Page 21 of Skin Game
“And she ended up saddled with me.”
Elton waggled his head. “I understand that Heidi wasn’t perfect, but she kept you. She didn’t have to. And now it’s starting to look like she was trying to get away from something. What, we don’t know?—”
“Family makes the most sense,” Casey interjected.
Elton nodded again. “Family, most likely. But she kept you, Gabe. There were other options for single mothers back then. She kept you, kept a roof over your head, brought you up the best she knew how. Whatever you take away from this”—he gestured at the unsmiling picture of his mother—“don’t forget that. Heidi did the best she could with what she had to work with.”
“I think I want a reason to be angry with her.” He really did. Gabe wanted to be furious, to rail at his mother for her shortcomings and the decisions she’d made. But Elton was right, she had done the best she could. Maybe his childhood could’ve been better, maybe not.
“Not all my memories are bad. Actually, most of them aren’t, and the bad ones I most likely brought on myself. Let’s face it, I can be impulsive sometimes.”
Casey was unable to repress a smirk. “Sometimes?”
“Yeah, yeah, so sue me.” A smile played at the corner of Gabe’s lips. “Unless there’s a set script, I improvise. And okay, yeah, itoccasionallydoesn’t go quite right. But in all seriousness, I’m a bit unsettled by all this and the possibility that there’s more I don’t know. That she hid so much from me. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what made Heidi tick, and it turns out I didn’t know anything, not even her given name.”
He felt like he should be angry, but what he felt instead was exhaustion coupled with a sense of loss. A history had been hidden, one that he had no real tools to connect back to. Gabe glanced down at the yearbook. Maybe that was the point of this? What if the solution was to meet Heidi-slash-Holly while trying to discover the truth?
It’s not pretty.
Yeah, well, that wasn’t a surprise.
“There are those who would argue that a taken name has more meaning than a given one,” Casey pointed out.
“Ergh, fine. You have a point. AlthoughHeidi Karne? I always thought our surname was a riff on carny, like our forbearers worked the circus circuit. Who knows.” He sucked in a breath, blowing it back out almost immediately. “I might as well finish going through this stuff. AC/DC though? Who would’ve figured Mom to have a wild side? Aside from being a professional grifter.”
Casey stood from his spot on the arm of the couch. “What I’m wondering is, did Heidi make those tapes or did someone make them for her? And could that person still be in the area? If she grew up in Westfort, or at least went to school there, it’s highly likely someone may still be around who knew her. I suppose it depends on just how much you want to know about your mom and any blood relatives you may have in the area.”
“Ugh, this is literally the worst.” Gabe set the yearbook down and plucked one of the cassettes off the table again, examiningthe handwriting. Heidi had distinctive, odd, loopy handwriting. “This doesn’t look much like her handwriting to me. But it evolves, doesn’t it? Maybe she purposely changed it.” Dammit, he wished that first letter hadn’t been destroyed when theTicketmostly sank.
“How about we see if anything is up with that chair?” Casey suggested. “From the thickness of the arms, I’d say there’s a possibility of hidden compartments.”
Oh, hidden compartments could be fun. “Fine, but if we’re poisoned by a secret poison-powder blower, it’s not my fault.”
Dropping the cassette back onto the coffee table, Gabe rose to his feet again and moved across the room to where the chair waited for him.Them. Not for the first time that day, Gabe was very glad that Casey Lundin hadn’t been scared off. Not yet anyway. And from the expression on his face, Elton was getting a kick out of this. At least one of them was enjoying himself.
Stepping in front of the massive piece of furniture, Gabe set his hands on his hips and stared at it. “That thing is begging for a name. Alfred, something like that.”
“You need to get a move on,” Elton groused again. “Pull it out more so I can see better.”
“Give me a hand?” Gabe said to Casey.
Together, they dragged the weighty piece closer to the center of the room. Casey was probably right about the arms being hollow, but it still was a huge monstrosity and heavy as fuck. Gabe spotted small but ornate hinges along the outside edges of the rests.
“Yep, this monster’s absolutely an Alfred.” Gabe circled the chair now, taking in every angle. Then, with a sigh, he crouched down and started to poke and prod Alfred as if it were a recalcitrant patient and he was a doctor checking its internals.
“Hey, check this out.”
He pried one of the armrests upward. Years of sitting in a damp Seattle basement had not done the piece of furniture muchgood, and the hinges were a bit rusty, but they still moved. At least the chair had been stored on a raised concrete pad.
“Anything inside?” asked Elton, who then heaved himself up and stepped closer to supervise.
Gabe peered into the cavity. “Nothing that I can see. Who has a flashlight? I’m not sticking my hand in there.”
It was Elton who handed him a small pocket light he had stashed in his coat pocket.
“Always prepared.” Switching it on, Gabe shone it into the hidden recess. “There doesn’t seem to be anything in this one.”
Casey had opened up the other arm while Gabe and Elton checked out the first one, so Gabe moved to shine the light into it.