The Tenderness of Thieves (4 page)

“I still don’t understand why you think Seamus likes me,” Tammy said, as though the rest of us hadn’t already moved on, which lightened the mood even more.

As we joked and gossiped, our previous conversation about the McCallens faded far into the background, almost too far to remember. But after the waitress cleared our empty glasses and we paid the check, Michaela stopped me before I could head off on my way home.

“My father wants you to come down to the station again. See if you remember anything new.” Her voice was low, like she meant this to be soothing. This request was anything but. “Jane?”

I shrugged. Then nodded. Even with all the other break-ins before mine, I was the only one the thieves had held hostage. Not the way a girl wants to be singled out. But I agreed, because the timing of the request was eerie. For the first time since that night in February, maybe I had something real to report.

“Okay, I’ll go,” I told her. “Not until the day after tomorrow, though,” I added, before saying my good-byes. I didn’t want anything to spoil my night with Handel, and seeing Michaela’s father, well, it would. Of course it would.

W
HEN I GOT HOME
from the beach the next day, my mother was sitting at the kitchen counter eating some of the leftover chicken. Pulling at the meat of a drumstick. She smiled at me. “Did you go for a swim?”

“More than one.” I pulled out a stool and joined her on the other side of the counter. Glanced at the clock by the sink. Six fifteen. “What’s up with you?”

“Sewing. Beading. Bustling. The usual.” She licked a finger. “Mrs. Levinson’s a saint.”

“I know. It’s good even the next day. I had some for lunch.”

My mother swallowed another bite. “Saint of Roasted Chickens.”

I laughed. “Yeah.”

“So.” Her eyebrows arched. “Anything you want to tell me?”

I took a deep breath. “Yes. So. I’m hanging out with Handel Davies tonight.”

My mother offered me the wing of the chicken. “Interesting.”

I shook my head. She shrugged and took a bite of it herself. “Apparently, more than I realized,” I said.

She wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Well, you know the people around here.”

“Yup. Lived here my whole life and all.”

Another smile from my mother. “Raised you the entire time, too.”

“Raised me to be a smart girl,” I said, looking at her directly so she knew I meant what I said.

“That’s what I like to hear.”

“He’ll be here at eight, Mom.”

She looked me up and down. Took in my tank top and short-shorts. “You’re going like that?”

“Nah. I’ll change,” I said. “I should, right?”

“You should.” She got up. Washed her hands in the sink. Dried them. “I’ve got something you could wear.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Follow me.”

My mother’s room was small. Compact, but tidy. Bed made perfectly. Italian lace curtains flowing alongside the windows. Not a piece of clothing peeking out from a drawer or draped over the chair in the corner. Order was essential when you lived in a tiny house, she always said. Order was important for a good life.

She opened the closet, searching. I sat down on the bed, careful not to muss it. Watched her go from one dress to the next. Noticed the way her dark hair flowed long and thick over her shoulders while she moved, Italian curves from head to toe. My mother was thirty-five, had me when she was eighteen, was married by nineteen and divorced by the time she was twenty-one. I took after both my parents—my mother’s nose and eyes, the color and style of her hair, but I got my father’s tall, thin build. My mother shifted, and I saw a slice of profile. Suddenly tears were pushing into my eyes. I’d lately become aware of how things could change from one minute to the next, how I could lose something precious in a single moment, and I drank in the sight of my mother like I might never see her again. Like I needed to remember her every detail, just in case.

Details.

Michaela’s father. Wanting more details.

Like the metal plate on the toe of Patrick McCallen’s boot?

But that was for tomorrow. Tonight was still mine.

“Found it,” my mother said, the sound of her voice breaking into my thoughts. She pulled out a skinny silk tank the color of a cloudless sky. Something she’d sewn herself. “Casual yet pretty, and you can wear it with your jeans.” She held it up to me. “It will look better on you, anyway. You have the right body. It’s a little slutty on me.”

“Mom!” I laughed.

She started laughing, too. “It’s the truth.”

I took it from her. Leaned in and gave her a hug.

“What was that for?” she asked, tilting her head. Taking me in.

“I just love you,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”

“You’re welcome. Now go shower. I’ll stay out of sight when he shows, all right?”

“You’re the best,” I told her, and took off to my room, thinking about how strange it is to feel so lucky and so unlucky all at once.

• • •

My heart pounded. It wouldn’t stop. I put a fist over it.

Handel Davies and I were walking toward town. He hadn’t said a word about where we were headed. Either Bridget or Michaela might be right about our destination. At any moment we could stop on a corner for the night or end up on a fishing boat. I was hoping for something more interesting.

“So it’s only you and your mother in that house?” Handel asked.

I watched him light a cigarette. Take a puff. “Do you think we could hide anybody else in there?”

The left side of his mouth turned up in a smile. “I guess not.”

“It’s just us. My mom didn’t have any more kids after she got divorced.”

Handel gestured left, and we turned down Chestnut. “My ma knows her.”

“Really?”

“I think every woman around here has been to your mother for some reason or another. Wedding. Christening. Funeral.”

We were passing Mrs. O’Brian’s house, and she was in her front yard, watering some plants. She stared hard at Handel and me. I gave her a wave and a look that said
mind your own business,
and she went back to her watering.

“Which one brought your mother to mine?” I asked.

“My sister needed her prom dress fitted,” he said. “That, and my uncle Billy’s funeral.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear that.”

He shrugged. Took one last drag of his cigarette, then stubbed it out on the edge of a trash can at the street corner and tipped it inside. “That’s business as usual in my family.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say, and I was a little surprised Handel spoke so easily about it. I remembered reading about how Billy Nolan had gotten shot in the middle of the street one day, but I hadn’t thought he might be related to Handel. Then again, it was well known across town that Handel’s family—extended family at least—was deep into shady dealings. Sometimes living in this town seemed like being on a movie set. Nolan must be Handel’s mother’s maiden name. I wasn’t sure how much more I wanted to know on the subject of Handel’s family and their, well, business.

Handel hooked a finger into the belt loop of his jeans. “So, some friends are hanging out over in the dunes tonight.” We reached the end of Chestnut, and Handel stopped. “I thought we could head there.”

“Yeah?” I asked, trying to seem casual. I knew about the parties in the dunes. They’d been going on for years. It was the place people went to drink and have sex and get into all sorts of trouble during the summer, and therefore a place I’d always avoided. “Sounds good.”

Handel’s eyes flickered over my bare arms and the low cut of my tank top. “You going to be warm enough? It’s cooling off now that the sun’s going down.”

The way his stare slid across my skin simultaneously gave me chills and made me nervous. I shrugged. “I’ll be fine,” I said, but as we cut right, then left, and I could see the wharf in the distance, I wasn’t so sure, and I didn’t mean about the cold. I could practically see my mother purse her lips in a tight line if she found out I was going to the dunes with Handel Davies. My friends would be divided. Michaela would cross her arms and get judge-y. Tammy would say I should go see what it’s like, and Bridget would probably celebrate the idea, and make some comment about how Handel could just ravish me on the beach instead of his boat.

But then there was me.

What did I think?

For so long, I’d always done what I was told. I’d gotten good grades, been a good friend, been a good daughter to both my parents. Been a teacher’s pet, worked hard for my spending money, crushed on nice boys who didn’t notice me. After the break-in I’d tried to go on like before, as though nothing had changed, doing the same things as always—studying, working, helping, listening. But for some reason those things had become much harder lately, as though they were just out of reach. This spring there were days when I felt like skipping school, when I wished for a party instead of studying, and when I found myself wanting to kiss someone—no,
more
than kiss someone—who wasn’t good for me, who might break my heart in such a way that the pain would overcome the agony from that night that still permeated my every cell. The good in me had started to peel away like skin, as though all along it had been a mask I’d worn that, with the slightest touch, would fall apart, revealing this other Jane below.

A Jane who wasn’t as good.

I glanced at the boy next to me, his blond hair pulled back from his face, his eyes, beautiful and dangerous, a demeanor that said
come here
and
beware
at once.

Handel was perfect for her.

This new Jane.

The briny tang of the beach got stronger as we got closer, and my lungs expanded to take it in, my heart calming as the scent made its way into my body. When you grow up alongside the ocean, there’s nothing better than that seaweed smell, potent and constant, the surest sign that you are where you belong. I paused, closed my eyes, and felt Handel slow his pace. I let the feeling of home steady me. This place, this town. What it meant. How it meant everything. But then another feeling worked its way inside, hooked into me sharply: the sense that Handel already knew who I was, that I was a girl on the verge of tipping one way or the other, and that he wanted to be around to see which way I went.

When I opened my eyes again, there he was, waiting.

Stare steady. Piercing.

I nodded. I was ready.

“This way,” he said quietly, and led me down some wooden steps along the wharf. They creaked under our weight. The sound of water lapping against the boats mingled with the talk of nearby fishermen as they smoked and remembered the business of the day. There was Mr. Johansen and his sons, Mr. Lorry, Old Man Boyd—who everyone actually referred to as Old Man Boyd—a few guys too hidden behind the others to recognize, and a couple of the Sweeney brothers. They were staring full-on and hard at Handel, then at me, puffing their cigs in unison like an ugly chorus line.

When we reached the beach, I slipped off my flip-flops, careful not to step on the sharp shells littered underneath the tall wooden pilings. The sand was cool between my toes in the evening air.

“You hungry?” Handel asked.

“A little,” I admitted.

“We could grab a bite at Aunt Carrie’s before we head to the dunes.”

“Sure,” I said. Aunt Carrie’s was a lobster shack built on the beach. There was a counter where you ordered and a few picnic tables in the sand and that was it. My mom and I went there twice every summer, once over Memorial Day weekend when it officially opened for the season, and again on Labor Day before it closed.

When we got there, a few families were scattered about, eating out of red plastic baskets lined with red-and-white-checkered wax paper, and more than a few people were unself-consciously munching corn on the cob, stray kernels and butter dripping down their chins. Handel and I went to the window. I asked for clam cakes and red chowder and a lemonade, and Handel asked for a basket of fried shrimp and a Coke. I dug in my pocket and came up with a few crumpled bills, but he waved the money away.

“I’ve got it,” he said, and paid for us both.

I bit my lip to hide my smile. Handel paying made it feel like a real date. While he waited for our order to come up, I went and chose a picnic table, the one farthest to the side, just under an old, majestic tree with branches that hung out over the beach. I debated whether to sit on the end of the bench facing the ocean, which would be an invitation for Handel to sit next to me—maybe a little weird, but then we’d both have a view—or take the very center of it, which would signal that he should sit facing me on the other side of the table. I settled on the second option, deciding it was more casual.

It wasn’t long before Handel was heading my way, a tray full of food, napkins, and drinks, balanced across his arms. He set it on the battered gray wood, then placed the Styrofoam bowl in front of me and the brown bag already stained with grease next to it. Then he sat down facing me, just where I thought he would.

For a while, we ate in silence.

Handel popped shrimp after shrimp into his mouth, occasionally glancing my way. I did my best not to slurp or get too much food all over me, which was difficult when dipping clam cakes into chowder. In between sips of lemonade, I tried to think of something to talk about and ended up on a subject that had me curious since Handel had first spoken to me on the beach two days ago.

“Handel,” I said, watching as he wiped his hands with a napkin.

“What’s up?”

“Your name. Handel. I was just wondering, you know, why Handel?”

His face colored a little. “It was my mother’s idea.”

I scraped my spoon along the bottom of the bowl. “Parents usually
are
the ones who decide their children’s names.”

“Yeah, well. Mine’s embarrassing. I’ve always felt that way, ever since I was a kid.”

I finished up the last crunchy bite of clam cake. “You? Embarrassed?”

Handel dragged one of his shrimp through a plastic cup of cocktail sauce. “What? You think I’m immune?”

“I don’t know. Kind of,” I admitted. “You’re . . .
you
after all.”

He chewed slowly. Then swallowed. “What does that mean?”

“You’re Handel Davies, Town Bad Boy,” I said, before I could stuff the words back in with the rest of my dinner.

Hurt—or maybe it was worry—flashed across his eyes. But then Handel chuckled. “I’m not really that bad.”

“No,” I said slowly, looking at him. “You’re not.”

This got a grin from him. The first one of the night. “You’re not so bad, either, Jane.”

I laid my spoon down. This time I didn’t try to hide my smile. “Thank you, but we’ve gotten off-topic.”

“I like this topic,” he said, still grinning.

“We were talking about your name.”

He pushed his basket to the side and leaned his elbow on the table, eyes on me. “It’s not something I talk about with just anyone.”

I pushed the remains of my dinner next to his and mimicked his position. “I’m not just anyone.”

“No,” he said, the way I had before. And added, “You’re not,” just like I’d done.

“You can’t flirt your way out of answering,” I said.

He furrowed his brow. “Was I flirting?”

I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. “Um, yeah.”