint glass filled with dark carbonation is offered up a minute later. “How’s Johnny doing?” he asks.

I lift my eyes to answer him because Dan has always been nice to me and he doesn’t deserve my attitude or silence. “He’s still sober.”

Dan nods in understanding. “Glad to hear it,” he says like he means it. Then he turns to tend to his congregation, the other patrons awaiting a refill of libation and hope that will never come.

Glancing in the mirror behind the bar takes more effort than it should. Everything takes more effort than it should. I just want to sleep. Forever.

But the night carries on as I seek out my target and do what I came here to do, despite the lack of beer.

She arrives an hour later.

Her name is Bethany.

She has secrets like all the rest.

And like every other woman, she shares them with me after she drinks a few beers.

Dan calls a cab for us two hours after that.

Mission complete.



Alice is sitting on the second flight of stairs inside the Victorian on Clarkson when I arrive. It’s after one in the morning, she should be asleep. So should I. We graduate later today.