Bitter Falls

by Caine, Rachel

  “I understand the theory. They need to be ready to react in an emergency,” Sam says, but he sounds subdued. “But this can’t be good for him.”

  Lanny’s gone down the hall. So I lower my voice and say, “Sam—this town. I don’t know what to do. They’re shutting us out, closing ranks. You’ve felt it. So have I.”

  “I know. I also know you swore you weren’t going to run anymore.”

  “Maybe that’s just blind, stubborn pride,” I tell him. “I picked this place because we were anonymous. But we’re not anymore, and maybe I just need to accept that we never will be again.” I take a deep breath, and I look around. This house . . . it means something to me. We bought it as a half-ruined shell, and Lanny and Connor and I made it a home. We put in the new floor. New drywall. Paint and sweat and love. We chose this place, and it’s ours.

  But the truth is, it’s just a house. We can find another place to make home. And . . . and I think we should. Moving to Knoxville would be expensive, but Sam would have a chance to fly again, and I—I already have a job, and the move would put me closer to my boss, and the resources of her offices.

  I take a deep breath and say, “I think we need to move.”

  Sam’s been carefully expressionless but now he looks relieved, and it makes me feel a real wave of guilt. He’s been worried more than he’s told me. He puts his hands on my face and leans forward and kisses me gently on the forehead. “I think that’s good,” he says. “But I know you put a lot into this place. I don’t want you to feel like I’m pushing you.”

  “You’re not,” I tell him, and smile. “But maybe you should. You’re part of this too.”

  “Okay. Consider this a push.” For a second, his smile is so genuine that it makes me forget everything else. “Oh, by the way . . . hope this doesn’t make you uncomfortable, but since you’re talking about homeschooling, I’ve got the details on Tennessee Virtual Academy. It could take us a while to get settled somewhere else, and I’m not sure you want to have them out of school that long.” When I pull back, surprised, he shrugs. “I figured it might come to this. You can enroll them in the online academy, but you have to withdraw them formally from the Norton schools first.”

  “Wow,” I say. “Thank you.”

  He shrugs. “I was worried. I thought it’d be good to know what to do if things went wrong. Backup plan.”

  I kiss him. It’s impulsive, and it surprises him, but he doesn’t pull away. We’re still healing a very large rift that opened between the two of us in the rough, creepy town of Wolfhunter. Things came out about his past that I hadn’t known, had never suspected, and . . . it had hurt. A lot. Now we’re slowly rebuilding a bridge that will hold the enormous weight of both our pasts.

  Something in this kiss ignites fires deep inside me, melts me like butter, and sends warmth coiling deeper in my body. We’re both a little unsteady. A little frantic. Sam’s thumb traces my lips, sealing the kiss, and the look in his eyes makes me think he’s feeling the same urgency I am.

  But we don’t get a chance to indulge it, because Lanny comes around the corner and says, “Hey, do you want me to make a salad or—” She catches the mood right away because we react like startled teens, taking a step back from each other even though there’s no reason in the world for that to happen. “Really? Wow.”

  “Lanny.” I try to make my voice sound firm and adult. I probably fail. “Why don’t you decide?”

  “Sure,” she says, with a load of meaning in it that I don’t really feel like unpacking at the moment. “I’ll, uh, take my time.”

  I take Sam’s hand.

  “Bedroom?” he asks me.

  “Bedroom,” I say.

  I pretend I don’t hear my daughter’s muttered ugh as we pass.

  5

  LANNY

  I suppose I should feel weird about the prospect of not going to school tomorrow morning, but I just feel great. Like a huge weight rolled off me, and now I can actually breathe again. School’s an armed camp, and I was always an outnumbered enemy soldier. Girls don’t fight the same ways—normally—so it’s more snark and bitchy cuts and exclusion than straight-up fights. Though I’ve put a beatdown on a couple of guys—and girls—who came at me that way when I first got here. Nobody’s tried it recently. But I’ve never really felt included; I’m still the new girl, at best. At worst, I’m the serial killer’s daughter. The polite ones don’t say it, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking it.

  It’s an early night. Connor feels like shit, and not even a rewatch of his favorite superhero movie cheers him up, so afterward I run away to my room. I’m in bed listening to a playlist and luxuriating in the fact that even though Mom’s probably going to roust me up at some horrible hour, I can just do online studies and take some quizzes and get on with my life.

  It sounds amazing.

  Rain clouds have been moving in, and by the time I finish watching a movie on my laptop and checking out a few makeup tutorials on YouTube, I hear thunder rumbling. It’s low and far away, but the rain’s already here. It’s a nice, steady drum on the roof and the windows.

  It’s nearly two in the morning, and I’m almost asleep when I hear something tapping at my window. At first I think it’s a branch.

  Then all my sleepiness flies away and I sit straight up in bed, because there’s a shadow out there.

  It’s a person out in the rain, knocking on my window.

  I start to scream for Mom, but then some weird instinct kicks in. I know that silhouette. I pick up my phone, activate the flashlight function, and shine it right at her.

  It’s Vera Crockett—Vee, to her friends. Vee from Wolfhunter. What the hell?

  Vee’s a little older than me, but only by months. She’s survived as much bad shit as I have, but maybe she hasn’t come through it as well. She lost her mom, for one thing, and that was after a rough childhood and even rougher teen experience. Vee’s one of the few people I can trade top-this trauma stories with, and she wins. Hey, at least I haven’t been put in jail and falsely accused of murder.

  But Vee’s supposed to have a new home with some aunt or something out of state. How the hell is she here, and why, especially at this time of night?

  Doesn’t matter. I like Vee. And she’s out there soaked and shivering and far, far from home.

  I grab a piece of paper and write in black marker, Wait there. I press it to the window glass, and she signals she’s gotten the message. Then I slip out of my room and into the hall. I listen at the door to Mom and Sam’s bedroom. I hear nothing. They’re asleep.

  I move quietly down the hall to the keypad by the front door, and I hesitate for a few seconds. Mom probably won’t hear me bypassing my window sensor when I enter the code. But the question is, should I? Or should I tell Mom that Vee’s here, outside? But I know what will happen. Mom will be worried, and she’ll send Vee away. Okay, maybe she wouldn’t; she saved Vee in the first place, back in Wolfhunter. But I can’t take the chance.

  A big part of me really wants to hear what Vee has to say.

  Screw it.

  I put in the code to take my window out of the alarm system, wincing at the beeps the keypad makes, but it’s in the front room and Mom’s bedroom is all the way at the back. If she hears something, I can say I was just checking to make sure it was on.

  I hover near Mom’s bedroom door, breathless, until I’m sure she and Sam have slept through it, then go back to my room and slide the glass up. The rain is cold, and it cascades in all over my bare feet; it’s all I can do not to yelp. Vee’s taken off the screen already. She slithers in fast and dumps a soaked duffel bag on the rug by my bed. “Quiet!” I hiss, and slide the window shut again. When I turn around, Vee’s hugging me, and I freeze up for a second before I relax. She’s really, really wet, and even with that she doesn’t smell great, but she feels great. “What are you doing here?” I keep it a fierce whisper.

  When I pull back, I don’t like the shine in her eyes. She looks weird. And kind of
high. Her wet hair’s dirty and matted. “I need to use your bathroom,” she whispers back. “Can I take a shower?”

  Oh man. I think about it, biting my lip. “Make it fast,” I tell her. I’m hoping that the sound of the rain will mask the shower noise. “Keep it quiet. And, uh, maybe wash your hair?”

  She smiles at me, and boy, I like her smile. I always have since the first minute I saw her in jail. She was trying to be all cool and strong, but I’d seen something under that too. Somebody worth getting to know. Vee’s got problems, I know that, but I always thought she kind of liked me too. And here she is.

  But why?

  Vee doesn’t tell me. She turns and digs in her duffel bag and comes up with sweatpants, underwear, a T-shirt. I take her to the door and point out the bathroom down the hall, and she waves and heads that way. I wait until she’s in there with the door locked before I go back to the alarm system and put my window sensor back online.

  The rain covers the shower sound pretty well; I can barely hear it myself, and it’s even farther away from Mom and Sam. Vee’s quiet, at least.

  I wait tensely, chewing my fingernails, until she comes back. She’s showered and changed, and she sinks down on my bed with a sigh. Her dark hair is wet and dripping on the T-shirt, turning spots transparent. She looks better. And a little less high.

  I lean close and say, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Well,” she says, and her rural accent drags the word out. “The courts said they’d put me with my aunt, but she couldn’t take me after all, so then they put me in a foster home, and I ain’t taking that shit. Would you, Lanta?”

  Vee is the only one who calls me Lanta, short for Atlanta; everybody else just says Lanny. I kind of like her version. And I’m also afraid of liking it. “Probably not,” I reply. “Were the foster people mean or something?”

  She shrugs. “They told me when to go to bed, when to get up, what to wear, what to eat. Didn’t care for that shit.”

  “And you came here? Have you met my mom?”

  “Your momma’s a badass bitch,” Vee says. “And she saved my life when the cops would have killed me back there in Wolfhunter. So did you.” She says that casually, but I feel it. I feel the look she gives me too. “I been thinking about you a lot, Lanta.”

  I don’t say I’ve been thinking about her, too, but it would be true. I have. Not in a serious way; I thought she was long gone out of my life. But there’s something about Vee. Maybe it’s just that dangerous edge I like.

  “So what are you doing?” I ask her.

  “In general?” Her shoulders rise and fall. “You know. Bummin’ around.”

  “You just took off from your foster home?”

  “A while back, yeah. Then I found myself at a bus stop not too far away and I thought, hell, why not find you. And here I am.”

  That is not Vee’s story. I know she’s lying to me but I don’t know why. “Look, you can stay tonight, but you’ve got to go before my mom gets up in the morning, okay? I’ll get you some food and—”

  “Lanta.” She puts both hands on my shoulders and leans close. I freeze. Her eyes are so pretty, and my heart is beating so fast it hurts. “Atlanta Proctor, you don’t have to do nothin’ you don’t want to do. You know that, don’t you? I’ll be gone if you want me gone. Ain’t no big thing.”

  I feel warm. Weightless. Strange. I want to run to my mother. I want to kiss this girl. I don’t know what’s going on right now.

  I don’t answer. I just lie down and pull the covers up. Vee watches me for a few seconds, then slips in beside me under the sheet and blankets and the heavy duvet, and the sheer animal warmth of her makes me forget how to breathe.

  She moves closer, and I can feel her almost touching me. I shiver, waiting.

  I feel her warm breath on the back of my neck as Vee whispers, “Good night, Lanta.”

  I catch myself on a gasp, and reach over and turn the light out.

  I don’t think I can sleep at all, having her beside me. My mind is racing. My pulse is too. I feel hot and cold and exhilarated and terrified, and I know none of it is right but I don’t care. I don’t care. I wasn’t even hardly alone with Vee back in Wolfhunter; when I was, there were lots of other problems to worry about. But I’ve spent time thinking about her after that. It feels unreal that she’s just . . . shown up. Like this is a dream, and when I wake up, she’ll be gone.

  When Vee’s arms go around my waist and pull me close, I moan, and it feels so good. It feels like the best kiss in the world, even though we haven’t kissed at all.

  I feel her sigh on the skin at the back of my neck, and then she just . . . falls asleep. I know she does. I feel her relax. I hear the rhythm of her breath change.

  She’s drunk or high or something, I tell myself. You shouldn’t have let her in here. You shouldn’t be in the bed with her right now. Get up.

  I don’t.

  I fall asleep, too, despite all the fear and uncertainty and longing inside me.

  Because as wrong as this is, Vee Crockett makes me feel . . . safe. And I know that’s very wrong; Vee isn’t a safe person. But maybe it’s just feeling, well, wanted again.

  Vee says she came here for me.

  Maybe she’s not lying.

  When I wake up again, it’s because Vee is moving. She’s pulling her arms back from me, and yawning. I blink at the dull glow from the window. It’s not dawn yet, but it’s coming fast. Mom will be up soon, if she isn’t already. Holy shit, I need to get Vee out of here. Now.

  I slip out of bed and hold a finger to my lips as I slide on my house shoes. Vee smiles at me, a warm and lazy kind of smile, and burrows into the pillows like she intends to stay. I open the door and listen. No sounds in the house yet. I hurry down the hall and into the living room, and I’m just entering the code for my window again when I hear the bright chime of Sam’s alarm going off. Shit shit shit. I nearly miss the buttons, I’m going so fast, but I manage to get it right, and I rush back to my room and shut and lock the door. I can hear Mom and Sam getting up.

  “You have to go,” I whisper to Vee. “Now. Now!” I pull her up to a sitting position, and she winks at me, yawns again, and jams her bare feet into the boots she left on the floor. Her hair has dried all crazy, but she doesn’t seem to care about that. She puts her dirty clothes in the duffel bag. I open the window. She dumps the bag out and sits on the sill and looks at me, dangling her feet like a little kid.

  “Can I come back tonight?” she asks me. I shake my head. “Oh, come on now, girl. That was fun, wasn’t it? And I was nice. I didn’t take no advantages.”

  “Vee, if my mom finds you here, she’ll freak the hell out. You’re supposed to be in a foster home! You can’t just . . . run away.”

  “Yes, I can. You send me back there I’ll do it again.” Her smile fades. I see that cool distance in her eyes, the same as I saw back in Wolfhunter when she was in jail. Vee’s complicated. And I know she’s got the death of her mom to deal with, and she’s probably doing that the bad way, with drinking and drugs. My mother will absolutely kill me if I don’t tell her about Vee being here.

  But I’m still not sure I will.

  “Come back tonight,” I tell Vee. “I can wash your clothes for you, maybe.” I have no idea why I’m making that offer, but I’ve already said it and it’s too late, and Vee’s smile makes me go weak inside.

  She kisses me. It’s fast, and hot, and then she’s rolling backward out the window and springing up like a gymnast. She hits the ground running. I quickly shut the window and try to catch my breath. I feel like I have a fever.

  Someone taps on the door. I flinch and rush over and unlock it. I fling it open. “What?” I sound bitchy. I’m just scared. “I’m up!”

  It’s Mom, and she doesn’t look pleased. “You left towels all over the bathroom floor,” she says. “You know better, Lanny. Clean it up. Go. Now.”

  I was afraid that she’d seen Vee running from the house, that somehow she just kne
w, like I was wearing a neon sign or something. But it’s not that at all.

  I rush to the bathroom. It’s a wreck. Vee left shampoo bottles in a mess, wet towels on the floor. I take the towels to the laundry machine, then come back and clean up the spills. By the time I’m done it looks okay again, and I’m calmer. A little.

  “Sorry,” I mumble to Mom as I head into the kitchen. “I think I was sleepwalking.”

  “Really.”

  “Maybe I was just really tired.”

  She doesn’t buy it, not for a second.

  I told Vee to come back.

  Oh God.

  This isn’t going to work. Not at all.

  6

  GWEN

  In the morning I make it official: I write a letter, using the format approved by the state of Tennessee, to remove my kids from the Norton Independent School District, and I enroll them in the Tennessee Virtual Academy. Both Lanny and Connor seem relieved, and so am I. I’ll make arrangements to pick up the contents of their lockers later, and that’ll be it. I think about calling a real estate agent, but I know I need to think about this and talk to the kids. Decide as a family. My impulse is to move on from Stillhouse Lake, but something the kids have been angry about in the past few years is that I run from things. I do it to keep them safe, but I understand their frustration. If we’re moving this time we have to decide it together.

  Meanwhile, I’m glad the kids are safer now, but it does make my job harder. I’d planned to take off for Knoxville today and interview the mother of the missing young man I’d been hired to locate, but even though Lanny insists (of course) that she and Connor can stay by themselves while Sam’s at work, I don’t buy it. So after letting them log into their new virtual schools and get their assignments, I order them into the car with me.

  Road trip.

  They’re not thrilled, which is annoying but typical; they’ve both reached the age where anything I want or need them to do is a horrific burden, but I know that beneath that facade they’re actually okay with it. Lanny’s subdued after the weirdness this morning; she warms up once we’re in the SUV and heading out on the road—with doughnuts, of course—and commandeers the sound system to play her own driving soundtrack, which I allow because it makes life easier and my daughter actually has decent taste in music.