A Slow Ruin Page 12

  Eleven minutes later—the rain had slowed me down—his one-story ranch house appeared around the corner, windows as dark as the sky. Nothing sinister. Nothing that screamed “Delinquent Lives Here!” Austin did all the yard work up to the tree line where a coppice of white oaks and sycamores broke up the monotony of houses. Vera had mentioned that on a few occasions she helped him tame the thicket’s brambly undergrowth, having learned from her family’s gardener how to manicure the peskiest of briars. That thought reminded me just how great the divide was between the haves and have-nots. Felicity’s family wanted for nothing and never had to lift a finger for themselves. And here was Austin, who didn’t have a pot to piss in, but he knew the dignity and value of plain old hard work. At least Vera was raised thoughtful in that way, always wanting to help those who needed it. That savior complex was probably what had attracted her to a boy from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks in the first place. It was also probably what had led to her downfall.

  When Vera first confessed to me that she had been sneaking over to Austin’s house after school before her parents came home from work, I remember the angst of being stuck in the Great Crux. Wanting to tell Felicity about Vera’s secret boyfriend versus being the cool, trustworthy aunt who kept her niece’s secrets. I desperately wanted to be that person Vera turned to, the person she could entrust with anything. Now I regretted wanting that relationship, because it wasn’t mine to take. Now Vera was missing, and if I had just told Felicity, maybe Vera would never have disappeared. Maybe…maybe…maybe…

  But it was too late for maybes. And it was too late to tell Felicity what I knew. The domino effect of damage would be too great, especially if she found out about Austin and told the cops. I knew what Felicity thought about people like him. Anyone outside her elite social circle was either a criminal or a predator. She never thought to include herself in that class, but I knew. I knew everything she had done.

  I parked as close to the house as the driveway would allow, the headlights swiping across the garage door. On the count of three, Cody and I dashed through the rain, crowding under a scrap of awning when we reached the front stoop. Pushing the doorbell, a weak chime rang through the other side, blended with the sound of television gunfire. I knocked just in case. Cody cupped my hand protectively. When Austin answered the door, a smile cracked his pale face and he swung the screen door open, his arms wide with a hug.

  Cody tossed me a skeptical look. I saw what he saw. A boy who probably didn’t know where his next meal was coming from. Bony shoulders and xylophone ribs screaming out under a throwback Sublime T-shirt, full of holes and two sizes too small. Brown emo hair falling defiantly over one eye. A thousand-yard stare expressing fear, threatening trouble. Yet his smile was pure. His smile was hope.

  “Miss Marin!” Austin clung to me like I was his mother. The poor kid barely had one; I didn’t mind stepping in when I could.

  “Hey, Austin. How are you?” I squeezed him before releasing him, feeling every rib like they’d crack under my pressure.

  “Okay, I guess.” He shot Cody a critical look, sizing up this clean-cut straight arrow.

  “This is my husband, Cody,” I said, sensing his discomfort. “Don’t worry, he’s cool.”

  “Hi, Austin. How’s it hangin’?”

  Austin shook the hand Cody extended without warmth and turned back to me. “Have you heard from Vera yet, Miss Marin?”

  I shook my head somberly. “Unfortunately not. That’s why I’m here. I wanted to ask you a couple questions.”

  “Sure, sure. Anything you need.”

  Stepping into the shadow of his living room, Austin led me inside where a video game on pause glowed from one end of the house, light clawing its way into the adjacent dining room and kitchen, lit by a cracked light fixture that hung over the sink. The crunch of what looked like cereal under my shoes left footprints of powdery cockroach bait across the carpet. Somewhere in the pit of the house I heard a closed-door fight between a man and woman. Cody tugged on my hand, trying to draw me back outside to safety, until I pulled my hand free.

  “Is everything okay at home, Austin?” I asked. My gaze shifted toward the intensifying screaming match.

  “Oh, that. Yeah, just my mom and stepdad. Nothing new. I’m just trying to stay out of his way. I’m good, though.”

  Was he good, really? I couldn’t tell if he was being truthful or not. I had never learned how to read kids.

  “Marin,” Cody’s wary voice broke in, “you wanted to ask him about Vera?” I could tell he was growing impatient to leave.

  “Thanks, Cody,” I said, silencing him with a glare. My voice softened as I returned to Austin. “The night Vera disappeared, I dropped her off here at your house. What exactly happened after I left?”

  Austin’s face scrunched. “What do you mean? She never came here.”

  Liar. Clearly he didn’t trust me.

  “You can tell me the truth, Austin. I promise I will protect you, and I’m not going to tell the cops anything. I just need to know what happened after I dropped her off.”

  “I’m telling you the truth, Miss Marin. I never saw her that night. I wasn’t even home.”

  More with the lies. I knew what I had seen that night. But I couldn’t blame him for taking the silent defense.

  “Then why did she ask me to bring her to your house?”

  His bony shoulders lifted, then dropped. “I don’t know. After she broke up with me we stopped talking. I wasn’t allowed to contact her, and she’d been ignoring me at school.”

  “Did she text you that night?”

  “Hell no. We never texted, only used messaging. She was terrified her parents would find out about me if they saw her phone. It figures. I wouldn’t want my daughter with someone like me either. I should have known she’d break up with me eventually.”

  His cheeks reddened, eyes watered. I wondered how long he’d been wearing his self-shame. I knew from experience that it was a hard beast to tame.

  “Oh, honey. It wasn’t about you. Never think you’re not good enough, okay?”

  He nodded wordlessly.

  “I’m just trying to make sense of this, Austin. I dropped her off right there.” I pointed out the screen door into the night, finger aimed at the patch of concrete where I had parked and let her out. “And watched her walk through your yard. If she didn’t go to your house, where would she have gone?”

  “I don’t know, I swear.” He shook his head with an almost believable conviction. “I would have told the police if I knew anything. I loved Vera…I still do. You know I would never hurt her, right?”

  “Of course I know that.” I grinned, but I felt like weeping. Why wouldn’t Austin just tell me the truth?

  A door slammed, followed by a baby’s wail. Then a gale of footsteps, and more yelling uncomfortably close as a woman emerged from a hallway wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt that came down her to knees. She was short and stout, a sturdy fireplug of a woman with a florid face and mean little piggish eyes. I knew the wary, hateful look she shot me all too well. It was clear she wasn’t happy about having a Black woman in her house.

  “Who the hell are you, and what you doin’ talkin’ to my boy?” she demanded, spittle flecking my face.

  “Mom,” Austin said, stepping between me and his mother, “this is Vera’s aunt. We were just talking about Vera.”

  “Vera’s aunt?” She eyed me with a chilling skepticism.

  “By marriage,” I explained. “Nice to meet you, ma’am. I’m Marin.” I held out my hand, but I might as well have held a gun in it. I let it drop to my side as she stared me down. I felt a strange sensation like this was improvisational theatre and I was winging my lines with a stingy actor who refused to give me something to work with.

  “And who’s this guy?” she asked, jerking her head at Cody.

  “He’s my husband.”

  She raised one pierced eyebrow in disapproval while Cod
y squirmed under her got a taste for the dark meat, huh, white boy? glare.

  “So you’re Vera’s kin, huh? She was a good girl. Sorry for your loss.”

  It was an odd thing to say when Vera was missing, not dead.

  “I appreciate that. We’re hopeful that we’ll find her soon.”

  She crossed her arms tight against her stomach. “The baby needs fed, Austin.” She stepped toward me, an aggressive get-the-hell-out-of-my-house gesture that didn’t match her formal goodbye. “It was nice meetin’ you. Give your family my condolences.”

  With a protective arm around my waist, Cody led me outside straight to the car. The rain had softened to a mist, but the urgency to run felt just as strong as before.

  Once inside the car, Cody finally exhaled. “What was up with the mom? She was a bit…much, wasn’t she? And I think that kid is lying, by the way. I could tell.”

  “I don’t think he’s lying. I know he is.”

  “You know? How?”

  A breath caught in my throat, momentarily wedged there, then released. “Cody, I saw Austin in his bedroom window when I dropped Vera off. He watched her get out of my car. I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  My brain felt numb.

  “You know what that means, don’t you, Marin?”

  I couldn’t find the strength to nod. I had used it up hoping that Austin had a believable narrative to explain what happened. Anything that would prove his innocence.

  “I’ve got to tell Felicity and turn Austin into the cops. Felicity is never going to forgive me. You know things won’t be the same between us after this, don’t you?”

  Felicity was my family, despite our differences. I loved her like blood. Losing her was a poison I didn’t want to swallow.

  “Maybe there’s a way to avoid Felicity finding out?” Cody looked at me—intense, determined.

  “I don’t see how. Vera’s life is at stake. I’ve got to come clean to everyone.”

  I didn’t realize in the moment that it wasn’t just Vera’s life at stake, but my own with it.

  Chapter 15

  Felicity

  “I need a break.”

  The four most dreaded words in the English language between two spouses. Especially between spouses still in love with each other.

  It was the last thing Oliver said to me before I blustered out of the house into nightfall, clutching Vera’s journal, not knowing what I was doing or where I was going. Anywhere but home.

  It had only taken a stop for ice cream to earn forgiveness from Sydney and Eliot after showing up late to pick them up from karate. Birthday cake flavor topped with sprinkles and gummy bears for Syd, plain old chocolate for Eliot. Their sensei was equally sympathetic after I explained how I was dealing with personal stuff. Forgiveness from strangers came easily when you had a missing child. But not from my own husband. Oliver lost all emotion months ago. All that was left were pragmaticism and survival.

  I couldn’t handle his judgment any longer. It was torture, the way his words were laced with bad mother, neglectful wife, miserable woman. What else was I to feel? How else was I to act? It was a human frailty to just let the despair eat me alive some days. Oliver expected me to don a comedy mask like he did, but I only felt tragedy. Aside from the dogs, only one person truly understood me, supported my need to grieve, and that was Cody. And it shredded my heart even more that my brother-in-law seemed to care more than Oliver about my missing daughter.

  Maybe I was acting basic, a Vera-ism I understood a little too well. I needed affirmation, approval. And one person always gave that to me.

  I didn’t remember driving to Cody’s house, parking on the street, staring at the rain puddles glistening on the asphalt like pools of hot tar. The house was dark and lifeless, a sleeping mass of red brick settling in for the night. I didn’t know what brought me here, other than the need for someone, anyone, to talk me through the complicated emotions swirling inside me. And yet I couldn’t push myself to walk up to his door. So I sat in the car and watched. Waited. For what, I wasn’t sure.

  Pulling Vera’s journal from my purse and turning on my cell phone flashlight, I skimmed through dozens of entries I had read dozens of times. As the tiny moon of light passed over the initials BS, they jumped out at me, now that I knew what it stood for. BS was Blythe. A was Austin. And lying…well, I still needed to find out what Vera had lied about. A flurry of questions cascaded in my mind after rereading the same entry with a new understanding:

  I hate lying to my best friend. I’ve never lied to BS before, but I couldn’t tell her the truth about why things ended with A. She would have tried to talk me out of what I had to do. She wouldn’t have understood.

  Back then I had thought it was a silly friendship battle. Now it held something much more sinister. A second-story light illuminated a window. A silhouette passed. A curtain moved, and I ducked down in my seat out of some unknown instinct—fear maybe? Odd, considering I had nothing to hide.

  My phone buzzed with a text:

  Felicity, are you outside my house right now?

  My heart drummed a wild beat. I hesitated before typing:

  Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m here.

  But I couldn’t hit send. Instead I deleted it, placed my phone in the center console, and started the car. As I shifted into drive and slowly pulled away from the curb, a shadow dashed through the beam of my headlights, and I slammed on the brake. A second later, a distorted face surfaced on the other side of my rain-streaked window. I yelped and lurched sideways, clutching my chest. When recognition dawned, I hit the power window switch.

  “Geez, Cody, are you trying to give me a heart attack?” I wheezed.

  “Are you trying to hit me with your car? Because I know I deserve it.”

  I smiled instant relief. “Yeah, you really do.”

  “I’m sorry, you know. For all the problems I’m causing you.”

  “It’s not just you. I’m so…sorry and angry and sad. I’m screwing up my marriage, letting my kids down, my business is falling apart… I don’t know how to pick up the pieces and put them back together. Is there even enough glue to fix it all?”

  Cody crossed his arms and leaned on the ledge of the door, our noses nearly touching. “With family there’s always enough glue, Felicity.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know about that.” I felt his beer-scented breath pass over my skin. “Now I have to live with the weight of another secret for the rest of my life…and I can’t even make things right, because making things right means telling the truth, and telling the truth means losing Ollie. I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

  “There’s nothing you can do. Just focus on one problem at a time. Like why you’re here. In front of my house. In the dark.”

  I had been asking myself the same question, and came up with only one answer. “I guess I just needed to talk to someone I could trust. But I shouldn’t have come. In fact, I was just leaving.”

  “You don’t have to leave, you know. You can come inside. I’m always up for company.”

  It was an awful idea. I couldn’t, not after the fight Oliver and I just had. Especially since Cody smelled like he’d been drinking. And yet it tugged on me like a loose string…a string that if I pulled it would unravel my whole marriage.

  “No, I really can’t. Besides, I was thinking about stopping by Austin Miller’s house.”

  “Are you serious? Felicity, please just let the cops deal with him.”

  “I will…after I speak with him first. I deserve to meet the guy my daughter had been dating. I just want to meet him. He’s a teenage boy. How nefarious could he be?”

  Cody shook his head and straightened upright. “Are you sure you should do that?” His voice hardened. “I mean, it’s getting late and he doesn’t live in a safe neighborhood.”

  “Then come with me for protection…or moral support.”

  “Uh, I don’t know…” Cody wavered,
gaze hopscotching from my face, to the roof of my car, to the street.

  “Never mind. Forget I asked. I’ll go alone.”

  “What is with you women wanting to do dangerous things by yourselves?” Cody grumbled, as he circled around the front of the car and slipped into the other side. “Obviously I’m not letting you go alone. I don’t have anything better to do.”

  “You know it’s a bit sexist and narcissistic of you to think women are too weak to handle dangerous stuff while you big, tough, powerful men can save us from ourselves, right?” I said as I pulled away from the curb.

  “Oh, come on. If it was a woman offering to go with you, you’d appreciate it. If it’s a man, you call him sexist? That’s a double standard, Felicity. I’m trying to look out for you. Why demonize that?”

  “It’s the belief systems beneath the words. I don’t want to get into a debate about this, but you have a tendency to need to prove yourself. It’s like you’re in some kind of competition with yourself, with your brother, always needing to be the best, be the savior. But sometimes you focus so much on trying to save others that you don’t notice you’re drowning.”

  “I’m not drowning.”

  “Cody…” He knew the truth. We’d both been floundering for months.

  We didn’t speak as I tried to read Blythe’s directions while squinting against the dark in search of my turns. As I was turning right, Cody blurted out, “This isn’t the right turn. It’s the next one—on Marigold Street.”

  “Huh?” I slowed the car to a roll and checked the directions. Cody was right. “How did you know that?”

  He was quick to answer, “I remember the directions that Blythe gave you.”

  “Yeah, but those were directions from her house. How do you know how to get there from your house?”

  “I know the area, Felicity. I know all these streets.” He turned toward the window. Avoidance, his biggest tell.

  “You’re going with that, huh? Not even going to try a better lie than that? Because you knew right away it was the wrong turn…like you’d been to his house before, Cody.”