Starling House, page 24
Bev asks, slowly, “Would somebody like to explain to me just what the hell is going on here?”
The constable drops me and puffs out the concavity of his chest. “Ma’am, I’m going to ask you to leave the premises. I’m investigating a crime.”
“Well whoop-de-do, Constable. I’m investigating why you handcuffed one of my guests rather than handing her over to the EMTs.”
I meet Charlotte’s eyes behind Bev’s back and manage a single, strangled word. “Jasper?”
Charlotte says, “They got the fire out, and they haven’t found any—anybody. I don’t think he was there.”
I miss the next few sentences because I’m busy heaving my guts out on the floor. When it’s over I feel hollow and brittle, like plastic that’s spent too long in the sun. The receptionist lobs a roll of blue paper towels at me and I ignore it, trying to remember the trick of breathing.
By the time I peel my skull off the tile Bev is jabbing her finger in the constable’s face. “Don’t talk to me like that, you goddamn mall-cop cowboy—”
“Now look here, Bev, I am elected by the people of this great state—”
“You drive your mom’s Pontiac, Joe! They don’t even let you use the lights anymore!” She’s inches away from him now, voice dropping to a strangled threat. “We thought she was dead until somebody told us you dragged her down here.”
Mayhew tries very hard to look down his nose at Bev, who has several inches and at least twenty pounds on him. “An eyewitness reported this young lady acting in a suspicious manner tonight.”
“Well, I’m an eyewitness telling you I never saw her this evening. She hadn’t gotten back from work.” Bev enunciates each syllable, like she’s talking to a broken speaker at a Burger King.
“Her manager reports that she was fired several hours before the event in question, after getting violent with a customer. Given her volatile actions, I think it likely that—”
Charlotte speaks for the first time, her voice soft and deferential. “I was there, too. Opal wasn’t anywhere near the motel this evening.”
Constable Mayhew narrows his eyes at Charlotte. “And what were you doing at the Garden of Eden this evening?”
“I was just…” Charlotte looks at Bev, and Bev’s face goes taut. Charlotte trails away.
Constable Mayhew hooks his thumbs around his belt loops. “Were you a paying guest?”
“No, sir.”
“Were you visiting a paying guest?”
“No, sir.” Charlotte’s voice is fainter with each word. The frames of her glasses are a stark pink against the pallor of her skin.
“Then what were you doing there?”
Bev steps between them, her jaw so tight she can barely move her lips. “That’s none of your goddamn business.”
The constable, who has apparently never seen Bev fight three drunks in a motel parking lot and is under the impression that the white curl of her knuckles means he’s winning, says, “I am trying to investigate a potential arson here. I think it’s worth asking this lady—who was apparently at the scene of the crime, with no reason to be there—a few questions.” He holds his head higher. “Ma’am, I’m going to ask you again: Why were you at the Garden of Eden this evening?”
Charlotte looks at Bev. Bev looks at Charlotte. I might be dazed and sick, stupid with relief, but even I can see them speaking to one another, talking in the silent Morse code of two people who know each other far, far better than I thought they did.
“This is not,” Bev announces, to no one in particular, “how I wanted to do this.”
Charlotte’s face is a map of hope and doubt. She shrugs as if she doesn’t care, or as if she wishes she didn’t, eyes on Bev. “Nobody’s making you, sweetheart.” I try and fail to recall if Charlotte has ever called me sweetheart before. If she did I doubt she said it like it was a dare, or maybe a prayer.
Bev turns back to Constable Mayhew with a reckless tilt of her chin and a fuck-it grin. “She was at the motel because that’s where I live.”
“And why would this woman care where you live?”
“Because,” Bev inhales, “she’s my girlfriend. Officer Fucknut.”
Constable Mayhew looks as if he’s trying to diagram that sentence on an invisible chalkboard, face crumpled with concentration.
Bev turns back to Charlotte with her arms hanging rigid at her sides. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright.” Charlotte sounds a little breathless.
Bev scrubs her hand over the bristle of her hair. “No, for before. For not wanting anybody to know. I’m not ashamed, it’s just—it’s not safe, and I’m—a little slow.”
I murmur “We know” from the floor and Charlotte manages to suggest, with the merest flick of her eyelid, that she will flay me and use my hide as a tote bag if I open my mouth again.
“Anyway, I know you’re still going to leave and I don’t blame you, but you should know…” Bev rolls her eyes, apparently at herself. “I’d go with you, if you asked. And if you stayed … I’d buy us a fucking billboard.”
Constable Mayhew appears to be rousing from his fugue state, preparing to make some sort of authoritative statement, but then Charlotte kisses Bev, hard and joyfully, right on the mouth, and he short-circuits again. The receptionist says “Awww” and starts clapping, and I wish I could join her, because Jasper is alive and Charlotte is smiling and I will get to tease Bev about this until the end times.
The glass doors open. Heels click evenly across the floor.
Elizabeth Baine holds out her hand to Constable Mayhew, who blinks down at it as if he’s never seen one before. She gives him a gentle smile. “Constable Mayhew, if you will return to your office, you’ll find a voice mail explaining my involvement in this investigation. Thank you for your assistance.”
Bev and Charlotte watch as Mayhew scuttles into his office. Baine transfers the clear blue of her gaze to the floor, where I sit cross-legged and dazed. I no longer want to clap.
“Hello again, Opal. Could we talk privately?”
* * *
I don’t know what makes me wallow to my feet and follow Elizabeth Baine down the hall. It’s the officious tap of her shoes and the ironed seams of her skirt, the way she checks the watch on the inside of her wrist, as if she has allotted a specific number of minutes to deal with our collective nonsense. The only flaw is her upper lip, which is swollen and glossy, split where my fist collided with her teeth. I imagine my knuckles would still hurt if I could feel my hands.
She leads me to a room labeled CONFERENCE ROOM C and sits at the head of a long table, gesturing to the seat beside her. I stroll past it and settle at the opposite end. I do my best to slouch insolently, but my shoulders are stiffening fast.
Baine studies me politely, chin resting on her folded hands.
I want to stare her down, but I find my mouth opening, my voice whipping down the table. “Did you know? That he wasn’t there?”
She considers. “Yes.” The answer sounds as if it was drawn out of a hat at random.
I picture myself striding over and slamming my forehead into the bridge of her nose.
She sighs as if she knows exactly what I’m thinking. “You are so determined to think the worst of me. Hal searched the room just before the incident. We knew your brother wasn’t inside.”
“And what about the other rooms? The front office? Did you carefully evacuate the premises before committing arson?”
For the first time, there is the slightest hesitation before she speaks. “The event was not intended to reach that scale. Hal is a very experienced operative, but…” She does a small, mannered shrug. “He claims the flames spread more quickly than they should have, and that the smoke alarms failed.”
I think of the mist mixing with the smoke, the shadowed shapes I saw there; there was more than one kind of Beast running loose tonight. I smile at her, a vicious twist of my lips. “Bad luck, I guess.”
Baine’s eyes glitter back at me. “Yes.” She unsnaps a black case at her side and withdraws a raggedy yellow legal pad. She smooths the pages flat on the table. “Hal retrieved some very interesting documents from room 12, before the fire. Your work, or Jasper’s?”
I close my mouth, hard.
“Listen, Opal. All we’re looking for is a little help. We don’t want anyone to get hurt, but there are a lot of very serious parties with an interest in the Starling property. They hired us to get results, and I don’t intend to let them down. You understand, don’t you?”
Arthur and all his predecessors had fought and fallen for generations rather than let the Beasts loose on the world; Elizabeth Baine would stand aside and watch with a clipboard and a smile.
“You don’t know what you’re messing with,” I tell her, cliché-ly.
“But you do?” Quick and eager.
“Can’t you just let it alone?” I can tell from her quizzical half smile that the question doesn’t make sense to her. It’s the same expression a Gravely might have worn if someone had asked them to stop digging when they knew there was still coal under Eden.
Baine checks her watch again. “Let me be clear about your situation. There was an act of arson committed tonight, and a reliable eyewitness with no reason to lie and a clean criminal record is willing to swear under oath that he saw you do it.”
“Tell Hal thanks from me.”
She ignores me. “Add arson to identity fraud, and no judge would find you a fit guardian for your brother.”
Panic twists in my belly, familiar as a toothache. I want to shout You can’t do this or He needs me, but I hear Charlotte’s voice in my ear: Does he? I hear Jasper himself: I’m not your job. Maybe it’s time to trust him a little more, to stop selling my soul for something that never belonged to me in the first place.
I swallow sour spit. “So? He’s a big kid now, and his future is taken care of.”
Her head tilts very slightly. “And what if his new guardians choose a different future for him?”
“What new guardians?”
Baine is tapping at her phone. “Well, his family, of course.”
“I’m his family, you—”
Which is when the door opens, and the CEO of Gravely Power walks into the room.
The last time I saw Don Gravely he wasn’t anything to me. He was a sweaty handshake and a polyester suit coat, and the only thing I noticed about him was the way he flinched away from me. I remember glaring at him, not out of any personal grudge, but just out of solidarity with Bev and her luna moths.
Now I find myself staring, trying to force his features to assemble into something or someone familiar. But there’s nothing of Mom in this man, nothing of me, except maybe the eyes: gravel-gray, cold.
He pulls out a seat and sits with a harassed sigh. I don’t think he’s even noticed me yet. “Look, Liz”—Baine’s face gives an imperceptible twitch—“you can’t just order me around. I’m a busy man.”
“Thank you for your patience, Mr. Gravely.” She smiles at him; he doesn’t seem to see the malice in it. “I was just talking to your great-niece here about her future.”
For the first time since he walked into the room, Gravely faces me. His entire body recoils, his head retracting into his collar. I have the childish urge to stamp my foot at him, just to see if he’d fall out of his chair.
He produces a smile that makes me think of a stray dog licking its canines. “Delilah’s girl. How are you?”
So: it’s all true. This man is my family, my history, my roots, and everyone knew it but me. Hot shame floods me, the sense that the whole town must have been laughing at me as soon as I turned the corner.
I work hard to make my voice come out flat. “Been better.” I rattle the handcuffs against the back of the chair.
“Ah, well.” Don Gravely isn’t looking at me anymore. “We always meant to reach out, of course, since Delilah finally went and did it. We—my wife and kids—we’d love to have you over sometime. You could meet the rest of the family. We could take care of you.” Baine widens her eyes very slightly at him, and he adds, “And the boy, your brother. You’re Gravelys, after all.”
Scenes flash through my head, a montage of shaky home videos that never happened: Jasper and me eating dry chicken on a big suburban patio, sitting across the table from a set of blond cousins in name-brand clothes. My picture in the family album, right next to Mom’s. A present under the Christmas tree with my name on the tag in pretty cursive: Opal Delilah Gravely.
So ordinary. So tempting. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted, the list I thought I burned a long time ago: a home, a name, a family. I know there’s a catch, a price—I know nothing is free for people like me—but for a minute I can’t move, can’t breathe, for wanting.
Baine interjects, smoothly, “After all this is wrapped up, of course.”
I pry my teeth apart. “All what?”
Gravely makes a gesture suggesting there are gnats in the room. “This fuss over the Starling property. You’ve heard about the plant expansion? Well, it all depends on a new coalfield opening up. Picture it—real mining in Eden again, for the first time since we buried Big Jack. My surveyors tell me there’s a good seam on the Starling property. We hold the mineral rights—always have, since the eighteen-somethings—but the Starlings won’t budge. Liz here”—he nods at Elizabeth Baine, whose eyelid gives another twitch—“has a reputation for solving this kind of problem.”
Baine looks coolly back at me, and I know if I announced that she was actually investigating a doorway to Hell she would deny it very convincingly.
“So we’d all be grateful,” Gravely concludes, “real grateful, if you could help her out.”
And there’s the price tag. It doesn’t seem like a bad trade, to be honest. I give them Starling House—I let them paw through an old mansion that isn’t mine and never will be, I betray one brave, stupid boy—and in exchange, I get everything.
A home, a name, a family.
The word “family” sets another montage off in my head, except this one isn’t imaginary. I see Bev, jabbing her finger in Constable Mayhew’s face; Charlotte, asking me to come with her; Jasper, pretending to sleep so that I can pretend to sleep. Arthur’s coat neatly folded on the couch. Arthur’s hands tangled in chicory and Queen Anne’s lace. Arthur’s face turning up to mine while the poppies bow around us.
I tilt my head, studying Don Gravely—my great-uncle, I guess. This man who looked away while we lived on ramen noodles for eleven years, who would have kept on looking away if it weren’t for his bank account and his business plans. And why not? We share a little blood, maybe a curse, but he’s never stayed in town long enough to know what it’s like when the mist rises. There’s nothing that ties us together except a name I didn’t even know I had.
It occurs to me, looking at those eyes, chips of cold limestone, that the Starlings probably had it right. That the only name worth having is the one you choose.
Gravely is getting impatient, his jaw working, his fingers tap-tapping. I smile at him, and from the way he flinches I think it must be my real smile, mean and crooked. I lean across the table, shoulders screaming in their sockets. “Go fish, asshole.”
The change comes quick: Gravely’s genial good-old-boy act disappears. His hands go still, upper lip peeling away from his teeth. “God, you’re just like her. Leon spoiled her rotten, gave her every little thing she wanted, and it wasn’t enough.” It was never enough, for Mom. She was all hunger, all want, insatiable. I’ve always hated her for that appetite, just a little, but now I feel a strange sympathy. It turns out I’m hungry, too.
Gravely’s face is turning a blotchy mauve. “She goes and gets herself knocked up—insists on keeping it, refuses to marry the man—shames the Gravely name—” His sentences are fragmenting, cracking under the weight of a twenty-six-year-old grudge. “And then still, after all those years, after everything she did, Leon was going to give it all to her. She didn’t work for it, she didn’t deserve it—I was the one who—”
“Give what to her?” My voice is cool, not loud. There’s no reason it should leave a ringing silence in its wake. Gravely shrivels again, turtle-like, and Baine looks like she’s preventing herself from rolling her eyes only through years of elite training.
Gravely is breathing hard, almost panting. “Doesn’t matter now. I burned the will myself, and your mama drove into the river before she knew what was coming.”
“She knew.” The words taste true. You’ll see, Mom told me. She told Bev she was going to make things right, and I think she meant it. I think she was going to bend that stubborn spine of hers and claim the inheritance her daddy offered, and buy us a better future.
But dreams don’t last long in Eden. The mist rose high, the wheels left the road, and by the time Constable Mayhew bought me that Happy Meal, my future was gone.
Stolen, by this stone-eyed bastard.
A surge of fury puts me on my feet. “You—”
“Enough.” Baine’s voice is cool, a little bored. “The past is over, and you can’t prove anything, can you?”
I open my mouth, then close it. The only evidence I had was my mom’s number written on a dead man’s receipt, her picture in the family photo album. It’s all ashes now, smoke and rumor.
“But let’s talk about the future,” Baine continues. “I think it’s safe to assume the courts would grant Jasper’s guardianship to his uncle, especially given his sister’s … behavior.” She cuts a glance at me, handcuffed and panting, reeking of smoke.
“You can’t see it, but I want you to know that I’m flipping you off.”
Baine is unmoved. “And I don’t think Mr. Gravely would be inclined to send him off to Stonewood. After all, he’s been offered a position in the family company. Why shouldn’t he take it?”
“Because he has asthma, you fucking ghoul.” Lacey’s dad works at the plant, and she told me the hood of his car is covered in fine black soot by the end of each day. All it would take is a long shift, a broken inhaler, a walk back to the motel on a misty night.
