Crazy Eights (Stacked Deck #8) - Emilia Finn Page 0,1
me not to call her anything?” I rasp out. “Everyone keeps saying she’s not real, so is that the point? For me to forget?”
“Baby, I—”
“Because she does exist, Mom! Maybe that’s not her name, and maybe she ran away, but her heart exists. It fucking exists, because I can feel it in here.” I crush my mom’s hand against my heart. “I’m sick to death of everyone saying she doesn’t exist.”
“It’s not… We don’t mean it like…” She stops. Swallows. Nods. “I’m so sorry, baby. When people say that, they don’t mean for it to hurt you. They’re just trying to work. Sophia and Oz and them… they’re just talking in the literal sense. They’re not talking about her heart.”
“She exists,” I whimper. “But she’s not here.”
“They’re looking for her.” Mom perks up just a little, like her news will somehow please me. “You’ll know as soon as they know.”
When a single tear slides along my cheek and rests on the corner of my lip, I brush it away with an angry swipe of my arm. “They’re looking so they can arrest them, not bring them home.”
It took a whole day for me to stop staring into space after Cam’s car roared away and left town. When her wheels finally touched the ground, and the Quinns raced out of my life, I merely sat. In the dirt, in the snow, in the gravel parking lot outside my family’s gym, I sat like maybe this was some kind of cruel joke and Cam would be back any moment.
I stared. And waited.
It took a week for me to stop dialing the number she gave me. Every time I called, I was met with the same canned response; “The number you are calling is switched off or out of range. Please hang up and try again.”
I spent a week doing that, like I thought the phone company would eventually change their mind and connect us again.
Then it took an additional week for me to stop texting… Stupid, I know. But when I texted, it didn’t bounce back and remind me that the number no longer worked.
Cam promised she would call me every single day once she was back in her town; every single night when she finally crawled into bed after a long shift stacking shelves, she’d call, and we could talk until we fell asleep.
She’s a fucking liar. But I guess we already knew that.
“What town was she born in?” Soph has asked.
Cam didn’t say.
“Who are her parents?” Oz has demanded.
I don’t know.
“She never gave you any other name? Not even by accident?”
Quinn.
That’s the only name she asked of me, and only when we were making love.
I’ve been questioned by my own fucking uncles, cops, like I’m some kind of criminal, but even if I wanted to give them something, Cam made it impossible. She knew all along, she knew she would run, and she knew the details she was giving were all lies.
She even told me once that what we had would end with her disappearing into the night. She literally told me, and still somehow, the fact she ran caught me by surprise.
Now, I have nothing to snitch, and even if I did, I’m not entirely convinced I would.
Stepping outside my mom and dad’s home, the home I was raised in, I slowly move down the porch steps and onto spongy grass. I cross onto the street, then onto the grass opposite, until I’m making my way through Uncle Jack’s yard and into the back.
It’s only February, so it’s not particularly warm, but the sun is out, and the snow stopped falling a while ago. It’s the change of a season; the old is gone, and with it… the woman I fell in love with.
I move through the gate, and pass our old-as-God black Labrador as she lays in a patch of sun with her feet lifted to the sky, and her tongue lolling out to the side.
She’s Uncle Jack’s dog. He rescued her long ago, when she was hit by a car and lost a leg. She’s lived a long, happy life with only three limbs, and has never once complained.
“Annie.” I walk to her, and kneel so I can scratch her belly. I wasn’t coming here to visit with her, but Annie’s days are numbered, and her belly is already exposed, so why the fuck shouldn’t I stop for a moment? “I’m going for a walk into the forest. Do you wanna come?” I slide my hand up