Deliver Her: A Novel (11 page)

CARL

The Charlton rest stop’s layout was pretty straightforward: a single set of doors in and out, aside from the emergency exit. From where Carl stood, he had a perfect 360-degree view of the facility. A busload of giggling girls straggled in, a handful breaking off to use the toilets.

He used the wait to check in with the mother, who picked up immediately. “Mrs. Carmody, Carl Alden here. Just wanted to let you know everything is going according to schedule.”

Her relieved sigh reminded him how much parents relied on his updates from the road.

“I’ve been crazy with worry all morning. How did everything go?”

“Like clockwork. We’re at a Massachusetts rest stop on I-90, not quite halfway. We’re about to have lunch.”

The mother haltingly asked for details about the morning pickup: Did Alex yell or scream, fight them in any way?

He measured his words. “There was, shall we say, a certain amount of resistance on her part.”

She sniffed. “I bet she had some choice things to say about me after I left.”

Again, he edited his response. “She was upset. It’s understandable. She wanted to say good-bye to you and her brother.”

The mother asked what they’d talked about.

“She’s been sleeping, mostly. Maybe we’ll chat some at lunch.”

Scanning the stream of women exiting the toilet, Carl thought he saw Murphy and the girl coming out. The pair separated, one strolling toward the sunglasses display, the other to the ATM. He’d been mistaken. But he had to remain vigilant. You just never knew. Alex may have been sleeping in the car, or just thinking. He still wasn’t sure yet about this one; he had to be prepared for anything.

The mother asked what was happening next.

Carl checked his watch. “After lunch, we’ll get back on the road. We’re anticipating a little wet weather toward the end of the ride, but nothing that should keep us from the timetable I gave you.”

“OK.” A few seconds of silence. “Did you give her my letter?”

“Still waiting for the right moment. How are you and your husband holding up?” He knew the day was extremely draining for clients, how much faith it took to place their children in his hands, the stress of waiting for updates.

They needed as much reassurance as the children themselves.

“I’m trying to hold it together and get through work. I feel better, knowing things went OK at the house.”

“Glad to hear it. I doubt we’ll stop again, so I’ll text you once we arrive at The Birches this afternoon. We can talk more tonight, once the school has taken over.”

“OK. Please be careful.” She sniffed again. “Tell Alex I love her, huh?”

“Of course. Try not to worry, Mrs. Carmody. We’re off to a good start.”

Ending the call, he flagged the pair, who headed toward him, only Carl reading Murphy’s hand on Alex’s back as anything more than a guiding touch. He caught the vestige of a smirk on Alex’s face before his charge tossed her braid and smiled brightly at him—a little
too
brightly, he thought. Like the mother this morning, leaving her daughter’s room.

ALEX

Camo Man set a pill in front of Alex. “Your mother said to take this at lunchtime.”

Good old Nurse Meg,
Alex thought, rolling it around the fake wood grain of the food-court table.
Aren’t you afraid I might sell it, Mom?
Even if Alex had been somewhat creative with the truth lately, her mom had no right to hatch this entire plot based on a teeny-tiny bag of pills.

She could just pretend to take the pill; then again, the meds did mute the jackhammers. She swallowed it with a gulp of soda. “What else did she say?”

“To tell you she loves you.”
Way to show your love, Mom. Pay strangers to yank me out of my bed in the middle of the night.

“Great. Love you, too, Mom,” she muttered.

The three now sat at a cramped plastic table with their food. Carl across from her, Murphy to her right, so close their shoulders touched. The woman would probably cut Alex’s food if she let her, Alex thought, biting into her bagel. She was starving, jonesing for a cigarette. The whole bathroom scene had primed the jackhammers for a workout.

She forced herself to listen to their chatter. They had checked out Playland and the promenade last night, Carl said.

Alex stopped chewing. “You were around last night? Were you like . . . at my house?”

Camo Man nodded and took another bite of pizza.

So they were stalkers, too. She imagined them in a car outside her school, creeping on her. Everything had happened so fast this morning, she hadn’t even thought about where they came from. But now, the sleep and food clearing her head, the logistics of this adventure began to sink in—the scheming her mom must have done to make this come off.

The whole thing made sense now. The bagel turned to cardboard in Alex’s mouth.

Peals of laughter made her look up. The giggling bathroom girls passed behind Carl with loaded trays. Did they ever stop laughing? The tallest one stared at Alex for a second, offering an exaggerated thumbs-up before sprinting to catch up to the rest. They sent the message, Alex thought, relieved. But what if they were messing with her? And now they had Evan’s number. Strange girls texting him crap would seriously piss him off, killing any chances she had with him.
If
Larke hadn’t already moved in on that territory.

The undigested bagel churned in her stomach. Of course, they were messing with her. She’d been a total douche to pull that in the bathroom. Despite the meds, the jackhammers grew louder. She unwrapped her last stick of gum and rolled it into her mouth, staring at the bathroom girls and praying for the power to read lips.

“Why do you do that?” Murphy asked.

“Do what?”

“That thing. With the gum wrappers. I noticed you doing it in the car.”

Alex dropped the folded silver
W
onto her tray. “I don’t know. Habit, I guess.” The action was only a reflex these days. At one time, the silver links were the building blocks of a whole DIY thing she and Cass envisioned—a line of soft-sided metallic phone cases and wallets they would sell on Etsy to subsidize their dream. Alex still had a massive pile of folded wrappers on her vanity, combined fruits of six months of marathon gum chewing. They had planned to get down to business after her party.

The wrappers meant nothing now.

“Nervous habit.” Murphy had a blob of creamy salad dressing on her chin, which Alex meanly decided not to mention. She felt sorry for the woman, with her husband gone and all, but she was still the enemy.

“Got any hobbies, Alex?” Carl asked.

Seriously?
This guy probably had a whole file on her. Out of nowhere came a stupid urge to impress them. “Yeah. Music.”

Why did you just tell him that?
He had a way of getting her to talk. She’d have to be more careful.

“You go to concerts?”

She shifted on the hard plastic seat. “Sometimes. I like this band Amphibian.” He already knew that; his performance in her room this morning hadn’t fooled her. He probably saw her concert poster when he scoped out her room yesterday.

Carl wiped his hands on a napkin. “Ah, Amphibian. Excellent bassist. How about ‘Rock of Ages’. . . that ten-minute jam in the middle? I saw it live upstate New York a few years ago.”

Alex knew the band’s tour history by heart. The guy had his facts straight. “You saw the Grass Is Greener tour?”

He nodded. “Eight thousand people camping for three days. Got nasty the second day, when the skies opened up. Thought for sure they’d shut the whole thing down. But they kept on playing. The crowd went nuts. When the drummer flew out on those wires . . .”

“I know. I watched it online.” Alex cocked her head. “Seriously? You were there?” He was certainly old enough—at least her father’s age, maybe older. He dressed older.

“What’s the matter? Don’t I look like a Phib?” Camo Man pulled at his navy shirt. “I know it’s not tie-dye.”

“It’s not that . . .” she started.

“What, then? Everyone’s stoned out of their mind the entire time? Can’t see me with all those twirlers?”

Her mouth dropped open. She had been captivated by their whirling and wheeling, song after song without a break, powered by some magical fuel. They even had their own section at the shows. She and Cass had tried twirling the length of a single song at home one night, only to flop dizzy and winded onto Alex’s bed. Phibs’ songs were long.

“Whatever the scene, those guys are superb musicians. Classically trained, actually. I appreciate their performances just fine these days without all the . . .” He paused to clear his throat. “‘Enhancements,’ shall we say?”

Was her chauffeur admitting he’d put away a few bowls in his day? Maybe Camo Man was human after all. She’d heard the band took care of Phibs who’d had problems with drugs or alcohol, but still wanted to go to their shows. Even held special meetings for them on the road, in tents. Supposedly Adam, the crazy drummer, had had his own issues. He left the band for a while.
Exhaustion,
they said. How cool would it be to peek in that tent, to see Adam up close?

Alex chewed the inside of her mouth. There was no way Camo Man had been coached on her current obsession—he knew way too much. “So, that frog thingy in your car?”

“You mean Rainmaker? That’s my traveling buddy. A little memento. You know the place?”

Duh.
What self-respecting Phib didn’t know the birthplace of
Rainmaker
, the group’s first album? Recorded in a college-dorm room, the record catapulted the group to celebrity status in the jam-band realm. Thanks to her dad, Alex could spout Phibs lore like other kids recited nursery rhymes. He even owned a
Rainmaker
original vinyl pressing. She was eight when he showed her the album cover, the tree frog’s hypnotic gaze scaring the crap out of her. But then her father picked up his bass and strummed the raw opening chords of the title track, sweeping them both away:

We opened our mouths to the manna from above

Sure in our purpose, uncertain in our love

The double jolt of her father’s passion and the music transported Alex, converting her on the spot—the day Alex drank the Kool-Aid, as her mother liked to say. And because they shared everything, it wasn’t long before Cass took a sip, too, falling under the band’s spell, Amphibian becoming their shared religion. They were practically babies compared to the Phibs’ fan demographic, which fit perfectly with Cass’s anti-cool take on everything. Who needed one-dimensional boy bands and country singers when there was Amphibian? (“I mean, do those guys
sleep
in those cowboy hats?” Cass used to wonder. She had a teeny snarky streak in her.)

Alex’s dad took them to their first Phibs concert after eighth-grade graduation. With his blessing, they wormed their way to the stage, navigating the sea of fans, most old enough to be their grandparents.

Because Amphibian obsessed over its set lists, Alex didn’t get to hear
Rainmaker
live until last summer—with Cass, not her father. By that time, he had stopped coming with them. The wait was worth it: the dazzling twenty-three-minute extravaganza of a jam was lush with imagery of desert storms, mushroom clouds (wink, wink), mirages . . .

That was the beauty of the band. Though they’d been around for more than thirty years, if you counted the time they were broken up, they still kept it fresh, every show unfolding like a perfectly choreographed dance. The place had been packed, considering it was Father’s Day. Some band members brought their children onstage. The musicians were such gods to Alex it was really funny to think of them as parents, with kids and dogs and houses like normal people.

She felt guilty her father missed that show. It wasn’t like she’d completely ignored Father’s Day. She left a card—had gotten Jack to sign it, too. Her mother said something about a family barbecue, but Alex just waved her concert tickets on her way out. What were they going to do? Sit at the picnic table and watch her parents stare at each other?

Instead, the friends swayed and sweated in communion with thousands of Phibs at the Long Island amphitheater. Alex was so suffused with bliss she didn’t mind that Cass took off without her to celebrate the day with her own dad. Nor did she regret blowing all her cash on a skull-covered cape her mother would freak over.

Nothing mattered because Ace, arms wrapped around his bass like a protective father, sang to her, and only her:

Parched and burning, it soothed our souls

Quenched our thirst though it took a toll

And then, because Amphibian always delivered a big finish, a set of giant sprinklers rose from either side of the stage and sprayed the audience, refreshing and reviving the crowd like a summer rainstorm, a final communal baptism before they all processed to tents and cars in a single undulating, glistening mass.

Rainmaker.

Her dad waited up for her that night, jumping out of the living room shadows, asking how many encores Amphibian played.

“Um, four, I think?”

“That’s about right.” He pulled a cardboard tube from behind his back and offered it to her. “Open it.”

This was
his
day. Why was he giving her a present? Beyond remorseful now, she pried open the tube. Inside was the celebrated Phibs tour poster commemorating
Rainmaker
’s first pressing. She gasped; the posters were like gold—sold out everywhere, even on eBay.

“How did you get this?” she said, breathless.

“I have my connections. Night, Al.” He shut the basement door behind him before she could thank him.

She’d stared into the red eyes of the frog on the poster. It was
soooo
frustrating to figure out her dad these days. He was eons away from the guy who had sat between Alex and Cass on the basement couch on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Amphibian’s
Rainmaker
recording to watch the live stream of festivities from some far-flung corner of New Hampshire. The three had cheered along with the live crowd as the band unveiled its giant tree frog statue—a twenty-foot version of the amphibian blinking at her from the poster.

So yeah, Camo Man. She
did
know about Rainmaker. She pushed her half-eaten bagel toward him. He could keep his pint-size version of the real thing.
Happy Corner.
Alex would never see it now. That would be the ultimate betrayal. She couldn’t hurt Cass again.

Across from her, Carl stood and piled his trash on a tray. “So, my fellow Phib: You know what they say, right? ‘One show at a time.’”

Alex didn’t like his saying
my
like they were friends. And it was a stupid saying, anyway. Of course you couldn’t do more than one show at a time.

He was still talking. “I just follow the green balloons now.”

Alex cocked her head. She’d seen bunches of green balloons at shows but wasn’t sure what they meant. Maybe they marked a special place for Phibs who’d attended a certain number of shows or were doing something for the environment. Not wanting to act dumb in front of Camo Man, she nodded as if she knew what he meant. Next time they went, she and Shana would get to the bottom of the balloons thing.

In front of her, Camo Man and Murphy did their little shuffle and attached themselves to her again. Making their way out of the food court, they passed the table of bathroom girls. By craning her neck, Alex caught the eye of the tall girl, her heart dropping when the girl stuck out her tongue. Then another girl noticed Alex looking their way and curved her hands into a heart, pressing the shape to her chest, smiling.

Alex smiled back. Maybe the day wouldn’t be a complete fail, she thought, letting Camo Man guide her toward the exit.