Chapter Archer #2
He follows directions just five blocks east and pulls up in front of a house with peeling shutters, but a nice, green lawn. With a rickety porch, but a complete lack of broken-down cars used as ornaments.
This is a family home that speaks of hard work and grit, of doing their best, but not always having spare cash on the side to fix things up.
“Tairneyy Keen,” I recite. “Recent high school graduate, best friends since childhood. Accepted into a college a few hours from here, so the girls were already preparing for separation. However, Caleb said they’d made plans to visit often and stay connected over the phone.”
“Two-parent family. Lower middle class, schoolteacher mom, and janitor dad. They’ve been married twenty-three years and have three children. A son who’s about to turn twenty-one, Tairneyy two years later, then a daughter two years after that.”
Nodding, I close my notebook and unsnap my seatbelt.
Pushing the door wide, I climb out on my side and wait at the front for Drake to meet me.
“I’d like to get her thoughts on the Prims. Tara said she knew who Josey and her friends were, so chances are Tairneyy knew the Prims. Best friends gossip, so if Josey had a problem with Scott… ”
“He was the worst!” Tairneyy sinks into the couch in the middle of her living room and blows her nose into a handful of already ratty tissues. Her mom sits on one side, her dad on the other. Behind them, her brother and sister hover uncertainly.
It’s kinda like the Prim family, but not really. Not at all.
Tairneyy wipes her face and brings bright blue, swollen eyes up to mine. “Scott Prim is a complete douchebag. Josey could hardly stand to be near him.”
“Can you elaborate further?” Drake questions gently. Fuck him. He’s supposed to be bad cop. “Did Josey give you specifics?”
Before she can, I add, “The Prims mentioned studying at the dining room table, but Scott didn’t like it, so they ended up going to his room.”
She scoffs. It’s noisy and snotty and wet.
“But then they said he was worried about how his girlfriend would perceive that, so he opted to bring their sessions back to the kitchen.”
“Yeah, right.” Mrs. Keen gently rubs her daughter’s arm. “I heard about that boy, too. About the time he insisted they study in his room, but then he put the moves on her, and she shut him down.”
“Josey did?” My blood runs hot as I look from mother to daughter to dad. “Josey said that?”
“Josey and Tairneyy have been friends for a very long time,” he murmurs.
“So long, I’m not sure at what point I stopped thinking of her as a guest and started seeing her as just another kid in my house.
She was comfortable blowing off steam here and rarely minced her words.
Even if she intended for a conversation to be private…
” He casts a small, trembling smile his daughter’s way.
“I mean, teenagers can get a little heated sometimes, and our walls are thin.”
“Oh my gosh,” Tairneyy tearfully snickers. “Daddy!”
“The way Jose told it, that jockstrap tried the stare and smolder thing a few times at the dining table. She was a shy girl, though. Unassuming. So she kept talking herself in circles while her instincts told her he was into her, but her brain said she was overthinking it.”
“We figure her not calling him out on it gave him the green light to be bolder.” Tairneyy folds and unfolds her tissue. Sniffling as tears freely dribble from her eyes. “So he made a big deal about how studying in his room would be better.”
“It was one time,” Mrs. Keen adds. “Not even a full hour. He grabbed her leg and tried to kiss her.”
“So she bounced,” Tairneyy finishes. “She didn’t shriek or scream or punch him in the nuts like she should’ve.
I was basically doing the WWE spine snapper move on my bed while she was telling me.
I said how she should’ve knocked him the hell out and screamed the place down, but she just…
” She shakes her head. “Josey wasn’t like that.
Confrontation isn’t her thing, so she got up and said she wasn’t interested.
She told him she had a boyfriend, even though technically she and Caleb had broken up by then.
Then she went back to the dining table and waited for him to join her.
When his mom came through and asked about them being back, he spoke up first and waxed on about loving his girlfriend and blah blah blah. ”
“Not that she would’ve spoken up anyway.” Tairneyy’s mom sniffles. “She wasn’t planning to put him on blast.”
“But he jumped in first,” Tairneyy concludes.
“To save face, I guess. Jose couldn’t stand the pig bastard, and whenever we saw him at school, we turned and walked the other way.
I told her she should quit and get a new family to work with, but she said she’d feel bad about ditching his sister, and the Prims paid her more than the average client, so she didn’t want to walk away.
” Hesitantly, she tilts her head to the side.
“At least half of the boys in my school are arrogant, self-loving, cheating sacks of crap, though. It’s just the way it is these days.
Are you saying you think Scott did this? ”
“We’re still collecting information,” Drake inserts, back to the party line. “We don’t know Josey like you do. We don’t know her mom, or you, or Scott, or anyone else the way you do. So we’re simply doing our best to get a fuller picture.”
“Was anyone else giving her a hard time?” I ask. “Anyone at school? Had she heard from her dad recently? Caleb?”
“No, she…” Sniffling, Tairneyy wipes her nose. “Caleb’s a sweetheart, Detective. Which is really kinda special, considering how most of the rest of the guys in our graduating class are trash. She never mentioned anyone else bothering her. And she hasn’t brought her dad up in years.”
“Her mom told us how, when you were thirteen or fourteen, he turned up at your school and tried to talk to her?”
“Yeah.” She chokes out a tearful laugh, her cheeks burning a pretty pink.
“Man, I hated that guy just on principle. I’d never met him except that one time, so it’s not like I had my own experiences to base an opinion on, but it was hard not to hate him when, every time he came around, he made her cry.
Every time she spoke of him, she got so freakin’ sad.
Every time she was around my dad—” She reaches across and takes his hand.
“She was happy. It was almost like she’d adopted him, but she was way too shy to ever say so out loud.
Like when Scott was still being subtle, the thought of rejection, of being wrong, practically paralyzed her.
So I knew she loved my dad, like… a whole lot.
” She looks up at him. “She loved you so, so much, Daddy. But she was too scared to say so, just in case you wouldn’t say it back. ”
The dam his emotions hide behind breaks, a sob bouncing through his chest. “I loved her too, baby. But I never said so, because I worried a grown man saying so out of the blue would be weird.”
She bursts out with a laughing, sobbing cry that draws every other member of her family closer.
“That time in seventh grade… when her sperm donor surprised her at the gates.” She brings devastated eyes up to mine, her jaw trembling with grief.
“She told him to fuck off. And though we told her mom that we ran straight back to her house after, we didn’t.
” She leans heavily into her dad’s side, weeping as she remembers back to another time.
“We stopped at the park first, because Jose needed a minute to scream and cry and throw things and calm down. She was so proud of herself, but terrified, too. Soaring, but horrified. Caleb and I wanted to high-five her for being brave, but she wanted to dig a hole in the sandpit and bury herself in it. She was an emotional wreck and didn’t want her mom to see that, so we hung out for a while, talked shit about him, talked shit about the entire world, basically.
I even joined in, because that same morning, I asked my parents to buy me a phone, and my dad said no.
He became cannon fodder in the dad-hating explosion, too. ”
He chuckles, crushing her tighter against his side.
“And then,” she exhales a long sigh. “We walked back to her place and told her mom the cleaner version of what happened. She never really brought him up again after that day.”
“A-are you getting closer to figuring this out?” Tairneyy’s mom reaches back for her youngest daughter’s hand.
Drawing her closer, she pulls her around until they’re a family of four on a couch too small for it, while behind them, their son weeps silently.
Stoically. His chest jumps and his eyes water, but he doesn’t pile on and make their grief worse.
Unlike Scott Prim, constantly trying to hoard every resource his family has to offer, Tairneyy’s brother adds a hand to his father’s shoulder, a second to his sister’s, and he does what he can to add stability and support.
“We’re doing everything we can.” Drake straightens his leg and takes a card from his pocket. “You can contact us directly at this number. If you think of anything that could help, anything at all, please let us know.”