Scare Crow (31 page)

“Is this true? Are you preg
nant?”

I glared back and held my head high because I was Emily Shep
pard.

She reached her hand over. “And it’s Camer
on’s.”

“Stay away from me,” I hollered over the wind and took a step
back.

Carly’s expression was one of surprise, and she pulled her hand away as if getting
bu
rned.

I started walking as fast as my belly would allow in the direction I thought I had
seen Frances go. I turned onto the first street, realizing it was just an alleyway
where garbage collected, a dead end. After a few seconds of freedom, Carly came running
after me. I could have screamed bloody murder, but there was no one left around to
hear me over the wind. So I spun around to face
her.

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough to me? You, Spider, don’t you think I’ve suffered
en
ough?”

I could tell that Carly wanted to say something. Yet nothing came out of her m
outh.

“Just let me be, Carly. I’ve moved on. Let
us
be. You’ll never have to worry about us again.” I clenched my teeth as a tear unwillingly
escaped. I immediately swiped at it, as though it too had betraye
d me.

Carly grabbed her forehead with two fingers as if I were giving her a migraine, and
her eyes went from my covered stomach to my
face.

“Please,” I be
gged.

Then she took a piece of paper from her pocket and gave it to me. “This is my number.
We need to talk, but not here. Not like
this.”

I had no an
swer.

She grabbed my hand. “Promise me you’ll call me the minute you get
home!”

My eyes were round. “
Okay.”

I started to peddle back, keeping my eyes on her until I reached the main street a
gain.

Frances’s car pulled up, and I hopped in before she had even fully sto
pped.

“Go. Go! Now!” I shouted before Carly could see who was in the car with me. The less
she knew, the be
tter.

Frances stepped on the gas, and we pe
eled.

“Was that who I think it was?” she aske
d me.

I cracked the window and let Carly’s number fly in the wind. “Can you lend me some
m
oney?”

“Sure,” she said, too slowly. “What’s goin
g on?”

“To answer your first question, yes, that was Carly. And what’s going on is that I
need to go to the Cayman Islands. That’s where the money is, and it won’t be released
unless I go there myself. In pe
rson.”

“Does Carly know
that—”

“She knows now. And soon enough, the rest of her world will also know that I’m preg
nant.”

While Frances considered this information, I wished she would drive faster. “I don’t
have a lot of time before they all come fo
r me.”

“Of course, I’ll lend you the money, but I need a bit of time to make arrangements,”
she said, gripping the w
heel.

“What kind of arrangements do you need to
make?”

“I think I’m coming with you,” she said with hesitation. Then she turned to me and
smiled. “I’m not going to let a pregnant lady fly by her
self.”

While I really didn’t want or need any company, there was no time for disagreements.
Plus Frances was lending me the money. How could I refuse her com
pany?

“How much time do you need?” I wond
ered.

She considered this and shot a glance at the phone on the console before answering.
“A couple h
ours?”

I sighed. “Okay. Drop me off at home, and I’ll meet you at the air
port.”

After Frances left me on the curb, I shot into the house and went digging for my passport.
Griff was still out, and I was extremely grateful for this. What I was about to do,
I knew he wouldn’t just disapprove; he would try to stop me from moving forward. But
I just couldn’t
stop.

I ripped a page from my notebook and stared at it for a while. I put the tip of the
pen to the p
aper.

“
I’m going to the Cayman Islands to seek the fortune that my brother left me so that
I can start a pharmaceuticals black-market business, take over the underworld, and
make everyone who ever hurt me pay. And this after I promised you that I was over
all of this revenge stuff. Oh, and Spider now knows that I’m pregnant and will now
be coming after me with everything he’s
got.”

This was the truth. This was what I had promised Griff I would always tell him. The
t
ruth.

But the truth wasn’t what I w
rote.

“
My Mom is really sick.”
(True, in a sense.) “
She’s in the hospital.”
(Not true, even though it should be.) “
I have to go see her.”
(Definitely not true.) “
I’ll call you as soon as I get there.”
(If by
there
, I meant Cayman Islands, then yes, this was true. Though I wasn’t looking forward
to that phone
call.)

I placed the note on his pi
llow.

Before heading back out the door, I left Joseph a quick, simple note to take care
of Meatball and grabbed the envelope of cash Maria and Darlene had left me. Two hundred
bucks was all that was
left.

I had a few precious minutes before meeting Frances at the airport. I used them to
go see my big ball of meat. Meatball was still under heavy drugs, snoring in a corner
of the veterinary clinic. I had brought the yellow comforter from my bed so that he’d
have something that smelled like us when he a
woke.

Even though he had no idea, I hugged him as though it were the last time I would ever
see him. I rubbed under his chin. I rubbed behind his ears. Even though he had no
idea.

I was distracted. And driving through an airport when distracted was a really bad
idea. The million one-way lanes that led in circles, the million parking lots—green
P, red P, blue P—for each and every damn terminal! After going around in circles,
expending a ridiculous amount of the fuel I couldn’t afford, and now running very
late, I finally pulled up to a lot only to realize I was in the airport staff parking
lot.

Frances had booked us on a flight at noon. It was already eleven o’clock, and I hadn’t
even checked in or gone through secu
rity.

A car pulled up behind me, so that I couldn’t back out. I got out of the car, smiled,
and waddled over. After a sob story of forgetting my parking pass and being very late
for work, I got into the parking lot using the card of the maintenance guy behind
me and scored a quick ride on his buggy to Terminal 3. Frances practically lifted
me off my feet to drag me to the Cayman Airways’ check-in
desk.

“Make sure you hide your belly,” she whispered to me as I was pulling my passport
out. “They won’t let you on if they know how far along your pregnanc
y is.”

After a suspicious glance from security at my bulge, we barely made our fl
ight.

While I sighed with relief as the plane took off, Frances was digging her fingernails
into the arms of her seat. Apparently, self-assured Frances was a nervous flier. There
were a lot of things that I had learned about Frances in the short time we had spent
toge
ther.

“That man who came out of your apartment, was he your boyfriend?” I wondered in a
whi
sper.

“I g
uess.”

“He seems a little old for
you.”

“He’s been kind t
o me.”

“Do you have many of these
kind
boyfri
ends?”

She had no resp
onse.

When I had gone into Frances’s apartment, one thing had struck me: how very lovely
and impersonal it was. It looked like a hotel suite. There were no pictures of her.
And no pictures of her child. The fact that Daniel didn’t live with her was not because
she didn’t care for him; it was because she didn’t want him in her w
orld.

“You’re too beautiful to be doing what you’re doing,” I told
her.

With wistful eyes, Frances watched the stewardess pass us with a drink cart. “What
else am I going to do, Emily? I barely graduated from high school. All I have to offer
is something nice to loo
k at.”

“Is that all you do? Give them something nice to look at? Or is it more than that?”
The term
escort with benefits
seemed a little more appropriate for the circumsta
nces.

“The kind of guys whom I have to hang around with are not interested in playing house
with me. At least I get paid for doing something I’m good at. Whatever money I get,
I send to Daniel. For a time when I will have absolutely nothing else to o
ffer.”

“Or for a time when you come back to your son in a body
bag.”

“You play the cards that have been handed to you. Daniel’s better off without me in
his life. At least he’ll never have to worry about money like I
have.”

It was hard for me to imagine that a beautiful girl like Frances could think so little
of her
self.

“What happened to the money my brother left
you?”

Her lips stretched thin. “
Gone.”

“How?”

The second flight attendant came up with a drink cart. Frances ordered a double v
odka.

“What happened to the money?” I asked her a
gain.

“I suppose one can call it a business deal gone
bad.”

“You mean someone took the money from you. One of your
kind
boyfriends?” I regretted saying this as soon as the words came out of my m
outh.

Frances took one small sip of her drink as though testing it, and then brought the
plastic glass back to her lips, downing the rest of her double vodka in one gulp.
It didn’t matter how she had lost the money. The fact was that it was gone and that
she needed to prostitute herself to keep food on the table. I was a self-righteous
rich
girl.

The flight was only about four hours. As the plane prepared for landing, I turned
to Frances. “This money. It should be yours and Daniel’s. Not mine. You know I would
give it all to you if I could. R
ight?”

Frances smirked as she straightened her back and pulled on her blouse to get the travel
wrinkles out. “Of course. I unders
tand—”

“I’m not finished. I can’t give you all of the money
right now
. But I can split it with you and with Daniel. You can each have a third of whatever
money Bill left behind. I’ll take the other third. I don’t know how much that will
be, but whatever I do take, I will pay you back as soon as I possibly can.” I knew
Bill would have probably wanted me to keep at least some of the money, but I knew
I could make my own. I wouldn’t need it forever. Frances w
ould.

She frowned. “Why would you ever do that? You barely know me or my
son.”

I waited for her to look at me before answering. “I don’t know what it’s like to have
a real family. I lost it all when Bill died. But Daniel is Bill’s son; he has some
of Bill in him. That makes us family.” While Frances went quiet, I chuckled. “Don’t
worry. I won’t show up uninvited to your Christmas dinner or Easter-egg hunt. But
I just want you to know that as far as I’m concerned, you’re part of my fa
mily.”

Until the plane landed, Frances hadn’t said a word to me, but kept glancing my way.
I glanced back every time, looking her in the
eyes.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” she finally said as passengers grabbed their carry-ons
from the overhead compartments. “You would actually give us all that money. No strings
atta
ched.”

“Not would.
Will
. What’s mine is y
ours.”

She looked at me for a while, though it felt more as though she were looking throug
h me.

We had two hours to get out of the airport and to the bank before it closed, and Frances
was walking so slowly she was practically going backward. You’d think I’d never offered
her all of Bill’s money. I thought I was going to scream when she said she needed
to use the washroom, but she looked like she was going to be sick so I resi
sted.

When she finally returned from the washroom, I expected her to be in full Oscar attire,
but she actually looked worse than when she had walke
d in.

“You’re looking a little green,” I n
oted.

She winced. “Last night’s pizza is coming back to haun
t me.”

Luckily, Caribbean taxi drivers are as crazy as they are in the States. We got dropped
off in George Town in front of the bank with time to s
pare.

Cayman International Bank seemed small on the outside, but as soon as you walked in,
you could smell the money. The floor was of white and burgundy marble tiles, each
big enough to fit an entire car; gold-sprayed columns adorned the sides, and the Caribbean
sun came reaching through the domed ceiling. It reminded me of St. Peter’s Basilica
in the Vatican, though perhaps the god being worshiped here (money) was a little different.
Perhaps
not.

At the end of the church of money, where the pope would have sat, was a gray marble
counter with clerks standing behind it. And there was an over-the-hill security guard
practically falling asleep at a small desk posted by the entrance. I could see a couple
of younger guards having a smoke in the small storage room behind him. Maybe what
I smelled wasn’t money, but tobacco and ars
enic.