Lock and Key (3 page)

By the time Jamie called up the stairs that dinner was ready, I’d decided to leave that night. It just made sense—there was no need to contaminate their pristine home any further, or the pretty bed in my room. Once everyone was asleep, I’d just grab my stuff, slip out the back door, and be on a main road within a few minutes. The first pay phone I found, I’d call one of my friends to come get me. I knew I couldn’t stay at the yellow house—it would be the obvious place anyone would come looking—but at least if I got there, I could pick through my stuff for the things I needed. I wasn’t stupid. I knew things had already changed, irrevocably and totally. But at least I could walk through the rooms and say good-bye, as well as try to leave some message behind, in case anyone came looking for me.

Then it was just a matter of laying low. After a few days of searching and paperwork, Cora and Jamie would write me off as unsaveable, getting their brownie points for trying
and
escaping relatively unscathed. That was what most people wanted anyway.

Now, I walked into the bathroom, my hairbrush in hand. I knew I looked rough, the result of two pretty much sleepless nights and then this long day, but the lighting in the bathroom, clearly designed to be flattering, made me look better than I knew I actually did, which was unsettling. Mirrors, if nothing else, were supposed to be honest. I turned off the lights and brushed my hair in the dark.

Just before I left my room, I glanced down at my watch, noting the time: 5:45. If Cora and Jamie were asleep by, say, midnight at the latest, that meant I only had to endure six hours and fifteen minutes more. Knowing this gave me a sense of calm, of control, as well as the fortitude I needed to go downstairs to dinner and whatever else was waiting for me.

Even with this wary attitude, however, I could never have been prepared for what I found at the bottom of the stairs. There, in the dark entryway, just before the arch that led into the kitchen, I stepped in something wet. And, judging by the splash against my ankle, cold.

“Whoa,” I said, drawing my foot back and looking around me. Whatever the liquid was had now spread, propelled by my shoe, and I froze, so as not to send it any farther. Barely a half hour in, and already I’d managed to violate Cora’s perfect palace. I was looking around me, wondering what I could possibly find to wipe it up with—the tapestry on the nearby wall? something in the umbrella stand?—when the light clicked on over my head.

“Hey,” Jamie said, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. “I thought I heard something. Come on in, we’re just about—” Suddenly, he stopped talking, having spotted the puddle and my proximity to it. “Oh, shit,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

“Quick,” he said, cutting me off and tossing me the dishtowel. “Get it up, would you? Before she—”

I caught the towel and was about to bend over when I realized it was too late. Cora was now standing in the archway behind him, peering around his shoulder. “Jamie,” she said, and he jumped, startled. “Is that—?”

“No,” he said flatly. “It’s not.”

My sister, clearly not convinced, stepped around him and walked over for a closer look. “It is,” she said, turning back to look at her husband, who had slunk back farther into the kitchen. “It’s pee.”

“Cor—”

“It’s pee,
again
,” she said, whirling around to face him. “Isn’t this why we put in that dog door?”

Dog?
I thought, although I supposed this was a relief, considering I’d been worried I was about to find out something really disturbing about my brother-in-law. “You have a dog?” I asked. Cora sighed in response.

“Mastery of a dog door takes time,” Jamie told her, grabbing a roll of paper towels off a nearby counter and walking over to us. Cora stepped aside as he ripped off a few sheets, then squatted down, tossing them over the puddle and adjacent splashes. “You know that expression. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

Cora shook her head, then walked back into the kitchen without further comment. Jamie, still down on the floor, ripped off a few more paper towels and then dabbed at my shoe, glancing up at me. “Sorry about that,” he said. “It’s an issue.”

I nodded, not sure what to say to this. So I just folded the dishtowel and followed him into the kitchen, where he tossed the paper towels into a stainless-steel trash can. Cora was by the windows that looked out over the deck, setting the wide, white table there. I watched as she folded cloth napkins, setting one by each of three plates, before laying out silverware: fork, knife, spoon. There were also place-mats, water glasses, and a big glass pitcher with sliced lemons floating in it. Like the rest of the house, it looked like something out of a magazine, too perfect to even be real.

Just as I thought this, I heard a loud, rattling sound. It was like a noise your grandfather would make, once he passed out in his recliner after dinner, but it was coming from behind me, in the laundry room. When I turned around, I saw the dog.

Actually first, I saw everything else: the large bed, covered in what looked like sheepskin, the pile of toys—plastic rings, fake newspapers, rope bones—and, most noticeable of all, a stuffed orange chicken, sitting upright. Only once I’d processed all these accoutrements did I actually make out the dog itself, which was small, black and white, and lying on its back, eyes closed and feet in the air, snoring. Loudly.

“That’s Roscoe,” Jamie said to me as he pulled open the fridge. “Normally, he’d be up and greeting you. But our dog walker came for the first time today, and I think it wore him out. In fact, that’s probably why he had that accident in the foyer. He’s exhausted.”

“What would be
out
of the ordinary,” Cora said, “is if he actually went outside.”

From the laundry room, I heard Roscoe let out another loud snore. It sounded like his nasal passages were exploding.

“Let’s just eat,” Cora said. Then she pulled out a chair and sat down.

I waited for Jamie to take his place at the head of the table before claiming the other chair. It wasn’t until I was seated and got a whiff of the pot of spaghetti sauce to my left that I realized I was starving. Jamie picked up Cora’s plate, putting it over his own, then served her some spaghetti, sauce, and salad before passing it back to her. Then he gestured for mine, and did the same before filling his own plate. It was all so formal, and
normal
, that I felt strangely nervous, so much so that I found myself watching my sister, picking up my fork only when she did. Which was so weird, considering how long it had been since I’d taken any cues from Cora. Still, there had been a time when she had taught me everything, so maybe, like so much else, this was just instinct.

“So tomorrow,” Jamie said, his voice loud and cheerful, “we’re going to get you registered for school. Cora’s got a meeting, so I’ll be taking you over to my old stomping ground.”

I glanced up. “I’m not going to Jackson?”

“Out of district,” Cora replied, spearing a cucumber with her fork. “And even if we got an exception, the commute is too long.”

“But it’s mid-semester,” I said. I had a flash of my locker, the bio project I’d just dropped off the week before, all of it, like my stuff in the yellow house, just abandoned. I swallowed, taking a breath. “I can’t just leave everything.”

“It’s okay,” Jamie said. “We’ll get it all settled tomorrow.”

“I don’t mind a long bus ride,” I said, ashamed at how tight my voice sounded, betraying the lump that had risen in my throat. So ridiculous that after everything that had happened, I was crying about
school
. “I can get up early, I’m used to it.”

“Ruby.” Cora leveled her eyes at me. “This is for the best. Perkins Day is an excellent school.”

“Perkins Day?” I said. “Are you
serious
?”

“What’s wrong with the Day?” Jamie asked.

“Everything,” I told him. He looked surprised, then hurt. Great. Now I was alienating the one person who I actually had on my side in this house. “It’s not a bad school,” I told him. “It’s just . . . I won’t fit in with anyone there.”

This was a massive understatement. For the last two years, I’d gone to Jackson High, the biggest high school in the county. Overcrowded, underfunded, and with half your classes in trailers, just surviving a year there was considered a badge of honor, especially if you were like me and did not exactly run with the most academic of crowds. After I’d moved around so much with my mom, Jackson was the first place I’d spent consecutive years in a long time, so even if it was a total shit-hole, it was still familiar. Unlike Perkins Day, the elite private school known for its lacrosse team, stellar SAT scores, and the fact that the student parking lot featured more luxury automobiles than a European car dealership. The only contact we ever had with Perkins Day kids was when they felt like slumming at parties. Even then, often their girls stayed in the car, engine running and radio on, cigarettes dangling out the window, too good to even come inside.

Just as I thought this, Jamie suddenly pushed his chair back, jumping to his feet. “Roscoe!” he said. “Hold on! The dog door!”

But it was too late. Roscoe, having at some point roused himself from his bed, was already lifting his leg against the dishwasher. I tried to get a better look at him but only caught a fleeting glimpse before Jamie bolted across the floor, grabbing him in midstream, and then carried him, still dripping, and chucked him out the small flap at the bottom of the French doors facing us. Then he looked at Cora and, seeing her stony expression, stepped outside himself, the door falling shut with a click behind him.

Cora put a hand to her head, closing her eyes, and I wondered if I should say something. Before I could, though, she pushed back her chair and walked over to pick up the roll of paper towels, then disappeared behind the kitchen island, where I could hear her cleaning up what Roscoe had left behind.

I knew I should probably offer to help. But sitting alone at the table, I was still bent out of shape about the idea of me at Perkins Day. Like all it would take was dropping me in a fancy house and a fancy school and somehow I’d just be fixed, the same way Cora had clearly fixed herself when she’d left me and my mom behind all those years ago. But we were not the same, not then and especially not now.

I felt my stomach clench, and I reached up, pressing my fingers over the key around my neck. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of my watch, the overhead light glinting off the face, and felt myself relax.
Five hours, fifteen minutes,
I thought. Then I picked up my fork and finished my dinner.

Six hours and fifty long minutes later, I was beginning to worry that my brother-in-law—the Nicest Guy in the World and Lover of Incontinent Creatures—was also an insomniac. Figuring they were the early-to-bed types, I’d gone up to my room to “go to sleep” at nine thirty. Sure enough, I heard Cora come up about forty minutes later, padding past my bedroom to her own, which was at the opposite end of the floor. Her light cut off at eleven, at which point I started counting down, waiting for Jamie to join her. He didn’t. In fact, if anything, there were more lights on downstairs now than there had been earlier, slanting across the backyard, even as the houses around us went dark, one by one.

Now I’d been sitting there for almost four hours. I didn’t want to turn a light on, since I was supposed to be long asleep, so I’d spent the time lying on the bed, my hands clasped on my stomach, staring at the ceiling and wondering what the hell Jamie was doing. Truth be told, it wasn’t that different from the nights a few weeks back, when the power had been cut off temporarily at the yellow house. At least there, though, I could smoke a bowl or drink a few beers to keep things interesting. Here, there was nothing but the dark, the heat cutting off and on at what—after timing them—I’d decided were random intervals, and coming up with possible explanations for the weird, shimmering light that was visible at the far end of the backyard. I was just narrowing it down to either aliens or some sort of celestial neo-suburban phenomenon when suddenly, the windows downstairs went dark. Finally, Jamie was coming to bed.

I sat up, brushing my hair back with my fingers, and listened. Unlike the yellow house, which was so small and thin-walled you could hear someone rolling over in a bed two rooms away, Cora’s palace was hard to monitor in terms of activity and movement. I walked over to my door, easing it open slightly. Distantly, I heard footsteps and a door opening and shutting. Perfect. He was in.

Reaching down, I grabbed my bag, then slowly drew the door open, stepping out into the hallway and sticking close to the wall until I got to the stairs. Downstairs in the foyer I got my first lucky break in days: the alarm wasn’t set. Thank God.

I reached for the knob, then eased the door open, sliding my hand with the bag through first. I was just about to step over the threshold when I heard the whistling.

It was cheery, and a tune I recognized—some jingle from a commercial. Detergent, maybe. I looked around me, wondering what kind of company I would have on a subdivision street at one thirty in the morning. Soon enough, I got my answer.

“Good boy, Roscoe! Good boy!”

I froze. It was Jamie. Now I could see him, coming up the other side of the street with Roscoe, who had just lifted his leg on a mailbox, walking in front of him on a leash.
Shit,
I thought, wondering whether he was far enough away not to see if I bolted in the opposite direction, dodging the streetlights. After a quick calculation, I decided to go around the house instead.

I could hear him whistling again as I vaulted off the front steps, then ran through the grass, dodging a sprinkler spigot and heading for the backyard. There, I headed for that light I’d been studying earlier, now hoping that it
was
aliens, or some kind of black hole, anything to get me away.

Instead, I found a fence. I tossed my bag over and was wondering what my chances were of following, not to mention what I’d find there, when I heard a thwacking noise from behind me. When I turned around, I saw Roscoe emerging from his dog door.