Chapter Six
Linden
Athroat clears behind me, and I jump.
I had a dream about the man in the mask last night. He was standing at the foot of my bed, looking bigger than the room, staring at me from the cutout around his eyes, the only spot that exposed his flesh.
His humanity.
His gaze was infiltrating my sleep, disrupting my dreams, and I’ve been jumpy all day.
Ms. Chaney and Ms. Harris took turns startling me while I cleaned their houses, and now, Avery is busy playing on the porch with chalk while I pull weeds, and I never heard anyone walk up behind me.
“I got some of your mail in my mailbox,” Jack says from across the fence.
The sun is shining right into my eyes when I turn to face him, forcing me to step closer until his height shadows my face.
“Thanks,” I murmur, staring up at him as he hands me an envelope.
Under his hat, his eyes are so dark that the brown almost appears black.
He’s so serious-looking, but he has a handsome face.
A pronounced brow, an angular jaw, and a strong nose that might’ve been straight once but has been broken a few times.
His skin is olive-toned, almost making him look bronzed.
Avery and I are both fair-skinned with freckles, and it’s not close enough to summer for the sun to have given me any type of color.
“Are you Italian?” I ask without thinking as I glance at the nondescript envelope with my name on it.
“No.”
“Oh, sorry. You just look sun-kissed already.”
He shifts uncomfortably at my observation, and I sense the awkwardness I brought on. “Uh, thanks again.” I wave goodbye with the letter in my hand and retreat.
His voice stops me when I’m halfway back to my house. “My mother was part Lakota.”
“Native American?”
He nods.
“And, O’Connor?”
“Irish.”
“That’s an interesting combination.”
His shoulders tick in a shrug.
“Well, it works.” I turn away from him before he can see my eyes widen in shock. Why did I just say that?
I scurry away and distract myself by opening my mail. Inside is a letter from the Social Security Administration, a Social Security card with my name, and another one with Avery’s name.
My jaw hangs open. I’ve been trying to get these replaced for months. And here they are? Just showed up on a random day…
In my neighbor’s mailbox…
Something akin to concern trickles down my spine.
My gut is telling me that something isn’t right about my neighbor, but I can’t pinpoint what it is.
He’s nearly as closed off as I am, and I can’t blame him for that. He doesn’t owe me anything.
I search his yard, but he’s already back behind the hood of his truck, doing whatever it is he does at the edge of his garage. I’ve never seen him go anywhere. I’ve never seen anyone at his house.
Who is Jack O’Connor?
And why do I really want to find out?
* * *
Another dreaded phone call from Merrill asking to see Avery. Just speaking to the woman takes five years off of my lifespan from stress.
She insisted that I allow Avery to have dinner with them at some fancy restaurant in Noddingbell. And of course, a new dress was delivered by her assistant.
As soon as I walk through the doors that are being held open by a member of the staff, I know I do not belong in this restaurant. It is way too fancy for my type.
Edmund is standing in the lobby in a dark colored suit, staring hard at his phone like a man in his 60s who forgot his readers.
Because that is exactly what he is. He’s also always the buffer between Merrill and me.
His wife is always a problem when I’m around her, and we avoid each other when at all possible.
“Ah, there’s our Avery.” He smiles and Avery waves kindly, keeping her other hand in mine.
“We should only be about an hour or two,” he says dismissively, holding his hand out for Avery’s.
“What? You are expecting me to wait out here?”
“No, of course, not. You can leave and come back around eight.”
“Eight? She goes to bed at eight.”
“Okay, 7:30.”
“I didn’t realize I was agreeing to an unsupervised visit.”
He rolls his eyes. “Please, Linden. We’re her grandparents. Turner isn’t here.”
I scoff at his dismissiveness. “Who is here?”
“Just some of our colleagues.”
Of course.
“I don’t know about this.”
“Don’t be difficult, Linden. Avery deserves a relationship with family.” His words hit a nerve.
He knows that without them, Avery hardly has anyone. I’m an only child, and my parents live all the way in Albany. I’m all alone here, and they know it and use it against me often.
“Fine. I’ll be back at 7:30. Call me if anything changes. Anything.” I lean down to kiss Avery. “Be a good girl for Grandma and Grandpa, okay?”
“I want to stay wiff you.”
“I know, honey. But it’s just dinner. I’ll be back so fast. Promise.” I hold out my pinkie finger, and she mirrors it, locking our little fingers together. “Love you to the moon.”
“To da moon,” she whispers before giving me a big hug.
I’m not ashamed to say that even leaving my daughter for 90 minutes brings a quiver to my bottom lip. It doesn’t feel right to be separated.
I hate when even a single minute goes by that I’m not experiencing the same things she is. What if she gets nervous? Or someone isn’t kind?
What if they don’t order something that she’ll eat?
“Don’t force her to eat anything she doesn’t like,” I call to Edmund as he leads her into the depths of the restaurant. All he gives me is an annoyed wave.
Fucking, dickhead.
I sit in my car for twenty minutes before I build up the courage to leave. I know my attachment to my daughter is a little overboard. But I also know how important it is to protect her.
I don’t believe that her grandparents would ever show ill will towards her, but they definitely do towards me. And that scares me.
I can’t let myself believe that they’d do anything vindictive to get back at me. I won’t let myself, because that just causes my anxiety to soar.
Instead, I go home, pace around my house, and rage clean for 40 minutes before it’s time to drive back to the restaurant.
Except, when I get in my car, the engine won’t turn over.
“No, no, no. I can’t do this right now.” I do all the things that I can think of, pumping my brake pedal, lifting my hood. Nothing is smoking. It’s all just a bunch of black plastic and wires that mean nothing to me.
I glance toward Jack’s house, and when my frantic eyes catch his behind his truck, his entire body stands taller in a snap.
“Can you help me?” I ask with desperation, jogging toward the fence line.
“What’s wrong? Where’s Avery?”
His concern surprises me as if he’s already assuming the worst, but I’m too relieved that he’s on my wavelength to wonder why that is.
“She is at dinner with her grandparents, and I’m supposed to pick her up, but my car won’t start. I need to leave like two minutes ago.”
“Alright, let me look.” For the first time ever, he forges past his property line to mine, breaking the divide between our homes.
He braces his hands under my hood, similarly to how I see him when he’s working on his truck, and starts twisting and pulling at things that I don’t know the function of.
“Try to start it again.”
I lean in my window and turn the key, but nothing happens after endless revving. “It just keeps doing that.” My hands grip my hair. I need to go. I need to get Avery.
“I can try a few more things, but it might need to be taken somewhere for a diagnostics check.”
“What? Oh my God. I don’t have time for that,” I cry. “If I’m not there on time, they are going to use it against me. They’re going to call me a bad mother.”
“Who?”
“My ex’s parents.”
“Ah,” he says absently. He drops to the rough, graveled ground, shifting until his head is buried beneath my car.
His shirt tightens across his torso as he reaches around for something, and it molds to the muscle he has hidden beneath. He looks a lot more jacked than a car guy should be.
But he doesn’t seem to mind the hard rocks digging into his back, and his clothes are far from clean. My gaze wanders down his stomach and the unmistakable imprint at his waistband.
A gun.
Guns aren’t illegal.
Especially in more rural areas like this. Hell, there are cows in the pastures behind our house. I guess it isn’t odd for a man to be packing.
It doesn’t mean that my defenses don’t go from zero to 60.
He stills suddenly, as if he can hear my thoughts. “Where else have you gone lately? Have you noticed any fuel issues?”
He scoots out from beneath my car, and I back up on instinct. He’s staring at me as he stands up and rights his shirt, but I realize it’s because I haven’t responded and not because he’s about to shoot me.
“I don’t go many places. The farthest I have gone is to the restaurant earlier in Noddingbell and to my in-laws for a party a few weeks ago.”
I don’t know if he is expecting more from me or if he is just thinking hard, because he doesn’t speak for a full minute.
“I think it’s your fuel pump.”
“Okay, how do I fix it? And like now.”
“You can’t. You’ll need to order a new fuel pump.”
“Oh my God,” I whimper, squeezing my eyes shut.
“I can drive you.”