Crow’s Row (21 page)

I’d only had my driver’s license for a few months. Getting a driver’s license was one of those Real World things that I had wanted to achieve. I celebrated my feat by buying a car from our landlord for a little less than two hundred dollars. It was a baby blue 1991 Buick Roadmaster station wagon, with wood-grained panel sides and a sunroof that was covered with a garbage bag because it leaked when it rained. Sometimes I could even afford to put a little bit of gas in it. The car was made of real steel, which was crucial. The bent stop signs, the crushed garbage cans on my street testified to my driving abilities.

I remembered the recently added dents on my Buick and looked at the shiny, frail cars lined next to me. I imagined the kind of damage someone like me could do to them … I lost my breath and leaned against one of the colored toys to steady myself.

“Ah!” Cameron said waking me from my nightmarish trance. “The Maserati! A bold choice.”

He smiled with approval and went to grab the keys from the back wall.

“Cameron, I can’t … I have no idea how to drive … this … thing …”

“It’s amazingly easy,” he reassured. “I’ll show you.”

Not even Cameron could reassure me at this point.

Cameron climbed into the driver’s seat. Tiny squeezed into the backseat, setting his handgun next to him. I grudgingly got into the passenger side. Cameron spent the next few minutes amused with my frustrated attempts at closing the trick door. When I gave up, crossing my arms and huffing like a five-year-old, he got back out of the car and closed the door for me.

My mood was darkening with the impending doom. This seemed to amuse Cameron even more. Tiny was in on it too. I was sure they were making faces when my head was turned to struggle with the stupid seatbelt. Cameron ended up leaning over me to help me with this too. While he pulled the strap over to my lap and our eyes locked briefly, I let my smile reach my eyes. His cheeks colored a bit; he looked down and then away and fumbled to get the strap secured as quickly as possible.

Driving out of the garage, Cameron looked at everything and anything that wasn’t in my general direction. At the end of the driveway, he decelerated just long enough for the soaking-wet armed guard to peer in and quickly step away. Within seconds, the car was racing at an incredible speed down the gravel road. I held on to the door handle and the middle console for dear life while Cameron explained over the rev of the motor how the gears worked. But I heard nothing. The trees on the side of the road were a big emerald blur, and I was seated so close to the ground, it was like sliding on a bobsled.

The rain was hitting the windshield hard. We raced through sharp curves, never slowing down.

Cameron was completely, frustratingly calm. And then he happened to look over at me. He slowed down a bit, and I was able to swallow again.

We had been driving for quite a while, at least fifteen miles, I thought. Though I wasn’t sure, I didn’t think that I had seen any other exits off the pebble road. I definitely had not seen any other houses. We were in the middle of nowhere.

When the gravel driveway turned onto the paved highway, Cameron spun the car around and stopped.

“Ready?”

“No,” I mumbled, but he was already out of the car, making his way around to the passenger side. He opened the door and stood in the pouring rain. I scooted over to the driver’s side, catching a glimpse of Tiny’s reflection as I adjusted the rearview mirror. He was terrified … so was I.

Even though Cameron coached me through, the car kept jerking forward, and then it would stall. Tiny’s head also slammed into the seat in front of him every time the car came to a jolting stop. After a lengthy while, I was able to make the car move more than a few inches at a time, and before long, we were coasting along the muddied road.

The car did corner curves effortlessly. It was—almost—exhilarating. Tiny’s knuckles had gone white, never loosening their grip on the door handle. Cameron seemed to be looking on proudly, enjoying the ride.

And then it all went very wrong.

I came to a deceivingly deep puddle and got to a curve faster than I expected.

I turned the wheel, but nothing happened.

I braked hard, the car fishtailed.

Cameron was looking ahead, one hand on the dashboard, the other pushing me against my seat.

“Hold on … we’re gonna crash,” he said evenly.

We all held our breath.

I touched the brake again as a reflex. The car did a full circle in the mud and slid, picking up speed in the process.

The last thing I remembered was Cameron ordering me to cover my face, which I did without thinking. Next came a loud bang, swiftly followed by the screeching of wood against metal and shattering glass. The engine ticked. And then all was silent—just the sound of the rain against the hood, that sounded like our breathing in tandem.

“Em … Are you hurt?” Cameron’s voice was hurried, finally.

“No,” I answered from behind my hands.

“Let’s see.” He tugged my hands away and turned my face to him. When my eyes flicked open, he was laughing. “You just crashed a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car!”

In the back, Tiny was giggling too, his large belly hoisting up and down. He was covered with shards of broken glass from the small back window that had been pierced by the branch of an evergreen. The car was on its side, half in the thread of a ditch, half in the woods. Outside my window, I saw a lot of mud. Nothing about this was funny, or “fun” to me.

After trying to push the car out, we all stood in the rain and watched the Maserati sink deeper into the mud. When realization set in, Tiny took out a short-wave radio and called for someone to come dig the car out. I recognized Spider’s sharp voice on the other end of the radio.

My mood had improved after the rain had ceased and Cameron and I were walking the rest of the way home. The road was flooded in parts, and my revered sneakers were gorged with mud.

At Cameron’s command, Tiny had stayed behind, watching uneasily as the boss left without armed defense.

Help had driven by us in the form of a black pickup truck, with Spider and four sodden guards who were grimly holding onto shovels in the back cab. After our bit of fun, Cameron was in an excellent mood. So when Spider’s passing glower hit me again, I decided to seize the moment.

“Spider doesn’t … like me much,” I mused.

“He’s just being overprotective.”

I slightly raised my chin and scrunched my forehead. Next to Cameron, I looked like a munchkin. “Am I that much of a threat to you?”

He grimaced and looked at the road ahead. “More than you know,” he mumbled as he hopped over a puddle.

“I meant Carly, not me. Spider is trying to protect Carly.” He turned around, extending his hand to help me jump over the large puddle. I still missed, badly, and splashed both of us simultaneously.

“Why would I want to hurt Carly?”

“It’s not a matter of you wanting to hurt her. It’s who you remind her of every time she sees you.” Cameron had an intent look on his face, egging me to make the connection.

“My brother?”

“Bill and Carly used to date,” he explained.

“But I don’t look anything like him.” Another unfair twist of fate.

“Your head might not be blond,” he said, “but you’re very much like Bill.”

This made me smile, despite the hair comment. “How long did they date for?”

“A while … longer than any of the girls he dated.” He waited until our eyes met. “Before Carly, Bill never let any girl stick around long enough for her to get to know him.”

Part of me wondered if this had been added for my benefit, or if Cameron was referring to himself … or if I was reading more into it than there was. The other part of me was trying not to ogle: Cameron’s soaked T-shirt clung to him … it was very hard not to ogle. I looked away and concentrated on getting out of the bog alive.

“When it came to Carly, Bill was different,” he said with difficulty. “He told her everything … no matter how bad … and there was lots of bad stuff …”

I quickly frowned. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as you make it out to be, Cameron.”

He forced a smile. “You mean as bad as Bill made it out to be.”

I shrugged.

“He must have loved her very much,” I said, turning to him. “To feel like he could tell her everything without being afraid of what she might think. Takes a lot of guts and trust.”

He seemed to consider this while he surveyed my face. “Carly’s a tough cookie. She can handle a lot more than most girls.”

“How would he know if he never tried?”

“Before Carly came around, your brother had been with lots of girls, and he left a path of destruction behind him. Spider tried to warn Carly about his … bad habits. She didn’t listen.” Cameron’s voice turned sharp. “Spider was right.”

The next thing that came out of my mouth I hoped with every fiber of my being that he would negate. “He cheated on her, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed solemnly. “Except that it was much worse than that.”

I couldn’t imagine what was worse than cheating on someone you loved and who loved you … until Cameron told me, “He got the other girl pregnant.”

He was right: this was much worse.

“Who was she?” I demanded.

“The other woman?”

I nodded.

He gazed ahead. “You’ve already met her and her son. The kid is Bill’s spitting image.”

From a corner of my mind, I dredged up the picture I had of my brother as a child: blond, curly hair, sun-kissed skin, gray eyes. He had kept these traits as an adult … and I had seen these same traits very recently.

“Daniel,” I gasped. “Bill fathered a child with Frances.”

“Spider confronted him once,” he told me. “When your brother was acting … weird, Spider accused him of cheating in front of Carly and me. Bill denied it, and Carly believed him. Hell, I even believed him—not that it had anything to do with me.” He smirked darkly. “Bill could be pretty convincing when he needed to be.”

It started drizzling again, but we kept a very slow pace. “After he died, we found out about Frances when she came looking for money.”

“Did Bill know she was pregnant?” I wondered.

“He must’ve. Her belly was already out to here when he died,” he said, rolling his arms in front of his stomach.

“Spider must have felt vindicated,” I guessed, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice.

“Not really—he was too busy bringing Carly back to worry about being right,” he answered and his voice became grave. “When Bill died, Carly was devastated. Then when Frances came around, she still wouldn’t believe that Bill cheated on her. But when the baby was born and he looked so much like Bill, Carly was …” He took a second and brushed his hand over his face. “We didn’t think that she could take anymore.”

While my brain took a moment to recoup, my mouth asked, “Are Spider and Carly related?”

Cameron burst out laughing. “What? God no! It would be pretty sick if they were!”

His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

“He seems very protective of her. I just thought …”

“There’s nothing platonic about Spider’s need to protect Carly.” His laugh cooled to a chuckle, and he explained, “Spider has been in love with Carly for at least as long as I’ve known him—probably longer. They don’t like to talk about their childhood, so I don’t know a whole lot. From the bits and pieces I’ve heard, they grew up together; Carly had a creep for a father and Spider has been watching over her his whole life.”

He leaned in and lowered his voice, in case the trees heard us. “When Bill and Carly started dating and they got really serious, I thought Spider was going to snap. I figured he was either going to kill Bill or himself. Instead, he spent his time trying to prove to Carly that Bill wasn’t good enough for her.”

Something didn’t fit. “Bill has been gone a long time, and Carly seems okay with me now,” I assessed. My interactions with Carly had grown from her deathly glares and her screaming profanities at me, to civilized, almost friendly.

He grinned proudly. “Spider and I are just as surprised as you are. We both thought she would have been mad longer than that.”

My head shot up.

“You talk to Spider about me?”

His brow furrowed, and he glanced ahead.

Thunder roared, and new rows of black clouds hoarded in. The mist had dropped from the treetops to the ground, making the gravel road barely discernible beyond two feet. Cameron and I walked closely and silently for awhile. Questions still colored my thoughts. For one, my brother’s stupid and idiotic mistake had nothing to do with me. Second, if Carly wasn’t as perturbed by my being there, why did Spider still feel the need to scowl every time he saw me?

“There’s more to this than what Bill did to Carly,” I said and watched him carefully. “There’s another reason why Spider doesn’t like me.”

He slowed our already slow pace while he deliberated. When he looked up, I could see the struggle. “He doesn’t trust you, and he definitely doesn’t trust me with you.”

“Why?” I challenged.

“For the same reasons he never trusted your brother, even before Bill and Carly met.”