Fatigue overwhelmed her as she pulled out her mother’s old jeans and leggings, blouses and sweaters. The sofa was damp, and she spread dry clothes as a base to lie on, then piled as many pieces on top of her as she could. Curling fetal, she pressed a sweater to her nose. It smelled of mold. Good. She liked things that told it straight.
It was dark when she woke. She checked the time on her cell. Nearly eight. Isaac had given her the burner phone only yesterday, hoping Evangeline would turn into the kind of animal who’d be lured by the possibility of family, who’d submit to his ridiculous rules: show up for dinner, call to let him know where she was. It made her laugh how he’d presented her with a drug-dealer phone in an effort to domesticate her, how she had almost bought into his promises and lies.
Still, she shouldn’t have called him a fucking bastard. She regretted that now.
When she’d walked into the kitchen a few hours back, he’d been perched at the table like a vulture on a dead branch. Her newspaper clippings and Jonah’s bracelet were spread before him as if they were carrion he planned to digest. This man she had trusted—had so stupidly, stupidly trusted—had invaded her room and clawed through its darkest corners.
In this dismal place, it didn’t matter what happened after that. Just another scene to be forgotten. Evangeline studied what had once been her home, a place where, one spring evening not all that long back, Viv had looked up from her dinner like she was seeing something in her daughter that would make a mother want to stick around.
Evangeline had been wrong about that. Her mother had seen nothing of the sort, and the skillet she’d used back then was tossed aside, half buried in the mud. There was nothing here but rain and ruin, a winter’s coming rot on a cool fall night.
She was shaking in the cold and wet. None of this could be good for the baby, so she forced herself to go over what had happened with Isaac. She needed to know if there was anything to be salvaged with him, because—she would admit it—she wanted to go back to the bed and clothes, to the food and Rufus, even to the man, even after what he had done. She had never trusted him anyway. Every adult she’d ever known had snooped through her stuff.
First, she had stopped at the stores, and that had put her behind. When she got home, she’d walked straight through the mudroom into the kitchen without hanging her coat. Isaac was always in his office this time of day, and she planned to sneak in and transfer the items from her pockets to a cluttered back corner of the fridge. Later, when Isaac was there, she’d dig around, “find” them, say, “Hey, I’ve got an idea.”
But Isaac sat stiff-backed at the kitchen table, and he looked as if . . . She stopped. She hadn’t seen his face, had she? She’d seen the clippings and the bracelet. In the split second before she caught his expression, she played out what would happen next. He would be in a rage. He would kick her out for lying to him, for being involved with his son’s killer, maybe responsible somehow.
She had whirled and retreated. And even as he said, “Evangeline. Please,” she slammed out of the mudroom. She was nearly to the garage when he made it to the back door and yelled, “Please! I want to talk to you.”
And what had she done? She’d grabbed the jar of capers and smashed it on the concrete pad by the gate, screaming, “Fucking bastard! You’re just a fucking bastard!”
And then she had run and run, her legs scissoring, her new backpack pummeling. She ran down the long drive, bounded over roots, dodged vines. She ran past house after house, everything spooling out behind her, the weeks and months of trying to live any way she could, the fear of being caught as she wandered strangers’ halls or darted out the backs of stores, the eyes that landed with hunger or pity or disgust, that turned her limbs and breasts into meat to be judged. The boys. The two dead boys. Could she ever run away from all that?
She turned onto a road end where she knew there was a trail. And when, finally, she was hidden in the trees and dense brush, when she was certain no one else was around, she stumbled to a stop, bent over heaving, and puked.
Running like that hadn’t exactly been her finest moment. But she’d had worse. She wasn’t going to give herself shit over it. Evangeline cast a final glance at the trailer. Her gaze lingered on the slimy remains of petunias, and she pictured her mother coming home puffed up and proud, plunking the pot by the front step. The woman had stood back admiring, then said, “You’ve got to give it to me. If I know anything, it’s how to make a place look nice.” Even then, Evangeline’s heart broke a little—the red close-out sticker on the cheap plastic pot, the flowers thin and sagging.
She turned away from her mother’s shadow, hoisted her pack, and headed toward town. The pizza place closed early these days, and when they did, they tossed their leftover slices in the dumpster in back. After that, she knew a dry place she might go where she could think things through. She could stay the night as long as she was out in the morning, before six thirty or so.
* * *
—
SHE HADN’T HAD TO DIG AROUND THE TRASH. The boy with the slices noticed her loitering nearby and offered them to her, easy as that. Now her belly was full and she was trudging up another dark road, deciding what she’d do if she confronted a locked door. Just then, a truck whizzed by, so close she felt the pull of its draft. Her eyes shot to where it must be cresting the hill. Her breath hitched. The road was empty, just a lone deer crossing, one halting step at a time.
For a second, she thought Jonah had been in that truck. Not his ghost—the boy himself. She knew it couldn’t be him, but it felt like a confusion of time, a past that had managed to catch up with her. She’d been sensing him near all week. Yesterday, she walked by the stairwell door and the scent of his aftershave stopped her dead.
She stared at the doe, half thinking the truck would reappear, and realized she was on the very road she’d traveled with Jonah when he took her to the pond.
* * *
—
AFTER THE NIGHT WITH DANIEL, Evangeline had sworn off the park. But by the next afternoon, she was stomping around the mobile home, slamming its one hollow door. None of this was terribly rewarding as she was the only person who heard. The whole thing was ridiculous anyway—why should she be the one banished?—and she headed to the park in the early evening. Though the sky had softened to a cottony blue, it did nothing to soothe her mood. By then, she was angling for a run-in with Daniel. She would stare him right in the eyes. She would make him blink first.
But when the trees of the park came into view, jagged and dark against the setting sun, her pace slowed and her stomach began to churn. She was about to turn back when a navy pickup cruised through the lot, a lone driver at the wheel. It had to be Jonah. He’d probably talked to Daniel and figured he deserved a stab at her too—his whole shy-boy act phony as hell. He made a loop, and as he was coming around again, she stepped into view. He pulled up beside her.
“You looking for me?” she said.
She must have sounded angry, because alarm lit his face. “No. I just—” He stopped, took a breath like he’d been running.
“Just what?” she snapped, because to hell with whether she sounded angry, to hell with all of them.
When his eyes caught hers, they shot away, but he kept flicking glances at her. He gulped and said, “I just liked talking with you the other day is all.” He released a breath, pleased with himself for spitting it out there.
She let her eyes linger on him, knowing it was a torture. He couldn’t manage his gaze, kept shifting in his seat, and the power of making a boy squirm like that aroused her a little. She smiled and leaned against the driver’s-side door.
“Yeah? That why you’re here? To talk?” Now that she was close, she smelled something musky and deliberate, like aftershave. The awkwardness of it made it touching rather than sleazy, and again she felt she knew him, believed him a species altogether different from Daniel.
“I brought y
ou something,” he said. “But I don’t want to piss you off.”
“Why would you bring something to piss me off?”
“I wouldn’t, but you seem kind of pissed off already.”
She laughed. “Maybe I am. But not at you. Look, why don’t you park that thing.”
He pulled into a spot, hopped out, and stood stiffly before her. “Sorry I didn’t bring any beer.”
She frowned at him. “What makes you think I expect beer?”
He stared down at his scuffed leather boots. Some of the stitching was missing on one, the sole a little floppy. He must have seen Evangeline noticing, because he re-angled his feet in a strange way, as if to hide it. She was hardly one to care about such things—her flip-flops and shorts had seen better days—but she wondered if he understood how odd he looked wearing those work boots in summer with baggy knee-length shorts and an old-man work shirt. On a different boy, it might have had a don’t-give-a-fuck edge, but on Jonah it just looked poor.
“I’m not good at this,” he said under his breath.
She touched his arm, and his entire body jerked, a violent spasm as if waking from a dream of falling. “Sorry,” he said again.
The poor boy looked so miserable, she said, “Come on,” and started toward the cliff.
“Wait.” He reached back into the truck and lifted out a plastic shopping bag with something heavy inside. He followed a few steps behind her, cradling the thing as if to keep it level. When they arrived at her spot, Jonah lowered it to the table, his expression anxious and excited.
“Come here first, okay?” she said, motioning to the edge. He went with her, and they leaned against a metal rail that kept them from tumbling. The sun was setting, turning the Sound into its own sky of reflected light. The breeze carried the scent of the sea and pine and blackberries even as it lifted away their own summer ripeness. The day had been warm and, as usual, she wasn’t prepared for how quickly the evening cooled now that fall was approaching. She leaned into Jonah, and while he didn’t resist, while she thought she might have heard a small moan of pleasure, his hands remained stiff on the rail. She straightened. “Can I see it now?”
Even in the pink light of the evening, she could tell how fiercely he blushed. “It’s kinda stupid,” he said, but he nearly ran to the table. He slid the thing out with such tender care he could have been a doctor delivering a baby.
He held it before her, a large glass jar with something inside.
She leaned toward it. “What’s in there?”
He lifted it to the last glimmers of sun. Holes had been punched in the lid, and now she could see gravel and moss, water and twigs, the quivering of a large leaf.
“It’s a frog,” he said. “A tiny little guy. Hardly an inch.”
“A frog?”
“The other night you kept pointing out the different birds, the way the squirrels here are so small and black. You said you loved the way the frogs are always singing along the trails and wondered where they live. This one’s being quiet now, but he can really croak for a little guy.” His hand twitched upward as if he wanted to reach out, touch her. “I know you want a dog, but maybe he could be a kind of pet.”
Had she really said all those things? It sounded like her; beer often turned her sentimental. She kissed his cheek like she had the other night, wrapped her arm through his, and said, “You got a flashlight? I’d like to get a better look.”
Back in the truck, Jonah pulled a fleece throw from behind the seat and settled it around her, then dug a flashlight from his glove box and focused it on the jar. A translucent flash of green dove under a leaf. With only darkness outside the windows, the frog’s home became the most real thing in the world, a fairyland of delicate green tendrils and water-smoothed pebbles, a shelter of broken leaves, a minuscule pond from which tiny nostrils and bulging eyes peeked. The creature jumped, and Jonah almost dropped the jar. The frog landed on the largest twig, its spatulate toes gripping and releasing.
Evangeline studied it a long while, breathing in the boyish silliness of Jonah’s scent, then turned her gaze to him. He kept his eyes on the frog, too shy to meet her eyes at this close range. Thin-chested and pale, he had lush dark eyelashes and a rash of razor acne on his chin.
“I like your present,” she said. “It’s magical. I mean, did you see those freaky feet?” She held the jar up, her face close, while Jonah angled the light so as not to hurt her eyes. “I love it,” she said, setting it in her lap. “I do. But how would you feel if we took it back home, its home, and let it go?”
He let out a breath as if he’d been holding it. “I’m so glad you said that!” He was nearly laughing. “I’ve been feeling terrible ever since I put him in there.”
He drove her to a little pond off a gravel road, about a mile from the park. Together they tromped through the tall grasses toward the water’s edge. There was a moment, wading through that dark undergrowth, Jonah leading the way, when her heart started pounding, a darkness closing in. She was about to wheel and run when Jonah jolted to a stop and turned to her. “You okay? Do you want to go back?” It was as if her fear had risen in him.
She took a breath. “No. I’m just being weird.”
“You’re sure, because—”
“No. I’m good. Really. We’re almost there.”
* * *
—
THE DEER HAD FINALLY MADE IT ACROSS THE ROAD. The pond couldn’t be far away, and as she crested the hill, she saw the Wild Habitat sign. She and Jonah had walked that last stretch, moss and ferns squishing under their feet, and knelt together at the pond’s damp edge. When she unscrewed the lid, the frog peered out, not moving. They were debating whether they would have to dump him when they saw the jar was empty.
Now, on this cold, wet night, Evangeline swept a hand over her belly and stared up a path where on one late-summer evening, the stealth of a frog’s disappearance—a creature here, then gone—had arrived as one of many small miracles.
23
Day of My Death
Cold is seeping around my window, but the room is filling with the tang of warm mud and wet moss, with the promise of a summer-evening breeze. When I close my eyes, there’s Red and the little frog at the edge of that night pond.
I try to go further back, but my mind’s not having it. Even my heart won’t budge. I’m trying to discover when I broke, when something cracked in me. And that night at the pond sure as hell wasn’t it. If anything, for one blissful moment I felt healed. And maybe that’s reason enough to follow this lead. So I listen, and soon I hear Red’s breath beneath a chorus of crickets.
We let the frog go and walked back to the truck. I felt okay. I know that sounds like a small thing, but it wasn’t. I’d never felt okay with a girl before. Not sure I’d felt normal with anyone since Dad died. Maybe never. So being all right with a girl—I don’t mean brilliant or good-looking or funny, just okay—was the biggest, most freeing sensation in the world. As we pressed through the tall grasses, her leg swishing against mine, I wasn’t worried about my wimpy chest or what I should say. I didn’t beat myself up for being weird. I was truly okay.
When we were back in the truck, I drove out the gravel road. At the street, I pulled over, not knowing where to head. We were in my neighborhood. If she looked a little to the left, she’d have seen my house. It was like most others on the block, a small one-story on a decent-size lot. Nells’s bike lay abandoned on the lawn, but at least our yard wasn’t cluttered with plastic kid toys like most of our neighbors’. Mom had cut next winter’s wood and stacked it under the eaves, and for some reason that made me proud. I guess there wasn’t much to be proud of. It wasn’t a poor-trash neighborhood, but it wasn’t far off either, especially with the hoarder down the block and the place with the moss-swayed roof, the one that had new tenants every couple of months.
It would’ve seemed like any other block if it wasn’t
for Mr. Balch’s house. That big old Victorian sat proud on those acres like royalty sneering down on the peons, making everything else look cheap and sad. With the tall firs, you couldn’t see much, but Red was curious, twisting around, trying to get a fix on it. Kitchen lights shone through the trees, and parts of its chimneys were visible between the branches.
“Who lives there?”
“You remember Daniel? The guy with me the other night?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s where he lives.”
“Shit.”
“They’re not rich. It was abandoned when they bought it. Kind of a mess, really.”
“Rich enough.”
She sounded impressed, and bam, like that I wasn’t okay. I was stupid and scrawny and poor and glad she didn’t ask where I lived, because now I noticed how terrible our lawn looked, the grass rangy and full of dandelions gone to seed. The boy who lived there was obviously one lazy piece of shit.
“I better take you home,” I said.
“The park’s okay.”
“Don’t your parents worry?”
She shrugged. “Don’t have a dad, and my mom, she doesn’t much care where I am.”
“I’m sure she cares. It’s no problem to get you home, seriously.”
She stiffened. “This really isn’t your business. Just drop me at the park. Can you do that?”
I said sure, I could do that. We didn’t talk much as we drove back, just awkward stuff about how strange it was that it was dark already. I couldn’t believe how quickly everything had changed.
What Comes After Page 10
