False Impressions (10 page)

She wanted to kick Kit for making her a part of this. Mary Lou would have a fit if she knew. April found a light switch and went down the basement stairs. The stairs were wooden, and the walls were plain cinder block. She stepped slowly, scanning for the promised folding chairs.

The room was a sea of black plastic.

All she could see were trash bags, filled to capacity. Wow. These kids really have been busy, she thought. She finally spotted the chairs against the wall at the bottom of the stairs and wrestled three upstairs.

Kit had covered the bucket with a piece of fabric and stuck a candle in the middle on a small plate. She’d lit the candle. April was touched by the effort to make the place look fancy.

She took one of the chairs from April and set it up, fussing with the position. April set the other two out and let Kit arrange them. She looked to April, her need for approval nakedly apparent. “How’d I do? These are the old curtains I found in a closet, and the candle was left behind in the bathroom.”

April smiled. “It looks great.”

Headlights raked across the ceiling. Tires crunched on the driveway.

“He’s here.” Kit flew to the front door and yanked it open.

“Be . . . careful,” April finished as Kit flipped on the porch light. Outside, it was as dark as the deepest night, even thought it was barely suppertime.

She looked back at April and beamed. “It’s him. I’d recognize him anywhere.”

She flew outside to meet the man getting out of the car, even as April tried to grab her back into the house. The temperature had dropped again, and the porch steps might be icy. But Kit was young and impervious to the dangerous cold as she flung herself into the man’s arms.

He’d parked behind Kit’s car. With the door open and the dome light on, April got a glimpse of a man slightly taller than Kit.

Out on the road, a car slowed. April couldn’t see the driver, but she was suddenly aware that a supposedly dead man was in Kit’s front yard. One wanted by the police.

“Come in here, you two,” she hissed, holding the door open. “Now.” They complied.

“Are you okay?” she heard Kit say as they crossed the threshold.

“I’m so sorry, Kitten. I never meant for you to suffer.”

They ignored April as J.B. wrapped his arms around Kit. Kit rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. April hadn’t sighed like that since she was in high school. She shut the door behind them.

Kit broke away from him. She held on to his hand and turned to April. “This is my uncle,” Kit said. “J.B. Hunsinger.”

He was skinny legged, with a belly bulging under his plaid shirt. He wore a red thermal Henley shirt underneath, probably for warmth as the flannel looked thin and worn through in spots. His jeans were Wranglers. He had inexpensive fur-lined ankle boots. This was a man who did his shopping at Walmart. Unlike Mary Lou, who traveled to Philadelphia to shop.

J.B. reached over and shook April’s hand. He seemed a bit nervous to find someone else with Kit. He looked around her. “Is there anyone else here? I asked you not to tell anyone.”

“Of course not. April’s different. She won’t tell anyone. I wanted her to hear your story. She can help you with the police, maybe.”

April cocked her head at Kit. Seriously? Did this kid think she had a good relationship with the Aldenville police?

Kit directed them to the kitchen where she shyly pointed J.B. to the vignette she’d set up. He smiled at her, but J.B. didn’t sit. He wandered around the room, touching the half-stripped wallpaper and testing the crooked miniblinds over the window. He walked on the balls of his feet, so he was in a jigging motion much of the time. He looked like someone who found it impossible to relax.

“So this place going to be okay for you?” he asked.

Kit laughed. “I guess. It’s not a Victorian on Main Street, my dream house. But I guess those don’t go into foreclosure that often.”

His face changed, a storm cloud moving across his forehead quickly. Kit didn’t notice the anger April saw. J.B. got himself under control, testing a kitchen drawer, keeping his face turned away from his niece.

“You look good,” Kit said.

“I’m doing good, real good.”

“Where have you been?”

“Not far away,” J.B. said. “In Mountain Top.”

Kit had just sat down, but she bounced back out of her seat. She faced him, her hands on her hips. “You’ve been, what, fifteen miles away this whole entire time? I thought you’d left the county at least.”

J.B. used a soothing tone. “No, I’ve been staying with a friend.”

Kit’s eyes were huge. She settled back in, grabbing J.B.’s hand, pulling him away from the construction zone and over to where she sat. He sat in the folding chair opposite her. “But did you have money? Where did you live?”

“There was a little money, yes. It’s been okay.”

“Who died in the fire?” April asked.

Kit jutted her chin at April. She clearly didn’t want April talking about the explosion.

J.B. lifted his eyes to hers. He didn’t seem to miss much, and he was probably wondering what her role was. He glanced at Kit, who hadn’t taken her hand out of his and was stroking it in her lap like a cat.

“Got pictures of the babies, Kit? I really need to know if the young’uns got my nose.” His tone of voice was light, but to April’s ear, a bit forced.

Kit laughed and grabbed her backpack off a hook on the wall next to the basement door. She pulled out a pocket-size photo album. The cover had been stamped and embossed. She pulled open the ribbon that bound the book and handed it to him.

The pain of losing her uncle was etched on her face. Rocky had told April she’d been in a precarious stage of her pregnancy when the explosion happened and very nearly miscarried. The joy and excitement of having twins had been tempered by the death of her favorite relative.

They bent their heads over the pictures. The two looked alike. Their hair color was almost exactly the same. J.B.’s hair was still thick, despite his forty-plus years, and it had natural highlights that April would have paid big bucks for. He wasn’t overly thin. He looked like he’d had been well cared for.

April sat down in the third chair. They were in an awkward little circle with Kit’s snacks untouched in the middle.

He hadn’t answered her question about who had died in the fire. It would have had to have been a major conflagration to burn bodies down to ash, with no identifying remains. Of course, in this small town, no one was going to do DNA testing. It would be easy to misidentify the remains.

But if J.B. were alive, then some other family was missing their son.

“Everyone was so sad,” Kit said, pointing at a picture of the babies’ christening. “We missed you that day.”

“Not everyone,” J.B. said. J.B. picked up a round of kielbasa and ate it. “Your parents were happy to be rid of me. And your husband.”

“No one wanted you dead,” Kit said.

J.B. hung his head. “I was such a loser. I wouldn’t blame them if they did.”

“Why didn’t you die that day?” April asked.

“I wasn’t there when the house exploded.”

“Your truck was there.” Kit’s voice was small. She was understanding something she didn’t want to know.

J.B. sat back in his chair. He sipped the water Kit had poured for him. “I got involved with the wrong people. I got myself in a situation.”

He wasn’t being clear. April wanted him to tell Kit everything. She’d be better off if she knew exactly what he’d been doing.

“Were you making meth?” April asked. Kit looked up sharply. April might as well have smacked her across the face.

J.B. didn’t look at April. He put his hand on Kit’s knee. “I made some bad choices.”

April made a snickering noise. J.B. glanced her way and sat back in his chair. He propped one leg up on the other and held on to his ankle.

“Look, I got to a position where I couldn’t say no when people asked me to help them.”

“People?” April asked. She was not going to let him get away with this obfuscating. He owed Kit an explanation.

He closed his eyes. “A gang. A meth-making gang,” he said. He spoke slowly as though the truth was painful. “There were two other guys that cooked in that house. I was the smurf, the one who buys the legal drugs they need to make the stuff. Cold medicine, over-the-counter stuff. Not a big deal to buy, unless you want quantity, which is what they needed. The drugs are regulated, so I would drive all over to different stores. I’d go into New York, New Jersey and get the stuff. It took me all day most days to obtain enough cold meds. They needed a lot.”

April watched Kit carefully. She was hearing directly from the source. After this, she could have no doubt that her uncle had been involved in making meth.

“Didn’t you use your truck?”

J.B. shrugged. “Sometimes. But I didn’t want my truck to get known, so usually I took one of the cars they had laying around and left mine behind. That’s what happened that day.”

Kit was not reacting, just watching her uncle closely.

April said, “No one said anything about a missing car.”

He laughed. It was curt. “It’s not like they were registered or anything. The, um, gang always had a couple of cars around the place. Stolen with fake plates.”

Besides, April thought, no one was left to complain. It’s not like gang members could call the police. “Did you know who died?”

“Yes. When I left that morning, two guys were in the house. They were both Cretins—gang members. They knew the chance they were taking.”

April said, “One person was identified. What about the other? Someone’s family is missing that guy.”

J.B. dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward. April sat back, startled. “Look, for all I know they’d gone to the diner for food. Maybe no one was inside. Besides, those bangers had no family. They’d taken an oath to the gang. That’s their only loyalty. Most of their families think they’ve been dead for years.”

Nice justification. April knew he might be right, but still. Someone was dead who people thought was alive, and someone else, J.B., was thought to be dead but here he was living a life. Of some kind.

“Why didn’t you come forward when you knew people thought
you
were dead?” April asked.

J.B. stiffened, and his chin jutted out. He looked like Kit when she’d told April about her uncle. Determined. Wrong, maybe, but in the moment, sure of their convictions.

Kit said, “April, leave him alone.”

J.B. seemed to make a decision. He pushed off his knees and stood. “I’m going to get out of here,” J.B. said, squeezing Kit’s shoulder.

Kit jumped out of her seat. She gave April a hard look. This was her fault. “No, please don’t go. Can’t we just talk some more?”

She hugged him hard. He patted her back. “Let me go. Just for a little while. I’m going to be around, Kitten. I promise. I want to go tell your mother that I’m here.”

“You’re going to Mary Lou’s?” April asked.

“You know my sister?” he said.

“I do,” April said. “She’s my friend.” And she’s really going to be shocked, April added mentally.

“Well, I’m taking a risk coming back into town, but I need to talk to my sister. Please don’t tell anyone I’ve been here. I’ll be able to come back for good real soon.”

“You promise?” Kit asked.

“I do, Kitten, I do,” J.B. said. “With all my heart.”

He kissed Kit on the cheek, looking into her face. “You’ve grown up a lot in the last year,” he said.

Death and pregnancy will do that to a girl, April thought. She felt so protective toward Kit. She was angry at this guy for making everyone so miserable.

“Let me go straighten out a few things with your mother. We have a lot to talk over.”

A flash of pain crossed his face. It looked as though his sister still had the ability to hurt him after all these years. He reached up to rub his eyes.

“See that?” Kit said, nudging April and pointing to a string bracelet on J.B.’s skinny wrist. It was faded and shabby. “I made it for him in tenth grade. I used to have one just like it,” she said.

J.B. stopped as he was going out the door. He spoke slowly, as if just remembering something. “This was a foreclosure, right?”

“Yeah, my mother bought it from the bank.”

“Did she know the family that lived here before?”

Kit shrugged. She pulled up the collar of his jacket in a touching maternal gesture. She patted his jacket front. “I don’t know.” She held his gaze. “You’ll come back, right?” The competent mother of two was gone, replaced by a little girl afraid of the dark but soothed by her uncle’s presence.

“I promise.”

She hugged him close, her face hanging over his shoulder like a moon. April could see streaks of tears and felt her own throat close up.

J.B. went out the door. They heard the crunch of his boots on the snowy drive and his car starting up. Neither of them moved until they heard him pull away.

April went to Kit’s side. She smoothed her hair, pushing it behind her ears and looking into Kit’s face. “You okay?”

Kit nodded, rubbing at her face to dry her tears. “Feels like a dream.”

“A good dream?”

Kit sighed. “Yes. A complicated one, but ultimately good. My mother is going to be so mad,” she said with a little laugh.

“Mad doesn’t begin to describe what your mother is going to be.” April thought a moment, then asked, “What will you do now?”

“Work on the house. Even faster. Logan and I need to get it ready.” Kit grinned. “Just think. When I host my first family party, my uncle will be here.”

 

April said good-bye and left. J.B. wasn’t dead after all. Kit had
her uncle back, and soon Mary Lou would have her brother. The twins would know him now. He seemed sober enough; maybe he could clean up his act for good. He’d said he’d stopped drinking, and if he could do that, who knew? Maybe he could be the guy they needed.