Promises I Made (16 page)

I was sitting on the sofa in the living room Saturday afternoon when my cell phone buzzed. I jumped, digging through the sofa cushions to find it, relieved to see it was a text from Selena.

Done. Want to meet?

I typed back.
When/where?

I can pick you up in half an hour?

I was 99 percent sure I could trust Selena with my address, but that 1 percent was still an unacceptable risk where Marcus and Scotty were concerned.

I'll meet you somewhere.

K, bus stop at the TC in half an hour?

I'll be there.

I pressed Pause on the remote, and the grainy black-and-white footage froze on the big-screen TV. There was an old
woman at the counter, paying for what looked like a carton of cigarettes and a gallon of milk. It had come from a convenience store in a sketchy part of Seattle, but it could have been from any of the locations I'd viewed over the past two days. Liquor stores, minimarts, even a porn store, much to my horror. Scotty had offered to take that one, but I'd kept a straight face and said I'd do it, mostly because imagining Scotty watching footage from a porn store, even to try to find Cormac, was worse than doing it myself.

So far I'd found nothing. There had been one false alarm. A man wearing a too-big suit, his hair receding (could have been prosthetic), large glasses perched on his nose. He looked nothing like Cormac, but there had been something about the way he walked down the aisle of the used-car lot, the arrogant way he held himself, that made me think of the man who had called himself my father. I'd gotten Marcus and Scotty, but after twenty minutes of debate, we'd decided it wasn't Cormac. We'd filed the location away for future reference in case we decided it was worth a second look, and I'd moved onto the next tape.

“Taking a break?” Scotty asked, dropping onto the couch next to me. “We could watch the next episode of
Alias
.” We'd been working our way through the old show while Marcus had been holed up in his office.

“Will the offer be open in a couple of hours?” I asked. “Selena texted. She's back from seeing Parker. We're going to meet.”

“Of course,” he said. “Where are you meeting Selena?”

“At the bus stop in front of the Town Center in about twenty-five minutes,” I said. “But I can walk. It's not that far.”

Scotty stood. “Not with Fletcher out there. I'll drive you. I have to grab some wine for dinner anyway.”

There was enough wine in the kitchen to get us through every dinner for the next ten years, but I didn't say anything. Then I realized that I'd thought about my time with Scotty and Marcus like it would go on forever. Like I would still be here for dinner in ten years, when this was just another temporary rest stop. I stifled the loss that rolled over me like a giant wave. It was too easy to get stuck underneath, to run out of air. I had to keep moving.

I changed out of my yoga pants and met Scotty in the foyer. We took the SUV to the Town Center. Scotty parked, waiting for me to get out.

I turned to him as I reached for the door. “Aren't you going to get the wine?”

He looked a little flustered. “Definitely.” He made a show of pulling out his cell phone and looking at the screen. “I just have to text Marcus first.”

I tried to hide my smile. “Okay, I'll see you in a couple of hours.”

“Text me when you need a ride home,” he called as I got out of the car.

When I got to the bus stop, I looked back and spotted Scotty still watching me through the windshield. He hurriedly bent back to his phone.

Fletcher was still out there somewhere, and I stood back
in the bus shelter, pretending to look at my phone while I scanned my surroundings through the shaded lenses of my sunglasses. I'd only been there for a couple of minutes when Selena rolled up in her dad's Cadillac.

I hurried around to the passenger side and got in.

“Hey,” she said, pulling back onto the road.

“Hey.” I studied her reflection, wondering if it was my imagination that she looked a little pale. “You okay?”

She nodded. “It was just . . . harder than I expected it to be.”

I hesitated. The thought that Selena's car might be bugged was paranoid, even for me, but being careful was practically coded in my DNA. I didn't know how to act any other way. “I want to hear all about it,” I finally said, “but we shouldn't talk here.”

She glanced over, her expression confused. A second later, understanding washed over her features. “Got it.” She refocused on the road. “Where we should go?”

“Somewhere outside would be nice,” I said.

She seemed afraid to say anything after that, and we drove in silence toward Redondo. She turned into the parking lot that stood over the beach and pier. “Is this good?”

“Perfect.”

We got out and headed down the stairs to the strand, then followed it onto the pier. “I'm starving,” Selena said. “I was too nervous to eat earlier. Want to grab something?”

“Sounds good,” I said.

We walked up to one of the counters serving food and
ordered two cups of clam chowder and two Cokes, then carried everything to a table near one of the pier's railings. The tide was receding, increasing the square footage of the beach every time it rolled back out to sea. There were only a handful of surfers in the water, plus a few people walking along the sand, getting their feet wet as the water rushed onto the beach.

I took a bite of the clam chowder. It was hot, and I had to take a drink of Coke to cool down my mouth before asking Selena the question that had been beating in my mind like a drum since the minute I'd gotten into the car with her.

“How is he?”

She chewed slowly, and I wondered if she was doing it on purpose, if she was trying to find a way to tell me about Parker without freaking me out. A knot started to form in my stomach.

“He's okay, I think.” She put her spoon down and sighed. “Honestly? It was kind of hard to tell.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that he looks like Parker—except for the short hair—but there's something different about him, too. He seemed nervous when we first started talking, like he didn't know why I was there.”

“He probably thought you'd come to chew him a new one,” I said.

“Maybe.”

“How was he different?” At first I wasn't sure I even wanted to know, but a second later I knew that I did. That I needed to know. It was the only way I could share this with
him. The only way we could really be in it together, like we'd been in everything since the day Cormac and Renee had adopted him.

She seemed to think about it as she took a drink of her soda. “He seems older. More careful.”

“Parker's always been careful,” I said, remembering his serious eyes, the way he moved, slowly, like he expected life to throw something unexpected at him.

“That's true,” she agreed. “But this felt different. Like he was afraid to make any sudden movements, afraid to speak in case he said the wrong thing.”

I thought about prison, about what it must be like for Parker there. It hurt so much that my lungs seemed to close. But I made myself imagine it, made myself see it.

“He's in jail,” I said softly. “He's probably afraid of all those things and more.”

She nodded sadly. “He doesn't belong there, Grace. Even I could see that.”

I swallowed against the tears that stung my eyes. “Did he look . . . hurt?”

“He didn't have any bruises or cuts. Nothing like that.”

“Well, that's good at least.” I put my spoon down, my appetite gone even though I'd only eaten a couple of bites. “What did you guys talk about?”

“Not much. I told him I wanted to see him, to make sure he was okay. He said he appreciated it, but he was fine. I asked him if there was anything he needed. He said no. That kind of thing.”

“Did he . . . did he ask about me?”

She shook her head, and I knew it had been a stupid question. Parker wouldn't ask about me. He wouldn't ask Selena if she'd heard from me because he wouldn't want to hear the answer, to risk that she might give something away.

“Did you tell him?” I asked. “What we talked about?”

“Yep. I said it just like you told me: I ran into Bailey from DC the other day. She said to tell you hello, that she hopes to see you soon.”

“And?”

She hesitated, like she was remembering. “I think he got it. For a second he looked confused, but then his eyes seemed . . . clearer.”

“What did he do?” I was starved for details about him.

“He just kind of nodded, like he understood. And he made eye contact with me. He hadn't up until then.”

I exhaled. “Good. Thank you, Selena.”

“It's fine,” she said. “I should have visited him before now. It . . .” She looked down at her hands.

“I didn't expect that of you. No one did. We're not your responsibility.”

“I know, but I'm glad I went. I hope you feel better. I do,” she admitted.

I smiled a little. “Me too.”

It wasn't entirely true. I was glad Parker knew that I was nearby, that I was trying to help him. But now I could see him in my mind, clad in an orange jumpsuit, moving carefully, not talking for fear of saying the wrong thing, being
scared and not having anyone to say that to. That was the worst: having to keep everything inside. Sometimes you just needed to say it, to name your fear, in order to take away some of its power.

“I'm glad,” she said. “Is there anything else I can do?”

“No, but thank you.”

“Have you made any progress on Cormac and his sources?” she asked.

“Not really.” I thought about the security footage. “I have a line on something, but I don't know yet if it'll lead to anything real.”

“Will you keep in touch?” she asked. “Let me know if I can help?”

I smiled a little. “Of course.”

She looked at her phone. “I should get back. I'm not sure how long I can stretch this volleyball sectionals thing, especially since I have my dad's car.”

We talked about Nicaragua on the ride home. Selena was leaving right after school got out and was both nervous and excited. I was flush with happiness for her, and also a little envious. I could see her, out in the jungle somewhere, working on a school or building an orphanage, helping people and growing up and figuring out who she would be in the world.

It was after six o' clock when she dropped me at the bus stop in front of the Town Center. I started walking toward Colina Verde, glad the sun had slipped behind the houses on the peninsula, leaving the sidewalks in perpetual shade. I knew Scotty would come get me if I called, but I needed the
time to think about Selena's visit with Parker, to process her observations and put them together with what I knew about him to get a real picture of his state of mind.

I was working my way up the last hill before the turn onto Colina Verde when my eye was drawn to a piece of paper stapled to one of the light posts. I stepped closer, my breath getting more shallow as the photographs on the flyer came into view.

They were pictures of me.

The first one, taken from my Chandler High School ID, showed me smiling, blond, and tan. The second one was a digital rendering, the kind police have to do when they're guessing how someone might look. It showed me with pale skin and dark hair, and I felt suddenly exposed, like every person in every house on the street could tell it was me.

There was a short paragraph under the pictures, and I leaned in to read.

The Playa Hermosa Police Department would like to speak to the above female, Grace Fontaine, 17, in connection with a theft on the peninsula last year. Please contact Detective Fletcher in confidence at 323-555-749
1
with any information.

A person of interest? They knew I was nearby, and they knew I'd been involved in the Fairchild theft. They were just trying to make it seem like no big deal so people would feel better about identifying me.

I stepped away, resisting the urge to tear the flyer down, to look for others and take them all down. That would be a mistake. I would only draw attention to myself, make someone who might be passing by or looking out their window wonder why I would bother. I turned away and started walking.

It was hard not to glance around. I felt exposed, like I was walking down a hallway at school while everyone whispered behind my back. I forced myself to move at my normal pace, talking myself down as I made my way to the safety of Scotty and Marcus's house. It was just a picture. It only looked like me because I knew it
was
me. A bystander would never look closely enough to connect the dots, and Selena and Logan had already promised to keep my presence a secret. For now, at least.

I was almost to the corner of Colina Verde and the safety of Scotty and Marcus's house when someone got out of a black BMW parked near the curb. I didn't recognize her. I thought she was just someone who lived on the peninsula. Someone's friend or mother. But then she stopped, took off her sunglasses, said my name, and I knew I'd been right. She was someone's mother.

Mine.

The blond hair was gone, replaced by a short, swingy chop of black fringe that might have been a wig. Her body was fuller and rounder, not enough to make her overweight, but enough to soften the angular edges she'd taken so much pride in maintaining. Even her clothes were different, the tight jeans and revealing tops she liked to wear between jobs replaced with gray slacks and a black T-shirt.

I don't know how long I stared at her. I was in shock, struck wordless by the unexpected sight of her on the heels of the flyers that were probably plastered all over the peninsula.

“Why don't you get in the car, Grace?” she said. “You've done a good job with the hair and make up, you don't look like yourself at all, but neither of us should risk it.”

I was torn between warring impulses. Part of me wanted
to run away from her and never look back. But there were other parts—the eleven-year-old girl who'd been grateful to be adopted, the teenager who'd believed she finally had a mother—that wanted to step toward her, let her stroke my hair and call me Gracie.

I shook my head, like that would shake some sense into it. Renee had betrayed me in a million different ways. Even under the rules of the grift, she'd betrayed me, betrayed all of us, and that wasn't counting the fact that she'd bailed as my mother, had left Parker to rot in jail.

“I have nothing to say to you,” I said, turning away.

“I'm sorry, Grace.” Something in her voice made me turn around. Some hint of regret or sorrow that I couldn't even be sure was there. Maybe I just wanted it to be there. “I'm so, so sorry. I had no idea things were going to go down the way they did. Please . . . just get in the car and let me explain.”

I thought about Parker and the things Selena had told me about him. I would do anything to get him out of jail. Even talk to Renee. Because if I couldn't find Cormac, Renee was a close second. Maybe even better, since she had the gold—or the money she'd traded it for.

I moved toward the car and slid into the passenger seat. Renee closed the driver's-side door, sealing us away from the rest of the world. She took off her sunglasses, and I felt her eyes on my face.

“How are you, Gracie?” she said softly.

My head snapped up. “Don't call me that. Don't ever call me that again.”

She nodded, her slim throat rippling as she swallowed hard. “Are you safe? Taken care of?”

“Why are you pretending you care?” I asked. “Just . . . stop pretending. In case you haven't noticed, the game is over. Parker and I lost.”

“I'm not pretending,” she said. “I've been worried about you. I just needed to set up someplace safe before I came back for you.”

“It's a lot harder to con everybody into thinking you're normal when you can't trot out your kids to do all the work for you, isn't it?”

She flinched a little. “I deserve that. But the truth is, I didn't have to come back. I sold the gold just like we planned. I had to take less than I expected, but I'm not hurting for money. I just didn't want to start over without you.”

“Without me? What about Parker? What about Cormac? He's an asshole, but he didn't deserve to have you steal his share of the money. To have you leave him high and dry. If you'd wanted out, you could have taken your share and gone. At least then Parker would have had money for a decent lawyer.”

“It's not that simple, Grace.” I recognized the hard edge to her voice. It was the one she used when we had to do something unpleasant, when there was no way around it. It was her stop-whining-and-get-it-done voice. “Cormac betrayed Marcus. You must know that now, given your current living arrangements.”

“How do you—”

“It doesn't matter,” she said, interrupting me. “I know. And you have to know that if Cormac did it to Marcus, it was only a matter of time before he did it to me. To us. He was getting distant. We were fighting. The Fairchild job was the perfect opportunity for him to take the money and run.”

I thought back to the months leading up to the Fairchild job. Things had been tense between Renee and Cormac, between everyone. “So you beat him to it,” I said.

“I did what I had to do,” she said. “Like always. And I did it for you and Parker, too. Do you really think if Cormac took the money he'd make sure you got your share?”

“Well, you didn't exactly make sure we got it, did you?” I hated myself for saying it. I didn't care about the money from Warren Fairchild's gold. It was tainted, poisoned by the loss it had caused Logan and his family, by the sadness Selena now wore like a shroud, by Parker's imprisonment. But it was just another blow from Renee, another way she had abandoned me.

“I have it set aside for you,” she said, “just like we planned.”

“You expect me to believe you'll just hand it over? Write Parker a check for his legal defense? Write me one for college?”

“It's not that simple, Grace, and you know it. If I give you money for Parker's lawyer, where will Parker say he got it? How will you explain it?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Besides, you seem to have a plan of your own.”

Somewhere in the part of my mind that wasn't blinded
by rage, I knew she was right, but her reference to my plan—to Marcus—caused a fresh flood of anger through my veins. “I didn't have a choice. And the fact that I managed to come up with a way to help Parker doesn't mean you're off the hook for helping him, especially since you have his money.”

She turned her palms up. “What do you expect me to do? How can I help in a way that won't compromise you or Parker? That won't compromise me?”

It was a question without an answer, which was the only reason she was asking it. And then I realized there was an answer. There was one thing she could do.

“You could turn yourself in,” I said. “Trade yourself for a reduced sentence for Parker and me.”

“Grace.” She said it softly, almost like she was disappointed I would even suggest it, that I would even go through the motions of making her say no. “You know I can't do that.”

I turned angrily toward her. “Can't or won't?”

“Both,” she said simply. “I'm not willing to give up my freedom and the money we worked so hard for when there's every possibility Parker will go free anyway, especially with you and Marcus working together. If I gave myself up, none of us would have access to the money. We'd be sacrificing something we don't need to sacrifice to achieve an end that's achievable through other means. It doesn't make good business sense.”

“I could just turn you in,” I said.

She smiled sadly. “You don't have enough information
to do that. Besides, I think we all know Cormac's the real bad guy in all of this. He would have abandoned all of us, and you can bet your ass he wouldn't have left a thirty-five-thousand-dollar bar of gold like I did. He wouldn't have come back for you like I'm doing. Cormac's all about Cormac. I think you know that by now.”

I choked out a bitter, hard laugh. “And you're some kind of Mother Teresa?”

She met my eyes. “No, Grace. I know what I am. I always have. But I also know what I'm not. I would never have bailed on Marcus the way Cormac did, but Marcus wasn't my partner. It wasn't my decision to make. I only did what I did after the Fairchild job because I knew Cormac was getting ready to do it to me. Protecting myself doesn't make me a bad person.”

“It does when it comes at everyone else's expense,” I said, reaching for the door.

“Wait, Grace. Just . . . wait.” She took a deep breath. “I'm set up somewhere. Somewhere quiet and safe. You can come with me. We can wait for Parker. We can even get you a good ID, the last one you'll need, I promise. You can go to college, do all the things you always wanted to do. We can leave right now.”

I didn't even have to think about it. “I'm not leaving Parker. Not ever again.”

She looked down at her lap. “I can stay nearby for a while, but not for long. You can join me after you find Cormac, after you get Parker out. We can all start over. I . . .” Her voice
broke a little. “I was . . . hard on you. Cormac was so goddamn militant. It didn't leave room for anything human. But I love you. I know I didn't do a good job of showing you, but you're my daughter, and I love you. You should be with me.”

My resolve started to crumble under the weight of the words I'd waited for her to say. “How could I ever trust you again?” I asked.

She exhaled. “I don't know, Grace. I guess we'll just have to start over. But we can't do that if you don't let me in, if you don't give me a second chance.”

“I don't know if I can,” I said, getting out of the car.

“Grace, wait!” she called before I could shut the door. “Will you think about it? Try to remember the good times and at least think about it?”

I wanted to say no, to shut the door and walk away. But that would mean never seeing her again, and now that she was in front of me, I longed for the days when she'd smooth back my hair while we watched a movie, the times we laughed trying on clothes we hated to work a job, the way we'd planned our girls' trip to Paris, the one we never got to take. It was stupid and crazy, but I couldn't help it. Besides, where would I go when I got Parker out of jail? I had no money, no friends, no family. Parker wouldn't want to settle down, and I was tired of moving around all the time. I wanted a home, one place that was mine. Where would I have that if not with Renee?

“Give me your number,” I said. “Or some way to reach you. I'll think about it.”

She shook her head. “I can't do that, but if you give me yours, I'll check in with you in a few days.”

She was afraid I'd turn her in, worried that I'd give her number to the police, that they might be able to use it to track her. I didn't blame her. She had more to lose than I did. I'd already lost everything.

I gave her the number and walked away.