Not One of Us(15)

“Not well at all. Especially not these days. He’s just someone I knew from high school.”

“Somebody from high school, eh?” he asked, gently probing.

“We went out once.” I practically choked on the euphemism. What we’d done hadn’t even been on an official date.

“Hmm,” Oliver noted, backing out of the driveway. His tone was neutral, inviting discussion.

I shut it down with a dismissive shrug. “It’s a small town. Lots of connections and paths crossed over the years. So. Who are we interviewing next? Eddie Yaeger, Alden Knight, or Jayrod Booker?”

“You know them too?” he asked wryly.

“I’ve seen them around. They all like to hang out playing pool at the Pavilion and trying to act like tough hotshots.” I held the radio mike in my hand. “Which house directions do you want next?”

“Actually, I’m more intrigued by Strickland’s association with Jori Trahern. She might be the last person he ever spoke with. Let’s visit her first.”





Chapter 4


JORI


Drinking the evening before had been a bad idea. Zach and Mimi had both been restless last night, wandering around the house for no good reason in the wee hours before dawn, which meant that I couldn’t rest either. All it would take was one slip on the rug for Mimi to fall and get injured, or for Zach to decide to fix something to eat and turn on a stove burner, and disaster might ensue. The possibilities had kept me up and coaxing them both back to bed whenever I heard wooden floors creak in the hallway.

As I poured Zach a glass of iced tea in the kitchen, I tried to rub away the dull throbbing in my temples.

Zach bit into the sandwich I’d prepared and frowned. “Pick . . .” The final consonant of the word was a garbled glug.

“Pick what?” I asked.

His brows drew together in concentration. “Pick . . . ,” and he again uttered some strangled syllable.

I stared blankly at his face, which was puckered with agitation.

“Mimi knows,” he said. Those two words were his favorite expression, and he joined them together as a single word: Mimiknows.

I turned to Mimi, who was putting away the dried breakfast dishes. “What does Zach want?”

“Pickles,” she said. “He won’t even eat peanut butter sandwiches without them.”

Mystery solved. I opened the fridge and moved around contents. No pickle jar. “It’s not here.”

Mimi turned away from the dish rack, her brows drawn together, echoing Zach’s expression. I’d never noticed the resemblance in my brother and grandmother before, but it struck me suddenly with full force. Mom had also used to wear that same pinched look, especially in the latter stages of cancer, when she’d been heavily dosed on painkillers and in that twilight world where she was neither here with us nor there on the other side of life. For a moment, the memory squeezed the breath out of my lungs.

“It’s got to be there,” Mimi asserted, striding over. Her house slippers flapped against the linoleum, blending with the tiger-orange cubes my colored hearing produced.

“Pickles,” Zach insisted, his voice rising. Zach’s tone was similar to Mimi’s, the same cubed shape, but the color was marigold with blended specks of orange and yellow. My own colored sounds were a bronzed sandstone of shaved ice, not near as flashy and pretty as theirs but still genetically related.

I opened the pantry cabinet and spotted a half-empty jar on the top shelf. “Here we are,” I said triumphantly.

“It shouldn’t have been in the pantry,” Mimi said. “Zach must have moved it.”

Or she had done so and just couldn’t remember.

“Did you take your medicine this morning?” I asked her.

“Can’t rightly remember,” she hedged.

I checked Mimi’s pill dispenser on the counter. The donepezil pill sat forlorn and neglected in its Saturday slot.

I poured her a glass of water and then handed it to her with the pill.

She frowned. “I don’t like taking them. They make me tired.”

Her tone was that of a recalcitrant child, and I silently tamped down my irritation. “The doctor said this might help you.”

“Might,” she emphasized bitterly.

“It’s worth a try. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for Zach.”

The defiance in her dark-blue eyes faded, and she held out a hand. Was I doing the right thing insisting she take the medication? The doctor had warned it only worked in half the patients, and even then, the effects were limited to six months or a year. There was no cure. The most it could possibly do was slow the progression of the disease.

Just as there had been no cure for Zach’s autism or Mom’s brain cancer, it seemed the Traherns were a cursed lot. At least our branch was. Was my own neurological quirk with synesthesia a product of some faulty brain chemistry I’d inherited from the maternal side of the family?

My hands fluttered involuntarily to my empty stomach.

A knock sounded at the side door. Before I could answer, it squeaked open and Uncle Buddy strode in, bringing with him a breath of fresh air into the tense kitchen.

“Morning, y’all,” he said easily, his deep voice filling the room. His eyes settled on Mimi scowling at the pill in her hand. “You taking your vitamins this morning, Oatha?”