Stillhouse Lake

by Rachel Caine

  "Next time--" Something catches his attention, and his easy calm shifts to sudden alertness. His focus goes down the line, and he bellows out, "Cease fire! Cease fire!"

  I feel a sweep of adrenaline ping every nerve, and I go very still, assessing, but this isn't about me. Raggedly, all the percussive noise of the range dies, and people pull their weapons down, elbows in, while he walks down four stalls. There's a burly man there with a semiauto pistol. Javi orders him to clear the firearm and step away.

  "What'd I do?" the man asks in a belligerent tone. I pick up my bag, nerves still jangling, and head for the door, though I do it slowly. I realize the man hasn't done as Javi instructed; instead, he's chosen to get defensive. Not a good idea. Javi's face goes stiff, and his body language changes with it.

  "Clear that weapon and place it on the shelf, sir. Now."

  "Ain't no call for this. I know what I'm doing! Been shooting for years!"

  "Sir, I saw you turn your loaded weapon in the direction of another shooter. You know the rules. Always point the muzzle downrange. Now clear it and put it down. If you don't follow my instructions, I will remove you from the range and the police will be called. Do you understand?"

  Smiling, calm Javier Esparza is now someone else entirely, and the force of his command blasts through the room like a stun grenade. The offending shooter fumbles at his gun, gets the clip out, and throws it and the weapon down on the counter. I notice the muzzle still isn't pointed downrange.

  Javi's voice has gone clear and soft now. "Sir, I said clear your weapon."

  "I did!"

  "Step back."

  As the man stares, Javi reaches for the gun, ejects the last cartridge from the slide, and sets the bullet down on the counter beside the clip. "That's how people get killed. If you can't learn how to properly clear a weapon, you need to find another range," he says. "If you don't know how to obey a range instructor's orders, find another range. In fact, you might want to just find another range. You endanger yourself and everybody here when you ignore safety rules, do you understand?"

  The man's face turns a puffy, unhealthy red, and he balls his fists.

  Javi puts the gun back down exactly the way it had been when he picked it up, turns it downrange, and then pointedly turns it to lie on its other side. "Ejection port goes up, sir." He steps back and locks eyes with the man. Javi's wearing jeans and a blue polo shirt, and the shooter is wearing a camo shirt and old army-surplus uniform pants, but it's clear as day which one is the soldier. "I think you're done for the day, Mr. Getts. Never shoot angry."

  I've never seen a man so clearly on the edge of either outright, unthinking violence or a massive heart attack. His hand twitches, and I can see him wondering how fast he can get to his gun, load it, and start to fire. There's a heavy, sick weight to the air, and I find my hand moving the zipper slowly down on the bag I'm holding, my mind calculating the steps--just as he is--to preparing my gun to fire. I'm fast. Faster than him.

  Javier isn't armed.

  The tension shatters as one of the other people standing frozen at a shooting station takes a single step out, halfway between me and the angry guy. He's smaller than both Javi and the red-faced man, and he has sandy-blond hair that might have been close-cropped once but is growing out to fan his ears now. Lithe, not muscular. I've seen him around but don't know his name.

  "Hey now, mister, let's just gear this back," he says in an accent that doesn't sound like Tennessee to me but comes from somewhere more in the Midwest. Folksy. It's a calm, quiet sort of voice, seductively reasonable. "The range master's just doing his job, all right? And he's right. You start shooting angry, never know what could happen."

  It's amazing, watching the rage drain out of Getts, as if someone has kicked a plug loose in him. He takes a couple of deep breaths, color fading back to something like normal, and nods stiffly. "Shit," he says. "Guess I got a little ruffled there. Won't happen again."

  The other man nods back and returns to his shooting window, avoiding everyone's curious looks. He starts checking over his own pistol, which is oriented the correct way, downrange.

  "Mr. Getts, let's talk outside," Javier says, which is polite and correct, but Carl's face twists up again, and I see a vein pulse in his temple. He starts to protest and then senses the weight of eyes on him, all the other shooters waiting in silence, watching. He steps back into the booth and angrily begins shoving his kit into a bag. "Fucking power-hungry wetback," he mutters, then stalks toward the door. I pull in a breath, but Javi lays a friendly hand on my shoulder as the door slams behind him.

  "Funny how that asshole listens to the white guy before the range master," I say. All of us in here are white, with the exception of Javier. Tennessee has no shortage of people of color, but you'd never know it from the makeup of the people on the firing line.

  "Carl's a jackass, and I didn't want him in here anyway," Javi says.

  "Doesn't matter. You can't let him talk to you that way," I say, because I want to slam a fist into Carl's teeth. I know it wouldn't go well. I still want to do it.

  "He can talk any way he wants. Blessings of living in a free country." Javi sounds pleasant, still. "Doesn't mean no consequences, ma'am. He'll be getting a letter banning him from the range. Not because of what he said, but I don't trust him to be responsible around other shooters. Not only are we entitled to turn people away for unsafe and aggressive behavior, we're required to." He smiles a little. A grim, cold little smile. "And if he wants to have a word with me in the parking lot sometime later, fine. We can do that."

  "He might bring his beer buddies."

  "That'll be fun."

  "So, who was the guy that stepped up?" I jerk my head toward the man; he's already got his hearing protection on again. I'm curious, because he's not a usual range rat, or at least not during the times I tend to shoot.

  "Sam Cade." Javi shrugs. "He's okay. New guy. Kinda surprised he did that. Most people wouldn't."

  I hold out my hand. He shakes it. "Thank you, sir. You run a tight range."

  "I owe it to everybody who comes here. Be safe out there," he says, then turns back to the waiting shooters. He breaks out his drill sergeant voice again. "Range is clear! Commence fire!"

  I duck out as the thunder of bullets rattles again. The run-in between Javi and the other man has shaved a little off my good mood, but I still feel vastly elated as I leave my hearing protection on the rack outside. Fully certified. I've been thinking about it for a very long time, cautious, unsure about whether or not I dared to put my name on official records. I'd always had guns, but it had been a risk, carrying without a license. I finally felt settled well enough here that I could take the leap.

  My phone buzzes as I unlock the car, and I nearly fumble it as I open up the back to place my gear inside. "Hello?"

  "Mrs. Proctor?"

  "Ms. Proctor," I automatically correct, then glance at the caller ID. I have to suppress a groan. School administration office. It's a number with which I am already depressingly familiar.

  "I'm sorry to tell you that your daughter, Atlanta--"

  "Is in trouble," I finish for the woman on the other end. "So I guess this must be Tuesday." I lift the panel on the floor. Beneath, there's a lockbox, big enough for the gun bag, and I put it in and slam the box shut, then pull the carpet back over to conceal it.

  The woman on the other end of the call makes a disapproving sound, low in her throat. Her voice rises a notch. "It's not funny, Mrs. Proctor. The principal is going to need you to come in to have a serious discussion. This is the fourth incident in three months, and it's simply not acceptable behavior for a girl of Lanny's age!"

  Lanny is fourteen, a perfectly predictable age to be acting out, but I don't say that. I just ask, "What happened?" as I walk to the front of the Jeep and climb in. I have to leave the door open a moment to let the suffocating heat bleed out; I hadn't managed to score one of the shady spots in the range's narrow parking lot.

  "The principal would muc
h rather discuss it in person. Your daughter will need to be picked up from the office. She's been suspended from classes for a week."

  "A week? What did she do?"

  "As I said, the principal would prefer to talk face-to-face. Half an hour?"

  Half an hour doesn't give me time to take a shower and get rid of the smell of the range, but maybe that's for the best. Having a gunpowder perfume probably wouldn't hurt me in this particular situation. "Fine," I say. "I'll be there."

  I say it calmly. Most mothers, I think, would have been angry and upset, but in the great history of disasters in my life, this hardly deserves a raised eyebrow.

  As soon as I hang up, my phone buzzes with a text, and I figure it will be Lanny, trying to get her side of the story out fast before I hear the less charitable official version.

  It isn't Lanny, though, and as I crank up the Jeep, I see my son's name glowing on the screen. Connor. I swipe and read the text, which is terse and to the point: Lanny in fight. 1. It takes me a second to translate that last bit, but of course the number one equals won. I can't decide whether he's proud or frantic: proud that his sister held her own, or frantic that it might get them booted out of school again. It's a valid fear. This past year has been a brief, fragile peace between unpacking boxes and packing them again, and I don't want it to end so soon, either. The kids deserve a little peace, and a sense of stability and safety. Connor already has anxiety issues. Lanny acts out on a regular basis. None of us is whole anymore. I try not to blame myself for that, but it's hard.

  It damn sure isn't their fault.

  I text back a quick reply and put the Jeep in reverse. I've changed vehicles frequently over the past few years, from necessity, but this one . . . I love this one. I bought it cheap for cash on Craigslist, a quick and anonymous purchase, and it's just the right thing for the steep, woody terrain around the lake, and the hills that stretch up toward misty blue mountains.

  The Jeep is a fighter. It's seen hard times. The transmission needs work, the steering's a little off. But scars and all, it has survived, and it still keeps rolling.

  The symbolism isn't lost on me.

  It bucks a little as I steer down the steep hill, passing through cool pine shade and into blazing noonday sun again. The shooting range sits on an overlook, and as I turn onto the road that leads down, the lake slips gradually into view. Light shatters and scatters on the ripples and shifts of the deep blue-green water. Stillhouse Lake is a hidden gem. Used to be an expensive gated community, but with the financial crunch, the community's funds cratered, and the gates now stand permanently open, the guardhouse at the entrance empty except for spiders and the occasional raccoon. Still, the illusion of wealth lingers here: a scattering of high, fancy houses, though many of the other dwellings are more along the lines of smaller cabins now. There are boaters on the water, but it's far from crowded even in today's fine weather. The dark pines scratch at the sky as I speed past them down the narrow road, and the sense of finally being right strikes me again.

  I haven't found many places in the past few years that felt even a little safe, and certainly none that felt like . . . like home. But this place--the lake, the hills, the pines, the half-wild remoteness--eases the part of me that never really relaxes anymore. The first time I'd seen it, I'd thought, This is the place. I put no stock in past lives, but it felt like recognition. Acceptance. Destiny.

  Damn it, Lanny, I don't want to have to leave this behind so soon because you can't learn to blend. Don't do this to us.

  Gwen Proctor is the fourth identity I've had since leaving Wichita. Gina Royal lies dead in the past; I'm not that woman anymore. In fact, I can hardly recognize her now, that weak creature who'd submitted, pretended, smoothed over every ripple of trouble that rose.

  Who'd aided and abetted, however unconsciously.

  Gina's long dead, and I don't mourn her. I feel so distant that I wouldn't recognize the old me if I passed her on the street. I'm glad I've escaped a hell I had hardly even recognized when I was burning in it. Glad that I've pulled the kids out, too.

  And they, too, have reinvented themselves--even if they've been forced to. I've let them pick their own names each time we had to move on, though I've had to regretfully reject some of the more creative efforts. This time they are Connor and Atlanta--Lanny, for short. We almost never slip up and use our birth names anymore. Our prisoner names, Lanny calls them. She isn't wrong, though I loathe that my kids have to think of their early lives this way now. That they have to hate their father. He deserves that, of course, but they don't.

  Choosing their own names is all the control I can give my children as I drag them town to town, school to school, putting distance and time between us and the horrors of the past. It isn't enough. Can never be enough. Kids need security, stability, and I haven't been able to give them any of that. I don't even know if I ever can give them that.

  But I've kept them safe from the wolves, at least: the most basic and important job of a parent, to keep her offspring from being eaten by predators.

  Even the ones I can't see.

  The road glides me around the lake, past the cutoff to our house. Not the house, as I usually think of such things, but finally our house. I've grown attached. That isn't long-term smart, but I can't help it; I'm tired of running, of temporary rented addresses and new fake names and new imperfect lies. I had an opportunity: I'd been given a heads-up about this place and scored the house for cash at an incredibly poorly attended bankruptcy auction a year ago. Some financed-to-the-hilt family had built it as their rustic dream getaway, then abandoned it to squatters, and the place had been a wreck. Together, the kids and I had cleaned it, repaired it, and made it into our own. We'd painted the walls in our own colors--bold ones, in Connor's room at least. That, I thought, is a sure sign we're making it a real home: no more beige walls and rental-property bland carpets. We are here. We are staying.

  Our house, best of all, has a built-in safe room. For the sake of Connor's enthusiasm, I call it our Zombie Apocalypse Bugout Shelter, and we've fixed it up with zombie-fighting gear and signs that read NO ZOMBIE PARKING, TRESPASSERS WILL BE DISMEMBERED.

  I wince and try not to think too deeply about that. I hope--and I know it's a vain hope, really--that all Connor knows about death and dismemberment comes from watching TV shows and films. He says he doesn't remember much from the old days, when he was Brady . . . or at least, that's what he tells me when I ask. He never went back to school in Wichita after that day, so the schoolyard bullies had no chance to scream the story at him. He and Lanny went into the custody of my mother out in Maine, in a remote and peaceful place. She'd kept her computer locked up in a cabinet and used it only sparingly. The kids hadn't found out much during that year and a half; they'd been kept away from magazines and newspapers, and the only TV in the house had been under my mother's strict control.

  Still, I know the kids have found ways to dig up at least some of the details about what their father did. I would have, in their place.

  It's possible that Connor's current zombie apocalypse obsession is his cryptic way of working things out.

  Lanny's the one I really worry about. She was old enough to remember a lot . . . The accident. The arrests. The trials. The hushed and hurried conversations my mother must have had on the phone with friends and enemies and strangers.

  Lanny must remember the hate mail that poured into my mom's mailbox.

  But what I worry about most is how she remembers her father, because like it or not, believe it or not, he had been a good father to his kids, and they had loved him with their entire hearts.

  He'd never been that man, not really. Being a good father was just a mask he'd worn to hide the monster underneath. But that didn't mean the kids have forgotten how it felt to be loved by Melvin Royal. Without meaning to, I remember how warm he could seem, how safe. When he gave his attention, he gave it completely. He'd loved them, and me, and it had felt real.

  But it couldn't have been real. N
ot considering what he was. I must not have known the difference, and it makes me sick when I realize all that I got wrong.

  I slow the Jeep as another big vehicle swings around a sharp curve ahead--the Johansens. They are car-proud people; the SUV's black finish glints perfection, and there isn't even a fine film of dust. So much for off-roading. I wave, and the older couple wave back.

  I'd made a point of meeting our closest neighbors the first week we moved in, because it seemed like a good precaution to assess them early for threats, or as possible resources in an emergency. I don't count the Johansens as either. They are just . . . there. Most people just take up space anyway. The whisper comes and goes in my head, and it frightens me, because I hate remembering Melvin Royal's voice. That was nothing he'd ever said at home, ever said to me, but I'd seen the video of him saying it at the trial. He'd said it utterly casually about the women he'd torn apart.

  Mel infected me like a virus, and I have an unhealthy surety deep down that I'll never get completely well again.

  It takes a solid fifteen minutes to navigate the steep road down to the main highway, which slips in ribbon waves through the trees. Trees thin, grow shorter and sparser, and then the Jeep rolls past the rustic, sun-blighted sign that announces Norton. The top right corner of the sign is obliterated by a cluster of shotgun pellet strikes. Of course. It wouldn't be the country if drunks weren't shooting signs.

  Norton's a typical small Southern town, with old family establishments clinging on grimly next to repurposed antique stores, everyone hanging by a fragile economic thread. Chain outfits are slowly taking over. Old Navy. Starbucks. The yellow-arch scourge of McDonald's.

  The school is a single complex of three buildings built in a tight little triangle, with a shared space for athletic and arts between. I check in with the single guard on duty--armed, as is customary around here, with a handgun--in his little shack, and score a faded visitor pass before proceeding.

  The lunch bell has already sounded, and all over the grounds young people eat, laugh, and engage in flirting, bullying, teasing. Normal life. Lanny won't be among them, and if I know my son, Connor won't be, either. I have to use the intercom to state my name and business before the secretary buzzes me inside, where the smell of stale sneakers, Pine-Sol, and cafeteria food hits me in a familiar puff.