Keep Her Safe(35)

Gracie’s head shake brings me an odd sense of relief.

“Why did you leave Texas?”

“The neighborhood turned on us. That’s what she told me, anyway; I don’t remember, but she said people watched our every move, glared when we walked by. Neighbors who’d had us over for dinner before wouldn’t even say hello. Some yelled at her. I remember that happening once or twice.” Her face tightens with a cute little frown. “I didn’t understand why they’d be so mean to us because my dad had an accident at work. That’s what my mom told me happened: that he had an ‘accident’ and he wouldn’t be coming home again.

“Then one night, someone threw a brick through the window. So she packed us up and we left for Arizona.” The sadness in Gracie’s voice has quickly changed to bitterness.

I guess having a neighborhood turn on you might make you up and move. Maybe overnight. Maybe. But according to Canning, Dina never came back, never even asked to see the police report. Why?

“Why accuse my mother of being a part of it?” Is she simply a heartbroken widow turned junkie? Or is there more to this part of the story? There must be, because why else did my mother have Abe’s gun holster hidden under our floorboards?

What does Dina know?

Gracie responds with a shrug, but there’s nothing nonchalant about it. She’s still suspicious, still calculating in her gaze as she studies me. “My dad and your mom were best friends and partners for years. Even after your mother got promoted. But then my dad died, and she cut us off. She stopped answering my mom’s phone calls.”

“She wouldn’t do that.”

“Why would my mother lie?” Gracie’s piercing eyes settle on me. “It seems odd, doesn’t it? They were partners and friends for years, and then she just turned her back on us. For fourteen years. And now you show up with this.” She gestures to the bag. “Why?”

Why, indeed? I focus on the beer in my hand as I try to recall those first few weeks, those months, after Abe died. We went to the funeral, that I remember. Dina simply stood there, a husk of a woman, her eyes puffy but no tears shed—as if she’d already drained herself of the ability. Tucked in next to her, a sullen little Gracie, her gaze wide as her eyes roved the crowd of faces around her.

We left soon after. I don’t remember attending a reception. All I remember is Silas and my mother sitting in the backyard, my uncle speaking quietly while repeatedly topping up the glass in my mother’s hand. My mother . . . all she did was stare into the depths of the pool and empty her glass over and over again.

She went back to work a few days later. And that’s when I started staying home alone. She said I was old enough, that there was no need for me to go to Dina and Abe’s after school anymore. At the time, I was more thankful than anything. I figured she was doing it so I wouldn’t have to walk through Abe’s front door every day and remember that he was dead.

But if what Gracie is saying is true . . .

If my mother believed Abe was such a good man, why would she cut Dina and her little girl off like that?

I don’t have an answer for Gracie—or myself—so I divert. “We didn’t exactly have it easy after he died, either. My mom started drinking and my parents divorced. I moved to Seattle to live with my dad.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard Seattle is rough. Was your trailer park like the Hollow?” She doesn’t hide her scorn.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” I’m an ass.

She shrugs. “You didn’t have anything to do with it.”

And yet I can’t help but feel responsibility here.

She pauses. “What do you think? You’re older than me. You must remember him, right? Do you think my dad was guilty?”

“He was a good man.”

“I need her to know.”

My mother’s words are a constant thrum. Why can’t I bring myself to give voice to them? “I don’t know.” I chug half the can of beer so I can gather my thoughts. Based on what George and Silas said, the case is firmly closed, the evidence irrefutable. Would knowing what my mother mumbled—drunk, and moments before she decided to take her own life—help Gracie and Dina? I’m not sure I believe her, and it doesn’t feel right to repeat it. It could hurt them more. It would definitely hurt the memory of my mom.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

How many times will I have to tell myself that before this guilt lifts from my chest?

The weight of that green-eyed gaze on me is suffocating. I need off this topic. “The Hollow. Sounds like a horror movie.”

It’s delayed, but Gracie’s face finally cracks with a smirk. “Even the cops call it that. Suits it, doesn’t it?”

Of all the places to run to . . . “How’d you end up there, anyway?”

“That’s where my mom grew up.”

“No shit.”

Gracie reaches for the fresh can of beer I left on her nightstand and cracks it open. “It wasn’t bad when she was a kid. But then the owner sold it to people who don’t give a rat’s ass about anything but getting their monthly fees. It all went to hell after that.”

“So Dina moved from Tucson to Austin . . . and back to Tucson.” Trailer-park girl to stylish Texan wife, to heroin junkie. I’m struggling to reconcile my memories of Abe’s Dina with the Dina I carried out of a burning trailer earlier today.