Night Road (30 page)

Here she comes
.

Grace didn’t need Ariel to tell her she was in trouble. She leaned forward and rested her arms on her thighs.

“Grace?”

She cocked her head up. Fine blond hair fell across her face. “Yeah?”

“May I sit down?”

Grace shrugged. “I guess.”

“You know you shouldn’t have punched Austin in the nose.”

“I know. And you’re gonna have to tell his parents.”

“And your dad.”

Grace sighed. “Yeah.”

“I shouldn’t have sent him over.”

“They don’t wanna play with me. And I don’t care.”

“Everyone wants friends.”

“I have Ariel.”

“She’s been a good friend to you.”

“
She
never makes fun of me.”

Mrs. Skitter nodded. “I’ve lived on this island a long time, Grace, and I’ve seen a lot of kids come and go. I used to know your daddy, did I ever tell you that? I worked in the lunch room when he was in high school. Anyway, the point is, everyone makes friends sooner or later.”

Grace shook her head. “Not me. No one likes me. And I don’t care.”

“Things change, Gracie. You’ll see.” Mrs. Skitter sighed, put her hands on her thighs. “Well, I was going to collect some beach stones. The pretty kind. You want to help?”

“I might not find any.”

“Or you might.”

Mrs. Skitter stood up, put her hand out.

Grace stared at her teacher’s white hand. A simple gold band on one finger meant she was married.

“My daddy’s not married,” she said impulsively.

“I know.”

“That’s cuz my mom is a super spy.”

Mrs. Skitter frowned seriously. “Really? How exciting. You must miss her.”

“I do. But I’m not s’posed to.”

For the next two hours, she followed Mrs. Skitter around, bent over, peering down at the rocks at her feet. One by one, the other kids went home, until finally it was only Grace and her teacher on the beach. Mrs. Skitter kept looking at her watch and making a tsking sound. Grace knew what that meant.

It was getting dark when Papa showed up.

“Hey, Gracie,” her grandfather said, smiling down at her.

“Grandma forgot me again,” Grace said, letting the fistful of rocks tumble from her hand.

“She’s not feeling well. But I’m here, and I thought I’d take my best girl for ice cream.” He bent down and scooped Grace into his arms. She clung to him, wrapping her legs around him like a little monkey.

He carried her over to Mrs. Skitter, and they said good-bye. Then he put her into the car seat in the back of Grandma’s big black car.

“You have something to tell me,” he said, starting the engine.

“I do?” She looked up, saw her grandpa looking at her in the rearview mirror.

“The fight with Austin Klimes.”

“Oh,” Grace said, sighing. “That.”

“You know you’re not supposed to hit other kids, Gracie.”

“He started it.”

“He did? How?”

“He kicked sand in my face. And he said I was stupid.”

“Really?”

“And he said a bad word.”

“Still, Grace, you shouldn’t be hitting kids.”

“I thought you only said I couldn’t hit girls.”

“You don’t think that.”

“Okay,” she said, slumping in her seat. “I won’t hit Austin Klimes anymore, even if he’s a butt.”

“You said that about Jacob Moore, too.”

“But I didn’t hit Jake.”

She could tell that Papa was trying not to smile. “We are not going through the kids in day care one by one. You can’t hit
any
of them. And before you look for a loophole, no hitting kids in kindergarten, either. Okay?”

“What’s a loophole? Is that like a hula hoop?”

“Gracie?”

“Okay. Are you gonna tell my daddy?”

“I have to.”

For the first time, Grace felt truly bad about what she’d done. Now her daddy would give her that disappointed look, and she’d get scared and snuggle up to him and hope he wouldn’t leave her. She didn’t have a mommy. What would she do without a daddy?

Nineteen

“Scared? What do you mean, you’re scared?”

Lexi leaned against the gray wall of her cell. After seventy-one and a half months in prison, she was finally getting out. She’d served her whole sentence—and then some, thanks to bad choices—so there would be no parole for her, no probation. She had a community service advocate who was prepared to help her “transition,” but the truth was that in a few minutes, she’d be just another citizen, free to go where she pleased. All she knew was that she was going to Florida to be with Eva; after that, her life stretched out like a desert highway with no end or turns in sight.

Strangely, now that the day was upon her, she was afraid to leave. This ten-foot square cell had become her world, and there was a safety in the familiarity of it. There were eight steps from the bed to the toilet; two from the sink to the wall; three from the bed to the door. The walls were covered with Tamica’s family photos—pictures of people that had become like family to Lexi. Her own pictures, of Aunt Eva and Zach and Mia, had been taken down years ago. Looking back was too painful, and a waste of time on top of it. She could never forget Mia’s smile, with or without a reminder.

“Lexi?” Tamica put down the tabloid magazine she was reading. “What do you mean, you’re scared?”

“I know who I am in here.”

“You don’t want to focus on whoever you became in here,
hermana
. Especially not you. You got so much life ahead of you.”

Lexi looked down at her few belongings. On the end of the bed were her prized possessions, all that she’d hoarded and collected in the past years: a shoe box full of letters—from Aunt Eva and to Grace; Mia and Zach’s senior pictures and a photograph of the three of them at a school dance; and a worn, often-read paperback copy of
Wuthering Heights
. No more
Jane Eyre
for her; why read about someone else’s happy ending?

A guard appeared at the door. “Time to go, Baill.”

Tamica moved slowly off the bed. In the past few years, as Lexi had whittled her own body down to a runner’s leanness, Tamica had packed on the pounds. She claimed menopause was the culprit, but prison food didn’t help.

Lexi stared at the sad, dark face of the woman who had saved her in here, had been a friend when she desperately needed one; if Lexi still knew how to cry, she would have. “I’ll miss you,” Lexi said, wrapping her arms around Tamica’s broad, rounded back.

“I’ll write to you,” Lexi promised.

“Send me a picture of you and Grace.”

“Tamica … I gave up that right,” she said. “You
know
that.”

Tamica grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her. “You know what I would give to be walking outta here with you? Don’t you dare be JELL-O. You made a mistake and you paid for it. Period.” She pulled Lexi into another hard embrace. “See your daughter, at least.”

“Come on, Baill,” the guard said.

Lexi let go of Tamica and walked over to the bed, where she gathered up her few belongings. She intended just to walk out, be as cool as possible, but she couldn’t. At the door, she paused and turned back.

Tamica was crying. “Don’t you come back,” she said, “or I’ll whoop your white ass.”

“I won’t,” Lexi promised.

As she carried her pathetic shoe box through the prison, women catcalled and yelled to her. She remembered how they had scared her at first, these women. She was one of them now, and she knew that no matter how long she lived or how much she changed, a part of her would be here, behind bars. Maybe a part of her always had been. A girl without a mother was a prisoner of a different kind.

At the desk, another uniformed guard handed her some paperwork and a bag with her own clothes in it, as well as a small manila envelope.

“You can change in there,” the guard said, pointing to a door down the hall.

Lexi went inside the room and shut the door. Alone, she stripped out of her faded, worn prison khakis and secondhand underwear.

Inside the bag, she found the wrinkled black pants and white blouse she’d worn to the courthouse so long ago, along with her own beige bra and black panties and a flattened patchwork denim purse. Black kneesocks and cheap black flats completed the old Lexi look. Or the young Lexi.

She dressed carefully, enjoying the feel of the soft cotton against her dry skin. The pants were too big for her now; they hung off her protruding hip bones. So was the bra. In her zeal to keep busy and get strong, she’d spent long hours in the gym, and her body had turned almost freakishly sinewy. Her boobs had all but checked out.

She buttoned up the black pants and tucked her shirt into the baggy waistband before turning to the mirror. For years, she’d imagined joy on this day, pictured it. But now, when she stared at her reflection, all she saw was a tired, stringy version of who she’d been.

She looked like an adult. More than that even, she looked at least ten years older than she was, with her pale skin, her prominent cheekbones and colorless lips. Her black hair had been cut off a few years ago by the prison barber, who had taken all of seven minutes to chop off twelve inches of hair. The pixie cut had grown out into soft curls that framed her angular face.

She opened the yellow envelope and found an expired driver’s license with a young girl’s face on it, a half-empty package of gum, a cheap drugstore watch, and her promise ring from Zach.

A knock on the door roused her.

“Baill. You okay?”

She put everything, including the ring, in her purse, threw the bag and envelope in the wastebasket, and left the room.

At the prison office, she signed one document after another and took the two hundred dollars that was her exit money from the state. How a person was supposed to start a new life with two hundred bucks and no valid ID was beyond her.

She followed instructions and did as she was told, until she heard a door clang shut behind her and she was standing in the open air, beneath a bright late-afternoon sky.

Free air.

She tilted her face to the sky, felt the day’s warmth on her cheeks. She knew the van was waiting for her—it would take her to the nearest bus station—but she couldn’t seem to make herself move. It felt amazingly good to just stand here, with no bars or razor wire defining her space and no women getting in her face. No—

“Lexi?”

Scot Jacobs walked up to her, smiling. He was older—his hair was short now, conservative looking, and he wore glasses—but other than that, he looked the same. He might even be wearing the same suit. “I wanted someone to be waiting for you.”

She didn’t know how to process the gratitude she felt. After so many years of bottling emotions, it wasn’t easy to open them. “Thank you.”

He stared at her for a moment, and she stared back, then he said, “Well, let’s go,” and started walking toward his car.

She automatically fell into step behind him.

He stopped, waited for her to catch up.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. She wasn’t a prisoner anymore. “Old habits, I guess.”

This time she walked next to him to the blue minivan parked in the lot.

“Don’t mind the junk in the car,” he said, opening the passenger door. “It’s my wife’s car, and she says she never knows what she’s going to need, so she never takes anything out.”

Lexi climbed up into the passenger seat and stared at the imposing gray of the prison.

She snapped her seatbelt into place. “It’s really nice of you to pick me up, Mr. Jacobs.”

“Call me Scot. Please,” he said, pulling out onto the road and away from the prison.

She opened the window and stuck her head out, breathing in the sweet, clean air. The landscape was exactly as she remembered: towering trees, summer blue sky, distant mountains. Out here, life had gone on without her.

“I was sure bummed to hear they added time on to your sentence for bad behavior. I expected to pick you up a while ago.”

“Yeah. Well. 2005 was a bad year. After I lost Gracie…” She couldn’t even finish the sentence. All of that was behind her now, anyway.

“You’re better now?”

“As good as an ex-con can be. I don’t do drugs or drink, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I hear you got your degree. Your aunt was so proud.”

“Sociology,” Lexi said, turning her head to stare out the window.

“Still dreaming of law school?”

“Nope.”

“You’re still young, Lexi,” he said.

“So I hear.” She leaned more deeply into the comfortable seat, watching the miles fly past. Soon, they were in Port George, driving through the Native-owned land, past the fireworks stands that lined the road in early summer. And then they were on the bridge, crossing over Shallow Pass.

Welcome to Pine Island
,
pop. 7,120
.

She felt her chest tighten. There was the entrance to LaRiviere Park … the high school … Night Road. By the time Scot pulled up in front of his office, Lexi’s jaw ached.

“Are you okay?” Scot asked, opening her door.

Get out, Lexi. Smile
.
If there’s one thing you know how to do now, it’s fake a smile
.

She managed it. “Thanks, Scot.”

He handed her one hundred dollars. “This is from your aunt. And here’s a bus ticket to Pompano Beach. The bus leaves tomorrow afternoon at 3:30.”

“Tomorrow?”

How was she supposed to keep her distance when she was
here,
at the scene of her crime and the only place that had ever felt like home?

“Jenny invited you to spend the night and have dinner with us if you’d like,” Scot said.

“No.” She said it too quickly and realized her mistake. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just that I haven’t been around people for a long time. Two thousand one hundred forty-four and a half days.” She smiled tiredly and looked around, anxious to be on her own.

“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Scot said.

Lexi wanted to shake her head, maybe even say
hell, no,
but she just stood there.

“She lives with her dad in the old Tamarind cabin on Cove Road. I see her every now and then in town with her dad.”

Lexi didn’t react. In prison, she’d learned to hide everything, especially pain. “Does she look happy?”

“She looks healthy.”

Lexi nodded. “That’s good. Well, Scot—”

“We could fight for her, Lexi. Partial custody or at least visitation rights.”

Lexi remembered “visitations” with her mom: the two of them in a room while a social worker looked on. What Lexi remembered about those rare days was how scared she was of the woman who’d borne her. “I’m a twenty-four-year-old ex-con whose last real job was part-time at an ice cream shop. I have no place to live, and I doubt like hell I’ll be hired at any decent job. But I should swoop in and see my daughter, wedge myself into the Farraday family again, and bring up all that pain … so that I can feel happier. Is that it?”

“Lexi—”

“I won’t be like my mother. I won’t make any decision that isn’t in my daughter’s best interest. That’s why I’m going to Florida tomorrow. Grace deserves better than me, and if I’m around she’ll love me anyway. That’s what kids do: they love loser parents, and it breaks their hearts.”

“You’re not a loser. And what’s wrong with her loving you?”

“Don’t.”

Scot pursed his lips. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a set of keys and extracted one. “This is the key to my office. There’s a sofa bed in the conference room and a bike by the front door. The combination is 1321. We closed up early today, so the place is all yours.”

She took the key and pocketed it. “Thank you, Scot.”

“No problem. I believe in you, Lexi.”

She should have walked away then, said nothing more. That was what she meant to do; instead, she found herself looking up at him, saying, “Did Zach get married?”

“No. He’s still in school, I think. No wife. He lived with his parents for a few years and then moved into that cabin on the cove.”

“Oh.”

“He never wrote?”

“A few times. I sent all the letters back unopened.”

“Oh, Lexi,” Scot said, sighing. “Why?”

She crossed her arms, trying not to remember the feel of those letters in her fingers, the sight of them on the rough gray wool of her blanket. But she’d been so angry then, so wounded. She’d acted out in all kinds of terrible ways. By the time she was past all of that, stronger, it was too late. He never wrote again, and she hadn’t had the courage to write to him.

“I should have taken your advice,” Lexi finally said, unable to look at Scot as she said it.

“Yes.”

“Well. Thanks again. I think I’ll go for a bike ride. It’s a beautiful day.”

Scot went over to the front door of his office, got the bike, and guided it back to her.