Keep Her Safe(53)

“Not really.”

“He was a good boy.” The wistful smile touching her lips slips away. “When I lost your dad, I lost Noah too.” Slowly, she places the picture back inside. She closes the lid. “I wondered if he’d come looking for us.”

“Jackie gave him our address. She sent him here.”

“He had nothing to do with what happened to your father.” She closes her eyes. “Don’t be so hard on him. He must be hurting a lot.”

She’s singing a different tune from the day she told me Jackie Marshall died, strung out and incapable of showing the smallest amount of compassion, even for the son who found his mother dead in their kitchen.

“I know what you think of me, Grace. But maybe when I explain it all, it’ll help you understand this . . . Me . . .” Her words start to drift. Probably the anti-nausea medication she took on the way here. It always knocks her out when she’s this weak. “Maybe you won’t hate me so much.”

“I don’t hate you.” A lump forms in my throat. “But I can’t do this anymore. I can’t walk through our front door every day, wondering if it’s going to be the day I finally find my mother dead. Do you know what that does to a person?”

Silent tears meet my words.

Minutes later, she’s fast asleep.

And I’m left with a thousand questions.

I open the adjoining door and find Noah’s side already open. He’s sitting in a chair, his legs splayed, his frown shifting from the sheet of paper in his hand to Cyclops, who’s sniffing through the backpack in the corner. “How is she?” Genuine concern fills his voice, and it pulls at my heart despite my fiercest attempts to keep my anger fueled.

“Asleep.”

“She wasn’t looking good back there.” His gaze skates over me from head to toe. I know I’m covered in soot and I should shower.

But first, I need answers.

“Tell me everything, Noah. Everything.”



* * *



“She said Betsy’s name?”

Noah nods solemnly. “I think it had something to do with the papers she burned in the sink. There was a piece left, with a date. April something, 2003. I can’t remember which date exactly, but it wasn’t too far off the day Abe died.”

I guess we’ll file that under “suspicious things Jackie Marshall was hiding.” The list is growing. “But why is ‘Betsy, 2002’ written on the back of my mom’s school picture, then?”

“I don’t think that’s your mother.”

“That’s impossible. Look at her.” I hold up the picture for emphasis.

“People write names and dates on the back of school pictures to keep track. Your mother was in her midtwenties in 2002. That girl is way too young to be her.”

I stare at the youthful face, comparing it to my memories of my mom before all the drugs started ravaging her, aging her terribly. Same eyes, same color hair, same jaw structure. Her nose looks daintier and her cheeks are fuller, but that’s not unheard of for a girl that age. “Then who is she?”

“I’m hoping Dina can tell us that.” Noah drops his gaze to his hands. I note the way his shoulders sag, as if burdened by an enormous weight. Have they always been like this, and I hadn’t noticed, too wrapped up in my own turmoil? “Did she say anything about the box while you were in there with her? About what was in it?”

“Nothing useful, but she’ll be awake soon. She can’t sleep for long stretches when she’s detoxing.”

He sighs, setting the copy of the newspaper article on the bed beside him. “I’ll see if I can track down anything about this bust when I get back to Austin. Harvey Maxwell is an ADA at my uncle’s office.”

“And you think he’ll tell you the truth, if he did something shady?”

“There’s got to be a good explanation for this.” Noah’s forehead wrinkles with worry.

More like he’s praying for a good explanation. He likes this Maxwell guy.

“You mean a good explanation, like there must be a good answer for why your mom had my dad’s gun holster?”

Noah bows his head.

He’s not at fault here, I remind myself. “When are you going back?” I ask with a softer tone.

“I don’t know. Soon.”

Despite Noah’s lies and evasiveness, disappointment pricks me. I push it away as I study the picture of the man with the sloped forehead and squinty eyes, who Noah recognized but didn’t tell me.

I wonder how long he would have kept that to himself, had my mother not run from the hospital today.

Noah fumbles with the leather band around his wrist. “I’ll run out and grab a pizza for us, and some soup for Dina.”

I snort. “Good luck getting her to eat.”

“We have to try. And food for him, I guess.” He scowls at Cyclops, who has made himself comfortable on Noah’s bed and is busy gnawing at an itch on his back leg. The bedspread is covered in sooty paw prints.

I sigh. “Come on. I need your help, before you go anywhere.”

“With what?”

“Something you’re not going to like . . .”



* * *



Noah frowns at the half-full tub of warm water. “Shouldn’t we be using dog shampoo?”