Inadvertent Disclosure

INADVERTENT DISCLOSURE

Melissa F. Miller

Brown Street Books

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

Copyright © 2012 Melissa F. Miller

All rights reserved.

Published by Brown Street Books.

For
more information about the author,

please
visit www.melissafmiller.com.

For
more information about the publisher,

please
visit www. brownstbooks.com.

Brown Street
Books eBook ISBN: 978-0-9834927-3-3

Cover design by SM Reine

Cover photo by Michel Meynsbrughen

For my sister Theresa, my
brother Trevor, and Kevin,

 true stewards of the earth,

and

for
my children, Adam, Jack, and Sara,

who
will reap the benefits
.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My
first book was a labor of love. This second book carries with it the weight of
expectations—both yours and mine. As such, it was, in some ways, more challenging
to write. As always, I could not have written it without the abundant good
humor, constant love, and occasional tough love of my husband and first reader,
David Miller. I also want to thank my friends and family, whose support and
encouragement have been phenomenal. Although I cannot name everyone who has
inspired and supported me here, I would be remiss if I did not thank Missy and
Geoff Owen and Beth Henke for their friendship, both generally and specific to
this venture. I also wish to thank the real Gavin Russell, whose generous
donation to the Amelia Givin Library earned him a place in these pages. And, of
course, I thank the fine folks at Brown Street Books. Finally, my sincere
thanks to each reader who wrote me a note or stopped me on the street to ask,
“So, where’s the next book?” Here it is.

INADVERTENT DISCLOSURE

PROLOGUE

Springport, Pennsylvania

July 29, 1974

The height of the oil crisis

The sisters sat on the wide
front steps of their soon-to-be old house and watched. The older girl, almost
twelve, had willed herself not to cry, but she couldn’t stop her cheeks from
burning with rage. Her sister, two years younger, wasn’t able to quell the flow
of tears down her cheeks, which were also bright red, but from shame, not
anger. The repo men studiously avoided their eyes as they walked back and forth
between the house and the van, loading it with their bikes, their ice skates,
even the old stuffed bears that still slept on their twin beds out of inertia
more than any need.

When she saw them taking her
microscope kit, along with the specimen slides she’d spent the whole last year
collecting and mounting, the younger girl lost what little control she had over
her emotions and let out a pained wail. The cry drew the attention of their mother,
who had been taking great care in loading the trunk of the borrowed station
wagon with her family’s heirlooms—the only possessions they owned that their
father hadn’t pledged in a fruitless attempt to save his oil-fired furnace
business. Their mother laid her grandmother’s jewelry box on the cloth she’d
had to borrow from the family’s former maid along with the car—even their
linens had been taken by the note holder—and rushed over to the steps.

“Stop it,” the older girl
hissed, annoyed that they were drawing the attention of creepy D.J. McAllister
across the street, whose smirk gave away his feigned ignorance of what was
happening to his neighbors. One thing the girls wouldn’t miss about their house
was the presence of Daniel, Jr., or D.J. nearby. His good breeding, as their
mother liked to call it, wasn’t strong enough to outweigh his teenage hormones,
and it totally grossed them out the way he leered at their mom in her hot
pants.

The girl struggled to catch her
breath between sobs. The older girl was about to give her arm a good, painful
pinch to distract her, when a white satin-covered book peeking out of the crook
of one of the men’s sweaty arm caught her eye.

“Mom,” she shouted, as her
mother came over to put a comforting arm around her still-bawling sister,
“they’re taking my diary!”  She had the little gold key hidden in the pocket of
her jean shorts, but everybody knew all you needed was a bent bobby pin to pop
the cheap lock. That book contained her private thoughts. Including the way
looking at creepy D.J. sometimes made her feel funny. She’d die if anyone ever
read it. “This is bullshit!”

“Language,” her mother said in
a firm voice. Then, a second later, “No, you’re right, this is bullshit.” She
marched over and tapped the repo man on the shoulder.

He turned. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Do you really think it’s
necessary to take my daughter’s diary?  It has no resale value. This is just
cruel.”

They watched while the man
weighed this, looking at the shiny white book in his arm. He shrugged and
handed it over. “You’re right, I guess.”

The girl ran up and snatched it
from her mother’s hands and clutched it to her chest. Her mother didn’t even
try to remind her to say thank you. Manners were worthless in their situation.

The man’s eyes shifted to the
younger sister, still crying on the stairs.

“I guess it’s only fair if she
gets to pick out one thing to keep, too, huh?  It’s not their fault, after
all.”

“No, no, it’s not,” their
mother agreed. “This is their father’s fault.”

She motioned for the girl to
come join them, and she did, still sniffling.

“What do you want to keep?” the
repo man asked, eager to get this over with.

“My microscope, please,” she
muttered.

“Ah, jeez, that looks
expensive.”

“It’s really not,” her mother
explained, “it’s just a junior kit. She’s worked so hard on her slides.”

Her mother reached out and
traced a finger along the man’s bare arm.

“Please?” she said her voice
breathy and low.

The man glanced over at their
father, who sat staring up at their mansion, oblivious to everything but his
own pain, and then back at their mother.

The girl held her breath and
hoped he’d say yes. Finally, he did.

“Okay, sure.”

She ran over and grabbed the
microscope and her slides from the carton on the curb before he could change
his mind.

Her mother’s hand lingered on
his arm. “How can I ever thank you?”

He looked away and continued
down the steps like it had never happened.

The girls hugged their mother
tight, and they walked together to the glider under the big red maple tree in
the front yard and waited for the nightmare day to end.

* * * * * * * * * *

As it turned out, that
nightmare day was just the beginning. Within three months of losing the
gracious Victorian mansion with its turrets and hidden passages, they’d go on
to lose the double-wide trailer their parents had rented on a patch of weeds
outside of town. While their mother had taken in sewing and done babysitting to
earn what money she could, and they’d traded riding lessons and the latest
fashions for nasty hand-me-down clothes from the Salvation Army, their dad had
just sat in a lawn chair in front of the trailer and done . . . nothing. Until
two days before Halloween, when he’d finally done something: He’d drunk most of
a bottle of Wild Turkey, then he’d pointed the barrel of their neighbor’s
hunting rifle into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

“The coward’s way out,” their
mother had shouted when she found his bloodied, faceless form, already swarming
with ants and grosser insects by the time they’d returned from the food pantry
with their bags of government cheese and generic soups.

With no life insurance
proceeds, thanks to the suicide exclusion, they couldn’t pay the rent, let
alone afford to bury the man who’d led them to this place. They moved into a
cramped studio apartment with thin walls and low water pressure, where they
lived for free in exchange for their mother acting as the super for the
building. The three of them slept in one room, which they called the bedroom
despite it lacking a bed. They ate meat once a week, on Wednesdays, right in
the middle, and the girls learned how to sew well enough to turn their thrift
store donations into something resembling fashionable clothes.

The older girl wrote every day
in the white diary, until the day she turned eighteen and ran off with the man
who would turn out to be her first of several husbands, leaving it behind on
the dresser she shared with her sister and mother. Her sister never left the
microscope behind. When she went off to college in Ohio on a scholarship, the
microscope was nestled on the bottom of the one cardboard box she took with
her, wrapped in a sweater her mother had crocheted.

CHAPTER 1

Firetown, Pennsylvania

The present day

Monday, 4:30 a.m.

Jed Craybill stared up at his
ceiling and waited. Tall orange flames licked the sky, reflected in his bedroom
window. The flares of gas whooshed as loud as any airplane. With each
whoosh
,
the floorboards shook and his bed rocked back until the headboard hit the wall
behind him.

He’d known for months that this
night was coming: after a well pad was completed, the controlled burn off of
surface gas began. The fires would burn day and night for days, maybe better
than a week. All the while, the smell of methane would fill the sky like a
low-lying cloud and seep in through his walls.

The gas company had been busy
since the fall, working to create a well pad on the edge of his neighbor’s lot.
First it was the incessant buzz of chainsaws, as they downed the old walnut
trees. Then the chippers. Next the bulldozers came, and with them, the huge
lights, so they could work through the night, moving the earth so it could be
leveled. Trucks rumbled along the road, gears shifting, doors slamming, loud
voices calling to each other, around the clock. All working toward this day.

He was just glad Marla hadn’t
lived to see it. She’d always been a light sleeper. The slightest noise, even
the wind in the trees, used to wake her. Toward the end, the only respite she’d
had was a sound sleep.

He was the opposite. Even the
flares, with their noise, light, and stink wouldn’t have kept him awake if he’d
been able to fall asleep in the first place. But he had bigger problems than
his idiot neighbors letting the gas company rape their land, and he couldn’t
seem to quiet his mind.

He lay there and waited for the
weak April sun to peek over the mountains and paint the sky a faded pink. Then,
he’d shower, dress, and make his stand.