Gun Shy

  I don’t have any friends, I want to say to him.

  “Sure,” I reply. “I don’t start until midday tomorrow. I’ll spend the morning doing it.”

  I don’t want to stand in the cold and put up posters of a girl who is more than likely already dead. But Damon buried the dog for me while I was at work. So I should do something to help him, I guess.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I find my old school backpack in the back of my closet, still adorned with stickers and full of holes. I swallow down a lump in my throat, wipe away the memory, and stuff the pile of Jennifer posters inside. A staple gun from the garage, a roll of duct tape, and I’m set. Damon drives me to the diner where the rest of the volunteers are meeting to go over the plan.

  When we enter, the place is full again. I hold the door open while Damon knocks his boots against the wall, shaking out the snow and dirt. Amanda is running around like she’s possessed, yelling breakfast orders into the kitchen, balancing plates up and down her arms.

  I guess pretty girls disappearing is good for business.

  Shelly and Chase are here; no kids this time. Shelly looks like she’s going to squat and pop out their baby on the diner floor. Everyone in the diner is looking at Chase while pretending not to. I scan the place, looking for any sign of Leo, feeling equal parts disappointed and relieved when I see he’s not here.

  Damon ushers everyone to a corner of the diner and hands out more stacks of posters. Shelly and Chase have been crying; their eyes are red, their faces lined with stress. I imagine what it would be like if my sister went missing. If I had a sister.

  After everyone has their posters and their little maps, Damon takes me aside. I’ve been assigned the diner and surrounds, most likely so Damon can keep tabs on me.

  “Don’t go near that fucking garage,” Damon murmurs in my ear. “I mean it, Cassie.”

  I nod. “I won’t.”

  It’s cold outside. Snow fell pretty heavily last night, and the place is blanketed in white. I wonder, briefly, if someone should have had the posters laminated to stave off the weather. I look around the parking lot of the grill, my heart heavy, Jennifer’s eyes following me from the posters I’ve already attached to every solid surface.

  I’m about to staple a poster to the base of a wooden power pole when I notice the remnants of an old poster in the very same spot. My blood turns to ice as I realize this is the exact same spot where Leo and I stood nine years ago and stapled a poster of Karen Brainard. This exact spot.

  I throw the rest of the Jennifer posters into a nearby trashcan.

  HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? No, I haven’t. Nobody has. That’s the whole fucking point.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  LEO

  The next day, I skip my shift at the garage. Hannah’s been complaining of pains in her stomach, and I need to make sure she’s okay.

  I want to take her to see a proper doctor, but she’s terrified of hospitals. She had medical problems when she was little, part of her condition, and now you can’t get her into one of those places unless you basically drug her first.

  Even to take her to the dentist when she had an abscess, Pike and I had to hold her down and make her take some of Mom’s strong painkillers to calm her down enough.

  The girl’s had a lot of trauma in her short little life.

  I could drug her now — only I can’t drug her — she’s pregnant. So I get Pike to drive us to the diner and once most of the breakfast crowd has cleared out, I lead her down the hallway to Amanda’s office. Part of me hopes I run into Cassie again. Another part makes sure I pull my baseball cap down low over my face so that even if she were here, we could pretend we didn’t see each other.

  I’ve already briefed Amanda on the situation. She’s a good person, and she gets us the help we need, sitting Hannah on an old sofa in the corner and speaking to her gently. She has a little thing called a Doppler that she got from Craigslist after I told her about Hannah a few days ago, and she slides it along Hannah’s stomach, searching.

  There it is. A clip-clop-clip-clop, a horse’s gallop, over and over. I don’t think Hannah understands what it is, or even the notion that there’s a baby inside her. After Amanda checks her over, she gives her a menu, tells her to order whatever she wants, and sends her to one of the booths out front.

  We step out into the hall and watch as Hannah walks, or waddles, past the kitchen pass and slides into a booth. She could be hours — a poor trailer kid being given a free meal is akin to a junkie being given a spoon and a baggie full of pharmaceutical-grade heroin. She’s grinning from ear to ear, and I make a mental note to take her to do something like this — the diner visit, not the rest— more often.

  “This last year’s been tough on your sister,” Amanda says. “I try to check in when I can, but your mother hasn’t let me past the front door these past months. Now I can see why.”

  Hannah doesn’t go to school. She spends her days in the trailer, watching TV, hanging out, coloring. There’s no school that could take her around here, and none of us want to send her away to one of those facilities. I guess I thought by keeping her home, she was more protected.

  Guess I thought wrong.

  I chew on the inside of my cheek as I mentally berate my mother. “I appreciate that,” I say, smiling at Amanda. “Thank you.”

  “Of course,” she replies, as we both watch Hannah slide her finger along the plastic menu, taking her time to read each item carefully. “Your brother tried, I think, but he’s not you.”

  I cross my arms over my chest, nodding. “Pike’s always needed someone to tell him what to do.”

  “Must be a lot to have on your shoulders, that burden of responsibility. Especially at your age.”

  “Honestly, I feel like I’m about a hundred years old these days.”

  “Have you started drinking again?”

  “Most people are too scared to ask that,” I say, amusement lifting one side of my mouth into a smirk.

  “Leonardo Bentley, I used to change your diapers when you were a baby. I’m not scared of you.”

  I chuckle at that.

  “Besides, I know your real name. I have currency.”

  I look around, making sure we’re not in earshot of anyone. The back tables are clear.

  “The Sheriff came digging around the garage yesterday,” I say quietly. “I think he thinks I’ve got something to do with Jennifer’s disappearance.”

  Amanda’s momentary smile vanishes, replaced by a deep frown. “Jesus, Leo.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Be careful what you say. Be careful who you talk to. You have a lawyer?”

  I nod.

  “Good. Make sure you warn them. It’s a packed lunch trip from any other town to here.”

  That hangs in the air between us for a while as Hannah finally makes her selection from the menu, humming a song as she waves us over. Amanda waves back, diverting one of the waitresses I don’t know over to the table.

  “Have you spoken to Cassie since you’ve been back?” Amanda asks, her tone tentative, almost like she’s afraid. I shove my hands in my pockets, suddenly feeling about two feet tall.

  “Nope,” I say. “Well, that first day with the spilled milk, but not since then.”

  “You never answered my question before. Have you been drinking since you got out?” she asks me.

  “No,” I reply evenly, wanting to be angry but knowing that it’s a perfectly legitimate question. I kick at the floor with the tip of my sneaker. “No, I haven’t had a drop.”

  We watch Hannah order with the waitress.

  “Your sister needs to go to see a real doctor at a medical center,” Amanda says, as Hannah approaches us. I shake my head, putting my finger to my lips. “She hates hospitals. We’ll have to trick her. Don’t let her hear you.”

  Amanda nods, smiling broadly as Hannah gets within earshot. She takes her back to her booth and gives her an iPhone to play with. We don’t have one, don’t have anything like that at our place
, so she’s instantly enthralled by a YouTube video of people unwrapping various toys and figurines. She’s completely captivated, some annoying high-pitched voice narrating all of the videos, and Amanda comes back to join me.

  “Have you asked her who the father of the baby is?”

  I shake my head. “I already know. It’s that Derek Jackson, the one who used to do janitorial stuff at the hospital until he got fired. Remember?”

  Amanda frowns. “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. I mean, I walked in on them in the bedroom—”

  “How long have you been home, Leo.”

  I count the days. “A week, today.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but judging by your sister’s measurements, she’s anywhere from five to seven months pregnant.”

  “And?”

  “And, Derek Jackson wasn’t fired. He was arrested. Outstanding warrant for unpaid fines. That was… Christmas. He only got back to Gun Creek a few weeks before you did. If he was the father, Hannah would be about eleven months pregnant right now.”

  I feel fucking stupid all of a sudden. “How do you know all this?” I ask, alarm bells ringing in my head. Because if Derek isn’t the father of Hannah’s baby, who is? I mean, it could literally be anyone. She’s so damn trusting, and all she wants is attention, and she can’t tell good attention from bad.

  “I work weekend shifts at the hospital,” she says. “Derek broke into the drug store and stole a heap of pharmaceutical grade morphine.” Probably shared it with my mom, I think wryly. “I saw them arrest him. That’s how I know what happened.”

  “Shit,” I say. I don’t know what to think. Just that now I have to kill two people for laying their hands on my baby sister. Derek, because I know he’s one of them, and whoever else it was who did this to her.

  I’m going to run out of places to bury all these bodies.

  I hope to God it’s a kid Hannah’s age. Somehow, that would make it less bad. I’d still smash the little punk’s face in, and she’s still mentally not old enough to be having sex with anybody, but at least if it were another fourteen-year-old kid, I could begin to understand how this happened.

  “I need to know who the father is,” I say.

  Amanda gives me a look. “Let me guess — so you can kill them?”

  “Something like that,” I mumble. Yeah, something very fucking similar to that.

  “Let’s see if we can talk to her, get any information,” Amanda says. “If you promise me you won’t do anything bad with the information.”

  I think about that for a moment. “Then what’s the point of having the information?”

  This woman is so patient, she must be a fucking saint. “We tell the authorities if we need to, and we let them deal with it. If he’s an adult, we make sure it’s reported to child services.”

  “What if they try to take her away?” I snap, my whole body going rigid. “No. NO.”

  “Okay, then, we don’t tell anyone. Unless we both agree. Okay?”

  I nod. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah.”

  Amanda goes over to the booth and talks with Hannah for a moment. I edge closer, just within earshot, but I have to focus very carefully, and I’m missing every second or third word that Hannah says.

  “— Sent him away. Now I’m sad,” Hannah says, pushing something on the iPhone. Derek. She must be talking about Derek.

  I smile to myself when I hear Amanda tell Hannah how special God made her, and how important it is to find the special father of her special baby. I don’t know how, or why, but my sister starts talking, and I wish to hell that I hadn’t asked.

  “Mom’s friend says I’m special, too,” I hear Hannah say. “He used to bring me presents until I started getting fat. Now he just comes and picks up Mom and he won’t talk to me.”

  I look at Amanda, and I can see the alarm bells on her expression. “What friend, sweetie?”

  Now he just comes and picks up Mom. Jesus. Don’t let it be him. Anyone but him.

  “Mr. Carter,” Hannah chirps up. Fuck, no. “He’d bring me presents, and then we’d have special time. I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”

  I clench my teeth, my fists, my entire body, to stop myself from rushing over to Hannah and shaking her until she tells me everything. I count to five in my head as I continue to listen to my sister speak.

  Amanda asks her when he started visiting. Hannah doesn’t know how to reference time that well, so Amanda helps her to describe the weather.

  It was hot because the AC was broken and Ma asked him to pay to fix it. He started “visiting” Hannah at the same time.

  Did my mother know what was happening?

  Hannah says the leaves crunched when Carter stopped visiting her.

  Fall.

  He was visiting her in summer, the very time she would have gotten pregnant.

  The guy who fathered Hannah fifteen years ago is the same guy who fathered Hannah’s baby, while I rotted in a jail cell and Pike sold meth in Reno.

  Hannah.

  I was always so careful with her. She never had any fear as a baby, the way she’d toddle around, her hair in pigtails and her eyes never quite managing to focus on anything. She would have walked straight into that goddamned creek and drowned if it weren’t for me keeping tabs on her twenty-four hours a day. She was my sister, but she was mine. I fed her bottles in the night. I changed her diapers. I brushed her hair and tied her shoelaces.

  I thought I’d protected her. Now, I can see how woefully inadequate my quasi-parenting was. I didn’t protect her at all. I left her, a lamb among wolves, and as soon as I was gone she was fair game.

  All I can see is red, all I can feel is this yawning chasm sucking me in. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to die in prison because I have to kill him for what he did to my sister.

  Hannah goes back to the iPhone — a pair of headphones over her head, this time, snug from ear to ear — and Amanda guides me back into her tiny office, closing the door behind us. Her expression is grave, like the hole I’m about to dig for Hal Carter. My hands are shaking.

  “Leo,” she says, just as I punch my fist into the wall. It hurts, but I do it again, and again. Amanda grabs my arm and I don’t struggle. I struggled once when Ma grabbed me, and I ended up giving her a black eye by accident when I swung my elbow around to push her away. I was only a kid when that happened, but it’s scarred me, the way she grabbed her face and screamed. When you’re raging on an inanimate wall and a woman grabs you, you freeze.

  I go rigid, staring down at my knuckles as blood swells up and drips down my wrist, down the arm of my shirt where it forms a wet, sticky puddle between cotton and flesh.

  “Leo. Please look at me.”

  I do. I look her straight in her bloodshot green eyes, and she doesn’t flinch.

  “We can figure this out,” she states, and suddenly it’s like someone has given me a dose of Percocet, a hit of weed, something that makes me sag against the wall I was just assaulting. The fight’s out of me. My eyes are burning, there’s a hard lump in my throat that no amount of swallowing can will away. I don’t think anyone else has ever taken charge like Amanda is, even if it’s just for a moment. Nobody except Cassie, that is. She was always the problem-solver, always the one who fixed everything, but aside from her, it’s been me. Just me. Trying to make sure nobody gets hurt, or dies, or worse.

  “If what Hannah’s saying is true, we will get him arrested. Okay? But we can’t do anything until we’re sure. Do you understand, Leo? You cannot go and see that man until DNA tests are conducted until we have proof. Because Hannah is beautiful, and she is special, but we cannot take her word as gospel.”

  I shake my head; she has no idea about Hannah. About where she came from.

  “Hannah doesn’t look like our mother,” I say, in a voice barely above a whisper. “And she didn’t look like my father, either. You know who Hannah looks like?”

  She stills; I can see the connections firing in her eyes.

>   “Hannah looks like her father. Her real father.”

  “You’re not saying—”

  “I am.”

  “The mayor—”

  “Hal Carter is Hannah’s real father. He’s a sick, mean old bastard. And if she says he did this to her? I take her word as fucking gospel.”

  Amanda’s face is ashen; she keeps doing this thing where she holds her hand to her mouth. Her fingers are shaking. I think mine are, too. Shaking and bleeding. Fuck.

  “What are you going to do?” she asks me. “You can’t go back to prison, Leo. Your sister needs you, now more than ever.”

  She’s right. I hate it that she’s right. I hate it that no matter what I do, I’ll always be the lowest common denominator. I hate that if I do something to Hal Carter, he’ll get off scot-free and I’ll be the one who gets punished.

  “It’s not fair,” I mutter.

  “Life’s not fair,” Amanda says. She might as well have poured napalm on me.

  “FUCK!” I yell, kicking the wall. “FUCKFUCKFUCK!”

  Somebody knocks on the office door. I throw the door open, feeling sorry for whoever it is because now I have to kill them, too, for interrupting my boxing session.

  Cassie. When she sees me, she steps back as if she’s been burned.

  “I heard yelling,” she says.

  “Everything’s fine,” Amanda says dismissively.

  Cassie looks at the small puddle of blood my bleeding knuckles are creating. “You sure?”

  Amanda nods. “Sure as sure can be. I think table twelve needs their check.” Subtext: Go away.

  Cassie looks almost disappointed as she walks back to the front of the diner. Once she’s gone, Hannah makes a beeline for me, snowballing into me, hugging me around my waist as hard as she can. “You miss her, don’t you?”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Cassie,” she says, pressing her ear to my chest. And that’s the thing about Hannah. She doesn’t even understand that this is all because of what’s happened to her.

  “Yeah, sis,” I say, messing up her hair. “That’s why I got mad. I’m sorry.”