“Maybe, someday you can tell me yours.”
“Not likely, “I told him. “You going to tell me yours?”
“Probably not.” He smiled up at me. “I still want to know why you were in the yard the other night, though.”
“It’s no big deal, I just needed somewhere to crash.”
“So, you picked a truck in a junkyard?”
“It’s my Nan’s truck. She never could afford to get it fixed. So, it’s just been sitting there.”
“You didn’t have anywhere else to go?”
I thought about not answering him. It would be easier not to. But he’d given me a ride, and I was tired of running from anyone who asked me anything about myself. “Not really. The foster care gestapo was after me. I was just hiding until she got bored and left.”
“Foster care?” Jake asked. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen,” I answered. He seemed a bit relieved. “She’s probably long gone now.” I hoped she was, anyway. I left out the part about the eviction and being homeless. “I live with my Nan... or, at least, I lived with my Nan. She died three weeks ago, and since I’m not eighteen they want to throw me in foster care.” I volunteered all that. It wasn’t even remotely the biggest secret I was keeping.
“And you’re running from them because you don’t want to go into foster care?”
“I won’t go into foster care.” It was the best answer I could come up with. It was more than me not wanting to. I wasn’t going, and that was it.
“What happens if they force you?” Jake asked.
“I won’t go, no matter what,” I said. “If they take me by force…” I didn’t want to finish my sentence. I knew what I would do. I would either hurt someone and opt for prison over foster care or hurt myself, and simply opt out of life. I didn’t consider myself suicidal. Just tired.
“Can’t you just get emancipated or something?”
It was a question I actually didn’t have to look up the answer for. “No. You have to have parental permission, and you have to prove that you can support yourself. I can’t do either. And it takes a long time. I’d be eighteen and an adult before it was granted, anyway.”
“Sounds like you’ve looked into it.” I hadn’t needed to. I’d been in the foster care system. I didn’t look into it. I just knew it.
I changed the subject.
“So, you work at the junkyard?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “I’m not here long-term or anything. Dad’s manager Reggie called me and said he needed some help straightening everything. Their secretary quit, their purchase orders are all wrong, and their ancient computer system crashed and took all their information with it. It’s a mess.”
“Why doesn’t your dad fix it?”
“He’s…sick,” Jake said. Everyone in town knew that Frank Dunn was a hermit. He rarely came out of his house, and when he did, it was just to buy booze.
“Oh. I’m sorry.” I knew what it was like to have a “sick” parent... or parents. Mine were the sickest of them all.
The comfortable silence returned and we sat side by side, watching the pelicans dive into the water for fish. It amazed me how they could see from that far up in the sky. They never seemed to miss and always emerged chomping on their catch, fins flopping between their beaks.
The sun had been up in the sky for way longer than could be called a sunrise, so we walked in silence back to the bike. I told him where Nan’s house was. He said he didn’t need directions. Of course, he didn’t.
I kept forgetting he was from here.
I thought once we got to Nan’s, if I didn’t acknowledge the giant blue tarp in the driveway then he wouldn’t either. “Thanks for the ride,” I said. I handed him his helmet.
“What’s all that?” he asked, gesturing to the very thing I’d hoped he would ignore.
“Garage sale stuff.” He had to go, and go now. I needed to come up with a plan. So far, it only consisted of squatting around Nan’s house until further notice. I’d forgotten about the boards on the windows. Shit. My situation was more obvious than I thought it would be.
I walked up the old steps of the porch, waiting to hear Jake’s bike take off. Instead, I heard nothing but the idling engine. I stood facing the door and pretended to rummage through my bag for my keys. Even if I’d had them, they wouldn’t have worked. There was a big gold padlock over the board on the door. I hoped he couldn’t see it from the road.
“You forget your key?” he called out.
“Yeah,” I lied. “I’m just going to go around back where the spare is.” I waved again and hoped that when I rounded the side of the house and reached the lanai he would take the hint and leave.
The screen door was locked. I bashed the flimsily latch with my wrist and it popped open instantly. I guess I wasn’t going to have to cut the screen after all.
The sliding glass door had another eviction notice taped to it, a duplicate of the one on the front door. I pulled it off and crumpled it in my hands. Then I sank down onto my ass, my back up against the door, and I rested my head in between my knees.
I was fucked.
I had nowhere else to go, and even if I did I had no money to get there. I would have to try to find some tools and break in, but that would only buy me a little bit of time. Nan’s house would probably be sold soon and occupied by seasonal renters or blue haired snowbirds in no time.
I pulled my hood over my head. It was ninety degrees out, but I didn’t give a shit. I just wanted to curl up and die.
“Abby?” a voice asked.
I knew exactly who it was without having to lift my head.
It was the foster care devil coming to drag me off to hell.
She was right on time, too. The pattern of my life seemed to be rolling right along on schedule. Something bad happens. Something worse happens. Something really bad happens. The cards I was being dealt were all the Fool.
“Dan,” I replied.
“Dan?” She questioned my use of her nickname, which only I knew the meaning of. I looked up at her. She looked down at me like I had three heads, and all three of them saw the pity in her eyes. “What are you doing back here on the lanai?”
“Just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“I came here looking for you and was alarmed when I saw the stuff in the driveway and that young man out front was holding this in his hands.” She handed me the wrinkled notice I had ripped off the front door.
“What young man?” I asked, sitting up and pulling my hood from my face.
She crouched next to me, still sweating from her neck, still holding the same clipboard she’d had the other day. “Your cousin, Jake, of course.” She said each word slowly like she was trying to tell me more than what she was really saying.
“My cousin? Jake? My cousin?” I must have sounded insane. I didn’t have any cousins, how would she get the impression that Jake was my…oh shit.
“What did you say to him?” I asked. Suddenly, I cared what he thought of me, though I didn’t know why it mattered.
“He just told me that you two stopped here to sort through some of your grandmother’s things and that you had come back here to make sure you didn’t miss anything,” Miss Thornton said.
“He said what?”
She huffed, like she shouldn’t be wasting her time on an idiot like me, like there was something I wasn’t getting in all this.
I wasn’t getting anything in any of it.
“I asked him about your Aunt Priscilla, and I was very sorry to hear that she had to leave town so suddenly.”
“Me too…” Maybe, I should just agree with everything she said. In the end, it wouldn’t matter anyway. She was here to take me away. I was about to tell her to save the paperwork, that I was going to opt-out the first chance I got. “Listen, you can take me if you have to, but it’ll be pointless, because if you do I’m just going to…” She was ignoring me. I was starting to get desperate. I was contemplating reaching for my knife in my boot and taking the next ten seconds to turn myself into a felon.
Miss Thornton said something that stopped me, mid-felony.
“I explained to your cousin that I was here to take you to a new foster home…” Here we go. “...but he told me it wouldn’t be necessary, because you’d be staying with him.”
What the fuck?
“I’m doing what?”
“I verified with Mr. Dunn that he has a residence, employment, the means to take care of you, and he meets the age qualification of twenty-one and over. It’s a shame I didn’t know sooner that you had a cousin. This paperwork could have been done days ago. I’d only have to remove you under emergency circumstances, and now that you have a relative here to care for you, there is no need for that.”
Residence? I thought. Employment? He was in town temporarily, wasn’t he?
Jake told her I could live with him?
She flipped a page on the clipboard, placed it on my lap and handed me a pen. “Here, sign this.”
“What is this?”
“Since you’re over the age of sixteen, you’re required to sign an agreement for your non-foster living arrangement.” I signed on the line where she was tapping her fat, sweaty finger, but before I handed her back her clipboard, I noticed the line above where I had just signed had another freshly inked signature on it.
Jacob Francis Dunn was signed in bold blue letters over a line that read Signature of Legal Guardian of Minor Child.
There was not a lot in this life that confused me. I understood that, aside from myself, people were pretty black and white for the most part. But that paper was definitely the most confusing thing I had ever encountered.
I was pretty sure that the man with the beautiful blue eyes, the temper and the big sexy bike—the very man who I had heard getting sucked off in a junkyard little more than twenty-four hours ago, mere moments before he put a gun to my head—had just adopted me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHEN I WALKED BACK TO THE FRONT YARD with Miss Thornton, Jake was leaning against his bike, smoking a cigarette. His eyes followed me, his face completely unreadable.
He nodded to Miss Thornton as she got into her little silver car and started the engine. Then he passed me the helmet and got off the bike so I could get on first, just like we had done earlier. I stood starting at him open-mouthed for what seemed like an eternity before he gave me a you coming? look.
I placed the helmet on my head and straddled the bike, grabbing the bar behind the seat. Jake got on after me, and we started down the road. After only a few minutes, we pulled into the parking lot at Dunn’s Automotive Repair. Jake parked the bike at the end a small dirt driveway on the side of the building. When I took off my helmet, I discovered that Miss Thornton had followed us and was now parked behind Jake’s bike.
What the hell is going on?
Jake said nothing to me as he waited for Miss Thornton to get out of her car. When she met up with us, clipboard in hand, Jake led us down the side of the building on a small concrete sidewalk and to a dark wooden door, almost hidden between two overgrown potted palms. He unclipped a set of keys from his belt loop and unlocked the door, stepping to the side to let us both in.
Once inside I realized this must have been the apartment Jake had told me about when we met in the yard last night. It wasn’t shop-like at all. It was small and clean and cozy. The floors were a simple beige tile, the walls a creamy yellow. Off to the right was a small galley-style kitchen with plain white cabinets with little plastic dolphins for knobs. The appliances were small and white but looked fairly new. The counter tops were covered in small, dark blue tiles with thick white grout lines. There was an overhang on one side where two wooden barstools were tucked under it. Behind it was a small area that looked like it was designated for a dining room table but instead sat a small iron desk and a laptop.
Jake turned on every light switch he passed as he walked Miss Thornton through the apartment, but it did little to brighten the dark space.
There was another door through the kitchen, and Jake opened it for Miss Thornton. She disappeared inside and quickly came back out, scribbling furiously on her clipboard. I was standing in the center of the living room with my backpack still on my shoulders. Jake leaned against the counter as Miss Thornton ran down a list of questions. “Own or rent?”
“Neither. My father owns the automotive repair company, and I use the apartment while I’m in town.”
“How long are you in town for?”
“I’ll stay until Abby turns eighteen, but I do travel for my own work, so there will be times when I’m gone for a while here and there.” His answers were simple and direct. Miss Thornton nodded as they went along.
“I expect you to take this seriously, Mr. Dunn. Miss Ford is under your care now.”
“I take it very seriously, ma’am.”
She turned her attention back to me. “Your home seems to have only one bedroom. Where will Miss Ford be sleeping?”
“In my room,” Jake answered. He realized how that sounded when Miss Thornton looked at him suspiciously, and he quickly corrected himself. “Oh, no—not like that. The living room couch pulls out, so that’s where I’ll be.”
She nodded. “I assumed that with you being cousins and all that sharing a room is out of the question.”
“Of course, ma’am.” Jake flashed her a brilliant smile. He really could turn on the charm when he wanted to.
Miss Thornton seemed satisfied with his answers. She tucked her clipboard under her arm and turned to leave, informing us of a follow-up visit in the next few weeks. She smiled, opened the door, and disappeared into the bright light of day, leaving us alone in the dark apartment.
Jake looked much too large for the little kitchen as he leaned against the counter and twiddled his keys in his hands.
“What the fuck just happened?” I asked. “You told Miss Thornton that you were my cousin and that I could stay with you?”
“Yes.” He smiled and moved over to the couch where he plopped down and put his feet up on the coffee table. His heavy boots thudded against the wood.
“Why?”
He pushed a stray hair behind his ear, shrugged his shoulders, looked me dead in the eye and said, “I don’t know.”
At that moment, it didn’t really matter why he had helped. All that mattered is that he’d saved me from foster care—or, more likely, he had saved me from prison.
“Thank you.” The words were hard for me to say. I hadn’t said them much in my life. “I don’t know why you did it, but I’m glad you did.” I pushed both straps of my bag over my shoulder and started for the door.
“Where are you going?” Jake asked. He stood up from the couch and blocked the door. He towered over me, his presence as intimidating as the bike he rode.
“I’m leaving.” I really didn’t want to have to remind him that his lie had helped me out of foster care, but it still left me homeless. I had to go back and see if I could salvage some of Nan’s stuff, to see if there was anything worth selling.
“Why are you leaving?”
I fidgeted with my hands and looked at the floor. “I gotta go figure some stuff out I guess.”
“Like what?”
“Well, what you told Miss Thornton will get her off my ass for a while, but I still have to figure where I’m going to live. I figure I can sell some of Nan’s stuff for a bus ticket to a place more inland, where the hotels are less expensive.” I hated saying that I had nowhere to go. It made it all even more real. Jake already knew all of it, between sleeping in the junkyard and seeing the state of Nan’s, but that didn’t make it any less embarrassing.
“Abby.” Jake reached out to grab my hand, but stopped himself. He pushed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans instead. “I want you to stay here. I meant it when I told her that.”
“Why? You don’t even know me.”
“You need a place to stay, and I have one. Problem solved as far as I’m concerned.”
“What do you…want from me?” I braced myself for some sort of perverted answer that would make me reach for my knife again.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” He reached out and gently pulled my hood off my face, letting my hair fall around my shoulders.
My red face in full view.