Seed (3 page)

“One-oh-three,” she said as soon as she saw him in the doorway. “She came home with a fever and she’s up to one hundred and three. I think we need to go to the hospital.”

“Did you give her a bath?” Jack asked, approaching his shivering daughter. Charlie was bundled beneath a pile of blankets, her teeth chattering in her sleep.

“Every time I try to move her she starts to cry. If I even touch her she freaks out.”

Jack took a seat next to Charlie, pressing his palm to her forehead. Aimee was right; if they couldn’t get her fever down they’d have to go to the ER—something they sure as hell couldn’t afford.

Peeling the blankets away from her coiled-up body, Jack stuck an arm under the girl and hefted her up into his arms. Charlie whined, squirmed, tried to get away, but Jack didn’t give in. He held her tight and walked to the bathroom, Aimee at his heels. Taking a seat on the toilet lid, he ran the bath while Aimee stripped off Charlie’s sweat-soaked clothes.

A worried Abigail appeared in the doorway with Nubs at her heels.

“Is she gonna be okay?” she asked.

When Aimee failed to answer, Jack looked at his eldest and offered her a reassuring smile.

“Everything’s going to be fine, sweetheart. Charlie just needs to cool down.”

As if on cue, Jack lowered Charlie into the tub. As soon as the cold water bit her skin, the shock of cold made her buck and thrash. She exhaled a high-pitched scream, clawing at the sides of the tub, desperately trying to escape. Abby slapped her hands over her ears. Nubs let out a frightened yelp and cowered in the hall. Jack held Charlie down while Aimee clasped her hands over her mouth. She looked away, unable to watch her baby thrash and writhe like a frightened animal.

“Let her go,” she finally demanded. “Let her out, you’re scaring her.”

But Jack didn’t give. Each passing second rendered Charlie calmer. She eventually breathed out the most pitiful wail he’d had ever heard and gave up, going limp in the bath with a sob.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Aimee whispered after Charlie had drifted back into a fitful sleep, a damp towel pressed to her forehead.

“Nothing’s wrong with her,” Jack assured. “She’s got the flu or something. She’ll be fine.”

Aimee nodded, trying to be optimistic, and left the room to heat up Jack’s dinner. Only after she left him alone did he look to his daughter with genuine concern. There was something off about the way she had fought him, something that made him uncomfortable. Had it been Aimee who had held Charlie down, he was sure Charlie would have leapt from that tub and rushed past her like a feral, wild-eyed child. It had been too much fight for a six-year-old.

“I gave her Tylenol but it isn’t doing a damn thing,” Aimee complained, watching Jack eat his meatloaf and mashed potatoes. “If I hadn’t sent her to school this morning she wouldn’t have gotten so sick. She told me she felt bad.”

Jack gave Aimee a look.

“What?”

“She’s a kid. She’d have gotten sick whether she was here or at school, or anywhere else.”

“Well I’d rather it have been here,” Aimee said. “At least that way I could have had my eye on her.”

“You’ll have your eye on her tomorrow. And most likely a day or two after that.”

“It was probably one of those kids at the pizza place,” Aimee mused. “It’s just like backroad Louisiana hicks to take their sick kid to a place crammed with other kids. I swear to God…”

Jack grinned. It was one thing he loved about her; Aimee was sweet and put together on the outside, but once you cracked that outer shell she was a pillar of brimstone. Raised a strict Catholic, it seemed that the constant Sunday sermons had infused hellfire into Aimee’s blood.

“What?” Aimee gave Jack’s smile a suspicious look. “I swear, sometimes I wonder why we even bother living here.”

“Where else would we live?” he asked. “New York? You want to move to California and get ourselves a condo out on the beach somewhere? Think we’d fit in?”

“What do you mean ‘fit in’?” Aimee looked genuinely offended. “Is there something wrong with us?”

“Sure,” Jack said. “We’re Southerners.”

“And what’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“It means we were born here, we live here, and we die here.”

Aimee smirked with a shake of her head.

“I don’t mind the South,” she said. “It’s the
dirty
South I can’t stand.”

It was the dirty South that made Jack who he was; Aimee just didn’t know it. She knew hardly anything about his childhood except that he’d grown up in Georgia and made his way to Louisiana after he left home. But she didn’t know when he’d left home—had no idea that he was only a few weeks beyond his fourteenth birthday when he flew the coop, never to see his parents again.

Exhaling a breath, Aimee slumped in her seat and sighed.

“I forgot to tell you, Daddy’s going to let us borrow the Olds until we get another car.”

Jack grimaced. He hated borrowing anything from the Rileys. Aimee’s parents emanated an air of being ‘above’ them; the last thing he needed was old Arnold’s pristinely waxed Oldsmobile parked in the driveway.

“They’re doing us a favor,” Aimee reminded him.

“Sure,” Jack muttered. “I’m sure they are.”

That evening Jack woke to a tug on his t-shirt sleeve. Charlie stood beside the bed, her hair plastered across a sweat-beaded forehead.

“Daddy,” she whispered hoarsely. “I think there’s someone in my room.”

The next morning, Abby dragged herself into the kitchen for breakfast. Aimee turned away from the stove, balancing a pancake on top of a spatula, and inspected the girl from across the room.

“Please tell me you aren’t getting sick like your sister.”

Abby shook her head no, then slouched in her chair like a ragdoll.

“What’s wrong then?”

“Tired,” Abby murmured.

“Did Charlie keep you up?”

Abby shook her head again.

“I think it was an animal,” she said. “There was this scratching on the wall outside. All night.”

Jack often wondered how Aimee would react to knowing just how much of the dirty South he had in him. The Rileys had been shocked when their daughter had announced she was engaged to a roughneck—a nobody that had come from nowhere, like a ghost that had gotten stuck in the bayou. But the thought that got to him most was how shocked, and perhaps disgusted, his own parents would have been to discover that Jack was marrying into gentility. It was hard to forget just how rough Gilda and Stephen had been when it came to ‘the riches’. Everywhere they went, whether it was the market or the movie theater, Gilda and Steve were scoping out the place, pinpointing the people who looked the most refined, tallying up the most expensive cars in poorly lit parking lots. Jack was too young to know for sure, but he had a suspicion his folks lived off more than government checks. Every now and again his dad would show up with a new leather jacket or a necklace for Gilda, but there was never a mention of how he found such treasures.

The Rileys were the type to swear by genetics. He was sure that if Patricia and Arnold knew the truth about the family he had left behind, the fact that he had run for his life wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference.

Reagan took a seat next to Jack at the warped picnic table that served as their lunch area a few yards from the boat shop. Jack had known Reagan since he’d found himself in Louisiana, and Reagan didn’t have a much better upbringing. He was gangly: tall, with long limbs that reminded Jack of a spider—if a spider lifted weights in its free time. He was the type of guy who liked to challenge authority by fitting his Charger with an exhaust that woke all of Live Oak when he took a late-night drive. He wore eyeliner and gauged his ears and bought intentionally offensive t-shirts off the internet, which he would then wear to the shop, betting Jack that today was the day he’d get punched in the mouth by a swamper.

“This Saturday is booked,” Reagan said, drawing a cigarette from its pack. “Should be a good night.”

Music was another reason the Rileys never took to Jack. Reagan and Jack were the backbone of Lamb. The band had been Reagan’s before Jack was ever part of the picture, but when Reagan discovered that Jack wrote all his own lyrics he threw Jack onto the helm and let him pilot the ship. Reagan’s act of selflessness for the good of the band paid off in strides. Lamb became a hit at a few local bars and clubs, and the boys eventually took to Bourbon where, miraculously, they gained a following that filled the Red Door to capacity every time they played their brooding, bluesy rock-n-roll.

Jack stared down at his bologna and cheese sandwich. It sat there, boring and humorless on a square of wax paper.

“Man, I don’t know,” Jack said. “This weekend is really bad timing.”

“It’s already a done deal.”

“Yeah, I know. And it’s going to get me into some serious shit.”

“What’s the problem?” Reagan asked. “You guys having a fight?”

He shoved the bologna sandwich back into the paper bag it came from. Having two daughters, Jack got sack lunches along with the girls. Aimee hated wasting money, which Jack supposed was partly his fault. When Aimee agreed to marry him, the Rileys decided it would be best for their daughter to get a taste of ‘real life’. Aimee had been expected to go to college and worked on a degree while waiting for an appropriate suitor, preferably a handsome young man working toward a PhD. Someone by the name of Ashley or Leslie or Rhett would have been preferable. As soon as Aimee was tossed from the nest and into Jack’s arms, they quickly realized just how little money they had.

Aimee had learned to embrace her less-than-perfect life as a direct affront to her parents. It was a giant
fuck you
to the both of them: she hadn’t starved to death like they had expected her to, and she hadn’t crawled back to them for help either. It gave her satisfaction to know her parents were irked by this. They had fully expected her to fail and run back home, begging them to take her back.

In fact, Patricia Riley still hoped for this to happen. She was waiting patiently for Aimee to announce the dissolution of their marriage. If Pat Riley was a gambling woman, she’d have a ladies’ wager on it.

“It’s just the whole thing with the accident,” Jack said. “And now Charlotte is sick. And we’re being forced to use Aimee’s old man’s car until we come up with the money to buy a new one. Aimee’s on edge.”

“So what do you want me to do? Cancel?” Reagan shook his head. “You know that’s going to make us look like shit.”

“I know,” Jack murmured. “We can’t cancel.”

“Then what?” Reagan asked. He paused a moment, then continued: “I mean, if we have to cancel, we’ll cancel. I’m just saying it’s going to look bad. It’s going to piss Max off. And I’m not really sure if it’s a good idea to piss off the owner of the only club we play, you know? I mean, you get what I’m saying here, right? I’m not trying to be a dick or anything. I’m being realistic. Realism, man.”

“I get what you’re saying.”

“I don’t want to be the bad guy,” Reagan insisted.

“I know.”

“Seriously, it’s like not my intention to make waves between you and Aimee. I’ll even tell her myself. I love her like a sister,” he continued.

“Reagan…”

“Like an incredibly hot half-sister.”

Jack pressed his elbows against the weather-warped wood of the picnic table and put his head in his hands.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered into his palms. “You’re so fucking weird sometimes, you know that?”

“I know,” Reagan agreed.

“Like just…
off
.”

“Oh, I know, dude. Seriously, I’m a psychopath.”

“I’ll just deal with it,” Jack said. “She’ll just have to understand. It was already scheduled.”

“Sure, she’ll understand. And then she’ll rip your balls off.”

Jack smirked and patted Reagan on the shoulder. “That’s all a part of marriage, my friend.”

“And you enjoy this?” Reagan asked, truly curious.

“Love is pain.”

“Write a song about it.”

“Good idea,” Jack said. “I’ll do that. I’ll have plenty of time while sleeping on the couch.”

Chapter Three

W
hen Abby came home from school there was a lump on Charlie’s bed. Buried beneath a set of Spongebob sheets and matching comforter, Charlie had taken up her favorite position of sleeping with her butt in the air. She’d done it since she was a baby; elbows pulled into her chest, her knees pressed into the mattress, her rear end flying high and her thumb stuck in her mouth. Abby didn’t have to see her to know that was her sister’s exact position.

She dropped her backpack next to the leg of the desk she and her sister shared. Most days, if Charlie had homework, she’d do it at the kitchen table with Aimee and Abby would have the room all to herself. Then there were days like these, where Charlie refused to leave the bedroom and Abby would have to do her best to ignore the six-year-old monster on the opposite side of the room.

Squatting next to her bag, Abby began to rifle through Lisa Frank folders—her favorite was the one with a unicorn on the front—searching for her homework.

The lump on Charlie’s bed shifted.

Abby waited for her sister to pop her head out from beneath the sheets. When it didn’t happen, she shrugged to herself and continued to search for the right notebook—the one with Hello Kitty stickers all over it. She was sure she brought it home.

The lump shifted again.

Abby blinked. “Char?”

Getting no response, Abby rolled her eyes and looked back to her bag, ignoring the next fumbling shift atop Charlie’s mattress. She had learned from her mother: if Charlie didn’t get a response, she’d get bored and stop. But when the lump began to convulse, as though the person beneath it was suddenly unable to breathe, Abby stared at it with a startled expression. It was moving in a nearly mechanical way—oddly jerky, like a gyro in need of grease.

Charlie had been diagnosed with asthma after an attack at a local park. Abby remembered how her sister’s face had turned blue, how she had clawed at her neck with wide, desperate eyes. Kneeling on the bedroom floor, the memory conjured in Abby’s mind and anchored, forcing her heart to flutter as she pictured her sister beneath those sheets, suffocating while she watched.