Chapter 4
ZEKE
I heard raised voices upstairs and was deeply tempted to pretend I didn’t.
Josiah had gone from shell-shocked silence to arguing with all of the Thompsons at the drop of a hat.
With me too, truthfully, but I didn’t fight back.
His grandmother had told me, before hustling out to catch her cab to the airport, that I should let Heidi take Josiah.
She would “teach that child how to behave.” Over my dead body.
Heidi was the last Thompson still around, and she’d come over to pick through Krystal’s room for family mementos.
I’d told her she had to clear anything she took with Josiah first, but personally I didn’t care if she walked off with Krystal’s earrings or a picture off the wall.
Josiah had originally said he didn’t care either, but the yelling suggested otherwise.
Setting aside the file of bills I was looking over, I left Dad’s study and took the stairs two at a time.
Josiah stood in front of Krystal and Dad’s bedroom, arms spread to block the doorway. “I changed my mind!” he shouted. “I don’t want you going in there.” I peered at him, seeing damp eyes and reddened cheeks.
“Now listen to me, young man,” Heidi began, at equal volume.
“Enough.” I strode down the hall toward them. “What’s the problem?”
Josiah turned his strained gaze to me. “I don’t want her to go in there. She said Mom was too soft on me and stuff. I don’t want her in Mom’s room.”
“Okay.” Grieving twelve-year-old wins this one. I turned to Heidi. “Sorry, I guess you won’t get to do this today.”
“What? But my plane leaves tomorrow. You can’t keep me away from my sister’s things.”
I pinched my nose and reminded myself she was grieving too. “Technically, Josiah inherited all of it. If he’s not ready to share, he doesn’t have to.”
“You’re worse than Krystal.” Heidi glared at me, then gestured to Josiah. “Look at him! Look at those dirty, ragged sweats he’s wearing. Even Krystal would never have let him walk around like that.”
“I like these, and I’ll wash them later,” Josiah snapped.
Heidi flicked him a frown, then turned back to me. “Krystal’s only been gone a week, and the child is falling apart. He needs his whole family around him, and some steady, consistent discipline. He doesn’t get to stand there and tell adults what to do.”
“In this case, he does.” I sighed. “Look, if there is some particular item you think would be a comfort to your family, let me know what it is. Perhaps Josiah will let me go in and get it for you.”
“Well, how would I know if I don’t look?”
“If it’s a family memento…?” I let my voice trail off.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” Heidi huffed. “Krystal was my mother’s last child, my younger sister. We should never have had to bury her, not like this, so soon. We’re all grieving.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I recited mechanically, then tried to infuse more warmth into my words.
I’d faked affection, while undercover, for human traffickers who locked people in trucks and shipping containers.
I could fake it for my annoying aunt-in-law.
“I imagine it was a shock, a blow, to hear that she had passed. And so suddenly.” Krystal had always seemed healthy as a horse, but getting T-boned while making an illegal driving move could kill anyone.
“I know mementos can be a comfort in difficult times. But you have to understand that Josiah’s not ready to have people in his parents’ private room. ”
“I’m Krystal’s sister. I’m not people.”
Josiah stirred as if to speak and I held up my hand, hoping to prevent more sparks. “Anyone, even family. I haven’t even been in there yet.” Josiah had asked to choose his mother’s clothes for the funeral, and I’d been happy to let him.
“Well, you can’t coddle him forever.”
“Ten days are not forever. You’re still grieving Krystal too.”
“I—” She frowned. “Krystal had a pendant, a cameo, that was our grandmother’s.
And a gold locket with photos in it, and a bracelet that our grandfather gave Grandmother that had a gem for each of their children.
Six of them. Those mean more to me and my family than to a child who never met either of my grandparents. ”
I asked Josiah, “Do you care about any of those?”
He shook his head. “Mom never wore them. She probably didn’t like them.”
I spoke to him over the top of some comment from Heidi. “Would they be in her jewelry box?”
“Probably. I guess. It’s on her dresser.”
“Are you okay if I go in and get them?”
“Sure.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t care.”
Heidi said, “If you don’t care—”
“No.” Josiah glared at her. “I don’t want you in there. You never liked Dad, and his stuff is still there.”
“Okay,” I said. “How about you head on downstairs, Heidi? I’ll bring those things down to you. Josiah, maybe wipe the grot off the front of that sweatshirt in the bathroom, if you don’t want to change.”
“I like it the way it is!” He stomped off down the hall to his room and slammed the door behind him.
Heidi watched him go, then raised an eyebrow at me. “That child is out of control. Now he’s gone, why don’t you let me look through Krystal’s things?” She gestured at the door.
“No.” Nothing would break Josiah’s fragile trust sooner than letting Heidi through that doorway, and I wasn’t inclined to do the Thompsons any favours. “I’ll get the jewelry.”
I let myself into the bedroom and closed the door firmly behind me against her prying eyes, locking it when I heard her turn the handle.
For a moment, I stared at the wood grain of the door, before pivoting.
Not coming into this room hadn’t been about respect or grief for Krystal, or sparing Josiah’s feelings, since he hadn’t tried to keep me out.
It was solely about the fact that I hadn’t been in here for seven years, since Dad died.
My first surprise was how little had changed.
The bed was still made with dark-blue sheets and the patchwork comforter our paternal grandmother had made.
Same curtains, same rug on the floor, same pictures hanging on the walls.
Dad’s narrow dresser was polished to a shine, the surface clear of everything except his small accessories box, but he’d been a military man and kept it that way in life as well.
The scent was different, though. I couldn’t put my finger on it, because Dad never wore cologne or aftershave, but something had changed, just enough for the room to feel alien.
I ignored the closed closet and drawers, not wanting to see what of Dad’s was or was not still there.
Eventually, we’d have to tackle everything in here, but I had no urgent need to invade Dad’s space.
I’d taken back my childhood bedroom in the third-floor attic, and I was good with its familiar spaces.
Krystal had kept a big jewelry box on her dresser under the mirror.
I went over to tip the lid, and was caught by my own reflection.
My hair was still growing out from the shaved head I’d sported as part of my undercover persona.
At this point, it all stood on end a centimetre long, like a dark-brown chia pet.
Not a flattering look. Maybe I could see if a stylist could do anything with it.
My jaw was cleanshaven, losing the bushy undercover beard to expose my slab-sided cheeks and the small, thick scar on my chin.
Part of the point of the beard had been to conceal that identifying feature, but I wasn’t ever going undercover again so it didn’t matter.
Never again. I closed my eyes for a second, then met my own gaze.
I saw green eyes I’d turned ordinary brown with contacts, less bruise-circled than at the end of that long nightmare case.
Thick brows and a high forehead contributing to my long narrow face.
I was decent looking, no more, and the scar was ugly, but I was beyond glad to see my real self looking back out of mirrors at me, not Unger, the cruel man I’d pretended to be.
Stay out of my head, Unger. I’d had a month after the department made the first sweep of arrests and pulled me and the detective out of our roles, while the case wound down, to try to scrub that persona from my brain.
A month of writing reports and helping with the occasional interrogation, grinning when the slimeballs saw “Unger” was not their friend.
A month of being Officer Evans, going to mandatory psych counseling and debriefing, purging “bitch” and “fag” and every racist slur from my automatic vocabulary.
Relearning not to respond to a casual touch with a nasty punch, not to sneer at kindness.
Thank God I’d had that time, before I had to deal with Josiah.
Then the last arrests were made, the last reports written, and my bosses said, “You did good. Take a vacation.” And here I was in my father’s room, wondering who Zeke Evans was now.
Well, a big brother, first and foremost. With a job to do.
I tore my gaze away and opened the jewelry box.
There was a lot in there. Krystal liked accessories and Dad liked to indulge her.
Mostly costume pieces, no doubt. Inheriting the house from Grandma had meant no rent to pay, a huge cost-of-living bonus, but still they’d been living on Dad’s military pay and Krystal’s income as a law firm receptionist. That didn’t run to diamonds.
When I picked through the box, the cameo pendant and the locket were obvious.
I opened the locket out of curiosity, and found that photos of my dad and toddler Josiah had been inserted in place of whatever used to be there.
I didn’t want Heidi to have those, so I pried the little images out of the setting and slipped them in my shirt pocket, tapping the side of my head as a mnemonic to remember them and not send them through the wash. Then I snapped the cover shut.