Page 96 of Creeping Beautiful

Of course, the charge did not stick. Nathan St. James is already home. And now the fucking town of Pearl Springs, Louisiana has taken an interest in us. I do have a birth certificate for her, and papers from the Bahamas saying I am her legal guardian, and she has a US passport. On the surface, everything is in order. But things are not in order. The documents are bogus and if they take a good look at our paper trail for Indie lots of red flags will start popping up.

She is allowed to have dual citizenship in the Bahamas until she is twenty-one if she was born abroad. Both her passports say she was born to a Bahamian father and an American mother in the US Virgin Islands. Thus, she is a legal citizen of both countries. Whether that is true or not, I have no idea. But all the papers I use to prove legal authority over her here in the US come from the Bahamian courts.

Which is fine, as long as no one looks too closely. And so far, no one has.

But Indie, pissed off as she is, has filed a request for emancipation in the town of Pearl Springs. She is, right at this moment, outside screaming at McKay that the minute that order is granted she and Nathan are getting married.

I’m sitting at the dining room table with my arms crossed and my legs kicked out in front of me, listening to Donovan, sitting across from me, go on and on about how this is just a threat. She’s not serious. She will come around. McKay will handle things. And I should just leave her alone.

I almost laugh. Because I wasn’t even the one who went into the fucking Pearl Spring Police Department and filed a complaint against Nathan St. James.

Donovan was.

I glare at him now. “You do realize that the town of Pearl Springs will be all up in our business over this shit?”

“It’s nothing we can’t handle.”

“How, exactly, will we handle this, Donovan? Are we going to kill them? Are we going to blow that whole town up? Wipe it off the map and pretend it was never there? There is no more Company. That town was never Company. Never has been, never will be now. I don’t know a single goddamned person on the city council. They are not gonna ignore us. They might not be able to take her away or charge us with anything, but they will find us… interesting. They will take notice. This is not gonna blow over. Some teenage girl who they have no record of—never attended public school, never took part in anything but church three towns over”—I’m so fucking pissed right now—“doesn’t have any friends except for this boy she got pregnant by. And lives with two men, both of whom are over thirty and neither of whom are related to her. You don’t think that’s gonna draw some attention? What the fuck, Donovan? What the actual fuck were you thinking?”

“I just thought—”

“And she thinks I did this.” I cut him off because my question was rhetorical and I’m not really interested in his fucking psychobabble right now. “She is seventeen and a half, OK? In six months, she could leave and never come back.”

He sighs. Rubs the side of his temple with the palm of his hand. “Maybe that’s not a bad idea.”

I stand up. My chair goes flying backwards. And I pound my hands on the table as I lean over and stare him in the eyes. “What the fuck did you just say?”

“Maybe… it’s time for her to go off and find her own way?”

“Her own way doing what, Donovan? Is she going to college? Is she gonna… waitress down in New Orleans? What exactly will she be doing as she’s finding her own way?”

He, of course, has no answer.

“She’s going to kill people, Donovan. That’s what she’s gonna do.”

“You don’t know that.”

“She’s gonna lose her fucking mind, and get bored, and start doing jobs on her own. And then one day that job will go bad and her instincts will kick in and that’s it. It’s over. She will revert back to who and what she really is and this world will not be a better place because of it.”

He grinds his teeth for a few moments. Stares past me while he thinks. And then his eyes finally meet mine. “Maybe she should come live with me?”

“With you?” I laugh. Very loud. “With you?”

“At least I can help her.”

“Help her do what?”

“Deal, Adam. That’s why I’m here, remember. I keep her sane.”

“You don’t keep her sane! I keep her sane. McKay keeps her sane. You just come and go like this girl is your hobby. You’re busy living in LA working eighty hours a week on this plastic surgery dream. You’re not even qualified to treat her mind. You never were.”

He huffs and leans back in his chair. “I’m more qualified than you. And you seemed fine with it for the past seven years.”

“Because we were a team. Because we were under Company protection. Because I had no other choice, Donovan.”

“And what choices do you have now?”

I point at him. “Fuck you. She is not leaving. She is not marrying that boy. She will have this baby here and we will take care of it.”