Crooked River: A Novel

by Valerie Geary

  The one who follows me is somewhere close by, but there is not enough light for her to show me the way. Like a firefly she darts in and out of sight, and even though it’s all she can do, I feel stronger just having her with me, braver knowing I’m not alone.

  She runs beside me, whispering encouragement, urging me on.

  We run faster.

  I hear the engine sounds first, like a snarling wolf, crashing through the brush behind me, chewing up the miles in between. A few seconds later a single beam of light shoots through the darkness, bouncing off tree trunks and cutting through shadows. The light chases me, coming closer and closer, growing brighter, and I know I only have a few more seconds before I am eaten alive.

  Hide.

  A word so quiet I almost miss it, thinking it’s only the night crying, only a moth brushing against my cheek, only a whisper in my head.

  Behind me, the engine revs louder, close enough now that when I glance over my shoulder I see the dark shape of Travis’s dirt bike breaking through the trees. A nightmare.

  I duck left and out of the yellow spotlight.

  The motorcycle turns, catching me in the beam again.

  Dodge right, into the dark between two pine trees, but the headlight finds me here, too.

  I run in a zigzag line, crossing in and out of the light too quickly, making it hard for him to follow me, and as I run, I look for some-place to hide. A hollow space, an oversize rock, a log big enough to tuck myself under, somewhere, anywhere to disappear.

  He shouts something, but I do not look back.

  I do not stop running.

  In front of me, the earth drops off. The world ends and, above the roaring engine, I hear water gurgling. I twist away from the headlight of the motorcycle one last time and when I am in the dark again, I run straight off the cliff.

  I hit the dirt hard, and my knees buckle. I tuck and roll and then I’m on my back, looking up at the stars. The clouds have gone, and the stars are many and bright. A rushing river is all I hear now, water crashing against stones.

  The drop wasn’t far. A few feet, maybe. More a long step down than an actual cliff, but I am below the headlight now, out of sight for at least a few seconds. Time enough.

  I roll onto my stomach and inch on elbows and knees across the damp sand toward a log that’s half buried in the dirt, half drowned in the river. I crawl over the log to the other side and scrape my knee on the rough bark. The pain is worse than when I twisted my ankle earlier, but I bite my lip and don’t scream. Thistles scratch my legs and arms and face. Blackberries tear my clothes. I burrow down into a low spot behind the log. I am hidden between weeds and rotting wood. Hidden inside darkness.

  The one who follows me spreads herself thin across the water. She is white and silver and blue and gray. She is starlight reflections and waiting. She is beautiful and bright with love.

  A yellow beam sweeps over the cliff, stretches halfway across the river. It stays steady, not moving back and forth, not searching the trees. Just stopped there at the edge of the world.

  “Ollie!”

  It’s Travis, but he sounds funny. His voice raspy, like he’s been crying.

  “Ollie! Please come out. I won’t hurt you.”

  The one who follows me dances like fire on the water.

  “It’s not what you think, Ollie,” he says. “We never meant for any of this. Please. I can explain everything. Just come on out now.”

  He waits for me, silently, but I know he’s still here because the headlight pierces the dark. Then he screams. He screams and howls and kicks rocks that clatter down the cliff and splash into the water.

  He screams, and I am torn apart. The energy he lets go makes the stars tremble, the trees shudder, makes me curl over my knees and weep without a sound. For all the things we had, and all the things we’ve lost, and all the things we’ll never be.

  He is not evil. I am not good.

  We are the same: broken and put back together again.

  If this night was different—if we were friends and not enemies, if my sister wasn’t in danger, if I had my own words—I would go and take his hand and tell him that he still has all his pieces, that just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I would tell him that the people who love us love us for always, even when we say mean things or make bad choices, even when we hurt them in the worst possible ways. Even then, they love us and keep loving us and will go on loving us forever. Love is a wide-eyed believer in second chances and impossibles, I would say, and then I would tell him to open his eyes.

  His screams have fallen silent now. The dirt bike revs, and he backs away from the edge of the cliff. The headlight grows dimmer and disappears.

  Travis is gone, and I am lost in the dark woods.

  But I am not afraid anymore.

  My mother is here with me.

  35

  sam

  Mrs. Roth shoved a broken pencil and a piece of notebook paper at me. “I want you to tell them you’re sorry.”

  I sat on my hands and turned my face away. She laid the pencil and paper in my lap.

  “I want you to tell them that life just got too hard,” she said. “That your grief for your mother overwhelmed you, your shame over what your father did was too much to bear. I want you to tell them you killed your baby sister to protect her from the evil, awful things in this world, and then you killed yourself.”

  “No.”

  “Tell them you didn’t want to be a burden, that you wanted to go and be with your mother.”

  “Go to hell.” I spat in her face.

  She drew back, wiping off the spit with her sleeve.

  Billy Roth spun away from his workbench and came at me. He struck me across the face, a single, violent blow. My head jerked. My jaw popped. Searing pain rolled through my skull, and blood rushed into my mouth.

  “Billy, don’t!” Mrs. Roth’s voice rang and rang like a distant buzzing hive. “We can’t leave any suspicious marks. We have to do it right. No mistakes this time, okay? No mistakes.”

  I tipped forward in the chair and let my head hang down, stared and stared at my so faraway feet. A drop of blood fell from my lips and splashed into my lap, onto the clean, white paper. A bright red splat of blood. My blood.

  I sat hunched over like that, like a broken doll, for another minute or so, until the jabbing pain in my jaw subsided to a dull ache and the ringing in my ears faded. Until Billy Roth grabbed a fistful of my hair and jerked me straight again. “Do what she says.”

  Mrs. Roth smiled the way a waitress might smile if she’d gotten your order wrong, with an apologetic look she doesn’t really mean. “Write it.”

  I picked up the paper and pencil. Billy let go of my hair and turned back to his work. Looking Mrs. Roth straight in the eyes and not blinking, I broke the pencil in half, crumpled the paper into a ball, and dropped everything onto the floor at her feet.

  Billy started to turn toward me again, his hand raised. Mrs. Roth pushed him back.

  “It doesn’t matter. I can do it.” She snatched up the paper and spread it flat again, then went to the workbench, took another pencil from the jar, hunched over and started to write.

  Billy stood with one hand on my shoulder, pressing me into the chair.

  I closed my eyes and imagined myself stretched out on my back in the meadow. The grass soft underneath me. The sun warm on my face. I imagined Bear whispering to the bees, and the bees whispering back. I imagined Ollie stretched out beside me.

  “Billy, honey,” Mrs. Roth said, shattering my thoughts. “Go and bring the Jeep around.”

  His hand lifted off my shoulder, and I returned to the shed and the smell of wet paint and lingering smoke and the realization that I might never see my sister again, might never be able to tell her how sorry I was for not listening, not believing. And Bear. H
e’d already lost so much. It wasn’t fair for him to lose us, too. None of this—for anyone—none of it was fucking fair.

  Mrs. Roth grabbed my arm and jerked me to my feet. She pressed the gun into my side and said, “The sooner we get there, the sooner this will all be over.”

  She started to push me forward. I dragged my feet, pressed back against her, struggled, did everything I could to keep from going out that door.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  “If you hadn’t been so nosy,” she said. “If you hadn’t insisted.”

  “I couldn’t let Bear go to prison for something he didn’t do.”

  “After what he did to my Delilah? And to Billy? To my entire family? He deserved a life sentence.”

  “All of that was an accident. A terrible, awful mistake.”

  “No, my dear. Your father made a choice. And that choice, his choice, cost us everything. He should have never been released.” Mrs. Roth squeezed my arm harder, pinching her fingers down to the bone.

  I squirmed, but that only made it worse. “She wouldn’t want you to do this.”

  She stopped trying to force me out the door. We were a few steps from the threshold now. I could feel cool air, smell pine trees and twilight dew.

  “Do you know what it’s like?” Mrs. Roth’s voice was barely a whisper. “To lose something so precious? To wake up every morning wishing you were dead, too?”

  “Please. Please don’t.”

  “I don’t really have a choice, now, do I?” She sighed and for a brief second, the gun lifted away from my ribs, but only a second, then it was right there again, cold through my shirt and unyielding.

  “You know,” she said. “I keep going back over it in my mind, trying to think of a way things could have turned out differently. Maybe if I hadn’t called Billy, insisting they come home. He told me the roads were icy, that he didn’t feel comfortable driving the pass, but I pressed him. I made him feel guilty for leaving me all alone to take care of Travis. His fever was so high, I was scared. Or maybe if we hadn’t spoiled Delilah so much. Maybe if we hadn’t agreed to have her party at that fancy water park. But you see, try as I might, I just keep coming back to your father. A selfish, stupid man who thought he could still drive after drinking a half bottle of scotch. He’s the reason my Delilah’s dead. The reason my Billy lost his way. He took everything from me. Everything. And all they gave him was a slap on the wrist. A couple of years in prison and then free to go. Just like that. Free as a bird. While my family continues to suffer.”

  She started to push me toward the door again, and I fought her as best I could, but her grip was firm on the gun. The gun. My tears made it blurry, made it disappear, but I could still feel it pressed solid against my side.

  “But now, look where we are. It’s like the universe is finding balance again,” she said. “Finally, making things right.”

  From somewhere far off came the high-pitched whine of a dirt bike, and then it was here, stopping right outside. The engine shut off.

  A few seconds later, Travis burst into the shed. He stopped just inside the doorway, looked at his mom, then at me, then at the gun. He twisted his fingers and said, “She got away.”

  And my first reaction was to smile. A twitch at the corners of my mouth, a rising, bubbling feeling inside my chest that might have turned into a laugh if I hadn’t swallowed it quickly down.

  “What?” Mrs. Roth jabbed the gun harder into my ribs.

  “She got away,” Travis repeated. “I looked and couldn’t find her. She’s gone.”

  My second reaction was to hold very still and, with only my eyes, scan the room for something I could use to protect myself. Something that would draw blood. There were screwdrivers and pliers and wrenches hanging on a Peg-Board wall. Hammers of all sizes and crowbars and long shards of metal and even a blowtorch sitting on top of the workbench. The butcher knife was there too, in the exact place Billy had left it. But all those things, even the knife, were beyond my reach.

  Mrs. Roth’s hand started to shake. “Impossible.”

  “It was dark,” Travis said. “I couldn’t see a damn thing.”

  Mrs. Roth lowered the gun so it wasn’t pressing against me anymore, but she kept her grip tight around my arm.

  “I tried,” Travis went on. “I looked all over, but there were just so many different ways she could have gone. Back toward Terrebonne. Out to the river. She could be anywhere by now.”

  Mrs. Roth shook her head. “Hush a moment. Let me think.”

  Travis stuffed his hands in his pockets and shifted back and forth on his feet, sneaking glances at me that I refused to return.

  Outside, the Jeep pulled up to the shed door. Billy honked the horn.

  Mrs. Roth sighed and shoved me back into the chair. “Don’t move.” Then she turned to Travis and said, “I’ll go find her myself. You wait here and make sure Sam stays put. We’ll figure this all out when I get back.”

  She started to move toward the door, but Travis stepped into her path. She tried to step around him, but he moved with her.

  “Travis?”

  “She’s gone, Mom. She’s gone.”

  I couldn’t see Mrs. Roth’s face from where I sat, but I saw her shoulders sag a little and her hand tightened around the gun. “You had her, didn’t you?”

  He placed his hands on Mrs. Roth’s shoulders and leaned down so their foreheads were almost touching.

  “Oh, Travis. Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “I’ll tell the detective it was me,” he said quietly. “I’ll tell them I killed Taylor. I’ll tell them I covered it up, too. You and Dad, you didn’t know anything about it. That’s what I’ll say.”

  “No,” Mrs. Roth’s voice cracked.

  “It’s going to be okay. Everything will be fine. You just tell them I’ve been losing my temper a lot lately, acting strange. Tell them I’ve been smoking and skipping work, and that you’ve been worried about me for some time now.” He let go of her shoulders, took two steps to the bookcase, and picked up the tan purse. He wiped it off with his sleeve, then gripped it tight with both hands. “My fingerprints are all over her bag. See? And my boots. They match the prints down by the river. The Jeep tracks. I’ll sign a confession. It’ll work. They’ll believe it. You just stick with our original story about how she never showed up for the interview, and everything will be fine. Tell them I must have snuck out after you went to bed. Tell them you had no idea.”

  “Travis, stop,” Mrs. Roth said. “I won’t let you do this.”

  Billy honked the horn a second time, a loud, long, persistent blast. Mrs. Roth glanced at the open door.

  “It’s going to be all right, Mom. Just let Sam go. I’ll take the blame. Please. Let her go.” He looked at me when he said this, looked at me and said, “I’m sorry. This should have never happened. We panicked. And the whole thing got so out of control. But I’m going to make it right, okay? You’ll help me?”

  I nodded, not sure what he was asking, but willing to say whatever he wanted if it meant getting out of here alive and seeing Ollie again.

  “You’ll tell them I killed her?”

  I nodded faster.

  Mrs. Roth grabbed Travis’s arm and pulled him close. “They’ll put you in jail. You’ll grow old and die in there.”

  “It’s okay. Listen, it’ll be okay. You and Dad, you’ll be fine. And Sam and Ollie, they’ll be safe, too. And I’m still a minor. Maybe they won’t be so hard on me. Or maybe I can cut a deal. Maybe they’ll—”

  “No,” Mrs. Roth said. “No! I won’t let you do this.”

  “I can’t think of any other way to fix it.”

  “I have a new plan. It’s foolproof. It’s—”

  Travis shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  He slipped from her grasp and came toward me, stretched out hi
s hand, and said, “Come on, Sam. I’ll drive you back to Zeb and Franny’s on my way to the station.”

  I stood.

  Mrs. Roth grabbed Travis’s elbow and pulled him back. “Don’t do this.”

  Travis smiled sadly at her. “It’s over, Mom. I’m done.”

  A car door opened. Boots crunched through the gravel, and then Billy came back into the shed. “Are we going or not?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he brushed past us and went straight to the sheet-draped object on the other side of the shed. He pulled on one end, sweeping off the cloth, revealing the sculpture underneath. It was beautiful and terrifying at once. Shaped delicately from a tree trunk, a girl rose like a Phoenix from a pile of tin cans and ash-colored dirt. Both of her arms were stretched to the ceiling, her head tipped back, her hair streaming gold behind her. She had two faces that looked in opposite directions. One was serene and gentle and smiling, the other grotesque, the mouth twisted open in a silent scream, tears carving lines in her cheeks. I recognized her. She was the girl in the picture standing beside the birthday cake with candles that would never go out. She was Delilah. I looked closer at the base, could see now the shape of something curled there, a sleeping child with fingers stretching bone-white through the gray, reaching and reaching for something that would always be just beyond her grasp. I turned away, dizzy and sick to my stomach.

  “I was thinking of adding a bow,” Billy said. “A blue ribbon with white polka dots. Right here.” He touched a spot at the very top of the sculpture.

  Travis pinched his lips between his teeth, grimacing.

  “Sounds lovely, dear,” Mrs. Roth said. “A nice touch.”

  “Mom, please,” Travis whispered. “Don’t let him do this.”

  Mrs. Roth gave him a sharp look and shook her head.

  “Delilah wouldn’t want this,” he said.

  Billy’s mouth twitched.

  “Travis.” Mrs. Roth’s voice was low, a warning.

  Travis clenched his fists at his side and moved toward the sculpture. “I won’t let him do this. It’s not right.”