Inveigle

Chapter Six: Memorial or Campaign Rally?

We ran inside and slammed the front door of The Palace. Ava and Pam looked up at us from their game of War. Pam sat in her chair and Ava on the floor, the cards between them on a small, worn ottoman. The television was still on, but the volume was muted. Pam gave me a worried look, and Ava asked, "Grandpa, were you running?" She let out a tinker bell sized giggle.

"Yeah, Baby girl, I was." He bent over, having a hard time catching his breath. I walked past Pam's accusing glare and went to my room. A knot was tied in my stomach, and it grew with every passing minute. What is going on? How could the Speakeasies be behind the fires when they were attacked on the same night?

Where was Sam?

Why do I care?

A couple hours later Sam came in the front door. He wasn't even stopped by Pam's death glare as he headed to his room and shut the door. The knot in my stomach quieted a bit when I heard him pass my doorway, but not entirely. A snake of uneasiness slithered in my stomach as I tried to piece together the events of the last 24 hours.

"We have to do something," I said to Nathan in the kitchen that night. Pam had foolishly left her personal bread downstairs, so I made us wish sandwiches from two slices of bread, mayonnaise, and a wish on a star for some meat.

"No, we don't," he replied after swallowing his first bite.

"Yes we do. I told you what I saw last night. Whether it was a Suicide Speakeasy or not, what the police did was wrong."

"It was," Nathan replied. His eyes stared at the sandwich, refusing to look at me.

I hesitated for a moment before continuing, "The police can't burn their evidence away. They can't get away with burning a whole building. People, for God's sake!"

"They can, and they did. The innocents, too."

"Innocents?" I racked my brain trying to remember a news segment ever mentioning the innocents, but I could not.

He sighed and looked up at me for a second before looking down again.

"How did you know for sure it was a Speakeasy?" I ask.

Nathan let out a shaky breath, "Because I took my wife there."

"What?" Speakeasies were where cowards snuck off to die alone. The easy way out of a shitty life. Nathan radiated certainty in this gray world, and I couldn't imagine him being married to anyone different.

"My wife, Sharon. I drove her there. She was going to do it either way after our daughter died. At least there it would be painless and clean...they let me hold her hand," his voice cracked at the end.

I stared in disbelief at Nathan. He seemed so calm earlier today. Why would he tell me this? I felt like I should share something to show him I understood, but the truth was I couldn't. I had no way of knowing for sure since I hadn't contacted home in so long, but as far as I knew my parents were alive. They may not be well, my dad had worked for a glass factory that had recently sent most of its work overseas, and my mother worked part time at a daycare, but at least they were most likely alive. My actual parents? I had no idea and no record. Adoptions like mine kept birth certificates classified. Losing someone like Nathan had, someone he knew and loved is an entirely different set of emotions from never knowing someone at all.

I jumped a little when Nathan spoke again. "Darlene, my daughter, she died shortly after Ava was born. Doctor sent her home the next morning. She began having headaches, so she would nap a lot, and my wife would help with the baby. Five days after Ava was born, Darlene just didn't wake up from her nap. We never did an autopsy. Couldn't afford it. Doctor said it was probably an infection of some kind from the birth." I stared at him from across the table. Our sandwiches lay mostly untouched among the water ring stains. "Sharon, she cried and cried. It seemed like the tears never stopped for a month. She cried when she held Ava, cried when she cooked, cried when she sat and did nothing. She told me her plan about the Speakeasy after she confided in me that she had held a pillow over Ava's face the night before."