The drive to Cletus’s house is the longest I’ve ever been on. My stomach fizzes with churning bile. My foot bounces uncontrollably. If I wasn’t clasping my own hands so tightly together, they’d be shaking.
Please be there, Julio. Please.
“It’s going to be okay,” Arden says, putting a hand on my knee. But the usual Arden Moss confidence is missing from the words. Before I turn away, I catch a glimpse of panic in his eyes. He’s looking at the road ahead of us. “There’s my dad. Get down!”
I curl myself into a ball in the floorboard, pressing myself under the dash and making myself as small as possible. The sand and general smell of feet invade my nose, sending the urge to sneeze to every nerve in my body. A whimper escapes me. I’m glad his dad drives a car instead of a truck so he has to look up to talk to Arden. This whole hiding thing would be easier if I wasn’t shaking like an earthquake, causing a plastic grocery bag in the floorboard to tremble with me.
Arden gives me a warning “shhh.” The truck slows to a halt. I hear Arden rolling down his window. Hear him turn down the radio. I want to open the door and run. I want to open the door and strangle the sheriff. I want to open the door and see Julio in the backseat of his car, alive and well.
I want to confront the world and hide from it at the same time.
I stay scrunched up in place.
“What’s up?” Arden says casually.
“Where are you going, boy?”
“Cletus’s house.” Why would Arden tell him where we’re going ohmigod.
“For what?”
“Old man says he has a hot nurse. Wants me to check her out. Why all this father-of-the-year concern? You feeling okay?”
“Be home by twelve.”
“I’ll think about it.” I guess an answer like “yes, sir” would have made the sheriff suspicious. Arden really does have a gift for BS. He doesn’t give his dad time to respond. He steps on the gas and the truck jolts forward. When it does, I puke on his feet.
Thirty-Four
“She doesn’t like tea,” Arden tells Cletus.
“She doesn’t have to like it,” his uncle says, lifting and lowering a tea bag in a steaming mug of hot water. “It’ll settle her stomach.”
“She thinks Dad killed Julio.” Arden hopes Cletus can discern the question he’s really asking here.
Apparently, he can. “No way. Your pa’s too chicken.” The old man picks up a slice of lemon and violently squeezes it into the cup.
“Well, if you tried to tell me he was too good of a man, I might not have believed you. But that makes me feel a little better.” Arden taps his fingers on the kitchen island and shifts his weight on the barstool. “Why do you think he kept the necklace? He hates gold chains.”
“Pure greed, if you ask me.”
This all sounds too good to be true. “You don’t think he suspected a wire?” He glances at the servant’s stairwell. Carly has been showering and changing clothes for a solid half hour.
Cletus sighs. “You have to be able to look at things from his point of view. As far as he’s concerned, someone like Julio isn’t capable of pulling off this kind of thing. He’s overconfident, you see.”
“So where is Julio?”
“Hopefully laying low.”
Arden shakes his head. “Just seems like he would have called by now.”
“Has she tried his cell phone?”
“He doesn’t have one.”
“Then how do you suppose he would have called?”
This conversation is too practical for all the emotions Arden is feeling right now. Because what if something really did happen to Julio? How will I ever help her through this?
He remembers what it felt like to lose Amber. He remembers sitting in his room after the funeral while people passed around tissue boxes downstairs. Made themselves plates of food, in honor of his dead sister, who was a stranger to most of them. Hundreds of people showed up. Big names, bigger names, names that meant nothing to Arden and wouldn’t have meant anything to Amber. People Arden didn’t know and didn’t care to know introduced themselves to him at the funeral home, offering condolences or funny anecdotes about her early childhood, when she appeared normal. The preacher extolled all the many admirable qualities of Amber Moss—an impressive feat, considering he’d never met her. At the time, Arden wasn’t sure what could be worse than having your funeral attended by a bunch of gain-seeking posers.
Now he knows what’s worse: having to attend Julio’s funeral with Carly. Especially if it was my own father who killed Julio.
He’s not sure one human being can actually help another human being overcome something like this. He’s not sure he’s qualified to be that person for Carly, either.
And how will I deal with it myself? Amber’s death broke him. This, though? This will destroy him—and anything left of a relationship he could have had with his dad. Sometimes bridges can be mended, holes can be patched up. Maybe one day, when they’re both old, they could find a way to reconcile over Amber. But this? No way. Never.
Outside, it begins to rain on the tin roof of the back porch. In the distance, thunder claps, rumbling through the old kitchen like a guttural groan. “Got a leak out there,” Cletus says, oblivious to the hole Arden is digging inside himself. “Need you to come fix it this weekend.” He shuffles to the cabinet then, dragging his small oxygen tank on wheels behind him.