“Wait,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Pick up your kids. Bring them home.”
“Where will you be?”
Cram upped the grin. “Around.” And then he was gone.
• • •
Grace waited by the fence. The mothers began to flock in, gather, chat. Grace folded her arms, trying to give off a “keep away” vibe. There were days she could participate in the clatter. This was not one of them.
The cell phone rang. She put it to her ear and said hello.
“You get the message now?”
The voice was male and muffled. Grace felt her scalp tingle. “Stop looking, stop asking questions, stop flashing the picture. Or we’ll take Emma first.”
Click.
Grace did not scream. She would not scream. She put the phone away. Her hands shook. She looked down at them as if they belonged to someone else. She couldn’t stop the shake. Her children would be coming out soon. She jammed her hands into her pockets and tried to force up a smile. It wouldn’t come. She bit her lower lip and made herself not cry.
“Hey, you okay?”
Grace startled at the voice. It was Cora.
“What are you doing here?” Grace asked. The words came out with too sharp a snap.
“What do you think? I’m picking up Vickie.”
“I thought she was with her father.”
Cora looked puzzled. “Just for last night. He dropped her off at school this morning. Jesus, what the hell happened?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
Cora did not know how to react to that one. The bell sounded. Both women turned away. Grace did not know what to think. She knew that Scott Duncan was wrong about Cora-more than that, she now knew that Scott Duncan was a liar-and yet, once voiced, the suspicion about her friend would not leave. She couldn’t flick it away.
“Look, I’m just scared, okay?”
Cora nodded. Vickie appeared first. “If you need me…”
“Thank you.”
Cora moved away without another word. Grace waited alone, searching for the familiar faces in the stream of children pouring through the door. Emma stepped into the sunshine and shielded her eyes. When she spotted her mother, Emma’s face broke into a smile. She waved.
Grace suppressed a cry of relief. Her fingers snaked through the chain-link, gripping hard, holding herself back so she wouldn’t sprint over and scoop Emma into her arms.
• • •
When Grace, Emma, and Max reached home, Cram was already standing on their front stoop.
Emma looked a question at her mother, but before Grace could respond, Max sprinted up the walk. He stopped dead in front of Cram and craned his neck to look up at the sea-predator smile.
“Hey,” Max said to Cram.
“Hey.”
Max said, “You were the guy driving that big car, right?”
“Right.”
“That cool? Driving that big car?”
“Very.”
“I’m Max.”
“I’m Cram.”
“Cool name.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
Max made a fist and held it up. Cram made one too and then they touched knuckles-against-knuckles in some newfangled high-five. Grace and Emma came up the walk.
“Cram is a family friend,” Grace said. “He’s going to help me a little.”
Emma did not like it. “Help with what?” She aimed her “eeuw gross” face in Cram’s direction, which, under the circumstances, was both understandable and rude, but this was hardly the time for a correction. “Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s on a business trip,” Grace said.
Emma did not say another word. She stepped into the house and ran upstairs.
Max squinted up at Cram. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Cram said.
“Do all your friends call you Cram?”
“Yes.”
“Just Cram?”
“One word.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Like Cher or Fabio.”
“Who?”
Cram chuckled.
“Why do they call you that?” Max asked.
“Why do they call me Cram?”
“Yeah.”
“My teeth.” He opened his mouth wide. When Grace worked up the courage to look, she was greeted with a sight that resembled the mad experiment of a very deranged orthodontist. The teeth were all crammed together on the left, almost stacked. It looked like there were too many of them. Empty pockets of coarse pink where teeth should have been lined the right side of his mouth. “Cram,” he said. “You see?”
“Whoa,” Max said. “That’s so cool.”
“You want to know how my teeth got this way?”
Grace took that one. “No, thank you.”
Cram glanced at her. “Good answer.”
Cram. She took another look at the too-small teeth. Tic Tac might have been a more apt name.
“Max, you have homework?”
“Aw, Mom.”
“Now,” she said.
Max looked at Cram. “Scram,” he said. “We’ll talk later.”
They shared another fist-knuckle salute before Max darted off with the abandon of a six-year-old. The phone rang. Grace checked the Caller ID. It was Scott Duncan. She decided to let the machine pick that one up-more important that she talk to Cram. They moved into the kitchen. There were two men sitting at the table. Grace pulled up short. Neither of the men looked up at her. They were whispering to each other. Grace was about to say something, but Cram signaled her to step outside.
“Who are they?”
“They work for me.”
“Doing?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
She did, but right now there were more pressing matters. “I got a call from the guy,” she said. “On my cell phone.” She told him what the voice on the phone had said. Cram’s expression did not change. When she finished, he pulled out a cigarette.
“You mind if I smoke?”
She told him to go ahead.
“I won’t do it in the house.”
Grace looked around. “Is that why we’re out here?”
Cram did not reply. He lit the cigarette, drew a deep breath, let the smoke pour out of both nostrils. Grace looked toward the neighbor’s yard. There was no one in sight. A dog barked. A lawn mower ripped through the air like a helicopter.
Grace looked at him. “You’ve threatened people, right?”
“Yup.”
“So if I do what he says-if I stop-do you think they’ll leave us alone?”
“Probably.” Cram took a puff so deep it looked like a doobie toke. “But the real question is, why do they want you to stop?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you must have been getting close. You must have struck a nerve.”
“I can’t imagine how.”
