The Reckless Oath We Made - Bryn Greenwood Page 0,6
shoulder. I wanted to stay there, but I knew I couldn’t. That was even more true than it had been when I was sixteen. I pulled myself together and stood up. “Should we call the police? They have to tell us something, right?”
“They’ve come by twice now, but I couldn’t answer the door.” I couldn’t meant a lot of things to Mom. Maybe she’d been too scared to talk to the police. Maybe she couldn’t get out of her chair and answer the door. “Now that you’re here, though, we’ll call them. And they’ll tell us whatever they know.”
I got the phone plugged back in, and Mom dialed. She was put on hold three times, and every time she had to tell someone new who she was. Then she finally got someone on the line who knew something, because she listened and nodded.
When she started crying, I had to sit down on the arm of her chair. The worst, that was what I expected. The very worst. After a minute Mom went back to nodding, and then she said, “Yes, I understand. That’s fine.”
“What did they say?” I said after she hung up.
“They’re going to send someone to talk to us.”
“What does that mean? Do they have any news?”
“They didn’t tell me anything.” Mom started crying again.
“Have you talked to Emma or Aunt Shelly?” I said. They were practically the only family we had left. Aunt Shelly had been married to Mom’s brother, Tim.
“Not Shelly, but Emma. I talked to her yesterday, just for a minute. Before everything got so crazy.”
“And?”
“We had a little fight. You know, in their minds this is somehow your father’s fault. Or LaReigne’s fault, which is ridiculous.”
“Well, not like she’s completely innocent, either,” I said.
Not that anybody would take me as an example of how to be a good person. Like Toby said, What kind of person takes a kid on a drug run? But what made LaReigne want to do something goody-goody like volunteer at the prison? Hadn’t we already put in our time? Before he died, our father spent twelve years in prison, and we went to see him almost every single week. Wasn’t that enough for LaReigne?
The door to the garage opened, and I heard Gentry and Marcus coming up the steps into the kitchen.
“Yea, I am a knight,” Gentry was telling Marcus. He said it with the k, k-night, and Marcus parroted it back to him that way.
“But k-nights have swords. Do you have a sword?”
“I have more than one sword.”
“You do?” Marcus said.
“What does that mean? Not completely innocent?” Mom said.
“Shh.” I didn’t want to get into it with her when Marcus might overhear us. “There goes my plan to ask Emma to watch Marcus for a little bit. The police were up at the apartment, so I don’t know if we’ll be able to stay there.”
“You should stay here.”
“How? There’s not even any place for us to sit down, let alone lie down.”
“That’s not true. You know there’s a sofa bed in the sunroom.”
The way Mom said it, so sure of herself, it gave me goosebumps. Even if you could get in the sunroom—you couldn’t—I doubted there was a sofa you’d want to sleep on. I stood up, because the whole house was quicksand, and I could feel it sucking me in.
“Probably we’ll get a motel room tonight,” I said.
“That’s silly to spend money on a motel. We can figure out something here.”
“No, I think it’d be better to take Marcus somewhere else. I don’t like all those reporters out there.”
“My lady,” Gentry said from the kitchen doorway. “I offer thee and thy page sanctuary at my father’s keep.”
“Okay.” I didn’t hesitate, because I had to get away from the quicksand. After I escaped, I could figure out what to do.
“Are we going?” Marcus said.
“Not yet, buddy. Grandma has some people coming over who need to talk to her.”
Marcus crawled up into the spot on Mom’s chair I’d just pried myself out of. He kissed her cheek and said, “When’s Mommy coming?”
“Soon, sugar pie. Soon,” Mom said. How many times had she told us that lie about Dad? Soon, when what she really meant was Never.
“Do you want to watch a video?” I asked Marcus. He didn’t move from where he was lying against Mom’s side, but he nodded.
“Gentry, do you mind taking Marcus back out to the garage? Just for a little while?”