Another deep breath. “Where are you?”
My accountant is calling on the other line.
“Jax,” I say. “I have to go.”
“You know I can track you, right? Find My Friends?”
Oh, right. I forgot about that. I can track her, too.
“And, I’m not stalking you? But. I know you’re up there. What the hell are you doing in that place?”
“I’ll call you back.”
“You hate it there, right? Why do you go back?”
She’s still talking as I click over to the other call.
It’s my accountant’s assistant, a young-sounding, soft-spoken guy named Lyle. I convince him that I haven’t lost my mind, don’t have a gun to my head, and after some weak protesting about how Marty is not a fan of Bitcoin transactions, he agrees to make the payment.
“You’re sure everything’s all right, Ms. Greenwood? This doesn’t seem like you.”
“I’m fine, Lyle, really. This is just—one of those things.”
What does that even mean? The words taste as disingenuous as they are.
“I know Marty would like to talk to you, Miss Greenwood,” he says. “You know the stock market is in a bit of tumult these days. He wants to discuss making some changes to protect your investments.”
The stock market. My father would stroke out. The ultimate con, the devil’s game of corporate greed. But Jax’s mother Miranda taught us both how to save and invest. Work for your money, and then make your money work for you. That way you never need to rely on any man. That made sense to me. When I think about my own mother, I remember someone trapped by her circumstance, in my father’s thrall, without the means to make a life for us without him.
“Just tell him to do what he thinks is best,” I say.
“I know he really wants to have a discussion with you. Is there a good time?” he presses.
“I’ll call and make an appointment next week.”
Surely my life will be back to normal by then.
“Miss Greenwood—”
“Thanks, Lyle. I have to go.” Rudely, I end the call while he’s still talking.
Now, all I have to do is wait for my dark web contact to get back in touch. Like he’s not just going to take my Bitcoin and disappear forever.
I have a few errands to run while I wait to see if I’ll ever hear from him again.
twenty-two
Trees bend in the stiff wind. What’s left of the afternoon light is leaking from the sky as I pull through open gates up the paved drive. Passing a small structure on my left that has the aura of abandonment, with foggy windows and a small porch covered with leaves, I wind up the path, driving slowly. The gloaming of a northern winter afternoon is the perfect time to visit a cemetery—if you’re looking for atmosphere. The shadows of the gravestones are long; the last of the day’s light white and sharp on bare branches.
Gravestones stand in careful rows, some tall, some squat. Some are monuments to the deceased, some statues, small stone houses. The metal fencing is down in places, not being kept up, it seems. I imagine teenagers sneaking in here and getting high, romping among the dead with the careless laughter of people who think they’ll never die. Some of the graves are overgrown, untended, others tidy with flowers carefully placed.
After parking the car, I remove the orchids I picked up at the market on my way out of town. The wind whips at my jacket, my hair, as the temperature drops and the sky dims. I stay on the path between the graves.
I don’t mind the dead. And I am not afraid of ghosts. The living are far more dangerous. There’s no one else around—no other parked cars, no one kneeling at graveside. Silence. Solitude. As far as I’m concerned, these are good, not frightening, things.
The ground is cold and hard through the soles of my boots. When I get where I’m going, I kneel to clear the fallen leaves from the first headstone.
My mother, Alice. Not quite forty years old when she died.
Then, Jay. We’d just celebrated his eighteenth birthday the month before.
I push away leaves and branches, thinking a rake might have been helpful. Not that I own a rake. In the detritus, a cigarette butt pops an unnatural white. Probably nothing, a million ways this tiny piece of trash might have found its way here.
But I imagine someone standing over Jay’s grave smoking. My father was a smoker. There was always the faint smell of tobacco on his clothes, on his breath, an ashtray overflowing with butts on the back deck. He’d lean on the railing, looking out into the woods, smoking, lighting one off the other. Camels, no filter.