The Vanishing Girls by Callie Browning (great novels of all time .txt) 📗

He snorted. “My father made me promise to look after Paul.” He chuckled dryly as he mimicked a deep voice. “‘Son, I named you after me because you’re the next best thing. Don’t forget it.’”

Despite the misery with which he said it, she laughed and observed, “Your father was very wise.”

Holden looked at her again. In the glistening moonlight, his eyes glowed back at her, focused and unrelenting. “He’s a brilliant man. Was.” He shook his head self-consciously, his eyes drifting to the tangle of tree branches that shivered overhead in the deluge. “I’ll be honest; he wouldn’t have wanted me to hire you. He would’ve said you’d be too much of a distraction.”

Eileen stared back at him, her brow furrowing. “Am I?

“Yes,” he said, softly. “One I needed.”

Eileen looked down, her cheeks aflame.

“Eileen?”

“Yes?” she said breathlessly.

“The rain stopped.”

* * *

SO IT HAD.

Holden checked the time. Two glowing hands spread wide across the watch face in the dark and his eyes flew open. “It’s almost ten,” he said.

“Do you think it’s too late to walk to the phone booth on the main road?”

Holden was surprised, but not because of the late hour. As Eileen had rightly pointed out, he was a man — that kind of fear wasn’t ingrained in him. What unsettled Holden was that they had spent three hours talking in a dark car. Three hours with no food, wine, or other amusements and yet he felt sated and free. The desert island he had waxed so philosophically about had materialized and he was on it with Eileen. He glanced at her, thoughts foaming in his head like bubbles, each one fraught with peril if he were to let them escape.

In some ways, Eileen was a complete mystery to him. Her cadences were artificially hardened like those of a catholic school girl who had ended up on the wrong side of the tracks one day after school and never went back. She was insightful and sharp, but gritty around the edges. She was well-read, having an absurd amount of pop culture trivia knowledge coupled with historical and social theories. He’d heard her cuss more than once and seen her drinking beer with Clifford. All of it only served to make her more intriguing.

She turned to him, eyes questioning because he hadn’t responded. He opened his mouth, ready to say the words on his lips when headlights beamed through the windshield, dousing them in sharp light. In unison, they raised their hands to shield their eyes. The oncoming vehicle rocked closer and closer on the dark road, splashing through puddles on the uneven gravel driveway and, for a brief moment, Holden felt Eileen’s hand clasp his. “Oh, my — is that Clifford?”

The van jerked to a stop and a loping figure emerged, sauntering in front of first one headlight and then the other as he traipsed around to the passenger side of the car. “Boss,” he nodded. “Eileen,” he grinned. “Y’all ready to go home?”

“Clifford, how’d you know we were still here?”

“I ain’t see y’all come back. I had a mind that Ol’ Faithful wasn’t so faithful,” he chuckled and tapped the rusty car door. “That Baygon ain’t save you tonight, girl. Let we go home.”

Eileen grinned and got her bag from the back seat. “Good thing he’s so nosy, isn’t it?”

Holden was silent as he got out of the car and walked across the wet gravel driveway. He didn’t think Clifford’s nosiness was a good thing at all.

* * *

LATER THAT NIGHT, his mind troubled, Holden lay naked on his bed at the Davis family home. It was a sprawling great house, painted in warm brick red and bordered by a ten-foot wall. He felt like an old man whenever he reflected how he came to live there alone. First, his mother had died. Then Paul moved out to marry a socialite who came from plantation money. A few years passed before his father also died and now only Holden remained. Since then, he'd toyed with the idea of renting the great house and moving into the living quarters above the funeral home. The savings would be immense, but Holden suspected that memories of residing above the funeral home were more alluring than rental income.

Like most traditional merchant buildings in Barbados, the parlour's second floor was outfitted as living quarters. His memories of living in a happy home were strongest there. He remembered his mother lighting the kerosene lamp at night and if it were warm, she'd pad silently across the wooden floor to throw open the jalousie doors to cool the house. Holden would trail her in his little pyjamas and beg for permission to sleep on the verandah like a big boy. She’d make up a cot for him, telling him to be careful even though she never went too far. His mother would spread a blanket across a chair by the door and watch as he stretched his little hand through the wooden rails to count the stars until he fell asleep. He would dream that he was high above the world, carefree and happy as he played in the sky. But what he looked forward to most were the mornings.

Every morning, Holden would wake up early to watch as the dray carts came down from the country laden with fruits, the donkeys' hooves clopping in a rhythmic beat on the road. They'd be joined by vendors who pushed boxed carts full of vegetables to the outdoor markets. Merchants would open their louvred double doors for business, one after the other, like a row of dominoes, tipped over by an unseen hand. Large trucks with barrels of rum would pass on their way to the careenage to be shipped overseas. The barrels were stacked so high that Holden tried to reach them as they passed by. Holden had loved living on a street that was always so full of life.

He was seven and Paul was five when his mother