Eerie - Crouch Blake - Страница 31

He powered off his sister’s phone and looked at Sophie.

“What do you think?”

“I think I don’t want to be inside this house anymore.”

“Believe me now?”

“Believe what?”

“That something beyond our understanding is happening here.”

“Yeah, and I want to leave, Grant. Does that strike you as a crazy request after what we just watched?”

“No, but—”

“But you don’t trust me.”

“I feel better with you here right now.”

“And I just told you I don’t want to be here. So are you going to continue to hold me against my will?”

Chapter 29

Paige blew out the candles and cleared the table while Grant moved Sophie into the living room. It was Friday night, and outside the street was busy with traffic heading downtown for the evening.

In an hour, Queen Anne would become a ghost town.

“It’s getting cold in here,” Sophie said, rubbing her shoulder with her free hand. “I can see my breath.”

Grant exhaled and squinted into the air in front of him. “No you can’t.”

“It’s still cold.” She was right about that. The temperature was dropping fast. “Guess you haven’t seen any of the weather reports.”

“No, why?”

“First night below freezing.”

“Awesome.”

Through the window, the outline of a house appeared in soft, white Christmas lights. It was already mid-December, but the season had yet to see its first truly cold night. Terrible weather in return for a mild climate and a month of perfect summer—that was the Seattle contract. Wasn’t for everyone, but Grant grooved on it. The cloudy skies jived with his ascetic inner-monk.

He surveyed the living room, eyes coming to rest on a mission-style rolling chair parked in front of a writing desk beside the fireplace. He pulled Sophie toward it, and then dragged the chair out and spun it around to face them.

Grant fished the key from his pocket and unlocked the bracelet around his wrist while keeping Sophie’s from popping open.

He snapped it around the armrest of the rolling chair.

“Still think I’m a flight risk, huh?” she asked.

“I would be.”

“And what if I looked you in the eyes and told you I wouldn’t try to leave?”

“I couldn’t live with myself putting you in a position to betray my trust.”

She rolled her eyes and plopped down in the chair, rocked it back-and-forth.

Said, “What now?”

“I’m going to find something to burn. In the meantime …” he tugged the afghan he’d slept under the night before off the couch and flagged it open, “… try to stay warm.”

He brought it down over Sophie.

“You’re just going to leave me here with these wheels?”

“Knock yourself out. Take it for a spin.”

Grant walked into the kitchen where Paige was still washing up.

“Can I help?” he asked.

“Water’s cold,” she said without turning around.

He walked up to the sink beside her, grabbed a plate.

“Thanks for dinner,” he said as he submerged it in the frigid water.

Paige made no response.

“You were quiet,” he said.

“Didn’t want to incriminate myself anymore than you already have.”

“Sophie’s on our side.”

“That why she’s in handcuffs?”

Silence crept in between them.

Paige turned the water on again.

Grant could feel the tension in his sister like a living thing. Could see it in the furious concentric circles she made with the sponge across the surface of the plate.

“I heard you in the basement,” she said at last.

Grant stopped scrubbing. Let the plate sink into the dishwater.

“Then you know I don’t blame you for any of this.”

“I know that if it comes down to my word against your partner’s, I’m fucked.”

“Hey, who’s chained to a chair in your living room? You’re my sister, all right? You get the benefit of the doubt.”

“Why even bother? I’m a wreck, right? That’s the word you used. A drug addict. A prostitute who fucked her own life from every position.”

He said, “I was defending you, Paige,” but it even sounded weak to him.

Her plate dropped into the water with a violent splash.

She put both hands on the edge of the sink.

“You’ve never defended me,” she said.

“What are you talking about? I raised you.”

“Not the same thing.”

“That hurts more than you mean it to.”

“Your crusade to fix me has always been about what I need, but never about what I need from you.”

“I don’t even know what that means, Paige.”

“It means that I didn’t need to be your project. I needed your support. I needed you to stand beside me.”

“All I’ve ever wanted is to help you.”

“I believe you think that. Just like any good doctor. But I’m not your patient. Want to know why I left the first time and why I kept leaving every time you found me?”

“Been asking myself that question for years.”

“That’s the problem. You don’t have the answer, but you could never see that. I left because I got tired of watching you fumble with my problems like they were yours. Like you had the first clue about how to fix them. You’re sicker than I am, Grant. All I wanted was a brother and all you wanted to be was a mechanic. We were both addicts.”

“That’s what family does. They try to help each other.”

She turned to him.

“I got clean on my own, Grant. You show up and now we have a dead body upstairs and a police officer handcuffed in the living room. What exactly have you fixed?”

He grabbed the damp dishtowel from the counter and dried his hands.

“You make it sound like you’ve got your whole life sorted out. I just watched some guy use you, Paige. Maybe you’re off drugs, but you’re a helluva long way from clean.”

The words were out before he could stop them. He was shocked by their venom, their precision. They had come from a place he didn’t know existed, a place where there was no love for his sister. Just anger and disappointment.

Utter devastation arrived on her face.

She shook her head in bewilderment. “Fuck. You.”

Chapter 30

“Everything okay?” Sophie called from her chair as Grant stormed through the foyer and into the living room.

“Fine,” he said, selecting a short, squat candle that smelled like lavender from the flickering legion on the coffee table.

Grant went back into the foyer and made his way down the hall beside the stairs, stopping at the door to the basement. The tap continued to run in the kitchen. He listened for the clink of plates and glassware but there was no other sound. Imagined Paige standing frozen by the sink, the same mosaic of hurt across her face.

During that last intervention in Phoenix, when Paige was in the throes of a spectacular crash and burn, she had leaned over to Grant with tears in her eyes and whispered that she wished the car accident had left him a vegetable too. Then she’d kissed him on the cheek. That was Paige at her worst. Paige out of her mind. It hadn’t made it any easier, but at least he’d known it wasn’t his little sister saying those things.

So what’s your excuse, pal? Around what can you hang the blame for your poison?

And yet still, it was there.

Unquenchable rage.

He stared across the kitchen at Paige’s back.

Knew he shouldn’t say it. Knew he should just let it go. Walk away. Punch a wall in private, but he couldn’t stop himself. He never could. The acid wanted out, and it was coming.

He said, “Did you ever think for a minute that maybe I needed you? That maybe I needed a sister? Instead of a train wreck of a child who has not for one single day since I’ve known her had control of her own life? Has that thought ever crossed your mind? I guess I’m lucky I’ve never really needed you.”