Stranger in the Lake(76)

“What about the investigation?” Micah says, dragging my attention away from my phone. “You must have seen the cops coming around. They didn’t question you?”

I give him a rueful smile. “You think the cops came around? How cute.” I wrinkle my nose at his expression, bury it in my tea. “Sorry. I know he’s your dad and all, but that investigation was a joke. Nobody looked very hard for Bobby. They closed the case after only a couple of days. He wasn’t even officially declared dead until they found his skeleton in his car. Ask Jamie. She’s still salty about it.”

“Who’s Jamie?”

“Bobby’s sister. She lived in his trailer for a while, and she was always looking out for me and Chet, feeding us, letting us hang out at her place when our mother would go missing, which was all the time. I just saw her, actually. Somebody’s been buying her stuff, paying for her medical supplies, taking care of her yard service. My first thought was Jax, but where would he get the money?”

“From the bank. He has stacks of it from the trust fund his mother left him.”

“But then why would Paul give Jax all that cash and hand-me-downs? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“You don’t remember anything else?”

“Not really.” But even as I say it, I get a flash.

Shut up, Charlie. Get your butt back inside.

I close my eyes, trying to put myself back there, in that grubby trailer park on the ugly side of the lake, in the dirt yard littered with trash and cigarette butts and somebody’s smelly old sofa. I hear my own cries and Chet’s wails, get a whiff of pine tree and dirty diaper. I feel Chet squirming against my chest and the sharp pang of hunger tearing at my belly. The burn of shame, of disgust and self-pity when our mother was wasted again.

Bobby laughed at her. I hear his mean chuckle, those ugly words he used to mock her. He called her a crazy bitch. I hear the words clear as day, and other voices, laughing. There were others, too, and they were laughing.

I open my eyes, and two pictures swim in and out of focus, pulling apart then shimmering into one.

Micah, seated on the couch across from me.

Micah, doubled over in laughter at the trailer park. A younger version of him, but still.

“Oh my God,” I say. “You were there, too.”



33


June 13, 1999
1:42 a.m.

The light is what Jax noticed first, bright and blinding and sudden, so sudden it made his eyeballs ache. A blazing light that turned night into day, like someone flicked a switch in the yard and inside that meth-head mother, turning her shirt and her skin see-through. Next, he noticed her face, the way her mouth went round and her eyes wide with fear. Then finally, he heard country music and the roar of a souped-up engine, a sound that had been there all along now that he thought about it, but that was the whole damn purpose, wasn’t it? The tequila was so that he wouldn’t have to think.

Jax swung around, shading his eyes with an arm.

“Mama, look out!” the girl screamed.

The woman dived for the dirt, but Jax didn’t move. He just stood there, squinting into the headlights, thirty feet away and closing fast. He spread his arm wide, welcoming it.

At the very last second, the tires cut right, sending a blur of shiny yellow carving a fat arc around him, kicking up dirt that rained on a trailer’s metal siding like pellets from a BB gun. He watched the car fly past, clocked it skidding across the yard until it came to a messy stop at the far end, parallel to the lit-up trailer. It was shockingly loud, a noise that bounced off the trees and ricocheted through the trailer park, shrill in Jax’s ears.

Through the open windows he spotted Micah, laughing it up with the driver.

Bobby, that was his name. The loser who flunked out in tenth grade. The freak who sold drugs under the bleachers. This was his car, his crazy Christmas trailer. He killed the engine and lit what Jax thought was a cigarette, until Jax noticed the way Bobby held in his breath. The pothead sampling his own wares.

Micah unfolded himself from the passenger’s seat in a cloud of smoke, his movements slow and syrupy.

“Where’s Paul?”

Micah tapped a finger to the Camaro rooftop. “Passed out cold. Dude can’t handle his liquor.”

That was because Paul drank like the teenager he was. Jax, too. But Micah... When it came to booze, he was light-years ahead. Drunk and high on who knew what and still relatively steady on his feet. Not like Jax, who couldn’t seem to stop swaying.

The woman pushed past him, bare feet churning up the dirt. “Hey, Bobby. Gimme some of that. Just one little hit. That’s all I need. Just something to tide me over.”

Bobby looked through the window with obvious disgust. “Put some clothes on, Francine. You do know you’re out here in your underwear, right?” He swung the door open and stepped out in redneck gear—boots and Levi’s and a leather jacket that hung from scrawny shoulders. His hair was greasy and so was his face, his forehead gleaming in the darkness.

“Come on.” The woman lunged for the joint dangling from the corner of Bobby’s mouth. “I’m good for it. You know I am.”

Bobby held her back with an arm, craning his upper body out of reach. “Back off, you crazy bitch. You still owe me for last time.”

“I’ll pay you tomorrow, I swear.”