Breaking Beautiful (16 page)

Blake leaves the paint cans on the porch, grabs two apples from the kitchen, and heads upstairs to the attic. The house is empty. Blake’s grandmother, Grandma Joyce, must be at her shop. She makes natural body-care products. She sells them in town, and every room at Pacific Cliffs Inn is stocked with her soap and little jars of her homemade lotion.

He sets the library books on a table in front of a pair of french doors that open to the widow’s walk and a great view of
the ocean. He starts flipping through the pages. The sun glints on his hair and a chunk of his bangs slips over his eyes. “What about this one?” His voice startles me. I realize I was watching him instead of looking at the book.

I lean closer so my arm almost touches his. The black-and-white picture shows a group of men in suspenders and hats staring back at the camera with stern expressions. In the background is the lumber mill that employed most of Pacific Cliffs before it shut down about twenty years ago.

“Good historical moment?” Blake asks. When he turns his head I have to step away because I was leaning so close to his face.

“Yeah, but there’s a lot of detail.” I reach to brush my hair back before I realize it doesn’t fall over my shoulders anymore. “The crane, the logs, the little dog.” I put my finger on a shaggy white mutt—the only creature in the picture who looks like he’s smiling.

Blake clears his throat. “You don’t think I can do it.”

I lean back farther. “I didn’t say that. I know that I couldn’t do it.”

“You’ve never seen any of my paintings,” Blake says. I can’t tell if it’s a question, a comment, or an accusation.

I shrug. “You never volunteered to show them to me.”

“Maybe I didn’t know you’d be interested.”

“I am,” I say firmly.

He looks like he’s waiting for the punch line. “Really?”

“Really.”

He goes to a corner of the room where a big divided shelf holds four racks. He pulls a stretched canvas off the rack. The image is blurred, like something out of a dream, with all the
colors—muted grays and blues and greens—running together. Still, I can tell it’s the entrance to our cave. There’s only one bright spot in the picture, something red hanging from a rock on the side of the cave. It reminds me of the red jacket I lost when I was eight.

I reach toward the painting but pull back, afraid to touch it. “It’s beautiful.” He ducks his head and slides the picture back into the rack. “Can I see more?” I look at him shyly.

He reaches into the rack and pulls out a picture of his El Camino, tricked out with blue racing stripes and custom wheels.

“Cool,” I say.

He shrugs. “It’s just a dream.” He slides the painting back into the rack and I reach for the next one. “Not that—” He tries to take it from me, but I’ve already seen what it is: a painting of me, half-done, from before my accident, the scar over my eye missing.

I blush and look away.

“That one’s just a dream, too,” he says quietly, replacing the painting in the rack.

The weight of a thousand things I should say to him hangs over me, but I let the silence speak instead.

“Blake, you home?” Grandma Joyce’s voice floats up the stairs. I breathe again and step away from him toward the corner.

Blake clears his throat. “We’re in the attic.”

“We?” Grandma Joyce huffs as she climbs the last stair. “Oh, hi, Allie. Good to see you.” She put her hands on her hips and evaluates me. “You look a lot better than you did last time I saw you.” I touch my scar. The last time I remember seeing Grandma Joyce was when I was in the hospital. “You still look
a little pale, though.” She steps forward and peers at my face from behind her glasses.

“How’s your shop doing?” I ask to get off the subject of me.

“Great, actually, if I can keep up with the holiday orders.” She sits back on a chair and looks me over. I’m waiting for her to say something about my hair or about my being too thin. Instead she asks, “I’ve been thinking about hiring someone to help me out.” She raises her eyebrows. “How would you like to work for me?”

I take a step back farther into the corner. “I can’t—”

“Not in the shop.” Grandma Joyce’s voice is coaxing. “I know you aren’t comfortable with that sort of thing. But I could use your help here, filling orders. I could show you how I mix things up.”

“I don’t know.” I look around at the array of glass bottles, measuring equipment, and jars filled with the ingredients that go into Grandma Joyce’s natural body products. If any combination is explosive, I would be the one to find it. I touch the stone in my pocket. “I don’t think I can.”

“Yeah, you can.” Blake’s eyes shimmer with the same excitement I saw when he was talking about the dance. “You could work for Grandma and we could do the project at the same time. I mean”—he looks down at the floor—“if you want to.”

“It would be fun to have you around here again.” Grandma Joyce’s face crinkles into rows of wrinkles that frame her eyes, bluer than Blake’s but the same shape. “I could really use your help. Blake makes beautiful paintings, but when he tries to help me in the shop … let’s just say he doesn’t have the right touch.”

“Maybe I don’t either.” I glance at Blake, but he’s still staring at the floor. I think about the painting of me on the rack behind him.

“Only one way to find out.” Grandma Joyce reaches for an apron behind the door. “Let’s get started.”

Chapter
22

Two days later there’s a note stuck to the bulletin board. This one is signed, “Mom,” but it scares me worse than any I’ve gotten so far.

Detective Weeks called. He would like to meet with you on Friday right after school
.

I’d like to think that my being seen with Blake has nothing to do with my appointment with Detective Weeks, but I know better. I was with another guy, in public, not playing the good widow. And not just any guy, it was Blake “Juvie” Evans, the town delinquent. The dark cloud of
if
Detective Weeks is going to question me turns into
when
.

Mom says she can’t get off work to go with me. She’s busy preparing for the holiday travel season, like Pacific Cliffs is a big winter destination. Dad says he doesn’t want me to go
alone. He takes the afternoon off from the shop to drive me. We get there about ten minutes before my appointment.

Like most of Pacific Cliffs, the police station struggles to be quaint and nostalgic but barely pulls off small and insignificant. The building is red brick and white trim, with a wide front lawn and a flag waving patriotically in the breeze. The lobby is filled with portraits of hero cops, most of whom attained their status merely by sticking it out in Pacific Cliffs until they were old enough to retire.

The receptionist/dispatcher takes our names, even though she knows exactly who we are, and tells us, “Please, sit down. Detective Weeks is still in another meeting.”

Dad sits calmly and picks up a six-month-old copy of
Field and Stream
. I work on making the rough spot on the tigereye smooth. With any luck, I look as messed up as I feel and Detective Weeks will take pity on me. More likely he’ll take my face as a sure sign of guilt and lock me up on sight.

I’ve tried to convince myself that he’ll only ask questions about the night of the accident. I won’t have to lie because I still don’t remember. That he won’t go into the dark abyss of
before
. Dad has been bugging me to concentrate, to try to remember
something
. “Maybe if they know what happened that night, Trip’s mom and dad can find some peace.”

I doubt that anything I could tell Trip’s parents about their son would give them peace.

The walls of the police station are supposed to be bullet-proof or at least soundproof, but I can still hear his voice. Loud. Demanding. Terrifying. Dad looks at me, but I don’t think he knows who is in Detective Weeks’s meeting. I’ve heard that
voice and that tone too many times before not to know. I recognize it from the times I cowered in Trip’s truck while the walls of his house shook with one of Mr. Phillips’s episodes.

Trip hated going to his house. Hated it. I hated it, too, because after a fight with his dad I could never predict whether Trip would be needy or just angry.

The argument moves into the hall between the lobby, the offices, and the little holding cell in the back. I don’t look, but I can picture Mr. Phillips’s face, beet-red and sweating, like when Trip dinged the side of his truck on a gas station pillar. “If you were doing your job, you would have something more concrete by now.”

The next voice is more muffled, Chief Milton saying something about calming down and trying to get to the bottom of things.

Mr. Phillips yells back, “I know the district attorney and the attorney general. If you can’t make things move forward, I’ll find someone who can.”

Dad discreetly raises his magazine. I don’t have anything to hide behind so I get the full brunt of Mr. Phillips’s glare. This time he doesn’t offer to have me over for dinner or pay for my college or reinstate my cell phone. I shrink into the fake leather chair as his eyes strip my fragile covering of secrets and find their way to my vulnerable core. Being seen with Blake must have officially pushed me across some invisible line from sympathy to suspicion.

Mr. Phillips storms out and leaves a trail of smoldering brimstone. Chief Milton follows him to the door but doesn’t go after him.

Detective Weeks shakes his head. “I guess that leaves me with you, Miss Davis.”

My dad stands up and walks with me to Detective Weeks’s office. They shake hands, cordial, like the yelling in the hall never happened.

They exchange pleasantries: “How is your business doing?” “What do you think of the Seahawks’ chances of getting into the play-offs?” “I hear we’re going to have an unusually wet winter.” That sort of thing.

“This shouldn’t take too long,” Detective Weeks says.

“That’s fine,” Dad replies. They shake hands again. “I’ll be waiting outside if you need anything.” Dad leaves me to the mercy of an overzealous detective and my own Swiss-cheese memory.

Detective Weeks’s office reminds me of Ms. Vincent’s; an afterthought—some kind of storage area repurposed for my benefit. It has a desk with a laptop, a bookcase, a file cabinet, and a hard chair for me to sit on. The walls are bare and the bookcase holds a couple of boxes and no books. It doesn’t look like he’s planning to be in Pacific Cliffs very long.

He sits and gestures for me to sit in the chair opposite him. I sit. He pulls a pile of papers from the file cabinet and shuffles through them. I wait. He sets the papers down, leans over the desk, and looks at me. I hold my breath.

“I should have sent this directly to the judge, but I’m sure you just forgot. With everything going on, it must have slipped your mind. I’d hate to have to throw you in jail for something so trivial.”

My heart races wildly as my scrambled brain grasps for
some meaning in what he’s saying, but I come up with nothing. I stare at him blankly.

He slides a copy of the ticket he gave me across the desk. “You were supposed to have this paid by the end of the month.”

“My traffic ticket?” I pick it up with fingers that have gone numb.

“Like I said, I could have turned that over to the judge and had a warrant for your arrest put out. But I know your memory isn’t the best.” He catches me in his blue eyes, and I read double meaning there.

I want to ask him if that was supposed to be a threat, but I just say, “Thank you.”

He stands up. “Grace can take care of you out front. Just don’t let it happen again.”

I stand and wait for him to open the door, but he doesn’t.

“So you just brought me in to remind me about the ticket?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth I regret them. I shouldn’t have said anything, shouldn’t have opened up a space for him to ask more questions.

“For now, yes.” His voice is casual, but his eyes are hard and intense. “Is there anything you would like to ask me?”

“Why are you here?” I blurt it out before I can stop myself. I’m not sure I want the answer to that question.

“Why did I come to Pacific Cliffs?” He leans against the desk. “I’m really not at liberty to say.” He could stop there, but he doesn’t. “I don’t think there’s any way you could have missed what Mr. Phillips said on the way out. He’s right about having friends in high places. And I guess he has money to throw around.”

“So you were hired by Mr. Phillips?”

“No,” Detective Weeks says firmly. “He may have the influence to bring me here, but he doesn’t have any influence over my investigation.” He picks up a pen and starts tapping on the desk. “Mr. Phillips seems pretty upset. I guess, given the situation, that’s understandable.” He sets the pen down and his forehead wrinkles. “Have you ever seen him lose his temper like that before?”

I slide my fingers along the edge of the stone in my pocket, but I answer truthfully. “Yes.”

“With Trip?”

I feel myself getting into dangerous territory. I grip the tigereye hard. “Yes.”

“Can you tell me anything about Trip’s mental state before the accident? Not just the night of the accident, but before. Was Trip depressed at all?”

I swallow. Moody, violent, arrogant, but not depressed. “No.”

“Are you sure? Sometimes it’s hard to tell, even if you’re close to someone.”

My head starts to hurt. I should have left when I had the chance. “I don’t think so.”

“Did he ever drink or do drugs?”

It feels like a betrayal, but I answer, “He drank.”

“A lot?”

“No. Sometimes. About the same as everyone else.”

“Were you guys drinking the night of the accident?”

“I don’t drink.” That’s the truth. It was hard enough to defend myself against Trip when I was sober.

“That’s not exactly what I asked. The toxicology report on
you showed no alcohol in your blood, so I know you weren’t drinking. Was Trip?”

My stomach clenches. “I don’t remember.”

“Without a body, that’s not something we can determine, but if someone saw him consuming alcohol that night—”