Sister Dear (37 page)

He shook his head at Emma in pity, as if someone else had ransacked the office, beat up Emma, and left her for dead. He put his head in his hands and turned away from her, mumbling to himself.

Emma forced herself to ignore the throb of her forearm and the ache below her waist. Using both hands, she pulled herself away from him using the wooden chair that had fallen over, dragging her body. And the coach was still muttering, pacing now, eyes half closed.

On her final hoist, a weakened chair leg came off in her grasp. Breathing hard, Emma scrambled to her feet, tucking it behind her back before Coach could turn around.

“I need to go,” she said, just audible above her own heartbeat. She was asking for permission. He wanted to be in charge and
needed Emma to be subservient and cowering. She could play the part. “Please.”

As she waited for him to reply, she glanced down at her free hand. The forearm above her wrist was swollen twice its normal size. Emma stared at the puffy tissue, the skin covering the veins and tendons beneath. Bruises began to blossom in angry streaks of red and purple. Marks from a man's hand and fingers were clearly evident.

“Please,” she repeated. “I won't say anything. I promise—”

“Oh, now you've changed your mind?” Coach sneered.

She kept her gaze on the floor.

“Now you don't want to make me look bad in front of my community, my neighbors, and my players' families? Well, Emma Marshall, I'm glad to hear that, because you are right. You don't want to go there.”

Shifting her feet and pressing against the floor, Emma pushed herself up against the closest wall, resting her wounded arm in her lap. She let her gaze fall from his short-cropped hair to his pressed khakis. His neat, orderly appearance, not a fold out of place, every stitch in an even line.

It was so obvious. It had taken this amount of shock to recognize it, though. Allie had seen it, might as well have shouted it from the rooftops. She wasn't afraid like Emma was. Her sister was a warrior, an Amazon. Her sister, who was always right, who always got what she wanted. Who was leaving this awful place and going to make a new life. She was leaving Emma behind. She hadn't even asked if she wanted to tag along. Not even in a joking way.

They were supposed to have tonight, though. Just the two sisters. Popcorn, pillows, and a movie. Allie had cleared her schedule to spend time with her.

Meanwhile, all Coach cared about was himself. How he looked,
how he felt, his record of success. Who he stepped on along the way was inconsequential. He hadn't been telling the truth all along. Not to his wife or his kids or to Emma.

“Why?” Emma asked. “Why me?”

Coach smirked. “You're young and naïve, not bad to look at, and your daddy's got all the fixin's we need to get a team to the state playoffs. I just needed a key to get in. Or the code.”

Emma winced as she remembered writing it down and handing the information over so freely. Coach reached for a glass of Coke and spun his straw in the ice, taking turns stirring and looking at her.

“Think about it this way. You helped get the team on track to the Georgia Bowl. Couldn't have done it without you.” Coach winked.

Emma shifted her weight to one side and pressed her thighs together, still clutching the piece of chair leg. She glanced around at the racks of supplies, the pharmacy boxes, the dispensers and shelves of over-the-counter medication waiting to be stocked.

“Why not use what you already have at the store? Can't you just order what you like? You own a pharmacy.” She frowned. “Why not take it? Why ask me?”

She loved him. Didn't he see that? She'd have given him what he wanted, if he really loved her. Why couldn't he see what was right in front of him?

“You're so innocent, so unbelievably naïve,” he said and checked his watch. “Ever heard of the DEA? The folks that keep tabs on people like us? Pharmacies? Every pill that comes in and out has to be counted, checked, verified, double-checked. Those idiots are on us every five minutes about this or that. Fill out this form, sign this statement. They can walk in here anytime they please and turn the place upside down. It's the crazy KGB all over again. The
government wants to run everything. And you wonder why I'd look elsewhere for my product?” He laughed, shallow and raw.

Emma let out a gasp. Her abdomen cramped like someone had reached in and clutched her insides, then twisted. She forced herself not to cry out again or exclaim at the pain. It seemed to intensify with each pump of blood through her veins.

“Fine. I-I understand now. Really. I won't say anything,” she coughed out, her eyes watering. “I need to go, okay?”

“We're clear?”

“Yes,” she whispered, maintaining the apologetic look.

“Because, Emma,” he continued. “I promise you this. If you breathe a single word, I'll find you.” Coach narrowed his eyes. “And when I do, I'll kill you.”

Emma gulped, tucking the piece of wood close to her spine.

After a beat, he grabbed his ball cap, turned his head to check the front of the store. “I've got to close up.”

Muscles straining, she inched up the wall and straightened her legs. Once on her feet, her vision cleared. She steadied her footing, then took a baby step and caught the edge of the table with her fingertips. Emma let out a small moan, wobbled from side to side, then straightened, keeping both eyes pinned on Coach. He glanced in her direction as he pulled on a jacket.

“I'm fine,” she assured him, still hiding the chair leg in the folds of her skirt.

His forehead creased as he reached to straighten his ball cap.

Emma leaned over to grab her purse on her way out the back door. She didn't want to fake too much, just enough for him to come to her rescue.

“Oh.” She let out a cry and bent her knees, hunching her shoulders, tucking her chin to her chest.

It was enough.

The coach hesitated, then reached for her again.

This time Emma was ready.

With a battle cry worthy of adrenaline-pumped soldiers, Emma took the chair leg and swung with all of her might.

FIFTY-TWO

ALLIE

2016

Allie tried her sister several times on the way home. Voice mail. She would have to tie Emma down or sedate her to talk about the cabin and the coach. How had she possibly missed all of the signs? She had been so blind—so focused on her moral quest to prove Thomas was guilty of manufacturing steroids and abusing players—that she'd let it cloud everything else in her life.

She bit her lip, regret washing over her body in waves. There was so much she could have done differently.

As she reached her own tree-lined street, she parked her mother's car, grabbed the mail from the box, and headed inside. She locked the door behind her and leaned against it, deciding to check her cell phone for the hundredth time. As she cradled it in the palm of her hand, Allie stared at the screen, debating her next move. She needed to call her father or mother. Path of least resistance first, she decided.

Her mother answered. “Hello?”

“Hey, Mom, it's me,” Allie said and offered her the obligatory fine and good when asked. After a lull in the conversation, she dove
straight in with questions about her sister. “I'm a little worried,” she explained. “Has Emma been acting strangely?”

Her mother made a brief humming noise, thinking. “Sweetie, we've barely seen her. Your father and I thought—we'd hoped—she was spending time with you.”

“Well, she has been, off and on,” Allie said. “Up until the last few days, she's been here a bit.” She pressed her cheek against the cell phone, brushing aside the curtain to glance out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of her sister's car. “It's not like her to disappear.”

“Well, now, I don't think that's the case. Caroline said she left her a note—”

“Caroline's there?” Allie interrupted, scratching at her forehead in frustration.

“She was at the library this morning. After that, she went home, found the note, and called and asked if she could go to a friend's house for a few hours.”

“Okay. And, um, you were saying . . . about Emma's note . . .” Allie jiggled her knee impatiently.

“The note from Emma just said that Caroline needed to spend the night with us. That she was fine and would talk to us soon.”

“Okay,” Allie said, remembering that she still had the mail tucked under her elbow. She withdrew the small pile and placed it on the counter, spreading it out as she half answered her mother. A lump lodged in her chest. There was a letter from Emma. Or handwriting that looked exactly like her sister's. No return address.

“Is everything all right?” her mother asked. Her question was hesitant, as if she really didn't want to know if or why trouble existed between her two daughters. Allie understood. Her mother wasn't a crusader, driven to battle by wrongdoing. Her mother would suffer in silence before bringing an ugly subject to light before God, country, or the population of Brunswick.

“Everything's fine, Mom.” Allie squeezed her eyes shut and searched for a good excuse. “I have something of hers and need to return it. That's all.” She'd find Emma on her own and deal with the situation before anything else happened. “Can I bring your car back in the morning?”

“Of course, dear,” her mother said. “We'll be at the house.”

After her mother hung up, Allie flipped over the envelope and pulled at the adhesive flap. She pulled out three sheets of folded white paper.

As she scanned the first page, Allie choked. It was a printout from the state of Georgia, discussing the “Special Needs” adoption category.
Special needs children were those who had been in the care of a public or private agency or individual other than the legal or biological parent for more than twenty-four consecutive months.
Her sister's handwriting was scrawled across the top:
We need to talk about this.

The other two pages, a policy and a form from the Division of Family and Children Services, dropped out of her hand.

Allie walked the interior of the room in a daze. She kept moving, trying to stimulate some kind of epiphany. Why was her sister acting like this? How could she even suggest this? And where was she?

One fact was certain.

She didn't know her sister at all.

Maybe she never had.

Swallowing her tears, Allie wiped at her face. She needed to go to the office and follow up on the supplies she'd found at the cabin. Allie needed to look back at old itemized billing statements and order forms—papers her father had filed a long time ago. Papers in file boxes that Nick might have taken out to the trash. Allie just hoped she wasn't too late.

After leaving a message for Natalie that she would be stopping by the office, Allie keyed in the code at the back door of the building.

An hour later, after combing through boxes of dusty manila folders and outdated patient files, Allie stumbled on a rusted metal file box in the far corner of the storage room. She'd seen the box before, in her father's office. Under Emma's desk when she'd worked there.

On her hands and knees, Allie dragged the box from its resting place. Heaving it up to the counter, she ran a finger over the locking mechanism. When she pressed the silver button in the middle, the clasp sprung apart and the top opened with a creak. Inside, Allie found paper, all colors and textures, wrinkled, some water damaged on the edges.

She reached in one hand and grasped what she could. A tickle on the top of her ring finger made her jump. Allie pulled out her hand and flicked a spider away. There were likely more where he came from.

Allie fetched a plastic tub from under the sink. With both hands, she picked up the file box, turned it upside down, and shook hard. Dust, grit, and rust flew everywhere, making her sneeze and cough. A few more spiders skittered away. Coins rolled across the surface and bounced to the floor, along with paper clips, used staples, and dried-out rubber bands.

Most of the paper settled into a haphazard pile at least six or seven inches thick. Allie bent over and found the stray pieces, collecting a few with every step. A musty, mildewed smell wafted from the pile.

One by one, she checked each scrap, noting the dates and any markings. Most were order forms, some from as far back as fifteen or sixteen years ago. She recognized the company names and
products. There were the usual items any vet office would keep in stock—doxycycline for bacterial infections, valium for sedation, Buprenex for pain. Amoxicillin—another antibiotic—was a frequent order, as was prednisone, an injectable steroid.

Allie placed that pile to the side. She picked up another few pages. Information for owners on rabies shots, a schedule for routine vaccines.

Her fingers trembled as she glanced at the next set of pages. On light blue paper, a horse's head was drawn at the edge of the logo. Equine supplies.

Boldenone Undecylenate. Equipoise, EQ, there were different names for it. Vets used it for weight gain in emaciated horses and to step up testosterone production in stallions. There had been a time when her father had done quite a bit of equine work, and she remembered accompanying him to farms as a girl, watching him give injections, listening to him calm the horses.

The demand for equine services had dropped off some when she came to work for her father as a vet tech in the summer between high school and her freshman year of college. She worked whenever she was home on break, honing her skills, going along on emergency calls.

She paged back—2009, 2008, 2007. She paused and jotted down the amounts in each order. Then 2006. She scanned the pages carefully for this year, then compared it to the prior year's orders. At the bottom of each page, her sister's signature was scrawled.

She'd done the ordering back then, signed for most of the packages, all of the office work Allie and her father couldn't stand. Her mother had done the job forever, but allowed Emma to step in and earn spending money during the summers and then when Emma had quit college. Her mother enjoyed the break, Allie thought, and seemed happy to give the responsibility to someone else.