No Safe House

Twenty-nine Terry

I could have gone up to Grace’s room, knocked on the door, and tried to calm the waters, but I had nothing left. If she wanted to stew about this for a while on her own, that was fine by me.

So I kept my ass in the kitchen chair.

Said to myself, Shit shit goddamn motherfucking shit.

Because that’s what we were in. Right up to our goddamn necks.

Was I a fool to do what Vince had ordered me to do?

Probably.

Did I have a better idea about how to deal with this mess?

Not exactly.

Did Vince honestly believe he could keep the lid on this? Did he think he could make these problems disappear? Even if he could make Grace and me forget Stuart ever existed, did he think he could erase all evidence that the boy ever existed?

Had Stuart ceased to exist? And if he had, what the hell had actually happened to him? If he was dead, what had Vince done with him? What about the boy’s father, Eldon? What was his reaction going to be? Maybe, just maybe, Grace and I could be counted on to keep our mouths shut, but Stuart’s father? If his kid was dead, was he going to do whatever Vince wanted?

What was it about that house? Why was Vince going on about whether Stuart and Grace had plans to do anything besides stealing the Porsche? Why did he want to know if they’d been anywhere else but the basement and the main floor?

The man was rattled. If he didn’t have a handle on what was going on, if he couldn’t contain things, what would be the fallout for Grace later when everything came out? What price would she pay for not coming forward in the beginning?

And if whoever else was in that house believed Grace was a witness, and knew who she was and how to find her, was Grace safer going to the police and putting all her cards on the table?

Man oh man oh man, what a mess.

In the morning, I’d see a lawyer. Someone I could tell all this to, with complete confidentiality. Lay it all out for him. See what our options were.

I couldn’t imagine any of them were good.

As if all this were not enough, there was another matter.

Cynthia.

What the hell would all this do to her? Unless Vince really could bury this mess deeper than Captain Kidd’s treasure, I was going to have to tell her everything. She deserved to know.

More than that, I needed her to know. Cynthia might be more high-strung and stressed-out than the next person, but she was still my rock, and I wasn’t going to be able to get through this without her. And as much as Grace might want to keep her mom in the dark, she wasn’t going to be able to get through this without her, either.

The question was when to bring her into the loop.

Not tonight. Definitely not tonight.

I went upstairs, stood in front of the bathroom sink, looked at myself in the mirror for a good minute before I remembered what I’d gone in there to do. I brushed my teeth, stripped down to my boxers, and crawled into the queen-sized bed that had felt far too empty the last few weeks.

I lay there staring at the ceiling for several minutes when I decided enough time had gone by that it was okay to check in on Grace. I got out of bed, threw on a bathrobe, and went down the hall to her room.

The door was ajar an inch and I pushed it open. Her light was off, but there was enough illumination coming through the window to see that she was in bed.

“I’m awake,” she said.

“I figured,” I said, perching myself on the edge of her bed.

“I don’t think I can go to work tomorrow.”

“I’ll phone you in sick in the morning.”

“Okay.”

She brought an arm out from under the covers and held my arm.

“What about Mom?” Grace asked.

“I was just thinking about her.”

“If it all comes out, and I have to, you know, go to jail or something, we’ll have to tell her.”

“I think we might have to bring her up to speed sooner than that,” I said, smiled, and rubbed her arm.

“You think that’s what’ll happen? That I’ll go to jail?”

“No,” I said. “We won’t let that happen. Let me ask you something.”

Grace waited.

“What’s your gut tell you?” I asked.

“About what?”

“About Stuart. Did you shoot him or not?”

She took a second to think about the question. “I didn’t.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I’ve been lying here thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it, you know?”

“Sure.”

“It’s the order of things.”

I gave her arm a slight squeeze. “Go on.”

“I did hear a shot. And all this time I’ve been wondering if I’m the one who did it. And when it happened, I screamed. But the shot came first. If I’d gotten scared and screamed, I might have done something dumb like pull the trigger when I was all freaked out about something. But I didn’t freak out until I’d heard a shot.”

“You remember anything else?”

Her head bounced back and forth on the pillow. “I don’t think so.”

“You going to be okay here or do you want to come into my room?”

“I’ll give it a few minutes. If I can’t sleep, I’ll come in.”

“Okay,” I said. I was going to tell her my thoughts on getting a lawyer, then decided against it. I leaned in and kissed her forehead. “We’ll get through this.” I hesitated. “We need a couple of new rules.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m grounded forever. I figured that.”

“I’m not talking about that exactly. I mean, you need to be, you know, careful. Paying attention. About answering the door, who you talk to online, like if somebody new wants to meet you or—”

“What are you talking about?”

I didn’t want to upset her. God knows she was going to have a hard enough time sleeping as things were now.

I searched for words that didn’t sound too alarmist. “He — whoever bumped into you — might think you saw him.”

“But I didn’t.”

“But what I’m saying is, he might not know that.”

Her eyes sharpened as she grasped my meaning. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“If Stuart’s dead, and if this guy in the house did it—”

“Yeah,” I said again.

“But how would he even know who I am?” Grace asked.

“He might not. But he might figure it out.”

She sat up in bed and put her arms around me. “I’m scared, Daddy.”

I held her tight. “Me, too. But you’re safe here, right now, with me. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

Grace buried her face against my chest, her words coming out muffled. “I didn’t see him. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t.”

“I know. We’re going to get through this.”

I held her like that for a good five minutes before she let go and put her head back down on the pillow.

“You come get me if you need me,” I said, easing off the bed.

“I will. I’m okay.”

I slipped out of her room, leaving the door slightly ajar so I could hear her if she called.

As I expected, I didn’t sleep. At least not until around five in the morning, when I finally dozed off. But I was awake again before seven, and couldn’t see the point in staying in bed. I got up, showered, dressed, and on my way down to the kitchen peeked into Grace’s room to see whether she was asleep.

She was not in her bed.

Her bathroom was directly across the hall, but the door was open. She wasn’t in there.

“Grace?” I called out.

“Down here,” she said.

She was sitting at the kitchen table. Just sitting there. Not eating breakfast, not doing anything. Just sitting there in the oversized T-shirt she liked to sleep in. She was bleary eyed, and it looked as though she’d done her hair in a wind tunnel. Not that I looked any better.

“You gave me a start,” I said. “How long you been sitting there?”

She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Since around five.”

She must have come down after I’d finally fallen asleep. Otherwise I would have heard her moving about.

“I’ve got something to say,” Grace said.

I looked at her. “Okay.”

“I don’t care what Vince says. I don’t care what he said to you. And I don’t care what happens to me.” She paused, took a breath. “I have to know.”

And with that she got up, sidled past me, and went back upstairs to her room.