One Red Thread by Ernie Wood

Author:Ernie Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: F+W Media

twenty-six

EDDY

“The past just sort of sneaks up behind you,” Libby was saying. We were at the florist shop and she was standing behind me, floating her idea. She put a hand on each of my shoulders. “It comes from back here, where you can’t see it at all.” She began tiptoeing around toward the front, slowly circling me. “It sneaks around the side, where you begin to see it, out of the corner of your eye . . . .” Then she jumped. Right out in front of me. “. . . and suddenly, Bam! It’s out here, staring you in the face.”

We stood face-to-face.

“Is that the way it works?” Libby wanted to know.

I was flabbergasted. I’d avoided Libby for weeks until I was confident that I’d fully tested the waters of what I’d been seeing with Sheila. I hadn’t wanted this to happen yet, maybe not ever, especially after Alexander Lee’s hanging. But as soon as I began telling Sheila about what I’d seen, as soon as I let out the secrets I could keep no longer, as soon as I’d told the truth or my version of it, I should have known the result. Libby would hear, Libby would call, and innocent Eddy would have no choice but to do as she asked.

Libby’d told me she wanted to discuss the sofa in the dumpster. The damn thing was still there, and I really did think at first that that was what she had in mind. When I arrived, I saw she’d dragged out the same dirty cushion that I’d crammed through that little green door. She’d dropped it onto the ground and there she sat, waiting.

“I don’t know how you work in such a dysfunctional industry,” Libby announced as I came up the front walk.

“You get used to it,” I replied, reaching out to help her to her feet, hoping the renovation was all she wanted to discuss, but letting my mind go to another place anyway. I was distractedly staring down the street and listening for something I hoped wasn’t there. I was listening deep in the cosmos, searching for the low clang of the rattling dumpster door that the sofa cushion made the day I saw my brother die.

Of course I wasn’t the only one looking elsewhere, and of course renovation wasn’t on Libby’s mind at all. It was just her bait. And now Libby had snuck around behind. Now she’d floated her own theory of how all this business worked.

And I hate to say it, but the only thing that surprised me was the timing of her jump.

Letting adventure pass was entirely out of character for the girl I’d known in childhood. Libby had always been the pushy, outspoken type, the leader of the neighborhood kids who grew up to grab for the high life in the big city, who lost her grip, who was searching again for the edge where she needed to live.

She may not have had her own life back together, not yet, but she’d nailed my life.

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