Yesterday (16 page)

I can tell his mother has answered the phone by the way Garren exhales—she’s answered and she’s all right (just as I’d hoped) because she’s oblivious to the things we’ve discovered. I lean back against the cold, dirty glass of a phone booth that isn’t really large enough for two people, and allow myself a moment of happiness before I’ll have to face the fact that although our families are safe, Garren and I have no place to go.

G
arren doesn’t stay on the phone long. When he hangs up he tells me we should move on in case they’re somehow tracing calls to and from his house. As we’re trekking along the sidewalk, Garren explains that Henry got through to his mother first and told her that Garren had dropped in to see him, asking for money and acting aggressive and strange. “Paranoid,” Garren specifies. “He told my mother that he thought I must be on drugs and that he was very worried about me. He was trying to fish for information and find out what she knows. He asked if I’d been saying any weird things lately or hanging out with a bad crowd.”

Since I heard Garren’s half of the conversation I know he didn’t tell his mother what really happened at Henry’s, just that she shouldn’t worry because he’s all right. I tell Garren I want to phone my family too and we pick a different telephone booth, one that makes my stomach rumble because it smells like French fries. My mother’s extension is busy so I
call Olivia who has read the note I left her and wants to know where I am. “With a friend,” I reply. “When Mom gets home just tell her I’m fine, okay?”

“Won’t you be home by then?” Olivia asks.

“Probably,” I lie.

When I hang up Garren starts talking about going to the police again. He says there’s bound to be a station nearby and that all we need to do is stop someone in the street and get directions. I shut my eyes and when I open them again he says, “What? You don’t think we should go to the cops? This isn’t something we can handle ourselves. We’re being hunted. And we still don’t know what they could do to our families. Okay, they haven’t made a move yet but that doesn’t mean they won’t.”

I push the phone booth door open and step outside, Garren following me. My lips feel chapped from spending so much time out in the brutal wind and nerves are bouncing around my throat, making me wonder if I really have to puke or whether I can talk myself out of it.
Mind over matter
, I lecture, but the trouble is, my mind is terrified. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do next but I know what Garren’s suggesting could get us killed or at the very least taken.

“The first thing the police would do is call our mothers,” I tell him. “They’d think we were making it all up—that we’re either nuts or high, like Henry told your mother.”

Garren’s dumbfounded. “But our dads—their deaths must be a matter of public record. The stuff about our
grandparents too, if it’s the truth. Henry’s two addresses and Evelyn and Irene.”

“You really think the cops are going to look all that up?”

Garren’s head snaps back like he’s only now beginning to understand the ramifications of our situation. We can’t go to any of the usual people for help. We’re on our own.

“We need someplace to go,” I continue. “Someplace we can just take a minute to figure out what to do next.” My mind speeds to Christine and Derrick. But their parents might ask questions and they certainly wouldn’t allow Garren to stay over with me, even for one night. Besides, my grandfather will probably have my mother looking for me, calling everyone she can think of.

Nancy
. Is she in on this with Henry? And what about Doctor Byrne? Aside from Henry he’s the only known living common denominator between me and Garren.

The abrupt realization makes me cry, “We have to talk to Doctor Byrne!” The traffic lights ahead change and Garren and I are forced, by an onslaught of cars, to pause on the corner. “Henry said he and Doctor Byrne have been friends for years and he examined your family too. He could know something.”

“He could,” Garren agrees. “But if he did, wouldn’t they warn him about us?”

Now Garren’s the one seeing a clear picture and I nod. “You’re right.” The armed men could be waiting for us at Doctor Byrne’s office as we speak but …

“I know where he’s going to be this weekend.” My words spill out with such velocity that I’m not sure whether I’m putting them in the right order. “It’s his anniversary and he told me and my mom he was taking his wife to dinner at a place called the Bellair Café.”

“When?”

“I’m not sure. We could call the restaurant. Pretend we forgot the time of the reservation or something.”

It’s the only thing we have to cling to right now—the idea that Doctor Byrne might be able to deliver the truth—and I watch a sliver of hope steal into Garren’s face. The sight of it instantly doubles my own hopefulness.

The walk symbol flashes and the crowd gathered at the lights with us pushes on, Garren and I straggling behind as he says, “I have an idea about where we could go. Somewhere no one would think to look for us.”

“Sounds perfect.” I feel jumpy wandering the street—anyone who gives us a second look could be working with Henry. We need to duck out of sight as soon as possible.

Garren arches his eyebrows. “Not exactly. It would mean breaking in.” He tells me that the girl I saw at his house the other day, Janette, has a thirteen-year-old brother who shovels snow for some of their neighbors. “One of the families he shovels for has driven down to Florida on vacation for two weeks. He’s supposed to drop by and clear the snow and pick up mail and stuff every few days so it’s not obvious that the house is empty.”

Garren adds that he knows which house it is.

I can’t think of a better idea but it still sounds risky. “Your girlfriend—she lives in the same neighborhood, though, right? What if she sees us or what if Henry has someone watching her street?”

Garren shakes his head. “He couldn’t have anyone watching the street. My mom doesn’t know about her. Neither does Henry. And Janette’s house is close to Lawrence Station—at the closer end of the street than the empty house I’m talking about. We could take the long way around, across Lawrence and up Duplex Avenue. Janette wouldn’t have any reason to be that far down her street. We’d just have to look out for her brother.”

I’m cold and scared. I’ve only been in danger for an hour and I’ve already forgotten what it’s like to feel safe. “Okay,” I tell Garren. “Let’s go.”

We head for Eglinton Station where we huddle in front of a pay phone (our third in half an hour) and I call directory assistance and then the Bellair Café. “Yes, hello,” I declare in what I hope is a mature (and somewhat annoyed) voice. “I’m hoping you can help me. My husband placed a dinner reservation with you for this coming weekend and has
inconveniently
forgotten the date and time of the reservation.”

The man on the other side of the phone laughs good-naturedly and asks what surname the reservation is under.

“Byrne for two,” I tell him. “B. Y. R. N. E.”

“Bingo,” the guy sings. “That would be seven o’clock tomorrow evening, Mrs. Byrne.”

“Ah, thank you. We’ll see you tomorrow then.”

Garren’s staring at me as I hang up the phone. “You were good,” he says.

“Not good enough to convince you two days ago.” Behind us a middle-aged couple is kissing passionately goodbye like they’ll never see each other again. I’ve never seen anyone older than thirty kiss in public that naked and unashamedly and for a moment the act distracts me.

When my attention shifts back to Garren, his gaze has dropped to my Doc Martens. “Two days ago everything was different,” he says.

We go down to the platform together and ride the subway one stop north to Lawrence because Garren says it’s farther than it looks on the map, especially on a day like today, and that anyway, it’d probably be harder to spot us on the subway than on the street.

Along the journey he admits that when I came to his door earlier this afternoon he told his mother I was just some girl who was chasing him but that he wasn’t interested in. “I didn’t want her to know you being there had anything to do with my dad,” he continues. “She hasn’t been the same since his accident and I thought the things you were saying were … I don’t know … some kind of fucked-up joke.”

I guess I might’ve thought that, too, if our situations were reversed. As it is, I’ve slipped into a frame of mind that won’t allow me to think beyond the next twenty-four hours. We’ll go to this place Garren knows and spend the night there. Tomorrow we’ll ambush Doctor Byrne and make him tell us what Henry wouldn’t.

The moment after that is a complete mystery. If I try to think beyond it panic will swallow me whole.

I get off the subway with Garren at Lawrence Station and then we walk the long way around to Cranbrooke Avenue. I was envisioning a neighborhood where the houses were much farther apart (and hopefully backing onto a park or otherwise unpopulated area) so that it would be possible to break in without anyone noticing. I was also imagining it would magically be dark out by the time we arrived. Neither of those things is true and the only thing that keeps me from turning back is lack of options.

“We could try the windows and see if one’s unlocked,” Garren says as we near the house. “But that could take a while and since they’re out of town they probably locked everything up tight. I figure the best thing to do is jump the fence and then kick the back door in.”

I’ve seen that done on television where the doors give way easily but it can’t be that simple in real life, can it?

The only saving grace is that the house—which looks similar to Henry’s—is detached. If we can get inside without being spotted no one should be able to hear us. There’s no one out on the street as we walk hurriedly towards the house and Garren points at the empty driveway and says, “Follow me fast. I’ll try to unlatch the back gate—unless there’s some kind of lock on it—so you won’t have to climb over.”

I’m right behind him as he whisks up the driveway and scales the high wooden gate, disappearing into the yard. I’m instantly more nervous at being left alone and exposed on
the other side but then Garren’s swinging the gate open for me and we’re both in the yard, edging around the house and searching out a back door, which sits right where you’d expect it to, at the top of a compact porch.

“Do you know how to do this?” I ask under my breath.

“I’ve never tried.” Garren zips up the steps and examines the door while I anxiously scan the area. If anyone in the vicinity happens to be peering out their back window right now, we’re doomed.

A lone goose that should’ve flown south long ago honks accusingly as he flies overhead. The sound makes me jump in my skin and Garren’s ashen as he says, “Okay, I’m going to aim right below the doorknob and kick the shit out of it. That’s my plan.” He says that like he knows it’s not much.

I move away to give him room and Garren stands sideways, several feet from the door. His left leg’s firmly on the ground as he launches his right heel fiercely into the door. The noise of the assault rockets out into an otherwise noiseless neighborhood and suddenly I’m positive we’ll be caught, not in a sixth-sense way but because there surely must be a spooked neighbor within hearing distance.

The door shudders visibly under the force of his effort but doesn’t break. Garren’s already repeating the process like the door is his mortal enemy. The second time the door frame begins to splinter and on the third I hear it crack and part of the jamb splits off and shoots into the house. Garren staggers through the doorway. I race in after him, glancing
at the door frame as I go and hoping the damage isn’t visible from the house directly behind us.

Inside, I press some of the larger bits of jagged wood back into the frame so I can close the door behind us. With the lock destroyed, the door begins to swing open again. Garren’s the first one to spot the door stopper on top of the shoe rack next to us. He snaps up the stopper and wedges the door shut.

I’m shaking and I can hear Garren breathing. We stand motionless in the back room (which has been decorated as a children’s playroom with shelves full of toys, a dark green carpet and forest wallpaper) for a full minute, waiting to hear some sign that we were spotted. When nothing happens I suggest we go upstairs and watch the street from one of the bedrooms. If we hear a siren or see a police car it will probably be too late to make a getaway but it’s not as though we can sit back and relax.

The first room we come to upstairs is a children’s bedroom with two single beds. Someone’s painted a Smurfs mural on one of the walls and there’s a Wonder Woman alarm clock on the dresser next to a stout pink night-light. Children’s books line the top two shelves of a red plastic bookcase. The bottom shelves are filled with things I’ve seen advertised on after-school television—My Little Pony figures, a giant Barbie head to style, plush Care Bear toys and two identical Strawberry Shortcake dolls.

Garren and I dart over to opposite sides of the window
and cautiously pull back the minimal amount of curtain that will allow us each a view outside. Every so often a car jogs along the roadway and after several minutes we see a woman dawdle by with a little girl in her arms, the two of them bundled up against the cold. Garren releases his hold on the curtain and moves to the nearest bed, lowering himself onto the purple bedspread.

“Is your foot bothering you?” I ask from the window.

Garren curves his fingers around the edge of the bed. “Not really.”

That’s not the same as no and I say, “Maybe you should ice it. I mean, if no one comes for us.”

“It’ll be fine.” Garren folds his hands around the back of his head and lies back. “I’m just having a hard time processing all this.
It’s unbelievable
. Those guys with guns coming for us and Henry being in on whatever the hell’s going on. It must go back to our fathers and something top secret they knew but I don’t get how it can stretch back to our grandparents too.” He rubs his eyes. “I don’t understand any of it. With the scope of this you’d think our mothers would have to know something but mine seems clueless. I don’t just mean today. I feel like I’d know if she’d been hiding something this big.”