The Tenderness of Thieves (27 page)

A
S THE AFT
ERNOON HEAT
settled over us, I went home to change out of my bathing suit for once. Then I snuck off to Handel’s house. I knew he was around today, and I couldn’t wait until tonight to see him. I marched up to his front porch with all the confidence in the world, hips swaying in my short skirt, freed by the serendipitous coincidence of the night we spent together. I went straight inside the front door and up the stairs to his room.

“What’s the matter?” I asked when I found him there, head in his hands, looking like the weight of the world was on him. I couldn’t tell if he was staring into space or studying something on the desk where he sat.

He startled and turned around in his chair. “Jane,” he said. Mustered a smile.

“Is anyone home? I didn’t see your mother on my way up here.”

“No,” he said, reaching out his hand. “We’re alone.”

“Good,” I said, taking it and pulling him to his feet. I led him over to the bed. Pressed my hands on his shoulders, signaling he should sit. “I bet I can make you forget whatever you’re worried about.” Now I pushed at his chest, tipping him backward.

He lay down and rested his head on a pillow. Eyes on me. “You always can.”

I lay down next to him, and we watched each other a moment. I ran my fingers through his long hair. “That makes me happy,” I said. “I’m so happy, Handel,” I went on, and then drew him toward me until he was close enough to kiss.

There was a moment when he paused, when he pulled away, blinked, long pale lashes fluttering up toward the ceiling like he had something on his mind. Like he was hesitating. But then it passed, and he turned to me, turned back with a big grin, reached out and tickled me in that place on my stomach he knew would make me laugh and scream—laugh and scream in a way that would make everything light again. Playful and fun like it should be between us. Like it always should be between a guy and a girl who are in love like Handel and me. Eventually things cycled from playful to passionate and from passionate to romantic, which was right where I’d wanted them to go.

One by one, Handel popped open the buttons on my white eyelet blouse. I’d worn it on purpose, thought about Handel doing exactly this. Earlier, when I was getting dressed, I’d dug down deep into my drawer and pulled up the flimsy, lacy white bra and matching underwear that Bridget made me buy in the fall just in case I ever met someone special. After so much waiting I finally had; today was the day. I’d picked this bra and underwear since I knew Handel would see them, finally cutting the tags that still dangled from their delicate hems, trading my bathing suit for something that would tell Handel what I wanted, beyond any doubt.

Handel undid the last of the buttons and, gently, slid the two halves of my shirt aside, looking at me. Watching the slow rise and fall of my chest.

I was shaking.

I don’t know why. We’d done this before. Many times.

All you could hear was our breathing.

“Pretty,” he said, running a finger across all that lace. Then underneath it. “Did you wear this for me?”

A shiver ran through me. Even though my cheeks burned red, I laughed like he was being ridiculous and said, “You wish.”

He smiled. Kissed a trail to my stomach, then back up to my neck.

And I sighed.

Today was turning out to be the best day.

I wanted more from Handel, just like always. It felt like my reward, to have
this.

To have
him.

I sat up a little, enough to slide my blouse over my shoulders and down my arms until I could pull it all the way off. Then it was Handel’s turn to pull his shirt over his head and toss it aside, until it was my turn again, and Handel was reaching around my back, unhooking the clasp of my bra, and it was falling away. Next was my skirt, and I was naked except for my underwear, lying on top of Handel’s sheets, pressed up against him, our legs intertwined. We’d spent a few weeks practicing these steps, this slow undressing, until it was a regular part of the time we were alone and kissing, whether it was down on the beach at night, or on his boat by the docks, or here at his house in his room when no one else was home.

Like now.

One thing I’d learned this summer: There was nothing like lying in bed, making out, clothes coming off piece by piece, unhurried and unworried about the time, with the boy you love.

And I loved Handel Davies.

Without a doubt, I loved him.

“I love you, Jane,” Handel whispered in my ear as though he’d heard my thoughts, his fingers light on my bare skin.

Giving me chills.

We spent the next hour resisting, wanting, whispering, kissing, waiting for that moment when Handel would hook his fingers into the elastic of my underwear, slowly sliding it down over my thighs, my knees, my ankles, until it slipped over the tips of my toes. Until all I wore was the tiny heart on a chain around my neck. Then it was Handel’s jeans and everything else getting tossed to the floor, the two of us panting, trying to catch our breath. We both knew these steps would happen, too; we knew it the second I walked into his room.

We pressed ourselves against each other.

When the moment finally arrived, my heart sped up, and everything seemed lit from the inside, him and me, so much skin touching and hands everywhere, gently but urgently. Each time we did this, it got better, if you could believe it. It really did.

There was nothing like being with Handel.

Nothing.

My cheeks flared a little afterward, when we were lying there in the quiet, catching our breath.

I turned to him. Took in the way the sunlight sent rays of light across his hair. Tried to suppress a smile. “Bridget said we’re like rabbits.”

Handel propped his head on his hand, studying me, a mock-serious expression on his face. “You do look a bit like a rabbit now that I think about it.”

“Shut up. You know what she meant.”

“My Jane rabbit,” he went on, playful.

“You’re making me bad, and I like it,” I told him, sitting up a bit, my eyes seeking the pile of clothes all over his floor. The sheet slid to the middle of my stomach, but I didn’t care. I liked having Handel’s eyes on me, on my body, all over me. I relished it. I wanted him to look. To see me. See the way the tiny blue heart hovered against the skin of my neck.

“Bad?” he murmured with a smile. “You could never be bad, Jane. Not all the way through.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m always stuck playing the role of good girl,” I said with a pout, even though I knew this was no longer true. The break-in had changed me. No—Handel had changed me. “I can’t seem to get away from it,” I went on, all flirty and forward. I pulled him on top of me again. Smiled. “Not even with you.”

Handel laughed. Dipped his head until his lips were on my skin. Hands along my curves.

I closed my eyes, smiling.

When his mouth reached my ear, he spoke. “I wouldn’t exactly call you that,” he whispered softly. “The good girl?” he added with another laugh, while something clicked inside me, finally fell into place after all this time.

Two words,
good girl,
lifting up a memory from the darkest recesses of my mind, fishing it out from the place it was hidden, the worst memory of all.

And my eyes flew open.

I
DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING.

Not right then. I couldn’t.

It was
impossible.
I was wrong.

All the blood in my body went cold.

Handel lifted his head. “I’m going to get a glass of water.” He smiled at me, eyes full of tenderness. “Do you want any?”

I shook my head no. I couldn’t speak.

Even then I didn’t believe it.

It wasn’t until Handel got up and left his room that I jolted myself out of the horror that held me frozen, tangled in his sheets. And it wasn’t until I got out of his bed, unsure what to do, looking around frantically, at the drawers and the closet, the pile of clothes draped over a chair, at the small mirror hanging on the wall, all the while my lungs unable to get air, that I saw it.

My necklace.

The other one—the original. My seventeenth-birthday present from my mother. Broken.
Sliced.
Lost the night of the break-in. Carefully curled up in a little jar on Handel’s desk. Like some keepsake.

My boyfriend, the one I was in love with,
Handel Davies,
was holding on to memories from the worst night of my life. He had them. Held them. All along he’d been doing this. All summer long.

The necklace was right there, staring up at me, the tiny heart in so many shades of blue—similar to the one I wore now, but different all the same. It was almost in plain sight, so obvious that I wondered if it was left there—if Handel had left it there—on purpose. Because he’d wanted me to find it. Because he’d wanted me to know, to
finally
know the truth.

He wanted me to see him for who he really was.

And I knew, I knew right then, I mean, how could I not? It had been Handel that night, whispering in my ear, telling me to be a good girl, trying to keep me calm, after his friend Cutter sliced that knife across my neck, his friend that smelled of sweet mixed with rot. It had been Handel witnessing those moments in which the Jane I’d once been was shattered for good, the same boy who would kiss me so tenderly, with so much love and passion and desire that I’d believed he could put the pieces back together and make me whole again.

I picked up the broken necklace.

Watched as it dangled from my fingers, swaying so gently through the air.

Looked from one mosaic blue heart to the other that rested against my chest.

There were footsteps on the stairs.
Thump, thump, thump.

Coming toward me.

It was in this moment that Handel returned, that he walked into his room and saw me standing there, hypnotized by the seemingly innocent swing of the necklace in my hands, of the heart at the end of it. My heart. The one that told a story I didn’t want to believe.

“Jane,” he stated.

Just like that.

Nothing else. Only my name.

My name for the first time now that everything would be different, now that there was no going back to the time of before—there would
never
be a going back to that before. My name, because, really, what else could Handel say?

“It was you,” I said to him, and I could feel the heart inside my chest breaking apart as we looked at each other, stared at each other with new eyes. Falling to pieces and disintegrating into a pile of dry heart dust. “It was you all along. You and Cutter, and if I had to guess who else, your brother.”

Tears ran down Handel’s face. “Jane, please. I can explain.”

But I was already hardening myself. Turning myself to stone. “No,” I said. “No, you can’t.” I grabbed my clothes from the floor, stepping into my skirt and throwing on my blouse. Fumbling and stumbling as I buttoned everything up. “It’s too late for that,” I said.

Then I walked out of Handel’s room. I walked right by him, careful not to let any part of me touch any part of him. Slowly, carefully, I made my way down the stairs.

“Jane,” I heard him say from above, just as my shaking hand was reaching for the knob on the door to the outside.

My name from his lips for the last time, I thought to myself then.

I would make sure of it.

• • •

I ran from the house. I ran and ran and then I ran some more.

When I finally slowed, I saw that I’d made it all the way to the next town. Somehow this was soothing. A relief to be out of
my
town. The town where I was no longer safe. The place where I thought people took care of one another, where I thought people looked out for one another. Where everyone knew everyone else, where kids still played hide-and-seek at night, and where we all held the beach so sacred in our hearts.

Idyllic. As though from another era.

I laughed out loud, a hysterical sort of laugh.

Who had I been kidding all this time?

A man out walking his dog took one look at me and then crossed to the other side of the street.

This only made me laugh harder.

Was I too frightening to see?

I went straight to the center of this town, this town that was not mine. I didn’t have my purse because I’d left my bag at Handel’s, and I didn’t have any money in my pockets, either, but that didn’t stop me from going in and out of stores.

I stole something.

I stole it from the drugstore. A bottle of dark blue nail polish. I studied it while I sat on a bench down the block.

Now I’ve got something in common with Handel.

I’m a thief.

I started to cry.

It was the crying that finally sent me headed home. I couldn’t seem to stop once I started. All day I’d been blindly going about, laughing and talking to myself like some crazy girl, like nothing bad had happened. Nothing horrible and awful and utterly unspeakable. I hadn’t shed a tear.

But when the tears came, they came with the force of a storm.

Sobs choked my throat when I arrived at my destination. By then it was getting dark. I don’t know how many hours had passed between leaving Handel’s and coming back here. It wasn’t my house where I went, either, or Bridget’s or even Tammy’s. I surprised even myself when I realized where I was headed, but when I did, I knew it was the right place to go.

Michaela was sitting on her front steps when I got there.

Sitting in the dark, her long dark hair falling all around her.

She looked up.

“Jane,” she said, a mixture of relief and expectation, like somehow she’d already known I was on my way.

I sat down next to her on the stoop and curled into a ball.

She put her arms around me.

When I finally caught my breath, when the sobs slowed enough that I could speak, I said, “I have something to tell you, Michaela. You were right. You were right about him all along.” I held out my hand, my fingers balled tight into a fist. Opened it to reveal the necklace I’d found in Handel’s room.

She stared at the broken heart chain lying along my skin. Then looked up at me. There wasn’t triumph or smugness in her eyes. Just sadness. Sadness and I think some shock. “I know, Jane.”

I inhaled sharply. Closed my hand, pushing the necklace deep into the pocket of my skirt. “You know? What do you know?”

She shifted her gaze. Watched as an ant carried a crumb three times its size along the cement toward the grass. “Handel went to the police.”

This, I wasn’t expecting. I straightened up, my back like a rod. “He what?”

“He told them everything. The police have been looking for you. Everyone has been out looking for you. My dad. The O’Connors. Seamus and Bridget and Tammy. Your mother is worried sick. We’ve all been worried. My father wants to speak to you.”

“Your father?”

She nodded. “He wants to make sure you’re all right. He wants to take your statement.”

All the air deflated out of me. My body caved into a C, my shoulders meeting my knees.

“Come on,” she said. “We’ll go together. Bridget and Tammy and Seamus and your mother and anyone else you want will go with you. You’re not alone, Jane. You never were.”

“I am, though,” I whispered, my throat hoarse. It hurt to speak. It hurt to breathe. Everything about me hurt and Handel was responsible. It seemed impossible, but I knew it was the truth. “It’s my fault that I’m alone. I did this to myself. You warned me so many times.”

“But, Jane, I didn’t know. No one did.”

I laughed, the taste sour in my mouth. “Obviously. Me, least of all.”

“Don’t blame yourself.” Her eyes flickered away, somewhere off in the distance, before settling on me again. Michaela seemed like she was hesitating. She took a deep breath. “There’s something else you should know. About Handel.”

I nodded. Braced myself for more terrible news. A bird flew over our heads. A sparrow. It landed in the small plot of grass in front of Michaela’s house, and my eyes went to it. Stayed and watched it prance around in all that lush green.

“Handel was there that night,” Michaela said carefully. “But he wasn’t there originally. He wasn’t part of the plan for the break-in.”

A tiny sliver of hope pierced my heart. I tore my eyes from the sparrow. “No?”

Michaela shook her head. “That’s what he said.”

The sliver in my heart grew and expanded, the hope painful and sharp, like it was prying me apart. “What else did he say?”

Michaela reached out and plucked one of the daisies from the pot brimming with them on the porch. She stared at its delicate white petals. “He said he only went to the house to try to keep you safe from his brother and his friends, that he went because he wanted to save you, that he tried to save your father. That it all went wrong, that you and he were both in the wrong place at the wrong time, and your father most of all.”

Michaela offered me the flower then, and I took it. “Do you think he was telling the truth?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Jane. I think that question you’ll need to ask him.”

The hope left me then, vacating my heart, the thought of facing Handel after he’d lied all summer long, keeping everything he knew from me, seemed impossible. No amount of him being in the wrong place at the wrong time could surmount this. Nothing would change what he failed to say all those days and nights we spent together. He’d wasted that chance.

Wasted our chance.

“Jane?” Michaela’s voice brought me back from my thoughts.

Her eyes were on the daisy.

Its stem was twisted around my fingers, threaded through them, crushed. I untangled it and set it aside on the wooden slats of the porch. It lay there, limp and dying. “I don’t want to ask Handel anything right now. I don’t know if I ever want to see him again,” I added, though I knew this wasn’t true.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand. Found the strength to stand. Michaela got up, and she held out her arm for me to take. I leaned on her because I needed to. I leaned on her because I could. But I leaned on her, too, because she was my friend and I could trust her all the way through, and this I needed most of all. Michaela was good all the way through, even if I no longer was. We walked down to the wharf, to the place where my father once worked, to the place where everyone was waiting for me, together.