Found Family

It had been four years and 8 months since Jacob had last seen the Crew and he wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Memories of Angie’s Molly parties or Tom’s ridiculous tall tales, or the laughter either could cause, competed in his memory with the yelling and the fistfights, the hours of waiting on bail, the wreckage of failed schemes.

He stared at his whiskey as he wondered if any of it had mattered. For a long time, for years, they had managed to stick together because they could only depend on each other. Starting at the Orwellian sounding NooVita Academy for Foster Children, they had bonded against the staff, who masqueraded as strict disciplinarians during the day until they could emerge as the abusive monsters they were at night. The first act of rebellion had been Tom hiding Jenny under his bed one night, then Jacob hiding Tom from the retaliatory beatings, then stealing food when the staff had tried withholding meals as a punishment.

They all really enjoyed the stealing. Taking food, or anything, away from the Academy felt like earning it, felt better than earning it, and when they got old enough to start sneaking out, what they took from the outside felt great. Jacob stared through the pub window, at the building across the street, and wondered if that’s why Tom had bought the jewelry store located there. Maybe all those years of theft had taught him a thing or two about gems.

The building was older, not quite gentrified as the rest of the neighborhood was, and the meeting place for their reunion. Jacob nursed his drink.

“Hello Jacob.” The words were so dry and high that Jacob almost thought he’d imagined them at first, but when he raised his head from his whiskey, she was there. Misha with her green eyes and skin like a dark, fading spray paint, teeth so white that having blood smeared on them didn’t look quite real. And that was how he had left her, watching from his hiding place on the fire escape as she struggled in the cuffs, one cop holding her while the other tried to smack the resistance out of her. In the quiet moments when he laid awake at night, he hoped that she hadn’t seen him, that she would never know how close he had been before turning tail and running, leaving the Crew to their fate.

Now, here with her in front of him, those thoughts grabbed his throat and stung his eyes. If she knew, she didn’t show it, smiling with that same slow kindness that he remembered. “Here for the reunion?” she asked.

For the first time in a long time, Jacob was honest with another person. “Thinking about it,” he replied. “You?”

Misha pulled up the stool next to him, got the bartender’s attention with the casual ease of the beautiful. She ordered something that Jacob didn’t catch, his eyes too busy staring at the tiny batch of scars at the base of her jaw. “Not sure, either.” Her drink landed in front of her with a predictable quickness.

Jacob fought the impulse to hug her, maybe to gush a little, to say how much he missed her. If she was equally inclined, it didn’t show. Instead she just said, “It’s been a long time.”

“Yeah,” he nodded, numbly, “not since the Banksy job.”

Misha rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “God, what were we thinking?” Bringing them down from heaven, she asked, “You do a stretch for that?”

Again, Jacob surprised himself by being honest. “No. The cops never saw me. I ran.”

Misha pursed her lips in approval. “Smart. I tried to get back in to warn Bethany.”

“You get pinched?”

“Oh, yeah.” She snorted a laugh the exact same way he remembered when she didn’t find the subject matter funny. “No time, though. Just a little jail for resisting arrest. They didn’t have anything else on me.”

Jacob pondered that response. He realized he as staring at her as the moment dragged on into silence. “So why didn’t we all find each other afterward?”

“Why didn’t you try to warn Bethany? Or me?”

“Because I didn’t want to get caught.”

“There you go.” Watching Misha thoughtfully sip her drink, Jacob realized what she meant. Things had started to fall apart for the Crew long before the cops had shown up. “Besides,” she continued, “you were on lookout. You know the cops got there in record time.”

“They knew,” Jacob responded, echoing an assertion that had rung in his head for years, but he had never spoken.

“They knew,” Misha rejoined.

Finding he couldn’t look at her anymore, Jacob returned to the window to stare at the jewelry shop. “So why the reunion?”

He heard Misha’s jacket move as she shrugged. “I’ve heard Tom has gone straight. The shop’s legit.”

Jacob snorted. “Sounds like the best reason not to have a reunion.”

Misha only rustled again. “I heard Tom left some people off the invite. Maybe he figured out what happened.”

Jacob shook his head, then finished his drink. “I wouldn’t mind knowing who that was.”

“Then head on over.” Misha stood up, saying that she was going to find the restroom. Before she did, though, she stood next to Jacob’s stool and gazed levelly at him, evaluating him in such a way that he could feel the gravity of her stare until it pulled him around to her. When he had his eyes on her, she smiled, teeth white and clean. “I did miss you.” She leaned forward and hugged him, pulling him into a warmth the he barely remembered. When she was done, she stepped out of the embrace, wiping the phantom of a tear from one eye. “Do me a favor,” she added. “Head on over. I’m going to visit the lady’s room and collect myself. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Sure.” Jacob watched her go before exiting the bar. Across the street, the jewelry shop’s display windows were shuttered, the front door closed. He stood in front of it longer than he would have thought necessary, taking a few long, deep breaths before pulling it open with his eyes still closed.

There was the tinny bell to announce his entrance, but nothing else. Absent any welcoming voices, Jacob opened his eyes to see shattered display cases, glittering pieces of gem and jewelry strewn haphazardly, as if someone had made a grab for as much as they could carry as quickly as they could carry it. In the back, the panel of a security system blinked red.

Not needing an explanation, Jacob spun to push back out the door, but found it locked. Just above the inside handle was a note. As Jacob heard the distant sound of sirens, he read:

“We know it was you.”