The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove

  "I'm just going to make a quick stop by the trading post," Slutsky said. "You want to come?"

  "Trading post?" I asked, confused. It didn't look like the kind of place where I'd want to trade anything.

  "Oh, Tal," she said, shaking her head, "you've been away too long. They've got everything, speed, Oxy--what's your poison these days?"

  One of the guys was leaning up against the camper, watching us. He had a braided beard and a spiked choker. His arms were tattooed from his shoulders to his fingers.

  "I think I'm just going to go," I said quietly. "Be careful, okay?"

  Slutsky nodded, as if she'd already read a script of my lines. "Of course," she shrugged, leaning in to kiss my cheek. "I'll call you?"

  From my car, I could see her silhouette climbing into the back of the trading post camper. I was glad to be out of there, but unsettled by the fact that I knew my next stop had to be my father's.

  I decided to sleep on it before I made any impulsive moves and put the car in drive. Suddenly, I was very aware of the leather interior, surround-sound stereo system, and blinging hubcaps. Here I was, stuck in my past, sticking out because of my present.

  And speaking of my present, I still hadn't listened to Mike's message:

  "Don't know if you were waiting in our spot today, but if you were, I'm sorry. I just needed a little bit of time to clear my head. Don't be mad, okay? Just call me. I love you."

  I sighed and tossed the phone back in my bag--but when I did, I noticed something conspicuously missing. The rattle of the bottle of pills. I quickly sifted through my backpack. Where were they?

  I knew I'd had the bottle when I walked into the bar; I'd felt for it when I paid for my drinks. I replayed the last hour in my mind and remembered Slutsky rifling through my bag. That little bitch had stolen my pills! And now she was selling them at that sleazy trading post!

  I almost slammed on the brakes and turned the car around. But then, a calm settled over me. Slutsky had just unwittingly done me a favor by taking away the baggage I hadn't known how to lose.

  Let her have them. Now I could only hope that they'd disappeared for good.

  CHAPTER Fourteen

  A BATTLE LOST AND WON

  When I woke up, everything was just as it had been before: my thin pea green comforter wrapped around me; the sun peeking through the wide east window, my father passed out on the easy chair in the living room of the trailer, where I slept on the fold-out bed. I was groggy, half asleep.

  "Dad? " I said. My voice had an underwater slowness to it. "I'll make some coffee, okay?"

  Silence from the chair. Dad's arms were thrown up over his head in slack fists, and his cheeks were bristly and bloated. He'd kicked off one shoe by the door, but the other one still hung from his foot at an odd angle, like it had been twisted. A spider inched along the back of his headrest. He was so gruesome; I couldn't stop staring at him. It seemed like lifetimes since I'd seen him, but then, it was just another day. Wasn't it?

  I stood over him, shaking his shoulder. "Dad," I said more loudly. Then my heart picked up, and I turned towards the back of the trailer. "Mom!"

  In the bedroom down the short hall of the trailer, I waited for my mother's moan and rustle in the bed. We had a whole routine: I'd call again; she'd gripe her way to the door and stick her bed head out into the hallway--sometimes with a backward glance toward the bed. She could have anyone in there--anyone willing to sneak out between the time I left for school and whenever my dad came to.

  "Mom," I called again. "He's really out this time."

  Suddenly, Dad's fingers clamped around my wrist. I looked down, and his eyes snapped open.

  "Shut your mouth. Nobody's out."

  I screamed because he'd scared me, because his grip was tight and his breath smelled dead, because his lips and his gums were blue.

  "Mom?" I called again. My voice wobbled through the cramped room.

  "Your mom's not here," he spit. "She didn't bother coming home last night."

  "How would you know?" I said, wrestling free to scurry to the corner of my bed.

  It was then that Dad lurched from the easy chair and came at me. I didn't think he had it in him to make it across the trailer, but then again, when he wanted to scare me, it didn't matter how strung out he was.

  "You think I don't know what goes on in my own house?"

  When he stood up fully, which was rare, Dad was the height of the trailer's low ceiling. His big arm reached for one of the bottles of painkillers strewn across the kitchen table, but he stopped to look up at me. I could feel my lips trembling. I was willing him to inhale his morning fistful. It'd be better for us both if he just swallowed them down.

  "I know what your mom tells you," he said in a low voice. "Talking behind my back as if I'm half a man. You think I need it?" He'd uncapped the bottle, but instead of taking out the pills, he chucked the whole thing at me, hard. The bottle bounced off my thigh, and the pills clattered across the floor.

  "You think I need any of you?" he yelled.

  "Dad," I pleaded, wincing when he pinned me up against the wall. His fist came close to grabbing my hair, but when I ducked to dodge him, he stumbled forward, knocking his shin on the bed.

  "Damn it, Tal," he groaned, grabbing his leg and hopping on one foot toward his chair.

  I grabbed my purple backpack and shoved flip-flops on my feet, not caring that this meant I was going to school in my pajamas, again. Better to show up in flannel pants today than covered in bruises tomorrow.

  "You get back here," Dad yelled, chasing me out into the yard of the trailer park.

  I kept running. I only looked back when I heard the thud.

  My father was face first in the dirt. It wasn't the first time he'd fallen like that, but it was the first time I'd seen him lie there silently, not trying to get up. He'd tripped over the bottom step of the trailer and come down hard. I saw the smear of blood dripping from his lower lip. His eyelids fluttered and he was out again. I reached down to his neck, felt his pulse, then turned around and kept on running.

  Mom showed up at school that day to tell me that the cops had picked him up. It was the last time either of us saw him. It was the first time I started keeping that old promise never to speak to him again.

  Could a man change? Definitely not.

  He opened the door before I'd even finished knocking. He looked frail and tired; the skin around his silver eyes looked loose like a grandfather's. But when he put out his arms, they were unexpectedly steady.

  "Tal-doll," he said, waiting for a hug.

  I stood on the metal steps of my Uncle Lewey's trailer, my arms crossed tight over my waist. I was fighting the part of me that wanted badly to step toward my father and put my head on his broad chest. Instead, I stared at the point on his forehead directly between his eyes. It was an old trick I'd learned in debate class--use it when you're too nervous to look someone in the eyes but still want to display your control.

  "What do you want?" I said.

  "To congratulate you," he said, nudging me with his bony elbow. "My daughter the Princess. Not that I'm surprised."

  "I don't need you to say congratulations."

  Dad frowned. "Okay, then maybe I need you to say, 'Welcome home.' I'm still on probation, of course, but with enough good behavior, everything can go right back to--"

  "No," I said, feeling the old tremble come back into my voice. "It's different now. Mom and I are different. We moved on." My voice strained with the hope that this was true.

  "Come in," Dad said, ignoring me and holding open the door. "I'll make you some tea. You look beautiful, but you don't look well."

  Before Dad left and Mom and I moved out, Uncle Lewey's trailer had been three doors down from ours. It was always the bachelor-party zone. I still expected to find a free-for-all of drugs and booze, maybe a woman no one knew asleep in the corner.

  But when I stepped inside today, the place looked modest and clean, with two worn place mats on the table and a
silk Jessamine in a small plastic vase. It smelled like disinfectant and shaving cream.

  Dad's favorite photo still hung on the wall above the kitchen table. Mom had snapped it with her disposable Kodak down by the wharf. Dad, Uncle Lewey, and I stood posed in front of the famous Caught 'er in Cawdor billboard, reserved for the lucky fisherman who caught a fish weighing more than fifty pounds. In the picture, Uncle Lewey's arm looped proudly under the fish's head, and Dad held up its stomach. I stood at the tail end, straining even then to hold up the weight. I was six years old, and though I didn't know it, Dad was already dragging me down.

  "You'll notice things have changed around here," he said today, spooning the instant Lipton powder into two mugs and topping them off with boiling water from an electric kettle on the windowsill. "I'm not the guy you remember. My buddies at the station say they hardly recognize me."

  I rolled my eyes. When Dad referred to his buddies at the station, he meant the cops who took his bribes for that brief period of time after his arrest, before the embezzlement charges came out. Dad could go on for days about his buddies at the station. A lot of good they'd done him when the shit finally hit the fan. I couldn't believe he was even still speaking to them.

  "What else do your buddies at the station have to say these days?" I asked, keeping my eyes on my tea.

  "Oh, that's right." Dad snapped his fingers. "You're over on that side of the world now." He chuckled. "You know, when bad things happen to rich folks, everybody gets worked up. Sounds like the dead kid's old lady has this new cop on a real witch hunt."

  "What do you mean?" I said. I thought Officer Parker was working for the school, not Justin's family.

  "You know, the families are always happier with a closed case." He waved his mug in the air. "Understandable," he said. "But these young cops, they just want to pin the first guy on the list. The bad news is, the first guy on the list is some kid with an alibi for the night of the murder."

  "Oh, yeah?" I asked, trying to sound as disdainful as possible--without completely shutting my dad down. "And did your buddies at the station entrust you with any details of that alibi?"

  "Get this," Dad laughed. "The kid was in rehab. He was too busy drugging himself to drug anyone else."

  I shook my head. "But Baxter's not in rehab," I said. "He was there the night of the party."

  Dad nodded, like he'd heard all this before. "It was one of those middle-of-the-night deals," he explained, "where they cart the kid off while he's sleeping. Convenient that it happened the night of the accident, but . . . wait a minute--" His voice changed. "What were you doing at that party?"

  "Please. You lost all your fatherly privileges years ago." I waved him off. "Who have you been talking to anyway? Officer Parker? Do they know when Baxter's going to get out?"

  Dad was looking at me strangely. He took a slow sip of his tea.

  "Why so interested in Baxter?" he asked. "You're not mixed up with this guy, are you, Tal?"

  "I'm not mixed up in any of it," I said quickly, defensively.

  Suddenly, I could see myself through his eyes. What must I look like, cheeks flushed and breath in my throat, firing off frantic questions to someone I swore I'd never speak to again?

  I stood up, pushing my stool back. It was stupid to have ever thought he could help me with something like this.

  "You got me worried, doll," Dad said, his head cocked to the side. "I thought you were seeing someone nice, that King boy."

  "You stay away from Mike and you stay away from me," I said, walking toward the door. "You have enough on your plate, worrying about yourself."

  Dad had his hands up in the air, like, "I surrender."

  "I'm your father," he said. "And I love you. I'm back in your life now, and I'm straight as an arrow, I swear. You can come to me if you need anything." He reached for my arm. "Do you need anything?"

  His hand on my arm was so familiar, so complicated. I hated it, but I couldn't shake myself free. How had he found his way back to me--after I'd come so far away from him?

  But then, out of anyone, maybe my dad could understand how I'd gotten myself in so deep. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to share this load with someone else. When I looked up at his silver eyes, I saw the same sparkle that I used to carry in my own. I opened my mouth to speak.

  "Just tell me what you need," he said again, more softly.

  It was that yearning in his voice--that need to be needed not so different from the Bambies, and I lorded it over the Bambies. My stomach turned.

  Behind him, something caught my eye. A large black spider spinning a web from the ceiling of the trailer. And behind it, the neat line of liquor bottles stashed behind a box of cereal. I looked at my dad. Part of his sentence was to get sober and stay clean. Suddenly I saw that nothing had changed--nothing except for me.

  I wrenched my arm free of him.

  "I'm leaving," I said. "Stop calling me."

  I grabbed the doorknob and thrust it open, catching a blast of cold air in my throat. I started to run. As the sound of my feet pounded the pavement, the desperate reality of my situation grew clearer and clearer.

  Dad had been my last chance out. And he'd failed me yet again.

  CHAPTER Fifteen

  NIGHT'S BLACKSHADOWS

  Whenever Mike and I agreed to meet at our secret spot over the Cove, the plan unfolded the same way:

  Rendezvous, one of us would text in the morning, and the other would know what it meant.

  Midnight, at the falls, dress darkly and go quietly.

  Today, I'd been the one to send the text, feeling uncharacteristically nervous even as I used the code we'd used countless times before. The difference was that usually Mike and I just went there to relax and spend some time together. Tonight, my agenda was a little more ambitious. This whole week had been one catastrophe after another, and even as I tried to start piecing together the fragments of a plan, I knew it wouldn't feel real until I'd looped Mike in.

  Okay was all he'd texted back.

  When the full moon was high in the clear, dark sky and my mom had come home from her regular Wednesday night bowling date with the Dick--tipsy enough that she passed out in her clothes on top of the bed--I pulled a black turtleneck over my head and slunk out into the night.

  We loved this waterfall. Mike had stumbled on it as a kid and had been coming here himself for years. He brought me here on our third date with a bottle of champagne and a picnic basket. I brought him here on his birthday and had all the props waiting to role-play Tarzan and Jane. It was the site of our first disagreement, our first time, our first anniversary. And luckily, it also was the one romantic spot in Charleston where we'd never run into another couple trying to squeeze in a covert grope. Having been there enough times by now, I was pretty sure that Mike and I were the only two people in the world who knew the secret waterfall existed at all.

  To get there, you had to park at the marina across from the Isle of Palms. Then you trooped straight up a craggy washed-out trail for almost a mile before you got to the line of maple trees and a thick patch of Spanish moss hiding the waterfall. But once you waded through the fecund forest, the view was well worth all the huffing and puffing.

  The falls cascaded cleanly down a limestone cliff and landed in a pool of water that, in the moonlight, was almost obscenely aquamarine. It wasn't that high--nothing in the Charleston area rose very far above sea level. But over the years, a perfect limestone niche for two had formed directly underneath the stream. On an early night like tonight, a slower stream of water from a nearby mineral spring sprayed off a cloaking mist that made being there feel kind of like being in a dream.

  Every time we went to the falls, Mike arrived before me. He always left a trail from the spot where the path ended to where I'd find him under the alcove, because even though I'd been there enough times to find it in my sleep, Mike still said he didn't want to lose me on the way. He'd sprinkle rose petals or chocolates or birdseed--once he'd even left a few pairs of his boxers in t
he tree branches, like flags leading me right to him.

  Tonight, the path was bare.

  My heart raced at the thought of being stood up a third time, but when I dipped under the sheet of water to the alcove, Mike was there. He was seated on our rock with his head in his hands.

  "You didn't leave me a trail," I said.

  "I thought you liked doing things on your own," he said. His black shirt sagged at the shoulders, and his face looked as white as the moon. "Besides," he said sadly, "haven't we left enough trails already?"

  "Mike," I said. He stood up when I went to him. We wrapped our arms around each other and just stood there for a moment.

  "I've missed you," I whispered.

  "I'm sorry," he whispered back, "about the other day."

  He lifted me up and I swung my legs around his waist. Then he backed me up against the wall of rocks and pressed his body against mine. We kissed. It was long and hot and very us. Something in me welled up with relief.

  But when Mike pulled away, we both opened our eyes, and the unwelcome, unfamiliar fear found its way into our waterfall.

  "What are we going to do?" he asked, setting me down.

  "Look, I've got everything figured out," I said, leading Mike back to his seat on the rock. From my backpack, I pulled out a foil-covered plate of my specialty Carolina Bourbon Brownies that always got Mike's mind focused before a test.

  "What's all this?" he asked.

  "Sustenance to help us strategize," I said, popping a well-done corner piece in his mouth. "I've been thinking, just in case Baxter's DVD does prove too hard to get a hold of, we're going to need a plan B. Which is why I've found the perfect way to keep Officer Creeper in check."

  "I like the sound of that," he said.

  "You do?" I asked, leaning into him. Everything depended on Mike being with me on the plan.

  "Are you kidding?" Mike raised an eyebrow in that sexy way of his. "After the way that guy treated you in the fishbowl the other day? I'm all ears."

  "A little bird tells me Officer Parker is packing an incriminating DVD or two of his own," I said, gaining confidence as he egged me on. I wiggled my finger through his button-down shirt and tickled his ribcage. This was much more like it. "I'll get us access to proof of O.P.'s statutory ways," I said. "And if he's still not cooperating, we might just have to air his dirty laundry." I leaned in for the clincher. "During regularly scheduled 'Path to Palmetto' programming at the Ball."