Atone

by Beth Yarnall

“Yeah.”

  “I was worried it sounded too old-fashioned.”

  He glances over at me. “You pull it off.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We talked to the people in the shops. Showed your sister’s picture around. No one recognized her as a regular. One guy thought she looked familiar but couldn’t tell us anything about her. Maybe we’ll get lucky tonight and she’ll grab a latte or get her nails done.”

  I don’t have much hope of that. The shopping center is next to the freeway. She could’ve stopped there on her way to or from somewhere else. We could be on a wild-goose chase. But it’s time with Beau, so I’ll take it while I can.

  He parks the car across the street in the parking lot of a closed U-Haul store and cuts the engine. It’s dark where we’re parked, so it’s easy to see the lit-up shopping center. There’s some action, the usual comings and goings. We’re about a half hour earlier than the time stamp on Marie’s photo. But that doesn’t mean anything. That night could’ve been the only night she was here.

  “Are you hungry?” he asks, reaching into the backseat. “I brought sandwiches.” He hands me a plastic bag. “They’re both the same. Turkey and cheese on sourdough.”

  “You cooked for me?”

  “I made sandwiches.”

  “That’s cooking, in my book.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t get too excited.”

  “Do you cook?”

  “No, but I’m trying to learn. What about you?”

  “Pretty much every day. Eating out is expensive and it’s a habit. I have to vary my routine, so no regular takeout and definitely no delivery.” I take a bite of sandwich. “This is good. It’s spicy.”

  “Chipotle mayo. Cora smears it on everything. Makes things taste less bland. I’m glad you like it.”

  “What’s your favorite food?”

  “Pizza. What’s yours?”

  “Chinese. Specifically, Kung Pao chicken. I’ve gotten pretty good at cooking in a wok.”

  “Yeah? Maybe you can teach me how.”

  “I’d love to.”

  It’s a worthless offer. This is a future thing that requires planning. Future and planning are two words I don’t have much association with, and Beau knows it. This whole conversation is make-believe. We might as well be talking about moving in together or where we’ll vacation next summer. We ride out the fantasy anyway. It’s a very nice fantasy.

  “You’re really good at finding needles in Internet haystacks. Do you like it?” I ask.

  “Surprisingly, yeah. I’m not good with people like Cora. I prefer the behind-the-scenes work where I don’t have to make conversation or have people staring at me, wondering where they know me from.”

  “Awkward.”

  “Very awkward.”

  “It’ll get better. People will move on to the next Internet sensation and forget all about you.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Will you do me a favor?”

  He glances unexpectedly at me. “Sure?”

  “I need you to go somewhere with me and I want you to promise you won’t reject it without giving it a try.”

  “Sounds dirty.”

  “It’s not. The dirty part can come later…pun intended.”

  He barks out a laugh. “Well, when you put it like that…”

  Almost three hours later the shops are closing up without a Marie sighting. I knew this was a lost cause, but I keep my thoughts to myself. It takes Beau another fifteen minutes to call it a night. I remind him of the favor he promised me and give him directions on how to get there. I’m not sure what his reaction is going to be. If he’s going to think this is stupid and try to blow it off or give it a try. I’m not even sure it will do him any good, but I feel like he needs this.

  We pull into the parking lot of a cemetery. I can feel it in Beau the moment he realizes what this is all about. The air around him vibrates with anger and the weightier emotion of grief. He turns the car off and sits back in his seat. I bet he’s regretting that promise he made me.

  I get out of the car and walk through the gate. Behind me a car door slams and reluctant footsteps approach. I use the light of my phone to check the info I jotted down. Three more rows up, on the left. I turn off the road and onto the thick grass. It’s so quiet here at night. In the distance, a dog barks. A balloon bats against a tombstone pushed by the breeze that makes the trees whoosh above us. There’s no other sound except the soft crunch of our footfalls. I stop at a grave with a simple mixed bouquet stuck into a buried vase.

  Cassandra’s grave.

  Beau stops a few markers away. When I turn to him, he’s looking off into the distance, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched and hard. His jaw works with all of the things he’s trying not to say. He won’t look at the grave or at me. I walk forward past the headstone to a little bench under a tree some ways away. Beau doesn’t follow. I sit so I’m looking away from him over the graveyard. Moonlight and silence make the scene eerily serene. I close my eyes and hope Beau accepts my gift. It might be the only thing I can give him—peace.

  Chapter 17

  Beau

  I know why Vera brought me here, what she’s hoping to accomplish. I’m supposed to find closure. My eyes won’t focus through the anger and I can barely breathe for the fisting in my chest. Cassandra lays buried feet from me. This is the closest I’ve been to her since that night I kissed her goodbye. I can’t reconcile these two things. This finality doesn’t exist in my mind. Logically I know she’s dead, but until now the reality of it never really hit.

  I make myself walk closer until I’m standing at her feet. Her headstone pronounces her a cherished daughter, sister, friend. She was more than that, and, at times, less. I’m not supposed to be pissed at her, but I am. She wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t perfect, but what we shared was, in its way. Until she ruined it. I hadn’t forgiven her when she died. We were trying to work things out. The sex was easy and a way we could try to reconnect. But even as I kissed her goodbye I doubted I could get over what she’d done.

  I didn’t tell her that. I was going to the next time I saw her. I couldn’t get the thought of her and my best friend, Dylan, out of my head. There are some things you just can’t work past, I guess.

  Dylan had a thing for her the whole time Cassandra and I went out. He didn’t think I knew about it, but I did. What was I supposed to do? Give her up to him? I shouldn’t have been surprised he’d make a move the minute we broke up, but I was. Cassandra and I had a terrible fight over it. I said some things I can’t ever take back. I regret that.

  Dylan sat in the courtroom during my trial periodically. I knew he was there, but I never acknowledged him. He even tried to visit me in prison a few times. I left his name on the visitor’s list just to fuck with him. As soon as I saw him I turned around and walked right back out. I let him believe there was a chance I’d forgive him one of those times. There wasn’t. It was stupid and childish, but it was the only payback I could accomplish from prison besides tossing his letters in the trash unopened. He finally got the message and stopped the letters and visits.

  I hope the guilt ate up his gut every single day.

  That’s an ugly thought to have while standing over the grave of the woman who put herself between us. Whether it was intentional or not, the result was the same. I lost my best friend and then I lost the only woman I ever loved within months of each other.

  And then I lost my freedom.

  I kneel in the damp grass. The knees of my jeans are soaked in a matter of minutes, but I don’t care. I want to touch her one more time. I want to tell her I’m sorry. There is only the hard, cold granite of her headstone to talk to and six feet of earth between us to touch. The grass is unexpectedly cold against my cheek and the wetness seeps into the front of my clothes all the way to my skin. The blades of the grass poke between my fingers as her hair might if I could touch her. I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of the earth. It’s nothing like
how she used to smell. I can’t seem to recall her scent exactly, but I know if I were to smell it again I’d recognize it.

  I blame her for dying.

  If she hadn’t died I wouldn’t have gone to prison and lost six years of my life. I wouldn’t be in the shit storm I’m in, trying to rebuild my life. That’s some fucked-up shit right there. I hate myself for feeling this way. It’s so wrong, but I can’t seem to make myself stop. I know her death wasn’t her fault. I know it, but that doesn’t stop me from blaming her and only adds to the rage.

  So many of my memories of her are contaminated by anger and grief. Even the good ones. Especially the good ones. I can’t seem to separate them. They’re all tainted by what came after. I’m sorry about that most of all. I’m failing her in that way. She deserves better than me. She deserves someone like Dylan, who probably put those fucking flowers on her grave and visits her on a regular basis. She doesn’t deserve me, who had to be tricked into coming.

  All of these thoughts and more pour out of me and into the earth beneath me. I’m leaving everything here because I won’t ever come back. I won’t jab a bunch of flowers into the vase next to Dylan’s. I won’t show up on her birthday or on the anniversary of her death. I won’t stand at the end of her grave, trying to remember what she sounded like or how she smelled.

  I rise slowly and look for Vera. She still sits on a bench a few feet away with her back to me, to give me privacy. I head back to the car alone. After a few moments I hear her behind me. We climb into the car and drive away. We don’t speak on the way back to her motel. There’s nothing to say. I wonder at her thoughts the way I wonder a lot of things about her—futilely.

  She opens the door of her new room and closes and locks it behind us. Her hands shake as she unbuttons my shirt, her focus on the task. I stand still and let her strip me. I can’t seem to find the strength to do it myself. She drops to her knees, unlaces my shoes, and slips them off. The socks come next, then the pants. She takes my hand and leads me to the bathroom, where she turns on the shower. When it’s hot, she pushes me in and closes the curtain. I stand under the spray, letting it wash away the chill from the damp ground. It washes away other things too.

  The curtain reopens and Vera steps in wearing a bra and panties. She pours shampoo into her hand and motions for me to lean down. Her hands are firm and unhurried as she washes my hair, then the rest of me. The numbness eases with each stroke of the washcloth. By the time she nudges me under the spray to rinse I’m feeling almost like myself again.

  She reaches for the knob to turn the water off, but I stop her. Wrapping my arms around her from behind, I hold on, my face buried in her shoulder. There’s so much I can’t say. Not because I’m ashamed, but because I simply don’t have the words. If I were a poet or an artist I might be able to express myself in some tangible way. My hands begin to rove in the only way I know to show what I can’t say. I cup her breasts in both hands, drawing a gasp from her. Her head drops back against my shoulder. I work the bra clasp and in seconds my hands are full of her bare flesh. My dick pulses. I need it now. Hard and fast.

  I slide a hand down between her legs. Slipping one, then two fingers inside her wet heat, I can feel how she wants me too. Her hips move against my hand. She reaches up and wraps her arms around my neck. The view down her body is magnificent. Kissing and biting her neck, I bring her to the brink of orgasm. I need to be inside her so bad I rip the fabric separating us. She turns in my arms and I lift her so her back presses against the tile. Her legs grip my waist. She pulls me down for a kiss so desperate it steals my breath. I didn’t imagine she could need me as badly as I need her right now.

  She tears her mouth from mine. “Inside me. Now.”

  “Condom.”

  “Told you. Don’t need it.”

  “Sure?”

  She nods. That’s all the encouragement I need.

  Gripping my dick, I find her entrance and flex my hips up and into her. The sensation is almost overwhelming. Something urgent and primal takes over. My thrusts are deep and punishing. She urges me on with her cries. The sound of the water is drowned out by the harsh slap of flesh on flesh. Her fingernails dig into my shoulders, setting something off inside me. I come at her with renewed focus. Coming is my only thought. I’m rough. Maybe too rough. She digs her heels into my back and bites my chest. I go off, slamming into her one last time. I come hard. My knees nearly buckle at the intensity of it.

  She shoves her hand between her legs and rubs. She’s almost there with me. I replace her hand with mine, bending down to take her nipple in my mouth. She grips the back of my head. Her fist pulls my hair. She jerks and comes on a loud moan. I push into her, using my pelvis to press against her clit. The sound she makes is somewhere between a cry and a groan.

  Her head drops back against the tile and the look she gives me causes my stomach to dip like I’m on a rollercoaster. A strand of her hair drips water into her eyelashes. I smooth it away, tracing the edge of her face with my finger. It’s such a delicate face, in contrast to her personality. I don’t know what to do with her in moments like this. There’s so much to say, but the words don’t form. She’s more expressive when she’s quiet than I am talking all day long. We haven’t spoken since I pulled in to the cemetery parking lot, and yet it feels like we’ve talked nonstop.

  I reluctantly pull out of her and help her find her feet. We’re both a little shaky. I turn off the water and grab a towel. I dry her with the same care that she used to wash me, wrapping the towel around her when I’m done. I give myself a quick dry and help her climb out of the tub. The bathroom is so steamy I can hardly see where the door is. We make our way into the bedroom and that’s when I see it. A tattoo on her shoulder. It’s the same tattoo Marie posted a drawing of on her Tumblr. I was too drunk to have seen it before, or else she positioned her body so I wouldn’t see it, not even in the shower just now.

  Something about it pokes at me.

  She discards her towel and climbs into bed. I stop a few feet into the room, my memory snagging on Marie’s first mention of the tattoo and Vera’s extreme reaction. The thought of it made her physically ill. And then again when Marie posted a photo of the drawing. She went totally white, scaring the shit out of me again. What does the tattoo mean and why does Vera have it? It’s more than just a way for that asshole Javier to mark the girls he’s been with. It means something. Something bad.

  “What’s wrong?” Vera asks.

  What does your tattoo mean? sits on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t say it.

  “Nothing,” I answer instead, taking off my towel and climbing into bed.

  “Are you sure? You had a look just now.”

  “It was seeing you naked.”

  “And that confuses you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  I pull her in the way she likes—her back to my front. I can’t see the tattoo from here. She’s lying on it. Clever girl. I shouldn’t think that it’s on purpose. I shouldn’t and yet I do. I want a better look at it, but if I ask to see it up close she might react the way she did at the office. I don’t want to do anything to upset her. There are other ways I could find out about it. I have Marie’s drawing and the Internet. It would be a simple Google image search. If I go looking for information behind her back, how will Vera react? Not well, probably. We have an unspoken pact about not prying into each other’s past lives.

  I can’t help it. It’s driving me insane. I have to know.

  “What does your tattoo mean?”

  Her whole body goes bow tight. I’m not even sure she’s breathing. The silence in the room reverberates in my ears. Other than the holes where her piercings were, it’s the only mark on her. That has to have meaning. I’m taking a chance here that we’ve come far enough for her to trust me with what might be her biggest secret yet. Bigger than learning she’s not who she claims to be and learning her real name. I may have seriously fucked this up by not keeping my damn mouth shut.

  She rolls on
to her stomach, her face buried in her pillow. I can see the tattoo very clearly now. I trace around the heart shape. Up close, I notice that what I thought was just an intricate design is really a series of numbers. No, a date. And a number. The key is in the shape of the letter J. I get that the J part is for Javier, but what do the numbers mean?

  She turns her face toward me. That look from the diner is back. I now recognize it as the place in her head where she deals with things that hurt. It’s defensive, protecting who she is as a person from what’s about to happen. I hate it. I wish I’d never opened my mouth. Why did I have to fucking pry? Why did I choose causing her pain over avid curiosity? I want to take the question back, but it’s too late.

  “September twenty-nine is the day I became his. Sixteen is my preferred number. My chosen number. The order in which I was acquired. It’s a way for him to keep track of his inventory. Girls with this tattoo sell for the highest price.”

  I can’t process what she’s telling me. I know all the words, but they don’t seem to fit in my brain.

  She comes up on her forearms and leans in until our noses nearly touch. Her gaze is hot and challenging on mine. Figure it out, it dares. Don’t make me say it.

  I can’t get my jaw to work.

  “He sold my virginity to a Taiwanese businessman who had the highest bid.” Her voice isn’t hers. Neither is the expression on her face. “Men paid hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars to fuck me.”

  My body burns with a fevered mixture of anger, fear, revulsion, and revenge. I bleed for her. I want to kill for her. Mostly I want to stuff the words back into her mouth and make them not exist or pull them all out of her so that she doesn’t have to carry them around anymore.

  “What number am I to you?”

  Her question confuses me.

  “How much am I worth to you?”

  She’s not making any sense.

  I sit up and glance around the room. It feels like forever ago we were in the shower. How did we get here? When I look back at her she’s watching me over her shoulder with the tattoo, taunting me with it. Her smile is far from polite. It’s almost predatory. This is another test.