Chapter Nine
Keith
DAWN PARKED AT THE END OF THE ROAD BY THE LOCKWOODS’ house so that Stump Sound was right smack in front of us. You could drive straight into it if you wanted. No guardrail or anything. I thought about Jordy Matthews’s mother flying off the high-rise bridge. What would it be like to be inside a car with water pouring in through the windows? If you wanted to die, would you panic or could you peacefully let yourself drown?
The Lockwoods’ house was on our left. There were a few other cars parked nearby, and I wondered how many people would be at this thing, whatever it was.
Dawn looked at me. “You all right, sugar?” she asked. “You look a little green.”
“Never better.” This was the last place I wanted to be. Maggie Lockwood’s house. I was doing it for my mother. Otherwise, no way in hell I’d be there.
The past two mornings, the second I woke up, I looked out the window above my bed, hoping to see my mother’s car. Hoping it had miraculously reappeared overnight. When I saw that it hadn’t, I felt this panic building inside me. It was like when I woke up in the hospital with that effing breathing tube down my throat. I’d never wanted to have that feeling again.
“Okay.” Dawn unsnapped her seat belt. “Let’s go.”
We walked up the sidewalk to the house, which was yellow, the only thing it had in common with our trailer. The house was big for Topsail. Grand, my mother called it. I wouldn’t have gone that far, but having the sound in your yard was nothing to sneeze at.
I’d been there plenty of times back before Maggie torched me and my mother and Laurel’d been friends, but not since then. Not since I found out that I was a Lockwood, too.
“I don’t want to see Maggie.” I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it came out of my mouth anyway. I sounded like a kid. Like I was asking Dawn to protect me or something.
She was a step ahead of me, but she stopped and put an arm around me so we were walking together. Her long red hair brushed my cheek. The smell of her hair reminded me of my mother, like maybe they used the same shampoo or something. I turned my head so I could pull in another whiff of it.
“I’m not that wild about seeing Maggie either, Keith,” she said. “But look. You don’t have to talk to her. Don’t even have to look at her. We just need to think about your mom, okay?”
It wasn’t looking at Maggie that would piss me off as much as her looking at me. It would be massive humiliation, letting her see how she’d screwed up my life.
“Keith Weston!”
I turned to see a man and a woman running toward us from the street. The dude had a camera, the woman, a microphone. Reporters, again! I could not fucking believe it! Were they trailing me or what?
“Do you have any idea where your mother is?” the woman asked.
I turned away so fast I whacked my head into Dawn’s chin. She gave me a shove toward the Lockwoods’ front porch. “Go on,” she said to me.
I headed for the porch and heard her shout from behind me, “Keep the hell away from him! Don’t you think he’s been through enough?”
I was shaking by the time she caught up to me on the porch, but I made like the whole thing had been no big deal.
“Total assholes,” I said, nodding toward the reporters. They were walking toward a white van parked on the street.
“No kidding,” Dawn said.
Trish Delphy—Surf City’s mayor—opened the front door for us.
“Dawn.” She hugged Dawn, then reached for me. “Keith, dear,” she said. “How are you holding up?”
“All right.” I let her hug me. I was surprised she was there. The mayor. Maybe people were finally taking this seriously. As far as I could tell, the cops weren’t doing much. They told me the first forty-eight hours were critical, and tonight made it about forty-nine.
Miss Trish changed places with Dawn, putting her arm around me as she led me toward the kitchen. I saw the bright lights in there. Saw Laurel and Emily Carmichael’s mother and another lady I didn’t know yammering with each other while they did something with food on the island. I didn’t want to go in.
I stopped walking. “I’ll just wait over there,” I said to Miss Trish, pointing to the empty family room, where it wasn’t as bright. One of the windows had no glass and was shuttered from the outside. I liked that it was a little dim in the room. In the kitchen, I’d stand out like a lightbulb.
“Sure, dear,” Miss Trish said.
“I’ll come with you,” Dawn said.
“You don’t need to babysit me,” I told her.
“Don’t you think I know that?” She grinned, mussing up my hair with her hand. Then she leaned close to my ear. “I’d rather hang out with you than those people in there,” she said.
Yeah, right, I thought. But it was nice of her, so I wasn’t going to give her any grief.
We sat next to each other by the fireplace with its fake-o gas logs. I remembered the house had three fireplaces in it. One in here, one in Laurel’s bedroom and one on the porch. The Lockwoods had more money than God.
Marcus came out of the kitchen carrying a plate of food. “Hey, Dawn. Keith,” he said as he sat down on the other side of me. “Frankie with you, Dawn?”
“He’s still at work,” she said.
I was glad Frankie wasn’t there. Dawn had been seeing him for a while now, but I thought he was an asshole. He was always staring at my face.
“We’ll get some action going today, Keith,” Marcus said to me.
I nodded. My eyes were on the kitchen door. I figured Maggie was in there, and I wanted to prepare myself for seeing her. I’d pretend I didn’t see her. I’d look right through her like she didn’t exist. That’s how I’d handle it.
Dawn stood up. “I’m going to get us some food,” she said to me. “You stay.”
Like I was going anywhere.
“How’s the PT?” Marcus dug his fork into the macaroni salad on his plate.
I shrugged. Marcus was all right. Of the Lockwoods, he was the only one I could stand, and not just because he started that college fund for me years ago with a honkin’ chunk of his own money. But I didn’t want to talk about the PT. I’d skipped this morning. PT was the last thing on my mind. I wasn’t keeping up with the exercises and my arms and shoulders were killing me. I’d popped an extra half a Percocet before Dawn picked me up, but it hadn’t kicked in yet.
“Who all’s here?” I asked.
“Well, let’s see.” He chewed some. Swallowed. “Flip Cates, for starters.”
Yeah. The whole point of this meeting was for the cops to update us and tell us how we could help.
“Who else?”
“Laurel, of course. Robin Carmichael. Sue Charles. You know her?”
I nodded. Sue was one of my mother’s old book-club friends, so it made sense she was there. I didn’t realize Emily’s mother cared much about mine, though. Emily had been in the fire, too, so I guessed that was the connection. Emily’d gotten a few cuts and bruises, but she was basically okay. Or at least as okay as she’d been before the fire, which wasn’t saying much.
“Is Maggie here?” I couldn’t take the suspense anymore.
“She’s upstairs,” Marcus said. “She’s only been home a couple of days and isn’t ready to face the world.”
Chickenshit,