The Tenderness of Thieves (19 page)

Joey’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, well, lots of people wear them boots.”

I looked at Joey straight on. Did my best not to let him intimidate me. “But his are different. They’ve got a metal band across the toe.”

He was shaking his head. “There’s something else you didn’t realize, Jane.”

“Oh?”

“Patrick found ’em next to the garbage bin down on the wharf. Perfectly good boots and someone tossed ’em. Makes you wonder why they’d get rid of ’em, eh?”

“Patrick found them,” I whispered.

“That he did.” Joey sounded pleased. “There were about ten witnesses, too, and the police have already ruled my brother out as a suspect.”

My lips parted. “Maybe Patrick just pretended to find them. Maybe they were his all along.”

“Well,
I’m
gonna pretend you didn’t just say that. I don’t know what the police got in terms of evidence, but I know for sure that Patrick is no longer on their radar. They’re looking elsewhere.”

Joey was staring at me hard. I stared hard back, even as my heart lurched. If it wasn’t Patrick, then who? “The police haven’t told me they’re looking elsewhere,” I said. I left out the part about how maybe the police had tried to tell me, but I hadn’t let them.

Joey cocked his head. “You’re at square one again, I guess.”

My eyes dropped to the ground. “Yeah, I guess,” I said, my voice hoarse. “I’ve got to go,” I added quickly, already turning to leave, disappointment roaring through me. I had to get out of there. I’d thought what I wanted most was to forget, but I’d been lying to myself. What I wanted far more was for this whole nightmare to be over. I’d wanted that memory to be a real lead, one that would put an end to this terrible chapter of my life. Maybe that was why I couldn’t seem to make myself call Officer Connolly back. I couldn’t bear the possibility that he would tell me how the little detail I’d finally confessed led them nowhere.

“Despite what you did,” Joey called out as I walked away, “I’m still gonna be looking out for you, Calvetti.”

I didn’t turn around. Didn’t say thank you or tell him not to bother.

It was all I could do to keep moving.

I
WORRIED THAT JOEY
was following me. Levinson’s was ahead, and I decided to stop in to get myself off the street. Make sure I wasn’t alone for long. I could walk the aisles until my heart stopped racing. My hand was already reaching for the bar across the door to the deli, but I retracted it. Tried to turn back quickly enough to escape a whole other kind of attention I didn’t need right now, but I was too late.

Miles was coming out of Levinson’s, a paper bag gripped under one of his arms. He smiled when he saw me. The fact that he could still be so nice after I’d led him on made me feel guilty. The bell over the door jangled as it shut, and the two of us stood there looking at each other, neither of us uttering a word at first.

I took off my sunglasses. “Hi, Miles,” I said softly.

“Hi, Jane.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he was hesitating. “You and I can still be friends. Right?” he asked finally.

“What do you mean?” I really didn’t want to do this now. Then again, if I was talking to Miles, Joey McCallen wasn’t about to come up to me. “Of course we’re friends.”

Miles shifted the bag to his other arm. “I mean I can handle you being with that guy,” he clarified.

“Handel,” I said, glancing behind me.

No Joey in sight.

Relieved, I turned back and saw Miles nod in answer.

I used my hand to block the glare in my eyes. Squinted at Miles in the bright sun. Our neighbor, Mrs. O’Malley, was trying to get to the door, so I stepped aside. She looked tired, forehead shiny with sweat, breaths audible, but she perked up once she took in the scene of Miles and me.

“Hello, Jane,” she said politely. Gave Miles a once-over.

This sighting was sure to make its way to my mother’s sewing room within the next few days. “Hi, Mrs. O’Malley,” I said awkwardly. “Nice to see you.”

She nodded. Headed into the deli, a whoosh of cold air spilling out.

“Do you know absolutely everyone?” Miles asked.

I thought about the McCallens right then, how sometimes living in a town like ours could be oppressive. But I wasn’t about to explain this to Miles. “Most people, by sight if not by name.” I made an effort to sound casual. “The women especially, because of my mother’s work.”

Miles half smiled. “You don’t sound happy about that.”

“No, it’s fine. I just end up being the subject of gossip a lot, though my mother does her best to fend it off. Sometimes people around here can’t resist telling her things.”

“And what will Mrs. O’Malley tell your mother about you now?” Miles asked in a way that was definitely flirty, his confidence returning.

I felt my cheeks redden. Miles was fishing for compliments, and for hope, I realized. He might be able to handle me being with “that guy,” but if he could wedge his way between us, he would do that, too. Between the police, the McCallens, and now Miles, I was feeling overwhelmed. “She’ll say she saw me with a boy who’s obviously not from around here,” I said. I knew this was what Miles wanted to hear, and somehow I thought that if I satisfied this need of his, we could say our good-byes and part ways.

“And what else?” he asked.

“Miles, quit while you’re ahead.” Frustration broke through into my words.

Miles grinned, ignoring my signal. “Ahead of who?”

I put my sunglasses back on. “There isn’t a competition. I have to go.” In a huff, I pulled open the door, welcoming the cool air that ran over me head to toe. As it swung shut, I could hear Miles’s protest of “Jane, wait, I was just kidding around,” but I pretended not to. Instead of letting him finish what he had to say, I plunged forward into the icy deli, unsure of what I was doing there, or what it was that I wanted, which left me to wander the aisles aimlessly until I was sure that Miles had gotten tired of waiting for me to come back out.

• • •

“I’m on my way to the door,” Seamus called as he crossed my front yard later that afternoon, making my head turn toward the open window. “I didn’t want to startle you this time.”

“Come on in,” I yelled back, setting my novel aside on the couch. “Stranger,” I added softly when Seamus’s freckled face peeked inside. Seamus was one of the few people I could handle being around at the moment.

He picked up the mail scattered on the floor. I’d ignored it when I arrived earlier. Picked up my book instead, in an attempt to distract myself from the encounters of the day so far. Seamus parked himself next to me. The couch spring creaked loudly. “I’ve had stuff going on.”

“Too busy even for me?” I asked gently.

He handed me the mail. “Nah. Never.”

“Does this have to do with Tammy? You’ve been hanging out with her a lot.”

Seamus’s face colored. The luck of the Irish always ran out on the embarrassment front. His freckles were darker from spending time in the sun. “Yeah, but just to go running and stuff.”

“You should ask her out for real,” I said, relieved to have someone else’s life to think about, to advise about. “She’s going to say yes. I mean, aside from going running, you guys had ice cream together.”

“But that was just an accident.”

I shifted positions to face Seamus. Crossed my legs underneath me. “It doesn’t matter. You hung out. It’s almost like a . . . practice date.”

“A practice date?” Seamus’s blush deepened. “You really know how to make a guy feel manly.”

“I was just trying to help.” I regretted kidding Seamus in a place that made him feel vulnerable. I hated when people did that to me. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I know you’re looking out for me.”

I nodded. “Forgive me, then?”

“Yes.” He drew the word into two syllables. “So, are you going to tell me what’s going on with you and Handel Davies, or are you going to make me wait even longer?”

Seamus’s question made me take a sudden interest in the mail. I had to hide my own blush now. I flipped through the letters that had arrived, one by one. Electric bill. Credit card bill. Postcard for a pizza special at Tony’s down on the wharf. I opened a catalog to the middle and stared at the pictures of couches we could never afford and wouldn’t want to, anyway. “I think there’s still plenty more to discuss about Tammy.”

Seamus leaned closer, looking at the catalog with me. “Oh? What else?”

“I think she likes you.
Likes
you, likes you,” I clarified.

Seamus turned red and pointed at the white china teapot in the middle of the page. “I should buy that for my mother’s birthday,” he said.

“With what? Your charm?”

He laughed. “My charm is useful sometimes.”

I got serious again—I didn’t want to embarrass him anymore. “You should turn it on Tammy, then. For her. And for you,” I added.

Seamus didn’t respond. Just pretended to read the teapot description for a moment, before shifting the subject back to Handel. “Do you like him or what?”

“I do,” I admitted, setting the catalog aside. Seamus was nice enough to distract me from the earlier events of the day, even if he didn’t know it, so I owed him some honesty.

He smiled shyly. “That’s great, J.”

“Really? You mean you’re not going to scold me like Michaela?”

He looked at me strangely. “Why would I do that?”

“Who knows? Why would she?”

“That’s a good question,” he said, picking up the catalog and starting to flip through it but not really looking at anything on the pages. “What does Michaela have against Handel Davies?”

My eyes dropped to the mail again as I thought about how to answer. There was a thank-you note from one of my mother’s brides. The phone bill. Then an official-looking envelope. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. My lungs stopped and wouldn’t start, a car that wouldn’t turn over. Someone was sitting on my chest. I tore my eyes from the letter.

Seamus was watching me. “Jane, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

In one big gulp I finally got some air into my body, my lungs expanding greedily. I got up. “I need you to go. I need to be alone.”

“Did I say something—”

“It’s not you.” Tears pushed into my eyes. “Please don’t be mad.”

“I’m not. I’m here if you need me.”

I nodded. I almost couldn’t talk. I watched Seamus walk out of my house, glancing back twice. It was only after he’d disappeared down the street that I looked down at the letter in my hands for the second time.

My father’s life insurance check had arrived.

• • •

“Were you even going to tell me?” I asked angrily when my mother got home from the beach. I was sitting at the kitchen counter, on the side facing the door, waiting for her. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

Her face went white underneath all that color from the sun. “Jane,” was all my mother said.

I held up the letter in my hand. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. I don’t even need to say it.”

The screen door banged shut behind her. She walked across the living room and slid onto the stool facing me at the counter. “Your father wanted you to have that money. That’s why he had the policy.”

“Well, I don’t want it,” I said. “Ever. It’s money for his
death.
”

“Honey, I know how upsetting it is to think about it that way, believe me I do. But you can go to any college you want with it. You need to be practical about this and think about your future.”

I looked at her in horror. “You want me to build a future on . . . on Dad’s
murder
?”

“Jane—”

“You signed for me, didn’t you? As my guardian? That’s the only way this check would be cut. The insurance company said so when I called them.”

She tried to take my hand from across the counter, but I snatched mine away. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she said.

Her apology did little to ease the guilt raging inside me and pumping my heart like I was on a run. “There’s a reason I refused to sign those papers. How can I go to college on money I got because someone killed my father?”

For the first time since my mother arrived home, her face flushed. “There’s a reason why your father took out a policy in your name only! Have you thought about the part where you’re not honoring his wishes? Do you really think he’d like that, Jane? Do you think that would solve everything? Do you think it would make him happy that you refused this money he left you?”

Tears burned my eyes. I blinked them back. “I don’t know,” I said, my throat choked with a sob. “It’s my fault he died. He was there because of me, and now he’s dead.”

My mother gasped. “It’s not your fault, Jane. It never was. You have to let that go.”

I could barely hear her words. “Dad’s not here anymore to ask, and I feel so lost without him,” I choked out, finally giving myself over to the sobs that came, one after the other. “I don’t want any money, Mom, I want Daddy back. I want Dad.”

“Oh, honey,” my mother said, coming around the counter and putting her arms around me. This time I didn’t push her away. Her mouth pressed into my hair. “I know you do. I know you do. I feel the same way.”

“Daddy?” I shouted a second time with all the breath in my lungs.

“Oh my God, Jane,” said my father when he reached the top of the stairs. Everything seemed to stop in that moment, to freeze like the world outside in its icy blanket. The noise ended, all movement ended, and everything grew quiet. Silent. The breathing of the boy who had me stilled. To my captors, my father said: “And I thought better of you, especially you.”

Who?
went my brain.

Chaos erupted all around me. I was blind at its center, the eye in a storm out of which I could not see, and in the chaos I was pulled and I was shoved and I was screaming and then I was going down, down, down, crashing to the hard wooden floor until my head knocked into it.

There was a gunshot.

One.

And then a second.

I don’t know how long I lay there in a daze, noise all around me, noise and shouts that I could hear but as though far away, my head under a heavy dark cloud. But when I finally came to, reality rushing to me like a parent to a lost child, everything was suddenly so clear again, as clear as the icicles dripping from the trees outside.

I sat up. Pulled the blindfold off. Put a hand to the back of my head where it pounded.

Saw the destruction around me.

My captors were gone.

My father, though, my father was still there, lying half-in, half-out of the doorway to the library.

I tried to get up, stumbled and fell, then dragged myself across the floor. My father hadn’t moved. “Daddy?” I called to him, voice full of fear.

But he didn’t say anything. Not
I’m all right,
not
Jane,
not even
Help me.

I bent down over his chest, saw that it was still.

Took in the blood next.

A great pool of it spilling from his body.

Staining his uniform.

His eyes, his big brown eyes, gone vacant.

Then the tears came in one great wave. They swept through me like a hurricane, rising and drowning and pouring out over everything, sobs so big and powerful I thought I was suffocating.

My father, my beloved father, was already dead.