Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Lux was wrong.
Monday came and went without contact. After Tuesday had passed without hearing from him, I felt tempted to just swallow my pride and say something.
Still, Lux’s advice remained clear in my mind.
I needed to wait. If he didn’t call me by Wednesday, I would take initiative and call him first. Even if he did have a girlfriend, I still felt like contact needed to be made so that I could at least thank him properly.
When I’d seen Kain last, he’d mentioned something about us having dinner.
I wondered if he was still open to the idea.
It wouldn’t be a date, but just a way for me to show gratitude, I told myself.
Besides, I also needed to return his clothes.
I would call him on Thursday, I thought to myself as I drifted to sleep that Tuesday night.
Except I never got the chance.
I was three days into my Spring Break when the first text message from Kain came—Wednesday. It had been five days since the party last Friday.
A lot of that evening had been forgotten either out of sheer willingness to forget it, or simply due to the amount of alcohol I’d consumed. I certainly wasn’t complaining to be rid of the traumatizing details of that night. My memories of Kain, however… I tried to hold onto those as best I could.
Kain Montgomery, 6:23 AM:
Convince your father to not park in the parking garage near his office today, and be smart about it. Don’t ask me any questions. Don’t even respond to this message. Just do it. And delete this text.
That was the text message that I’d woken up to that early Wednesday morning.
For a minute or so I didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me.
The message was random and unexpected, not to mention sent incredibly early.
I fished through my sleepy memories for a moment, and then immediately sat up rigid in my bed once I remembered.
He was making good on his promise. Something dangerous was planned for my father today and, just like he said he would, Kain was helping me stop it.
I didn’t have time to marvel in disbelief that he was actually helping me undermine his family.
My main priority right then was thinking of a way to protect Dad.
I was out of bed immediately, leaving myself no time to acknowledge the shivers that ran through my body.
Now was not the time to be scared. Just before rushing down the stairs, I was sure to delete the message Kain had sent.
The house was quiet as everyone slept and I tiptoed into the kitchen, looking for the keys to my father’s car. We kept the car keys on three hooks in the kitchen. The top hook had Dad’s keys. The second hook had Mom’s keys. And the bottom hook had the keys to the car that Morgan and I shared.
I slipped the top set of keys into my pajama pocket.
The parking garage for Dad’s work building required a parking pass that was glued on to the windshield of his car.
If Dad couldn’t find his keys in time to not be late for work, he would take Mom’s car.
Mom’s car didn’t have access to the parking garage at Dad’s job so he would have to park her car somewhere else.
Somewhere outside of the garage, likely along a busy downtown road which would be full of witnesses at all times.
A couple hours later, I was sitting at the dining room table, watching my father walk around checking under papers and in drawers.
“We got the damn hooks for this reason, Joshua,” Mom said, blowing at her coffee as my father searched frantically. Morgan was still in bed, and I had a bowl of oatmeal in front of me that I hadn’t touched.
“Tameka, you can either help me look or drink your coffee,” Dad responded, patting the pockets of his suit.
Trying not to seem obvious, I watched my father carefully as he searched for his “missing” keys.
There was still some general uneasiness from within me that he might somehow find them even though I’d hidden them in a box on the top shelf of my closet.
I cleared my throat. “Daddy, you’re going to be late,” I reminded. My father looked at the clock above the stove and then at my mother.
“Just for today,” he said to Mom as he reached for her car keys. She rolled her eyes and I let out a silent sigh of relief.
“Don’t forget to bring lots of quarters for the parking meter,” I added. “Mom’s car doesn’t have access to your job’s garage.”
Dad smiled at me for the reminder. “What would I do without you, Baby Girl?”
When it came to our household, it was like we’d unconsciously split into teams. There was Mom and Morgan, and then there was Dad and I.
Make no mistake, my parents had a great marriage and we were by no means a divided household, however, they clearly had their favorites. And Morgan and I clearly had ours.
Mom and Morgan were the exact same person, simply twenty-eight years apart.
To know my mother was to know who Morgan would be in the future.
They were feminine, social, fashion-conscious women who had a tendency to be snobby at times.
Morgan had recently crossed into Mom’s sorority, and that was the only time I’d ever seen Mom cry over one of our accomplishments.
My sister was a total Momma’s Girl, and the love she had for our mother was clearly mutual.
I didn’t have time to be jealous about it, however. Where Morgan had Mom, I had Dad. I was a complete Daddy’s Girl. We had a bond that I would argue was even stronger than the one Mom and Morgan had.
My proximity to my father growing up had only served to exacerbate the differences between my twin and I.
When Morgan was obsessing over boys in seventh grade, I was hanging out in my father’s office, getting well acquainted with the stories of the people he’d send to prison.
I could pass the bar exam right now based on all the legal education I got by spending time with Dad.
As irony would have it, this exposure to the legal field only served to make me avoid a career in law as much as possible.
To everyone’s surprise, Morgan was the one out of the both of us who had aspirations for law school. Me? I wanted to be a child psychiatrist. All those years of reading up on the histories of the hardened criminals my father had to prosecute taught me one very important lesson.
Criminals aren’t born. They’re made. As a child psychiatrist I hoped to get into the minds of troubled children before they became troubled adults. I didn’t want to try criminal cases, I wanted to prevent them from ever happening.
From the window of my bedroom, I watched my father pull out of the driveway in my mother’s car and silently prayed that this would be enough. I pulled out my phone and sent Kain a quick text.
Lauren Caplan, 8:32 AM:
Thank you
I was beginning to make my way into the bathroom to get washed up for the day when my phone buzzed with a new message notification.
Kain Montgomery, 8:34 AM:
Really?
I could almost hear the irritation in the one-word response.
With a shake of my head, I set the phone down.
No one was going to know what he just did for me just because I sent a ‘Thank you’.
I felt like he was being too serious. Smiling a little to myself, I walked into the Jack and Jill bathroom that connected my bedroom to my sister’s.
Under the water of the shower, my mind ran through dozens of thoughts, only slowing down once the thought of Kain Montgomery began to creep into my mind.
I wondered if he only planned to talk to me when it had something to do with my father.
Not that I wasn’t grateful for his help, but I had an unshakable desire to see him again simply for the sake of seeing him again.
My thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the sound of my sister banging on the bathroom door, urging me to finish up.
I took a few more minutes to wrap things up, deliberately taking my time before stepping into my room in my black bathrobe.
Out of habit, I reached for my phone. I wasn’t really expecting anything other than an update on the time, so it was quite the surprise when I found a fresh new text message from the most recently added person in my phone.
Despite myself, excitement rose within me before I even opened it. The message was sent about ten minutes before I read it.
Kain Montgomery, 8:53 AM:
Don’t text me.
My energy completely deflated. Even though I’d already read the three-worded message, couldn’t help but read it over and over again, reliving the humiliation as if it were fresh each time.
Kain wanted me to delete his first message to me, and I did that. His need for my discretion didn’t stop me from taking a screenshot of the rest of our conversation and sending it over to my best friend. No one else would see it but her, and Lux was very good at keeping secrets.
Lauren Caplan, 9:15 AM:
Attachment: 1 image(s)
See? He doesn’t want me to talk to him.
It was early so I wasn’t expecting my best friend to see and reply to the message as soon as I sent it. I finished getting dressed, did some laundry, and when I checked my phone as the day began to creep into noon, Luxana had responded.
Luxana Petit, 12:15 PM:
Lol, that’s a very rude way to tell someone that you want them to call you.
Lauren Caplan, 12:16 PM:
That’s what you think he was trying to say?
Luxana Petit, 12:18 PM:
Yeah. Don’t you? He didn’t say, ‘don’t talk to me,’ he said, ‘don’t text me.’ There’s a difference.
It was just like Lux to see a message like that and see it as an invitation rather than a request to be left alone.
I stared at the phone in my hand, neither responding to my friend or dialing in Kain’s number.
For a moment, I just paused, weighing the pros and cons of both calling and not calling.
When curiosity pushed me into calling, I was half expecting him to ignore it.
Imagine my surprise when he picked up after the third ring.
“Hello?”