Sketchy (23 page)

I look up at him, wipe my nose. “What? But who was it, then? Who was calling for help?”

Daniels puts his cheek against mine and whispers, “Maybe it was you, Bea. Maybe it was you.”

Professor Woolf is dragged out of the studio by the cops. His hands are cuffed behind his back, his face painted in swirls of fluorescent colors.

“I didn’t know you could paint, too.”

I muster up a faint smile. “I did good, didn’t I? Catching him?”

He wipes my tears with his scarf. “Yes, you did good. Stupid, but good.”

“Bea, Bea, oh my god, Bea!”

I look up. She is running toward me. The cops have cordoned off the street and try to hold her back, but they don’t know my mom. She tussles with them, kicking, barreling through like a Pamplona bull, calling and screaming out to me. “Bea, my baby, Bea!” My dad is not far behind her, following as she paves the way.

I am swallowed up in my parents’ arms.

“Cut it off! I want it all cut off!” I yell.

“What are you talking about, baby?” Mom asks.

“My hair. I want it gone! Off my head, out of my life!”

W
illa was at the station waiting for me. I held her shaky hand as she positively identified Professor Woolf from behind a two-way mirror.

“You’re going to be okay. It’s going to be hard, but you’re strong. You can do it, Willa.”

Her bottom lip quivered as she looked at me with doubtful, scared eyes and walked away with her stunned parents.

She hasn’t been back at school. Chris heard from some of the girls on the cheerleading squad that she’s in a local rehab facility. The rumor is that she’ll continue on an outpatient basis and begin school after the first of the year so she can graduate with the rest of the class. She’ll probably write one hell of a college essay, knowing Willa, with all that’s happened to her, and nail her Ivy League dreams.

The police collected all the photos—all the evidence
from the darkroom—and Professor Woolf was charged with the assault on me, Willa’s rape, and the murders of Beth and Veronica. He is in jail, denied bail, awaiting trial. They’re also looking into his possible involvement in a few cold cases in the Upper Peninsula.

“It’s good for the tree, Bea. It’ll grow back stronger and healthier in the spring,” my dad says, unable to make eye contact. He knows it’s bullshit.

I sit on the hood of my car in the driveway, my knees tucked up tightly to my chest, silently peeved, watching the tree trimmers butcher the sycamore.

My parents were relieved, of course, that I was okay, smothered me with hugs for days, and then smothered me with questions.

“Why were you in the studio with Professor Woolf?”

“What’s your relationship with that sergeant?”

“Why were you involved with this?”

I finally answered at one of our stupid family dinners and told them the simple truth. “Willa needed my help, and I needed hers.”

They seemed to accept that, and the questions ceased.

Mom brings me a cup of hot cocoa and joins me on top of the car. “I’m sorry I doubted you, Bea.”

“Yeah.”

“We’re proud of you,” Dad says, leaning on the hood.

“Yeah.”

“Is there anything we can do, say, to prove it to you, how sorry we are?” Mom asks.

“Yeah! Stop trimming the tree!” I yell. “I’m not going to jump out the window again.” I point at them before they can speak. “Unless you make me.”

“Okay. Okay,” they take turns saying.

“And no more family dinners!”

My dad takes my mom’s hand in his. They look at each other, eyes wide.

I start it first; can’t help it. Just a little hiccup of a giggle.

Mom looks at me sideways, catches it, sputters; her hand closes over her mouth, trying to keep it in—she tosses it over to Dad.

He’s not as subtle. He puts his big hands on top of his nappy head and blurts out a loud, raucous laugh. “Thank god! No more family dinners!”

We huddle and laugh. Simultaneously angry and loving, as always… and they silence the saws.

A
ggie rests in Forest Hill Cemetery. There’s a foot of snow on the ground as I make the trek up the hill to her grave.

I take a photograph out of my purse—a picture of Aggie and me, the two of us—my face visible this time. We’re wearing bikinis, laughing, goofing off at a school pool party when we were sixteen—sober that day, I think. I dust the snow off her gravestone and prop up the picture under her name.

“Hey, Aggie, you know what? I’m celebrating four months today. Four months, sixteen hours, and”—I look at my watch—“twelve minutes. But who’s counting?”

I am. Always.

“Do you think you could help me find the other one, Leila?” I hold up a white, furry mukluk boot at the thrift store. “I think it’s pretty cool.”

Leila laughs. “Let me check in the back.”

I sit down on a bench and pull on the boot.

“I like your hair, or lack of it,” Sergeant Daniels says, leaning against a rack of coats. He’s scruffy and sweaty in layered running clothes.

My tummy does a flip-flop. “What are you doing here?”

He holds his hand out. “May I?”

I bow my head down, and he brushes his hand over my buzz cut.

“You don’t do anything half-assed, do you?”

“I had my mom set the clipper setting on number four—pretty radical, I know. But it’s grown out a bit—going to be like a mini ’fro. I haven’t seen you…”

“For a couple weeks, I know.”

“Are you following me again?”

“Following you? I never followed you!”

We both smile at that.

“I happened to be running by. This is my route, and I saw you in the window.”

“You spotted me without my hair?”

Leila walks toward us. “You’re in luck, Bea. I found the other boot.”

“Thanks. Um, this is Sergeant Daniels. Sergeant, this is Leila.”

“Sergeant?” Leila looks at me, raising an eyebrow.

“Ann Arbor Police,” Daniels says and shakes her hand.

“No. It’s not what you think, Leila. I’m not in trouble. He’s just a—”

“Friend,” Daniels says.

“Right. A friend.” I agree.

The bells on the front door jingle with new customers. “Nice to meet you—and Bea, let me know if you want the boots.” Leila walks away to greet the customers.

“You know, since you’re a ‘friend’ as you say, do you happen to have a first name?”

The sergeant feigns a sudden interest in a woman’s corduroy jacket with elbow patches. “I do, yeah, but I’m not interested in sharing it with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll laugh, that’s why.”

“Oh, come on. I promise I won’t laugh—pinky swear. What is it, a girly name like Leslie or something?”

“No, no, it’s not like that.”

“What is it?”

“It’s Dan.”

“Dan? Dan Daniels?” I burst out laughing.

“I told you you’d laugh.”

“Well, that’s just sick. What were your parents thinking?”

“They weren’t. They were, um, my mom was messed up when she signed my birth certificate, when she had me.”

“Messed up?”

“Yeah. She and my dad were both pretty hardcore drunks, and she signed my last name on the wrong line, where my first name was supposed to be. So there you have it. I was named Daniels Daniels.”

“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry.” My nostrils flare, suppressing a laugh. “Why didn’t you change it?”

Daniels studies the lining of the jacket. “I guess I hold on to it like you do with your chips. It reminds me of what not to do. Keeps me in line, my name.”

“I get it. Sorry I laughed.”

He looks at me, squints. “You’re really something, Bea. You know that, right? Special. And not just because of… that
thing
you do.”

“Thanks.”

Our eyes lock—again—for a good minute.

Leila calls out. “So, Bea, you decide on the boots? You surprise me—not really your style.”

“I know.” I’m still looking into his eyes. “Surprises me, too.”

“Okay, well.” Daniels breaks the stare and pulls on his gloves. “I’d better get back to my run. I’ll see you around, right?”

“If you keep following me, yeah, Dan, you will.”

He smiles, starts to walk away—turns back. “You know, you can call me, anytime, like if you need anything.”

“Okay. And you can always call me if
you
need any help—like in catching someone.” I smile. “I could be your personal Bea catcher.”

His sweaty blond eyebrows push together and connect. He nods a couple times and laughs. “Right, right. My Bea catcher. I’ll keep that in mind.”

I watch him jog off. I take out my Moleskine and turn to my favorite page.

It’s a drawing of me. A sketch I drew while sitting across from the sergeant during Professor Woolf’s arraignment hearing.

He was thinking of me. I was on Daniels Daniels’s mind.

I close my sketchbook, smile, and hug it tight to my heart.

Kicking the caked snow off the bottom of my fabulous new mukluks, I drape my coat over my arm and step into St. Anne’s recreational hall.

We sit, hold hands—young and old, fat and skinny, pretty and ugly, male and female—all different, all the same, all as one.

Karin “with an
i
instead of an
e
” starts the meeting. “First on our agenda… Bea, you have four months today, congratulations!” The group applauds. “Would you like to share tonight?”

I nod and walk to the front of the room. Karin gives me a big hug. I look out at the flawed fellowship in front of me and take a deep breath. “Wow… four months today. Pretty damn cool. But, shit, it hasn’t been easy this month, that’s for sure. Almost every day I think about using, and I almost slipped up a couple times.”

“Who hasn’t?” Granny raises her knitting needle in the air.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but I wasn’t too crazy about you all at first.” That gets a big laugh, especially from Hawaiian-shirt guy. “But you’re all kind of growing on me, I guess. You believe in me—even when I lie to you. And when I’m here, inside these walls”—I look around the tacky room—“I find that I’m… myself. You’ve somehow, magically, drawn the truth out of me. The truth of Bea—and don’t seem to mind her. And, hell, the coffee even tastes better.”

The door creaks open in the back of the hall. I hear a faint, familiar voice. “Oh, sorry I’m late.” All eyes turn as she sits in the back row on a cold folding chair—the same place I sat when I first came. She sits between a tranny and the trucker, looking beautiful as always but scared as shit.

Tears well up in my eyes and stream down my face as I see that Willa is wearing my paisley velvet coat. I’m so beyond happy that a piece of me has been there with her all along, keeping her warm, giving her comfort.

She takes a deep breath and looks up at me with frightened eyes. I nod with loving approval, and she says, softly, “My name is Willa, and I’m an addict and an alcoholic.”

“Hi, Willa.”

After the meeting, we walk out into the parking lot and give each other a big hug. I watch Willa drive off and am about to get in my car.

Beep. Beep.

I look across the street, and there he sits in his idling Prius, summoning me to join him.