JOSIE
Newspaper clippings. Court records. Transcripts. A five-spread newspaper article about the trial.
My mind races through all the paperwork I’ve read in the folder Trevor has given me.
There was no mention of Alysha or Victoria regarding the fire.
They’d had a sleepover. They were never at the scene.
There wasn’t enough evidence to charge my grandmother for the murder of Dougie Hartzel.
There was no weapon found. She was trying to save Dougie.
The crime scene was destroyed by the fire.
The cameras had been disconnected prior to the accident.
No motive either. Despite what many in town thought, the jury found Karen Boots not guilty.
On the other hand, the bar fire was arson.
The charred containers the investigators found in my grandmother’s shed were evidence.
She wasn’t stupid enough to have kept those if, in fact, she had been responsible.
But that wasn’t how the insurance investigators looked at it.
The result was a one-year sentence for insurance fraud with an aggravating factor, subsequently reduced by early release.
Not able to connect the dots, I stare at Rika. “What do you mean, she saved our moms?”
“My mom once told me that she and your mom were at the bar before the fire.”
“At the crime scene?”
“Uh-huh. She was drunk when she spilled the beans. Nana refused to talk about it. But I think our moms were involved.”
We sit for a while in silence, the TV humming upstairs. Mrs. Snickett’s house smells like a bachelor pad with a pinch of cinnamon, and though I usually don’t like cigarette smoke, her house is cozy. Maybe, except for the old rifle hanging on the wall. I assume it’s an antique.
“Did you grow up on the streets?” I finally ask Rika, trying to resume the conversation because she’s a lot quieter than usual, and I don’t like it.
She chuckles. “What, a wild guess? My record? Or observation?”
I shrug. “Just wondering?”
“I grew up in a fairly decent neighborhood in Miami. Next to the bad one. Trust me, there are a lot of cool things going on in bad neighborhoods besides all the bad stuff everyone talks about. More importantly, people are real there. They stick up for each other. You don’t learn to be tough by living in a golden cage. ”
“I never lived in a golden cage,” I argue.
“I know that, Boots. I know a lot more about you than you think. My nana talked a lot about you and your grams.”
“Mine didn’t.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“No worries. You didn’t grow up in a golden cage. Just a shitty cage called Burnville. Where would you learn?”
We’ve been talking for some time when the door to the kitchen opens, and Mrs. Snickett walks in. She drops my keys on the kitchen table and takes off her coat.
“What now?” I ask.
“What now?” she echoes without looking at me and lights a cigarette. “I need a drink.”
“I mean, the car.”
“Oh, your car is out back, where you left it.”
“But…”
She glances at me before picking up a tumbler from the counter and taking a greedy gulp. “It’s all good,” she says with a satisfied humming in her chest, then takes another gulp. “You had a good night at the bar. Brought Rika here. Thank you for that. And you can stay here tonight if you want.”
“I can’t. I need to check on Grandma.”
My phone pings somewhere in the living room. Rika brings it and hands it to me.
Unknown: Naughty, naughty. What did you do with the body?
I instantly panic and show the message to Mrs. Snickett. Calmly, she takes another gulp from her tumbler, sucks her teeth, then takes a drag of her cigarette, all of this done slowly, like she’s reading a cozy novel. “Sometime tomorrow, I’m gon’ take you to a friend.”
“What sort of friend?” I ask.
“Need to track that number. Don’t worry. It won’t be official.”
She gives me more instructions. When I’m ready to leave, she walks me to my car.
When I get in the driver’s seat, she gets in the passenger’s.
“What are you doing?” I ask her.
“Making sure you get home safe.”
“You don’t—”
“Drive, kiddo. Just drive.”
I do. Grandma’s house is only a few streets away, and the entire ride, I wonder where the body is.
“You can drive my car back,” I say to Mrs. Snickett as we both get out of the car under my grandma’s carport.
“I’m good,” Mrs. Snickett rasps. “I’ll walk.”
“What if someone is watching?”
Slowly, she sticks a cigarette between her lips.
“Let ’em watch,” she says, the cigarette bouncing as she talks.
“They watch too closely, they get a bullet between their eyes.” She lights the cigarette.
“Good night.” She doesn’t move, though. “Off you go,” she says, and I realize that she wants to make sure I get in the house safely.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she carries a gun.
Inside the house, I lock all the doors like Mrs. Snickett instructed and watch through the window as her silhouette disappears into the night, the scent of her cigarette smoke still lingering in my hair.
I wait for fifteen minutes, then pick up the landline receiver and dial her house number, which I’ve written on my palm. When she picks up the house phone, I ask, “Home?”
She answers, “Good night,” and hangs up.
I stand, holding my breath, hoping that Grandma didn’t wake up. The house is quiet. It’s peaceful, except I know that someone is watching me. And that someone is an evil mystery.
This isn’t over. But Mrs. Snickett said she’d take care of things. For the first time in years, someone besides Grandma has my back.
I walk to my bedroom, turn on the light, and my eyes instantly catch sight of my guitar. I take a seat on the edge of the bed and study it for some time.
I thought the Pittsburgh fiasco was rock bottom.
It’s nothing compared to what’s going on in Burnville.
Trouble has many shades. I don’t know when this ends, how this ends, if it ends at all.
The ache in my chest makes it shake with a sob.
Tears well up in my eyes. It’s self-pity, of course.
And pity for Grandma. Ours is a generational curse.
The one-eyed old Mr. Bunny stares at me from the shelf.
It’s a screwed-up metaphor for my family.
Torn, patched up, mutilated, burned, then washed and somehow presentable.
I don’t know how to process what happened or how to pack all the secrets that keep piling up into a box and hide it under my bed. No closet can hide a dead body either.
I close my eyes and start humming a vague tune that’s slowly forming into a song.
For the first time in months, I pick up my guitar. The moment my hand wraps around the familiar smooth guitar neck, a pleasant tingle of anticipation courses through my body. I’ve missed this.
I don’t want to wake up Grandma with the noise, but I feel like playing. I silently caress the strings, thinking about how to stitch my emotions into words and following the tune in my head.
Soon, the lyrics come together, and I pick up a pen and paper and write them down.
It’s the middle of the night. I’ve just been framed for a horrible crime.
The strangers I barely knew until weeks ago covered it up.
I might survive this. Or I might go to jail.
Grandma might die soon. Or she might last for a while.
I wanted answers about my family’s past. Now I wish the past stayed in the past. My music career went to crap, my fans despise me, life sucks, and yet, there are people who try to make it better, not asking for anything in return.
Often, it’s not the brutal violence but rather random acts of kindness that affect us the most.
So I write about blue waves, like Rika’s hair. And the scent of vintage wood and smoke that is Mrs. Snickett. The secrets with sharp edges and the wishful kindness of strangers. And the dark road to nowhere, with a trunk full of my past.
It’s all in the past, that’s what I tell myself as I sing quietly and finally touch the guitar strings, weaving the words with the music. It’s all in the past.
I hear a creak outside my door, and I smile, knowing that Grandma is up, being sneaky behind the closed door, listening to me play. But I carry on singing, for her, but mostly for myself, knowing that I can’t erase what happened, but I might change what’s to come.
You can’t look into the future when all you do is look into the past.