Minders (13 page)

On Tuesday after work Ford went to an old boat that he entered from a secret tunnel beneath a picnic bench, and a fort made out of a decaying camper entirely engulfed by bushes. On Wednesday he rode to a completely deserted tree-lined residential block in the middle of the city, where he stopped at an abandoned house with a secret room through the fireplace. There was no sign of Bucky.

By Thursday he was a tinderbox ready to explode. He was on his way home from work when his phone buzzed with a text. It said, “I HEAR YOU’VE BEEN ASKING ABOUT ME. I’LL BE AT THE CANDY FACTORY TONIGHT AFTER 10:30. YOUR NAME IS WITH THE VIP HOST. PLUM.”

Boom!
thought Sadie.

CHAPTER 9

H
is mother was sitting at the kitchen table when Ford walked in the door that night. She was wearing a faded blue sweater, jeans, and a gold locket. Sadie hadn’t seen her dressed and out of bed before, and although she still looked frail, she seemed more substantial. More real.

She marked her place in her word jumble with a pencil, folded her hands over it, and looked at him with a smile. “We had a visit from our Roque Community Health Evaluator today.” Her tone made Sadie think of Jell-O, artificially bright and sweet. “It went very well.”

“Oh, good,” Ford said, matching her artificial cheer. He pulled the two cans of Spaghetti-n-Meatballz he’d bought on his way home from his bag.

“They offered to send someone over to help Lulu feel more comfortable leaving the house again. We just need to set up a time.”

“Can they also bring James back to life? Because I actually think that’s what it would take.”
Stop it
, Sadie wanted to tell him.
Why can’t you just listen to your mother instead of having to remind her constantly that James is gone?

Her brightness dimmed a little. “Why do you always have to be so negative?”

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are,” Lulu said stepping into the room. She was wearing a pair of purple corduroy pants that were three inches too short and a gray men’s Henley shirt.

“That’s my shirt,” Ford said. “Who said you could borrow it?”

“The fairies that live on the floor of my room, where I found it.”

“Copernicus must have put it there.” Ford looked sternly at him and said, “Bad dog.”

Lulu said, “It’s not his fault you failed Drawers in school.” She stood on her tiptoes to peer into the pot and made a face. “Spaghetti-n-Meatballz again?”

Ford said, “There’s also nothing. We’ve got plenty of that.”

Lulu rolled her eyes. “Why is it spelled with a
z
?”

“It stands for
zee good stuff
,” Ford explained solemnly. “It’s Italian.”

For the first time since Sadie had been in Ford’s head, the three of them had dinner together. That meant that Lulu and Ford ate like savages while Mrs. Winter pushed her food around on her plate. “I’d hoped you would be here when the Evaluator came,” she said, arranging her Ballz into a pyramid.

“This new one is nice,” Lulu put in. “She knows fun games.”

“It’s the fifth visit you’ve missed,” his mother went on. “But she’ll be back Tuesday.”

Sadie felt the muscles in Ford’s back tense. He kept his eyes on his plate, concentrating on holding back his rising anger. “I’m sure you kept the Roaches entertained.”

His mother knocked over her pyramid. “Please don’t call them that. They’ve been very helpful to our family.”

“Have they?” Ford looked up, like he was interested, but Sadie knew it was only sarcasm. “As far as I can tell, they come and spy on us—”

“Check on us,” Mrs. Winter corrected.

“—to make sure we’re not doing drugs, just because one member of our family, who’s not even here anymore, did drugs. I’m not sure how much I trust people who think drug addiction is a communicable disease.”

Mrs. Winter sighed. “They come to see if we need support. If there’s anything they can do to make our family life easier.”

“There is,” Ford said, and Sadie felt as though he wasn’t just leaning into a door to keep the anger from coming through, he was bracing an entire wall. “They could leave us alone. Can you point to one thing they’ve actually done?”

His mother looked away. “They paid for James’s funeral.”

Dots of blues and yellows streaked with black coalesced into a churchyard with patches of snow on the ground, a man in a suit speaking, people, more than a hundred of them, crowding close to listen. Finally Lulu in a dress three sizes too big for her, dropping crystal stars on a coffin. Sadie felt whole new registers of anger blossom in Ford as the images faded.

“May I be excused?” Lulu said.

Ford glanced at her plate. “You hardy ate anything.”

“Copernicus doesn’t feel good,” the girl said.

Ford looked at her hard for a moment then said, “Go on. I’ll come in to say goodbye before I leave.”

Lulu nodded and ran down the hall to her room, slamming the door.

His mother said, “You upset your sister.”

“Yeah, it was all me.” Ford got up from the table and began to clear the dishes. Sadie noticed the deliberateness of his movements and sensed how much he’d like to smash every plate against the floor.

His mother lit a cigarette, took a short drag, and said nervously, “You’re going out?”

He leaned against the counter, drying his hands. “Yep.”

Don’t do it
, Sadie said, sampling the anticipation he was feeling. It was impure, mixed with a little malice and a lot of pain, and it was designed to do only one job.

He said, “I’m going to meet James’s girlfriend.”

There was a long silence. And then, “You selfish boy.”

His mother’s words set up a relay in Ford’s mind, pinging around his memories like a pinball. His father in a janitor uniform smelling of bleach, the man’s face clear, teeth yellow, eyes furious. “You selfish shit, I work to put food on the table, a roof over your head, and you thank me by running away?” His face in Ford’s face, the image slightly less clear, Ford’s saying, “I wasn’t running away, sir, I was at my friend Buck—” interrupted with a growled “Shut up.” The man’s voice yelling, “Do you know how upset your mother was? Do you know how much pain you caused her?” The dots bigger, images blurrier as though harder to see since the situation made less sense to the child, his mother’s arms covered in bruises. “Look how much you hurt your mother when you don’t obey. Tell him, Vera.” Large dots combining into hypnotic smears making a woman with no face, just a voice that says, “Please, Ford, please, can’t you just behave? Why can’t you stop upsetting your father?”

Sadie was knocked backward by the memories. The scent of bleach was overpowering.
Betrayal
, Sadie realized. That’s what bleach meant. The deepest, most fundamental form of betrayal.

Poor Ford
,
s
he thought.
No wonder he and his mother have so little to say to one another.
It was incredible to Sadie that they communicated at all, even in their stunted way.

Then the scent of bleach faded, and Ford demanded, “I’m selfish because I think we should know what really happened to James?”

“You don’t care about James,” she said, one arm crossed over her chest, the other balanced on it, smoking in small, nervous puffs. “You’re doing this for yourself. And to hurt me.”

Ford laughed bitterly. “Yeah, can’t imagine why I might want to meet my dead brother’s girlfriend. The person he spent the most time with before he died. The one he was so busy with we never saw him anymore.”

His mother, looking genuinely confused, asked, “Why
would
you?”

He said, “To know. How did this happen?
What
happened?”

His mother stabbed out her cigarette. “I know what happened.”

Ford’s stomach dropped. Over the lingering scent of cigarette smoke Sadie thought she caught a whiff of cinnamon. It took her a moment to realize that he was surprised and something else… hopeful? Was that what the cinnamon meant? “You do? What?”

His mother nodded. “It was a terrible accident. And no amount of looking or asking questions will bring him back. We have to move on with our lives.”

Sadie felt Ford’s hope twist into an even tighter knot of anger. “Is that what you call this?” He made a wide gesture with his arm, taking in the apartment but clearly meaning more. “Moving on with your life? Our lives? Lulu is afraid to leave the house, I’m destroying beautiful buildings I’d rather be rescuing, and you sit in your room week after week doing these.” He picked up her word jumble and fanned it open.

He put it down and then, as though just registering something he’d seen, picked it back up and flipped through it.

It was blank. Every page blank. Not a single puzzle had been done.

Ford frowned at his mother. She looked back, defiantly.

“What do you do all those hours if you’re not doing this?” he asked, waving the book toward her.

“None of your business,” she said firmly. Only her hand patting the top of the table indicated she wasn’t completely calm.

Ford’s voice softened. He sat down and reached toward her. “Mom, what is going on?”

She pulled a cigarette from the pack on the table, took one, lit it, and exhaled. Settling back in her seat she said to Ford, “I lost my glasses.” She shrugged. “I can’t see to do my jumble without them.”

“How long?” Ford’s voice was still calm. “How long ago did you lose your glasses, Mom?”

“A month.” Her eyes went left. “Maybe two.”

Ford nodded slowly, taking that in. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You always seem so upset. I didn’t want to give you more to worry about,” she said, still not looking at him. “You already worry too much.”

Ford’s anger rose like a swollen river, blotting out reason. His vision blurred, and his ears rang. He stood with such force that his chair fell backward, sending Copernicus fleeing. “That’s it. I can’t do this anymore. I’m going out.”

“No, Ford. Please don’t,” his mother said. “Not—not when you’re in a mood like this.”

“I assure you,” he told her, picking up the chair, “it’s when I’m in a mood like this that you want me out of the house.”

“You’ll call attention to yourself or do something stupid, and that could cost us everything.”

There was no subtlety in Ford’s fury. “How can I avoid doing something stupid? It’s in my genes.”

Mrs. Winter froze, half in and half out of her seat, staring at him. “You cannot speak to me that way.”

“You’re right,” Ford said in a tired voice. “I owe you an apology. I’ll give it to you later.” He went to the door. “I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up. I promise I won’t do anything stupid.”

• • •

At ten forty he was standing in the parking lot of the defunct Surprise Party Outlet Store, opposite the art deco façade of the Candy Factory, watching the streams of people and cars lining up outside.

He’d spent the previous two hours walking through City Center. It was different than Sadie expected, the densely populated parts alternating with abandoned, almost desolate blocks, making a patchwork of light and dark, noise and overgrown silence.

But for the last half hour Ford had been following the elevated train tracks, and there was no quiet there, just noise, from the train and the traffic and the sounds echoing off the partitions. Sadie wondered if that was what appealed to Ford about walking beneath the tracks: that with all that noise it was literally too loud for him to hear himself think.

Now, as he watched a limo disgorge a party of five girls, all wearing only candy, he felt hungry, thirsty, and spent.

You don’t have to go in
, Sadie told him.
You can skip this.

He crossed the street, headed up the stairs, and gave his name to the first person he saw. A moment later a petite blonde wearing a Candy Factory apron and boy shorts approached him with a wide smile. “Welcome to the Candy Factory. I’m your VIP host, Morning. Please let me escort you to your party.” She linked her pinkie with his and led him into the club.

“Is this your first visit?” Morning asked, looking up at him through her lashes.

Sadie figured Ford would be intrigued or flirt back, but he had almost no reaction at all. “It is.”

He seemed more interested in the architecture of the club. It was built in an actual old candy factory, and they’d preserved many of the industrial elements, including one of the old sugar melting vats, which was now a DJ booth topped with an oversized candy thermometer.

“You party is in the Hard Candy section,” Morning told him. “We provide a number of services for our VIP guests, should you be interested.” She gave him another through-the-lashes glance.

“Thanks. I’ll, um, see where tonight goes.”

He was nervous, Sadie realized. That’s why he’d suddenly become so subdued. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might be uncomfortable around large groups of new people just like she was, or that meeting his older brother’s girlfriend could be intimidating.

Without thinking, he stopped dead in the middle of a busy doorway as they entered the main part of the club, and Sadie could tell he was dazzled by what he was seeing. The space was cavernous, with thirty-foot-high ceilings. A gigantic chandelier was suspended over the dance floor, probably fifteen feet across, in the shape of a crystal candy bowl filled with enormous blown-glass candies. When his eyes landed on it, Ford laughed with pleasure, and Sadie did too.

Morning coaxed him forward, toward the Hard Candy booth. He followed her up a set of stairs that looked like large plastic-wrapped butterscotch candies. As he climbed them, Sadie heard Ford repeating
I’m Mr. Irresistible, I’m Mr. Irresistible, I’m Mr. Irresistible
in his head, like a mantra.

You have got to be kidding
, Sadie thought.

Plum was on a couch but facing away from them, which meant they were seeing just her mass of hair, pretty much exactly the image he had in his mind, only without James.

She turned when he reached the top of the stairs. Beneath the mass of hair were wide-set brown eyes, high cheekbones, and a tiny rosebud mouth. Her olive skin glowed as though it had been polished, and Sadie wondered if that was natural or if she used something to get it to look that way. Their eyes met, and Plum moved her gaze from Ford’s eyes to his lips and back again, causing a flurry of trumpets in Ford’s mind followed by a tightening in his lower abdomen. Plum gave him a small, knowing smile.