Chapter 4
“Silas!”
The moment he opened his front door, a small figure with a large hat pelted down the stairs and flung itself at Stone.
He bent as it approached and when he turned back to face me, I saw that he held a little girl in his arms. Maybe she wasn’t that little—more like seven or eight, I thought, but anyone would have seemed small compared to him.
An eighteen-wheeler or a T-Rex would have, and a child sure did.
“Silas, who is that?” she asked. She pushed back her brown hat in order to see me better, and I realized that it was actually a thick thatch of hair.
“Lyra, this is my friend Camille,” Mr. Flip Phone said. Silas? His name was Silas? Then that was what I was calling him from now on, because “Stone” as a first name sounded more like the hero of an action movie and I didn’t care much for those.
Her eyes narrowed as she stared at me. “Why is she here?” she asked him.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I answered, and the man I had known only as Stone walked into the house and closed the door behind us all.
I had pulled up in front of this building and had thought that the map, which had misled me about how long it would take to arrive, had also lied about reaching the destination.
This was a pretty Detroit bungalow, with a big dormer on the second floor and a long front porch.
It was hard to see, since the sun hadn’t yet risen, but the front yard seemed perfectly kept. We were at the wrong place.
I had looked at the sleeping man beside me and then said, “Stone! Is this your house?”
He had awakened immediately with no hint of grogginess and answered, “Yeah.” Then I’d followed him up to the front door, and here we were.
“Why are you awake?” he was asking the little girl. “Did you have a bad dream?”
She looked over his shoulder at where I stood behind them. “No,” she said, and she wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue. She made a face at me!
My own face must have demonstrated my shock because next, she smiled. Then she put her head down like she was tired. By this point, it was three in the morning, and I myself was exhausted.
“Camille, make yourself at home. I’m going to put her back to bed,” Silas told me. I heard him talking as he went up a flight of stairs, his size seventeen feet thumping as they went.
I made myself at home by looking around a little.
This was very cute house, and not at all what I would have pictured for him.
Maybe…maybe an industrial loft with steel beams across the ceiling would have been a better setting.
Or a gym, the kind with racks of giant dumbbells where he might have slept in an extra-large cot in the corner.
The pretty bungalow with its dainty furniture didn’t seem right.
“Sorry,” he said as he rejoined me. “She doesn’t always sleep through the night. Come on.”
“Who is that?” I asked as I trailed behind him into the kitchen. It was probably a sunny yellow color here during the day, but it looked a little ghostly in the moonlight and he didn’t bother to flip the switch on the wall.
“Lyra’s my little sister.” He bent and took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator. “Want one?” I shook my head and he nodded. “I didn’t figure you for much of a drinker.”
“How many years apart are you?”
“She’s seven and I’m thirty-two. If you do the math right, it comes out to a hell of a lot.” He tilted back his head and half the liquid in his bottle disappeared. “We have the same dad, different moms.”
“So, the three of you live here? Your sister, your dad, and you?” It made more sense to me that this house wasn’t his.
“No, he lives elsewhere. I’m not exactly sure where he’s currently holed up.” The beer was now gone and he sat at the kitchen table. I noticed that it had only two placemats on it, ready for the next meal, and he took the chair behind one of them. “Sit,” he told me, and I did.
“What about your mothers?” I asked.
“Mine passed away about ten years ago. Lyra’s mom…” He looked up at the high ceiling, as if he was considering. “If I had to bet, I would say that she’s in Vegas. But you’re here.” He pointed at me with the empty bottle. “Option D.”
“What?”
“Option D,” he said slowly. “That was why you came over, so we could discuss my idea for helping each other out. Do you have a legal pad or something to take notes?”
We both looked at my tiny purse. “No,” I said. “Is it complicated?”
“There are some twists and turns. We should probably get this in writing because I don’t have faith in oral agreements.”
I looked at the circle of pale skin around the ring finger of my left hand. “Me neither. I can draw something up, but first tell me your idea.”
He did. “I need help with my sister because she doesn’t have any good female influences.
You need help with your ex-boyfriend because he’s a grade-A, first-class turd bucket.
You must have done well in school.” He paused, looking for my agreement and I did nod yes.
“I do well with these.” He held up both his fists and white scars on his knuckles gleamed slightly in the moonlight.
“You teach her to be smart and successful, and I’ll teach him to shut the hell up. Quid pro quo, Camille.”
“Really? That’s your idea, that I act as a mentor for your sister? You didn’t have to drag me over here in the middle of the night. I would have said yes if you’d asked at a normal time.”
“What?”
“Sure,” I said, nodding. “Of course I’ll help a little girl who needs it.”
“And I’ll help you,” Silas Stone said. “I will. I’ll take care of Dax and his song.”
“What do you mean? Before, you mentioned option B…”
“Murder or maiming,” he clarified. “No, I won’t have to resort to either of those things. Your ex-boyfriend will listen when I tell him what’s up because he’s a spineless bitchface. I’ll get him to understand that it’s in his best interest to sit this one out.”
“You said he had a gun, though.”
Silas seemed unconcerned, but he didn’t disagree. “Let’s talk about your part,” he suggested. “How are you going to fix my sister?”
“What exactly is wrong with her?” I asked, and he got mad. Very.
“Nothing,” his deep voice boomed, and I jerked back in surprise. “There’s nothing wrong with Lyra.” His big fists had clenched on the table and he leaned forward, like he was daring me to disagree.
“You were the one who just asked how I was going to ‘fix’ her. That implies that there is a problem, and if you want me to deal with it, then you have to define it,” I told him calmly. “What’s wrong?”
He sat back and raised his hands to rub his forehead. “Yeah, you’re right. She’s having trouble at school, that’s one thing. And she’s having problems here in the neighborhood, too.”
But he also thought that she was smart, very smart.
“I don’t know where she gets it,” he mentioned.
His sister had started reading when she was about three, not just letters but whole words and then whole books, too.
They were always going to the library to get more, and a few years before, a woman there had told him about math and science enrichment stuff.
He’d started doing that with Lyra and she had excelled. But when she got to school?
He shook his head slowly, and he looked confused. “She’s failing that shit. How do you fail first grade? Even I got through elementary school. The teachers keep saying that she’s not trying and I don’t get it.”
I didn’t have the answer either, but I had already learned a lot. It sounded like Silas had been a part of her life for a long time. He had been the one taking her to the library and he was the one talking to her teachers now. “Her parents aren’t involved?” I asked.
“I adopted her,” he said, then he tilted his head and nodded. “You’re good.”
“What?”
“You’re not showing your emotions right now,” he pointed out, and that had been my goal. I’d been going for “interested” but also “serene.” “Unruffled” was a better word. “You’re covering what you feel, which I’m guessing is surprise. Maybe horror.”
“No, I’m not horrified. I know that other people often have to step in when parents can’t or don’t, and when I work, I don’t get emotional. This feels like work,” I explained. “Tell me exactly what’s happening with her school. Is she getting in fights?”
He hesitated, and then sighed. “Yeah. With boys and girls. They’re doing all kinds of discipline and restorative shit but none of it’s helping.”
“What are you doing about it?”
“Christ, I’m trying!” He leaned forward again.
“In Lyra’s mind, the worst thing I can do is take away her books, but is it smart to stop her from reading?
” His voice had risen in disbelief. “I can’t ground her because she never wants to leave the house unless she’s with me.
When I make her go out to play like I used to, she fights with the other kids on our street.
I try to talk to her about her behavior and she cries and says she’s sorry.
She’s had so much shit going against her and then I’m supposed to drop the hammer?
” He sat back and sighed. “Obviously, whatever I’m doing is wrong. ”
“Why do you think that I could help?”
“Because the teacher was asking me if Lyra had any positive female influences and she sure as hell does not. And you’re…” Now Silas held up his hands, and he ran his eyes over me. “You’re…”
“I’m here and I said I’d do it,” I filled in. “Ok. I don’t think we should start tonight, though. I’m really tired.”
“I don’t think you should drive home alone. You picked one of the worst possible places to live in the city.”
I was aware of that. “It’s cheap,” I commented. “This house is nice.”
“It belonged to my grandma. That was the deal I made with my dad,” he said. “If I took Lyra and made things easy for him, he would let me have this house so she would have a place to grow up. You can stay here in the extra bedroom.”