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MAC EASED THE truck to the side of Main Street and killed the ignition. The Ford shook for a few seconds, then became quiet. Wondering if Tiffany had made it home yet, Haley pushed open the passenger side door and climbed out into the oppressive sun.
Her bare feet burned against the sun-beaten asphalt. She took slow, deliberate steps, because while she concentrated on the blistering heat, she couldn’t think of anything else. Her father, her mother, the insomnia, her future. . . The asphalt was agonizing but also therapeutic in a way. A Southern anti-depressant.
Dead, dried up worms, some in L-shapes, some in the shape of C’s, were glued to the blacktop. She slowly made her way across the road, trying to avoid stepping on their mangled bodies.
“The tar’s gotta be blazin’. Shit, I can feel the heat clear up to my ankles,” Mac said, waiting on the other side of the road. “Why you walkin’ so slow?”
“It’s not that hot,” she said, and tried not to wince. “Really.”
As they stood in front of Bob’s sno cone stand, an old run down trailer that had been parked on the side of Main Street for as long as she could remember, Haley noticed a girl her age standing on the side of the road several yards away. Erica Duvall. She was staring into the woods, a backpack hanging low on her back.
“What do you reckon she’sdoin’?” Mac asked, squinting against the sunlight. He handed a blue sno cone to Haley.
“Don’t know.”
“She hangs out in the woods an awful lot,” he said, taking another cone from the pimply-faced kid who was working the counter. “You’d figure a girl our age would’ve grown out of that type of play. Moved on and become a young lady.”
“She doesn’t have any friends,” Haley muttered, watching Erica disappear into the woods. Haley found Erica beautiful and mysterious. Tiffany only found the girl creepy.
“You two get along okay at Luke’s?”
Haley bit into the ice, barely tasting the sweet syrup on the tip of her tongue. She nodded. “Yeah, she’s quiet, but nice enough.”
Haley had taken a job as a waitress at Luke’s Diner a few weeks earlier to help her family with the bills. Since taking it, she found herself mesmerized with the quiet, petite girl who was also a waitress there. She was much different than the others, always reading, always writing, always in a different world than everyone else. Tiffany, who also worked at Luke’s, had a much different impression of Erica. She only found her weird and a bit freaky and like she did with so many other people, looked down on her.
Erica’s family moved to Grand Trespass from San Francisco when she was in the first grade. Haley remembered when she first saw her at school. She was small and ski
Sadly, she had the same number of friends walking into the classroom that day as she’d had the day she graduated from high school. None.
***
FOUR O’CLOCK that afternoon, Haley carefully skimmed the greasy scum that had settled at the top of the gumbo pot. Setting the big wooden spoon back on the stove, she went to her mother’s bedroom and quietly opened the door. The woman appeared to still be sleeping. The only part of her body Haley could make out for the bedcovers was the crown of her head. She hadn’t come out all day. It was as though she was attempting to sleep away the reality of her father’s death.
Haley closed the door and walked to the recliner. Mac’s six-foot-one frame was sprawled out on the large couch against the wall. His empty sno cone cup was on the floor by his side, next to two crumpled cans of Coors Light.
“You think you should call Dr. Broussard?” he asked. “This has been going on for far too long. It’s not healthy for her to stay holed up like that.”
Haley sighed. “He was just here a couple of weeks ago. She wanted some pills to help her sleep. Now she stays in there and sleeps more than she did before.” Haley sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”
The phone rang. Haley sprang up and hurried into the kitchen. “That’s gotta be Tiffany.”
When she picked it up, she immediately heard terror in the voice on the other end of the line. “Please tell me Tiffany’s there,” Mrs. Perron croaked.
Haley glanced at her watch, and her heart skipped a beat. It was already five past four.
Chapter 6
FIVE MINUTES AFTER the phone call, Mrs. Perron climbed into Mac’s truck and thrust an ample hip into Haley’s side. Haley squeezed closer to Mac, and Mrs. Perron slammed the truck door closed.
“Le bon dieu!” she cried, mascara smeared into the deep recesses beneath her worried eyes. “It’s not like my Tiffany to run off like this!”
Mac threw the truck into gear and headed to Trespass Gardens, where Charles lived. Haley looked out at the dusty road watching the big cypress trees as they whizzed by, their branches seeming to reach for the truck. She folded her arms over her body and held herself tight. Where could Tiffany be?
In the distance, a cottonmouth slithered across the blacktop. Mac skillfully eased the truck across the yellow dotted lines, sparing its life. As Haley glanced behind her, watching the reptile hurry into the unkempt grass at the edge of the woods, she thought again of what Tiffany had begun to tell her, wondering if the guy she’d been flirting with was someone she knew. If he could have had anything to do with her not returning home. But just as quickly as the thought had come, she dismissed it.
Tiffany was with Charles. She was okay.
A few minutes later, they pulled off the two-lane blacktop road and bounced their way into Trespass Gardens, a park on the opposite end of Trespass Bayou that housed trailers and small shack-like houses. Gravel crunched beneath the truck as they crawled past one old trailer after another, then several shack-like houses. Haley took in the porches that sagged beneath tattered couches and disfigured toys. Trash barrels of all sizes and colors were lined up for collection.
Soiled-faced children played freeze tag in front of the homes, ru
Mrs. Perron clicked her tongue, shaking her head disapprovingly as they rolled past the rows of battered homes.
“There,” Haley said, pointing to a small white house in the distance. “That’s Charles’s house.”
Mac pulled off the path and slowed the truck. As soon as he yanked the emergency brake, Mrs. Perron was out the truck door and hurrying up to the porch. At the top of the steps, she smoothed out her pink polo shirt and yanked open the screen door. She rapped loudly.
Mac’s engine popped and hissed as the two sat watching the older woman. “How many times have you been out here?” Mac asked.
“Just once,” Haley said, looking around. A tricycle lay on its side next to two crepe myrtles. Azalea bushes were in full bloom in rock gardens at either side of the concrete steps that led to the front door. Unlike most of the homes in Grand Trespass, Charles’s actually looked cared for.
He fumbled for his cigarettes. “This ain’t a good place for young girls to be hangin’ around.”
Haley had known Mac would comment about Trespass Gardens. He was always worrying over her. Had been for the whole year they’d been together.
He produced a cigarette. “Just want you to be safe is all.”
She looked into her boyfriend’s eyes. The boy who had stood by her side at her father’s funeral and afterward, taking care of the things her father had taken care of before he passed. The yard, the gutters, the siding, her tears.