Snowflakes & Fire Escapes (10 page)

It was opened within moments, and I glanced up, meeting Cormac Moran’s gaze. His brow furrowed when he saw me, and edge of something in his eyes.
Anger
.

My father may have never liked Cody, but it was nothing compared to how Cormac felt about me. I overheard him once say I was nothing more than an unfortunate inconvenience that got in the way of my father ever being somebody someday.

“I need to see Cody,” I said … or tried to say, anyway. The words were rushed, jumbled, barely intelligible to my own ears, but he seemed to understand.

“He’s not here,” Cormac said.

“Where is he?” I asked, standing up straight, wishing my hands would stop shaking and my lungs would cooperate. “How can I find him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t.”

“But …” How could he not know? “I need to see him.”

“I don’t know where he is,” Cormac said again, stressing the words, the anger now tingeing his voice. “He left here last night and hasn’t returned.”

“I know … I saw him last night, but he left and … he left, but I need to see him, and I thought …”

“You thought he’d be home,” he said, “but he isn’t, so you should go.”

He started to shut the door, but I reached out, slamming my hand against it, stopping him. That anger in his eyes flared, but I was too frazzled to care. I knew the man has one hell of a temper, had seen proof of it on Cody’s face way too many times, but I didn’t think he’d ever hit me.

At least I
hoped
.

“Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t know where else to go. My father was arrested, and there are police everywhere and—”

“Connor was arrested? For what?”

“I don’t know. He said it was all just a mistake.”

“I’m sure he’s right.” Cormac leaned against the doorframe as he crossed his arms over his chest. He studied me like he was trying to decide whether or not I was lying, like he thought maybe this was all some game. After a moment, he shook his head. “Go home. Wait it out. It’ll blow over.”

I tried to argue, to tell him I couldn’t go there, when the door slammed in my face.

It was hard to know where to turn to when you didn’t have anybody anymore. I kept my head down as I strolled around Hell’s Kitchen, dodging away from police cars, seeking out Cody. I wasn’t sure where to find him. I’d never had to do it before. He always just knew when I needed him. He always knew to come to me.

It was well after dark, and I was cold and shivering, my feet hurting and head pounding. I made my way back to the school, back to where this day all went to hell, and sat down on the steps in front of the building.

The neighborhood was quiet. I sat there for a while before the doors behind me opened. My heart stalled for a beat as I swung around, but it wasn’t anybody I expected to see. My principal stood there, huddled up in a thick coat, his hand still on the door. He eyed me curiously, frowning.

It wasn’t a church, but it was the closest I’d ever come to belonging to one. The man couldn’t offer me sanctuary here. He had no obligation to help me, but part of me hoped he would. Standing up, I wrapped my arms around myself. “Please don’t turn me in. I’ll leave. I will. I just … I don’t have anywhere to go.”

His frown deepened as he motioned toward the building. “Come in out of the cold, Grace. You’ll be safe here.”

Safe
. I wasn’t sure I trust that word. Safe was something only Cody ever made me feel, and he was gone now. Where did he go?

***

Most of my life was spent in a box—a proverbial box, with four familiar walls and an enclosed top, shielding me from everything outside of it. The box felt too big to break out of but too small to spend the rest of my life in, like I was locked inside a cage with no bars, the worst kind of prison there is.

Because if you can’t
see
your restraints, how are you supposed to escape them?

I lived in this box until the day it collapsed, the pressure on it too great to sustain the weight of reality. And now that I’m free of my invisible chains, I don’t know where to go except for where I’ve always been.

Hell’s Kitchen.

The place looks the same at first glance, but everything feels different.
Everything
. The street is too quiet while the air is bitter cold. It’s after nightfall, darkness cloaking everything, so thick even the streetlights seem to struggle cutting through it. It’s the city that never sleeps, but nobody seems to be awake, like a spell was cast over the neighborhood in the wake of what happened. Cars drive through on their way to somewhere else, lights on in some of the apartments, but it’s nothing like it used to be. There are no boys hanging out on the corner. There’s no shouting or laughing. The fire escapes are all empty. The windows are all closed.

And the diner on the corner, once open twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, stands quiet, a shell of what it used to be, devastated in a fire sometime during my absence. The windows are all boarded up, the door busted. The sight of it makes my chest heavy.

I don’t dwell. Not now, anyway. Instead I head to the small public library a few blocks away. It’s even quieter here than it is out on the street, only a handful of people sitting around, studying. Slowly, I stroll up to the front desk, to the lone librarian on duty. She’s relaxing in her chair, flipping through a magazine. “Excuse me, but do you have a computer I can use?”

She doesn’t even look up. “We’re closing in twenty minutes.”

“It won’t take me long,” I say. “Just a moment, really.”

She huffs, holding her hand out. “Library card.”

“I, uh … well, I don’t …”

Her eyes drift overtop of her magazine to meet mine. “You have to have a valid library card to use a computer.”

“I do,” I say. Or well, I
did
. “I just don’t have it with me, but I have one. And like I said, it’ll only take a moment, and it’s really important. I have nowhere else to go, and I need to use a computer.”

I must sound convincing, probably since it’s not technically a lie, because she tosses down the magazine and shoves a clipboard toward me. “Write down your name and the time.”

I offer her a smile of relief as I scribble my name down.
Grace Kennedy
.

“Upstairs,” she said, taking the clipboard back. “You have twenty minutes.”

I take the steps quickly, sitting down at the first empty computer I find, and open Google. I don’t need twenty minutes. All I need are a few. Just a search of my father’s name gives me everything Holden has been keeping from me.

Connor Callaghan, murderer, is being hailed a
hero
.

I suddenly feel sick.

He’s testified almost a dozen times in the past year and has been dubbed as the man to single-handedly destroy the Irish mob in Hell’s Kitchen, as if he did it from the kindness of his heart and not out of selfishness. His testimony has brought down plenty of men, but Cormac Moran still walks free. The man runs the streets, released on bail for petty conspiracy charges, still awaiting judgment for his many sins.

His trial is just after Christmas.

My father again will be testifying.

Closing the browser, I shove the chair back and stand to leave. I head down the steps, eyes on my feet, and go right out the front door. The moment I step out onto the sidewalk, I nearly slam right into someone. My footsteps halt abruptly at the door, and I glance up as the person stops in front of me.

My heart races when my eyes connect with a vaguely familiar face. I don’t know his name, and it takes a moment for me to place him, one of the boys who used to hang around Cody in the neighborhood.
Shit
. He looks at me, his brow furrowing as he studies my face. Confusion is laced in his features, like he thinks he might know me but he doesn’t know how. And I know it’s because he doesn’t … he doesn’t know
this
girl, the one who spent the past year in Snowflake. He’s never encountered her before. We share some of the same features, sure, but I’m not entirely that girl he saw before.

My eyes dart back to the sidewalk as I quickly step around him, muttering, “Excuse me.”

“Grace? Grace Callaghan?” he calls out. “Is that you?”

“You’ve got the wrong person,” I shout back. “I’m not her.”

I hurry away, glancing back only briefly to see the boy shake his head and disappear into the library.

***

I slept in the nurse’s office, on the small cot reserved for sick students. The next morning, I was awoken by the principal and told to go to class with promises that he would handle everything for me. I didn’t know what that meant, I didn’t know how he could help, but I was exhausted, so exhausted … so I trusted the man.

I sat in class, in a daze, staring off into space until Sister Abigail shouted my name. My eyes sought her out in the front of the classroom as she studied me, raising her eyebrows. “You need to go to the principal’s office, Grace.”

Rolling my eyes, I stood up, shoving my hands in the pockets of the hoodie as I stalked toward the door. The last thing I cared about was another dress code violation lecture. I made my way to the front office, pushing the door open without knocking, sighing exasperatedly when I did. “Look, I’m not taking off the hoodie, okay?”

“Okay.”

The voice that responded was not a voice I knew. I looked up, seeing a pair of bright blue eyes that I’d almost call kind if it weren’t for the badge hanging around the guy’s neck they were attached to. My eyes narrowed as my gaze darted straight to the principal. “This is your idea of
helping
?”

He held his hands up defensively.

The stranger chimed in. “Grace Elizabeth Callaghan?”

“Yes.” I turn to him. “But I’m sure you already knew that.”

The man smiled knowingly as he held out a hand for me to shake. “Grace, I’m with the U.S. Marshals Service … and you and I need to have a conversation.”

***

The apartment is dark.

No lights shine from the windows, no shadows moving around inside. It blends in with the blackness blanketing the eerily quiet neighborhood. It’s closing in on midnight and I have nowhere to go.

I’ve got some cash left but not a credit card. Nobody will rent me a room. I have no friends in this city, no family left, nothing except for a life I abandoned up in that apartment.

Jumping up, I grab the ladder for the fire escape, yanking it down. I struggle a bit, trying to get my footing on the metal rungs, but I carefully climb up. I try to be as quiet as possible, not wanting to disturb any of the neighbors as I scale the building, the whole way up to the fifth floor.

I pause there, crouching down on the dingy metal platform, and gaze in. It’s too dark for me to make out anything inside. Hesitating, contemplating, I press my hands to the cold glass of the window, pushing up on it, trying to get the thing to budge. The window sticks, barely shifting half an inch, but it’s just enough for me to slide my fingers underneath.
Unlocked
.

I struggle shoving it open, the wood groaning worse than ever before, but I manage to get it up enough to slide my body inside, out of the bitter cold.

My feet hit the wooden floor, and I close the window behind me, blocking out the cold. Turning around, I blink a few times, adjusting to the darkness, an overwhelming suffocation squeezing my chest when things come into focus.

It’s empty.

Completely empty
.

I shouldn’t be surprised, and maybe I’m not, but it still takes me a moment to come to terms with that fact. The last time I was here, this place was packed full of belongings,
my
belongings, everything I’d been forced to leave behind. I wonder what they did with all of it. Donated it to charity? Destroyed it? Discarded it? Maybe they put it in a storage unit some place. I don’t know.

All I know is it’s gone.

Nothing’s here.

I don’t venture any further than the living room. I know it’ll all look the same. The bed where I once gave myself to Cody will be missing, my bucket list of dreams covering the walls ripped away, like none of it ever happened.

Like the girl I’d been never existed.

Pressing my back against the wall, I slide down to the floor, stretching my legs out in front of me. I’m exhausted.
So exhausted
. Everything feels so different; maybe too much changed.

Maybe, just maybe, this was a mistake.

I don’t know what I planned to accomplish by coming here. Like maybe I could prove Holden wrong, show him that all of this was senseless, that I don’t need protected. But now that I’m here, I’m afraid to find out what’s true, afraid that maybe Holden wasn’t the one who was mistaken.

It’s a battle between my head and my heart, and I’m too exhausted to continue the fight tonight. I’m staring across the dark room at nothing, contemplating where I go from here, wondering if I even have enough cash to make it back to Arizona, when the silence is shattered by an abrupt noise. The shrill sound stalls my heart for a beat before I reach for my bag, shifting things around inside to pull out the old cell phone. I flip it open, staring at the screen as it rings.

Blocked number.

Holden
.

His service-issued Blackberry doesn’t show up on Caller ID.

Before I can get my muscles to work again, before I can do anything, the ringing stops. I stare at the missed call, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

He shouldn’t even know I’m gone yet. He would be preoccupied with whatever business he had to attend to and wouldn’t have time to find out anything about me. But Holden isn’t one to call for nothing, and I know that. If he’s trying to contact me, there’s a reason.

Sighing, I close the phone and set it on the floor as I stretch out, laying my head down on my bag, using it as a makeshift pillow. It’s uncomfortable, but I’m too tired to care, as I snuggle up against it, pulling my arms up into the hoodie and wrapping them around myself.

Cody’s hoodie.

It stopped smelling like him a long time ago, but I close my eyes and inhale anyway, trying to conjure up his scent. But all I breathe in is the dust coating the room, the stale smell from the place being vacant for so long, no air circulating. I lay there, breathing steadily, eyes squeezed shut, hoping the memories will be enough to keep me warm as I wait for morning.