It was Sharon from across the street, hurrying over. He shot Josephine an apologetic look before they headed toward the pedestrian gate to meet her.
“Where are you kids off to?” she asked.
“Oh, you know. Just hanging out.”
“Hanging out, huh? Well, I saw what you were up to, and you’d better be careful.”
He felt all the blood drain from his face, and suddenly realized that was a real thing that happened, not just a punch line in cartoons. He dared a glance at Josephine’s wide eyes, then jerked his gaze back to Sharon. “Wh-what?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell your mom.”
They hadn’t even visited the locker yet. Had she somehow seen Everett going in? “Oh,” he ventured. “Okay?”
“That said, you really shouldn’t be up on that roof. It’s not safe. If I see you again, I’ll have to say something. All right, Everett?”
A warm wave fell over his body, sliding from his head to his toes and leaving his knees weak as noodles. “The roof. Right. Yes. Of course, Mrs. Hassan.”
She turned to Josephine. “I’m Mrs. Hassan from the shop across the way. It’s nice to meet you . . .”
“Josephine,” Everett supplied quickly.
“And Everett, the crawfish boil is in three weeks; do not let your mom squirm out of it. She needs to get out more often.”
He nodded, shifting from foot to foot.
“Well, you kids stay out of trouble now,” she said. “I’ll be keeping my eye out.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they both chanted before spinning to hurry away.
“Jesus Christ,” he rasped.
“Yeah, no crap,” Josephine whispered. “Thought we were dead meat.”
“My mom would absolutely kill me if she knew about this.”
“Mine too. Though my dad might be willing to smuggle me to another state.”
“Hell, I’ve got a leg up. My dad’s already in hiding. I’d just have to find him.”
A laugh burst so loudly from Josephine that Everett found himself joining in. It felt good to laugh about it, to let out the energy that had hardened and curled inside him. He still had the birthday card his dad had sent. Happy 7th Birthday, Big Boy! He hadn’t signed it, but his dad had drawn a little cartoon bunny that he’d sometimes sketched on napkins for Everett.
“So . . . that’s all true?” Josephine asked as they moved deeper into the complex.
He hadn’t planned on talking about this, but Everett couldn’t exactly avoid the subject now. “I’m not sure what you heard, but yeah. He stole a bunch of money from a bunch of places. The Ford dealership. Some trucking company. The hospital. I don’t really know how it worked, but he took over a million dollars.” Everett swallowed a thick pain stuck in his throat. His cheeks warmed until he was sure they must be glowing. “Then he left.”
“Wow. I heard he was one of the FBI’s most wanted.”
He laughed a little just to break the clog in his throat. “I don’t think that part is true. I never saw that online, anyway.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. It’s not really that interesting. He just moved numbers around on computers. I didn’t think anyone talked about it much these days.”
“I don’t think they do,” she reassured him. “Bea told me because you got off at our bus stop so we saw you all the time. But I don’t think my mom knows. She’s never said anything.”
He nodded, hoping that was true. He didn’t have his dad’s name anymore, and people seemed to have short attention spans for gossip. He knew his mom had always worried about repercussions for him, but kids didn’t care about the stuff adults did. If his dad had murdered someone, sure. He’d be famous at school. But an accounting crime? Boring.
He did vaguely remember some boy saying, Your dad’s a thief, in first grade, but the insult had rolled away forgotten, likely because it made six-year-olds picture some kind of ninja jumping from roof to roof, and that was actually pretty cool.
“Almost there,” Everett said, and that was the end of the conversation about his father, thank God. Instead, Josephine began listing what she’d found about Alex Bennick, and Everett was glad. He didn’t want to think about his dad. He wanted to think about anything else for a while.
“This guy worked for the school district for thirty years! So the first girl who went missing . . . Yolanda Carpenter? It was 1999, and she’d only graduated the year before. Or she was in school, at least. I don’t know if she graduated. I know some of them didn’t.”