That’s…incredibly odd, he thinks.
He texts Drew. Did you send me an email with a picture of JJ Watt?
The answer: Uh no why would I do that and I was asleep thanks for waking me up
Never mind, Grant texts back. This wasn’t the kind of joke that his buddies Drew or Landon or Connor typically pulled on another friend. He scans the computer for viruses. None.
Go look in your tree.
It can mean only one tree. Maybe it’s Julia, pulling a prank on him. Julia isn’t interested in computers, though, and hiding a picture inside a picture—she wouldn’t know how to do that. It wasn’t the kind of joke his parents played, either, trying to turn everything into a learning opportunity or a challenge he could write about on his college essays.
He goes downstairs and into the kitchen. Mom is making coffee, tapping her foot as if the coffee maker were delaying her.
“Good morning,” she says. She runs a hand through the mess of his bedhead hair. She’s always trying to fix his hair. He loves her, but he wishes she wouldn’t do that. Sometimes Mom looks at him as though surprised he’s there.
“Hey,” he says, giving her a quick hug and thinking: This is silly. I should tell her about this email. But then, it’s so odd, so strange, that it’s like having a special secret. So he doesn’t, and she says: “I think your sister went out playing that Creaturescape game with Ned.”
“Critterscape,” he says. He gets orange juice from the fridge, pours a large glass.
“Whatever. Do they just walk around the neighborhood?”
“It’s exercise,” he says, not looking at her.
“That’s what her dance class is for. Do you know what’s going on between them?” Mom asks.
It’s like she can’t help herself, Grant thinks. Like if Julia confides in him he will break that confidence just because Mom asks. “I don’t know,” he says.
Mom bites at her lip, unsatisfied.
“I have to go down into the greenbelt,” he says.
“Why?” Mom is always a little suspicious of the greenbelt. Kids go down there into the heavy growth of oaks and cedars and swim in the wide creek and walk the convoluted trails and sometimes smoke weed or drink. He hasn’t done the forbidden activities. But he knows other kids who have.
He realizes then he should have waited until she wasn’t around or had gone upstairs and then just gone to his tree. Now she is interested, in that Mom way.
“Biology class specimens,” he says. He’s a freshman and biology is the bane of his existence.
“In winter?”
“Yes, Mom, in winter, biology still goes on.”
Her phone buzzes with a specific ringtone that indicates Julia is calling. The ringtone’s melody is that of a song Mom wrote about Julia when she was very young and fighting cancer—a neuroblastoma—and Julia hates that it’s a ringtone but doesn’t want to hurt Mom’s feelings. Grant keeps meaning to tell Mom to change it. Mom picks up the phone, stares at the screen.
Her face goes pale. She makes an odd little noise, like a gasp or a cough interrupted.
“Mom?”
She keeps staring at the screen; it’s like he isn’t there. “Mom?” he repeats.
“Stay here. Stay here. Keep your phone close.”
“What is it? Is Julia all right?”
“Yeah. No. I’ve got to go to her. Stay here.”
Mom grabs her coat from the mudroom and hurries out to the garage. He hears her car start and then silence for several seconds, as if she’s forgotten how to drive, and then the garage door powering up. He stands at the kitchen window, sees her Mercedes SUV jerk down the driveway, going way too fast. Julia’s done something stupid, he supposes, and she’s gotten into trouble. Last year she was Little Miss Perfect; now she’s in some vague rebellion that makes no sense to him. He wishes she would make up her mind.
He wonders where Dad is. He goes to his parents’ room. His father is lying under the covers, snoring softly. Another late night working, Grant figures. He closes the door softly.
Go look in your tree.
He goes out the patio door, crosses the backyard, and opens the gate. The greenbelt is just beyond. It’s fed by Winding Creek, a middling tributary of Barton Creek in West Austin, which runs across a slice of Lakehaven. There’s a hiking path by the creek. He walks off the trail, listening to the hiss of water as he heads down toward the creek, and his old tree is to the left.
A rock covers the cleft near the tree’s roots. The cleft was his hiding place: small, cozy. Grant would put pretend treasure maps there, or Legos, or hide little objects he had stolen from his parents—a penknife, coins, his father’s car keys once when Kyle had an endless succession of overseas business trips. He wasn’t even sure why he took small, worthless things and hid them away: he always brought them back home, put them in plain sight, and sometimes smiled to himself when Dad or Mom would find the missing item and say, How did I miss seeing that?
Now inside the cleft, where he hasn’t looked in years, is a plain brown envelope. His breath catches in his chest.
He pulls it free. It’s thick, with GRANT written across it in block letters with black ink. He opens the envelope.
Inside is money. Cash. Crisp twenties. Bound, organized, like it just came from a bank. He counts it, stunned.
It’s a thousand dollars.
Left for him in a tree.
He looks into the envelope again and sees there’s a note inside. He unfolds it and reads it.
Grant: You have been told a huge lie. I will only tell you the truth. Keep this money hidden and please tell no one about it. It’s a gift from me to you.
Grant stands up. This is insane. Someone spoofing an email address to lead him to money hidden behind his house. He’s never seen this much cash in his life. And it’s his now. It makes no sense. Why?
Grant feels like someone is watching him. He stands. He scans the dense growth of oaks and cedar along the creek, the hiking trail. Sees no one, listens to the quiet of the wind in the trees.
He clutches the envelope close to his chest, feels the weight of the cash.
Then, on the morning air, he hears the approaching scream of police sirens.
3
Iris
Iris Pollitt sits in her car, in her closed garage, hands on the wheel, thinking: Danielle is dead. Really dead.
And then she thinks: Good.
It’s the worst thought she’s ever had, a horror, unworthy, and she shoves the thought away. She wants to cry; she wants to vomit. Instead she takes several deep breaths and starts the car. Music plays, the nineties channel on satellite radio, or the “Mom Channel” as Julia calls it. Britney Spears is singing “…Baby One More Time,” and Iris turns the volume down into silence.
Now she hears only the sound of her own ragged, gasping breath.
Go. Go there. Your kid needs you. Mom mode. Now.
She’s in such shock she’s forgotten to open the garage door, and she jabs the button, thinking herself lucky she didn’t rocket into the closed door. She waits for the door to power up and reverses up the driveway, fast. Going past the kitchen window, she sees Grant staring out in surprise, in curiosity.
What do you say when you get there? What do you do?