Saving Toby
Authors: Suzanne McKenna Link
Saving Toby
A Novel By
SUZANNE MCKENNA LINK
Copyright © 2013, Suzanne McKenna Link.
All rights reserved.
Except as provided by the Copyright Act 2013 no part of this work may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
eBook cover design
by Stephanie White/Steph’s Cover Design
www.stephscoverdesign.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The
author would like to thank the following people:
My editor, Enrica Jang: My first tough critic.
Thank you for the countless hours of read-throughs, for sharing your knowledge
and for helping me sharpen my craft. I have become a better writer for knowing
you. It was with your guidance that I was able to 'save Toby.'
My dear friends: a never-ending source of
encouragement.
My family: the lights and laughter that
replenish my soul.
My husband, Brian: Thank you for your
nutritional support and enduring patience throughout the process of creating
this story. It is your love and steady support that allows me to stand on my
toes and reach for the stars.
“It always seems impossible until it is done.”
~ Nelson Mandela
Prologue
“Good Lord! What happened?”
Julia’s eyes went wide when Al and I burst into the kitchen.
She stopped putting birthday candles on the cake and tightened the belt on her
bathrobe.
My face was bleeding.
Al threw a roll of paper towels at me and then turned to our
mother.
“He cracked his chin open on the coffee table.”
I wadded a dozen sheets and pressed them to my gushing chin.
My jaw ached—there wasn’t a spot on my body that did not—but I just shrugged.
“I’m fine.”
“There’s so much blood.” Julia came closer, but I could tell
she didn’t want to look. She hadn’t been feeling well, and the sight of the
blood seemed only to make her more squeamish. She glanced back at Al. “You look
at it. Tell me how deep it is.”
Annoyed, Al came over and yanked the towels away. He pushed
my chin up to inspect the gash with his big hands, and a new stream of blood
flowed down my neck.
Julia turned away, and I knew she’d seen the cut anyway.
“He’ll need stitches,” she said. “Take him to the emergency
room, Al.”
Al grunted. “What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you take
him?”
“I’m not feeling well,” was all she said.
Al wouldn’t stop. “Maybe while you’re at the hospital, the
doctors can finally figure out what’s wrong with you.”
I stepped forward. “Leave her alone. I don’t need stitches.”
“Yes, you do,” Julia insisted. “Let me get dressed. I’ll
take you.”
“I’ll take him,” Al barked, snagging his car keys from the
hook near the back door. “Get in the car, you pussy.”
“Fuck off,” I snarled.
Dwarfed between us, Julia held up her hands and pleaded,
“Boys,
please
stop fighting.” She turned a distressed grimace on me.
“And Toby, your profanity upsets me.”
I lowered my head. “Sorry, Ma. I’ll go with Al. Just relax.”
Like yesterday, Julia was having a ‘bad’ day. Today, trying
her best to be upbeat, she’d roused herself out of bed. Still, she hadn’t
managed to get dressed.
She rubbed my arm. “When you get back, we’ll have your
cake.”
* * *
Fourteen stitches for my sixteenth birthday—and a scar I’d
probably have the rest of my life. As Al drove me back from the hospital, I got
a call from Dev.
“We’re hanging out in town. Come down, we’ll celebrate your
birthday,” Dev said.
I told Al to drop me off in front of the donut shop on Main
Street.
He pulled the car alongside the curb. “Mom wanted you home
for cake.”
“I’ll be home later,” I said and got out. Leaning back in, I
saw that his right cheek was swollen. At least I’d gotten in a few good shots
before he’d taken me down.
“Hey, thanks for the birthday present.” I patted my bandaged
chin.
Al didn’t reply. Before I had a chance to shut the door, he
floored the gas pedal. I pulled back, narrowly avoiding being decapitated, as
the car’s heavy door slammed shut.
“Asshole!” I gave him the one-finger salute as he drove off.
From outside, I could see through the windows into the donut
shop. Ed, one of the local beat cops, was at the counter. He eyed me through
the plate glass, his stare fixed on my ridiculous bandage. I glared back.
“Get your donut and get out of here,” I muttered under my
breath.
Rounding the corner to the back, I saw Dev in the shop’s
small parking lot behind Main Street. He was with Ray—the two of them mostly
concealed by a large commercial dumpster.
Just then, three younger, elementary school kids rode by on
their bikes, skirting the edge of the walkway doing wheelies and slide tricks
over the curb. Dev shot out from behind the dumpster, growling savagely, as he
gave chase. The unsuspecting boys shrieked and took off down the block,
pedaling as fast as they could. Winded, Dev picked up a handful of pebbles from
the ground and chucked them in the boys’ direction.
Near the entrance to the donut shop, four freshmen girls
from my class babbled incessantly as they sipped overpriced iced coffees. Only
mildly interested in Dev’s idiotic performance, their attention turned to me as
I drifted towards my friends. I scanned them, hoping to see the familiar shape
of this one girl I’d been dying to tag. She wasn’t among the crowd.
I was lighting up a Marlboro when the cute, dark-skinned
girl from my Earth Science class, April, sidled up to me and smiled.
“What happened to your chin?”
I took a drag and said, “Skiing accident in Utah. Bad fall
out of the helicopter.”
She laughed. I immediately liked that she had a sense of
humor.
“Hey, how come I haven’t seen your friend around school?”
She sighed, loud and dramatic. “Claudia? Her parents sent
her to St. John’s. Can you believe that?”
“Bummer.” Though I hadn’t been close to making anything
happen with her, I was disappointed with the news. Tucked away in private
school, there was little chance anything ever would.
“Want me to tell her you said ‘hi’?” April offered.
I squinted at her, wondering if she was yanking my chain,
but she seemed sincere.
“Okay,” I shrugged. Even as I began to move away, I saw her
reach for her cell phone to relay the message as she walked back to her friends.
I didn’t kid myself that anything would come of it though.
Dev stepped up to me, looking over my shoulder at the girls.
“Think they’d hang out with us?”
I didn’t even bother considering it. “No.”
“Even if we tell ‘em we got some ganja?”
“No.”
Alone, I might’ve been able to hang with those girls. Unlike
most of my classmates, I wasn’t plagued by acne, and I’d grown two inches in
the past year. An unexpected bonus to the constant battles with my brother was
the way my once weedy body was morphing into a powerful fighting machine. I
liked the change in my appearance—and girls seemed to like it, too.
Alongside scrawny Ray, who could barely string two words
together, and Dev, built like a massive tugboat, doing stupid shit like chasing
down defenseless little kids on bikes, the odds were ridiculous. Getting with
any of the girls here tonight would take a whole lot of clever chitchat and
persistence. Normally I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity, but I was still wound
up after the throw-down with my brother.
I was itching for a good fight, and if there was anyone who
could find one, it was Devlin Van Sloot. He was as predictably reactive as a
lit stick of dynamite. Even without a fight, we could always get lit. Ray’s
house was stocked, and his mom was generous with her booze.
1.
Claudia
“This is an extraordinary list of service credits.”
Bill Ramsey, the managing director of Sterling Senior Care, was
looking over my recently updated
résumé.
Listed
were all the organizations and service clubs I’d been a part of over the years
as well as the titles I’d held within each association. There was not one paid
position.
From the corridor windows, the flowering March daffodils had
been only a yellow blur in my dash to the director’s office from the activities
room. I had just finished getting my butt whooped in two straight hands of gin
rummy by one of the senior residents, adorable Mr. Ricci. In anticipation of
discussing a new opening with Bill, I’d rushed the
length of the building to his office with
my résumé
tucked under my arm, protected in a manila envelope
. I was excited about
the possibility of taking on a
real
job.
“The position is a home companion of sorts for a cancer patient,
a woman in her fifties. Part-time, three nights a week,” Bill explained.
“But I’m not licensed for that sort of work.”
“You don’t need to be licensed for it, and as wonderful as
this is, they probably won’t ask to see it either.” With an apologetic smile,
Bill passed my
résumé
back to me. “They want
someone to be home with the woman and maybe do some odds and ends around the
house. I assured them you were reliable and would be a perfect fit for their
needs.” He handed me another sheet of paper from atop his desk.
“Joan Reitman, 563 Roosevelt Avenue,” I read. The local
address was familiar, but not the name.
“Yes, a family, right in town, so your father should
approve,” he said.
I was used to these kinds of remarks regarding my father.
Dad was a decorated Suffolk County police officer. Though my weekend position
as junior coordinator of activities at Sterling was only voluntary, Bill had to
meet my father’s rigorous stamp of approval before I was permitted to work at
Sterling.
“I believe it’s only for a few months until she gets back on
her feet. Which made me think it would fit in nicely with your schedule.
Probably finish up just before you leave for Los Angeles.” His expression
softened. “Any news from USC yet?”
Bill knew I was planning on transferring out of my current
school to the University of Southern California in the fall.
“Just that they have the application.”
“So, I guess it would be pointless to ask if you’d made any
headway with your father?” he said.
I shook my head.
“I hope you told him that the Davis School of Gerontology is
one of the finest programs in the country.”
I appreciated his interest in seeing me get into the
program.
“
Across
the country is not an easy sell. Unless I can
drive there in under forty minutes, it’s practically useless to talk to him
about it. I only hope when my acceptance comes in, I can figure out a way to get
him on board.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you,” Bill smiled.
“Thanks,” I sighed, knowing I would need more than crossed
fingers.
I hated going behind my father’s back. After the divorce, my
mother had followed a job to California, and my dad and I had become a team.
We'd weathered three years without her, still in the house I’d grown up in,
about a half-mile from the Great South Bay on the south shore of Long Island, in
the small town of Sayville.
My dad was always my hero, chasing away monsters from under
my bed and kissing my scraped knees. Even though I didn't need him to baby me
like that anymore, to my ever-growing exasperation, he was insistent on being a
part of my every decision. He wasn't buying into California. It was too far away
for him to keep an eye on me.
I suspected that the bigger issue, the one that made him
practically foam at the mouth, was that I’d be much closer to my mother. Dad
had never forgiven her for leaving.
I put aside thoughts of sunny L.A. that Monday as I drove
down Roosevelt Avenue, a few minutes before my five o’clock appointment with
Mrs. Reitman. The neighborhood, in the same town, was just over a mile
northwest of my house. The streets ran north of the railroad tracks and
apartments, near the soccer fields where I, and just about everyone I knew,
played as a kid. The houses were closer together and on smaller lots, some up-kept,
some not.
I pulled up in front of house number 563. Two small, compact
cars were in the driveway beside the faded red-shingled house. A rusty, chain
link fence ran the perimeter of the property. The two-story house appeared
exhausted, as though it had lost the fight against time and the elements.
I’d never actually been there before, but something about
the house was familiar.
And then I remembered.
I had only a little time, but I fumbled for my cell and hit
the first person on my contact list.
“Hey, chica,” my friend April said, in her usual cheery
greeting.
“You won’t believe where I am.”
“Outside my salon in a stretch limo with
piña
coladas
and two first-class tickets to the
Caribbean, where we’ll dance the nights away under the stars?”
“Not quite,” I laughed, looking out my windshield at the
overgrown bushes and a weedy, dead lawn. “I’m interviewing for a job at the
Fayes’ house.”
“The Fayes? You’re kidding!”
The things that happened to the Faye family were the kinds
of things folks in small towns loved to gossip about. As the daughter of Police
Officer Donato Chiametti, I had the scoop on most of the town buzz. Back when I
was in middle school, Mrs. Faye became a widow when her husband drove his
pickup truck into oncoming traffic, killing himself and the two people in the
other car. There was a lot of local controversy and anger over the accident,
mostly because Mr. Faye had been drunk. After his death, Mrs. Faye quietly
retreated, vanishing from all community involvement.
“Did Mrs. Faye remarry?” I asked April.
“I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything about her since Al
Junior was convicted of killing that guy last year.”
Al Junior, the older of the Fayes' two boys, was a rough
character four or five classes ahead of me. I remembered him as a schoolyard
bully. He grew up into a big, beefy guy with a temper. That he’d killed someone
with his bare hands during a bar room brawl shocked the town, but most weren’t
surprised that Al was capable of it. Last I’d heard he was serving out a long
prison sentence upstate somewhere.
“And Toby?”
Though the youngest Faye was a year older than April and I,
he’d been in the same grade. Toby had gotten into his share of trouble but
wasn’t known to have an angry, intimidating personality like his brother.
After eighth grade, my parents had me transferred to a
private high school. April, though, had gone to Sayville High School with Toby.
“I haven’t seen him since graduation,” April said.
I glanced at my dashboard clock.
“I have to go in. I don’t want to be late.”
“Good luck. Let me know how you make out.”
Promising to call her back tomorrow, I said goodbye and
scrambled out of my car. I walked through an opening in the fence where a gate
should have been and up the pitted cement walk to the front door. The
antiquated scrollwork on the black railings of the porch steps was peeling and
rusted dry in more places than not.
A moment after I knocked on the dark wooden door, a slender,
serious-faced older woman answered. She was not Mrs. Faye.
“Mrs. Reitman?”
“Yes?”
“I’m here about the job. We spoke on the phone.”
“You’re Claudia?” She pursed her thin lips when I nodded. “You’re
so young. I thought the residence would send over someone a little more mature.”
She stepped back, her manner almost patrician, as she allowed me to enter.
I was a little deflated by the quick judgment, but tried to
turn it back. “I’m pursuing a career in health care. And I take my work very
seriously.”
She blinked at me before her face settled into a gentler expression.
“I’m sorry, please forgive me. Mr. Ramsey did speak highly
of you,” she said, and signaled me to follow her.
To the left of the doorway, a large bay window in the living
room flooded the foyer with natural light.
She led me through the quiet house, down a wide hallway. We passed
a tidy den and a staircase with faded mauve carpet. Her stride was quick and
sure, and she didn’t look sick, so I asked, “I’d be
your
assistant?”
“Me?” she glanced back with furrowed brows. “No, I’m as healthy
as a horse.”
We stopped inside a tired, old kitchen in the back of the
house. The scent of woodsy cleaner intermingled with the spice of freshly
brewed herbal tea.
In the back of the room, the hazy late afternoon sun shone
through the glass sliders, illuminating little floating dust motes. The
kitchen, while scrubbed clean, had mismatched appliances, Formica countertops
rubbed thin in spots, and a tan threadbare braided foot rug in front of the
sink.
A slight, pale-faced woman sat at a rectangular, cloth-covered
kitchen table. Her back was bolstered with a bed pillow. At the sight of us,
she self-consciously patted her teal patterned silk headscarf.
“You’d be taking care of my sister,” Mrs. Reitman said,
motioning to the woman. She spoke across the room. “Julia, this is Claudia.”
I stepped forward and held out my hand. “Mrs. Faye.”
Her smile was slow, as if it took effort, but recognition
lit her eyes. She gently grasped my proffered hand with cool, fragile fingers.
“Claudia Chiametti,” she said, sounding surprised, but
pleasantly so. “You’ve grown into such a beautiful young lady.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s nice to see you again.”
When I was younger, Mrs. Faye taught catechism, and back
then it was rare not to see her at church functions, selling raffles or
organizing bake sales. Although I’d always known her to be petite, she appeared
painfully frail. Illness had taken its toll. Her milky-white complexion and
sharp, angular face was similar to that of some of the older Sterling
residents, but I knew she had to be at least twenty to thirty years younger.
Bill Ramsey taught me that nothing was worse for a sickly
person than seeing their sad condition mirrored in someone else’s eyes. I
forced myself to smile.
“I hear you can use some help. Tell me what you need,” I
said. Mrs. Faye’s appreciative smile softened her features.
The ladies asked me to sit, and we started to discuss the
job. Light cleaning, some cooking, and assisting Mrs. Faye when needed.
“Someone is here every day until my nephew gets home,” Mrs.
Reitman said. “He gets in around five o’clock. But he needs time to get out and
unwind.”
“You remember Toby, don’t you?” Mrs. Faye asked.
“Of course.” I replied, quickly doing the math in my head.
Four years of high school and two of college. “It’s been at least six years,
though. I’m sure I wouldn’t even recognize him if I saw him.”
“That’s right. You went to Catholic high school.” Mrs. Faye
nodded approvingly.
Mrs. Reitman pulled us back to task. “Julia needs wholesome,
cooked meals. Can you cook?”
“I love to cook,” I said, anxious to show them I was
flexible. “I’ll even find some healthy recipes for you!”
“This is going to work out better than I thought.” Mrs. Faye
sounded delighted.
The front door creaked on its hinges, and then we heard the
sound of heavy footsteps entering the house.
“That’s probably my nephew.” Mrs. Reitman motioned over her
shoulder and stood. “Since you’ll be seeing him around the house, we might as
well re-introduce the two of you now.”
On a mission, the brusque woman left the kitchen. Mrs. Faye
finished the tea she’d been drinking and, with effort, pushed the cup aside.
“Let me take that for you.” Wanting to demonstrate my
initiative, I rose from my chair and picked up her empty teacup. I moved to the
counter and deposited it into the sink just as Mrs. Reitman bustled back into
the kitchen.
“He’ll be in, in just a minute.”
Mrs. Faye spoke to me, “Toby works at that appliance and
electronics store in town. You know, the one on Main Street?”
I nodded and tried to move back to my seat without breaking
our eye contact. In my peripheral vision, I became aware of motion, but too
late to stop myself, I bumped into a solid wall of body.
“Oh!” I gasped, surprised as I hit a warm, immoveable mass
with my shoulder and bounced off. A pair of hands caught me around the waist
and kept me from tumbling over.
The collision brought me eye-level with the angular chin of
a guy’s face. His windswept, tawny brown hair was streaked with multi-hued
highlights. The untamed waves softly framed a tan, handsome face.
“Excuse me,” I mumbled, looking up into a pair of
almond-shaped, blue-grey eyes.
He seemed just as stunned by our impact. We stood there,
staring at each other for what seemed like an eternity while the warmth of his
hands on me spread like a blaze up my torso and flamed my face. The spell was
broken when his full lips parted and he said, “Claudia?”
That he knew my name set off alarms in my head. I struggled
to reassemble my disjointed thoughts, and it took a moment to put it back together—where
I was, who I was with.
Toby Faye.
Embarrassed at my inane reaction, I quickly regained my
balance, and retreated several steps.
“Oh, hi. Sorry about that.”
“No problem,” he said, and seeming to recover from our
run-in with little effort, he turned to his mother.
“Hey, Ma. What’s going on here?”
Mrs. Faye’s face brightened as her son moved towards her.
“Hi, honey. I guess you remember Claudia. She’s going to help out with my
care.”