“I don’t know. She hung up on me after she told me where I could find Aubrey.” Lynn started to gnaw on her fingernail. Then she winced. “Apparently, Aubrey got in the car with Shelly because she thought Shelly was me.”
Malcolm shook his head, cursing under his breath as he walked to the bathroom and let himself in. He didn’t come out for the next hour, but when he did, he had Aubrey under his arm, she was wearing his shirt, and his eyes were soft with something I’d never seen on him before. Compassion. Understanding. Maybe a little bit of love.
“I’m going to take her to my place.”
“You should call her parents so they’ll stop worrying.”
“Already did,” he replied quickly.
“Mal,” Lynn said, “this is all my fault.”
“No,” he bit out. “This is Shelly’s fault. Not yours. Somebody should have drowned that bitch at birth.”
“I’m sorry,” Lynn said quietly.
They left together, and Malcolm helped put Aubrey back together in the days following. A year after that, they were married. Aubrey and Lyn
n were tight, but Shelly still scared the hell out of her. The police said it was a harmless prank, but they hadn’t seen Aubrey that night. That prank was far from harmless. If Lynn hadn’t gone to find her, she might not have survived it.
But out of all of it, Aubrey and Malcolm found their way together, and that was what I clung to.
Out of all the havoc Shelly wreaked, that was one good outcome. Probably the only good outcome so far.
Lynn refused to see Shelly for a while after that, until the day that she needed her.
28
That day, the day Lynn called upon Shelly to help her, I knew that something was desperately wrong. I’d come home to find Lynn sitting at the kitchen table. She had an open envelope from the mail in front of her, and her hand tightly clutched the letter that had been inside.
“Lynn?” I asked as I stepped slowly into the kitchen. She stared into space, seeing nothing, I was sure. She didn’t even look up. I called her name again. “Lynn?” I said softly.
Slowly, she raised her gaze until her eyes met mine. Tears pooled in them, but I watched as she steeled herself. She un-crinkled the letter, folded it neatly, and put it back in the envelope.
“Everything okay?” I asked, as I set my gym bag on the floor. I was sweaty and dirty, as I’d just come from playing basketball at the rec center.
She got up and walked toward me, stepping onto her tiptoes so she could kiss me. “I’m glad you’re home,” she said quietly.
“Tough day?”
“A little,” she said, her voice not much more than a whisper.
“You look like…” I stopped. I didn’t know the right words.
“I look like what?” she asked.
“What were you reading?”
She heaved a sigh. “A letter.”
Well, that much was obvious. “From whom?”
She used to get letters from her father, but she always returned them to sender. They went straight back to the prison.
“He got out a week ago,” she whispered. “For a whole week, he’s been out there and I had no idea.”
I rushed to the letter and held it up so I could read the return address. “Your father?” I asked. I didn’t open it. It wasn’t my letter. But I desperately wanted to. I wanted to rip into it so I could find out what kind of havoc he would wreak on our lives and how soon I could expect it.
“Yes. My father.”