Kill Me If You Can

14

I put a hand to my forehead, trying to remember the events surrounding Missy Belmont’s plea for help. “I met her the Sunday after I moved up here. The next Tuesday we met at the library in Manistique, and she told me everything.”

Puppa glanced up at a twelve-month wall calendar. He wrote on his paper.

“And what exactly did she say to you?” he asked.

I relayed the details the best I could. “Then I told her she should take the kids and go to a shelter.”

My grandfather nodded. “That works for most people, but Missy knows she’s in a little deeper than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a drug network involved. It’s not just Drake she’s got to break away from. As with a lot of the wives and girlfriends, Missy has seen and heard too much. If she runs, she could be dead.”

I sucked in a breath. “So what can you do?”

Puppa shrugged. “Make a few phone calls. Call in a few favors. We’ll see.”

“But why would Missy think you could help her?”

“I used to be in law enforcement. Maybe she thinks I still have an inside track.”

“Do you?”

“We’ll see.” He scribbled a few more notes on his pad. “Or, maybe there’s something else going on altogether.” He paused, pencil in midair as he concentrated. He looked over his shoulder at me. “Go back in there and check on Olivia.”

I hesitated at the door. Puppa strode to a file cabinet and started flipping through folders.

“So, you’re like a retired cop?” I asked him.

“No, I’m like a fired cop.” He turned his back to me.

I gulped and nodded and walked back into Olivia’s room.

She was awake.

“How are you feeling?” I went to the bed and touched her hand.

“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Tell Joelly I’m hungry.”

“Sure.”

I found him in the kitchen, putting supper together.

“Mmm. Smells good,” I said.

He glanced up from his place at the stove where he was mixing something in a fry pan. “Hey, little cousin.”

“Hey, yourself.” I snuck a peek in the skillet. “Stir-fry. Looks yummy.”

“I take it Olivia’s not dead?” he asked.

“Nope. She’ll be kicking for a long time yet. In fact, she’s hungry.”

His spatula slowed. “Uh-oh. What’d you tell her? She only gets hungry when she’s gearing up for the gossip circuit.”

“You heard everything. She insulted my mother and I thanked her for it. She fell asleep right after you left.” Fat scraps and veggie ends were scattered across the top of the island. I scooped up a handful and put it in the trash. “So. Papa B was a police officer?”

Joel looked up from the stove. “State cop. How’d you know?”

I shrugged. “He told me. Said he was fired. What happened with that?”

His spoon halted mid-stir. “I’m surprised he said something to you. He never talks about it.”

I grabbed a dishcloth and wiped down the island. “So? What’s the scoop?”

Joel shook his head and went back to stirring. “I was pretty young at the time. Four or five years old, I guess.” He tapped the spoon on the edge of the pan. “In fact, it was right around the time Lizard died.”

“Lizard?”

Joel’s cheeks blushed red. “Elizabeth. Beth. Your mom. That’s what me and Gerard called her. She was a lot of fun.”

My forehead bunched. I could see two freckle-faced boys jumping out in ambush along some forest path.

“Nice try, boys,” I heard my mother say. “But I saw Joelly’s white socks from a mile away.”

“No fair,” the boys whined as they ran ahead to find a better hiding place.

I looked at my cousin, all grown up. “You called my mom Lizard and me Toilet Tissue.”

Joel looked sheepish. “You see why Uncle Bernard will only let us call you Patricia these days?”

I crossed my arms. “Yes. Remind me to thank him.”

Gerard showed up in time for supper and the four of us shared a pleasant meal. Grandma Olivia had her tray in the bedroom again. She had to make it look like she was still dying, Puppa said when she wouldn’t come to the table.

Joel drove me home around seven.

“You want to come in and see what I’ve done?” I asked.

He looked straight ahead, as if debating. “Why not? I haven’t been in there since I was a kid.” He turned off the ignition and came after me.

“Nice kitchen,” he said, kicking his shoes off on the rug.

“Think so? I thought about changing some things because it feels so small.”

He looked around the room. “It has everything a good chef needs. Nice work triangle, a prep island, and stools for company. No need to change a thing.”

“Thanks. I’ll go easy on it.”

We walked from room to room. I gave Joel the rundown on the improvements. He made all the right comments.

Upstairs, I leaned against the banister overlooking the great room.

“So what’s the history behind this place, anyway?” I asked him.

His hands rested on the log railing. “I’m not sure. Some big family hunting lodge from back when there was still family to fill it, I guess. Unfortunately, the years haven’t been kind to the Russos. They just petered out ’til there’s just me and Gerard—and now you—left to carry on.”

I looked out over an orange sky. “Seems sad, doesn’t it? I mean, what is it about our family that causes us to self-destruct?”

Joel was quiet for a minute. “Is it just us? Or is it everybody? We’re not the only ones living lonely and afraid. It’s everywhere you look.”

I thought about his words. Lonely and afraid. Yep. That about summed it up. Yet I really didn’t have an excuse for feeling that way. I’d heard enough Sunday sermons about abundant life in Christ that I should feel happy and joyous by now. I guess I just needed to try harder.

I put on a smile. “Listen to us whining. We’re some of the luckiest people I know. Young, healthy, and miles of future ahead.”

Joel grinned. “You’re right.” He rubbed his hands together. “Nice job here, Tish. All the best with the rest of your improvements.” He went down the steps two at a time. At the bottom, he stopped and looked back up at me. “By the way, I owe you an apology.” He cast his eyes onto the stair treads. “I didn’t know you were going to be such a decent person. I thought you might be . . . well, I figured you’d just want to barge in here like you had some right . . . Anyway, I’m sorry I was rude at Papa B’s house last time. You didn’t deserve it.” He gave a final glance up at me, then disappeared under the arch. A moment later I heard the back door close.

I stood at the rail. Maybe Joel had been disrespectful the other night. But his apology made up for it in a big way. It took a big person to humble himself like that.

Twiddling my thumbs, I stared at specks of dust floating in the beams of a setting sun. Humility sure wasn’t my strong point.

I sighed. Tonight was my night to call Brad. I dropped my head on my arms, dreading the call. It had been hard conversing with him lately. I just wanted to be with him. But he had his job, his family, his roots down in Rawlings. And I had my roots to plant here in Port Silvan. It seemed there could never be a way for us to be together.

I contemplated not calling him. The pain always spiked after I heard his voice. Maybe if I just let him go, just let him become a long-forgotten memory, then that place in my chest would quit hurting.

Eight o’clock passed and I didn’t call him. I breathed a sigh of relief. It hardly hurt at all. I sat on the couch with my book. After ten minutes staring at the words, I hadn’t understood a sentence. I reread the page. Then I gave up and checked the clock. Eight twenty.

I should call him. That would be the right thing to do. I could say, “Please don’t contact me anymore. Every time I hear your voice, I’m jerked back into loving you. And what good is that doing? We can’t be together right now and it hurts too bad to be apart. So just don’t call me anymore. Just leave me alone.”

Tears ran down my face just thinking the words. I couldn’t bear to be without Brad. As much as it hurt to be away from him, it would surely kill me to never speak to him again.

I dialed the phone.

“Brad?” My voice quavered with emotion.

“Tish, are you alright?”

I laughed into the mouthpiece. “Yes. I’m just glad to hear your voice.” I laughed again to hide my feelings. “Hey, remember the day we went shopping for garage door openers?”

He gave a quiet chuckle. “Oh, man. What were we thinking?”

I smiled and closed my eyes as I relived the afternoon we’d spent at the home improvement center in Flint, just north of Rawlings. We’d gone to buy his-n-hers openers for our own separate detached garages. But somehow we’d gotten distracted on the way to the hardware department and ended up in kitchen cabinets, choosing our favorite styles and colors. He picked a medium hickory with an arch top, I picked a light oak square top. We laughed at our differences, together choosing a lighter arched hickory as our joint favorite. We did the same thing in the bath department, then the lighting department, and finally the whole store, until we built an entire house for ourselves.

“Yeah,” I sighed into the phone, “what were we thinking?”

In the end, we bought our separate garage door openers and drove home to our separate houses and went to sleep in our separate beds and woke up to our separate brews of coffee, which we drank alone each morning in our separate kitchens.

I swallowed hard so I could speak. “Hey,” I said, “did you ever think it might have been fun—to build a house together?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I thought about that. It would have been a lot of fun.”

Then why don’t we do it, I wanted to say. Why don’t we figure out a way to get together and make it work?

Instead, I made a little grunt through my tears. “What do you think happened to that idea, anyway?”

He paused a moment. “We decided to just be friends.”

I nodded, wiping my face. “Just friends” didn’t get married and have babies and build houses together. No, “just friends” called each other on the phone every once in a while. Just like we were doing now. I tried not to sniffle into the receiver. “Thanks for being my friend, Brad. It really means a lot to me.”

Comforted in the knowledge that he was at least still my good buddy, I relaxed a little. We talked for over an hour. I could almost hear the dinging of a cash register at my cell phone company as each minute passed, but decided not to let my usage minutes rule my relationships.

I mentioned my great-grandmother’s death scare, my grandfather’s former career, and my cousin’s take on life.

“Your family sound like good people. I’m glad they’re there for you.”

He said it like such a true friend. I wanted to think that underneath the words he was really saying, “I love you.” But that would have been reading too much into it.

“Good night, Tish.”

Brad’s gentle farewell dredged up that gush of agony.

“Night.”

I sniffled and disconnected. Then I carted myself off to bed.