No One Tells Everything by Rae Meadows Read Free Book Online

willful, her brown eyes shining with defiance, was going for the closet and Grace’s favorite long dress, smocked and frilly, that she was allowed to wear only on special occasions. Grace tried to grab the scissors from her but her sister brandished them, using both her hands to snap the blades. When Callie caught Grace’s fingertip in the scissors her eyes widened, but she slammed the handles together anyway, lopping off the pad, blood beading on the beige carpeting in small droplets. Grace stood there, stunned. Callie’s contrite howling alerted their mother, who wrapped Grace’s finger in the dress, the nearest thing she could find, to stop the bleeding. The separated part wasn’t enough to sew back on so the doctor stitched the sides together in a messy bunch. It was the first time Grace can remember the cracks being exposed in a childhood that had been relatively carefree, cracks where the future peeked in, where life as she knew it was over.
    “Do you mind if I sit here?” a handsome long-haired boy in a tie-dye asks.
    Grace shakes her head and scoots over on the bench. He sits Indian-style, a biology book spanning his knees.
    “How’s it going?” he asks.
    “Fine,” she says.
    Shade has crept over the bench and she rubs her arms to warm them.
    “Right on,” he says, turning back to his book.
    “Did you know Charles Raggatt?” she finally asks the hippie kid.
    “No, man. That’s some crazy shit though.”
    “Yeah,” she says, giving him a halfhearted smile.
    Grace tries to imagine Charles here, his money the only thing he thought he had going for him. A boy who wanted to fit in without any idea how to do it.
    ###
    College kids and old couples are scattered throughout the diner in town, its booths maroon plastic, its cake covers cloudy and cracked. The waitress, henna-haired and bulging out of her uniform, bustles about noiselessly in nude-colored nursing shoes. At the counter, Grace takes a place two down from a muscled guy reading the Post and tapping his foot. He has dark hair on the backs of his hands and he wears a gold insignia ring from some fraternal order. She looks away just as he checks her out. He stares. She orders coffee and glances over to dissuade his gaze, but he just smiles and lifts his cup in salute.
    “How you doing?” he asks with a pronounced Long Island accent.
    “Okay,” she says.
    “What are you doing way out this way?”
    “Excuse me?” she asks.
    “You don’t look to be from around here. Manhattan, right?”
    “Brooklyn,” she says.
    “Ah, okay. Brooklyn in the house!” He laughs. “My grandmother lives in Sheepshead Bay.”
    She smiles weakly and pours cream into her coffee.
    “Tommy,” he says, extending his hand. “Tommy Toscano. Teamster.”
    He keeps his meaty hand outstretched until she shakes it.
    “Grace,” she says.
    There is something surprisingly kind in his face, a softness in the mouth that she bets he doesn’t like.
    “So Grace, what are you doing out here on a Thursday afternoon?”
    It’s a good question, she thinks.
    “The murder? At the college? I’m kind of interested in it.”
    “I hope they nail the motherfucker’s ass to the wall. Excuse my language. Why do you care about that shit anyway?”
    “I want to know the real story I guess.”
    He snorts, amused. “What, you don’t believe what the grown-ups tell you?”
    She starts to sweat under her coat.
    “No, I guess not everything,” she says.
    “You got a spark behind that cool façade, don’t you, Grace?” he asks, squinting his eyes. He slides over to the seat next to her and says softly, “The word is he couldn’t have her, so he took her. Simple as that.”
    “That’s what they say.”
    Tommy’s cologne is warm and musky. His thick fingers look like they could crush the white coffee cup he holds around its waist. His masculinity is so exaggerated he is like a cartoon.
    “You know the craziest part?”
    “What’s that?” she asks.
    “He drove around with