LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 4

      Sweat was running down the back of JC’s neck by the time the cab came to a complete stop. She’d wanted to ask the driver to turn down his heater, but for the last fifteen minutes she’d listened to the man, who was probably fifty in a world where fifty didn’t look like thirty, quietly beg the person on the other end of the phone to please let his mother keep her dog. He’d promised repeatedly to replace the carpet that said dog must have ripped up.

      Her own mom had loved her little Yorkie. And after she’d died, the dog had never been the same, even though JC had watched her father try to woo the dog over. Instead, the animal had seemed to mope around her parents’ home for months until one night the little guy had fallen asleep and never woken up.

      She’d figured he’d died of a broken heart. She’d understood the feeling. The loss of Lara Cambridge had been sudden and very horrible.

      “Twenty-six fifty,” he said.

      She gave him a hundred and got out of the cab.

      He rolled down his window. “I don’t have change, lady.”

      “I don’t want any,” she said.

      It was enough that for a brief second, the man’s tense posture, the stiff way he held his head, it all seemed to relax. He rolled his window up. Stopped halfway.

      “Best be careful in this neighborhood,” he said. Then he pulled away, leaving her alone. Cars, mostly old, were parked on both sides of the street. There was little grass and only a few trees to soften the rough appearance of the small wood-framed houses that lined the road. A big dog running behind a chain-link fence barked, startling her. She saw a swing set in one yard with a rusty slide that couldn’t possibly be safe for a child.

      Across the street, several houses up, she saw an old woman wearing a housedress, her back to the street, sweeping her sidewalk. She glanced again at the scrap of paper where she’d written down the address and Charity’s brief directions. Apartments on the corner. Had to be the three five-story brick buildings that were bunched together as if there might be safety in numbers.

      She’d been so distracted after talking to Charity that she’d run out of the hotel without her phone. Hadn’t realized it until she was already blocks from there. If she had it, a quick call to Charity would have made it easier. Instead, it took her several minutes to identify that apartment 302 was in the middle building. She walked across the yard that was more weeds than grass, grateful that she’d pulled on her flat-heeled boots before leaving the hotel. She was almost at the door when she saw a police car cruise by.

      It was the kind of neighborhood that likely required regular patrol. There were two officers but neither seemed to glance her direction. Eyes were focused straight ahead.

      She reached for the handle of the glass door that looked as if someone had thrown a slice of pizza at it, hadn’t been happy with their aim and tried it again. That or it was dried vomit.

      She was sticking with pizza.

      Inside, there was a very small lobby, maybe five feet by five feet. Mailboxes, thirty of them, lined one wall. Directly across was the elevator that looked a hundred years old, which she thought was likely not possible, since the building had probably been built in the seventies or eighties. But the painted doors were scratched and dented and when they opened, the smell of urine was oppressive. She got in and pressed the three with her elbow.

      The idea that Charity was living in the place made her sick. And the knowledge that if circumstances had been different it might have been her instead made her arms feel heavy as the elevator slowly climbed to the third floor.

      When the doors opened, the heat hit her. How could it feel as if it was eighty-five in the hallway when it was fifty degrees outside? She quickly glanced both directions. All five doors were closed.

      She found apartment 302 at the end of the hall. Stood outside the door, her fist raised to knock.

      She had some idea what to expect. Charity had no social media accounts, at least that she’d been able to find. But the private investigator she’d hired had unearthed a senior class picture of the girl taken six years ago.

      She’d stared at that photo for weeks that had turned into months, working up her nerve. The idea that she was opening a door that might never be fully shut again was a bit terrifying. She could be inviting trouble into her life, into her father’s life. Maybe unnecessarily.

      She’d almost managed to convince herself that it was too great a risk, that it didn’t matter. But in the end, she’d realized that she had to know. She had to know if what her mom had believed to be true was indeed fact.

      Had to know the extent of her father’s betrayal.

      She pressed a hand flat against her stomach, which was rumbling with nerves. What was Charity going to think of her? If she’d done any searching, she’d have seen plenty of JC. Miatroth’s recent clinical trials in the war against pancreatic cancer had gone amazingly well, and in the last month, JC had been interviewed many times.

      She’d have preferred to orchestrate a meeting, to set it up just so to give her and Charity the optimal opportunity to get to know each other. But Charity’s admission that she was in trouble had changed all that.

      Her plan was to meet Charity, find a solution to whatever trouble she was in and get back to the hotel before Royce returned so that he never had to know she’d left in the first place.

      Otherwise, he was going to have one more reason to believe that she couldn’t be trusted.

      JC knocked sharply on the door.

      It swung open. And there she was.

      Charity had big dark eyes that seemed to fill her narrow face. Her straight hair was almost black, much darker than it had been in her senior class picture, and hung down past her shoulders. There was a silver ring at the edge of her right eyebrow and her nose was pierced. Those were also new in the last six years. She was wearing a shapeless olive green cotton dress with a drawstring waist and flip-flops.

      Too thin, almost waiflike, and JC’s first impulse was to feed her. “Hello,” said JC. Should she hug her? Nothing about Charity’s body language told her that would be the right move. She settled for extending her hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m JC...uh...Juliana, but I go by JC.”

      Charity didn’t move. Instead, she glanced at JC’s extended arm, then settled her gaze back on JC’s face. The silence stretched on.

      And JC silently lectured herself not to fill it. She sometimes did that when she was nervous.

      “I guess I wasn’t sure you would come,” Charity finally said.

      JC

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