Page 46 of American Hellhound
But Ghost turned toward her, face hard to read. “What are we? Fucking pathetic?”
“No.” Automatic. Emphatic. Just because she didn’t like to hear him talk about himself like that. “Because I’m just sorry,” she said, for lack of anything better.
“Yeah, well…”
They were at an impasse. She couldn’t think of anything else to say, and obviously neither could he.
Finally, when the silence had stretched thin, Maggie said, “Do you think we can carry Aidan to the truck without waking him?”
“Yeah,” Ghost said. “I can.”
~*~
He thought it could be as simple as that – driving her home. But of course it couldn’t. Of course not.
He saw the red and blue lights before they turned the corner onto her street. He braked to a sharp halt beneath the pear trees, hard enough Aidan slid forward; Maggie caught him around his waist, and he settled against her side with a muffled grunt, still asleep.
Ghost felt his heart travel up his throat for the second time that night. “What is this?”
The patrol cars – two of them – were parked in front of her house, lights spinning, sirens off. Ghost could make out the shapes of four officers on the lawn, talking to a couple: her parents.
“Shit,” Maggie swore. She took a deep breath and let it out, leaning forward, fogging a patch of the windshield. “They must have called the neighbors.”
“What?” There was a high whining in his ears, a sense of panic just beneath the skin of his palms, the soles of his feet.
Maggie sighed and slumped back against the seat, pulling Aidan with her again, settling his small dark ahead against her shoulder without thought. “I told them I was babysitting for someone in the neighborhood. They must have called around looking for me. When no one said I was there, they called the cops. Shit.” She unbuckled her seatbelt. “I’ll go tell them it’s okay.”
When her hand was on the door handle, he said, “Wait.”
She turned toward him, worried, but still composed.
“What will they do when they find out you lied?”
She shrugged. “Ground me, probably. Maybe I won’t have to go to the stupid tea party Mom has planned.” When he didn’t respond, because he had no idea how to – women in his life didn’t attendtea parties– she popped the door and slid out of the truck.
She walked, shoulders squared, down the street and straight up to her parents and the cops. Ghost watched the woman – dressed in a long white bathrobe – hug and then shove Maggie, white hands flying around in the shadows as she gestured. He let it go on about two minutes before he realized that he had to step in.
He left Aidan in the truck – laid down across the cab, snoring softly – and locked up. Walked down the street to the last place he wanted to be at the moment.
Ten feet away he could hear the shouting. Five feet away, he could make out the words.
“–how in the world are we supposed to ever trust you again?” the woman yelled. Her face was bedsheet white beneath the rotating red and blue lights of the patrol cars, eyes huge and crazed. Ghost could tell she was Maggie’s mother – they had the same bone structure – but nothing about her energy seemed related to her daughter. Thank God. “You lied to us, Margaret! Youlied!”
The cops watched with their thumbs hooked in their gun belts, shifting their feet and wanting to be anywhere else.
“If everything’s alright now, ma’am…” one of them said, edging back a step. Ghost recognized his voice: Greaves.
A man in a dark gray robe stood behind Maggie’s screaming mother, presumably the girl’s father. He was tall, but thin, his shoulders slumped, expression closed-off save a twitch of distress at the corner of his mouth. His glasses caught the police lights in alternating flashes.
“You lied!” Maggie’s mother repeated, and that was when Ghost stepped up behind Maggie and laid a hand on her trembling shoulder.
She turned her head, startled, golden hair flying, but he didn’t know what sort of expression she turned up to him. He had his gaze focused on her mother. Who, for just a moment, looked gratifyingly terrified. He’d startled her, he guessed, same as Maggie, but she recovered with a quick shake of her head, mouth opening to ask the sort of question he no doubt didn’t want to answer.
“She didn’t lie, ma’am,” Ghost said. “She was babysitting. For me.”
“Oh shit,” Maggie breathed.
It was silent one beat. Two…
