3. Andrew
ANDREW
She takes a sip of her beer, sitting opposite me at the bar, which is stained with ancient cup marks and chips in the varnish that have probably been here longer than I’ve been alive.
I do my best not to notice how full her lips look, gliding along the edge of the glass, or the little sigh she lets out when she swallows, or the way her blue eyes flutter for a moment before she opens them again, but it’s damn hard not to.
It has been so long since I’ve been close to a woman like this. So long since I’ve had a beer, for that matter; but she’s buying, and it seems like she has good reason to want to figure out what it is that I know.
Which would be a first.
Because I am not the kind of guy anyone comes to for information, not with the way I’ve lived my life.
I keep my mouth shut most of the time, only way to get by in the world I am a part of, or, at least, the one I was a part of, before I was inside.
These days, one wrong move, and my probation officer will have me locked back up before I can think twice, and there is no way in fucking hell I am going back there.
If whatever this woman has going on will keep me out of trouble for a while, I’ll take it.
“I’m Renee, by the way,” she introduces herself, as she roots in her back once more. “You’re Andrew, right?”
“Sure, but everyone calls me Drew.”
“Drew,” she repeats, flicking her gaze up to meet mine again, face lit by the glow of the advertising board behind the car. “Right. Well, you worked with my grandfather a few years back, I think nine years ago?”
“Sounds about right.”
“So where exactly did he get you to drive to in order to pick up the wardrobe?”
She poises a pen over paper, looking at me expectantly with her eyebrows raised. I part my lips, trying to cast my mind back.
“Somewhere across the state,” I reply, frowning as I piece it together.
“I did a lot of odd jobs for people back then, don’t remember all of it, but that one stood out to me because I was out of the city for a while.
Needed to get some heat off my back, that’s why I took the job in the first place. ”
“Some heat off your back?”
She stills her pen, flicking her gaze to mine again.
I shrug.
“Yeah. I was involved in a—look, shit, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I took the job with your grandfather, right?”
She pauses for a moment, as though she is intrigued to know more, but then nods, thinking better of it.
“Yeah. Yeah, of course, you’re right,” she agrees. “So, it was across the state. In a town somewhere?”
“No, it was this house in the middle of nowhere,” I continue, casting my mind back as best I can. “Little place that looked like it was on the brink of giving out. There was some old woman living there, and she said something about the wardrobe having belonged to her… her husband, I think?”
“Oh!” she exclaims, flicking through her notebook again. “I think I have her name. Annie, does that ring a bell?”
I nod, snapping my fingers.
“That’s her” I agree. “I don’t know why she was getting rid of it, but she said she wanted to see the back of all of his stuff. She was glad when we got it out of there. Looked like she had already managed to get rid of most of the rest of his shit by then, but she didn’t seem sad about it.”
She scribbles down what I’m saying on to the page, and takes another sip of her beer, running her tongue over her bottom lip to collect the foam that gathered there.
I try not to let my gaze linger there too long, but damn, if it isn’t difficult to keep my head on straight when she looks the way she looks right now.
“You going to tell me what all of this is about?” I ask her, lifting my chin expectantly.
“You really want to know?”
“Yep.”
She drums her fingers on the desk, and then her eyes dart left and right before she leans in.
“I found an old notebook in a secret compartment at the bottom of the wardrobe,” she explains. “With my grandfather’s handwriting in it. And in the middle of it, there was a map.”
She pulls out her phone and holds it out to me, showing me a picture on the screen.
“This is it,” she explains. “And I don’t think my grandfather drew it. I think it came with the wardrobe, and I’ve got a feeling that it leads somewhere specific.”
“What, like buried treasure?” I reply, a little flippant. She shrugs.
“I don’t know.”
I splutter into my drink, surprised.
“Wait, you think your grandfather left a treasure map in a wardrobe for you to find?”
“I’m not sure if he ever intended for me to find it,” she admits.
“But it’s the last little bit of him that I haven’t been able to make sense of yet.
And I want to figure out why it was so important that he wanted to keep it hidden.
You know, like those Carrington Carruthers books? You ever read those?”
I shake my head.
“Oh, well, I used to read them all the time at my grandfather’s store.”
I soften slightly. There’s an obvious sadness to her voice, as though the grief is still close to the surface.
“You guys were close, huh?”
She nods.
“Yeah, he raised me,” she replies, running a hand through her hair, looking away from me as she drops the phone back into her bag. “My parents, they passed away when I was pretty young, so he took me in. Spent most of my life in that antique store, actually.”
She trails off, blinking, as though it has just struck her how much she is telling me. She forces a slight laugh and shakes her head, brushing it off.
“But you don’t need to hear all that,” she replies, looking to her beer once more. “You think you would be able to show me on a map where you picked up the wardrobe from? I have a few ideas, but nothing specific.”
“I could give it a try, sure.”
She pulls out her phone again, and flicks through a few images of towns that she seems to think might be the original home of the wardrobe she is showing to me.
And, while I try to keep my gaze on the screen, I find myself looking back at her a few times.
Now she is leaning in a little closer to me, I can smell the scent of her perfume, something deep and rich and musky, like the kind some ancient queen might have worn while she was ruling over her subjects.
But there is something more to her, too. Something beneath the surface, laying open, as if she can barely stand to contain it. It’s clear that the loss of her grandfather has hit her hard, and it makes sense that she would be intent on chasing down this, the last thing that he left for her.
When my grandmother died all those years ago, there’s damn near nothing I wouldn’t have done to feel like she was around again, even for a split second.
“Wait,” I remark, squinting my eyes at the image of one of the towns she’s shown me. “What’s that one called?”
“This one? It’s Remarque,” she replies. “Why? Does that look familiar to you?”
“Yeah, that looks like the one I drove into,” I reply. “Got a river running up nearby, right?”
“Yes, that’s the one!” she exclaims, her eyes lighting up, and it’s as though it was exactly what she wanted to hear from me. “Okay, that’s great. If I can get back up there, then.”
“It’s a hell of a journey to make on your own.”
She waves a hand.
“Oh, I have a ton of podcasts to catch up on, I’ll be fine.”
I eye her for a moment. I wouldn’t say it out loud, not when I’ve just met her, but I can’t help but worry about her being all by herself, given that she has just lost someone so close to her.
Maybe it’s none of my damn business, but before I can stop myself, I throw out the offer.
“I could come with you. If you want.”
Her head jerks back in surprise.
“What?”
“I could drive you there,” I offer. “It’s a long journey. And you’ll be on the road by yourself for a while. Girl like you, you shouldn’t travel alone.”
She tips her head to the side, cocking an eyebrow.
“And what does that mean, exactly? What kind of girl am I?”
The words are a challenge, I can taste them in the air between us. Her edge, her sharpness, there’s something alluring about it, even though I know I should know better than to let myself get drawn in.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” I assure her. “Just wanted to give you a hand, that’s all. Besides, not like I have much going on here. Might as well get out of the city for a while.”
“Might as well, huh?” she muses aloud, and she trails her tongue along her bottom lip again, drawing my gaze as if she intends for exactly that. “You would really do that for me?”
“Sure, I would,” I reply. “If you’ve got the car, I can drive.”
“You know, it would be handy, having someone else there to help,” she agrees, tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear.
“Then let me come with you.”
I say the words with more certainty that I intended, and she seems slightly surprised by them. But then, after a moment, she shrugs.
“Why not?” she agrees. “You know the place better than I do. And you might remember more while we’re on our way there, that could help, too.”
“Exactly. And who knows, if there really is something there, maybe I could have a cut of it?”
She sticks her hand out to mine, her smile widening.
“Well, then, we’ve got a deal. You drive me down there, and you get a cut of whatever we come across.”
I take her hand, giving it a firm shake.
“You got it.”
And, as I close my hand around the beer once more, I realize that, for the first time in a long time, I actually feel like I am starting to get somewhere.