Hemlock Veils (6 page)

He slammed the door behind him, breathing heavily, and looked all around them as though a million pairs of unseen eyes watched him, hiding in her vintage furniture and framed family photos. He blinked rapidly, as always. “They’re gonna kill me, Beth.” Tears hung in the corners of his eyes, lurking.

“Who?” she asked, keeping her distance.

“I’m in too deep this time.” He exhaled the sob she’d been anticipating, running a trembling hand over his moist head then down his face. His fingers stayed at his mouth, tapping, and to himself he whimpered, “It’s over.”

“Willem, look at me.”

He didn’t. And the side of her that would do anything for him wanted to take him in her arms until all his problems vanished. She wanted him better, she wanted him home.

“It’s not too late to clean up—”

“Fuck off, Beth.” He glared, and saliva collected in the corners of his mouth like it would on a crying baby. “I’m not here for a lecture.”

Elizabeth tightened her lips. “Leave.”

“What?”

“Leave. I won’t do this anymore.”

His sobbing turned apologetic, and his whimpers pathetic. He cowered before her, his clammy hands grasping hers. “Please…Beth. I’ll never ask for anything again.”

She shook her hands free, backing up.

“Your promises mean nothing. I can’t always bail you out. I love you and you know I’d do anything for you—hell, I’ve given up everything. But—”

“How? Working for that rich cock-sucker and living the good life? I’m just asking for a little of it.”

Her heart grew hot, and the swelling fire filled her. “Just a little? I guess I’m mistaken for thinking I’ve given you everything. And for what, so you can run out and screw up your life again, even worse than the last time? You’re not just screwing yourself, Will! You’re screwing me, too!”

“I know, I know.” His mood shifted faster than she could get a handle on it. “I know, Beth. But it’s different this time, I swear. I know you’ve given up a lot to help me—”

“
What
do you know?”

“I…know you’re happy with your life, and you’re always teaching me—”

“You think I’m happy?” She recoiled. Living the good life was one thing, but happy? “Will, what I am
isn’t
happy. I just make the best of what I have. You think I was happy taking over for Dad when he died, missing out on the normal life of a teenager so I could make sure my brother wasn’t out getting high, beaten, or arrested? Was I happy putting every cent I earned from the time I started working into cleaning you up?” She backed him into a corner. “Was I happy dropping out of nursing school when I had one semester left, just to take on more hours with Mr. Vanderzee so I could pay for your damn
rehab
?”

Her chest heaved in the silence, and Willem’s eyes held only a trace of fear. She sighed, dropping to the couch, and finished tiredly, “That’s not being happy. That’s being a fool. That’s holding to Dad’s dying request that I never give up on you. That I do everything to help you. So don’t say I should give you a
little
, when everything I’ve done is for you.”

She met his eyes, the color of a dawn sky; the life in them was barely there. “Has it meant anything to you, Will?”

“You’ve…always had my back.”

She shouldn’t have expected more. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

He shook his head. “Don’t say that.”

“Look. I don’t know what trouble you’ve gotten yourself into this time, but I can’t help. No more drug debts, no more jail bonds, no more medical bills for overdoses, and no more goddamn rehab. I can’t…” She paused, hating herself even as she spoke the words. “I
won’t
stick my neck out for you anymore. The truth is, my brother died a long time ago and I’ve been wasting money on a ghost.” She’d never spoken such harsh words to him before, and she couldn’t meet his eyes, even though she knew there wouldn’t be anyone real staring back.

“I never asked you to send me to rehab,” he said through his teeth.

“So all your ‘I’m cleaning up’ speeches were acts?”

With a shrug, he sniffed. “You…always came.”

The pain in her heart
should
have made her sob. “And it’s my fault,” she whispered to herself, finding it hard to breathe. The reality astounded her, the one she’d never let herself think, since she’d always believed one day, with enough help, he
would change. Just as her father had said only minutes before he’d passed:
Don’t give up on him no matter what
.
Anyone can change.
Turns out she had been doing all the wrong things to help him.

“There’s one last thing you can do to help, though, Beth. And I swear on Dad’s grave it’s the last thing.”

“Don’t swear on Dad’s grave.” She stared at the floor. She couldn’t look at him, this time out of mere disgust—with him
and
herself.

“I need a little money, that’s all.”

“Get out.”

“Beth, please. I mean it, they’ll kill me.”

A corner of her heart ached, telling her to jump up and save him. But the rest of her didn’t believe him. He’d said it before.

She was guiding him to the door when tears began fleeing his eyes again. “Louis Dimas,” he said. And then in a rush, “Jacob Maceno.”

She pushed him, staring. Vaguely, the names rang a bell.

“Martin Soto,” he finished with more reverence. For the briefest moment, when another tear fled his bloodshot eye, she saw a flicker of Willem—the old, real Willem. Martin Soto had been Willem’s best friend last year, the one Elizabeth had begged Willem to stop associating with—the one who always got Willem stuck in the same hole. But three months ago, Martin Soto had been shot, and the story had been all over the local news.

The other names, the ones that had pricked her memory: they were other murder victims from that same week—all young men and all shot in the head. Willem had actually shown a trace of sadness during that week. She’d hated those boys who called themselves friends of Willem, but the attachment he felt to them made her realize there were still some healthy human emotions remaining inside her brother. And those boys, no matter what life they got mixed up in, didn’t deserve murder.

“What about them?”

“It’s the Paddock brothers.”

She shook her head, confused. “Will…”

“They all owed ’em. Louis and Jake and Marty…they couldn’t pay.”

“These Paddock brothers, they murdered them?”

He nodded. “And now it’s me who owes. I ran out…I’m next if I don’t pay. But…they don’t just want my share. They want theirs, too.”

Elizabeth huffed, folding her arms over her sickened abdomen. “That’s ridiculous. If you know it was them, turn them in.”

“You don’t think anyone’s tried? You remember that kid, the ten-year-old who was beaten behind Joe’s garage a couple weeks back?”

Elizabeth hardly nodded. The news had hit her apartment complex hard, since the kid was Guillermo from 4D’s nephew. It was tragic, and the boy had been hospitalized. He’d survived.

But it wasn’t soon after that his older brother had been murdered.

“He was a snitch, Beth. The kid witnessed something and decided to be brave. And it was his family that suffered. It won’t be long before they’d be coming after you, too.”

“How do these Paddock brothers have so much power?”

Willem shook his head, lifting the corner of his mouth in a condescending grin. “You have no idea. They have followers everywhere. The cops’ve tried to arrest them, but they have nothing on ’em. No proof.” He stepped closer, his eyes more intense than she’d seen tonight. “You think you can change the world and spread your goodness, but some people are invincible. Beth, your ideas are naïve as fuck.”

She shoved him again, her rage building almost enough to blur her vision. “Why? Why would you get mixed up in that? You really think I can save you this time? It’s you who’s naïve!”

Willem swallowed hard. He looked around, blinking and squinting and blinking again—a nervous twitch he’d acquired sometime during the past year—trying to eliminate the invisible sand in his eyes. “Frank.”

Elizabeth
almost
laughed. “You’re crazy if you think Mr. Vanderzee would give you a cent.”

“You can convince him.”

“Will.” She grabbed his shoulders, looking him squarely in the eyes. He still blinked and she tried hiding the panic in her voice. “He despises what I do for you. Everything I’ve ever given you—it hasn’t been without a lecture first. He would never loan me a cent for you.”

He didn’t even appear injured. “Then…don’t try to convince him.”

She studied him, trying to grasp his meaning.

“Don’t ask,” he emphasized. He sniffed, wiping a finger over his nose, and never dropped his lifeless, blinking eyes from hers. He didn’t care what she would lose by risking everything for him, as long as he was saved.

“You…want me to steal from him?”

“This is the last thing I’ll ever ask of you, and I mean that, Beth. It’s just…a hundred K.”

Her eyes widened. “
Just
a hundred? You said you needed a
little
cash.”

“Well, to someone like Frank, that
is
a little.”

“I’m not stealing from my employer! How can you even ask me to do that?”

“What about
me
, Beth? Huh? How can
you
not care that my life is on the line?”

“Don’t. Don’t turn this on me.” She shoved him, then opened her door and shoved him again, landing him in the hall. She ached to cry. She ached to change everything about her life that had brought her to this point. “Don’t drag me into your life anymore, Will.”

She closed the door in his face and he begged through it, pounding his fists and sobbing as though his life was being taken at that very moment. She folded her arms over herself as she leaned against the door, trying to remain detached. Trying to block out the sound. Trying to breathe.

She closed her eyes.
I love you, Will
.

After an excruciating minute, his shadow passed the open window, then paused. When she moved the curtain, she found him on the sidewalk, phone to his ear.

“Juan…I can’t. I tried to get it, but…” Willem broke, choking on a sob he tried to hide.

He ran his hand over his perspiring head and paced, clearly not fond of what he heard on the other end.

“No.” He grew desperate. “Just…relax. I’ll find a way, I swear. I’ll get it to you. Just give me ’till tomorrow night.” Short silence. “No, no. I won’t fuck up.” Pause. “Yeah. I know what’ll happen to me if I do.”

One-hundred-thousand. He wouldn’t get it.

And he wouldn’t survive. The knowledge was so palpable it took Elizabeth’s breath. And she found herself overcome with the memory of Willem at seven years old, one hand in hers and one in their father’s, laughing as they raced through Hazard Park. He laughed because Elizabeth and her father had let him win. It wasn’t long before he fell and cut his knee, and where Elizabeth would have wanted their mother at his age, Willem wanted her. He crawled into her arms, weeping. And while she bandaged his knee, he made her promise she would always be there to take care of him, even when he was a grownup.
I couldn’t live without you, Bethy
, he’d said.

Even then, when her father hadn’t fallen sick yet and she was barely twelve, she’d been the only mother Willem had ever known. And just like she’d promised then, she’d promised him every year after. Always mending the wound, always making it better. Always holding to an unrealistic hope that her love for him would be enough.

Only it wasn’t, and never had been.

***

“Remember three o’clock, Elizabeth,” Mr. Vanderzee said through Elizabeth’s earpiece. Not even the phone could mask his arrogance. “Not a minute past. Mr. Fluckiger will be ready and waiting.”

Thankfully, he couldn’t see her rolling her eyes. “Yes, Mr. Vanderzee. Three. I’ll be there.” Was it just a coincidence that this crisis with Willem happened to fall on the same day as her monthly meeting with Heritage Financial to discuss the status of Mr. Vanderzee’s accounts?

The line clicked without a goodbye, as it usually did, and Elizabeth ripped the earpiece from her ear, burying her face in her hands in Mr. Vanderzee’s large kitchen. Spacious granite countertops, high-tech appliances, dozens of mahogany cabinets filled with every ingredient imaginable—all stocked by her of course: it was her dream kitchen, and her favorite place in Mr. Vanderzee’s mansion. He let her make it her own, in a sense, only because he had a weakness for what she could create here.

When he’d first hired her as his housekeeper twelve years ago, she’d hardly spoken a word to him. He’d been away most of the time, but three months after hiring her, he’d fallen sick. After a week of waiting on him hand and foot, a strange and unique bond formed between them. He had a certain respect for her, one she saw even through disrespectful words. There were certain things he could never bring himself to do—certain affection a man of his status simply couldn’t show his lower-class housekeeper. But he cared about her. She saw it in the way he attempted to buy her a better life, in the way he was so protective of her—especially with her brother. Soon after that week, he’d fired his other help and deemed her his “Everything Girl.”

Her days hardly veered from the routine: arrive at Mr. Vanderzee’s at precisely six a.m., start his coffee (he’d given her a limitless allowance to spend in his kitchen, and after a rather exciting month of experimenting, she’d mastered a coffee brew so perfect Mr. Vanderzee said it should take over every coffee chain in America), lay out his clothes, make him breakfast, drive him to the office in a Rolls-Royce far too exquisite for her taste, return to Vanderzee Mansion, clean, clean, and clean some more, be at his beck and call in case certain errands needed running or impossible things needed to be asked of her, return to the office at the end of the day to drive him home, and finally, cook his dinner.

Sometimes he would even let her eat with him. It wasn’t until after he finished and the dishes washed that she was free to go home. When she had been in nursing school, her days would end after picking him up from the office, but to Mr. Vanderzee’s dismay
and
delight, she’d needed more money to pay for Willem’s rehab. Mr. Vanderzee was always opposed to the way she came to Willem’s rescue, but he also loved her cooking, more than anything else she did, and couldn’t deny her request to work through the evening if it meant another meal cooked by his Everything Girl. Her days were long and exhausting, and at every moment she felt pulled in every direction; but being on Mr. Vanderzee’s payroll made taking care of Willem possible.