Chapter Seventeen #2
A crow caws in the distance. I stare at the front door. Decision time. I can keep pestering these people and run the risk of having the cops called on me, which is definitely not the path I need to pursue. Or I can back off this porch and go back to Shadow Bluff and mind my own damn business.
“I want to talk about your daughter,” I yell. Decision made. “I want to talk about Emily.”
The door remains shut. I tell myself I’ll count to twenty slowly, then I’ll leave, but my mouth and brain seem to have disconnected.
I yell, “I’m not leaving!” I give up trying to convince myself I’m going to do anything that resembles sane.
My phone buzzes in my tote. I check the number.
Mama’s doctor. The front door opens again.
I send the call to voicemail and look up, but Mrs. Arceneaux isn’t standing there; Eddie is.
His eyes are as dim as the space behind him.
He moves his large frame away from the door, and I take this as an invitation to come in.
The living room, if it can be called that, is filthy with rotting food and overflowing cardboard boxes.
The stench is sweet and thick and coated in cigarette smoke.
Stacks of magazines lean in every corner.
A torn leather sofa faces a giant television.
Gaming controls cover the floor in front.
The television looks as if it cost more than the entire house.
I cover my nose with my hand and follow Eddie through the mess to the small kitchen.
Liv Arceneaux sits at a card table in a folding chair.
The kitchen is only slightly neater than the living room.
The sink is full of dirty dishes, and the walls are streaked with grime, but the card table is spotless.
My mind scrolls through diagnoses, like someone flipping through an old-fashioned Rolodex.
I land on several, OCD, hoarding, and depression among them.
I wonder when those started. I wonder if losing her husband, her daughter, and if Ermine is right, a son, triggered it.
Or was the state of this house a reflection of something that started long before?
A slow-moving avalanche she couldn’t escape from.
“Offer our guest a chair, Edward,” Liv says.
Eddie pulls a folding chair out from the table and presents it to me like we’re on a date. He smells like boiled cabbage. My stomach clenches as I sit.
Liv trains her gaze on me. “Why you talkin’ about my little girl?”
I look at Eddie. He stands behind his mother and stares at the ceiling like it holds all the answers.
“I’m an old friend of Travis’s. I came back to Broken Bayou to get some things for my mother, and we reconnected.”
She scowls, lights another brown cigarette. A curl of blue smoke rises in front of her face. “Travis tell you he was a bed wetter?” The smirk on her face begs me to react, but I keep my composure.
Body language, vocabulary usually let me know who I’m dealing with pretty early on in a conversation. Liv has set a record. She let me know in only a matter of seconds. Thankfully my previous conversation with Ermine has me prepared for this woman, and I’m able to listen without flinching.
When I don’t respond she says, “Travis never did right by this family. He left when we needed him most. He only thinks about himself.”
I heard that same phrase before, from my own mother, when I finally got up the courage to move out.
She railed on about how I made them follow me to Texas, and now I was abandoning them.
If I hadn’t had Christopher, I probably would have stayed.
But good or bad, marrying him got me out of that house.
Travis found his way out, too, and it’s obvious he’s not Liv Arceneaux’s favorite child because of that.
“I’m here because I found a sketchbook of my sister’s, and one of her drawings interested me.” I reach into my tote and extract the sketchbook. I lay it on the flimsy table and open it to the sketch of the girl and boy. “Is this Emily? My sister drew this.”
The sound that erupts from Eddie’s mouth can only be compared to a suffering, dying animal. I jump, and my hand hovers near the opening of my tote for the other item I’d tucked in there. Mrs. Arceneaux’s face contorts into a mask of grief.
“My baby,” she wails. Her arthritic hand pets the picture.
Tears well up in her eyes. She pulls the sketchbook closer.
Her finger traces Emily’s face, then stops on the drawing of the boy.
Eddie snivels and wipes his runny nose. Liv studies the sketch.
Then with one quick movement, rips the drawing from the sketchbook.
“You can’t have her,” she says, her voice full of venom. Then she tears the picture in half, separating the boy and Emily. She slides the half with the boy’s image back to me.
A seed of anger blooms in my gut. Mabry drew that. It’s not Liv’s to take and destroy. I will myself not to react. “I would have offered it to you. All you had to do was ask.” I take the sketchbook back.
Liv drops her cigarette onto the kitchen floor and crushes it with a filthy slipper. “The boys were all so jealous of her,” she says, tracing the sketch. “She was perfect. Sometimes I pretend she’s just run away and she’ll be back.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. Even though it’s been decades, her grief is still palpable, etched in every line on her face. Losing a child is the worst grief of all. Not that I’ve experienced it. But I’ve come close.
“Mrs. Arceneaux, I’m a child psychologist, and I have access to a lot of books that can help with grief. If you’d like, I’d be happy to send them to you.”
Her face hardens. “It wasn’t my fault.”
I straighten, lean back. “I never said anything was your fault. I was just trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help.” Her tone has changed to defensive and sharp. “You don’t get to come in my house and start talkin’ about Emily. Telling me I need help. Showing me pictures of my dead daughter. Who do you think you are?”
The kitchen grows silent except for a scratching noise somewhere down the dark hallway. I can picture the rat that’s responsible, and I shiver. Time to wrap this up. I swallow, hold my hands up.
“I’m leaving.” In the corner of my eye, I catch Eddie moving closer to me. I ease my chair back. “Well, thank you for—”
In a swift move, much swifter than I thought him capable, Eddie reaches my side and clamps a meaty hand on my shoulder. The weight of it speaks to his strength.
“Stay,” he says.
I look up at him, keep my voice as steady as I can. “Take your hand off me, Eddie.”
“Edward, don’t scare the lady,” Liv says, a smile on her lips.
He removes his hand but hovers close.
“I’m sorry about him.” She points a finger at him, but nothing in her voice says she’s really sorry. “Dumber than a fiddler crab. Show this nice lady out, Edward.”
I look at the torn picture Mabry drew. Liv Arceneaux looks at it as well.
Then she slides it toward me. I tuck it back in the sketchbook and follow Eddie to the front room.
At the door, he rocks on his massive feet, and his eyes keep darting down the hallway.
I follow his gaze. The air around me sizzles with a strange, unseen energy.
Part of me is yelling to run and the other part is yelling to stay.
I don’t want to leave him alone with that woman.
“Do you want to tell me something, Eddie?” I say. He chews his bottom lip. “Have you been leaving gifts for me at Shadow Bluff?” I add.
He nods.
I smile. “Right. Tell me about the gifts.”
He looks down the hallway again. “Show.”
“You want to show me?” I say.
The air in this house is hot and sticky, but a shudder works down my spine as Eddie points to a closed door.
I glance at the front door, then back down the hall.
I slip the sketchbook into my large tote and fumble inside until I feel the cool handle of my handgun.
Then I feel for the other things I stopped for on my way here.
“Show me,” I say.
He does his best to tiptoe down the hallway. I follow. He slides a dead bolt open on the outside of the door.
“Keep her safe,” he says.
The chill I felt earlier magnifies into a cold steel blade as Eddie opens the door and a whoosh of air sucks outward from a small bedroom.
Like a seal has been broken. The room is clean.
So far, the only clean room I’ve seen. A twin bed with a ratty pink blanket occupies one wall.
On top is an old baby doll missing one arm and clumps of hair.
A few of Eddie’s metal dolls keep her company.
There’s one window on the back wall. The other walls are empty. No closet. No bathroom.
I walk in, past the door with the lock on the outside, my pulse quickening with each step. They’d locked Emily in here. Eddie barely fits inside the room with me. His towering stature reminds me to keep my distance. He could snap my neck in one move.
Eddie turns in tight circles next to me.
“Eddie.” He stops spinning. I pull out the handful of metal trinkets I purchased from Ace’s.
I present the metal parts and pieces to him, nuts and bolts, screws, and scrap pieces Ace was happy to part with.
He reaches for them, and I close my hand.
“I tell you what. Every time you answer a question, I’ll give you one. Okay?”
He nods.
I need to start simply. I look around. “Was this Emily’s room?”
He nods. I hand him a metal piece. He slides it in his pocket.
“Do you miss her?” I say.
He nods again and gets another piece.
“Why did you want to show me her room?”
He covers his ears and lowers his head to his massive chest and starts to rock. I’ve gone too fast. “Eddie? Eddie?” He looks up and stares at me. “What was Emily’s favorite color?”
“Pink.”
I hand him a small metal bolt. “I like that color too.” I point to the metal figures on the bed. “Did you make those dolls for her?”
He nods, and I drop a screw into his hand.