Birthday Girl

  OTHER TITLES BY MATTHEW IDEN

  The Marty Singer Mysteries

  A Reason to Live

  Blueblood

  One Right Thing

  The Spike

  The Wicked Flee

  Once Was Lost

  Stand-Alone

  The Winter Over

  John Rain: The B-Team (Kindle Worlds)

  Stealing Sweetwater

  Short Story Collection

  one bad twelve

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Life Sentence Publishing LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542045889

  ISBN-10: 1542045886

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary-Soudant

  For Renee, who continues to make the whole thing possible.

  For my family.

  For my friends.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE The Children

  1 Elliott

  2 Amy

  3 Sister

  4 Amy

  5 The Children

  6 Elliott

  7 Charlotte

  8 Dave

  9 Sister

  10 Elliott

  11 Charlotte

  12 Elliott

  13 Sister

  14 Elliott

  15 Dave

  16 Evan

  17 Elliott

  18 Jeremy

  19 Elliott

  20 Charlotte

  21 Amy

  22 Dave

  23 Charlotte

  24 Amy

  25 Elliott

  26 Charlotte

  27 Elliott

  28 Sister

  29 Elliott

  30 Elliott

  31 Charlotte

  32 Elliott

  33 Amy

  34 Sister

  35 Elliott

  36 Charlotte

  37 Elliott

  38 Amy

  39 Elliott

  40 Sister

  41 Elliott

  42 Charlotte

  43 Sister

  44 Elliott

  45 Charlotte

  46 Elliott

  47 Elliott

  48 Charlotte

  49 Elliott

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  The Children

  Sister came home as the last slanted rays of sunlight squeezed their way into the house through small gaps and holes. The deep, greasy odor of fried chicken wafted upward from the foyer to every corner of the old four-square.

  “Charlie, Charlotte, Tina!” she singsonged as she made her way down the dark, musty hall on her way to the kitchen. “Buddy, Maggie! Come to dinner! I’ve brought a treat.”

  Five pairs of feet stampeded to the kitchen from bedrooms and the cellar, books and toys dropping in the rush. The children—blond and brunette, pale and dark, brown- and blue- and green-eyed, but all dressed in poorly fitted hand-me-downs—came to a skidding halt just inside the doorway, bunching up comically, then shuffling forward in half-steps, eyes and mouths wide in anticipation of the rare extravagance.

  Sister, still in her work clothes, leaned against the Formica counter, a gentle smile on her face. She’d already placed the white bucket, mounded high with crispy brown wings and thighs, on the scarred farmhouse table like a trophy. Stacks of lily-white napkins rose on either side of it, begging to be made dirty by oily little fingers.

  “Take your seats,” she said with a clap of her hands. “And no sneaking a bite!”

  Their bare feet made slapping noises on the green linoleum floor as they moved to their places. Following the clatter and screech of chair legs, the five climbed into their seats around the table, then turned their heads in her direction, eyes downcast, unblinking.

  Sister watched in approval, then addressed the children. “What do we say before we eat?”

  “Grace,” Charlotte mumbled. Like the others, she snuck glances at the bucket.

  “That’s right, we say grace.” Her eyes flicked over their faces, looking for black eyes and bruises that were the signs of rough play. She’d forbidden it, but it still happened from time to time, a consequence of young, energetic bodies being cooped up while she was at work. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, she still frowned. “Charlotte, did you wash your hands?”

  “Yes, Sister.” The girl’s golden hair, hanging long past her shoulders, bobbed with her head.

  “But I didn’t hear the water running.”

  “I was quick.” The answer was straightforward, but the slightest undercurrent of sarcasm colored every word.

  “I guess you were,” Sister said, smiling, but with a gleam in her eye that meant she didn’t believe the answer for a second . . . or appreciate the tone in which it was delivered.

  She took her seat at the head of the table, taking stock. Charlie, as the eldest, sat to her right, then Charlotte, Tina, and Buddy, until they wrapped around the table, with Maggie to Sister’s left. Overhead, a clear jelly-jar lamp, dead bugs littering the glass bottom, hung from the ceiling. Its single bulb cast a harsh light that threw their shadows onto the table’s surface in sharp lines and gleamed on the chrome handles of cabinets and drawers that were rarely, if ever, opened.

  As they sat, enduring her inspection, Tina darted her hand out and pinched one of Buddy’s large ears. The boy yelped but, instead of turning and hitting her like any brother would do, kept his eyes locked on the table in front of him.

  “Tina,” she said reprovingly, but nothing else. The girl flushed, dropping her head with the ghost of a grin. Everyone knew she wouldn’t get in trouble. Tina was Sister’s favorite. Buddy, his face burning, scowled. The rest sat still and silent.

  When she was sure order had been restored, Sister leaned over. “It’s your birthday soon, Charlie.”

  “Yes, Sister,” he mumbled, looking down at his hands. They’d had a disagreement that morning, and he’d actually yelled at Sister over breakfast. About what was unimportant; in this household, talking back was unheard of.

  When Charlie said no more, Sister looked around at the others. The children had their hands folded as she’d taught them and looked sufficiently penitential, even while she knew the smell coming from the bucket of chicken, sitting within arm’s reach, was driving them to distraction.

  She watched them for a moment longer, then said, “Let us bow our heads.”

  Obediently, the crowns of five heads tipped forward and five pairs of eyes shut. Sister began the prayer but kept her eyes open, watching as Maggie, the youngest at six, darted her dirty little hand forward and tore off a strip of chicken skin, jamming it in her mouth.

  “Amen.” Sister ended the prayer, and as one, five heads came up and stared at the bucket. “Charlie, would you serve your brother and sisters?”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  She pushed her chair back and stood. “Maggie? Help me get something out of the oven.”

  “Sister?” the little girl said, confused, glancing from the fried chicken to the other children. Next to her, Buddy’s eyes widened with excitement; last month, Sister had brought enough sto
re-bought cupcakes for each of them to have one. Buddy had made his last a whole week. But Sister never used the stove.

  “Help me with the oven, Maggie,” Sister said again, patiently. “I hid something special in there before you came into the kitchen.”

  Maggie slid off her chair as Sister came around the table and then opened the door to the ancient white porcelain stove. A ripple seemed to pass through her as she touched it. Inside, the racks had been removed, leaving just a dark, black, empty box. Maggie peered inside.

  Charlie started to say something, but Charlotte reached out, grabbed one of his clenched fists, and silenced him with a look.

  Sister, a hand on Maggie’s bottom, lifted her off the floor and into the oven. Her shriek startled the other children; they froze, hunks of chicken in their hands and mouths. Sister slammed the door shut and backed her weight against it as the little girl began to scream and kick from the inside.

  Sister smiled beatifically, then raised her voice to be heard over Maggie’s wails. “Eat up, everyone! There’s plenty of food for those who follow the rules.”

  1

  Elliott

  This is the way it happened.

  They’re at the playground. Cee Cee’s legs are dangling off the edge of the bench, and she’s kicking them in short, angry flicks of her feet. He’s had to put her in time-out because she punched the Gilmer boy for pushing her into the dirt. Appearances have to be maintained—he should act upset, both for Cee Cee and the other parents—but he is secretly pleased because Patrick Gilmer is a little shit who will grow up to be a much bigger shit if someone like his daughter doesn’t put him in his place.

  Cee Cee knows he’s faking. Even as she kicks, her face breaks into the smile she likes to use on him, catching her lower lip with her teeth as she grins. Locks of curly red hair—mysteries that he and Marilyn, both of them brunettes, have pondered the origin of—drop in her face, getting in her eyes, and she brushes them away with a knuckle, a gesture he already knows she’ll keep and use as a teenager, a young woman, a mother. He smiles at her, unable to keep up the sham, and she winks back at him.

  “Come push me, Daddy!”

  “In a second, honey,” he calls. He’s got a particularly thorny problem at work to solve, so he’s put his head in his hands to think when there’s a tremendous crash behind him. He literally jumps in the air.

  A panel truck has slammed into an oncoming car by the edge of the playground. Glass shatters and metal squeals as it is torn away from fenders and bumpers. Children, scared by the noise, are screaming before their parents scoop them up in their arms, afraid, perhaps, there will be an explosion or just out of instinct. Elliott is looking directly at the wreck, but it seems indistinct, lacking detail.

  He sprints to the edge of the lot anyway, jumps the twisted border fencing. Bystanders are milling around, tending to the drivers. He has no medical training, so he turns instead to the scene by the jungle gym. Kids are screaming. He moves from parent to child to parent in a blur, reassuring and offering a hand. “I’m a psychologist,” he says. “Maybe I can help.”

  Sirens wail. Ambulances arrive. Children are distraught. There are tears and murmurs and embarrassed prayers of thanks that it wasn’t them, it wasn’t their children. The parents shoot him reproachful looks that he doesn’t understand. He’d tried to help, hadn’t he? Rebuffed, he turns away, then freezes.

  Cee Cee isn’t on the bench or on the swings.

  She isn’t in the playground.

  She’s gone.

  He lurched upright, gasping, his heart lodged high in his throat like he’d swallowed a baseball. Wide-eyed, he glanced around in the dark, trying to place himself. Awareness returned reluctantly in a slow trickle and it was a long minute before he remembered where he was, when he was, who he was.

  My name is Elliott Nash. I am—was—sleeping. A car has crashed nearby.

  He eased himself back to the dry earth, feeling his heart settle into a weird arrhythmia, a syncopated triplet that made him simultaneously edgy and hopeful. Flat on his back, with the ball of his thumb pressed to his sternum, he stared upward at the struts and cables of the cathedral-like underside of the bridge. Dust rained down as he listened to the aftermath of the traffic accident above, trying to push away the shreds of his nightmare and separate fact from fiction.

  Yes, he and Cee Cee had been at the playground, all those years ago, but there’d been no car crash, no heroic parents staunching the flow of blood. His brain, wonderfully resilient and creative, had simply used what it could find lying around—his bottomless well of guilt, his sensitivity to the world around him, the crash that had just occurred above his head—to cobble together a new and improved nightmare for him. A dream featuring sensory incorporation of external stimuli, as he and his old psychology textbooks had once called it.

  In truth, he’d probably brought it on himself, priming the pump of his guilt with his little nightly ritual of saying good night to Cee Cee before drifting off. Thing was, each night for the last eight years, she’d said it right back, as clearly as she’d ever said it in life. Until recently. Her voice had begun to fade, and for several weeks now, his nightly farewell went unanswered. In turn, his nightmares had become more frequent, more punishing.

  His former self smiled patronizingly and reached for the textbook again. Flipped to the glossary in the back, stopped at T for transient auditory hallucination.

  Voices in your head, is that it, Dr. Nash?

  “No!” he said aloud. That “hallucination” has kept me alive for eight years. And it will kill me if I never hear it again.

  A high-pitched wail split the air and his heart started to bang away again, a three-legged horse trying to burst out of his chest. He put his hands over his face. Please, no screams. It was a selfish thought, one he should’ve been ashamed of. Someone might be dying or hurt up there. But over the years he’d learned to be greedy, at least with his emotions. Not just because the screams were bad—of course they were—but, when muffled or heard from far away, they sounded like the cries of children.

  The wail changed pitch and his shoulders slumped in relief. Not screams, just an ambulance, maybe two, rushing to the scene. The sirens piled on top of each other, different threads of sound in a tapestry of disaster. He lay for a moment, listening, but the intimation of injury and death nearby quickly became too much to take.

  Kneeling in the dirt, joints creaking, he rolled the quilted freight blanket into a spiral, brushing it clean before cinching it tight with an old belt. He ran a hand over the dirty knapsack he used as a pillow, having been robbed before with his head still on it. It didn’t matter what was in there; people would steal anything because value was irrelevant. When you had nothing, anything was a prize.

  He slung the bedroll and pack over one shoulder, sparing a quick glance around the abutment that had been his home for a few hours. Before he’d bunked down, he’d cleared the area of the bottles and flasks lined up against the abutment wall, pitching them into the river rather than be tempted by the few drops left in the bottom. With the trash gone, it was a good spot—he’d been lucky to have it to himself—and would be claimed by someone else before too long. Nights were getting colder, and when the wind picked up along the Potomac and the autumn rain came thrashing down, it could literally kill you to not have a roof over your head. But it wasn’t worth fighting someone for it. He didn’t have the energy and, anyway, there was nothing sadder than a fight between bums. Plenty of other places to hole up out there.

  He climbed the embankment next to the bridge, emerging close to the road like a mole popping out of the ground. He glanced across the water at the bright lights of Washington, DC. Traffic already choked the parkway in a bright line as far as he could see, four lanes of cattle nosing their way out of the city after a hard day’s work at a desk. Music and muffled talk show nonsense wah-wahed through closed windows. He kept his back to the wreck, but splashes of blue and red reflected off bumpers and fenders. To his right, a
panel van changed lanes at a crawl, easing through the spaces in a futile attempt to make headway. His stomach clutched at the sight and he had to turn away.

  The driver closest to him caught his eye. A young woman, late twenties. Talking on a phone, a look of irritation on her face. Hair, a perfect bob. Clothes, a white blouse underneath a no-nonsense blazer. The hint of a necklace at the throat. Armed and armored from doing battle in the District for some law firm or lobbying group.

  Their eyes suddenly met. In the instant before she looked away, he saw the array of emotions he’d come to expect. Pity. Revulsion. A flicker of apprehension, though not much.

  What she lacked, he could see, was curiosity. Did she wonder who he was or had been? How he’d gotten here or where he was going? Whether he would live through the night, the week, the year? Did someone care for him or had he cared for someone else in turn, with a love so desperate that it would drive her to tears if he had just a minute to tell her about it?

  But why should she care? Maybe he’d asked those questions himself, once, sitting in his car, watching a bum trundle by or hustle to clean his windshield. Maybe he hadn’t. He couldn’t remember.

  He dropped his gaze and put one foot in front of the other, grinding out the steps along the parkway that would take him to the path that led to the town where he would look for a meal or a handout, for a bed or a box. Or, like last night, just a quiet patch of dirt.

  But his feet took a detour that his conscious brain hadn’t intended. Forty minutes later, from a bench in the far corner of the Alexandria Presbyterian cemetery, Elliott looked out over the shoulders of granite headstones, immovable sentries marching away from him in columns and rows. Unlike the chaos on the bridge, the night here was cold, quiet, and still.

  Ornately fashioned streetlamps, meant to evoke Victorian gaslights, perhaps, were placed sporadically along the road leading to the cemetery, but there were none in the graveyard itself, leaving the middle spaces dark and surrounded by silent, skeletal trees.

  He avoided the cemetery during the day. Dog walkers and joggers had reported him before, finding his violation greater than their own. Once upon a time, he’d tried to avoid them by going to the far corner of the massive grounds, a muddy niche out of sight of the gravel path, but he’d realized his mistake staring down at the rain-drenched Barbie dolls and decaying stuffed animals, soggy handwritten notes and chipped plastic tiaras—it was the children’s cemetery. Gulls wheeled and screamed in the sky. He’d fled, certain he was going to lose his mind.