Cursed Romance

by Raven Snow

  “Keep going!” Rowen urged, pointing after the guy who was quickly disappearing into the distance. Eric did as she had told him. She got back up and followed. She tried to sprint but didn’t have much luck at it. She’d landed wrong on her arm and twisted her right ankle. She was more hobbling quickly than running. She made it around the bend just in time to see the muscle car collide with Eric’s parked four-door.

  “Hey! Eric went around to the driver’s side, narrowly avoiding being hit by the tail end of the car as it backed up. Rowen’s heart raced when she saw that, her mind’s eye flashing pictures of a funeral wherein she was the widow. The guy driving looked like he was trying to either drive around their car or ram it out of the way.

  “Be careful!” Rowen shouted at her husband as the car swerved hard to one side. She needn’t have worried. As soon as the car went off road, two of its wheels dropped right into a ditch. The engine revved. Tires spun. The car wasn’t going anywhere.

  Eric continued to the driver’s side and threw open the door. He reached in, pulling at the man inside. The guy was still hitting the gas, still trying to speed out of there. He didn’t stop until Eric had yanked him out the door. “Are you trying to get someone killed?” he demanded, holding the driver by the front of his shirt.

  Rowen hobbled to where the car was idling. Now that she was closer, she immediately recognized the driver. “I know you,” she said to the wild-eyed young man. “Marve, right?”

  “I…” Marve began. He looked from Eric to Rowen then back again, like he didn’t know how to answer that question. It was plain to see that he wanted to deny it. What could he say, though? The longer Rowen looked at the kid, the more certain she became. This was definitely Dedra’s boyfriend. His dreadlocks had been pulled back in a ponytail, but it was him.

  “We just keep running into each other, don’t we?” Rowen crossed her arms over her chest. “First we run into you at the trailer park, and now here? Is there something you want to tell us?”

  Marve’s wide eyes narrowed. He gave Eric a shove and stepped back. “No,” he snapped. “I didn’t do anything wrong. The two of you stalking me or something?”

  “We were here for an entirely different reason, actually,” said Eric. “I think you know that. We’ve been looking into Andrea’s disappearance and, for some reason, you keep on showing up in the places we look.”

  Marve averted his gaze. He staggered where he stood a little, like he felt light headed. “You’re not the cops. You can’t keep me here. Move your car so I can go.”

  “I don’t think so,” Eric shot back. “You rammed my car.”

  “That was your fault! You were blocking the way!”

  Eric shook his head. “I think we should call the cops then. That’s what you’re supposed to do in the event of an accident, right? They can decide whose fault it is.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “I’m just trying to do the right thing. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it was my fault. Either way, I should call the cops.” Eric took his phone from his pocket even though he almost certainly wasn’t getting signal out here.

  “Wait,” Marve said quickly, reaching for the phone. Eric swiped his hand away but moved the phone from his ear. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he urged.

  “Do you want to come sit down and have a chat?” asked Rowen.

  Marve frowned. He clearly wanted to do no such thing. His gaze fell on his car and Eric’s, taking in the damage there. He must have decided there weren’t many choices open to him. “Fine,” he relented.

  Rowen led the way to a log near the remains of the bonfire. Eric stayed close to Marve as they walked, making sure that he didn’t try and run for it again. “Take a seat,” said Rowen.

  Marve hesitated but did as he was told. He sat down on the log, his posture sagging a bit as Rowen and Eric took a seat on either side of him. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he complained.

  Rowen wasn’t going to argue with him about that. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s a free country, isn’t it?” Marve shot her a dirty look. “I can go where I want.”

  “Well, yeah, within reason,” said Eric. “Though, you must understand how weird it looks that you keep showing up wherever it is we happen to be looking.”

  Marve’s eyes grew large again. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said again.

  “Maybe not.” Sitting there next to Marve, she didn’t think he had the stomach for law-breaking any more severe than smoking pot or partying a bit too hard. “But it definitely seems like you’re hiding something.”

  “Like what?” asked Marve. He didn’t deny that he was hiding something. It sounded more like he was fishing for information from Eric and Rowen. He wanted to know what they suspected him of before he confessed to anything.

  “Look, we don’t want to get you into trouble,” said Eric. “We’re just trying to figure out what happened to Andrea.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “No one said you did,” Rowen assured him, quickly. “But you know they found her hand, right? They know she was murdered. My stepfather was murdered too. All I want is to catch the person who did this. I’m not going to go running to the cops with every little piece of information, not if it’s going to keep you from telling me what it is you know.” She felt more confident than ever that Marve knew something. “Just tell us, please. Do it for Andrea… or for Dedra. You’re dating, right? She must be beside herself with grief.”

  Marve didn’t say anything for a while. He looked down at the ground, his hands folded in his lap. “Don’t get the cops involved,” he said, finally.

  Rowen nodded. “We won’t… You might be better off just telling them what you know, though.”

  “Tell us,” Eric urged, speaking in a soft and gentle voice. Scaring the kid any more than they already had would just be cruel.

  “I was seeing Andrea,” Marve blurted, sagging after he had spoken, like saying that aloud had released a great deal of tension in his body all at once.

  Rowen had suspected as much. At the very least, Rowen had suspected something was going on between Andrea and Marve. Marve had been acting oddly since the first time they met. “Seeing her in what way?” she asked, looking for some clarification anyway.

  Marve raised his head and gave her a frown. “You know what way,” he said.

  Maybe it should have been obvious, but Rowen hadn’t guessed until now. “Oh,” she said. “You were romantically involved with her.”

  “It wasn’t romantic.”

  “Sexually involved with her then?” Rowen wasn’t sure that was better.

  Marve groaned. “It wasn’t like that. It was…” He didn’t have anything to say really. It was like he couldn’t find an excuse. “Fine. I guess it was kind of like that. Please don’t tell Dedra.”

  “You should tell her yourself.” Rowen couldn’t imagine her husband having an affair with one of her cousins. She was sure that she would want someone to tell her, though.

  “Why?” asked Marve. “So she can think less of Andrea? We just found out she’s dead. I don’t want Dedra to think less of her.”

  As far as reasons not to tell someone about an affair, that sounded like a pretty good one. Rowen still didn’t like it. “You should break up with Dedra.”

  “While she’s going through this?” Marve had his head in his hands. The way he spoke, it sounded like he had given all this some consideration. “I can’t just dump her while she’s grieving. That would be a lousy thing to do.”

  “Cheating in the first place was a lousy thing to do,” Eric reminded him.

  Marve looked up. “Don’t you think I know that?! I wish I hadn’t done it, but it’s not like I can take it back now.”

  “How did it start?” asked Rowen.

  “Does that matter?” asked Marve, his head back in his hands.

  “Probably.” Rowen still hadn’t been able to get a very clear picture of Andrea. She knew th
e way her parents talked about her, painting her as a good girl. She knew Dedra didn’t want to tell them about anything. She knew Andrea had probably gone to a lot of parties. That was a lot of dots that didn’t connect to make a full picture yet. “If you didn’t hurt anyone, this isn’t going to go any further. Just tell us. Please.”

  Marve didn’t say anything at first. Finally, he relented. “She started coming on to me first. I really should have known better. Dedra said she was flirty and to just ignore it.”

  “She trusted you not to flirt back,” Rowen guessed.

  Marve nodded, a look on his face like he was angry at himself for abusing her trust. “She kept touching my arm, though. She kept telling me I was handsome, the most handsome guy her sister had ever dated.”

  That sounded like flagrant flirting to Rowen. “Did you tell Dedra about what she said?”

  Marve shook his head. “No. She’d already warned me Andrea was a flirt. And… and I guess I kind of liked it.”

  “You met at a party?” asked Eric.

  “Yeah. It was at that trailer park. It was the first time we met. She must have gotten my number from her sister’s phone, because she started texting me after that.”

  “What did she text you?” asked Rowen, thinking back to the touched-up nudes she had found on Andrea’s computer.

  Marve opened his mouth to answer but closed it again, like he was thinking better of disparaging Andrea by admitting to the kind of pictures she had sent. “You know, the usual stuff.”

  “Nudes?” prompted Rowen. She didn’t think badly of Andrea for sending naked pics, even doctored ones.

  Marve hesitated but nodded. “You must have liked her a lot,” said Eric.

  To this, Marve shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I liked her fine. I liked her about as much as I liked Dedra, I guess.”

  “You were just looking for sex,” Rowen reasoned.

  Again, Marve shrugged. At least he wasn’t lying to himself. He was just living life like your average college student, Rowen supposed. She didn’t know personally, but she had heard a lot of kids floated from one sexual encounter to the next. A guy cheating on his girlfriend with her younger sister sounded like your average college drama. “We never slept together.”

  Rowen believed him when he said that. She wondered if Andrea really had the nerve to follow through with all that flirting. Someone going through all the trouble to touch up nude photos didn’t strike her as someone all that comfortable with the idea of sex. “When did you see her last?”

  “The day before yesterday.” Marve was looking at the ground again. His shoulders were sagging like he was ashamed.

  “After we had asked you if you had seen her,” Rowen gathered. Rowen couldn’t help but be a little surprised by this. “Why did you lie to us when you said you hadn’t seen her?”

  “She was sleeping off a hangover in the back room. We had partied pretty hard the night before.”

  “So, when we came to question you, Andrea was in the other room?” Eric’s voice sounded almost angry.

  Marve nodded, and Rowen felt a swell of frustration. They had been so close. That poor girl. She didn’t have to be dead right now. If they had found her then, they could have called the cops and alerted her family. She’d still be alive. “Why had she been away from home for so long?” asked Rowen.

  “We were partying a lot that week,” Marve explained. “She wanted to get out of the house more, have more independence. She’d tried to convince her folks, but they’re… they were determined to keep her under their thumb. That’s what Andrea and Dedra told me anyway. Andrea was the baby, so they were super overprotective of her. They never let her go anywhere or do anything. After she turned eighteen, she figured she should have more freedom. She didn’t, so she just sort of… took it.”

  “By running away from home?” Rowen asked.

  “Is it really running away from home if you’re eighteen?” Marve continued talking like it didn’t really matter either way. “She wasn’t planning on being away that much longer. We were just going to have some fun for a few days. Then the police got involved, and she was too afraid to go back. We thought we would wait for it to die down.”

  “You must have known it wasn’t going to die down.” Rowen couldn’t imagine they were so stupid as to think that was going to happen. “If anything, the search was only going to get more intense.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. She just kept pushing the consequences aside, I guess. She put it in the back of her mind. It wasn’t really any of my business. I stayed out of it.”

  “You didn’t,” Eric reminded him. “You lied to us when you backed up Dedra and said you didn’t remember seeing her. It became your business when she was suspected to be a missing person and the hunt started. That became doubly true after she was killed. You say you saw her the night she was probably murdered. What was going on?”

  “We were at a party.”

  “Dedra too?” asked Rowen.

  “No, she was doing homework. I didn’t have any due, so I went out with Andrea.”

  “Did she know that?” Rowen doubted she had.

  “I guess. She knew we were going to be at the same party. She was going to try and show up to it later on, but she never did. I think she fell asleep doing homework. She asked me to keep an eye on her sister before we left.” Marve groaned as if just remembering that last bit. “I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight.”

  “Were you intoxicated?” asked Eric.

  “A little bit,” Marve admitted. “That’s not how she got away from me though. We were both at the trailer park. We were dancing. She tried to rub up against me, and I stopped her. I’d thought better of the whole thing. I had a good thing with Dedra going. It felt messed up to cheat on her with Andrea. I told her we should just be friends. She got mad after that, shoved me a couple of times.”

  Rowen was getting a clearer picture of Andrea. It sounded like the poor girl had been on a bender. The whole thing had gotten out of hand when the police started looking for her. She was nervous about that and intoxicated and then, to compound matters, had just had her heart broken. “What did she do after that?”

  “I didn’t know at first,” said Marve, looking from Eric to Rowen. He met both their gazes, like he really meant this part and didn’t want them thinking differently. “That was the last time I saw her. I guess she ended up here. The party was starting to die down by then anyway. Some people were heading out here to keep it going. I figure she must have hitched a ride with someone.”

  “But you have no idea who?”

  “I came to ask Jeff.” Marve looked back in the direction of the shack. Jeff had ventured out by now. He was leaning next to the door, rolling his own cigarette. It looked like he was trying to nonchalantly watch them. “I wanted to know if he had seen anything. I want to figure out who killed her as much as you guys do.”

  “Really? It seems to me like you would have come forward to the police if you really wanted her murderers caught,” said Eric. “It also seems to me like you wouldn’t have started running when we found you. You probably wouldn’t have rammed my car, at the very least. You were pretty desperate to get away, huh?”

  “I said I wanted to figure out who murdered her. I don’t want to go down for it. I’m not crazy. I know how this might look. I mean, did the police tell you it was okay to storm up here and start forcibly questioning everyone?” Marve sat up straighter. He wasn’t going to put up with anyone accusing him.

  “Fine,” Rowen relented before her husband could say anything. “Did he have any answers for you?”

  Marve hesitated. He looked to Jeff who was lighting up his cigarette now. “No,” said Marve, after some consideration. “Not really.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Eric.

  “It means, he didn’t really have any useful information to give me.” Marve stood. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to leave.”

  “We should probably wait for the
cops to come and take a look at this accident,” said Eric, standing as well.

  “You parked where you were blocking me!” Marve snapped, his eyes wide like he hadn’t expected them to end up back on this subject. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Well, we’ll let the cops decide.”

  Rowen removed her pad and paper from her purse. She jotted her number down on it before offering both pad and paper to Marve. “There’s my number. Give us yours. We won’t call the cops but, in return, I want you to give us a call if you find anything out. Likewise, I want you to answer the phone if we try to get in contact with you.”

  Marve looked down at the pad of paper in his hands. He was holding it loosely, like it was a used piece of tissue he didn’t want to touch. “Fine,” he said, finally. He ripped the page with Rowen’s number on it and shoved it in his pocket. He jotted his number down next and handed the paper back to Rowen. “I really didn’t hurt her,” he said, spacing out each syllable so that his words carried more weight, a heavier impact. “I’m not that kind of guy.”

  Rowen knew better than most that what type of person you were didn’t matter. Everyone was capable of the unthinkable under the right kind of circumstances.

  ***

  They were done questioning Marve for now. “I’m gonna go have a word with Jeff,” said Eric, fishing his keys from his pocket. “Will you move the car so our friend here can leave?”

  Rowen took the keys and headed for the car. She walked quickly, not wanting Eric out of her sight for long. “Keep in touch,” she reminded Marve before slipping into the driver’s seat.

  “Whatever,” Marve grumbled.

  Rowen saw his lips mouth the words rather than actually hearing them. Poor kid. She really did feel sorry for him. She didn’t approve of cheating, but it did seem like he was trying to do the right thing now. That had to mean something.

  Rowen backed the car up and parked it on the side of the dirt road. She had barely gotten its wheels into the grass when a white four door flew by. The engine revved loudly. Her heart jumped into her throat and her hands tightened on the steering wheel. For a second there, she was sure another car had hit her. But, no. The body had just rocked with how fast they had flown past. Rowen considered going after them, but her nerves rooted her to the spot. She couldn’t leave Eric. She just couldn’t.