Growing and Kissing (34 page)

And it was worth it, to be with Louise. We were together a lot, now, every hour she didn’t have to be at her job or looking after her sister. Most of the time, we were working, but I still managed to coax her away from the plants long enough to go up to the big four poster in the bedroom...or I’d push her down on one of the tables and slowly strip her...or I’d just catch her as she walked past and press her up against the wall….

When she was there, it was great. When she wasn’t, though...that’s when I got to thinking. Like right now, as I hammered down a new floorboard.

In another few weeks, it’ll all be over.
Louise would bring in a great crop—I didn’t doubt that for a second. If I could keep her safe until then, we could sell it to Malone and Kayley could get her treatment.

...and
then
what?

Against all my expectations, it felt good to have opened up to her. It felt
great.
But once we’d sold the crop and she’d gone back to her normal life...would she still want me? What the hell could I offer her? All I was good at was being a scary fucker and smashing stuff up.

I heard a noise from the next room, where the plants were.
Shit.
Probably just a bird—there were enough missing slates on the roof that they got in, sometimes. But I wasn’t taking any chances: I kept the claw hammer in my hand. As I crept through the doorway, I drew it back….

No one there. I could see right across the room, between the shifting foliage. I sighed, lowered the hammer and started walking the aisles, looking for the bird. I’d heard
something....

I was on my third aisle when I heard the rustle. I spun around, lifting up the hammer again...but there was no one.

Not at
that
height.

It wasn’t until I glanced down that I saw the intruder, sitting on the floor against a table leg.

“Hi,” said Kayley.

Louise

I’d just finished my shift at the garden store. On the phone, Sean had just said
you need to get over here,
so I didn’t understand how bad the situation was until I glimpsed Kayley’s bandana between the plants.
Oh shit.

I skidded to a stop in front of her and Sean. He and I exchanged horrified looks.

“This is for Switzerland, isn’t it?” Kayley said. “This is for my treatment.”

I looked at Sean and then looked at her. I nodded.

“Are you
INSANE?”
Kayley yelled. “You’re growing
drugs!
You...you
asshat,
Louise!
This isn’t…” She looked at me helplessly. “This isn’t
you!”

“I know,” I said softly. “But it was the only way. We had to have the money.” I took hold of her arms. “Look, this is just a one-time thing. And it’s all over in another few weeks.”

Kayley swallowed, turning pale. I could see her working it out in her head. This is what had terrified me all along: not just her finding out I was breaking the law, or being scared for me, but figuring out why I needed to do it. Watching the realization wash over her was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen.

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” she whispered. “If this doesn’t work, if I don’t go to Switzerland...I’m going to die.”

Before I could answer, Sean stepped forward. “That’s fuckin’
irrelevant
,” he said heavily. “Because this
is
going to work.” And he said it in
that
voice. The same one he used when he told a trespassing dealer they were leaving town,
now,
or the owner of a poker den that the game was
over.
It sounded like slabs of stone the size of houses, so fucking
sure
that even I was convinced.

Kayley nodded, tears in her eyes. Then she suddenly ran to me and threw her arms around me, pressing her face to my chest. I hugged her tight, nodding silent thanks to Sean over the top of her head.

“You’re still an asshat,” Kayley said at last, her voice muffled. “You really thought I’d never find out?”

“How
did
you find out?” I asked.

She pushed back from me a little. “I snuck a look at your phone while you were asleep and found this place pinned on Google Maps. So I got a cab over here while you were at work. At first, I thought
he
must live here—the guy you were dating. Then I snuck in a window and saw
this.
” She waved at the plants, then walked closer to look at one. “Good plan, telling Stacey you’re dating. You totally have her fooled.” She chose that moment to glance up and see Sean and my guilty faces. “Oh. Oh
shit!”
She clapped her hand to her mouth. “You two are—”

My face flashed red. I’d been so concerned with her finding out about the grow house, I hadn’t thought about that side of it. I exchanged looks with Sean, but there was zero chance of hiding it. And there’d been enough lying already. “Yes,” I said at last.

“
Fuck!”
Kayley breathed.

I tried to claw back some shreds of parental authority. “Okay, under the circumstances I’m giving you a free pass up until now. But if one more curse comes out of those lips, I’m suspending your Kindle account.”

Kayley gave me a look...but she also looked strangely relieved that things were back to normal. Well,
sort of
normal.

“So you’ll be here all the time?” she asked, looking around.

“Most of the day, yes, when I’m not at the garden store. I’ll be back at the apartment every night. No more emergencies...I hope.”

“But I’ll barely see you,” Kayley said. “Can’t we all just move in here? There’s plenty of space.”

“
WHAT?”

“I could help with the plants.”

“
NO!”
My chest had clamped tight with fear. “Kayley, you are
never
to come here again, understand?
Ever.”

“Okay, okay, whatever.” She looked around ruefully. “But this place is
awesome!”

“We need to get you home,” I said. “Right now. Come on, I’ll drive you.”

She sighed but trailed along behind me. The fact she knew—about the growing and about Sean—had my stomach in knots. But, oddly, I felt lighter. It was only now I’d stopped lying that I realized how much it had been tearing me up inside.

We were almost out of the room when Kayley suddenly broke away from me and ran back to Sean. He’d started to turn away and swung back towards her running footsteps just to get a small warm wrecking ball in the chest. He
oofed
and staggered back a step, then looked up at me in wonder as he realized she was hugging him.

“Thank you,” said Kayley. “I know she wouldn’t have pulled this off on her own.”

Sean looked down at her awkwardly, as if he’d never had a kid hug him before. Then it hit me that, in all probability, he hadn’t. “That’s okay,” he said at last.

Kayley finally pushed back and looked up at him. “Don’t you dare break her heart,” she said hotly.

Sean nodded solemnly, then glanced at me. “I won’t.”

Louise

With the secret out and the tension between Sean and I gone, I thought things would get easier. But as we hit the flowering stage, things went from stressy to
insane.
This period was critical: every tiny adjustment in light, water, air and fertilizer now made a huge difference. This was when the plants would shoot up and turn potent...
if
we got it exactly right. It was like sitting a college degree course that has a single final exam right at the end worth 100% of the credits: you could work your ass off the whole time but then blow it all at the end.

I’d get up early, get Kayley up and dressed and set her some schoolwork, make breakfast, rush off to my job, work a shift, drive to the mansion and then work straight through until the evening, rush back to the apartment and cook dinner, then spend a few hours trying to figure out which bill to pay to avoid anything being cut off. Kayley offered to help: “I’m four-freaking-teen,” she told me. “I can cook my own dinner.” But every day, she was getting weaker. No way was I leaving her to fend for herself, not now.

Dr. Huxler was starting to get worried. When I brought Kayley in for her next blood test, he took me aside. “I don’t need to see the test results,” he told me. “She needs to be in Switzerland
now.”

“You said six months,” I said.

“Leukemia doesn’t stick to a calendar. I held it off for as long as I could—any more chemo would have killed her. Now it’s free to progress and it’s going faster than I’d hoped.” He shook his head. “From this point on, every day counts.”

Just another week,
I thought.
That’s all I need.
But every day, Kayley got paler and weaker. I couldn’t leave her...but I couldn’t leave the plants, either. I felt like I was tearing myself in half: if I left Kayley on her own, I was the worst mom and sister ever. If I left the plants on their own, I was going to blow it all and Kayley would die. Something had to give, but I couldn’t take any more time off work: I’d used up every bit of vacation time and every personal day I had.

“Quit,” Sean told me one morning.

“
What?
We need that money!” Sean had been contributing some cash from the jobs he still took from Malone and the other dealers, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

He put his hands on my shoulders. “The plants need you. Kayley needs you. This’ll give you more time for both. And the money won’t make a difference—not now. If for some reason we can’t sell the crop, we’re fucked anyway.”

I slowly nodded. Going all-in made my stomach twist and tighten into a cold, iron knot...but it also made me realize that really I’d been all-in from the start, ever since that first conversation in Dr. Huxler’s office. If we pulled this off, I’d just have to find a new job and a way to pay off my debts. If we didn’t, if Kayley died...I honestly wouldn’t care about any of it, anymore.

So I quit my job and started running the grow house like the laboratory I’d always wanted to work in. For the final week, everything was timed down to the minute. I taped up the doorways with plastic sheeting so that I could control airflow, precisely timed the lighting cycles, brought in exotic mixes of plant nutrients to give them that final boost....I could see it working but I was utterly exhausted. On the fifth day, I fell asleep face-down on a table and didn’t even wake when my phone’s alarm went off. Sean, who’d been fixing a leak in the plumbing, had to gently shake me awake.

“Shit,” I said, looking at the time. “Shit, shit,
shit!”
I scrambled up out of my seat, tripped over the leg of the stool and went sprawling. I got to my feet, waving away Sean’s hand, and lumbered towards the door, drunk with fatigue. “I said I’d take Kayley to see a movie. I need to be picking her up
now.”

Sean stepped in front of me and put a big, solid hand on my chest. “
Stop,”
he commanded. “When did you last sleep?
”