Guilty (9 page)

I'm not listening to him. Instead, I'm thinking about the girl. She had a reason for being at Tracie's funeral. I'm not sure what it is. I'd like to believe it was me, but maybe it wasn't. No matter what that reason is, John's right about what she must be going through. Her father died. And the fact that she was at the police station means it was something as traumatic as what I saw in my own yard. Maybe she came because she wanted to reach out to someone she thought might understand. And maybe she backed off because she's shy, or she's having a hard time, or whatever.

“What if she hangs up on me again?”

John crosses his arms over his chest. “Are you a man or what?”

I think about that. “Maybe I'll try her again.”

“No time like the present, my friend.”

“I'll do it later.”

“Man up, Finn. Strike while the iron is hot. He who hesitates is lost.
Carpe diem
.
Tempus
—”

“All right. Jeez.” I dig my phone out of my pocket, find her number, hit the right button.

The phone rings at the other end.

No answer.

No voice mail either, so I can't even leave a message.

“Maybe you should drop by her place.”

“I don't know where she lives.”

“You're pathetic, you know that?” He puts his fork down and digs his own phone out of his pocket. “What's her number?” he says. I tell him. He fiddles around with his phone. I can't see what he's doing. Then: “Murrich,” he says. “She lives on Murrich. 1833.”

“How do you—?”

He turns his phone around, and I see the screen. He's been on the Internet, doing a reverse number lookup.

“Ball's in your court, dude,” he says.

Sixteen

LILA

I
wake up the next morning feeling like all I want to do is sleep forever, mainly because I barely slept the night before. “Be careful what you wish for,” Aunt Jenny always says. What she means is, what you think you want doesn't always turn out to be the thing you hope it's going to be.

Like going to The Siren the night before and finding someone who knew my father way back when. Hearing Dodo say, “How about this? Your daddy spent ten years in prison for something he never did.”

I lie in bed, my covers up over my head. I remember the feeling when I heard him say those words. I remember my whole body being jarred, as if my heart slammed to a stop. I could barely speak.

“What do you mean?” I ask Dodo. I realize I'm holding my breath. I'm going to hear what I've ached to hear practically all my life.

He looks me up and down.

“You seem like a nice girl,” he says. “You go to school?”

I nod.

“That's the best thing a young person can do—go to school. That way, maybe you don't end up with a broom in your hand.”

“What do you mean?” I ask him again. “About my father? Are you saying he didn't do it?”

He peers at me again, as if weighing the damage his words will do.

“Your daddy,” he says carefully, “he had his demons.”

“I know. I know all about that.”

His expression changes. He nods.

“He used to tell me you scared him.”

What?
I
scared my
father
?

“I told him he was crazy,” he says. “I said, how can a little girl scare a grown man? You know what he said?”

I shake my head.

“He said you looked like a little girl, but you were smarter than any little girl he ever knew. He said you knew things. About him.”

“Mr. Dodo—”

“Edward,” he says. “My name is Edward.” He leans on his broom. “I remember when your daddy first came around here. He was barely walking straight. I was about to chase him away. But he had Mr. Newsome's card. He said Mr. Newsome told him to come by, he might have some work for him. I thought he was kidding—but Mr. Newsome had written the time on the back of the card—the same time your daddy showed up. So I took a chance and called in to Mr. Newsome. He hired your daddy on the spot to do what I'm doing now—keep the place clean. Especially the bathrooms.” He shakes his head. “You know what a bunch of young people do to bathrooms when they're out for a night on the town?”

I could imagine.

“Your daddy did a half-assed job, if you don't mind me saying. We had a pool on him—how long he would last before Mr. Newsome finally fired him.”

I hold my breath. Was that why he did it—because Mr. Newsome fired him?

“But he never did get fired,” Edward says. “Bit by bit your daddy cleaned himself up. We were all surprised. It looked like Mr. Newsome had done something good for him. He showed up for work on time. He started to think about maybe bringing you up to live with him. Then it all went to hell.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he fell off the wagon. Got himself all hopped up again. The next thing you know, Mrs. Newsome is dead and the police get a lead on your daddy. They find him sound asleep and a whole pile of her jewelry in his room. They find a scrap of paper with the Newsomes' security code in his pocket.”

“Security code?”

“Mr. Newsome had just had a security system installed at his house. The police said whoever broke in shut off the alarm.”

“How did my father get the code?”

“That's the thing,” Edward says. “Your daddy couldn't read without his glasses.”

Glasses? I don't remember my father wearing glasses back then—and there are times, plenty of times, when I'm sure I remember every single time I ever saw him. I know it isn't possible though. No one remembers like that.

But glasses?

I would remember glasses, wouldn't I?

If I don't remember them from back then, I would remember them from all those visits. Especially the ones when I made the trip on my own. During those visits, made in the past couple of years, my father was keenly interested in my schoolwork. He actually wanted to see what I was doing. He didn't have glasses then.

I peer at the old man. He's a lot older than my father was. He's not remembering it right, I think. He's confusing my father with someone else. Or his brain is playing tricks on him. I look at the caved-in side of his head.

“But your daddy's glasses were broken,” he continues when I don't speak. “He told me that. If you ask me, the miracle is how he managed to hang on to a pair of glasses as long as he did. Anyway, he never had them when he was at work. He was always asking me to check his work orders for him. Said he was going to get himself a new pair as soon as he got paid. Said that just about every week, as I recall, but he never seemed to get around to it.”

“I don't think I understand…”

“That security system Mr. Newsome had, when I say it was new, I mean it was brand-new. I remember the salesman from the company he bought it from. He was down here at the club after it was installed, explaining it to Mr. Newsome. How did your daddy get the code, that's what you asked me?”

I nodded.

“They say your daddy must have seen the manual that the salesman left for Mr. Newsome. I remember Mr. Newsome talking about it. He said he'd written the code in it—he really beat himself up for that, you know, because they always tell you not to write down codes in places like that, practically the first place a person would look. Your daddy was in and out of most places in the club—kitchen, main floor, bathrooms, offices. Mr. Newsome's office. They say he must have seen that manual and seen the code written down in it, and that's how he got into the Newsome house without Mrs. Newsome even knowing he was there. The thing is, your daddy never got around to getting those glasses he needed. So you want to tell me, if he couldn't read without his glasses, how he got that code?”

I can't take my eyes off the side of his head. His eyes meet mine for a moment, and I'm ashamed to be caught staring.

“Did you tell that to anyone?” I ask.

The old man hangs his head.

“Like I said, I had my own demons back then. I didn't know anything about anything at the time except that your daddy said he done it. It wasn't until later—a lot later—that I heard what was supposed to be the real story. I called some cop, but he just laughed at me. He said your daddy took a plea, he said he did it, so don't bother him with some story about eyeglasses. But I'm telling you, that thought stayed in my head for a long time. Yes, a long time. And I still don't see it. I don't see how a man who needed eyeglasses to read but who didn't even own a pair of eyeglasses could have seen that Mr. Newsome had a manual on his desk and then go ahead and go through it and find a security code he had written in it.”

“Edward, can I ask you something?”

He nods, but there's something guarded about his expression.

“The guy who brought me back here, he said you'd been in an accident.”

The old man's eyes lock on mine. I see disappointment in them.

“That's true,” he says.

“What happened?”

He pulls himself up straight now and holds the broom away from him, as if to show me that he doesn't have to lean on it.

“I fell,” he said. “I got drunk one night and went up on the roof, and I fell.” His eyes flash. “But that doesn't mean I don't remember.”

“Edward, my father didn't wear glasses. Ever.”

Edward's eyes refuse to let mine go.

“That's not what he told me,” he says. “But you go ahead and believe whatever you want to believe. You believe that a little girl who hardly ever saw her daddy knows better than a man who worked with him every day for six weeks.”

“Six weeks?” I sigh. “That's all? You knew him for six weeks ten years ago?” Before your accident, I think but don't say. Before your head got caved in.

He stares at me for a moment before turning and making his way back down the steps to the basement.

And now here I am in bed, still thinking about what Dodo said, going over it and over it, looking for something to give me hope, even though I should know better. He barely knew my father. He doesn't remember him right. His head is caved in.

It's noon before I get out of bed and make myself some instant coffee. I walk around the small apartment, looking at the secondhand furniture, the secondhand pots and pans, dishes and cutlery, trying to decide what to do with everything—leave it where it is, or pack it up and get rid of it?

In the end, I pull on some clothes and walk to the nearest grocery store, looking for boxes. They don't have any to spare. They send me to a liquor store. Empty boxes are stacked high in there. A woman at the only cash register that's open tells me to help myself.

When I get back to the apartment with the boxes, there's a phone message for me from Detective Sanders. She's left a number where I can reach her.

“Lila,” she says when I call, sounding relieved to hear from me but also a little anxious. “How are you?”

“Okay.”

“I wanted to give you an update,” she says. “Do you want to meet for coffee?”

I tell her no. I tell her that if she has something to tell me, she can do it over the phone.

“We've closed the case,” she says.

I brace myself. I know what she's going to tell me. It's no surprise, but still, I don't want to hear it.

She spells it out for me. A homicide: my father shot and killed Tracie Newsome. And an attempted homicide: he tried to kill Mr. Newsome, who struggled to defend himself, and, in that struggle, killed my father, a clear case of self-defense. She stops and waits for me to say something.

“Thanks for calling to tell me,” I say. I'm not sarcastic or bitter. She's gone out of her way to be nice to me, as if she understands that I'm a person who has lost her father and, for that reason, she feels for me.

“What are you going to do now?” she asks.

The words that come out of my mouth surprise me. “I'm going back home.”

As soon as I hang up, the phone rings again. It's Finn Newsome. I tell him I'm not interested, and I hang up fast. Then I go back into the front hall to get the boxes I brought back. I take them into the kitchen and start to pack the kitchen stuff.

After that, I go into my father's room. I pack up his clothes—he doesn't have many. I'll take them to the Salvation Army along with the kitchen stuff. While I'm there, I'll see if they'll take back the furniture we bought. I don't want my money back. They can have it if they'll come and get it. I decide to call the landlord, too, and ask for a refund of the last month's rent. I know he doesn't have to give it to me, but I decide to plead helpless victim. I mean, it's not my fault my father did what he did. The phone rings again. I ignore it.

There's a box sitting on the floor. It was there when I arrived with my dad. It's taped shut. My father never opened it. I pick at a corner of the tape until I can grab hold of it and rip off the whole strip. I open the box.

There are books inside. Seven of them. Three of them are slim paperbacks. I see by the covers that they are books for people who don't read English well—people who are just learning the language. Another two are books about hockey. The other two books are textbooks. Grammar books.

Underneath the grammar books are some exercise books, the thin kind that kids use in elementary school. There are nearly a dozen of them, all of them dog-eared.

Now I know why my father never opened the box. It was left here by the last tenant, who must have been an immigrant.

The doorbell rings.

I shove the box aside. Who can it be? Not Detective Sanders. I just spoke to her. Maybe it's the landlord. Maybe he's read about my dad. Maybe he's come to throw me out. After all, my name isn't on the rental agreement.

I go to the door and peek through the window.

I freeze.

It's him. It's Finn Newsome. He sees me, and he smiles at me. What is he even doing here? How does he know where I live? I want to pretend that I haven't seen him and he hasn't seen me. But I can't, not when our eyes are locked like this.