When I stuck my head in my dad’s office, I wasn’t at all surprised to find it cleaned out. He had left not only us, but all his other responsibilities high and dry. I didn’t miss the way Race’s eyes got dark and his jaw clenched when he looked over my shoulder into the empty room. I knew my dad owed him and Nassir a lot of money, but that anger was on my behalf, not because of the debt. I wasn’t going to ask Race to let it go, to just let my dad disappear and forget about the debt. Not because I knew deep down he couldn’t do that and still expect the rest of the people who owed him money to pay up, but because I was starting to really believe people needed to suffer the consequences of their actions. Maybe if my mom had gone to jail after the accident, she would have been forced to be medicated and wouldn’t have ended up such a wreck. And maybe, just maybe, Drew would have felt like his father and brother’s deaths hadn’t been in vain and that justice was served and none of this nightmare would have had to happen. In the end, it landed me in Race’s lap, and as long as that was the end result, I wouldn’t complain about the rough ride it had been so far.
I had a minor attack of nerves the first time I had to enter the condo. I thought I was going to forever see Booker’s bleeding body and Dovie standing in the doorway with a gun pointed at Drew, but with the shining new floors and all the modern, brightly colored furniture Race had let me and Karsen pick out, it was like going into an entirely new space, a space that felt more like home, even with its ugly past and bloody recent history, than any other place had in a long time.
Race and I settled into a pretty easy pattern really quickly. I still went to school, still went to work at the restaurant, and he still ran around town, still came home with blood on his hands and clothes, and there were nights he called and told me he was just staying at the loft because it was close to dawn and he was burned out. I could read between the lines and tell that meant he had to do something really bad, something he hadn’t shaken off just yet and wasn’t ready to bring it into this place that was his safe haven. I wasn’t like Dovie. I didn’t just let him go without knowing what he was doing, who he was going to be with, and I wanted him home even when he was raw and still covered in the city. If I was in, then I was all the way in, and he never tried to give me pat answers or brush me off. Even if it made me cringe and my tummy hurt to know what he was up to after dark, he always told me flat out and I tried my best not to stay up all night worrying about him until I heard him come up the stairs.
It took a few more weeks for me to realize that Karsen wasn’t nearly as settled into the new routine and life as I was. I started to notice that she was really quiet, that she seemed kind of listless and uninterested in what was going on around her. I asked Race what he thought about it, considering he had taken Dovie under his wing and practically raised her when she was only sixteen. He suggested just talking to her instead of trying to guess because the teenage-girl mind was like a labyrinth, so I pulled my sister aside one afternoon and asked her what was going on.
At first she tried to tell me that she was just adjusting to a new place, that she missed Mom, but the more I pressed the more I could tell something else was going on with her. I let it go for a few days until I came home from work one night and noticed that she not only had a fat lip, but was also missing a huge chuck of hair. Her hair looked as jagged as mine had after leaving the hospital. Since there was no hiding the damage, she broke down and told me that things at school had only gotten worse since the house had gone into foreclosure. The rich kids were picking on her, the boys were harassing her, and when one of the girls had gotten in her face about Mom being in rehab, Karsen had lost it and smacked her in the face, which had led to a catfight in the hall. She told me she was probably going to be suspended and that she didn’t want to go back to the Hill ever again. She felt strongly enough about it that she had already looked into alternative schooling, because she knew there was no way I was going to let her drop out, and there was no way either Race or I was going to be comfortable sending her into the war zone that was the public high school in the Point. She had taken it upon herself to find a charter school that was really close to where Dovie and Bax lived. It was a school that was just a step down from a private school, and even though she would have to wear a uniform, she was convinced it was the best option and wanted me to go with her to enroll. I was never going to get used to how mature she seemed, how she seemed to be taking to this new life and our new set of circumstances like a duck to water.
I told her I wanted to check the school out before I agreed, but I think she knew it was a done deal. I couldn’t find anything wrong with it after I toured it and talked to the principal and teachers. Karsen seemed to think it would be a good fit, so I filled out all the paperwork and her transfer only took a few days to be approved.
I was just getting back from taking her to get her hair fixed and buying the khaki and black she was going to have to wear for her uniform when my phone rang. I was getting ready to kick my shoes off and toss my keys on the counter but paused because I didn’t recognize the number. That wasn’t unusual, considering my boyfriend had about five different phones on hand at any given time and that my best friend was always using a different prepaid cell.
“Hello?”
There was a lot of noise in the background, I heard someone yelling and someone else shouting, and then there was the sound of a door slamming shut and a deep voice asked, “Is this Brysen?”
I frowned. “Who’s asking?”