The Reckless Oath We Made
Bryn Greenwood
TITLES BY BRYN GREENWOOD
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
Lie Lay Lain
Last Will
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
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Copyright © 2019 by Bryn Greenwood
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Greenwood, Bryn, author.
Title: The reckless oath we made / Bryn Greenwood.
Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019011105| ISBN 9780525541844 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525541868 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION /
Literary. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3607.R4695 R43 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011105
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For anyone who is struggling to build their tower: may it be strong and just tall enough
Contents
Titles by Bryn Greenwood
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
Zee
People talk about having an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. I had a pair of imaginary bill collectors, so no matter which way I turned, there was somebody to remind me I needed money. That’s how I ended up on a train at four o’clock in the morning with my nephew and a hundred pounds of weed.
We were hours behind schedule, but the westbound Southwest Chief was running on time. When the two trains met each other, they rattled back and forth, and the air that leaked in through the vents smelled like diesel and burning brakes. I could see into the other train’s windows, where a few people were still awake. Usually, it made me feel lonely, seeing those people so close but separated from me.
This time felt different. Having Marcus’ head resting in my lap reminded me I wasn’t alone. He was small like his mother and dark-haired like his father, but when he was asleep, he was like me. Always running hot and trying to burrow his way into things. After hours of him sleeping on me, my hip hurt so much I kept hoping he would wake up, but he slept through the railroad crossing bells in every small town we went through. When he did wake up, rolling over and grinding his forehead into me, I didn’t make him move. I smoothed his hair down and said, “Shh, it’s okay. I’m here. Go back to sleep.”
The trip to Trinidad had never been a big deal to me, but then I’d never had to take Marcus with me. I didn’t have a choice, when LaReigne didn’t come home, and twenty-four hours later, I was still waiting to hear from her. Waiting but dreading it, too, because there was no way I could keep lying to her. I would have to tell her about the weed, and she would have to get over it. She could be as mad as she wanted, but that wasn’t going to pay the rent, and maybe it was time she knew where the extra cash came from. Sometimes she spent money like it magically appeared in our bank account. Like the gas money she burned up driving to El Dorado to volunteer at the prison.
Back before I started doing the Colorado run, LaReigne used to call Asher my boyfriend, I guess because that was the only way me having sex with him made sense to her. She didn’t understand it was just about the money. My hospital bills, the rent, the groceries, Mom’s prescriptions, LaReigne’s tuition, and whatever thing Marcus needed, because kids are money pits.
In my experience, you could fuck for money, or wait tables for money, or sit in an insurance office forty hours a week like LaReigne did. However you get it, you need it, because money always decides whether things get better or worse. They never stay the same.
I was in too much pain to sleep, so I practiced in my head how I would explain all of that to LaReigne.
The thing that bothered me was that she didn’t always come home on her volunteer nights, but she always texted. She always had an excuse. One time, exactly one time, she had completely flaked out on us. It was right after she’d filed for divorce, so Marcus had only been three. We’d been in our apartment for a month, and we didn’t know where the next month’s rent was coming from. We were living on potatoes and canned stuff from the food bank. One Thursday, LaReigne had gone out for a job interview and hadn’t come home. I’d spent the whole weekend trying to find her, and gotten fired from my job for not showing up. LaReigne had finally come home on Sunday night, and we had a knock-down, drag-out fight. She never told me where she’d been, but she’d promised she would never do that again. And she hadn’t.
Except where was she? If she’d lost her phone, she would have replaced it by now, so I couldn’t keep pretending that’s why she w
asn’t answering. For the first time, I let myself think about other reasons. Maybe she was dead. A car wreck. Some asshole with a gun who got her office and the Planned Parenthood clinic down the street confused. Her ex-husband was in jail in Texas, or I would’ve added him to the possible ways LaReigne could die. He’d threatened her enough times. Looking at one of the last texts I’d sent her, I wished I could take it back. If you’re not dead, I’m going to kill you. What if I’d jinxed her?
A new text popped up, but it was only from Asher’s lackey, Toby: Why is the train so late?
Engine problems
Ok well if there r cops at Newton ur on ur own
WTF are you talking about? Why would there be cops? I said.
The little dots flashed as Toby typed. When the answer came, I would have fallen down if I hadn’t been sitting down: This deal with your sister. Asher gonna murder u if the cops get his shit
Panic washed over me, and my hands shook so hard I could barely type. What are you talking about the shit with my sister???
The thing out at the prison.
What thing at the prison???
Toby didn’t answer.
I opened my Internet app to look at the Wichita Eagle’s website. While I waited for it to load, I couldn’t tell if it was the train rocking back and forth or my stomach.
MANHUNT FOR ESCAPED INMATES was the top headline. Underneath that were grainy pictures of two guys in orange prison jumpsuits.
The smaller headline was Two Guards Killed in Riot, with pictures of the guards in their uniforms. Below that: Night of rioting ends with three inmates injured and two volunteers taken hostage. LaReigne was so unimportant, they mentioned her last. I didn’t recognize the picture they used for her, so it was probably from her volunteer badge at the prison. She managed to look glamorous even in a mug shot–style picture. Her hair in blond waves and her eyebrows drawn on perfectly. The other volunteer was a woman, too. Chubby and maybe fifty with short brown hair. Was it Molly, who LaReigne had stayed with a couple times when she had a migraine and didn’t want to drive home?
I tried to find out more, but all the news sites had the same information. Rioting, low staffing, overcrowding, dead guards, escape, hostages. I was rereading it, over and over, when we pulled into Newton.
I was the last person off the train, practically carrying Marcus while the conductor tossed my suitcases out on the sidewalk. Marcus flopped down on the ground next to the bags, cried for about two minutes, and then fell asleep.
I almost cried, too, but I held it together while everybody was meeting up with their families and finding their rides. The whole time, Toby was standing in the shadows, watching me. Maybe he thought he was keeping a low profile, but he looked like a creeper.
“Do you want this shit or not?” I said, after the train pulled away.
“Keep your voice down.”
“There aren’t any cops.” I raised my voice, same as always, because being mad felt safer than being scared. Toby came over and started towing my suitcases toward where he’d parked his car next to mine. After sitting for twelve hours, my hip felt like it was full of gravel, but I picked Marcus up and limped after Toby.
Usually Toby unloaded the suitcases into his trunk and gave them back to me, but when I got to his car, he was tossing them into the back seat. Those suitcases were serious business: matching, locking, hard-sided, polycarbonate, all-terrain wheels. The only place I’d ever taken them was Trinidad, Colorado, and the only thing I’d ever packed in them was Asher’s weed. They’d cost me serious money, too, but right then didn’t seem like a safe time to argue about them, so I set Marcus down and unlocked my car.
“Why the hell did you bring the kid anyway?” Toby said.
“Because I had to. Asher said if I didn’t make the run tonight, he’d have you fuck me up.”
Toby laughed and said, “You’re already fucked up. What kinda person brings their kid on a run?”
“He’s my nephew, and my sister didn’t come home last night, which you already know. There was nobody else to watch him.”
“Shit, for real? This is LaReigne’s kid?” Toby looked at Marcus, who was asleep on his feet, leaning up against me. “So that’s some crazy shit, huh? What do you think is—”
“Shut up, you asshole!” I said.
Even though Marcus was right there, Toby reached out and grabbed me by the neck. He pushed me back against my car, digging his thumb into my throat.
“You need to learn some fucking manners, Zee.”
“Please,” I said, which wasn’t what I felt at all. “Don’t say anything in front of him.”
When Toby let go of me, I opened the door and lifted Marcus into his car seat. After I shut the door, I turned back to Toby with my arms crossed, so he wouldn’t see me shivering. There was a reason Toby couldn’t do the run to Colorado himself. He looked exactly like what he was: a drug-dealing thug with a neck tattoo and a squirrelly eye. He also happened to be one of the scariest people I knew. Him and Asher. Any time I got tempted by those blocks of cash, that was all I had to think about. Two hundred grand would pay off all my debts—hell, the debts of everybody I knew—but it would also get me killed.
“Jesus,” Toby said. “I was gonna offer to make things easier for you with Asher. Smooth things over.”
I knew what he had in mind for payment for a favor like that, and I really wanted to be done paying for things with sex. I hoped I was never going to be that desperate again.
“Anyway, doesn’t matter now. Asher told me to tell you you’re cut off. You don’t call him. You don’t text him. He’ll call you after this shit quiets down.”
I probably should have got in the car and left, but I had bills to pay.
“My money?” I said.
Toby snorted, but he reached into his back pocket and took out an envelope. He held on to it for a couple seconds after I reached for it, but he finally let it go. I stuffed the money into my pocket and walked around to the driver’s side of my car. When I opened the door, Toby was still watching me.
“Tell Asher he owes me for those suitcases,” I said. “They weren’t cheap.”
CHAPTER 2
Zee
When we were in grade school, LaReigne and I walked to and from school every day, separated by about ten feet or so, because she was too cool to walk with a baby. One day—I was in third grade and LaReigne was in sixth—when we got to our block, there were half a dozen cop cars parked in front of our house. I remember crying, even before I knew what had happened. I don’t know when I learned to be afraid of the police, but I was. We all were. That day, LaReigne took my hand, and we walked down the street to our house together. Mom stood on the front porch, screaming and sobbing, with a cop on either side of her. Dad was locked in the back seat of a police car, with his head turned so he wouldn’t have to look at his wife or his daughters.
Now, driving past our apartment building and seeing a police car and a police van parked outside, I felt eight years old again. Afraid and angry, but not ignorant or innocent anymore. I didn’t dare stop. I had five ounces of weed in my backpack and a bunch of drops and edibles. Probably the smart thing to do was ditch the weed, but I couldn’t afford to. I needed the money, and it was the only thing that really worked for my pain that didn’t require a prescription.
I kept driving.
“You missed our turn,” Marcus said. Five years old and he was already a backseat driver.
“We’re not going home yet.” I pulled up to the light at Central, white-knuckling the steering wheel to keep myself focused. In my side-view mirror, I could still see the cop car parked in front of our apartment.
“Where are we going?” he said.
“Grandma’s house.”
I should have gone somewhere else. Anywhere else. A motel. A park. A fucking church. Even going to Marcus’ other grandparents’ would have been
a better terrible choice, if I was going to make a terrible choice. My mother’s house was on a cul-de-sac that dead-ended where they had widened Kellogg into a six-lane highway, so when I turned down the street, I was already stuck. There were three news vans, plus half a dozen other cars. Once again my family was newsworthy.
Reporters didn’t scare me the way cops did, so I pulled up at the end of the line of vehicles and parked. I got Marcus out of the car and led him across the neighbors’ yards, but as soon as we reached the weedy edge of Mom’s yard, the reporters saw us. Holding Marcus’ hand tighter, I walked faster, keeping my eyes focused on Mom’s front porch, which was piled up with old furniture and lawn tools.
“Are you a member of the Trego family?” said the first reporter that reached us.
“Do you know the family?” said another one.
A TV cameraman cut me off at the sidewalk, while more reporters shouted, “Do you know LaReigne Trego-Gill?”
Marcus started to cry, and then his hand slipped out of mine. My heart stuttered and I turned around, thinking it would be a reporter or a cop or . . . I didn’t know who might grab Marcus.
Standing there, next to Marcus, was Gentry. Where had he come from? Had he followed me there? Of course; he followed me everywhere. Before I could think of what to say, Gentry picked Marcus up. What I would have done if my hip hadn’t been hurting so much. Then Gentry reached past me and used his arm as a barrier between me and the cameraman who was nearly in my face.
“Let the lady pass!” Gentry bellowed. The cameraman backed up.
I ran the last ten feet to the porch, with Gentry behind me carrying Marcus. The screen door was only attached at one hinge, so you had to be really careful with it, and I wasn’t. I was so freaked out, I jerked it open, and the glass panel on the top rattled into the bottom and almost fell out. I managed to shove the whole thing out of the way, but the front door was locked. I pulled my keys out of my pocket and got the deadbolt turned. When I pushed, the door opened, but only a few inches. For a second, I thought, Mom has finally managed to block both doors. She’s going to die trapped in there.
