Grim
Authors: Anna Waggener
To Mom, for keeping my feet on the ground,
and to Dad, for showing me the stars.
Together you made me tall.
I love my youngest child more than the other two, and God bless them but they all know it.
It's not that I don't love Rebecca or Shawn. I would die for them â let my ashes hit the ground a hundred times over. But Megan's special.
Shawn is so cold, so afraid to remember how things used to be. And Rebecca â she got her father's temper, his habit of burning and burying those around him. I hope that she's forgiven me. That she still loves me. I've never really been sure.
Maybe I'm only skewed because of everything that's happened. I might've been a better mom if their father had been a better dad. I might've been a better person if my husband had needed a better wife. I've never aspired to be much, myself, but I rise up to meet other people's expectations. I can't help it.
So no, I've never loved my children any less than a mother should.
It's just that I love Megan more.
Meg. So different from her brother and sister. There's so much guilt when I watch her sleeping, but there's a kind of pride, or maybe just relief, every time she laughs. Every time she promises to never, never change. Until you've been where I've been, you can't have any idea what a comfort that is.
Shawn pulled up to the impound lot before the rain, while the air still felt tight in his throat.
Behind the chain-link fence, cars waited in perfect rows, windshields facing the parking lot like soldiers at attention. He glanced to his left, where the small brick office sat, dark, locked, and shuttered, before leaning over to fish a set of spare keys from the glove box. Panic slipped into his stomach when he straightened again and measured up the fence. All around him, floodlights were throwing distorted shadows over the ground, and a thought lurked in the back of his mind: a yell, and a night patrolman's heavy footsteps quickening to a run. Breaking and entering, they would say. He closed the door as quietly as he could.
Seriously, Becca. Every single time.
Shawn hadn't expected better from her, but that didn't make things any easier. Still, when the buzz of his phone startled him, he gritted his teeth and answered. “What?”
“Hurry up, jerk.” Rebecca's voice came through a haze of bad reception.
Shawn snapped the phone shut and headed to the padlocked gate.
Predictable. After all was said and done, he always ended up being the jerk.
The cuff of Shawn's jeans snagged on his way over the fence, but that was the least of his worries. He shook himself free and dropped onto the dirt lot. Crouching down to be less conspicuous, he hurried off to the left, where they kept newly towed cars. He planned to tell Rebecca how pathetic it was for him to know that.
When his phone started humming again, he almost ignored it â he'd already caught the gleam of Rebecca's Mustang anyway â but even on vibrate, it made too much noise and he knew that she'd just call again, over and over until he picked up.
“What?”
“Oh my God, Shawn, hurry.”
He straightened up and punched the unlock button, and the car's lights flashed yellow through the dark. The Mustang's trunk popped open and his sister climbed out, all legs and too much skin, smoothing down her navy skirt. Shawn just shook his head.
Rebecca doubled over to fluff out her long hair, the blond almost silver in the dark. “Took you long enough,” she said.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Jesus, it's cold.”
Shawn knew, even without looking, that Rebecca's eyes were on his jacket.
“Yeah,” he repeated. “I guess.”
“Shawn.”
“Fine.” He shrugged off the coat and handed it over. “Happy?”
“Yessir. Now how are we getting out of here?”
“I'm parked out front.”
“No, I mean
we
.” Rebecca settled her palm on the Mustang's scarlet tail fin, fingertips caressing cold metal. She maintained an unhealthy relationship with that '97, but at least she could admit it.
Shawn crossed his arms. “I'm not breaking that out of here.”
“Shawn!”
“What?”
“If I don't come back with it, Mom will
kill
me.”
“Well, if Mom gets in from work and finds Meg asleep and
no one else home
, then we'll both be dead, Becca. So your car really isn't my first priority.”
Rebecca pouted. “I'd do it for
you
, Shawn.”
He shook his head and chafed his arms against the cold.
“Lemme call Matt,” she said.
“There's nothing he can do.”
“He's a captain, Shawn. He can do anything.”
“He's got a badge, Rebecca. That doesn't make him Batman.”
Rebecca stared at him, her eyes slit and her mouth hanging open. “Christ, you're lame.”
“Hey, there.” They both flinched at the voice. A high-powered flashlight burst on, leeching all color from Rebecca's face. Shawn felt a stab of déjà vu.
“Dammit, Becca.”
Her palms were already flat in the air. “I need to make a call,” she said. It came out so easily that Shawn knew it was habitual. Making coffee in the morning. Chewing hangnails until they hurt. Coughing up your Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. All in a day's work.
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Erika emptied another packet of creamer into her coffee and watched the sandy powder fan out and settle. She dropped the plastic spoon into the trash bin. The gas station's fluorescent bulbs glared against white wall paint and spotted linoleum floors, and oldies crackled out of a radio next to the cash register. Erika recognized the two women behind the counter but didn't know their names. She'd spent more time in this gas station than she'd like to admit, filling paper cups with strong coffee and excessive sugar and praying that the jolt would be enough to get her home in one piece. It was the only store for miles, pedaling its gasoline seven cents too high and lighting itself up like the Empire State Building of U.S. Route 30.
An automated bell sounded as a fellow late-night traveler came in, and Erika looked over. A man in jeans and a black sports coat strolled up to the counter.
“How do I get to Atlantic City?” he asked.
One of the cashiers eyed him over the edge of her magazine. “You want directions,” she said, “you buy directions.”
“You know, I'm going to be in big trouble if I don't get to Atlantic City soon, so if you'd just point me in the right direction I'd be much obliged.”
The other cashier arched one slow eyebrow. “You want directions â”
“I buy directions,” he finished. “Someone's having a bad day. And how much do you charge for telling me where the maps are?”
She pointed a mulberry-colored fingernail at the rack beside the coffee counter.
The man pivoted, eyes skimming over Erika. She offered a small, sympathetic smile.
He gave her a second look. “Have we met?”
He asked the question without malice, as if he really cared, but he'd come in with the late-for-a-business-meeting vibe of someone from the city, and Erika had gotten enough I-don't-know-you-so-why-are-you-smiling-at-me? looks in her life for the question to put her on edge. She'd grown up in Pennsylvania, in the country, and had never been able to wrap her head around the kind of logic that made pleasantries rude.
“I don't think so,” she said, looking back down at her triple-heated coffee. She was too tired to be talking to anyone right now.
The man brushed past and pulled out one of the maps. He gave her a third look. When she caught him, he faked a smile.
“Do you know how to get to Atlantic City?”
“South to Walnut Street,” she said. “Then get on the expressway. Forty minutes, tops.”
He sighed hard. “No time,” he said. “Where's the closest hospital?”
“Pomona.” An awkward pause grew as Erika took her turn looking him over and he pretended not to notice. She took the bait. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” he said. “Just looking for sanctuary.”
“Then I think you'd be better off in a church. Plenty of those.”
He smirked and ruffled his hair. “Thanks,” he said. “I'll keep that in mind.”
Erika paid for her coffee and left. As her car rumbled to life, she glanced up and saw the man leaning back against the counter with a thoughtful look on his face. He held a New Jersey road map open in his hands, but his eyes were set on her.
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Police Captain Matthew Kingston felt his frown deepen. His broad hands, nails too short, summer brown just fading, tightened around the steering wheel. “And you still call them your friends?”
Rebecca focused on the phone in her lap. Dark buildings rolled past them as Matt guided his police cruiser down Hudson Avenue. Shawn had gone on ahead in his own car, anxious to get back to Megan and away from Rebecca.
“We were just messing around,” she said quietly.
Matt groaned. “Beck,” he said. “Getting into the trunk of your car without your keys is
not
messing around. It's practically suicide. You could've died.”
“I had my phone.”
He shook his head. “You have to grow up someday.”
Rebecca nibbled her lips, looking sorry. Matt knew her well enough to call the bluff.
“What's on your mind?”
She shrugged. “What's on yours?”
“How to revive your mother after the heart attack.”
Rebecca's neck snapped up so fast that Matt thought she might get whiplash. “You're
not
telling my mother.”
“Oh, really?”
“She'll kill me!”
“She'll take your car.”
Rebecca huffed.
“I'll tell her to, Beck.”
The sky opened up. Fat drops of rain smacked against the windshield.
Rebecca glared at the rivers forming on the glass and let her voice go cold. “You wouldn't.”
“I would,” said Matt. “Look, Beck. It's been hard enough getting you out every time some party gets busted, and to clear your record after that stunt with the water tower. Now you're trying to sneak into the drive-in with people who find it funnier to leave your car in a tow-away zone? What the hell's next?”
For the rest of the drive, Rebecca kept her legs crossed stiffly at the knee, her mouth scrunched into a tight line. She watched as the rubber wiper blades skimmed clear a double arch. Back and forth. Back and forth. Matt pulled to a stop in front of the house on Mission Street and looked sideways at Rebecca.
“I'll be calling your mother,” he said.
Her grimace vanished when she turned to him, desperate. “Please don't.”
“Go inside, Rebecca.”
“She'll be pissy and we'll all have to deal with it. You too.”
Matt saw Shawn standing in the doorway of the house, waiting like an angry father, his arms crossed and the hall light throwing him into silhouette. If Rebecca's own brother could look that embittered, the city police captain certainly had a right to.
“Go inside, Rebecca,” he repeated.
She got out. “Fine.”
“Good night,” he said.
“Whatever.”
Matt gave a small laugh when Rebecca marched up the steps and gave her brother a death look so exaggerated he could call it from behind. Hair sopping, but shoulders back and her chin up like she owned him. Shawn shoved open the glass storm door, and Rebecca breezed past without a word. The downstairs lights were all on in ten seconds, warm against the rain. She really was her mother's daughter.
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Erika coasted down the highway, cursing under her breath. Her headlights turned the drizzle silver, so that the road looked like a mirror and a million flashes of light.
She hated driving in the rain. And driving at night. And this empty stretch of highway, where the only sign of life came from an occasional farmhouse, porch light winking through the trees.
It was too late for her to be out, and she knew it. The overtime was killing her. She could feel the tension knots all along her spine â one for each sleepless hour, and another for each caffeine-fueled drive home.
She wanted to be home, in bed, asleep, without a stack of unfinished reports in the backseat. She wanted to get the man from the gas station out of her head. Something about him made her jumpy, but a promise flickered in his eyes that said he wouldn't hurt her. That said he could become whatever she wanted.
In the passenger seat, her phone started glowing. She ignored it.
If she finished the reports tonight, she'd be done for the week. Or she could call in sick tomorrow and finish everything at home. She could have dinner with her kids for once, instead of leaving a twenty tacked to the fridge next to a list of take-out numbers. There was a chicken in the freezer. If she took it out before bed, it would be thawed in time to make soup tomorrow.
Her phone glowed blue again, playing a tinny version of Beethoven.
“Dammit, Matt,” she muttered. She kept telling him not to call when she was driving, and he kept ignoring her. She reached over to grab the phone.
Light filled her windshield, white-hot and blinding.
“What the hell?”
A car shot over the hill ahead of her, high beams on. It took a few seconds for Erika to realize that it was in the wrong lane and picking up speed.
“Shit.”
Her car fishtailed as she twisted the steering wheel, trying to get off the road. The rain-slicked highway slid like oil under her tires.
The scream of her horn died when the two cars collided. Their metal bodies crumpled together like construction paper.
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Rebecca zipped up her jacket and checked herself in the hall mirror.
“And where are you going?”
She turned to look at her brother. “Ashley's picking me up,” she said.
“At midnight?”
Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Yes, Shawn, at midnight.”
“Why?”
“You're not my mother.”
“Becca.”
“Jesus, you're annoying. David still has my keys, okay? I want them back.”
Shawn couldn't help but stare. “You don't have a
car
anymore, Becca. Don't you
get
that?”
“Oh my God, Shawn, shut up about the stupid car.”
“You got it impounded, Becca. I know that you're not very intelligent, but please tell me that you know what âimpounded' means.”
“Matt'll get it out tomorrow.”
“And how will you get the money?”
“Mom'll do it.”
“You're going to ask
her
to pay?”
“Well, yeah.”
Shawn saw the headlights of Ashley's car flash across the front windows. He shrugged.
“Fine,” he said. “Do whatever you want.”
Rebecca gave him a dangerously sweet smile. “Thanks,” she said. “I plan to.”
She didn't lock the door on her way out.
Shawn slouched against the wall, feeling sick to his stomach. Even after seventeen years, he'd never gotten over Rebecca acting like a million-dollar bitch.
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Rain drummed on the scrunched metal of the wreck, sounding hollow. Jeremiah peered into the spiderwebbed window of the other car. He tapped the glass out of his way until a pile of diamond dust covered the pavement, then stepped back and folded his arms, thinking.