Chapter 1 #2
Ray harumphs. I highly doubt Ray would fire me because of Bob’s barking, but I still should find some way to keep Bob entertained enough that he barks less, just in case, because I can’t lose this opportunity.
I’m still day labor while Ray figures out if I can handle it, but I’m this close to a real position.
One with a salary and benefits. The kind of job where I could save up enough to afford rent somewhere safe and warm, where I could leave Bob while I worked, and then Ray would never need to hear Bob barking again. I just need to keep not screwing it up.
Ray looks at me like he sees something in my face I’m trying to hide, and I drop my eyes to my boots, rubbing the toes together.
“Jimmy would be proud of you,” Ray says. “I hope you know that.”
No one calls Dad ‘Jimmy’ except Ray, and hearing the name makes him feel way too present for what I’m able to handle right now.
“Could we not talk about this, please?” I ask.
“Yep.” He sniffs, then rubs his nose. “Got you on the third floor today. They’re hanging and mudding drywall. Mark needs an extra pair of hands.”
“Cool.” I tilt the coffee cup toward him. “Thank you for this. And for everything.”
Ray claps me on the shoulder once before he walks away. Steadying myself, I drain the coffee in one burning swallow then climb the temporary stairs to the third floor.
Mark’s already up there with sheets of drywall leaning against the studs, and he tosses me a pair of work gloves without a word.
I’m still pretty new to drywall, but I’ve gotten stronger these past four months, strong enough that lifting the sheets doesn’t make me want to die anymore, just makes my arms shake a little.
Mark shows me where to put the screws in a couple of times before he leaves me to do it on my own.
My shoulders are already burning, but it’s a good burn.
The kind that says I’m building something. Being useful.
Construction beats the hell out of every other job I’ve had.
The pay’s better, for one thing, and there’s something satisfying about building something that stays when everything else in my life is temporary.
I focus on the burn in my shoulders and keeping the screw gun straight, and not on how heavy my phone feels in my pocket.
I bet if I check my email right now, my inbox will be full of reporters desperate for their annual update on the sole survivor of the Callahan Family Murders.
What is Stanley Daniels’s only surviving victim doing today?
Where is she now? If they really want to know, they should check the ShopRite parking lot.
At lunch, Ray finds me with a brown paper bag. I peek inside to find an honest-to-God deli sandwich in wax paper. The smell hits me: pastrami, provolone, and whatever vinegary concoction DiNapoli’s puts on their specials.
I try not to look as pathetically grateful as I feel. “Thank you.”
Ray turns away before I can say something else or, God forbid, get emotional over deli meat like an unstable girl.
I find Tio sitting on the curb by himself.
He’s an older guy—in his seventies, maybe?
—and my friend, even though we’ve never had an actual conversation.
His English is about as good as my Spanish, which is to say nonexistent, but he always says hello in the mornings and helps me when I need it.
I never see him bring lunch, so every day I’ve been giving him half of mine.
I drop onto the curb next to him and hold out half my sandwich.
“Para ti?” I say, which is probably wrong, but he takes the sandwich, and we eat together on the curb.
Once I’m done eating, I let Bob out and walk him around for as long as I can until the end of my lunch break.
When I get back to work, that sandwich sits heavy in my stomach, like my body forgot what that amount of food feels like.
The screw gun feels twenty pounds heavier, each shot sending vibrations up my arm as I secure drywall to the metal framing.
My hands are shaking a little, but I force them to be steady.
I’m so focused on not messing up the measurements that I don’t notice someone watching me until a low whistle cuts through the noise.
“Careful with that thing.”
I turn to find Dylan standing in the doorway and roll my eyes.
Dylan is an electrician for the company wiring this building, so he’s been working here for the past two months.
He’s twenty-two with copper hair and forearms corded with muscle that look really good when he’s carrying big coils of wire, which is why I keep making terrible decisions.
But he has an actual apartment with an actual shower that he sometimes lets me use after we’re done with the only thing we’re okay at together.
I line up my next shot, focusing on getting the screw placement right. “I am being careful.”
He pushes off the door frame. “You get my text?”
Yep. He sent it at one o’clock in the morning. I saw the text between nightmares.
“You do realize ‘u up?’ is the mating call of the desperate fuckboy, right?” I snap, then immediately cringe at myself. Just because I’m having a bad day doesn’t give me a free pass to be a jerk to him. “Sorry, today is just not a good day.”
He moves closer, reaching for my hip. “Lucky for you, I can turn it around.”
I glance toward the doorway where other crew members are passing by, and I give them what I hope is a normal “nothing to see here” smile before spinning back to Dylan. “Could you be any louder?”
“You could be,” he says. “Based on recent evidence.”
My face feels so hot with shame that I bet even the tip of my nose is red.
Dylan drops a hand to my lower back, and I do everything I can to ignore the treacherous heat blooming low in my stomach.
I don’t like that my body responds so easily to him.
I don’t like him. He’s not nice to me, but it’s true his hands are the closest thing to oblivion I’ve found without chemical help.
“You seem like you need a distraction,” Dylan says. “Want to come over tonight?”
I open my mouth, not sure if I’m about to say yes or no, when he adds, “Unless you got plans with Bill.”
I step back, and his hand falls away. “His name is Bob.”
“Doesn’t matter, that dog hates me anyway,” he says, and I want to shoot the screw gun in his face. I spend so much time with Dylan, and he doesn’t care enough to even remember Bob’s name?
I guess he doesn’t spend much time with Bob. Dylan won’t allow Bob inside his apartment. I wrap Bob in my sleeping bag and go upstairs with Dylan for a couple of hours before coming back to my car to sleep, changing parking lots so Dylan doesn’t figure out my living situation.
“I’m just saying, you could stay over if you want,” Dylan says. “Actual bed. You’re welcome to it. Well, you’re welcome to me, and the bed comes with the package.”
My laugh comes out sounding breathy and forced. Ray doesn’t know, but somehow, Dylan figured it out?
Ray hasn’t told any of the guys my real last name. The construction worker demographic isn’t exactly known for loving true crime, but still, I asked Ray to keep my identity a secret to avoid anyone leaking to a journalist that I’m working here.
Dylan doesn’t know the truth about my family’s murders, but he does know they’re dead.
I’ve always known in the back of my head that all it would take is one recommended news story about the murders popping up in his Facebook feed for him to figure out who I am, which could happen, especially since my phone number is in his phone, so Facebook knows we know each other.
If he does find out who I am, I hope he cares enough about me not to sell me out, but deep down, I don’t know how much I believe that.
I’ve successfully avoided any reporters or podcasters ever since I aged out of foster care. I could always change jobs if they found me here, but now that Dylan knows about me living in my car… I’d prefer to avoid any big stories coming out about me being homeless.
“I have my own bed,” I say, but my voice comes out too defensive, and he smirks.
“I’m not gonna tell anyone,” he says. “But I am saying I can give you a break from your car, if you want one.”
There’s a desperate part of me that wants to say yes just to sleep somewhere warm, but that piece of me makes my stomach hurt.
“I’m good,” I say. “Got plans with Bob.”
“Your loss.” He shrugs and pulls away, already done with this conversation now that I’m not giving him what he wants. “Have fun with your stupid dog.”
He saunters off, and I’m left standing there staring at the unfinished doorway he just walked through with the screw gun in my hand.
For a second, I let myself consider it. I could lose myself for a few hours.
Have a shower with hot water and soap that doesn’t come from a gas station bathroom dispenser.
God, how can I even consider that? Is that how I’m going to honor my family’s memory today, by letting Dylan try to fuck the grief out of me?
Plus, Bob’s not a stupid dog. He’s perfect, and he loves me, and he’s never once made me feel like I’m only worth something when I’m useful.
Still. I fire the screw gun into the wall, pretending it’s my face.
By the end of the day, my arms feel like cooked spaghetti, but in a good way. Ray pays me in cash. I splurge on chicken thighs at the grocery store because Bob deserves something tasty for dinner on a day like today, and honestly, so do I.
I cook them with a can of tomatoes on my propane stove in the parking lot, the smell making my stomach growl so loud I’m pretty sure the people three rows over can hear it.
I eat straight from the pan because washing dishes is annoying when you live in a car, and I mix a tiny piece of chicken with Bob’s kibble.
His whole body wiggles with excitement, and watching him get that happy over a bit of chicken feels better than any hot shower could. At least I can give him this.
I change parking lots for the night, heading to the far corner of the mostly empty Walmart lot. Bob finds a piece of kibble in the back footwell and paws the mats frantically like he’s discovered buried treasure. His tiny teeth crunch as I pull out my sleeping bag. Oh, so now he will eat his food.
Bob has become such a big part of my life that it makes me sad my family never got to meet him. Rosie would have loved him. Actually, it’s probably better for Bob that he never met Rosie, because all she would have wanted to do was dress him up.
Eight years. How has it already been eight years?
I jam my privacy shades up so nobody walking by can see me sleeping, then climb into my sleeping bag in the back seat.
I uncap a bottle of Jim Beam and take a swig.
The first sip burns all the way down, but by the third, the cardboard panels I wedged into the windows and the sleeping bag bunched around my legs blur in a way that feels like mercy.
I’m sliding onto my pillow, closing my eyes, and hoping the alcohol will drag me so far under that the nightmares can’t reach me. But then Bob whines, this urgent little sound that means business. I glance up to see him shifting from paw to paw.
“Seriously? I just took you out half an hour ago.”
Bob vibrates with need, and I immediately feel like an asshole. It’s not his fault that his bladder is so small.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Let’s go.”
I shove my feet into my boots and open the door. The air tastes like exhaust and cigarette smoke. Bob circles, sniffing a patch of oil-stained asphalt as if he’s reading the world’s most fascinating newspaper.
I bounce on my toes to stay warm. A guy with pants hanging low on his hips sorts through bottles near the garden center. Two teenagers pass a cigarette back and forth inside their idling Civic, their laughter floating out of the cracked window, and I feel a familiar pang of loneliness.
“Come on, buddy,” I say. “Pick a spot.”
Bob sniffs another section of asphalt.
A footstep scrapes behind me.
I spin around, scanning the spaces between parked cars. There’s nothing there. Shadows pool under the broken streetlight, making my surroundings look more intimidating than they are. My brain is doing its anniversary special.
Bob’s standing in the wood chips, abandoning his bathroom mission to stare up at me with those enormous bug eyes.
“It’s okay, buddy,” I say. “Can you please pee so we can get back to the car, where it’s warmer and less creepy?”
He goes back to sniffing, taking his sweet time like we’ve got all night. Which we don’t. I want to be back in the car. I want to stop feeling like something’s wrong.
There’s another sound behind me.
I go to turn, but then a growl rumbles out of Bob’s tiny chest. I’m distracted for a second, glancing down at him instead of behind me, and that’s when something coarse drops over my head and cinches tight around my throat.