The Last Orphan
Chapter 39

Long Island MacArthur Airport, a regional facility in the comedically named town of Islip, was near the base of the tail of Long Island, forty-five minutes east of Luke Devine’s estate.

Evan sunned himself, leaning against the borrowed Hertz rental he’d slotted in the middle of outdoor long-term parking. But he wasn’t merely sunning himself.

He was shopping for a new residence. Between Luke Devine’s reach and the Secret Service’s intensified interest in him, he could risk neither a hotel nor a bed-and-breakfast.

A promising minivan pulled into the lot, coasting along and parking two rows over. Empty bike rack, a custom decal sticker showing a stick family of five. The 3-D version unpacked themselves from the car, the wife blond and fair, the husband dark-skinned, likely Indian, the children an unreasonably beautiful blend of both.

Preparing for his fourth exploratory approach of the afternoon, Evan ambled past them as they unpacked a fleet of suitcases from the rear. As the parents dealt with the larger luggage, the middle child, who looked to be around six years old, fumbled with two hard-shelled suitcases, decorated with action heroes, and a diminutive set of golf clubs.

She unsheathed a driver and waved it around like a swashbuckler, her toddler brother laughing and clapping his hands. The other clubs tumbled out onto the asphalt, and as she crouched to gather them, the suitcase slid away toward Evan. “Runaway droid!” she cried.

The family alerted all at once, a herd of startled deer.

Evan caught the runaway suitcase by its handle, his thumb snared in the luggage tag. Glancing down, he checked the city on the address before rolling it back.

“Sorry!” the mom called.

“Thank you!” the father said.

The girl laughed a joyful laugh and slung her second suitcase toward Evan.

“Asha!” the mother shouted.

Evan blocked it with his shin.

As mother and father reprimanded Asha, the oldest sibling, a string-bean around Peter’s age, hoisted the youngest atop his midsize suitcase behind their backs. He launched passenger and conveyance at Evan, crying, “Runaway Padawan!”

Straddling the rolling suitcase bearing down on Evan, the toddler giggled, air rippling his dark hair.

The parents were screaming.

Evan caught the toddler around the waist, lifting him off his rolling perch, setting him down on his feet, and arresting the suitcase with his heel. The boy jumped up and down, clapping his hands.

As the siblings celebrated uproariously, the parents alternated scolding them to no avail and thanking Evan profusely. Then they gathered up their luggage, the father chirp-chirping the minivan with a key fob. Laden with bags, they trundled off toward the terminal in a simulated jog no faster than a swift walk.

As soon as they passed from view, Evan circled back, removing a relay theft device and a specialized transponder key that had captured the electronic signal.

He unlocked the minivan, climbed in, and punched the keyless ignition. The vehicle was impeccably neat, no trash in the cup holders, and the interior still held that magical new-car smell. Bringing up the GPS, he punched the entry for HOME.

A professional voice with a slight British accent instructed him to pull out of the parking lot and turn onto 27 East. She was firm and a bit pushy. He decided to name her Pleasant Boss.

Pleasant Boss directed him to a quiet street in the town of Hampton Bays, ten miles from Devine’s stately pleasure-dome of Tartarus. The residence itself was a high-set Queenslander with bright white wall cladding and an expansive covered veranda. The first button in the minivan’s visor lifted the garage door. Evan pulled in.

The main access panel to the house alarm waited behind an unlocked panel in the garage beside the washer and dryer. He unplugged the AC power, used a rake from his pick set to pop the plastic backing, and disconnected the wires attached to the blocky battery.

He entered his temporary residence.

Light spilled through timber archways and across Shaker-style cabinetry, sand-colored stone benchtops, and duck-egg-blue walls. Various school and sports portraits adorned the refrigerator, mostly featuring wide-mouthed grins, delight pouring out of the kids. It seemed impossible to get a photo of the children with their mouths closed. Magnetized above them, a large monthly-format calendar provided an accounting of domestic life. Evan studied it with fascination. Birthdays, “call HVAC guy,” holidays, “family movie night,” soccer practices, “refill prescription,” farmers’-market times, “lemon chicken pasta,” carpool schedules.

He liked this family.

The computer on the kitchen desk had no password. One of the open tabs was logged into Instacart, the liquor store up the street carried Kauffman Vintage, and they offered contactless porch drop-offs. Heaven in a single thought. But he demurred.

Dumping his rucksack on an Amish knot rug in the family room, he plopped down on the giant shabby-chic couch. While not his taste, it would make for superb sleeping. The house smelled faintly of lavender.

He was pleased with his selection.

Now he had to attend to Joey. He needed her for operational backup. That’s why it made sense to reach out to her. Not because he was worried about her.

He wasn’t worried about her.

Not at all.

He was unsure how to approach her. She’d been angry with him before, but not like this.

After a few minutes of pondering, he downloaded an emoji app onto his RoamZone. He sent her an olive branch in the mouth of a dove. A bit saccharine, but it was the only relevant option.

Her response came immediately: i believe u meant to send this:

He thumbed: Am I to understand that your only terms are unconditional surrender?

my only terms r u apologizing4hanging up on me after being all like ‘ur so important2me’

She fired off two more texts in rapid succession:im mad @ u, X.

Then:irl.

A quick Google search translated what IRL meant.

Can we talk?he texted. The rationalized orthography is exhausting me.

im not a birdwatcher

Evan searched for an aggravated emoji but found none to his liking.

Before he could reply, Joey’s next text popped up: kidding! oops. i mean kdng. but if u want2apologize, being a snotty grammarian isnt the best look

Ok,Evan texted. im like tots sorry + i wud luv 2 talk 4 reelz

X!

wut?

aaargh!fine!

He dialed.

“You’re, like, the most annoying uncle-person ever!” The hint of amusement in her voice undercut the sharp tone. “What do you want?”

“I’m in the Hamptons. Ten miles from Luke Devine.”

“And?”

“I’m gonna need backup. Start figuring out his network at Tartarus. The encryption will be intense.”

“Intense encryption? I’m shuddering in my Adidas slides. Is that all? I mean, I don’t want to keep you. I need to make sure I honor your hard boundaries.”

“Joey.”

Silence. Then, “Did Ruby Seabrook travel with you to the Hamptons? I mean, since your famous hard boundaries don’t seem to apply to her?”

“She stayed with her folks in the safe house. She was pretty rattled after I took her to the dump site where they found her brother’s body.”

A long pause. He could hear her breathing. “Damn it, X. I’m not mad at her. Obviously.”

“Who are you mad at?”

A much longer pause.

“Josephine,” he said softly.

“I’m mad at my mom and dad for being useless children who should never’ve had a baby. I’m mad at my maunt for dying. I’m mad at the foster parents who treated me like shit, and I’m mad at the other asaltantes culeros who abused me just because I was there and small and had the right anatomy. I’m mad at the Program and the f*****g world that doesn’t give a shit about people like me, and I’m mad at how unfair it is and how hard it is at the bottom and how no one up top bothers to notice until their perfect lives feel threatened. If you have any kind of money in this country? Life is so easy. I mean, easy compared to the entire historical record of the species. It’s safe. There’s food. You can say what you want, do what you want, buy stupid shit for cheap. You don’t get raped by Huns or die of a bladder infection ’cuz there’re no antibiotics or get eaten by pterodactyls—”

“I’m pretty sure there weren’t pterodactyls—”

“—so s-t-f-u and enjoy it. Don’t act like you’re beset with inequities and the suffering of the world pains you endlessly. Just don’t. ’Cuz if you’re at the bottom? Shit is really hard. And we don’t care what everyone up there feels. We don’t. We just want them to do something to help or quit taking up all the oxygen.”

She was breathing hard from the rant, and Evan wasn’t sure if she was done. She was out there alone with the pain cracked from its hiding places, and it was everywhere, all around her. She was in the belly of it, and there was no getting out. It would digest her until it was through with her or she with it.

“Big words,” Evan finally said, “from a trust-funder.”

“Yeah, X,” she said, a smile in her voice. “But we earned that shit.”

He laughed.

She giggled along with him. He didn’t laugh often, and she delighted when she was the cause of it.

“Remember what your maunt used to tell you?” he said. “‘Tiene dos trabajos. Enojarse y contentarse.’”

“Don’t use the language of my people against me. And your accent. Gawd. Ear rape.”

“Apologies.”

“Maybe …”

Evan said, “What?”

“Maybe you start your life thinking it’s all some big thing that’s just for you and no one else gets how special you are and if only the world could just see through how f****d up you are, everything would be great, right? Then: It never happens. You never get to be perfect, like Katy Perry.”

“Who?”

“People get older and they’re, like, f**k, this is it? So they talk about appreciating every moment and living in the present and how today is all you have because what else are they gonna say?”

“I think I read that once in a greeting card.”

“I’m just saying. There’s no big secret to life. It’s just what we decide it is. We can get pissed off about it and make everything suck ’cuz we think we deserve it, or we can …” The words came a bit harder now. “Learn how to be with it. And—if we’re lucky—even, dunno, try ‘n’ celebrate it sometimes. People we care about.” Her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “Ourselves, maybe.”

Evan thought about what Deborah had said about never shaming someone for replaceing joy. Johnny Seabrook had been that kind of kid, openhearted, generous of spirit. The loss of him was more than just the absence of a person; it was an affront to hard-won goodness in the universe.

He listened to Joey breathe some more.

Her tone was softer now. “Did Ruby and her folks get to the safe house okay?”

“Yes. And Candy’s in Boston now if they need anything.”

Her voice shot up an octave. “What? Really?! Ruby Seabrook gets Orphan V? I had to wait, like, forever before—”

“Good-bye, Joey.”

“X! You’re tha worst.”

“You’re the worst, too.”

Hanging up, he tossed the phone beside him.

Twilight dampened the sky, shifting the shadows of the house, pulling them long across the wide-plank flooring. With an exhale, he sought a moment of relaxation, but instead a flood of anger caught him off guard. Joey’s outrage had loosed his own.

Since the moment he’d listened to the voice mail intended to terrorize Ruby, he hadn’t registered just how furious he was. That Johnny Seabrook’s throat had been slit deep enough to expose vertebrae. That Angela Buford’s head had been twisted 180 degrees. That a pack of men were at work doing Devine’s bidding. That the Seabrooks had been shattered into pieces because of it. That one of Devine’s men had come into the home of those good people to kill them.

Evan had tucked it all neatly away.

Until now.

Degree by degree, night blackened the windows.

It was time to visit Tartarus.

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