Whatever Doesn't Kill You (16 page)

“Let me put this away and get changed,” he says at last, tapping the extension cord with two fingers. “It's cold out here; we can go to the Tim's down on the corner and get a coffee.”

“I don't drink coffee.”

“Well, I'm sure they have some sort of alternative beverage on their menu.” He smiles a little, nervous, awkward, and I can see what my mother meant about him having been a handsome boy.

I wait for him outside the shop, the cold stinging like a million little pinpricks running through my skin as the wind picks up again, whirling snowdrifts around the parking lot. Not for the first time, I wonder what on earth I've gotten myself into.

“So what do you want to know?”

Um, everything? How do I answer that question? I cup the hot chocolate that Travis bought for me despite my telling him three times that I was fine, I wasn't that thirsty, I didn't need anything to drink. He sips his coffee, staring at me over the rim of the cup as he lifts it to his lips.

“Why did you kill my dad?” I say finally.

Travis coughs a little, puts his hand to his nose like he's just snorted some coffee up it. “You want to say that a little quieter?” He looks around, jumpy, like he wants to make sure nobody's staring at us. They aren't—we're sitting in the corner by the bathrooms, where nobody else is sitting—but I can't say I'm too concerned whether he's comfortable or not.

“Well, why did you? I know you were pissed at him for throwing you out of our house, but murder seems a little…I don't know…extreme.”

Travis presses his lips together so hard they turn white. “Jenna, I think maybe…I mean, you've got it wrong.”

“What part do I have wrong?”

“I didn't”—he drops his voice down low, almost to a whisper—“I didn't kill him on purpose. I never meant for anybody to get hurt. He wasn't even supposed to be working that night.”

I scowl. “Who was supposed to be working, then?”

Travis scowls, looks down at his coffee like it holds some great secret.

“This isn't entirely my story to tell, Jenna.”

“Well, nobody else is going to tell it to me. I've been asking my brother for years, and he doesn't want to talk about it.”

“What about your mom? Didn't she ever tell you what happened?”

I roll my eyes. “Are you kidding? My mom doesn't even know who I am ninety percent of the time.”

“What do you mean?”

So I tell him the story of coming home and finding my mother in the bathroom, her brain scrambled beyond repair. Travis lets out a low whistle.

“That's…wow. I can't believe it. She was such a great person.”

I shrug. “If you say so.”

There's a long, awkward silence. Travis sips his coffee and studies his hands.

“Look, Jenna…maybe you should try asking Simon again. This is really…this is something he should be telling you.”

“Why? Was he…” A terrible thought occurs to me suddenly. “Was he involved somehow?”

Travis hasn't seemed to be much on making eye contact to begin with, but now he doesn't even make any pretense of looking at me. “You…you really need to ask Simon.”

“So that's a yes then. How?”

“Jenna, I—”

I take a look around the restaurant. There are maybe half a dozen customers besides the two of us, not to mention four or five people working behind the counter.

“Tell me. Or I'll scream. I swear.”

That makes him look at me, really look at me, now. “Jesus, kid. You can't just let sleeping dogs lie? This whole thing…it was a lifetime ago.”

I've heard variations of that line from Simon so many times, I just let it roll over me without comment. Instead I put on my best glare and fix it squarely on Travis.

“So what did my brother have to do with it?”

Travis looks as if it's taking every ounce of his strength to keep looking at me. His right eyelid twitches a little as he speaks.

“Simon was my best friend. He worked at the shop every Monday, Wednesday and Friday night. We had it all planned out. Your dad did all his banking on Tuesday mornings, like clockwork. So on Monday night I was going to burst in there with a mask and a gun, all
Point
Break
, and Simon was going to empty out the safe. Except he wasn't there that night.”

I sit there for a second, trying to process all of this. I run my thumb up and down the seam of the paper cup, hearing every sound in the coffee shop like someone has turned the volume up way too loud. I can hear the old guy at the counter ordering a large double-double; a couple of guys in security-guard uniforms two tables over complaining about their dispatcher; the girl behind the counter snapping her gum.

I want to ask him something smart, something that will make everything he just said make sense. Why did he want to rob my brother? What did he mean by
we
? And what the hell is
Point Break
? But the only thing I can force out of my mouth is “Why?”

“I don't know where he was that night. I thought it was going to be Simon when I burst through that door. I got the gun off this guy at school, um, Mike…what the hell was his name, Patterson, Parkinson, something like that. He was a real badass. Guns, knives, drugs…he could get you any of that. Twenty bucks. He said it was a piece of crap; said it wouldn't even fire. What do I know about guns, right?” He shrugs, makes this weird little sound that might be a laugh. “So here am I, wearing this Bill Clinton mask, bursting into Cooper's Smoke and Gift waving this gun around like I know what I'm doing with it, expecting Simon behind the counter, when all of a sudden your dad turns around. I was so surprised to see him, I probably jumped about a foot in the air. I didn't even hear the gun go off, but I must've squeezed the trigger because I sure felt it. I thought it had taken my arm clean off. It didn't even occur to me what was going on until I saw your dad hit the floor.”

I suddenly wish I hadn't eaten that peanut butter sandwich. I can feel it sitting uneasily in my stomach as tears sting my eyes. “What did you do next?”

“I pulled off the mask, started freaking out—
Oh
my god, Mr. Cooper, I'm so sorry, it was an accident
… I mean, ridiculous, right?” Travis laughs again, but there's no humor in it, none at all. “I tried to stop the bleeding, just leaned on him with my whole weight. I got him right here.” He points to a spot right about the middle of his chest. “They said at the trial he never had a chance. The bullet nicked his aorta. There was so much blood.” He bites his lip and stops talking, as if he was about to say something more. I'm not usually much of a crier, but as I listen to Travis talk I can feel tears running down my cheeks, and I use the heel of my hand to wipe them away.

“Was he dead? I mean, right away, when he hit the floor?”

Travis shakes his head. “No. He saw me when I took the mask off. He was staring right at me while I was trying to save him. I'll never forget the look in his eyes. That was pure hatred.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He sure did.” And he closes his mouth, lips pressed tight together in an odd grimace.

“Well? What did he say?”

“He said, ‘You little bastard. I always knew you were no good.'” Travis's voice breaks a little, but he holds it together.

“You can see his point, though, can't you?” My own voice is steadier than I would have expected. “I mean, he takes you in after your own dad throws you out, and you repay him by robbing his store and shooting him.”

I expect him to get defensive at that, raise his voice, get snippy at the very least, but instead he looks at me quizzically, a terrier with its head tilted to one side.

“Who told you that?”

“My momma.” He's still staring at me like I've suddenly switched to speaking Portuguese or something, and I feel a strange urge to backpedal. “I mean…she's gone a little crazy since you saw her last, so sometimes she gets things kind of mixed up. But she told me your dad was this horrible guy who was always getting drunk and beating the crap out of you. In so many words. Is that… I mean, what part of it did she have wrong?”

Travis's voice, already quiet, gets even softer. “The part where it was
my
dad,” he says. “My dad died in a car accident when I was twelve. And my mom never laid a hand on me either. I went to live with your family while my mom was in the hospital with breast cancer. Your mother was terrific. Said it was Christian charity, and I'd always been such a good friend to Simon. She wouldn't hear of me going anywhere else.”

If my stomach was in knots before, it's now doing backflips and dancing the Macarena. I know the answer to my next question before I even ask it.

“So then, the raging, temperamental, abusive alcoholic Momma was talking about…”

“Was your dad, not mine,” Travis finishes for me. There's a long silence while I try to process this new information. The happy sitcom family, the alternative reality I've always imagined for myself if only Travis Bingham hadn't ruined it for me, shatters as surely as if someone has thrown a rock through a
TV
screen. For an instant I consider the possibility that Travis is lying to me, but why would he? He doesn't even have to be here talking to me right now. What would he possibly have to gain by telling me that my dear, long-departed father was a drunken son of a bitch?

“But…” I struggle for words, trying to find my next question amid the wreckage of everything I've ever known about my past. “I still don't understand why you were… I mean, you were eighteen by the time my dad kicked you out, right? Why didn't you just…go away someplace? Was your mom still in the hospital?”

“No, she died.” He says it like he's telling me the weather, but his eyes squint up a little, like it hurts to make the words come out of his mouth. “We wanted to get out of town. This guy Ben Astonberg—he used to work at this comic-book store up on Main near Queenston—he had an old K-car for sale. You probably don't even know what that is, do you? Talk about a piece of crap. He wanted six hundred bucks for it. We were gonna take it out west someplace, get jobs in Alberta or something, get as far away from David Cooper and Hamilton, Ontario, as that old piece of junk would carry us.”

“We?” I echo, still feeling like I'm missing something.

Travis gives me that confused-terrier look again, like he's not sure how I could possibly be this dense.

“Me and Simon,” he says. “The whole robbery thing was his idea.”

“I…he…what?” I shake my head emphatically. “No. That's impossible.”

“He thought it would be the perfect crime. Your dad had video cameras all over his store, I think as much to make sure Simon wasn't stealing anything from him as to prevent shoplifting. Not that Simon was the type to steal. Or do anything out of line, really. He just didn't have it in him, you know? A real straight arrow. Honor roll, debate club. And smart. Man, that guy was smart. We all figured he'd wind up a lawyer or a doctor or something. Rich, famous, the works. He was a year younger than me, but he was taking all
OAC
classes—that's like a level above grade twelve. I don't even think they have those anymore, do they?”

I shake my head. “No. Not in a long time. It just goes up to grade twelve now.”

Travis barely takes notice of my answer though. He's on a roll, like he needs to get the rest of the story out now that he's started telling it. “Simon was going to be the guy where you'd say ‘Hey, I knew him back when.' But he came over one night, probably like a week before you were born, and he'd had enough. He'd caught the raw end of your dad's temper one too many times, and he had a black eye coming up. I was staying at a place just off Parkdale, renting a room off this old couple and cleaning ashtrays in a pool hall nights while I finished up high school. Simon came up with this plan, and it sounded like the perfect crime. I'd go in wearing a mask, get an old coat from the Goodwill or something so your dad wouldn't recognize me on the videotape. We'd pick a night when Simon was working and there was lots of cash in the safe. He'd act scared, hand over all the money…and who'd be able to blame him? Clearly there was a crazy guy with a gun: what else would he do? We were gonna stash the money, wait until semester break in January and off we'd go. Only it didn't work out that way, obviously.”

“Why would you wait, if you had the money to leave?”

Travis actually smiles at that. “Your brother was such a nerd. At the end of the semester he'd have had enough credits to graduate, so he could take college courses out west. He figured he could stick it out a couple more months if we at least had a nest egg and a plan to escape.”

“So what happened, then? Why wasn't Simon there that night?”

Travis shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine. I never got a chance to ask him. Haven't seen him since.”