Revenge of the Scapegoat Heiress novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Garage

Kirk sets three rules in his garage, sleeps on the stairs outside her open door, and shows her the camera photo proving someone over six feet tall drove her car.

Kirk drove forty minutes down the shore road and didn't ask me a single question.

I had expected questions. In prison everyone who is nice to you wants something by the end of the week.

"Why did you come to the gate?" I said finally.

"Your cellmate asked me."

"She asked you to drive me. She didn't ask you to stand there and watch my family throw me out."

He kept his eyes on the road.

"I have my reasons," he said. "Not tonight."

The garage stood in Bridgeport between a closed laundromat and a lot full of tow-truck parts.

A steel sign over the bay door said CORLISS AUTO.

He rolled the door up and turned on one light.

He led me past a lifted truck and a wall of tools to a narrow staircase at the back.

The room upstairs had a bed, a hot plate, and a window over the street.

Someone had folded two towels at the foot of the bed.

A grocery bag sat on the table with bread, peanut butter, an orange, and a toothbrush still in its package.

I stood in the doorway holding the envelope with my two hundred and twelve dollars.

"I can't pay you," I said.

"I didn't ask."

"Everyone asks eventually."

Kirk leaned on the doorframe and rubbed his jaw.

His nose had been broken once and set badly.

His hands had black work in the creases.

"Then here's what I ask," he said. "Three rules."

"Go on."

"One. It's your room and your door. Nobody touches you unless you start it. That includes me."

I watched his face and didn't find anything in it that I recognized.

"Two. You don't ask me why I'm doing this."

"And you don't ask me about the night of the crash," I said.

"Not until your family has fallen."

"Three?"

"You tell me before you do anything. Before. You don't walk back into that house alone."

"You're not my parole officer."

"He'll be the one who comes to arrest you," Kirk said.

"And?"

"I'd like to be the one who knows where you are."

I turned the orange over in my hand.

Inside, we got one orange a week, on Fridays.

I had not picked out my own food in five years.

"Fine," I said.

He nodded once and went downstairs.

I shut the door, and my whole body went rigid.

I opened it again.

For five years, every night at nine, a steel door had shut in my face and a lock had turned.

I could not sleep behind a shut door.

I lay on top of the blanket with the door wide open and the stairwell light on.

Around two I heard a boot scrape on the bottom step.

He hadn't gone to bed.

He had pulled a stool to the foot of the stairs, where he could see my door and not me.

I got up and sat on the floor in the doorway.

He sat three steps down with his back to me, his elbows on his knees.

"Can't sleep?" he said.

"I never sleep the first night anywhere."

"Me neither."

His boot was one step below my hand.

I put my fingers on the leather. I don't know why. I wanted to find out if he'd move.

He didn't.

He didn't turn around either. His shoulders went still, and he breathed out slowly through his nose.

We stayed like that until the window turned gray.

In the morning he put a manila folder on the table next to the orange peel.

"I wasn't going to show you this till you ate," he said. "Eat first."

I opened it anyway.

It was a photo of a car on Quarry Road at night, taken by a traffic camera.

My car. My plate.

The time stamp said 11:52 p.m.

I had looked at this picture in court until my eyes stung.

"Look at the headrest," Kirk said.

The driver's seat was pushed all the way back.

The roof line of the car cut off the driver's head.

"I'm five foot four," I said. "I drive with the seat up so far my knees hit the wheel."

"That seat is set for somebody over six feet."

I looked at the photo for a long time.

"Who's that tall in your family?" Kirk asked.

"My father," I said.

Neither of us said anything else.

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