Letters From Cages

It had been two days after the incident at Tier Forest, but I was still as shaken up as ever. Now not only was I not even close to finding out any information, but the whole group definitely now knew what I was up to. Things weren’t just going to be easy anymore, but it wasn’t like they ever were. I couldn’t deny that I wasn’t scared, because I was, but something inside of me didn’t want to give up. Now that I knew that there was more to these people than anyone could think, I couldn’t just stop and go on with my life without figuring out this all for myself.

“Drink, dear,” My grandmother, Lyba, said to me as she placed a cup of tea in front of me. Her faded brown hair was tied back into a low bun and wrinkles weighed down her cheeks. “I made this with a Samovar, my mother had given it to me when I was your age. Very special.”

I tried my best to smile convincingly and placed my hands around the cup. Lyba looked at me with her eyebrows raised and I knew I would have to drink it. I lifted the cup to my lips and took a small sip of the spiced citrus tasting tea. It tasted great, but I wasn’t quite in the mood to be enthused about anything.

“Do you miss him?” My grandmother asked while handed me a small piece of bread that I definitely did not want. She looked at me, and I couldn’t tell if she was waiting for me to answer, or waiting for me to eat, so I did both.

“Very much,” I replied and chewed on the bread before placing it down next to the teacup and looking down at my hands. It was always so uncomfortable speaking to my grandmother. She never spoke to me, or my father for that matter. I don’t even know why she agreed to have us move in with her when my father thought of the idea. Her and I barely knew each other. I didn’t grow up with a grandmother, mainly because her and my mother never got along well, at all. All I had known about her was that my mother would cringe every time my father mentioned her.

“Did you know that I made your mother come back from Europe after she met your father?” She asked while fidgeting with a large ring on her finger. Her faint accent could be heard among her words. “Your grandfather, Nikolai, was dying of a tumor, and I told her she needed to see him to say goodbye. When she came, she brought your father with her.”

I leaned forward in my seat, somewhat interested. My father didn’t speak of my mother much, and my grandmother didn’t really speak in general, unless it was important or necessary, so for her to want to say something meant that it had to be significant.

“She told me she would be here as soon as possible, but instead she came late, too late. Your grandfather, had already passed. I never forgave her, and I’m not quite sure she forgave herself. Only a week later, she announced that she was pregnant with you.”

Lyba stood up, took my cup, and walked over to the sink while I stayed in my seat and looked at her curved and slightly hunched back. Her long dress fell to the floor, and her delicate hands placed the teacup on the counter.

“Do you miss him?” I asked quietly. “More than you miss her?”

My grandmother turned around and eyed me carefully, as if she was trying to find the right words to say. But instead, she chose to say nothing at all and walked out of the kitchen, leaving me feeling as empty as I felt before she said anything at all.

Later that evening, as I was laying on my bed doing absolutely nothing at all, the telephone I had left next to my bed rang. I reached over to pick it up and placed it against my ear.

"Hello?”

"Gwenith, it's Adam. I know you're probably still freaked out by what happened on Friday, but I need you to tell you something."

I sat up in my bed, facing the large mirror of my vanity. My long hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, and my eyes stared at my reflection dimly. I could honestly say it looked like I had no life in me.

"Okay," I replied slowly and leaned again backward until I was laying flat on my back staring up at the ceiling.

"You mentioned that the first time you saw that Jerry guy was at a junkyard right?" Adam asked, his words spewing out quickly, as if he was excited and scared at the same time.

"Yes," I said, confused as to why he was asking me this.

"I noticed that you never got the name of that junkyard, and Carter never mentioned the name to you either,” Adam rambled. “That junkyard used to be a car dealership, but the dealership moved to a nicer part of town and the lot was just abandoned and overgrown and soon turned into a junkyard. The dealership that was once there was named McDowell's Auto.”

Adam didn't say anything else, as if he was expecting me to know exactly what he was talking about. There was a pause and I awkwardly coughed.

"I'm sorry, I don't really know where you're getting with this," I replied honestly while fidgeting with the end of my shirt that kept rising up.

"Gwenith," Adam said slowly. "A man named Demetri McDowell bought that car dealership when he was a mere 29 years old and made thousands upon thousands of dollars. He stayed with that dealership for 15 years before deciding to move to a better location. Soon enough his car dealerships were popping up all around the Oregon coast and he became a millionaire. He became a corporate businessman who ran his business here, downtown. He still owned his old location and would bring old fix-er-uppers there as a hobby. It soon became a certified junkyard that he'd take his son to where they would fix up cars.” Adam paused. “Gwenith, his son is Jerry, Jerry McDowell."

I sat up straight on my bed, causing my hair to fall from its ponytail and into my face. "What?" I asked.

"Gwenith, Jerry isn't just some low life guy Carter met at a junkyard one day. Carter met Jerry when he was interning... for Jerry's father."



“Could you sit still?” I asked Carter as I shakily held a pair of scissors dangerously close to his ear.

“No, not when you’re about to make me the next Van Gogh,” Carter replied and moved his head away. “Seriously, I don’t need a haircut, and you should really consider being ten feet away from any pair of scissors at all times.”

“Whatever,” I replied and placed the pair of scissors on Carter’s bedroom dresser. “Don’t blame me when people on the streets mistaken you for a homeless person.”

“Oh please, it doesn’t even look bad!” Carter retaliated and looked at himself in the mirror. I just rolled my eyes and sat down on Carter's bed before he turned to me, a faint smile visible on the corner of his lips. He slowly stepped towards the bed until he was standing right in front of me, leaning forward. I leaned backward and he lifted his knee up until he was halfway on the bed, hovering above me as I looked up at him.

“What are you trying to do?” I asked teasingly. He didn’t respond, but only smiled and leaned down, but his clock hanging on the wall caught my eye.

“Carter it’s almost 5 o’clock!” I exclaimed. “And it’s Thursday. Weren’t you supposed to go to your internship today?”

Carter exhaled loudly before sitting up on the edge of the bed. I knew that I had ruined the ‘moment’, or whatever it was.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t planning on going today, anyways,” Carter replied and ran his fingers through his growing hair.

“What?” I asked and sat up. “What do you mean? Carter, you know you made a deal with your dad that in order for us two to be… us two, you had to keep up with that internship.”

“That internship is bullshit, Gwen,” Carter replied angrily. “All it is is rooms full of corporate dick entrepreneurs who would rather spend time at work making money for themselves then at home with their families. My dad belongs there, not me.”

“But, you said-“

“Yeah, I know what I said,” Carter said and stood up so that he was looking down, facing me. “It’s fine, I’ll talk to my boss, or whatever he is, and see if I can come in tomorrow. I just wanted to spend time with you. I hate it there.”

I stepped off the bed and walked towards him, but he just sat back down at his desk chair. He grabbed a pen and fiddled with it, tapping the end of it on the top of the desk. I stood to the side of him, looking at his profile.

“Did you know that Wyatt plays baseball for the youth league?” Carter asked. “He’s been playing for about a year now, and my father has only managed to make it to one game, but only for fifteen minutes because he had to go back to work to make a conference call. He’s never even seen me play soccer, but he always tells me to stay on the team. He’s such a hypocrite, and when I’m at that office, I’m surrounded by clones of him. The man I intern for, I swear, barely even knows his son’s first name." Carter turned to me, his face held so much emotion that I couldn't determine what he was feeling. "I never want to be like that. Fuck, Gwen, I’m never going to be like that.”

I stepped forward and sat down on Carter’s lap as he reached out and pulled me closer to him. His head rested sideways on my chest and I felt him breathe in and out slowly.

“I swear to God, Gwen, I'm never going to be like that,” He repeated.



“How did you find all of this out?” I asked Adam as we walked through the empty streets of downtown. It was colder than cold, and I hugged my thick coat to my body but it didn’t seem to help. The wind was blowing rashly and it looked like it was about to rain, again… for the millionth time.

“My father is an accountant,” Adam replied while pulling his gray beanie down over his ears. “He does taxes for rich people who don’t want to do it themselves. He does Demetri McDowell’s, and was mentioning how much of a big spender Demetri is. He mentioned that Demetri would and still does ‘buy his son whatever he wants to get him out of his hair’. I asked him who his son was and he told me who it was, much to my surprise.”

“Wow, I truly never would have thought that Jerry was-"

“Just another rich brat?” Adam asked with a smile on his face. I laughed and looked up at him. His now shaggy dirty blonde hair was poking out of his beanie, and his long eyelashes framed his blue eyes. “See now this is what I don’t get,” Adam continued. “If whoever killed Daniel Cody only did it because Daniel walked in on them stealing money from his parent’s safe, then why are the two main people that could have done it, two rich boys from upscale suburban Oregon?”

I stopped and sat down on the steps of a random shop in town. Adam sat down next to me.
“None of this makes any sense,” I muttered.

“I know,” Adam replied. “But I think the things that seem to be so simple and concrete in the beginning, are never what they seem. All of the evidence was so perfect to pin Carter, maybe it was... too perfect?”

“Adam… you mentioned that Jerry’s father always buys him things. Do you think we could get ahold of his financial records, maybe from your dad’s office or something, and see what Jerry has been purchasing lately? Maybe it’ll bring us a little bit closer to knowing what exactly he has been doing, and what he has been buying. Maybe we can figure out if Jerry made any purchases the night of Daniel’s death that could connect him to the murder.”

“Gwenith, do you think that’s a good idea?” Adam asked quietly. “I mean, we already tried the whole snooping around thing once, and that got us in the middle of the woods where Daniel’s body was found with some scary girl’s handwritten note basically telling us to back the hell off. Maybe we should just… mind our own business?”

I let out a laugh before turning my body to face Adam fully.

“Adam, I think we’re a little too deep to even consider minding our own business,” I replied and paused. “I’m ready to find out the truth. Are you?”

“That all depends on if finding out the truth will put us where Daniel Cody is,” Adam said softly. I didn’t respond, instead I stood up, wiped invisible dust off my jeans and grabbed Adam’s hand to pull him up. And as we continued to walk down the street, we both took that as a silent confirmation that whatever happened, we were going to figure this out, together.