Secret Triplets(24)

 

When Russell pulled up to the darkened East Street Garage, we sat there for a minute. I was too tired for any more pretenses. I hardly even cared for the money. I just wanted to get out of this suffocating prison of a car.

 

Russell said, “You will tell me if he contacts you again, if you see him. If you find out anything about him.”

 

I nodded my head robotically and told him I would.

 

He handed me my envelope, and I got out.

 

One step away and—“Miss Combs!”

 

“Yes?”

 

“You must have been proud, happy to see your good detective work being put to use.”

 

I scrutinized his face for a minute and then finally produced the expected “yes.”

 

“Thanks again,” he said.

 

We stood there for another minute, staring at each other. Then I gave an awkward wave, and he gave one back. It was only once he had pulled away that I let the tears fall.

 

What had just happened? Other than me betraying all that was right, that was. That look on Russell’s face… He hadn’t believed those words any more than I had, and yet he had said them entirely for me. That look had been pure pity.

 

I shook my head and brushed aside the tears angrily. It was stupid, all of it. I was the last person in the world who deserved anyone’s pity.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eleven

 

 

 

 

 

The garage had its lights out and looked closed when I walked up, but that didn’t seem to matter. The same old man was sitting there in his same old lime chair, sipping pink lemonade as if it were the middle of a scalding summer day.

 

“It’s ready,” he said, throwing his arm out when I was a few steps away.

 

I stopped and visually followed the sweep of his arm to my little brown car.

 

“Thank you!”

 

“Your boyfriend came by and checked it out too,” he said, and I stared at him.

 

“My boyfriend?”

 

“Yeah. Took a look inside before admitting we’d done a good job. Though we didn’t need him to tell us that.”

 

As I gaped at him, he let out a wheezy laugh. Had it been Brock? Russell Snow? Why?

 

“What did he look like?”

 

The old man shrugged, squinted at me, and then muttered, “Asian.”

 

I sighed. Clearly, this man didn’t care and wasn’t going to help me anymore.

 

So I went to my car. I checked around the exterior and then interior, scanning for anything out of place. But everything was untouched; even my Kleenex box was shoved in the side of my door as always. I got in. Then, after shoving Russell’s fat envelope into the glove compartment, I started driving out of Nederland right at the speed limit. I headed back to the home I didn’t want to go to while listening to some radio song I didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

 

I was exhausted and yet filled with a useless, frenetic energy; I needed to move. I wanted to go home, to my apartment, where I could sink into my bed and cry. I was starving, but I didn’t, and wouldn’t, stop for food. I deserved to suffer, and I needed to go home.

 

The drive seemed endless, but I liked it like that—the black mass of trees or rock or water or something in between. The cat-like yellow lights of another car passed me. I didn’t pass anyone. I puttered along at exactly the speed limit, nothing more. I drove to get there; I just didn’t want to arrive. I wanted to drive forever and escape into this dissociated, thoughtless state permanently. I wanted never to think about what I’d done. But it was all too soon that I pulled into the familiar underground parking garage, stopped in my spot, and then remembered.

 

Car lights still on, I sat there and stared desolately at the half-worn ‘C26’ painted onto the wall.

 

I had been so busy trying to escape the mistake I’d just made that I’d flown straight into the arms of the mistake I had made years ago: Charlie.

 

If his message was any indication, he was sitting outside my door, just like all the other times. Maybe he was asleep; maybe he was awake. It didn’t matter.

 

I sat there in my car, trembling with what I had to do when I got out of it. I laid my fingers against the plastic handle and took a deep breath. Then I switched them to the gear shift, changed it to reverse, eased my foot onto the gas, and pulled out of the lot. As soon as I was at the garage doors, I tore out of there. I wouldn’t give in this time. I couldn’t take it anymore.

 

Streets flew by. I got glimpses of lights and the occasional pedestrian. The traffic lights remained green, encouraging me. The darkness made things reassuring somehow. And finally, there was the library, my childhood escape where I had leaned over books half the size of me—sweeping Renoirs, lush Monets, lively Toulouse-Lautrecs—cocooned in that unmistakable, bookish scent, safe from my mother with her never-ending list of worries.