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North: If she’ll let us.
Luckily the house had back doors and rear stairs. She didn’t have to get upstairs, necessarily. Just inside the door without getting caught coming in the door.
Or did she even have to do that? Couldn’t she pretend she had gone out to see the guys? We were supposed to stay here, as Carol had said last night, but did that mean we couldn’t be in the yard?
I waited, wondering if I’d hear more.
I ran a bath quickly, getting clothes arranged so I could simply rinse myself and wash out the hairspray. I scrubbed my hair a couple of times but it still felt there was residue remaining.
I was getting dressed when I heard footsteps in the hallway. Too soft to be Jimmy, more like Marie.
The footsteps moved to Marie’s room. Her door shut.
I breathed out slowly. They’d convinced her.
Was she angry?
I quietly finished up and went to her room.
I knocked quietly.
No answer.
I knocked again once more before I used the pin again to open the door.
Marie sat cross-legged on her bed. She had her dark hair in a ponytail and wore jeans and a T-shirt.
She turned just enough to look at me with a glare of annoyance.
I felt I knew similar unhappiness. While I hoped the guys would listen, we couldn’t risk talking loud enough for Carol to hear us.
Before Carol and our father had arrived, she’d wanted to remain in the house alone, to wait for her mother to return from the hospital. Plans were changing for both of us.
“We need to talk quietly,” I said.
She frowned but nodded. “We need to get her out.”
I sat on the floor, on my knees, more out of habit than anything.
She got onto the carpet too, sitting cross-legged.
“We could get out,” I said quietly.
She smirked. “You want to bail? I’m not going to live with one of your boyfriends.”
“I don’t want to just up and leave. If she calls the police on us, it might be more trouble than it’s worth.”
“She’s trying to get Dad to give my mom nothing,” she said, her voice wavering. “She wants to put her in a home.”
Her eyes were watery. She was afraid. More than I’d seen her before.
I sighed.
The Academy made a promise to those who worked with them that their families would be taken care of. There was no way for Marie to know this, of course. Marie might need far more help than she would ever admit, and for a long time.
Despite us not getting along, she’d had as hard a life as I had, watching her mother get sick and her mind deteriorate and being practically forgotten about.
“We have a few options,” I said.
“I want them out of the house,” she said. “They don’t belong here.”
“That won’t be easy,” I said. “She wants to sell the house and move to Savannah.”
Her lips twitched. She was thinking.
“They can keep the house and take the money,” I said, encouraged that she was at least considering this.
“They shouldn’t get to keep it,” she said.
Her logic was irrational to me, as I didn’t feel I had a right to anything here. Did she feel this house and the money was hers? “Do you want to see if they’ll send us to a private school?”
“Like the boys go to?” She snorted. “No, thanks.”
“It will get us a place to live until—”
“Mom won’t have a place to live if they sell this. She won’t go to a facility.”
I pressed my lips together and suddenly understood.
She was holding out for her. She was protecting what was her mother’s house.
In my mind, I went through options. Was this house worth fighting for? Or could I find her and her mother a place to live where they would be happy?
How much could I promise to do for them? I didn’t know what the Academy would do to help if I even asked them.
I was already asking a lot, and I had barely done anything for them yet.
But if I was going to trust in family, I had to assume the guys would help me provide what was needed.
“We can find a new place,” I said. “Not this. We’ll let Carol think she got what she wanted. I can arrange another house.”
She raised an eyebrow. “With what? The few dollars you make at the diner?”
“The guys will help.”
“I don’t want them to help,” she said in a very bitter tone.
“We don’t have a choice,” I said, not meaning to be short with her, but she either needed to be on board or...what else was there? “But I can make sure you have a place to live once we leave. The tricky part is getting out without getting the police called on us or creating any more problems.”
“How?”
“Play along for now,” I said. “We get on her good side.”
“And then what?”
I hesitated. I went over what I should admit to her.
She’d know what I was up to the moment I mentioned anything to Carol. If I said I wanted to go to a private school, she’d be able to connect that to the fact that the guys went to one too.
Who knew what she might have heard about the Academy? And while she was wrong about it, I couldn’t risk Carol looking into it.
“I’m going to go to private school, but we can fast-track you to get into college,” I said. “But you don’t really have to go.”
Marie raised an eyebrow. “That’s stupid.”
“It can be done,” I said. “She doesn’t want either of us here. Tell her you’re going to college, and she probably won’t care.”
“I don’t want any more school.”
“Just pretend to go,” I said. “This just stops Carol from calling around about you. Where do you want to go?”
She was quiet for a long moment as she gazed at the beige carpet.
She didn’t know. Where else was there for her?
“What about my mom?” she asked.
“She’s still in the hospital, but wherever you go, we can make sure she goes with you.”
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She continued to look at the carpet, keeping her head down.
This wasn’t going to work. She wasn’t sure what to do. “Do you want to ask her where she wants to go?”
“She’ll want the house,” Marie said. “You heard her last time.”
I needed her to focus on reality more than whatever her mother said. “Convince her otherwise,” I said. “Don’t leave it up to Carol. We’ll get away from Dad and his mistakes. There’s no reason for us to stay and deal with it.”
She nodded, seeming more interested in that. “What are we doing?”
“Carol is going to try to drum up divorce papers,” I said, thinking ahead. “We’ll go see your mom ourselves to get them signed, though. Don’t let them get together. It’ll be a disaster. If we say another woman moved in, you know...”
Marie sat up more. “Maybe in the papers, it will say I can stay with her?”
Could that be arranged? I was more worried the paperwork would have my name on it if Carol managed to find another lawyer. “We can find out. You know Dad won’t care where we go as long as everything is squared away. We can arrange something we’re both happy with. Carol shouldn’t be in the middle.”
“She’s been going through Mom’s things.”
That could be a problem if there was anything about me in any of them. “Do you know of anything that we don’t want seen?”
“I don’t want her to touch any of it.”
“We should probably find your birth certificate,” I said. “And whatever other records you have. Make sure she doesn’t take them. We’ll have to wait until she’s out of the house.” I thought about it. “Tomorrow, I was supposed to go to Jessica’s to study, but Carol was going to come with me to talk to her mom. I could convince Jimmy to come along. Dad should be at work. It’ll give you a chance to go through and find anything you don’t want her to have.”
“I don’t have a spot to store it.”
“Will you trust Nathan enough to keep it at his house?” I asked. “For now?”
She paused and scratched at her elbow. “I guess.”
“Once you’re out, he can give it back,” I said. “We just have to check in with each other about what we say. You can’t tell her about my background, because if she calls anyone about it, or threatens him, we may not get what we want.”
