The Reckless Oath We Made - Bryn Greenwood Page 0,30

She could be dead in a morgue drawer in Nebraska with pictures of her corpse on the ten o’clock news, and he would call me and say, “Be sure to take my grandson to school tomorrow, or I’ll have to get my lawyer involved.”

“Motherfucker.” I said it under my breath about ten times while I paced up and down in the front hall trying to get my temper under control.

“My lady,” Gentry said. He’d snuck up on me and was standing in the doorway. “Thou art troubled? Hast thou news?”

“No. I’m fine. And no news.” I didn’t want to get into it with him about how messed up everything was. I hadn’t noticed before, but the wood-paneled walls of the front hall were covered in framed photos of Gentry’s family. In the picture hanging next to where he stood, Gentry was an awkward teenager with long, shaggy hair. He had his head down and his arms crossed over his chest. Bill was sitting in a chair, and Charlene stood behind him with a hand on his shoulder. Trang was maybe five or six, and he looked like a grinning elf. There were two older kids, a boy and a girl, who looked like they might be Bill and Charlene’s biological children, because unlike Trang and Gentry, they were black.

A nice family. A happy family.

“Who’s this?” I said, pointing to the picture.

“My mother and father, and brother Trang—”

“I kinda guessed those. Who are they?” I put my fingers up almost close enough to touch the glass.

“She is my sister Janae, who is three years my elder. And he is my brother Carlees who is but one year my elder,” Gentry said. “He is a teacher in the city of St. Louis. She studieth to become a veterinarian.”

“That’s cool.”

“My father has declared that we shall have no television this night, but that we shall play games. Wilt thou join us?”

“Sure,” I said. My first choice would have been curling up in a little ball somewhere, but my second choice was definitely just pretending that my sister wasn’t maybe dead.

CHAPTER 13

Zee

At Marcus’ school, I realized I didn’t know how drop-off worked, because I was always picking him up. I almost pulled in the wrong drive, and in the right drive, there was a sign that said NO PARKING, but I was already late. I got Marcus unbuckled and grabbed his book bag and the lunch Charlene had packed for him.

“You can’t park here, ma’am,” the school resource officer said. He came down the sidewalk with his gun belt rattling. I never knew what to think about that. Was Marcus any safer because a cop with a gun was on duty at the front door?

“I’m sorry. I don’t usually drop him off, so I don’t really know what I’m doing.” I gave the cop what I hoped was a friendly smile.

As soon as I got his book bag strapped on and his lunch in his hand, Marcus ran up the sidewalk to the front door. I was going to call him back and hug him, but the SRO was frowning about where I was parked, so I yelled, “I’ll see you at three-thirty!”

As I was pulling away from the school, my phone rang. Mom. I’d missed a call from her while I was getting Marcus out of the car, too.

“The police are here again,” she said, as soon as I answered.

“They came by again? Or they’re there now?”

“They’re here now.”

“What do they want?” I put on my signal and got into the turn lane to go to Mom’s house.

“I don’t know. I didn’t answer the door.”

I wanted to say, You can’t hide in your house like a turtle and hope this all goes away, but she’d pretty much done exactly that since Dad died. Instead, I said, “Okay, well, I’m on my way to your house, so I’ll talk to them.”

When I got there, two patrol cars were parked in the street, and a police van was parked at the bottom of the driveway. Two guys in suits and three uniformed cops were standing on the front porch. I think I was too exhausted from worrying, because I didn’t feel anything as I got out of the car. As I came up the sidewalk, though, I saw that one of the cops was holding a goddamn battering ram, which I guess they were planning to use to knock the door down. I broke into a jog, wishing I didn’t have to do the whole