“How is she?”
“You know I can’t answer that either.”
“What can you answer?”
“I’m pretty good at math.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Christine Shippee said. “How are you, Mickey?”
“How do you think I am?”
“You don’t sound good.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Your uncle.”
I frowned. “What about him?”
“I know you blame him for a lot, but he’s not a bad guy.”
“Thanks.”
“Cute too.”
“Well, that changes everything,” I said.
“Talk to him, Mickey.”
Christine Shippee hung up then. I stared at the phone and frowned. I tried not to think about what my mother might now be going through. I had tried to be there for her. I had gotten a job and supported us. I had dragged her home from bars, motels, and trailers. I had cleaned her off. I had made her shower and dress and get out of the house, all in the hopes that she would pull out of her nosedive. But that just wasn’t happening. I was, according to Christine Shippee, an enabler. I wasn’t so sure, but I decided to listen to the supposed expert. So now, much as it went against every innate tendency in my body, I let her be.
Except, well, when I weakened and called. Like this.
The front door opened. “Hello?” Myron shouted. “Mickey?”
“In the kitchen,” I said.
Uncle Myron hurried in with an expectant smile on his face. “So how was basketball?”
My gut reaction, I’m not proud to say, was to lie. I didn’t want to get into it. I didn’t want to have Uncle Myron lecturing me about all the wrong I’d done or, worse, looking at me with pity. But I didn’t have the strength to lie and he’d know soon enough.
“I got thrown off the team.”
The look was closer to shock than pity. “What? What happened?”
So I sketched it out for him, awaiting the inevitable I-told-you-so, you-knew-the-rules, what-did-you-expect-but that didn’t happen. Uncle Myron’s muscles began to tighten. When I mentioned Chief Taylor’s involvement, I saw the vein in his neck start to throb in anger.
Once I finished, there was silence. I was okay with silence. Uncle Myron wasn’t. He was one of those guys who couldn’t stand quiet, who constantly had to interrupt it because quiet made him feel uncomfortable. But right now, he stayed silent, unmoving, and for the first time, I could see what must have made him such a great basketball player. There was a fury in him now, one that made even me want to step back. His eyes had gone dark, and he had a look on his face that not only challenged the world but knew he could whip it.
“Ed Taylor,” Uncle Myron finally said between clenched teeth.
“It’s okay,” I replied, which was dumb to say on several levels, not the lowest being that it was totally untrue.
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Who? Wait, with Chief Taylor?”
He didn’t reply.
“Please don’t,” I said. “This is my battle.”
“With Taylor?” He shook his head. “No, it’s mine. You’re just an innocent bystander caught in the line of fire.”
“It won’t make a difference. I broke the rules. Coach Grady made the call, not Taylor.”
Uncle Myron didn’t reply.
“Myron?”
“Do you remember what you asked me yesterday?” Myron asked.
For a second I was confused by the shift in topic. But then I remembered. “About exhuming my dad’s body?”
“Yes. Why do you want to do that?”
“I told you.”
“For closure.”
“Right.”
Uncle Myron shook his head. “You can’t just exhume a body for reasons like that. There are strict regulations. That particular cemetery doesn’t grant any exhumations. Even if they did, we’d need to get the permission of the next of kin. That would be your mother. Do you want to ask her to sign a certificate like that right now?”
I could feel my hope deflate. “No.”
“So let me ask you again. Why do you want to exhume your father’s body?”
I shrugged. “What difference does it make now?”
Myron seemed to be weighing his words on a hand scale. “Because there is a chance I can get it done.”
“How?”
“I have this friend. This very well-connected friend…”
“Angelica Wyatt?”
“No.”
I almost asked him whether he knew about Ema, about Angelica Wyatt having a daughter, but I knew that there was some secrecy regarding her identity, and I didn’t want to say anything I shouldn’t.
“So who?”
“You don’t know him. He’s the friend who asked me to watch Angelica.”
“He can get Dad’s body exhumed?”
“If I really push it, yes, he can do it. But I need to know your real reason, Mickey. I would go out on a limb for you for no reason. I can’t ask my friend to. You get that, don’t you?”
I nodded. We sat at the kitchen table. It had been updated within the last five years, but again, this was the kitchen of my father’s childhood. Dad had spent countless hours here with his family. It was a simple thought and yet, for a moment, it overwhelmed me.
“I’m not sure Dad is in that grave.”
Uncle Myron opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “I don’t understand.”
“I know it sounds crazy,” I said, “but I need to know for certain that Dad is in that coffin.”
Myron blinked twice. “Do you have reason to believe he’s not in there?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. I couldn’t go into the sandy-blond paramedic. For one thing, Myron would never believe me, but even if he did, both Bat Lady and Shaved Head had warned me not to tell Myron. I also knew that my father never told Myron about Abeona. There had to be a reason, right?
“Mickey?”
I met his eye and held it. “Yes,” I said. “I have a reason.”
Then Myron caught me off guard with his next question. “Does this have something to do with the fire at Bat Lady’s house?”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“I told you. Your father visited that house. It changed him. Now suddenly you’re drawn to it too.” Myron leaned a little closer to me. “Have you met the Bat Lady?”
“Yes,” I said before I could stop myself.
“What did she say to you?”
I shook my head, remembering the warnings. “Please, Myron. Please ask your friend to help us.”
“I need to know more.”
“Can’t you just trust me on this?”
“That’s not the issue. You know that.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, but Myron’s cell phone buzzed. He checked a text message and sighed. “It’s Angelica. I have to go. We aren’t done with this, okay?”
“Okay.”
He rose and looked at me as though he were seeing me for the first time. “Mickey?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll talk to my friend. I’ll try my best to help you.”
CHAPTER 36
I could smell the charred remains of the Bat Lady’s house.
It was eight P.M.-not too late. Night had fallen. I had a flashlight, but for now, standing on the sidewalk, the streetlight gave me enough illumination. A few wooden beams from the house remained upright, stretching up into the darkness like fingers on a giant hand.
“Hey.”
I turned. It was Ema. “Hey. How did you get past Niles?”
“Are you kidding? He’s so happy I have a friend, he practically shoved me out the door.”
I smiled. I thought about how wonderful the hug we shared earlier had been and tried to sort through my feelings about it. Ema was my friend. My very best friend. That was where that overwhelming sense of warmth came from, right?
We slowly approached the house. I kept my flashlight off because I didn’t want the neighbors to see. We stopped at the crime-scene tape. Ema turned to me, shrugged, and ducked under it. I followed her up those front porch steps and inside the house. There was debris all over the floor.