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“You worry about me too much.”
He gri
Sticking the cigarette between his lips, he reached for the door. Before opening it, he glanced up at Mrs. Perron and shook his head. “The girl’s not right in the head. Making her mama worry like this is just plain wrong. A nice, wholesome girl like you would be better of with more upstanding friends. But you know where I stand on that subject,” he said and winked. Then he jumped out of the truck.
Mac had never liked Tiffany because he thought she was too promiscuous and self-centered. The more Haley tried to get him to change his mind about her, the more resistant he was. He was as polite to Tiffany as he was to everyone else, but it was more than obvious that he didn’t care for the girl and never would.
Haley climbed out of the truck to find him pulling down the tailgate. He sat and lit his cigarette. Several yards away, a bunch of kids were squealing, hopping over sprinklers and sliding across a faded Slip ‘n Slide.
Mrs. Perron was still knocking on the front door. “Anybody home?” she shouted, her voice becoming more and more agitated. “Anybody? Tiffany? You in there?”
Haley wandered around the house, into the backyard. A thick plume of smoke curled into the air, rising from a distant neighbor’s barbecue. Its tangy, mesquite scent filled her nostrils. Rotten figs, oversweet, lay at the base of a small tree and a lone pair of jeans swayed in the hot breeze on an otherwise empty clothesline.
She stopped at a tall anthill, slid off a flip flop, and pushed her foot into its soft center. In a matter of seconds, a
She glanced at the house and startled. Someone was peering out from behind a window shade, watching her. Quickly, the shade fell back against the window.
Someone was home.
She hurried back to the front yard. Mrs. Perron was still speaking to the front door. “Tiffany, if you’re in there, you’d better come out right now,” she threatened, her words shaky. “If you don’t, I’ll make sure your father knows everything. I mean everything. Bad heart or not!”
Mac flicked his cigarette ash into the grass as Haley walked up. He ground it with the heel of his shoe. “No one home?”
“Someone’s here. But whoever it is isn’t answering,” she said, staring back at the house. “I saw someone at one of the windows out back.”
“Tiffany?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see.”
“We can come on back here after we take her home,” he said, picking an ant off of Haley’s arm. “If she’s in there, she’ll open up if her mother ain’t around.”
Chapter 7
THE LANDRYS’ HOME was no different than most of the ranch-style homes the middle-class families had built in Grand Trespass in the 70s and 80s. At the front door, one would walk into a small room which co
“Who’s the kid?” Mac asked, letting the screen door snap shut behind them.
Cigarette smoke hung in the air. Haley had seen a bicycle leaning against the house when they pulled up but figured it was Sadie’s, her sister’s friend. Sadie’s mother was always buying her things, trying to make up for the time she ran the child over in the driveway, leaving her with a lame right arm.
“I don’t know.” She walked past the kitchen and into living room where Becky and a raven-haired teenage girl were watching television.
“Hey,” Haley said.
Fifteen-year-old Becky turned to her with a practiced look of boredom, an irritating expression she seemed to have mastered overnight. “Hey,” she answered, pulling her thin, mousy hair into a ponytail. She pointed to the girl. “Haley, this is my new friend, Seacrest. Seacrest, this is my sister, Haley, and her boyfriend, Mac.”
The girl blew out a steady stream of smoke and fixed her gray eyes on Haley’s. “Hey,” she muttered.
Haley watched the smoke spiral into the air.
“The Landrys don’t smoke in the house,” Mac said, his voice matter-of-fact, but polite, one of the many ma
The girl smirked. “Well then, I’ll go on outside.” She stood and pulled at the hem of her short denim shorts. Then she sauntered out the back, letting the screen door snap shut behind her.
“Why’d you tell her she could smoke in the house?” Haley asked, exasperated.
“She didn’t ask,” Becky replied. Her feet, stained brown on the bottoms from walking around barefoot, dangled from the arm of the big recliner. She twisted in the chair, lowering them to the floor.
“Well, who is she?” It wasn’t every day that Becky brought a new friend to the house. In fact, she couldn’t think of the last time she had. Sadie was Becky’s only friend.
Becky shrugged, and smeared some lip balm on her cracked lips. “I don’t know. Just some girl.”
Mac took a seat on the couch. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I just met her. She was riding her bike out front and we just started talking. She’s pretty, huh?”
“Does she go to your school?” Haley asked.
She shook her head. “She lives in Weston.”
Mac frowned. “She rode her bike from Weston? That’s an awfully long way in this heat.”
“I guess.”
“I don’t like that she smokes,” Haley mumbled, trying Tiffany’s cell phone again. She’d grown anxious. She and Mac had just driven to Trespass Gardens for a second time, but again, no one had answered the door. She didn’t have Charles’s cell phone number and directory assistance said that his home number was unlisted.
“What’s wrong with smoking? Tiffany smokes,” Becky said. She lifted her chin in Mac’s direction. “So does Mac. He smokes.”
“Tiffany and Mac are adults,” Haley pointed out, checking the answering machine for messages. There were none. “Did Tiffany call?”
Becky shook her head.
Haley sighed. Where the heck was she?
“And Mom. Has she come out of her room at all?”
“No.”
Chapter 8
HE ROLLED A polished half dollar-sized stone around his palm. He’d found it on the bank of the pond and hoped it would remind him of the power he’d had with those who now rested at its bottom. Although it was only morning, it was already humid and it made his hand uncomfortably moist.
He dropped the stone in his pocket and rubbed his palm against his pant leg. Once it was dry, he studied the faint scars on the inside of both hands, an unpleasant reminder of the morning his mother held both palms against a hot burner on the stove. He was nine and she’d been in one of her moods. The seared skin had smelled awful. Her high-pitched laughter still rang in his ears.
He heard a scream. His head shot up. Trembling, he looked out at the pond, to the place where he’d let the girl sink. It was black, its surface unblemished.
He walked closer to the water’s edge and something in the tall grass plopped into the water. Stepping sideways, he tripped on a thick branch. He steadied himself, but the wetness from the pond’s edge had already seeped into his muddy rubber boots.