Chapter 49
Turning to watch him, I stood with my mouth open, pushing the microwave door closed without looking. Elliott found a small saucepan and poured the milk into it, flicking on a burner. He was mumbling to himself, something about, “kids these days,” and “barbarians.” I was amused; I never would’ve taken him for the kind of person who could be so irritated by something that seemed so unimportant to me.
I decided to take a seat at the table while he began to slowly stir the milk, being very careful to warm it evenly and not burn it. “You seem to know a lot about warming milk,” I noted.
“Yeah, well, my mom taught me early. Used to have to help take care of my baby brother. And then…” he stopped talking. I wondered where the thought was going, but he didn’t seem to want to finish it, so I went back to what he had actually felt comfortable telling me.
“I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“Had is right.” He turned his back to me then, and in the dim light from above the stove, he looked a bit frightening, dressed in dark jeans, his signature black jacket still on. The light cast a shadow over most of him but illuminated the top of his curly hair.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I replied. He muttered something that sounded a little bit like thanks as his shoulders hunched up and down. “What happened?” I knew it was none of my business, but it seemed like the sort of question a person might ask.
He turned back to face me now, though he was still stirring. “He got hit by a train,” he replied quietly. I gasped, and he shrugged again. “It was a long time ago, though.”
My hands had flown up to cover my mouth on their own accord. I withdrew them. “That’s just terrible. I’m very sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He turned back around now, but I could tell that it really wasn’t.
Part of me thought I should leave well enough alone, but I am nothing if not inquisitive. “How old was he?”
“Uh, a little older than you,” he replied, stirring. “Seventeen.”
I sighed. Another life taken too early. “That’s… I’m sorry.” I knew I was saying the same thing over and over again, but there really wasn’t anything else to say.
Elliott seemed satisfied that my milk was warm enough, so he flipped the burner off and carefully poured it back into the glass. He brought it over to me and resumed his seat.
“Thank you,” I said before cautiously picking up the container, being sure it wasn’t too hot before I took a sip. It was delicious. He was right. It was much better heated over the stove than ran through the microwave. “It’s really good,” I said before taking another gulp.
He smiled at me. The paper was back in his hands, but he wasn’t reading it. “Good.”
I took a few more swallows, staring at the table instead of him, before I stuck my toes into the proverbial pond. “Can I ask you something?”
“Nope,” he said, straightening the paper so that it flapped loudly.
“Please?”
Huffing like I’d asked him to drive me to Disney World, he said, “What is it, Cass? You know I’m not going to able to answer you. I’ve already told you way more than I am supposed to.”
“And I appreciate that,” I replied, “but, I can’t help but wonder what all that discussion was earlier, about the CDC, and Jack’s body missing. Does the CDC really cremate people?”
“Sure,” he replied. “Why wouldn’t they? If someone has an infectious disease, we can’t hardly let them go running around spreading it all over the place.”
“We?” I asked, glad to finally have him talking.
“Yep.” He groaned at me and rolled his eyes before setting the paper aside and reaching into his jacket pocket. He pulled something out and glanced at it before turning it to face me. It was a badge, like one you might need to get into an office building, and it had a picture of him looking a bit cheesy, sort of like Will Ferrell’s wedding picture in Old School. Next to it, I clearly read, “Dr. Elliott Sanderson, Center for Disease Control.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “What else you got in that pocket of yours? FBI? CIA? Department of Homeland Security?”
He shrugged and stuck the badge back in his pocket, taking a sip of his coffee before he said, “Maybe.”
I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms. “Now, that’s something I would think Aaron would get mad at you for telling me.”
His smirk took up half his face. “Are you and Aaron having a lot of intimate conversations these days?”
“No, of course not,” I replied, slamming my hand down on the table, “which is why it shouldn’t matter what you tell me.”
“It’s not just Aaron I’m worried about,” he replied, keeping his voice down as if my hand slamming might wake up half the house. “Your parents have made it very clear that they are not ready for you to know anything more than what they are willing to tell you. Dang it, Cass, I’m trying to respect that.”
Elliott looked a lot more serious and a little more angry than I had ever seen him before, and I didn’t like it. “But… why?” I asked, my voice almost a whisper. “What is it that my parents are keeping from me?”
“Not keeping from you. Protecting you from.” The anger was gone, but his words were still measured. “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
I stared at him hard for a long moment. I had no idea whether or not I should be trusting him. Was this how Jack and Drew had been snookered? Did they think they could trust someone that they couldn’t? Is that how my sister fell under their spell and ended up—something different. “Did my sister kill Jack?” I already knew the answer, but I needed him to tell me. For sure.
“Of course not.”
“Did one of your associates?”
“No!”
“Do you know who did?”
He let out an exhausted breath. “Why can’t you just accept that Jack died from a disease like everyone else?”
“Because I’m not like everyone else.”
“You got that right.” He ran his hands through his hair, leaving it standing up and curled in all different directions. “Cassidy, Jack is gone. I’m not trying to brainwash you, but you need to let him go, okay?”
Tears filled my eyes, taken from the well inside of me that grieved for the baseball player my sister had loved so well, that I had loved in a way that was now being transferred to the man in front of me for reasons I could not understand, reasons out of my control. I said nothing, only dropped my eyes to the floor.
Elliott got up and walked away, returning a moment later with a napkin, which I supposed was the best he could do under the circumstances. His chair screeched across the floor as he sat back down. “Look, I wanna be honest with you, Cass. I can’t tell you everything, but I do want you to know I was wrong about one thing. I thought your sister would decide this line of work wasn’t for her. In fact, I thought I could convince her of such. But… well, she’s pretty darn good at her job. And she’s growing on me a little bit.” I looked up at him then, saw a small smile, remembered them holding hands on the couch earlier. “Anyway, I don’t think she’ll be headed off to school again quite so quickly. I think she’ll probably come back to KC with us when Jack’s funeral is over, and I think she might be with us for the long haul.”
I didn’t know what to say. I dabbed at the corners of my eyes, still upset but not wanting to start crying again. I muttered an, “Okay,” and took a deep breath.
“Just, whatever you do, don’t start asking her a bunch of questions, all right? She’s not equipped to handle that right now, and you don’t want her to get in trouble for telling you stuff you’re not supposed to know.”
I sounded like a broken record, whatever that means. “Okay.”
He reached over and put his big bear paw of a hand on my thin arm where it rested on the table. “Cassidy, I will tell you that you’re safe. You and your family are well-protected from anything and everything. You don’t have to worry.” I looked up into his eyes, and even without them gleaming at me, I believed him. “We are the good guys. You can trust us.”
Something about the intensity of the moment had me smirking. I had to turn it into something else so I didn’t seem rude. I asked, “So why do you always wear black, if you’re the good guys?”
“This ain’t no western, and it’s not my first rodeo,” he replied, without skipping a beat.
I nodded, feeling like even if he couldn’t tell me exactly what was going on, at least I no longer felt like there was a possibility that my sister was some evil creature who was taking out her friends. Once more, for good measure, I said, “Okay. I guess I should go to bed.”
“Yeah, I think you should, too.”
I rose, stepping behind my chair and pushing it in. I reached for my mostly-empty glass of milk. “I’ll take care of it,” he assured me, and I smiled. “Night, Cass.”
“Goodnight.” I gave him one last smile and then headed off to bed, thankful that he had at least put my mind at ease, even if he hadn’t answered all of my questions. I was hopeful the milk would do the trick, and I’d be drifting off to dreamland sometime soon.
