My Sister's Keeper (19 page)

She rolled the window down. “Be careful tomorrow.”

I nodded. “Thanks. I’ll be fine.”

For a brief moment our eyes locked and I felt a surge of something.
Was that hope? Or was it pity?
She clicked her seatbelt in place, shifted the vehicle into “reverse,” and backed away.

25

“
What are you doing laying here in the dark?”

“
I took a Percocet. I had therapy today.”

“
Are you okay?”

“
Fair,” she whispered. “I’m glad you came by. You need to straighten things out with Daddy.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. “He’s the least of my worries.”

She exhaled slowly. “No, you need to.”

“
He doesn’t care about me. He’s just humiliated by this whole thing and wants me to get it straightened out. Quickly.”

She reached out and gripped my arm. “He loves you, Richie.”

“
Ha!”

“
He asked me to find out what was going on; if you were all right.”

I turned to her. “Why can’t he just ask me? Huh?”

“
Richie! What happened to your face?”

I dropped down next to her on the bed and told her everything that had happened.

“
For heaven sake,” she said. “It’s a wonder you weren’t blinded.”

“
I’m okay.”

She shifted her weight on the bed and groaned. “You have got to be more careful.” Her voice was tense. “I’m proof enough that these kinds of people can be ruthless.”

I exhaled. “Yeah, I’m starting to get the picture, but I think I’m onto something now.”

She wiped a tear off her cheek and sighed. “What?”

“
Something tells me that Ashleigh set this whole thing up.”

“
She what?”

I placed an arm under my head and explained about the house at the beach, Angie, the missing money, and the video cassette. “Ashleigh is most likely the one that stole that guy’s money and—if she did—might have set her place up to look like she’d been murdered in order to get away with it.”

Martha slapped her hand against the bed. “Damn! Why do I have to be trapped in this bed?”

I touched her arm. “What’s wrong, Babe?”

She shifted her weight again. “If those people at the beach are into porn, they could be the same ones that did this to me, that are killing those girls.”

“
Jesus, Babe. I never thought of that.”

She laid back and dropped an arm over her eyes. “I need to get a look at this place. Check out the occupants. Get fingerprints.”

“
I slipped in last night and got a video cassette, but Scott McGillikin has it now. No, wait!” I rolled up on my elbow. “It got smashed. I transferred the tape. I’ve still got the cassette it came in.”

With her arm still over her eyes, she exhaled. “I want it. But don’t touch it.”

“
I’ve already touched it. I had to take it apart.”

“
I still want to check it for prints.”

“
Okay, I’ll bring it to you.”

“
Tomorrow, when you pick me up?”

“
Tomorrow? I—can’t.”

“
Aren’t we going to see Sister Hazel?”

“
Oh, shit. Is that tomorrow?” She didn’t answer, just sighed. “I—I’m going out on the river in the morning.”

She took shallow breaths. “What’s happening on the river?”

I laid back and told her about the boy, the bicycle, and the boat. When I finished, she grabbed my arm. “Take me with you, please?”

“
Gosh, Babe. It’s an open workboat. It doesn’t have seats. It’ll pound you to death. You can’t even put your chair on it.”

She flung her head from side to side and covered her face with her hands. “Oh God! I hate being a cripple!”

It wasn’t often that I saw her like this and it hurt me just as much as it did her. “I’m sorry, Babe.”

She wiped tears off her cheeks. “It’s not your fault. You do more than you should. I just miss it so much sometimes…and hate having to depend on others for everything. Just be careful, okay?”

I couldn’t stand to see her like this, but there was nothing I could do about it. I sat up and threw my legs off the bed. “Don’t worry, Babe. I’m not going to let anything happen to me. I’ve got to look after my baby sister.”

She picked up a tissue and wiped her nose with it. “Why do I feel like
you’re
the one that needs looking after?”

I smiled and gripped her other hand. “Because I probably do. I’ll get what’s left of that cassette to you by Monday.”

She sniffled. “Thanks.”

I rolled off the bed, brushed a tear off her cheek, and kissed her forehead. “Goodnight, Babe.”

AT 5 A.M. SUNDAY MORNING, I pulled into the dirt parking lot at the boat landing. Dawn had not yet broken and the temperature had dipped to around thirty-six degrees. The cuts on my face had scabbed over and now looked like freckles. Concerned about the morning chill, I kept my pajama pants on and added a pair of insulated underwear beneath a pair of blue jeans and put two wool shirts on under a lined leather jacket. If it warmed up, I could take it all off. I also packed a rain poncho, fur-lined gloves, a red ski mask, and a tan and blue baseball cap I’d picked up a few years back on an assignment in Nassau.

The old-timer was shoving dry wood into the heater over a bed of red coals. “Might get some rain t’day,” he said. “How long you plannin’ on bein’ out?”

“
Two-thirty at the latest.”

He walked away from the heater without lighting it and pulled a key off a hook screwed in the wall. “What’cha going out there lookin’ for anyways?”

“
I’m looking for your missing boat.”

“
Well, le’ me know if ya find it. I ain’t got no ‘surance.”

The wood in the heater burst into flames as I paid cash for the boat, the gas, and a bag of ice. “How far can I get on that gas?” I asked.

“
Ya gots two six gallon tanks,” he said counting out change from an old hand-crank cash register.

“
And how far will that take me?”

“
One runs dry ya gots to change to the other one and pump the bulb ‘fore she’ll start again. Then you’ll know how far ya kin run on one.”

That’s the kind of wisdom people seem to have lost these days. Common sense. I smiled. “Right. Thanks.” I wrote down the registration number of the missing boat and left.

Outside, the air was nippy and the horizon was just beginning to lighten. I dumped the ice over the sodas and bottled water and loaded it into the boat along with the food and a box containing binoculars, chart, cell phone, radio, gloves, poncho, and a thermos of hot coffee.

The boat rocked under my weight as I placed and secured everything in it. I turned the key and the outboard motor cranked instantly, as if it had been running all night, and warbled back and forth pulling against its steering lines. A cloud of gray-blue smoke gurgled out of the murky water behind the boat and drifted up the creek.

The sky was glowing in the east, but it was still nighttime on the creek for the frogs and crickets performing their endless songs. I untied the lines, pulled them in, and pushed the boat off the dock. The wind was calm and the water was black as ink. Grasping the wheel, I eased the gearshift forward. The transmission engaged with a grind and the boat gently advanced. Without a windshield, even the slowest forward movement brought a cold, damp breeze onto my face.
It was exhilarating.

I loved being on the water and don’t know why I had stayed away so long. The creek was narrow and unfamiliar. I’d taken a Coast Guard course about ten years earlier and will always remember their “red on right on return” rule. It means that when you are going upstream, you keep red markers on the right. I was going downstream, so I needed to keep the red ones on my left.

From the thermos I poured steaming black coffee into a spill-proof insulated cup and set it in one of those swiveling holders designed to keep it right-side-up regardless of the position of the boat. Setting the engine to putter along at its lowest possible speed, I stayed close to the center of the creek watching for blinking channel markers as the dawn light began to paint the horizon in pastel colors. The Intracoastal Waterway was only a mile or so ahead and would be laden with crab pots, nets, stakes, and traffic. I preferred to have a little more light before plowing through them.

I tuned the radio to the local weather frequency, sipped hot coffee, and thought about Sydney while the monotonous voice of a NOAA weather announcer called for a 40% chance of rain.

SYDNEY AWOKE EARLY and tossed restlessly until yielding to the realization that she was not going back to sleep. She knew Richard was going out on the river that morning and could not get him out of her mind. Throwing back the covers, she eased off the bed trying not to awaken Scott.

With a pot of coffee on, she sat quietly at the breakfast table looking out at the pre-dawn darkness thinking about Richard. The feelings she’d had for him growing up had been revived—feelings she thought she’d locked away long ago. And she couldn’t get him off her mind.

She and Scott McGillikin had been together for five years and—in the beginning—he had pulled her out of the depths of emotional devastation after her break-up with a radio DJ and given her the strength to go on with her life. She had been grateful then and had felt safe with him. He had been strong, patient, thoughtful, and understanding.

Later, he helped her start her dance school. “Plan the work and work the plan,” he’d say. He’d even taken charge of investing her profits and now—thanks to him—she had a sizable savings account. He was everything she’d needed…back then. But, over time, he had become less nurturing and more possessive and had begun to spend more and more time away. She’d even suspected there were other women and eventually came to hope he
would
find someone else. It would be an easy breakup. She’d fake being hurt and he’d be gone. But he’d continued to drop by every week or so. And when she tried to push them apart, he would twist things around and make her feel guilty and selfish. Now she felt trapped and alone and just wanted things to be
over
. She knew that if she wanted things to change in her life, she’d have to make changes.
Plan the work, work the plan.
She also knew that making changes isn’t easy.

A tear rolled down her cheek as she lifted a hot cup to her lips. Through the window, the sun broke over the horizon and spread its warmth and golden-orange light as far as it could reach.

“
The dawn of a new day,” she whispered.

She wondered where Richard might be at that moment, if he was warm and dry, and if he, too, had seen and appreciated the magnificence of that glorious sunrise.

Her thoughts drifted back to the sound of that gun exploding and the shock on Richard’s face and the sight of him riding back in that car—humiliated, with his clothes tattered—and began to laugh. It was an uncontrollable, cleansing, loving laughter and with it came more tears.

If you want change, you have to make changes,
she thought.

26

P
RESSING THE THROTTLE FORWARD, I steered the open boat into the choppy waters of the Intracoastal Waterway and turned southward into the wind. The boat bounced hard across each wave and a light spray moistened my face making it feel as if the temperature had suddenly dropped another twenty degrees. I reached for the ski mask and pulled it over my head.

The channel was no more than a hundred feet wide, but the waterway itself varied from a few hundred yards wide in places to a mile wide in other places. In the wider stretches, there were strings of islands and shallow grounds on either side of the marked channel. A mid-sized yacht with a dinghy dragging behind it approached from the south and cruised past me twenty yards to my left with a rolling wall of water streaming outward behind it. Cutting toward the wave, I slammed through it, slipped into the smooth draft behind the yacht, and resumed my southward trek.

A fisherman in a workboat much like mine pulled at a net and eyed me suspiciously as I cruised by. Pelicans nestled around him and fought over the fish he didn’t keep. Occasionally, I’d spot a boat like the one I sought and would slow down, get a closer look at it, and then move on. Farther and farther I traveled southward crossing back and forth across the waterway eliminating one boat after another. As the waterway grew wider, I decided I’d check the right side going south and the other side coming back.