Secondhand Sinners Read online

  “What good would that do?”

  “They’d see he’s a good guy.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to do much good.”

  “You have to try it. You have to. Please.”

  “Oh Abs, I don’t…” The police station was the last place Miller wanted to be. Emily might not come home every time her grandmother got ill. If Levi was in trouble, however? Wild horses couldn’t keep her away. Abby was so upset, though, he had to make some kind of attempt to check on Levi. “Okay. Although I can’t promise they’ll let me see him.”

  “They will.” Abby wiped a tear from her eye. “You’ll convince them.”

  ***

  Miller and Abby made it to the center of town around noon. “Remember what I said,” he reminded her after he had parked the truck. “You can stay here, or you can go to the library. Do not come inside the police station.” He handed her the keys to the truck. “Lock up if you get out.”

  Abby took the keys and nodded. “Okay. Promise.”

  The police department was a few yards behind the town’s only antique store. Miller walked around the corner and stopped short. There it was. A car with a Texas license plate sitting in the parking lot of the station. He didn’t even dare hope it was someone else’s Lexus or someone else’s Texas license plate because it wasn’t anyone else’s brother who had been arrested. He knew it was Emily.

  He looked through the glass door and saw Alan, one of ten of Bokchito’s worst, standing behind the welcome desk talking to a woman. Her back was to Miller, but he was sure it was Emily. He waited for a few moments, hoping Alan would escort her to one of the rooms in the back or the kitchen for some coffee. Then he could slip in without having his world intersect with hers.

  Miller had worked the fantasy of his reunion with Emily for years, and it had never involved the police station or her brother. In his dreams he was the one with power over her. He’d steal her away from that rich husband and wonderful life her mother was always going on about, take her to bed and show her what she’d given up. Then he’d send her away in the middle of the night…or leave her. Watching the scene with Alan and Emily, he was sure they were arguing. Miller slipped inside and waited against the back wall until he realized Emily’s hand gestures were a sign of desperation, not anger. His gaze fell on the boy clinging to her leg. He was blinking in some kind of weird, rapid, repetitive pattern. He was also counting on his fingers and mumbling something about nine planets. What the hell was wrong with him?

  Even from behind, he could see Emily was different from the picture he held in his mind. Her hair was pulled back into a crooked and loose ponytail. It reminded him of Abby’s when he picked her up from gymnastics. Her clothes were baggy. Too baggy. They may have been expensive. How the hell would he know? She wasn’t wearing the kind of haughty, tailored clothes he imagined she’d be wearing. Actually, now that he was thinking about it, he could trace his visual image of her back to Pretty Woman. He had imagined her to be a blonde version of the cleaned-up Julia Roberts character. God he hoped he never admitted that out loud to anyone.

  Baggy clothes or not, he caught himself staring at her ass. He forced himself to look away and considered backing out of the building, though truthfully, he wanted to be in the room with her. For a few seconds. He wanted to hear her voice, smell her hair, touch her…he was staring at her ass again.

  Emily had one hand on the boy’s shoulder and was begging Alan with the other, “Please. Go tell him again.”

  Alan scratched his stubbly cheek. “Like I told you, he said he doesn’t wanna see anyone.”

  “Tell him it’s me.”

  “I did.”

  Emily put her hands on the counter and leaned in. “Let me see him, anyway. Please.”

  “You aren’t on his list. I can’t let you back there if you aren’t on his list.” Alan touched her hand. “I know this must be hard for you. First Daniel, and now your dad.”

  Miller felt a little thrill when Emily pulled her hand out from under Alan's and said, “You don’t know anything.”

  He had a sudden and desperate urge to say something. He needed Emily to turn around. He wanted to see her face. Or maybe he wanted to rescue her. He took a few steps forward. “So whose list is Jenny Abernathy on, Alan? Cause I know you’ve taken her back there for a few, what were they? Strip searches? Come on. Let her see her brother.”

  Emily’s shoulders stiffened. She brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear and pivoted to look at him. She blinked. A tear fell out of her bloodshot eye and ran down her pale face.

  They stared at each other for a few seconds then he stepped up to the counter, aware that Emily’s eyes were following him. “Come on, Alan. Let her see him.”

  “Won’t do any good. He’s not talking.”

  Miller caught a whiff of Emily’s shampoo and took in a deep breath that he disguised as a frustrated sigh. “She might be able to get him to talk.”

  Alan shot a quick glance over his shoulder. “Well, all right,” he agreed. “Only long enough to see if he’ll talk.”

  From his peripheral vision, Miller could tell Emily hadn’t taken her eyes off him. He smiled at her, not that he wanted to, he just couldn’t help it. “Go see your brother, Em.”

  “Thanks,” she whispered and took the boy by the shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Alan moved around to the side of the counter to block her path. “You can’t take that boy back there.”

  Emily looked at Miller and then back at Alan. “I have to. I can’t leave him out here with strangers. He might—”

  “No.” Alan crossed his arms. “I’ll make an exception for you. Not for the kid.”

  “What am I supposed to do, Alan?”

  “I’ll watch him,” a girl’s voice said from behind them.

  Everyone spun and looked at Abby, except for Miller. He was looking at Emily, trying to read her expression. An impossible task since she already looked so distraught.

  “You’re Emily, right?” Abby said. “Levi talks about you and Jack all the time when he’s in town.”

  Miller addressed his daughter. “I told you to stay in the truck.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. I want to help. I want Levi to know—”

  “You’re Abby?” Emily interrupted. “He talks about you all the time too. You modeled for his ballerina piece. That’s my favorite.”

  That was news to Miller. “You did what?”

  “Focus, Daddy. We’re all here for Mr. Levi, remember?” She looked back to Emily. “I’ll watch your little boy so you can go back there.”

  Miller and Emily said, “No!” in unison. Then they both tried to explain—Emily saying her son had special needs, and Miller arguing that Abby wasn’t even supposed to be in there.

  Abby put her hands on her hips. “Well I’ll go see him, then.”

  Miller took her by the shoulders and swung her around to face the door. “I’ll go see him. After you go back to the truck.” He opened the door, nudged her through, and pulled it closed.

  He walked by Emily and her son, who was still counting on his fingers, and followed Alan through the heavy door to the back.

  Levi was in one of two jails cells, sitting on an old cot with his head in his hands.

  “You have a visitor, Levi,” Alan said.

  Levi didn’t look up.

  “See? Told ya, not talking.” Alan whistled and shouted, “Hey, Levi!”

  Levi didn’t move. He sat there with his blond hair caught in the clutches of his fists.

  Alan kicked the bottom of the cell bars with the side of his foot. “Wanna make your phone call? People are out there wanting to see ya. Abigail Anderson’s real worried about you.”

  Levi clenched his fists, pulling his hair tighter. Miller wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been looking for some kind of acknowledgement.

  “Emily is still out there. She wants to see you. Looks like she’s in bad shape. She’s got that boy of hers—”

  �
��Jack.” It was a whisper, but it thudded to the floor of Levi’s cell with a heaviness that Miller understood. He remembered that same heaviness from fourteen years ago when he heard Daniel was dead and Emily had run away. And then again when he realized she wasn’t coming back.

  Alan looked at Miller and shrugged. “I give up. You try.”

  “Why don’t you give us some privacy?” Miller said.

  Alan scratched his cheek again. “Well, all right. Only for a few minutes, though.”

  He walked down the hallway lined with whitewashed brick.

  When the door to the lobby closed, Miller faced Levi. “What happened?”

  “I failed her,” Levi said. He looked up. “We failed her.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “You and me.”

  “I failed her? You’ve gotta be kidding. Do you have any idea what it was like to lose your two best friends in the same night? To rush to Emily to comfort her over Daniel's suicide only to find out she had run away?”

  “Yes.” Levi nodded. “I do.”

  “That’s right.” Miller took a step closer to Levi’s cell. “She failed us, pal.”

  “She protected us, and we let her down.”

  “You have no idea what I’ve done for her.”

  “Wrong again.” Levi stood up and took long, slow strides until he was face to face with Miller. “I know exactly what you’ve done, what you’ve been doing for the last fourteen years.”

  The accusation was like a punch in the gut. Miller grabbed the bars to steady himself while he absorbed the blow. Once the reality that someone else knew what he had done sunk in, he straightened and looked Levi square in the eyes. “Who told you?”

  Levi smiled. “You did. Just now.”

  “What?” Miller asked in a whisper he wished Levi would emulate. “How did you—”

  “Hell, I didn’t even catch it at first. You’d think I would have, though. I mean after all that time she spent in that ballet pose so I could get the arms and hands perfect. Did you ever notice how much her hands look like—?”

  “Yes. I have.”

  “It’s funny how the mind works, isn’t it? It was right there in front of me, but I didn’t even see it until last night, a whole two years later, when I was showing those sketches of her hands to my dad, and he asked when I had sketched Emily’s hands. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, it all fits. When you trace Abby’s birthday backward, it takes you right smack to the beginning of your senior year of high school, when you and Emily were sneaking around.”

  “No.” Miller kept shaking his head. “It’s not—”

  “Abby has this habit of biting her lower lip. I know someone else who does that. What I can’t figure out is how you got her.”

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  “I guess I could ask Emily if she knows.”

  “Your grandfather. Not long before Abby was born, he called me and set the whole thing up.”

  Levi laughed. “Not exactly legal, huh? If you didn’t want anyone to know, then why’d you stay so close to my family?”

  “He wanted me to stay nearby so he could see Abby.” Miller was standing in the middle of one of his worst nightmares. Someone from Emily’s family had looked at Abby a little too long, a little too closely. Now two people knew about Abby’s adoption besides himself, Sara and Levi. His ex-wife and Emily’s brother. That was two people too many as far as Miller was concerned. “Did your dad see it too? Is that why you hurt him?”

  “I hurt my dad because of what they did to Emily. But yeah, he saw it. He was on his way out the door to your house when I stopped him.”

  It sickened Miller to think about how close he came to losing everything. He squeezed the bars tighter. “I really appreciate that, Levi. Please, you can’t say anything.”

  “I’m not going to say anything.”

  “Oh thank God.”

  “You are. You’re going to tell my sister. Not a day goes by that she doesn’t think about that baby girl she gave away.”

  Miller resisted his first instinct, which was to offer him anything if he would drop it. Even that was generous because he had one major advantage over Levi—he wasn’t behind bars. He raised his chin and countered. “I’m not going to tell her anything.”

  “Yeah, you are. You think someone else in my family isn’t going to see it?”

  “They haven’t yet. They’ve been too busy with their own screwed-up lives.”

  “Yeah. I wonder what would happen if someone, oh, I don’t know…draws their attention to it? If one of them finds out and tells Emily, it’s all over for you, my friend.”

  He was right about that. However, Abby was finishing up her eighth grade year. It wouldn’t be too long before she’d go to high school, graduate, and go off to college. He’d kept her away from the family pretty successfully. This was a SNAFU that Levi, thank God, had contained.

  “I’ve managed up ’til now, Levi. Besides…” Miller tapped his index finger against the bar he was clutching, “you’re hardly in a place to give me orders.”

  Levi put a hand through the bars and took hold of Miller’s shirt. “You tell my sister…” he cocked his head in the direction of the door where everyone was waiting, “or I tell your daughter.”

  “Wh…” The back of Miller’s throat started to burn. “Impossible. You’re going to be sitting in a jail cell for quite a while.”

  “I can write letters. I can make phone calls. Are you going to be able to intercept every call, every letter she gets for the rest of her life? I doubt it.”

  If the bars hadn’t been there, Miller would have taken a swing at Levi for threatening his relationship with Abby. Instead he pulled away from his grasp and stumbled back a few feet. This could not be happening. He bent over and let out a frustrated growl. After a few deep breaths, he straightened his spine and stiffened his backbone. “Your sister is the one who left. She doesn’t deserve to know anything. This isn’t one of your family’s fucked-up games, you know? This is my life. My daughter’s life.”

  Levi smirked. “You’re so certain about everything, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Your passion for your certainty is heartwarming,” Levi said. “Have you ever considered that my sister left so you could keep that precious certainty of yours? You spout off about my family’s fucked-up games, but do you have any idea how it feels to be the instrument with which those games are played?”

  Miller had to stop and think about that. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying abuse doesn’t always show up on the outside. I’m saying that day my sister left town was probably the best day of your life. I can assure you it wasn’t her worst. Not even in the top ten. Ask my sister what she’s certain of, and she’ll give you a one-word answer. Pain.”

  “Was she…” Miller thought he might lose his breakfast over what Levi seemed to be implying. “What happened to her?”

  Levi walked back to the cot and lay down on the bed. “Why don’t you ask her while you’re telling her what you did?”

  Miller put his forehead against the bars. “I could lose everything. Again.”

  Levi settled in, laid his hands on his chest, and locked his fingers. “That’s the problem with you, Miller. You have no idea what it really means to lose everything.”

  Alan opened the door. “Time’s up, Miller.”

  Miller started to leave, then Levi stopped him with one last question, the answer to which he hoped he’d never have to tell.

  “Why’d you do it, Miller?”

  He sighed. “You seem to know everything. Figure it out yourself.” He walked through the door with the guilt of fourteen years fogging up his mind again. He’d taken Abby because he betrayed his best friend when he had sex with his girlfriend, because he thought she was his, because when Emily told Daniel about them, he killed himself. He signed the log Alan stuck in his chest and saw Emily sitting in a chair next to her son, looking weary and defe
ated.

  She stared at Miller, her eyes begging him for some word on the state of her brother. “Well? Did he say anything?”

  Miller handed the clipboard back to Alan and shook his head. “He didn’t say a word.”

  She bit her bottom lip and stared at the floor. “What am I going to do?”

  The boy leaned his head on her shoulder. “Let’s go home, Mommy.”

  Miller was struck by the sadness in her voice when she replied, “Yeah. Home.”

  He didn’t know how he was going to tell her the truth. They hadn’t even spoken since the night Daniel killed himself because of what they did to him. How could Miller explain that he did it because he wanted to be closer to her and to gain a little atonement? If she couldn’t understand that, she could destroy his life with one phone call. She could take his reason for living away from him.

  Miller walked Emily to her car and they exchanged numbers. She asked if there were any good hotels nearby. He told her there weren’t and noticed how she kept pushing her hair back and wouldn’t make eye contact with him. She really was different, not only from how he thought she’d be but also from how she was before. What had they done to her?

  When he got to his truck, Abby took her earbuds out. “Well? How is he? What did he say?”

  Miller stared at his hands on the steering wheel.

  “Daddy?”

  “He didn’t say anything.”

  “I feel so bad for them, Levi and his sister. What do you think Mr. Norman did that made Levi want to hurt him?”

  He buckled his seatbelt. “I don’t have a clue.”

  Abby put her earbuds back in her ears but removed them immediately. “Oh, and that poor boy.”

  He put the key in the ignition. “Yeah. He’s weird, huh?”

  Abby punched him in the arm.

  “What?”

  “Daddy, that’s mean. It’s obvious that he’s autistic.”

  The weak spot in Miller’s heart throbbed. For the first time in fourteen years he felt something for Emily other than his usual repertoire of anger and regret. Compassion. That wasn’t good, no good at all. He really was doomed.

  CHAPTER THREE