Grim and Darling

Chapter Fourteen

I sit on the highway for half an hour before I finally work up the courage to turn down the driveway.

Dad let me borrow the pickup. It’s the first time. Ever. I’ve never driven alone, never wanted to or needed to before because no friends means nowhere to be. Until now. Until Edward. When I asked Dad for the keys this morning, he looked shocked enough to pass out in his reheated spaghetti.

“Where are you going?” he asked, sounding like there’s nowhere a girl like me would want to be other than right there in that kitchen with the spaghetti and the memories and the stifling father-daughter awkwardness. I shrugged. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Certainly not “There’s this creepy, cold, totally hot guy who has been hanging around for some reason, and he finally told me where he lives, so I want to go stalk him.’

I’m pretty sure that would go over like a lead balloon.

“Not out to the Rez, right?” Dad’s big bushy eyebrows smashed together like two caterpillars getting frisky, and I had to try so hard not to laugh out loud because that was totally mean, and he’d probably think I wasn’t taking this Rez thing seriously enough. Billy Black’s death was still unsolved, and even though the coroner thought it was an animal attack, some people are more animal than human, so who knows, really?

“No. Just. . . around, I guess.” I shrugged again. This was awkward. Really awkward. He kept frowning at me for what felt like forever before he shook his head and seemed to give in.

“Ok, but be easy on her.” He dropped the keys into my palm, still warm from his pocket. “She’s a hell of a lot older than you and twice as stubborn. Double pump the clutch, and remember that the left blinker doesn’t work. Use your arm signals. I don’t want to have to pull you over later.”

I fled before I had to ask him how to double pump anything.

The driveway is just how I imagined it: so overgrown that it’s barely a dent in the foliage. There aren’t any tire marks in the dirt ruts that cut through the grass, at least not that I can tell, and I wonder just how Edward gets to and from town without a car. He runs like a bullet, but that doesn’t mean he runs back and forth every day, right? I mean, he’s way too sick and wheezy for that. I still can’t shake the fact that he reminds me of a doctor who injected himself with some disease just to try out a new cure, still unsure if it’s going to work even as he’s sticking a needle into his arm.

I bump through the woods, fighting to keep the old truck’s wheels in the sunken tracks, wondering just what the fuck I’m doing. Part of me thinks I’m going to show up there and march right in the front door without even knocking, drag him to his couch to kiss him crazy for a while; go silly and stupid on not enough air and too much boy. Another part of me is pretty sure I’m going to turn around before I even get there, that I’m not brave enough or brash enough or even dumb enough to be doing this right now. There’s an even another part of me that hopes he’ll yell at me, chase me away, tell me to go home.

Then maybe I’ll never see him again because I’ve never been more confused about anything in my life before he showed up and threw the whole thing upside down.

Before I have a chance to get freaked out and eight-point turn the truck around, I’m breaking through the trees, and there it is.

The house is enormous. Giant like it should have been a hotel. A hostel. An orphanage. There have got to be fifty rooms, and there are windows everywhere. There’s a big wide porch and a big gabled roof. It would almost look elegant with those columns, the black shutters, and the red door, except that the paint is peeling, and the stairs are sagging, and a few of those shutters are hanging on by a thread. It looks fancy from far away and kind of shitty the closer I get. The truck crawls to a halt in the grassy driveway, and I stare up at the place, expecting crows on the roof and ghosts in the windows and something living underneath the porch. I can’t believe he lives here because no one should live here.

It’s definitely haunted.

“You’re here.”

I scream. Loudly. And almost faint. There are stars and black fuzz and everything warps wildly. I’m pretty sure my heart fled clear down to my feet. My stomach is in my mouth, and all of my blood in in my brain. Edward puts a hand on my back through my open window as I fight to regain my breath. I push him away, flapping my hands in the air like a drowned bird.

“I’m fine. I’m fine,” I pant, my vision stabilizing, and my heart slowly edging back into its proper place between my lungs.

“I’m sorry. I forget that hu-” His eyes go wide, and he lets out a sharp breath. “Girls,” he corrects himself.  “I forget that girls startle so easily.”

“It’s not just girls,” I hiss, resisting the urge to call him a sexist jerk. Or worse. “I’m pretty sure anyone would freak out if you snuck up on them like that.”

“I think it’s fair to say that you snuck up on me, too. What are you doing here?”

“You’ve been to my house.” I say, and even though I don’t mean for it to, my voice sounds accusing anyway. I get out of the truck, the cool air on my flushed cheeks making my skin prickle sweaty and goosebumped.

“I like your house better.”

“Why?” I ask. My house could fit in the living room of his. My house has a rotting foundation and asbestos siding and the non-existent ghost of an eight-year-old. It might not be haunted the way his is, but it feels emptier somehow.

“Because you’re there.” His answer is absent, thoughtless, as though it came easy without a bunch of justification or convincing or even editing. Like he meant it. Like he didn’t even think for a moment about not saying it. I blush. Hard. Cheeks flaming and ears on fire and I shuffle in the overgrown grass beside him, fingering the frayed edges of my cut-off shorts and resisting the urge to cross my arms over my chest.

My scuffed up sneakers are just inches away from his shiny shoes.       

There’s something about him that makes me feel clumsy and unpolished. Like I shouldn’t be here in my chucks and unbrushed hair. Like I should be dressed in some fancy black ball gown, reclining on a velvet fainting couch with pearls around my neck and a glass of something alcoholic in my hand. Like my hair should be in ringlets and my nails should be painted.

Like I should be elegantly anguished, but I’m not.

I’m just disheveled anxiety.

“You’re not going to invite me inside?” I rub the top of my sneaker against the back of my leg.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says, taking a sharp step back like he’s worried I might try to tarnish his virtue or take advantage of his virginal heart or something. He has his hands in his pockets and his eyes on his shoes, and I expect a blush, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, he goes grey.

“Why not? I won’t try to kiss you or anything,” I tease, slapping on a forced grin because I’d actually thought about doing exactly that on the way here. The faint disappointment that I won’t get to do such a thing is stronger than I thought it would be.

“That’s a shame.” He stares at me so hard I swear he’s going to burn a hole right through me.

“Why isn’t it a good idea then? Me coming inside?”

He glances toward the house, the big dark windows and the heavy red door, his face puckered and his hands twitching nervously at his sides.

“Haunted, remember?”

---

I go home and spend the entire night wondering what he meant by “That’s a shame.”

Next

AN:

I wrote Hadley Hemingway a mushy love letter. It's over at The Lemonade Stand, as part of their grammar gratitude special feature. I cried lots while writing it, and had to reread it eleven billion time because I didn't have a beta to look it over. There's still mistakes in it. 

Check it out - it says more than I ever could here:

Bee's love letter to Hadley

Grim and Darling

Chapter Thirteen

Eight things about your dad:

One.

He is essentially the “good cop.” Not all of them go into the job with a pure, unadulterated drive for civic duty, but he did. Your grandfather was killed by a drunk somewhere out on the Wyoming flatlands, and your grandmother was robbed at gunpoint on a street corner in Phoenix. The gun didn’t kill her, but the fear-induced heart attack did. The police never found the guy who stopped her life, so Dad’s always been a bit of a vigilante.   

Two.

He probably loved your mom at some point or another.

Probably.

Maybe.

Three.

He definitely doesn’t anymore.

Four.

He still refuses to teach you how to shoot a gun. You ask him every year on your birthday, but he seems to think you’re better off not knowing. You’re not sure if that’s because he doesn’t want you to accidentally shoot your own foot off, or that he worries you may take things into your own hands and actually off someone for real someday.

Either way, he doesn’t trust you with a firearm.

Five.

Spaghetti is a literal food group.

Six.

He used to go fishing every weekend. He had a special spot, special vest, special pole, special hour, and to anyone else he probably seemed superstitious. Maybe he is. But it worked for him. He called it “therapy,” the killing of fish.

Seven.

The only time you’ve ever seen him cry was about a week after the whole Alice thing. You had a nightmare and went looking for your dad because he was big and strong and brave enough to fight off whatever demons had followed you into your dreams, but when you found him, he was crying. On the couch, in the dark, unopened beer between his feet, his face between his hands. You stood in the doorway listening and watching and not moving because you’d never seen him like that before and it scared you even worse than that nightmare.

Eight.

Alice completely ruined him.

---

“Got you something.”

Dad puts a paper gift bag on the book in front of me, the handles tied together with a purple ribbon. I look up at him, immediately full of suspicion.

“You got me a gift?” I look at him like this is really a test.

He shrugs and is probably blushing, but that fucking beard of his is so big these days, I can’t really tell. “Yeah. So what?”

“You got me a gift,” I say, shaking my head. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. Just wanted to.” He’s all shrugging shoulders, rolling eyes, and shuffling hands as he turns away to make a pot of coffee. I pull the bag toward me and undo the ribbon. Inside, there’s a shirt. A pretty shirt. Shiny and sequined and made of really soft fabric, the double-washed kind. But it’s purple.

“It’s purple,” I say.

“Yeah. Thought it’d look nice on you.”

“Purple.”

What is going on?

“Yeah. Purple. It’s a color.” He rolls his eyes at me like I’m not getting his joke.

“What are you even saying right now?” I shake my head at him, and he grunts, leaning back against the counter and staring at me hard for a full minute before he speaks.

“I’m worried about you. You’re always…” He waves his hand at me, his eyebrows raised like his point is obvious or something.

“I’m always what?”

“In black.” He waves at me harder, and I look down at myself. He’s right. Black pants. Black sweatshirt. Black sandals. My t-shirt is black, and my beanie is black, and even my nail polish is black. He doesn’t know this part, but my underwear is black too.

“I like black.” I shrug, glaring at the purple shirt.

“I can tell. But it’s not a happy color, Bella. Maybe if you tried to wear something… else, you wouldn’t be so sad anymore.”

Like happiness is determined by the color of your clothing.

“I’m not sad.” My voice goes hard, and my muscles all stiffen up like I’m suddenly made of stone. This is the very last conversation I want to be having with him, except for the sex talk. Maybe. That one might be less awkward than this.

“Bella,” he sighs and rubs his eyes with his thumb and his finger.

“I’m not sad!” I yell it this time, sitting in my chair and feeling small because my feet don’t even reach the floor, and my dad is trying to make me wear colors, and everything in the world is terrible right now.

“Yes. You are. You know how I know that?” He asks like he wants an answer, so I just keep my eyes on the stupid purple shirt and shake my head.  I hear him sigh. “I know because I’m sad. It takes one to know one, kiddo.”

I finally look at him, and oh god, his eyes are watery. Big and wide and wet like baby animals in Disney movies, and he’s chewing on his bottom lip, and I hate this. I hate that we’re in the kitchen on a perfectly nice day having this conversation because some fucking worthless asshole came in here and took my sister and left us with this big empty space with nothing to fill it up. I hate that my dad is so worried about me that he bought me clothing, and I can’t even think about him in a store picking this out because it’s almost too embarrassing to comprehend it. I hate that part of me wants to burn the stupid purple shirt, but another part of me, a small secretive part, wants to wear it.

“I just thought we could both start small,” he says. “I’m gonna start fishing again. Thought you could wear something that isn’t black. We could do it together.”

“If I get rid of all my black, I won’t have any clothes left,” I grumble. I’m actually kind of glad to hear that he’s going to take up fishing again. He really liked it, always had a tan and smelled like the woods, and the freezer always had something in it. He smiles that lopsided smile, the only one I’ve seen for years now, and ruffles my hair as he leaves the kitchen.

“I’m not asking for a rainbow. I’m just asking for a little bit of sunshine, ok?”

Next

AN:

Hadley is my forget-me-not and gives me soft places to land.

Thank you for fixing this up, baby.

<3

Grim and Darling

Chapter Twelve

Dad storms in the door at 10:14 a.m.

He looks tired, like he hasn’t slept at all, and he must have driven overnight to get home this early. He flies right by me and starts digging through a laundry basket on the end of the couch, pulling free a clean uniform and stripping out of his old clothes right there in the living room. He’s breathing hard as he hops into his slacks, panting as he tugs on his socks.

“How was Seattle?” I ask, and he stops, a limp sock in one hand, and his mouth hanging open for a moment before he closes it, staring at me like I’m suddenly speaking a different language.

“Seattle?” he asks, blinking at me like an owl caught up in a barbed wire fence.

“Yeah, Seattle. The guy?”

“Oh, that. It was nothing.” He shakes his head, muttering to himself and shoving his arms into the sleeves of his cop top, strapping on his holster and loading his gun. I watch every move, most of it memorized, shaking my head in disbelief.

“That’s it?”

“Yep,” he huffs, fumbling with the second sock, totally ignoring me..

“You’re just giving up?”

“I’m not giving up!” He yells loud enough to startle me, loud enough that I jump in my skin. He’s breathing hard, and his hands are shaking, and his face has gone pale. When he finally looks at me, his eyes are heavy and dull. “I’m not giving up, Bells. I’ll never give up. But I’ve got a murder on my hands right now that I’ve got to go deal with. I can’t handle this friggin’ inquisition from you.”

I watch him tuck his gun and sit on the couch to lace up the ugly black shoes they make him wear, my own mouth hanging open.

“A murder?” I whisper. It’s about all I can manage, my heart jammed so high up in my throat I can barely breathe around it.

He just nods, double knotting his laces.

“Another one?” I ask. I must sound bad because that gets him to look up at me. The corners of his eyes pinch, and he shakes his head. I nod. He shakes harder.

“It’s not him, Bella.”

“But it could be.” I’m still whispering, and I’m not sure if it’s just my voice trembling or my whole body. He’s still shaking his head as he stands, wiping his palms on his thighs.

“It’s not. There’s a body. There’s blood. There’s no forced entry. It’s not him, Bells.” He takes a step toward me slowly, like he doesn’t want to startle me, and puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be back before dinner.”

“Can I go with you?” I ask. It’s not that I’m scared to be alone. Not that I think maybe I’m a loose end that needs to be tied up or chopped off or trimmed back by the person who got my sister but left me sleeping in the next room. It’s not that I think that I might be next.

It’s that there’s been another one, another murder, and I need to see it for myself.

“Bells…” He’s trying to say no, shaking his head, his eyes narrowed, so I make myself look extra sweet and even push up a few watery tears to make him think it is about the fear, the “don’t leave me alone, Dad” plea any other seventeen-year-old would give her old man.

He totally buys it.

“Ok. Let’s go.”

---

Billy Black is lying face down in a pool of his own blood on the floor of his bedroom.

The tiny, slumped trailer smells like what hell probably smells. It’s dank and dusty, and the curtains are molded. The refrigerator is leaking the faint traces of doom and decay, but that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is Billy. He’s been lying there for five days, and he’s starting to go putrid. Starting to turn a little black around the edges. I guess for most people this would seem gruesome, but I’ve already done a slip and slide through my own kitchen, the familiar tile doused in blood, so this sort of small time on the shock factor scale. I’ve spent so many nights researching decomposition that the FBI is probably watching my computer; I know exactly what is going down here, and none of it bothers me as much as it probably should.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Shut the fuck up, Newton,” I hiss. I don’t look around, but all the hair on my arms stands on end, and I clench my fists to keep myself from gagging. I can’t see him, but I know he’s there.

“Not just my opinion, sweets. Whole staff thinks it’s kinda odd how he lets you tag along.”

Mike appears, leaning against the doorframe beside me, hands in the pockets of his police-issue pants, watching the coroner poke around in the blood puddle Billy is sprawled out in. Mike Newton is a hometown boy who had big dreams and big plans and big ambitions, but too little gumption to make anything of himself. He was a little too dumb for law school. A little too slow for a football scholarship. A little too rowdy for the State Patrol. His last three girlfriends lasted less than two months apiece, and he has a close, personal relationship with Smitty, the scary tattooed guy who runs the liquor store on the Rez.

Really personal.

He doesn’t know I know that part yet.

“Oh, yeah?” I laugh. “The same staff that helped you bury your arrest record? How’s Amanda, by the way? ” I can barely remember it, but the underage girl and the gram of coke he was caught with are the reasons he’s still a local lackey. Mike goes red and stammers something I can’t understand. I narrow my eyes at him because I know it makes me look more like my dad and then lean in really close because it’s totally intimidating if you do it fast and hard enough. He smells like wintergreen and cigarettes and not enough deodorant.

I watch Newton retreat with his tail tucked up so far between his legs that it’s practically nonexistent as I hear the coroner say “blood loss” and “surface wounds” and “animal attack.”

Next

AN:

Hadley is my one true love. All of my gratitude to her for making this less of a mess and more of a readable mystery. (Also, thanks for making ME more readable and less messy.)

Grim and Darling

Chapter Ten

“I thought I told you not to bother.”

I open the door to Edward, glaring at him, wishing I could just smile and look pretty and invite him inside. But I’m not pretty, and I can’t smile. He comes inside anyway.

Every time I see him, I think he gets a little hotter. I don’t know how that’s possible because every time I see him, he also looks a little sicker. The circles under his eyes are darker, and his skin is paler, and his hands are shakier, which is probably why they’re always in his pockets. He needs more fresh air. He needs a new liver or lung or heart. He needs a blood transfusion and a protein shake.

He needs a haircut.

“Your old man have any liquor?” He’s looking around, inspecting, and the house is a wreck, and I’m a wreck, and I wish I had changed into something nicer than these sweats and this tank top. I wish I had brushed my hair this morning. Wish I had picked up, spruced up, or at least bothered to wear underwear.

“Yeah, in here.” I turn and hightail it to the living room, falling to my knees in front of the entertainment center and pulling out stacks of dvds to reach the bottle of whiskey I hid back there before the great alcohol purge of last month. It happens a couple of times a year or so: Dad deciding that he’s done drinking. He pours everything down the drain, and it lasts about thirty days before he’s bringing home six packs and bottles again. We don’t acknowledge it. Just wash, rinse, and repeat the same ritual three or four times a year like we didn’t just do it a few months before.

I hand Edward the bottle, and he falls onto the saggy old couch that used to be the color of a sunset but now looked like a rotten old peach. I stay where I am, watching him take a big long drink. Too big. Too long. Like he doesn’t even need to breathe and doesn’t give a shit about his liver either.

“Drinking is bad for you.”

“A lot of things are bad for you.” He stares at me like he’s about to tell me what exactly is so bad for me, twitching his fingers to loosen his tie and clearing his throat like maybe it’s him that’s bad. Maybe he’s bad enough already and the liquor won’t do much worse, but it sure won’t help anything either. His lips are pale today, paler than yesterday, and his eyes are darker, if that’s even possible. His hair looks the same. His suit looks the same, sullen and slack. I’m not entirely sure how someone can change so much but not change at all.

“Are you sick?” I ask.

“Why?” His eyes narrow, but he drops them from me to inspect the bottle in his hand instead, swallowing hard around nothing but air.

“You look sick.” I shrug. “You look tired and… sick,” I finish lamely, because I realize halfway through how rude I sound. When someone tells you that you look tired, they are really only trying to tell you that you look like shit, but they don’t know how to say it any nicer than that.  

“I’m not sick,” he says, but I don’t believe him. I can’t.

He’s not healthy, that’s for certain.

Edward is looking around again instead of at me, eyes on the guns piled in the corner, the beheaded deer mounted to the wall, the discarded camo and neon orange clothing in a pile near the back door. For a cop, my father has just about the worst gun etiquette of anyone I know. No locked case. No safeties. No lessons in “people don’t kill people, guns kill people” that most kids get. He just expected me to adapt and by adapt, he expected me not to pay them any mind or touch them.

So I didn’t.

“Where’d he go? Your dad?” he asks.

“You’re avoiding me,” I accuse.

“Yes.” Edward nods. He doesn’t even try to deny it.

What a load of nerve this guy has.

“Seattle,” I say, feeling glum and lonely and weirdly uncomfortable.

“Got family there?”

“No. He’s… investigating,” I resist the urge to roll my eyes. This is easily dad’s fifth trip this year to some random location, chasing a lead that would most likely turn into a dead end.

“Investigating what?”

I narrow my eyes. It’s instinct. Grind my teeth. Also instinct. Dig my fingernails into my palms and ball my fists against my thighs because instinct was all I had in moments like this. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, I felt like an animal that didn’t know how to deal with the realities of life without teeth or claws or blind biting rage. Moments like this, I bared my canines and retreated back into my hole because explaining this to a new person never got any easier.

I’d honestly rather go chew through my foot.

“You know,” I huff. “Don’t fucking make me say it.”

He just stares at me. A part of me, a small part, starts to hate him.

“Know what?”

I flop back onto the carpet, an old shag that isn’t soft anymore, and stare up at the ceiling with my heart in my ears and my stomach in my throat. I hate retelling it. Hate reliving it. Hate that I have to go there again for this guy who should just march his sick, sorry ass down to the library and skim through the backdated newspapers. He should go to the cop shop and ask one of those bastards to fill him in, because it’s easy to recount a tragedy when it belongs to someone else. All the gruesome details become bothersome and boring when it’s not your situation, not your life, not your nightmare.

“She’s dead,” I say, and I hear him clear his throat, but I don’t look anywhere except the ceiling and press on. “I mean, maybe not dead, but she’s been gone for three years, and I’m pretty sure she’s dead. My dad is still looking.”

“For her?” Edward actually perks up for this. He leans forward, sets the bottle down, puts his elbows to his knees and threads his fingers together. While he’s doing this, he hasn’t taken his eyes off of me. It’s hot and cold and feels good but also hurts somehow.

“Of course not. He gave up on her a long time ago.”

“People come back, you know? Children come home.”

I shake my head slowly against the carpet, wishing with every molecule in my body that such a thing could be her truth, my truth, our truth. The fact that it can’t be, won’t be, sucks more than just about anything else in the world. Her last school photo, third grade, pigtails, that ridiculous calico dress she’d started a love affair with a few weeks before and refused to take off, the one with the enormous lace collar and the puffed sleeves and the tiny pearl buttons at her wrist, it all stares down at me from the mantle. I fucking hated that dress.

“Not Alice.” I shake my head. “She won’t come home.”

“You sound so sure.”

“I am.”

Yeah, kids come home, but then they lead police to their abductor. If you asked me, if I took a kid, the last thing I’d do is let that kid escape alive.”

Next

AN:

Hadley Hemingway is my one true love.