Worth the Weight (43 page)

I know there are ways around that, proxies and other stuff, but I don’t trust them. I’ve learned not to.

A thought hits me. The bank. My safe deposit box. I look at the clock, I still have a few hours before my branch closes. Thank goodness they have Saturday hours.

How to do this? I think it through. I don’t want the contents of that box in this house. I know it’s overkill, but it’s how I feel. That life, even the remnants of that life, have no place in this house.

I’ve been through too much to make sure I had this one, small, safe haven.

I take a screen shot of the desktop and then open it up. I enlarge the pic as much as I can without totally blowing out the pixels. I crop out the blonde and her good-looking boyfriend – presumably Nick Carpenter. I hook up a printer to the IMac and print out a copy.

As if someone is watching me, I quickly fold the picture several times, image inward, and place it on my work table. I run upstairs and change out of my sweats, baggy turtleneck, Hello Kitty slippers – my basic work uniform – and into slacks, a light-weight sweater set and loafers. I have about three such outfits for the rare times I go to the bank or to some other professional establishment.

At home I just wear sweats or yoga pants. To run out for take out or to the store, I usually wear jeans. Or sometimes I just stay in the yoga pants.

Pretty inexpensive wardrobe needs. It makes for an uncluttered closet. And not a lot to have to pack on a moment’s notice.

I make the thirty-minute drive to the bank in silence, the print out of the picture sitting on the passenger seat, as if Uncle Chazz is coming for a little ride with me.

I feel a moment of panic at the bank when I pull out my two forms of ID. No reason I should, this is my safe identity. No one outside of this town knows me by this name.

At least no one who wants me dead.

The woman looks at both forms of ID for a while. I don’t blame her; they’ve never seen me in the four years since I got the box. I do my financial stuff at a different bank and most of all my
transactions are done online anyway.

The woman finally takes me in the little room and we put our keys into the drawer together and then she leaves to give me privacy. I take the box out and bring it over to the high table in the center of the room. There are four tall stools around the table. I scooch onto one, wishing I was bellying up to the bar to order a brew, not opening the lid on my deadly past.

I turn the key and lift the heavy lid. I open it slowly, as if something inside could strike out at me.

There are only seven items in the box. My birth certificate. My California driver’s license. My Social Security card. A stack of hundred dollar bills totaling four thousand dollars. A picture of my father. A gun. And a sealed envelope.

The identification things I quickly move to the bottom of the box. They are no good to me now, and could get me killed. The cash is my safety net, it goes back into the box. The gun…the gun may be needed, but not today.

I finally come to the sealed envelope, not able to put it off any longer. I don’t know why the procrastination now, after I’d hurried like hell to get here before the bank closed.

Yeah, on some level I do know why. Because what I find it this envelope may blow my safe world apart.

I take a deep breath and place my finger under the flap of the envelope and quickly slash it across, causing a momentary flash of pain from a tiny paper cut. The envelope flap turns a diluted pink where I bleed, ever so slightly, onto it.

Holding the offending fingertip out of the way, I pull out the contents of the envelope, careful not to let them touch the bloodstain. Two photos. Both single shots of a man alone. Different men. The first is a face I know well.

Knew
well.

Or maybe, never really knew at all.

I see now that the resemblance to the handsome man in the desktop picture is surface, at best. Black hair, blue eyes, extremely good-looking, yes. But this man…my man…has a gleam in his eye, a charming predator look that draws one in.

Drew me in.

But I flew away.

I swallow down emotion, careful not to examine closely what the exact emotion is, and place that photo back into the envelope. Left remaining is a photo of Uncle Chazz. I take the folded printout of the desktop picture out of my pants pocket. I slowly unfold it, pressing out the creases with my now shaking hands.

I lay the picture from the envelope, a smaller snapshot, onto the table next to the unfolded printout.

He has aged, but it’s Uncle Chazz. There are differences, yes. But even if I hadn’t been sure, and I now was, the man in both these photos has a small scar running through his right eyebrow. Very tiny, not very noticeable, unless you were looking for it.

Or looking
at
it. As I had, at five years old, when I saw him standing over my father’s body, gun in hand. He’d lifted his index finger to his lips as he watched me watch him, in a “shhhh” motion. It wasn’t necessary. I didn’t scream. I didn’t speak. I only stared at the man who had just killed my father.

My little eyes had followed the line of his index finger as if it were pointing straight up, and saw the scar that bisected his eyebrow. I suppose I was already going into shock because all I
could think at the time – and I still remember this, twenty-two years later – was “ I wonder how Uncle Chazz got that owie?”

My finger glides over the scar in the printout of the desktop photo, as if it might be embossed, and I could feel the nail in Uncle Chazz’s coffin.

I’m not sure how long I sit and stare, but I finally put the snapshot back in the envelope, careful not to look at the other picture in there. I fold up the printout and add it to the envelope. I don’t want it in my home. In fact, Nick Carpenter’s IMAC is going to be nothing but nuts, bolts and motherboard by then end of the day.

My hand slides over the gun as I place it on top of everything in the box. Yes, I silently tell it, I will be back for you soon.

I put the box back into the long drawer, call the woman in and we both lock it up and take our respective keys with us. I thank her and walk out of the bank, wondering how I can possibly drive home.

I can’t. Not yet. I’m not even sure I’d be able to find my way home, as shaken up as I am. I look at the coffee shop across the street and head over. I spend the next two hours nursing a black coffee, turning a muffin into a pile of crumbs and plotting how to kill Uncle Chazz.

My hands stop shaking at some point and I know it’s okay to drive. I clean up my mess, half expecting to see napkins littered with murder plots, but no, I’d done all the planning in my head.

On the drive home I turn over all the different ways to exact revenge.

No, not revenge. Vengenance.

Plots and schemes skim through my head, one idea more delicious than the next. I turn down my street and head toward my driveway. The entrance to my safe haven. My nest. A place I hadn’t ventured far from for four years.

A soft sound, almost a wail, escapes from me as I realize none of these plans for Uncle Chazz will happen. None
can
happen.

I have finally found my father’s killer.

And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

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Mara Jacobs' books come to her as movies in her head. She sees them so clearly, every movement, every detail. The tough part – the REALLY tough part
– is getting them down on paper.

She has spent most of her adult life in advertising, primarily at daily newspapers.

Forever a Yooper (someone who hails from Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula), Mara now resides in the East Lansing, Michigan area where she is better able to root on her beloved Spartans.

Mara loves to hear from readers. Send her a note at [email protected]