The A-Word

  The rest of our conversation—once we managed to be just the three of us standing outside the front door—went like this:

  Casey: “What the hell are you doing here, Bo?”

  Me: “He’s my new world history teacher.”

  Bo: “Get yourself under control. If Management wanted your input on this, they’d have asked you.”

  Me (because seriously?): “Management wants you to quit your college job so you can teach me what color map pencils to use?”

  Bo: “Map pencils?”

  Casey: “I don’t need you minding my business. I don’t need you in my sister’s business.”

  Bo: “Something’s coming. You can’t be everywhere at once. I’m sure that isn’t a surprise to you. Or perhaps you’ve been too occupied trying to find answers for something that doesn’t need answering. There is nothing new to learn and nothing new to see. So you can go park your car where it belongs and come on in.”

  Casey: “You were there when she came back. You must know what happened to her. I think if you won’t say, it must be something with power connected to it. That’s what your big thing is, right? Follow the power. Way I figure it, you must believe there’s something in it for you if you keep quiet. But she deserves to know.”

  Bo: “You think you know what’s best for her, Mr. Samuels?”

  Casey: “Yeah. And Mr. Samuels is my deadbeat father. You’re talking to me.”

  Bo: “Some things are better left alone. I’ve got more experience on this. Trust me. Things I’ve seen—”

  Casey: “You’re old. I get it. Here’s what you need to get: My sister wants to go to Austin. That’s where I’m taking her. This is now a family matter. And you are not our family.”

  After that, Bo held Casey’s gaze so long it made me squirm. But he didn’t push matters, which surprised me. Bo didn’t strike me as the giving-in type—more the ‘let’s be a jackass to piss off Casey’ type. Then again, Casey had been moping around so much, I wouldn’t have figured him for taking a stand. Or for calling out our dad for what he was now.

  “Truth’s a good thing,” I added, hoping to break the tension.

  It hung there between us with the other lies we’d all told.

  We drove the three hours to Austin, stopping once to pee and buy kolaches at Amber’s favorite place on 290. This was my idea: a good omen, I figured. But they were out of regular sausage and just had the jalapeño variety and only the prune filling among the fruit ones. This did not bode well. We passed on the prune—for obvious reasons—splitting a jalapeño sausage one, and choked it down with ice tea.

  In Austin, we stomped around the UT campus until we found the library. Here we researched for any articles that might not be on the general Internet but mentioned the events of the robbery, that day when Amber didn’t exactly bite the dust. There was a total of one, from the Daily Texan. And there was one quote, from one of her bio professors. When we went to find him, we discovered that he had retired, moved to Bozeman, Montana, where he lived until last year when he had died of a heart attack. So we couldn’t ask him if she’d had any enemies or whatever CSI-type question I had in mind.

  After that dead end, we went to St. David’s Medical Center where Amber had trained as an EMT. More of the same: we convinced the lady at the ER desk to ask around, saying we were Amber’s brother and sister and that we were planning a surprise birthday party for her and did anyone who’d worked with her there want to do a video birthday message. (Here I held up my cell as evidence that we could actually film.) One ER nurse remembered Amber. She sang “Happy Birthday to You,” into my cell and then said Amber had been a natural at EMT and how was med school going, to which we replied, great, leaving out any other details since there weren’t any.

  “She still with her boyfriend?” the nurse asked.

  We told her no, they’d broken up.

  “Shame,” the nurse said. “He was always bringing her gifts.” And that was all she had for us.

  THE ONLY THING left was to nose around the apartment building where Amber and Terry had lived. We hiked the mile from campus, finding the street off Guadalupe with no problem. But it reminded me of the last time we were in Austin, looking for Dad. We’d found him at Taco Taco Taco. Renfroe had drugged his memory, but he’d remembered most of his old life by then. Except he still hadn’t come home.

  I told myself: Jenna Samuels, do not take this as a sign. Think about something else. So I thought about tacos.

  “I’m hungry,” I told Casey.

  “You’re the one who wanted to do this.”

  “Yeah. Maybe we can go to Torchy’s after?” (Torchy’s has the best brisket and avocado tacos in the universe.)

  “We’ll find something, Jenna. We will.”

  I wanted to agree with him. I had figured we were experts after last year and the whole Renfroe/Manny mystery. But now I was thinking we were amateurs. If there was access to all those convenient TV mystery clues like DNA and scientists who could figure out that it was Colonel Mustard in the library with the noose or whatever, even angels couldn’t get there.

  The manager of the apartment complex had been there five years ago, at least—which did not say much for his upward job mobility but that was the recession for you. He was a stocky guy with a droopy mustache and a belly that lapped over his belt.

  “I remember Amber Velasco,” he said. “Short and blonde, right?”

  My heart sank again, but then he said, “Oh snap!” like a sixteen-year-old girl and amended: “No. She was the tall girl. The EMT who lived with that lab geek.”

  “That’s the one,” I said. “She’s an EMT in Houston now. Spoke at our school about her job and mentioned how she’d gotten EMT care herself when her apartment was robbed. We’re doing a piece in the school paper on home safety. She said, um, that she remembered you.” Here I stopped, since he had not told us his name and was not wearing an ID badge.

  He beamed, mouth turning up under that droopy mustache. “She remembered me? Carl Whatley?”

  “Yup,” Casey chimed in. “She said a lot about you, Carl.”

  Carl warmed up then, telling us that the “lab geek”—I assumed it was Terry, although he didn’t seem to know his name—called the front office hollering about shoddy security in the parking lot. How could someone have broken in and robbed the place? His girlfriend was all traumatized and no way was he letting them keep his security deposit and wasn’t it good that he had his laptop with him. He was an important guy at the lab, he’d told Carl. He was about to have some scientific breakthrough. He didn’t have time to deal with a traumatized girlfriend.

  “Her boyfriend was working at a lab?” I asked, not sure who I was directing it to. “I thought he was a student, like Amber.” And probably a big braggart to boot.

  Carl allowed that maybe he got that part wrong. But what he did remember was that Amber moved out the very next day. He saw her with suitcases and a backpack and never saw her again. He seemed eager to know what had happened to her. That made three of us. Carl could yak all he wanted, but we weren’t learning anything new.

  “Can’t you use your Spidey sense?” I whispered to Casey.

  “Tried to,” he whispered back. “I got nothing. ’Cept he had the hots for Amber.”

  I didn’t need an angel Spidey sense to tell me that.

  We bid Carl adios and went to Torchy’s—where we ran smack into our father, standing outside and jabbering on his cell phone.

  MY FIRST THOUGHT: I should have known better. It wasn’t a coincidence; it was a foregone conclusion. (Hindsight may be the worst thing ever, second place only to unanswerable questions involving angels.) Of course Dad would come to Torchy’s for lunch. He was the one who’d introduced me to the brisket and avocado tacos in the first place, when I was a kid. The guy was pretty freaking predictable, except when it came to anything that involved his own family.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Olivia,” he said to whoever he was talking to, Olivia not being our mother or
a name with which I was familiar at all.

  Well.

  Here is the thing about parents—at least this parent—who get caught looking like they are perfectly content living a new life. A life that doesn’t involve the people from their old life. Yes, even including the ones who went through hell (or in my brother’s case, Heaven) and back to find them in the first place.

  Here’s the thing: they go on the offensive pretty damn fast.

  First came the wide eyes. Then the fake smile. Then the horror. Our initial angry small talk lasted like three seconds, punctuated by my brother’s, “Who the hell is Olivia?” After which Dad speed-dialed Mom and said, “Holly, do you know your children are in Austin?” After which, Casey got in his face, but I’ll leave that part out because our family situation has been well-established and does not need more sad elaboration.

  “Maybe Manny’s guys are drugging him again,” I said to Casey once we’d parted ways with our father. I realized I sounded sort of hopeful.

  “Whatever,” my brother said.

  Needless to say, we did not stop for brisket and avocado tacos. Or even to pee. Casey and I got back in the Merc and headed home.

  WE WERE PASSING the College Station exit at Highway 6, and I was staring out the window at the sign for Texas A&M. I thought briefly about Coach Collins—he wasn’t worth longer thoughts—and the Aggie football philosophy he’d encourage me to adopt last year when I was in his algebra class. All that stuff about the Twelfth Man and being there for each other no matter what.

  “It’s no big deal,” Casey said out of nowhere. “Maybe Bo was right. Maybe some things are better off left alone.”

  “He needs to come home,” I said.

  “What?” Casey’s brows knitted together, his eyes on the road “I was talking about Amber.”

  “I was talking about Dad,” I snapped.

  Maybe Maggie sensed the ever-shifting drama of the universe, because my cell buzzed and it was her. Crap. I had texted her on the way to Austin. I’d told her the same lie I’d told Ryan: Dad, lunch, road trip. “Finally!” she bellowed when I answered. “Do you know how many times I’ve texted you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Argh! Well listen. We have a new history teacher.”

  I sighed. “Oh?”

  She filled me in on what I already knew, except she left out the guardian angel with a death wish part.

  “His name is Mr. Shivers, but he told us to call him Bo,” she said. “Said he’s used to teaching college and that’s how he was going to treat us.”

  “Awesome.”

  “You’ll like him, Jenna.”

  Maggie then rattled on about how Bo had lectured to them about industrial development, and how the Houston Med Center was growing so much, especially now since foreign heads of state came there for their cancer treatments and checkups. (Which didn’t say much about the health care system in those wealthy oil countries and said better stuff about ours, not that either of us would probably ever admit it.) And all her Med Center talk started reminding me of Renfroe and Oak View Convalescent, and how Bo had recently reminded me that Oak View was up and running again and owned by some conglomerate.

  Mostly her rambling reminded me that I couldn’t care less about any of this stuff. Nothing in my life was the same as it used to be. If heads of state wanted to trust the Houston medical community with their internal well-being, that was their own damn business.

  I told Mags as much and hung up.

  Mom’s Kia was in the driveway when we pulled up. But the house was quiet when we walked in. My pulse zipped faster because it was about an hour too early for her to be home, and if I’d been a gambling girl I’d bet that Dad’s phone call had not done good things for her happiness quotient.

  Sure enough, she was lying on her bed with the comforter, the TV blaring one of the Housewives shows, her eyes closed. Not that I blamed her. Looking too long at all that plastic surgery could make anyone want to screw their lids shut.

  “You cut school,” Mom croaked. “I do not need this kind of behavior from you two. I absolutely do not.”

  “Sorry,” I told her. I actually was, although not for the reason she thought.

  “I’ll make chicken,” my brother said.

  “You don’t cook,” Mom said.

  “Sure I do.”

  “He makes breakfast tacos,” I said. “Remember?”

  I figured Mom would lecture us some more, but all she said was, “No, but I guess we both need to have faith in your brother. Y’all call me when it’s ready. Close the door on your way out, please.”

  We left her with the Housewife ladies hollering. They were an excitable bunch. I figured I’d let Casey put his money where his mouth was about the cooking and hole up in my room to call Ryan—but we hadn’t even made it to the kitchen when the front bell rang.

  There was Amber Velasco in her EMT outfit, hands on hips.

  “What the hell have you two been up to?” She pushed by me into the house, slamming the door behind her.

  “Hello to you, too,” Casey said.

  “You recover from that hangover?” I asked, and she gave me the stink eye. I supposed I deserved it. A little.

  “Bo told you?” Casey asked, shaking his head.

  Amber’s blue eyes flashed darker, a flush rising fast and deep in her cheeks. “You had no right,” she said.

  “But—” I began.

  “No.” Amber held up her hand. “What happened to me is my business. Not yours. I’m going to say this once, and I don’t want to say it again. I’m dead. I’m an angel. Nothing is going to change that. You’re wasting your time.”

  “We’re just being proactive,” my brother whispered, glancing back toward my mother’s bedroom door. “Better than sitting around and—”

  “Leave it be,” Amber said tightly. “Finding this out isn’t gonna make you a hero, if that’s what you two think. Leave. It. Be.”

  The front door opened again.

  Bo Shivers strode in. I almost smiled. I should have expected it.

  He was wearing black slacks and a grey button-down. His hair was ruffled just the right amount at the neck. His nails looked buffed and his wrist and hand scars looked faded, which was confusing because scars don’t change like that overnight. At least on regular people. He smelled manly—not like Axe, but something muskier.

  “Looks like I almost missed the party,” he said.

  Silence.

  And what do you know? At this moment, Mom chose to leave reality TV, rise from her mental decline over my father’s potential and current abandonment, and join us. There we were: Mom, the angel brigade, and me.

  Mom nodded at Amber. She’d long ago accepted that this EMT chick wandered in and out of our house like she lived here. Was Casey keeping Mom a tiny bit forgetful still, to ease the weirdness of our lives? Without asking or consulting me or in any way discussing whether this was fair or right? But Mom’s lips turned in a scowl at Bo.

  “I’m Bo Shivers.” He held out his hand. “Jenna’s new history teacher at Spring Creek. My policy is to conduct home visits for my most promising students. I know it’s unconventional, but I find that meeting my students’ parents puts everyone on even ground. Those Open House nights are so rushed and impersonal, don’t you think?”

  My mouth gaped. Casey frowned. Amber glared.

  Mom smiled. She shook hands with Bo. “Well,” she said. “I only wish my son could have had you his freshman year.”

  “I would have loved to teach Casey,” Bo announced, smiling broadly. “Perhaps I still can before he graduates. You never know. The public school system is a curious thing.” He handed her a bottle of red wine. Where had that come from?

  “You shouldn’t have!” Mom exclaimed.

  I turned to Casey and Amber. Casey was gaping now, too. But Amber was gazing down at the floor.

  I eyeballed Casey, who frowned at Bo, who grinned at my mother, who smiled at Casey, who frowned more deeply, this time at Amber, who br
iefly gnawed her lower lip.

  “So what’s for dinner?” I asked when none of us had said anything for a few long beats. “Chicken?”

  CASEY BEGAN BANGING around in the kitchen. Bo offered to help cook the meal (somehow out of our limited pantry offerings, he whipped up some sort of tangy sauce), punctuated by a lot of smiling and inappropriately flirty talk with my mom. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw our patio fire pit light up in flames even though there were no logs or matches out there that I knew of.

  Casey excused himself from the cooking process at which point Amber snapped, “I’ve got to work a shift tonight.” She gestured to her EMT outfit. “Sorry I’ll have to miss the chicken. And the wine.” She stomped out.

  “Excuse me,” I said to Bo and Mom. “I’ll be right back. And maybe you should go easy on that wine.”

  Bo raised a brow, eyes watching darkly.

  I ran down the driveway past what I assumed was Bo’s vehicle—a beat-up white Ford 210 pickup that both did and didn’t surprise me as his choice of transportation—and caught up with Amber just as the Camaro’s engine caught and revved.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Gotta go, Jenna. I have to work.”

  I spit it right out there. “Are you afraid of Bo?”

  Amber’s hand was on the gear shift. “I’m late,” she said.

  “They’ll be short one if I don’t show up.”

  “Y’all are keeping stuff from me.” All of a sudden, I wasn’t letting any of it go. “Y’all are scared.”

  She shoved the car in gear, told me to back up, and started moving—not fast, but still covering ground.