Shelter (Book One): A Mickey Bolitar Novel

IT WAS TWO FIFTEEN when I slipped quietly back into the house. My cell phone buzzed. It was a text from Ema: home. happy?

Me: Ecstatic.

I started tiptoeing toward the basement door when I heard voices coming from upstairs. At first I figured that it was the television, but no, one voice belonged to Myron. The other—hello—was female.

Hmm.

I moved toward the stairs. The light was off in Myron’s bedroom, but it was on in the office. The office, as Myron had told me maybe a million times, used to be my dad’s bedroom, and before Myron moved to the basement, he and my father had shared it. Myron often regaled me with stories of the lame stuff they used to do together in that room—play board games like Risk and Stratego, trade baseball cards, set up their own Nerf basketball leagues. Sometimes, when no one was in the house, I would go in the room and try to imagine my father as a child in there. But nothing ever came to me. The renovation had stripped the room of any memorabilia. It looked like an accountant’s office.

I moved upstairs and stopped by the door. Myron was on the computer, video chatting—at two in the morning? What was up with that?

“I can’t come now,” I heard Myron say.

A woman’s voice said, “I understand. I can’t either.”

Who was Myron talking to? Wait—was he trying to hook up online? And neither of them wanted to make the trip to the other’s town? Oh, gross.

“I know,” Myron said.

“Carrie isn’t ready,” the woman said.

Uh-oh. Who’s Carrie? Another woman? Oh, double gross.

“So what do we do?” Myron asked.

The woman said, “I want you to be happy, Myron.”

“You make me happy,” he said.

“I know. You make me happy too. But maybe we need to be realistic.”

They no longer sounded like strangers trying to hook up. They sounded like two people with broken hearts. I peeked into the room again. Myron had his head lowered. I could see a raven-haired woman on the screen.

“Maybe you’re right,” Myron said. “Maybe we do need to be realistic.” He raised his eyes to meet hers on the screen. “But not tonight, okay?”

“Okay.” Then the woman said in the most tender voice I’d ever heard, “I love you so much.”

“I love you so much too,” Myron said.

I didn’t know what to do here. I had no idea who this woman was or what they were talking about. I hadn’t asked Myron if he had a girlfriend or anything, mostly because I didn’t much care.

Whatever, I came up here because I heard voices. I didn’t feel good about eavesdropping like this. I took two steps back and quietly padded back down to my bedroom in the basement. I got ready for bed and slipped under the covers.

I wondered about how sad Myron and the woman sounded. I wondered who Carrie was and why Myron couldn’t be with her right now. But I didn’t wonder about it very long. In the morning, we would fly to Los Angeles and see my father’s grave. I figured that thought would keep me up the rest of the night. Instead I dropped off in seconds.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m still getting to know them, but as far as I can tell, my grandparents are the coolest grandparents in the history of the world.

Ellen and Al Bolitar—my grandmother likes to joke that they’re “El-Al, like the Israeli airline”—greeted us at LAX airport. Grandma sprinted toward Myron and me, arms wide open, hugging us as though we were innocent men just released from serving an unjust prison term, which is to say, like a grandmother should. She hugged us with everything she had and then she looked us over, inspecting us to make sure that everything was how it should be.

“You both look so handsome,” Grandma said to me.

I didn’t feel handsome. I wore one of Myron’s suits. The fit was far from perfect. Grandpa trailed, using a cane and moving too slowly. Myron and I both kissed the old man on the cheek because that was how we all wanted it. Grandpa was still pale and thin from his recent open-heart surgery. I pushed away the feelings of guilt over his condition, but it was hard to escape the fact that I felt at least partially responsible. Grandpa wouldn’t have any of that. In fact, he liked to say that I saved his life that day. I had my doubts. As though sensing that, Grandpa gave my shoulder an extra squeeze. I can’t tell you why, but that squeeze comforted me like nothing else could.

Myron had a rental car waiting. We drove to the graveyard in silence. Grandma and I sat in the back. She held my hand. She didn’t ask about my mother, though she had to know. I loved her for that.

When we reached the graveyard parking lot, I felt my entire body shudder. Myron turned off the car. We all stepped out of the car in the silence. The sun beat down upon us.

“It’s up the hill,” Myron said. “Maybe I can get you a wheelchair, Dad?”

Grandpa waved him off. “I’ll walk to my son’s grave.”

We made the trek in silence. Grandpa, leaning heavily on his cane, led the way. Grandma and I followed him. Myron brought up the back. As we neared my father’s burial spot, Myron caught up to me and asked, “You okay?”

“Fine,” I said, picking up my pace.

No headstone marked my father’s gravesite yet.

For a long time, no one spoke. The four of us just stood there. Cars from the adjacent highway zoomed by without a care, without the slightest concern that just yards away a devastated family grieved. Without warning Grandpa started reciting the Kaddish, the Hebrew prayer for the dead, from memory. We were not religious people, far from it, so I was a bit surprised. Some things, I guess, we do out of tradition, out of ritual, out of need.

“Yit’gadal v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba . . .”

Myron started to cry. He was like that—overly expressive—the kind of guy who cried at a greeting card commercial. I looked off and tried to keep my face steady. A strange feeling enveloped me. I didn’t believe Bat Lady, but today, standing by my beloved father’s grave, missing him so much I wanted to rip my own heart out, I was oddly unmoved. Why? Why, I asked myself, am I not totally devastated by my father’s final resting spot?

And a small voice in my head whispered, Because he isn’t here . . .

With his hands clasped and his head lowered, Grandpa finished the long prayer with the words “Aleinu v’al kol Yis’ra’eil v’im’ru. Amen.”

Myron and Grandma joined in for that fourth and final amen, making the word sound more like “oh-main.” I stayed silent. For several minutes, no one moved. We were all lost in our own thoughts.

I flashed back to the first time I had been in this cemetery, at my father’s funeral, just me and my mom. Mom had been stoned to the point of oblivion. She made me promise that we wouldn’t tell anybody about Dad’s death because Uncle Myron would claim that she was an unfit parent and seek custody. I looked down at the small placard that was there until a gravestone would be ready. The placard had been there on that day too. BRAD BOLITAR, it read, in plain black ink on a white index card in a weather-protected plastic case.

After another silent minute had passed, Grandpa shook his head and said, “This should never be.” He stopped and looked up at the sky. “A father should never have to say the Kaddish for his son.”

With that, he started back down the path. Myron and Grandma followed. They looked back at me. I took a step closer to the loose dirt. My father, the man I had loved like no other, lay six feet below me.

I didn’t feel it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t so. I stared down now at the placard and didn’t move.

Behind me I heard Myron say, “Mickey?”

I didn’t reply or react because, well, I couldn’t. I was still staring at the placard, feeling my already teetering world spin me off my feet again. I saw Dad’s name. I saw the plain black ink on the white index card. But now I saw something else too. A drawing. The drawing was small and in the corner of the index card, but there was no mistaking what it was. An emblem of a colorful butterfly with what might have been animal eyes on the wings. I had seen it before—at Bat Lady’s house.

It was the same emblem as on those T-shirts in that old picture.

We said good-bye at the airport. Hugs and kisses were exchanged. Grandma said to both Myron and me, “You’ll come down for Thanksgiving.”

Grandma didn’t ask—she told, and I loved her for that. I regret that my grandparents hadn’t been a bigger part of my life until now, but Mom and Dad had their reasons, I guess.

My grandparents caught a plane back to Florida; Myron and I grabbed one half an hour later to Newark. The flight was full. Myron volunteered to take the middle seat. I had the window. We shoehorned ourselves into our seats. Coach seats are not designed for people our height. Two little old ladies sat in front of us. Their feet could barely touch the ground, but that didn’t stop them from reclining the seat with great strength into our knees. I spent the four hours with an old lady’s scalp in my face.

At one point during the flight, I almost asked Myron about what I’d seen at two A.M. I almost asked him who the raven-haired woman was and who Carrie was, but I didn’t because I knew that would lead to a longer conversation and I wasn’t really in the mood to open up.

After landing, we grabbed Myron’s car from long-term parking and started up the Garden State Parkway. Neither of us spoke for the first twenty minutes of the drive. When we passed our exit, I finally said something.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see,” Myron said.

Ten minutes later, we pulled into the strip mall lot. Myron put the car in park and smiled at me. I looked out the windshield, then back at Myron.

“You’re taking me for ice cream?”

“Come on,” Myron said.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

When we entered the SnowCap ice cream parlor, a woman in a wheelchair greeted us. She was probably in her early twenties and had this big, wonderful smile. “Hey, you’re back,” she said to Myron. “What can I get you?”

“Set up my nephew here with your SnowCap Melter. I need to talk to your father for a minute.”

“Sure thing. He’s in the back room.”

Myron left us. The woman in the wheelchair held out her hand. “I’m Kimberly.”

I shook it. “I’m Mickey.”

“Sit over there,” Kimberly said, gesturing to a chair. “I’ll whip you up a SnowCap Melter.”

The Melter was the approximate size and dimensions of a Volkswagen Bug. Kimberly wheeled it over with that big, lovely smile. I wondered why she was in the chair, but of course I’d never ask.

I looked at the huge plate of ice cream and toppings and whipped cream. “We’re supposed to eat this alone?”

She laughed. “We’ll do what we can.”

We dug in. I don’t want to exaggerate, but the SnowCap Melter was the greatest thing anyone has ever eaten in the history of the world. I started eating it so fast I feared getting one of those ice cream headaches. Kimberly was having fun watching me.

“What does Myron want with your father?” I asked her.

“I think that your uncle has realized a universal truth.”

“What’s that?”

Kimberly’s smile fled, and I swear I felt a cold breeze against my neck. “You do what you have to do to protect the young.”

“I’m not following.”

“You will.”

“What does that mean?”

Kimberly blinked, looked away. “Sixteen years ago, my older sister was murdered. She was only sixteen years old.”

I had no idea what to say to that. Finally I asked, “What does Myron have to do with that?”

“Not just Myron,” she said. “Your mother had something to do with it. So did your father.”

I put down the spoon. “I don’t understand any of this. Are you saying my parents hurt—”

“No!” She cut me off. “Your parents would never hurt anyone. Never.”

“How do you know my parents?”

“I don’t. But understand something now, Mickey. None of this is a coincidence.”

My head was spinning.

“Don’t tell Myron we talked, okay?”

I nodded.

“Eat the ice cream,” she whispered.

I took another bite. The door to the back room opened. Myron appeared. Kimberly leaned over to me and whispered into my ear, “Laugh like you just heard the funniest joke in the world.”

I was going to ask her why, but for some reason I trusted and liked her. So I did as she asked. It felt a little forced, but then she laughed with me. Her laugh had a contagious quality. It made it easier for me to let go. Kimberly leaned again and whispered, “One more time. We don’t want your uncle to ask what we’re talking about.”

So I laughed again—and again she joined me. Myron stared at me with puppy-dog eyes and a small, sad smile. Kimberly wheeled herself away. Confused, lost, I let my laugh fade away. I didn’t know what to do when my phone vibrated. I checked the caller ID and saw it was Spoon. I put the phone to my ear.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

“Mickey?” I could hear the excitement in his voice. Spoon was, in fact, so excited that he skipped his customary non sequitur. “I got something.”

“Got what?”

“Ashley’s locker.”

“What about it?”

“I know who broke into it.”