When No One Is Watching(72)
My last fuck disintegrates uneventfully, but in its wake it leaves the knowledge of what I have to do. Of what Mommy would want me to do.
“Don’t let them take my house.”
I head back to the duffel and grab it—it’s his, but it contains what little evidence I have and also: Fuck him. If I can inconvenience him a little bit, good.
A sharp white edge of paper sticks out of the side pocket and I push it in more deeply, then quickly tug it out to peek at it. It’s a business card. Motherfucking Bill Bil, for BVT Realty.
The same company Theo just acted surprised to learn was part of VerenTech.
Okay.
I’m not being paranoid. The one person I thought was on my side is not. Again. I refuse to feel upset—this is what I get for depending on everyone else to help me. This is what I get for not being strong enough to do things on my own.
That ends now.
I grab the duffel and quietly jog to the door.
“You want honey?” Theo calls out.
I don’t know if he repeats himself because my response is the quiet click of the door closing after me.
Gifford Place OurHood/privateusergroup/Rejuvenation
Review of the door-cam footage, store surveillance, and the in-app microphone override make it clear that we can’t wait any longer. We can find another explanation, but if we don’t move now, the entire project is in jeopardy. Geolocation shows Green is moving toward the house marked next for clearance.
Chapter 19
Sydney
I JOG ACROSS THE STREET IN THE DARKENING EVENING LIGHT, hiding between parked cars to watch a black sedan with tinted windows that slows, then keeps driving. Was it Drew? What would happen if I ended up in the back seat of his car again? I doubt he’d let me out this time, and a key between my fingers probably won’t cut it.
Toby barks from somewhere behind me, and I turn and look up. On either side of my house, Mommy’s house, the brownstones are inhabited by strangers who are no longer just new neighbors, but likely people who want to do me harm.
A siren whines to life a few blocks away and I flinch. The roar of a jet engine overhead makes me wonder if they might have drones watching us.
Everything seems like it might be a means to hurt me. Every. Goddamn. Thing.
Laughter tinkles through the window of Josie and Terry’s house, and that’s the rage straw on the camel’s back for me.
I came back to Brooklyn to find home, and these bastards have taken even the comfort of the familiar from me. Taken my mother’s dignity, and my best friend’s loyalty, and my community. I can never get those things back, and they think they’ll get away with it because no one cares.
They don’t count my pain, our pain, in their idea of care.
They’re gonna learn today.
I jog up the stairs to my front door, the key slipping out of the lock two times before I manage to turn it.
Once the door is shut and locked behind me, I stand for a moment and take several deep breaths, filling my nose with the familiar scent of potpourri, wood polish, and dust that always made coming home feel real. Even though it’s the opposite of what I would normally do, I slip on the pair of old Timbs I usually wear while gardening and never wear into the house. I don’t know what’s going on, and you can’t stomp someone with Old Navy flip-flops.
I jog up to Mommy’s apartment, and when I open the door, I’m hit with the stale, stifling hot air of an un-air-conditioned top floor. Sweat beads on my brow as I close the door and engage the multiple locks. The duffel bag rests against my hip as I scan the apartment, and a sudden vibration makes me jump about a foot in the air before I realize it’s my phone.
Fucking Theo.
My jaw clenches and I beeline for Mommy’s bedroom, the one place in the house I haven’t been since that night. The room is simple, light blue with a dark wood bedroom set and a rarely used vanity, the kind with lightbulbs around the mirror. It made me feel so glamorous as a kid when I’d sit in front of it, cataloguing the features that were so similar to those of the woman I thought was the prettiest in the world, and sneaking dabs of her lipstick and blush.
It’s dark in the room, even though the blinds aren’t closed—it’s already evening, somehow, as if time has stopped making sense along with everything else I thought I knew.
Her bedroom window sits in the faux-parapet, the high tower, where I can look down on those who might come to get me. Where I once watched my friends pretend to battle to save me.
No one’s fighting for that job now.
I stand in the doorway, staring down at Mommy’s bed, my teeth pressed together so hard that I feel like they might crumble. The bed is bare except for its mattress cover because we used her favorite blanket to wrap her up.
Drea had helped, had given me the recommendation for the lawyers, had promised to help me fight to keep the house. She said she didn’t know why Mommy had agreed to sign over the house, and Mommy had never mentioned Drea pressuring her—but pressure wasn’t always blatant.
Drea’d betrayed us, gotten paid, pretended to care, and then left me to fight this alone.
Has she pretended to be my friend all this time? Has she hated me all these years when I’d thought of her as a sister? Did she tell them where the body was, and that’s why Mommy is missing?
Wait. Theo is the one who told me her body wasn’t there. That might be a lie too. Everything could be a lie.