The Sweet Dead Life (25 page)

determined to find Mike's body, because she

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was convinced he was dead. "I know I was wrong," she told me that day.

"Mike might leave me. But he'd never leave the kids. I'm thinking about hiring a private detective."

That day, I stopped funding their bank account. Two days later, I began supplying Holly with her vitamins. I told her daughter to make sure her mother took her medicine. That might have been the end of it. But the thought of Mike out there kept needling at my brain. What if he was alive?

What if his memory had returned? What if he'd figured everything out and was watching us, just waiting for the right moment to strike and get us all?

Like I said: fear makes you crazy.

Then Manny confirmed those worst fears for me. Mike Samuels was out there, all right. Not just out there. Close. In Texas. Working as a groundskeeper at a ballpark for some rinky-dink minor league team, the Round Rocks.

I might not be remembering that correctly, by the way. I was too terrified to remember anything clearly. Besides, Manny might have been lying.

At first I'd planned to poison Holly, to use her as bait.

But Jenna's boots were lying on the living room floor. Every time I ever saw that girl she was wearing those boots, except for this one day. Maybe that's why I made the spot decision. It was dumb luck. No father could resist coming to rescue his daughter.

While Holly was in the bathroom, I spiked the inner soles of those boots with the poison I'd intended to use on Holly. My plan was to make Mike Samuels come out of hiding. And that's all I can tell you.

I don't know what happened at the Galleria. But I suspect it's the beginning of a process I deserve and have had long coming.

Dr. Stuart Renfroe, MD

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"JUST LIKE YOU guys suspected," Amber said, folding the papers and handing them to Casey, who then handed them to me.

"You should have dropped him," Casey said. His voice was low and I could see his jaw tighten. "You should have let the bastard die."

I reached across Amber and patted his thigh. "No wonder he made the miracle snake venom diagnosis," I said. "He'd given it to me. Of course he knew what it was." Guess that was one way to interpret that Hippocratic Oath. I blinked several times. My eyes were stinging. There was suddenly a lump in my throat the size of a baseball, but I choked out: "Dad might be in Texas."

"Exactly," Amber said. "I wanted to show you this first before I told you the rest. I talked to some of my cop friends at the station. Friends through Terry."

She flushed and glowed a little.

(Note to self: If Terry wasn't to Amber what Lanie was to Casey, he was
pretty damn close.)

"Anyway." She took a deep breath and stood, turning to face the both of us.

"They've found someone matching his description, with his name, in Austin.

But they haven't contacted him yet."

The room spun dizzily. I clutched at the bedspread.

Casey just kept shaking his head. "So why hasn't he come home yet?" he asked in a small voice.

That was a good question. But I could tell by the silence the three of us had already guessed the answer. Dad really
had
forgotten about us.

"We need to go to Austin," I said.

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Amber nodded.

"Yeah," Casey said, "except for one thing."

"What?"

"Mom. You still can't tell her about me. Can't tell Dad either, if we find him."

I was about to argue, but stopped. "Okay," I said. I wiped my eyes and straightened. That preacher at Maggie's church, the one who had talked about slippery slopes and telling the truth, had also told us about forgiveness. You can't move on until you forgive, he said. When it came to Dr. Renfroe--who had smashed our family into crooked bits--I had a feeling I'd be stuck for awhile.

But I didn't want Mom to be stuck, too. Not any more than she already was.

So yes, I would keep Casey's secret from her. And I knew right then that I'd also keep Renfroe's. I would never tell her that he changed his mind at the last minute and poisoned me instead of her. I didn't give a damn if Mom ever forgave Renfroe. But I knew as sure as I knew anything that she would never forgive herself, not for what happened to either Casey or me. Even if it wasn't her fault, she would still feel responsible. That's what parents did.

At least parents whose brains hadn't been scrambled.

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Maggie and I exchanged Christmas gifts early. I told her I was going on a road trip to Austin and I wasn't sure when we'd be back. Maggie made me open hers first: a black tank top with an array of sparkles and sequins on the top that she'd designed herself. I almost choked on my own spit when I realized the design was of an angel.

"Don't know why I thought of that for you," she said. "But I was arranging the sequins and suddenly there it was. Not too hokey?"

I hugged her tight. "Perfect," I said. "Really."

She unwrapped my gift to her. Presents were tricky. We were still broke, although Mom had started applying for jobs. Oak View had closed for now, but the Med Center was a big place. Hopefully someone would be in need of a speech therapist who was now a specialist on memory issues. But in all honesty, we had no idea if Mom would ever be totally herself again. I guess none of us would.

"Yum!" Maggie said. "And also perfect!" I had given her 224

two gifts: a pack of press-on tattoos of famous artists (the Van Gogh tattoo had only one ear) and a tin of homemade snickerdoodles. Mamaw Nell had shared her recipe.

When she asked why we were going to Austin, I replied, "A change of pace."

It wasn't the truth, but it was hardly a lie.

AT FIRST WE didn't tell Mom why we were going to Austin, either.

Casey and I met Amber for kolaches to discuss a possible ruse. Amber had already staked out a table at the doughnut shop when we arrived, a huge box at her feet.

"For you," she told me.

The label read Bubba's Boot Town.

Inside was a shiny new pair of Ariats, pointy-toed like Amber's. They were red and tan leather, and the inside was lined with blue.

"Texas girls need their boots," Amber said. "Besides, it's high time you returned those borrowed purple clogs to Nurse Ed."

Of all the things I'd ever expected from Amber Velasco, I had never expected her to make me cry. I swallowed, hard. I tried to think of funny things. It didn't work.

"Thanks," I croaked. The boots fit just right: tight at the instep and giving a little at the heel. Cow leather, not snakeskin, which was fine by me. She had also included a bottle of leather conditioner. My feet felt like dancing. If I had been Amber, I'd have spread my wings and flown around Sundale Donuts in happiness. Instead, I scarfed two sausage kolaches and sucked down a container of chocolate milk.

"So here's what I'm thinking," Casey began. "We--"

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His phone rang. When he checked the caller ID, his eyes lit up.

Amber heaved a sigh. "Go ahead. Get this out of your system."

Casey made no comment, just hightailed it out of the doughnut shop, his cell already clapped to his ear.

"Want to split this last one?" Amber pointed to the remaining sausage kolache. All of a sudden I noticed that she was back in her EMT outfit today.

"You really are an EMT?" I asked. Yes, I trusted Amber Velasco now. But I also knew that she would never tell us the whole truth if she could help it, about anything.

Amber shrugged. "More or less."

I frowned.

"Like your brother going to school still." She slurped some more coffee.

Pressed her finger to the kolache crumbs on the napkin and licked them off.

"It's a cover. I'm a part-timer when it suits my purposes. Right now, it does."

I kept frowning. "That's it?"

She flashed a half-smile. "Jenna, come on."

I glanced out the window at Casey, blabbing on his cell, as happy as I'd ever seen him. Did he not know that the whole Lanie thing was never going to work out? Or maybe it was. That was the problem. I just didn't know. About Lanie. About how long Casey would stay here. About the wings and how he'd used up his flight saving me. But Amber had used hers up, too, hadn't she?

And that's when it happened: everything that I still didn't know came burbling up and out. Question after question after question ...

Amber didn't look upset in the least. She folded her arms across her chest as I spilled. When I was finally done, I took

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a deep breath and flopped back in my seat. She stared at me for few long beats without saying anything. Then she glanced wistfully out the window at Casey.

"Everything you overheard at Mario's is true," she said. "I mean, you want to know about me, right? I was living with my boyfriend. It was my senior year and I'd just finished my med-school applications. Someone broke into our apartment one night ..." Amber stopped talking. Her gaze went somewhere that I couldn't go.

"Were you in love with him? Your boyfriend?"

"Yeah," Amber said. "I was." She eyeballed Casey again, then shifted her gaze back at me.

I leaned forward. "And is he still alive? Is he--"

"He's not an angel," Amber said, "if that's what you want to know."

What I wanted was the rest of the story. What had happened to her? Who had done it? What had happened to her boyfriend? Was it Terry? How had she ended up with wings? But I understood that this was all I was getting. At least for now.

"I'll tell you something else," she said. She wrapped her hands around her Styrofoam cup of coffee. Lowered her voice. Her perfect bangs looked just the tiniest bit flatter today, tired out. "Something your brother doesn't know.

I'd rather you not tell him, but I'll leave that up to you."

I nodded.

"I know I should have, but I didn't give a rat's ass whether Renfroe killed himself. He's not why I flew out there, Jenna. Justice or no justice. Anyone who could do what he did, no matter what his reasons ... I flew to catch you, Jenna." She raised the cup to her lips, then set it down without taking a drink. "But when I saw that Casey was

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already one step ahead of me, I had to make a choice. Your brother was going to suffer for what he did either way. He was already out there, already committed. There was no turning back. So I did what I had to. I let him come for you and I grabbed up Renfroe instead. Might as well get some benefit out of it since I'd already taken the leap. Jenna, your brother might have lost his chance to fly while here on Earth. But he did it to save you. I needed to let him have that."

My cheeks were suddenly wet. I sniffed and nodded again.
Thanks
, I mouthed.

You're welcome
, she mouthed back.

The Aggie 12 th Man
, I thought. That was Amber Velasco. Even if she and Casey were now effectively benched with the wing debacle. She was there no matter what.

Casey burst back into the shop, grinning from ear to ear. "We need to find time to get to the mall," he said. "I have to replace that gift for Lanie."

"What about Mom?" I asked.

He blinked at me. Then he shrugged. "Screw it. Let's tell her the truth. If we find him, she's gonna find out, anyway."

BACK AT THE house, we decided to let Mom lead the conversation. We started with how she was feeling.

As usual, her memory still came and went. But it was getting stronger. Now she knew why. And she remembered other things too: if I'd forgotten to give her a vitamin (and sometimes I did forget) she started feeling better. She would fight the fuzziness. In those times, she would call and email anyone who knew Dad. Something deep inside, something not even the drugs could destroy, had told her that the cops were wrong, that if Dad was alive, eventually, he'd come back. If not to her, than at least to a place that was familiar.

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People didn't easily let go of their strongest and best memories. Something would draw him back and if she kept asking around, she'd find him. That was the hope.

I didn't question her logic on this. Nor did I remind her of all the memories she'd tossed to the wind. It seemed pointless and cruel.

Here is what Mom said when we told her that the police might have found Dad. The thing that shocked us all.

"I thought about going to Austin, too. We met at UT, remember? That's why he always wanted to go back there."

She didn't so much as bat an eyelash.

Truth? I didn't know whether to feel relieved or troubled. Had Dad wanted to go back to Austin? Had we just forgotten that in five years? What had he liked to do? Was he crazy about the UT Longhorns like Mr. Collins was about A&M? I remembered something about breakfast tacos--there was a place in Austin that he loved. Or was I just imagining it? For some reason, I pictured him saying the word "Taco" over and over again and laughing.

"Taco Taco Taco ..."

"Minor League Baseball in Round Rock," Mom told us in the heavy silence.

"Your dad was a crazy person for minor league ball. He said it was purer than anything else these days."

"Oh," Casey said. "Huh."