Earth to Emily (17 page)

I grabbed my ice scraper and hopped out again. I held my hand up and caught some precipitation. It was snow.
Hallelujah.
Winter driving in Amarillo and Lubbock, and some in Dallas, taught me to fear ice and respect snow. The weather forecast on the radio during the drive over here promised snow and freezing temps. Snow would improve the icy roads. Soon, anyway. Right now, I still had to contend with the exposed ice.

When I finished scraping, I did some shoulder shrugs and rolled my neck. The creepiness of finding Ivanka’s dead body was slowly dissipating, enough that I remembered my date with Jack and felt a flare of excitement. Then it hit me. I was picking up a houseguest for the evening. A handful of a houseguest. And then I was leaving for New Mexico in the morning. Ava and I would barely even get to talk. She’d think I was an incredibly rude and terrible hostess.

I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—cancel my first real date with Jack Holden. I supposed I could invite her to go with Jack and me tonight, but hopefully she’d be exhausted from traveling and want nothing but a soft bed and long winter’s night sleep. Ava liked men, liked them a whole lot, and they liked her back. I didn’t need that kind of pressure on my fledgling relationship. I sighed with a rising note of exasperation. I was being unfair. I’d cast Ava in a role, and she hadn’t even stepped onstage yet. I needed to chill. I would chill. Starting right now, I was chill.

I got back in the Mustang and put it in drive.

I rolled well below the speed limit down Fourth toward Tyler and the Greyhound Bus Station. The station was only four blocks past the Maxor Building, where Jack and Snowflake would be doing whatever it was they did when the office functioned as their condo instead of workplace. The bus station itself occupied part of a block on the edge of Amarillo’s small downtown. It stood about two and a half stories high and had an art deco‑ish feel, with rounded corners and square blue tiles three-high around the bottom, sort of in the style of the restored Paramount Theater sign on Polk Street.

I turned right on Tyler. The bus station was just ahead, and I spotted Ava outside the front door but inside the recessed overhang. She wore an electric-blue jumpsuit and black leather coat, and she was stamping her feet in spike-heeled black boots. She didn’t exactly blend into the background, even if her outfit did match it. I coasted to a stop, threw the Mustang in park, and popped the trunk.

I climbed out and ran carefully to her. “Ava! What a fun surprise! Get in, you must be freezing.” I hugged her and grabbed her two suitcases, practically in the same motion.

“Yah, I freezing my bana, for true,” she said, her island lilt an odd sound here, like a scene from
Cool Runnings
. It took me a moment to remember “bana” was the West Indian word for “bottom,” too. “Thank you for coming for me.” In her accent, “thank” came out as “tank.”

“No problem.” I threw her bags in and slammed the trunk. I was back in my seat as fast as she was, but, then again, I was wearing retro moon boots I’d appropriated from my mom’s closet, not stilettos.

My phone made a weird noise from its perch on the console. A message from Nadine:
How’d it go with Beth?

Oh God. She didn’t know about her friend yet. I typed:
Call me.

Ava shut her door. “So, how you entertain an island girl in this town on Christmas Eve?”

As I groaned inwardly at Ava asking precisely the wrong question, the phone rang. It was Nadine, way faster than I’d hoped. I didn’t know which I dreaded more: telling Nadine about Beth, or telling Ava about my plans that evening. I decided to let Nadine go to voice mail. I’d call her back later.

Ava kept talking, leaving her first question behind us. “The weather here terrible,” she said. “How you stand it?”

“Most of the population isn’t familiar with the alternatives.”

“But you?”

I put the car in gear and coasted into motion on Tyler, then slowed at the corner. There was no traffic. I turned right onto Seventh Avenue. “I have no excuse, other than I’m broke.”

“Yah, Katie tell me your husband an anti-man.”

I opened my mouth then shut it.

“You got no idea what I talking about, do you?”

I turned right onto Taylor. Suddenly, the connection occurred to me, and the translation of the island slang made perfect sense. Katie had told her Rich was gay. I laughed.

“It took me a minute, but I got it. Yes, Rich likes men, and his guy has expensive taste, so they ran through our cash before I even caught on. But my divorce is final, and I’m pretty much back on my feet.”

“You living with your mother?”

“I am.” And not wanting to talk about it. “Are you still living with Rashidi?” I referred to the gorgeous UVI professor she sometimes dated who was a mutual friend of Katie’s, but not the father of Ava’s daughter.

She waffled her hand. “Roommates still. For now.”

Rats. I had hoped she was in a serious relationship. “So, your gig got weathered out tonight, huh?”

“Yah, the organizer, Phil, he cool, though. He reschedule me, and he pay me half.”

“What kind of group has a Christmas Eve party anyway? Most of Amarillo will be at church.”

She laughed. “Phil see me when he visit St. Marcos, and he know everybody. Got me booked for two weeks at parties in three states. He tell me they all private. That they, uh, swingers.”

“Swingers?”

“Yah, you know, people who trade partners.”

“Yeah, I know, but we have a client named Phil who runs a swingers group.”

“Sound like the same guy.”

Phil, Phil, Phil. I wondered if Nadine had any idea what she was getting into, or if it would even matter to her. “What I really want to know is how are you, and how is your baby?”

“She good, I good, my mother—she save my life. Don’t even think about having a baby without a grandmother near you house, I tell you.”

The loss of my baby had left a cold, empty space in my heart, and my fear of losing Betsy tugged the edges wider and wider. I’d love to have a baby anywhere, anytime, now that I knew I couldn’t. Or most likely couldn’t. But maybe I could have a big girl, maybe I could have Betsy. If I could help Jack and Wallace keep her in the states long enough for it to happen, and keep the whereabouts of Greg and Farrah a secret.

But I kept all of that inside and instead said, “Good advice. I’ll remember that. Are you and the father, um—”

I merged onto 287 and quickly veered onto the I-40 entrance ramp, then negotiated another careful merge. These icy flyways were tricky today.

“Lord no. He worthless. So if you know a man need a woman who look good on his arm when he out spending his cash, I the one for the job.”

My stomach lurched. That was exactly what I was afraid she’d say. We drove in silence for a few minutes. A dinging noise from my dashboard panel grabbed my attention. I glanced down. Low-gas light. I switched on my right turn signal to exit at Bell for gas.

At the station, Ava ran inside. I huddled in the car for warmth while the gas pumped. A huge army-green panel van backed to the pump station catty-corner in front of my car. It was the kind of van that construction crews use. Them, and serial killers. A man who looked vaguely familiar exited and worked at the pump. Of course, just about everyone in Amarillo looked familiar to me. I either went to elementary school with them or knew them from their kids or I’d seen them at United Supermarket a couple of thousand times or they were Jack’s clients or family or, God forbid, victims of Jack’s clients.

This guy looked a little older than me. He had a square face with a lot of graying facial hair and wore a cap with wool-lined ear flaps over his head. He took a few drags off a cigarette then crushed it under the toe of his boot. He went to the back of the van and opened one side of the doors—like the batwing gates in Judge Herring’s courtroom—and I couldn’t help watching, even if it was impolite. His body blocked most of my line of sight, so I leaned to the right for a better view.

“Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas, boys and girls,” a deep voice slurred, so loud I could hear him through my car window. A tall Santa lurched in front of my car, toward the back of the van. He was a little on the slim side for Santa, and even more on the drunk side, it appeared. He steadied himself with a hand on the open van door but still managed to knock the driver to the side and, from the looks of it, slosh half a bottle of something all over him, too. The bottle dropped to the ground and rolled away. Santa’s eyes tracked it, and he moaned. The driver righted himself and brushed liquid off his body, flicking his hands in exaggerated motions as he did.

“Shorry,” Santa shouted, or tried to. “How about shome candy canes for the kiddos?”

The pump clicked and I saw it had shut off. I opened the door to go put the nozzle up and get my receipt. Alcohol fumes hit me as I took the long way around the back of my car to the pump. I pulled the nozzle from my car. As I screwed on my gas cap, I saw the van driver grab Santa by his fuzzy red jacket fronts. I backed into the pump, gaping as he shoved him against the closed side of the rear door to the van. For the first time, I got a good view of the interior. It was filled with kids.
Filled
with them. Long, dark braids and a sweet face caught my attention. I stood frozen, nozzle in midair.

“Betsy?” I called out, but my words were muffled by the roar of the van driver, who I now realized was Trevon Hodges, Betsy’s foster father.

“Stay away from those kids with your drunken idolatry.”

“But shir, I din mean nothing by—”

“Sinner!” He pushed the man away.

Santa stumbled to his knees, then stood. “Sh’okay.” He held up one hand. “I may be a shinner, but Jesus died for my shins, sho I’ll be okay.” He stumbled toward the van again.

Trevon Hodges reached into the back of the van and pulled out a tire iron, and I heard screams from inside. I shoved the nozzle back in place on the pump. A voice I knew well screamed, “Mama!”

I started to run toward Betsy, but saw she was facing away from me, holding her arms out toward the front of the van. Just barely, I recognized Mary Alice Hodges, a few rows up.

Hodges pointed the tire iron at Santa. He dropped his voice so low I could barely hear him. “That won’t save you from the wrath of God, sinner. Now, go, before it catches up with you in the here and now.”

Santa turned and staggered away, mumbling. He picked up his bottle and disappeared around the corner of the gas station. I remained inert, my mouth open. Hodges tossed the tire iron back into the rear of the van and seemed to notice me for the first time. He nodded, then slammed the back door, blocking my view of Betsy. A low whimper caught in my throat. Hodges went around the side of the van. I heard the pump click and the sound of the nozzle inserted into its home station. He didn’t appear again. I heard his door slam and the engine start, then the van pulled away, dragging my heart along with it.

On wooden legs, I took the three steps back to the door of my car. Somehow, I got it open and lowered myself inside. Betsy. Betsy had called out for her mama and that scary Mary Alice Hodges was the only one there. I was still months away from being able to try to adopt her, and she needed a mama now.

Ava yanked the door open and dove inside, her teeth chattering. She slammed it and looked at me. “Damn, girl, you look like you seen a jumbie.” She used the island word for ghost or spirit, which I knew from my time there with Katie.

“Something like that,” I said. I bit my lip, holding back tears, and pointed the Mustang toward Heaven.

***

At five twenty-five, I poofed my bangs a little and shellacked them into place. If the sky was still spitting snow, my hair needed the support. Heck, I needed support as much as my hair did. I’d ended an emotional call with Nadine a few minutes before. She was understandably shaken about the death of her coworker/friend. Finding Ivanka and all that came after hadn’t been the highlight of my day, either, but it was the sight of Betsy and the sound of her voice calling out to her mama that I couldn’t shake. I had to, though. I took a deep breath. Obsessing about it wouldn’t do me a bit of good. I turned sideways in front of the bathroom mirror, checking myself from all angles. Peach flocked wallpaper provided the backdrop, and a Phelps family tree cross-stitch sampler framed my head. The lavender lingerie set was hidden, but I smoothed my hand over the waist of my black flowing skirt. No one would have ever guessed I was pregnant less than three months ago from my flat belly now.

The doorbell rang at five thirty, exactly as Jack had promised it would.

Mother’s voice chirped, “I’ll get it.”

“Thanks, Mother.”

A few taps sounded on the bathroom door.

I opened it. “All yours,” I said.

Ava stepped toward me, her hands splayed at hip level on either side of her. She smacked a kiss in the air five inches from my cheek. “I won’t be but a minute.”

I couldn’t imagine what additional primping she needed for a Christmas Eve service, although it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if she changed clothes entirely. The curve-hugging black dress with the peekaboo chest and crisscross back straps might have worked for her canceled gig, but it was bound to raise a few eyebrows at a church. Not to mention her four-inch black pumps with little bows on the heels that accented the back seams in her pantyhose.

We exchanged places in the bathroom. She leaned into the mirror, pursing her plum-colored lips and pushing her breasts farther up and out of her dress. Her perfect, café au lait skin glistened above her neckline, sparkled even, and I suspected she’d dusted her décolletage with something. A lot of something. My mouth went dry watching her, and I wasn’t even attracted to women. I cringed to think the impact she could have on Jack. Sure, I was pretty, but Ava was sex on two legs.

I heard my mother greeting him, and the rumble of his hello back to her.

I swallowed and said to Ava, “Meet us in the living room.” I turned to go, then added, “The roads are bad, so we need to get moving as quick as we can.”

She winked at me. “No problem, mon.”

I walked down the dark hallway from the bathroom to the strains of “What Child Is This” playing. My low-heeled riding boots were almost soundless against the carpet. They had seemed a smart, attractive choice half an hour ago but now hopelessly bland. I straightened my red cashmere sweater. The soft wool was luxurious to the touch, but was it too “school marm” beside Ava?

“Enough of this bull hockey,” I whispered to myself. “Woman up.”

I’d already had a more-than-full day, but this evening was important to me. I wasn’t going to let insecurity or anything else spoil it. I pasted on a smile, and walked to the door of the bright living room.

Jack and my mother stood in front of the hearth before a roaring fire. She had pressed a rosy-cheeked Santa mug in his hand, and steam rose from its mouth as the aroma of spiced tea wafted my way.

“I just can’t thank you enough, Jack. For everything.”

I stayed rooted in the doorway. What did she have to thank Jack for? Hackles rose on my arms. Surely she wasn’t talking about him giving me a job?

“Yep.” But of course the man of few words—and those usually off topic—wasn’t going to expound on her remarks. “Can I entice you to Downtown Methodist with us tonight?”

Mother beamed. “Maybe next year. I helped with the stage set for the children’s program this year at Believers, and I can’t miss the pageant.” She put her hand on his non-mug arm. “I’m thrilled Emily’s going with you.”

Since the conversation seemed poised to take an embarrassing direction without any further illumination on what my mother had to be thankful to Jack for, I broke in. “Merry Christmas Eve.”