by Mary Logue
Even if her mom came home before Meg made it back, she would have a super good excuse. If she could tell her mother the name of the drug guy that had given Krista the meth, Meg didn’t even care if she was grounded for a year. It would be worth it.
Maybe then her life would start to go back to what it had once been. Maybe she could talk to Curt again without feeling this huge lump of guilt rising up in her throat to choke her.
She called Jared’s number before she left. His mother answered. “Hi, Mrs. Ecklund. This is Meg Watkins again. I forgot to tell Jared an important thing about that homework. It won’t take a second. Could I talk to him?”
Jared came on the phone. “What?”
“I got the truck. I’ll be there in about ten minutes. Why don’t you try to get outside and meet me by the trees at the end of your driveway.”
“Okay. I can do that. Thanks.”
“Good. I’ll see you.”
The old Ford pickup was parked in the shadow of the barn. It still had a load of hay in the back that Rich used for bedding for the pheasants. Meg climbed into the truck. She had learned how to drive this truck on field roads, she should be able to manage it on the paved county roads.
When she turned the key in the starter, the engine chugged and whined. No one had driven the truck in a while. She tried it again, pumped the gas pedal a couple times, careful not to flood it. The engine caught in a roar.
CHAPTER 15
5:30 p.m.
When Roger got home, he found Emily stretched out on the couch with the newspaper on her lap. At first he thought she was sleeping. Then he saw she had a pencil in her hand. She was doing one of those Japanese number games. She said they calmed her down. Said she couldn’t think of anything else when she was doing them. Sushi was the word that first came to his mind, but that wasn’t right. Sudoku.
Roger had tried to work one of them, but all he ended up with was too many numbers in a bunch of boxes and nothing for sure. Sudoku was just plain frustrating.
“What do you want for dinner?” Emily asked as he stood in front of her. She didn’t even bother to look up. “I’m going out for a bit.”
That got her attention. She lifted her head and he could see that she had been crying again. The ravages of tears turned her face red and left streaks on her cheeks. “But you just got home.”
“I need a part for the tractor.”
“At this time?”
“Emily, don’t fuss.”
She put down the paper. “Don’t you dare tell me not to fuss. What’s going on, Roger?” “Nothing.”
“Where did you go before?”
There was really no reason to lie about where he had been. “I went to the sheriff’s office.”
“Oh, Roger.” She sat up and folded the paper. “Do they know anything? What did you find out?”
“Why do you think I found out anything?”
“I can see it on your face. Tell me.”
“It’s probably nothing.”
“They know who gave Krista that horrible drug?” “Not for sure. They’ve got some kind of lead. I don’t know.” He turned and tried to leave the room. “I’ll be back in a while.” “I’m coming with you.” “To the hardware store?”
She stood up and grabbed his arm, holding it tight with her firm grip. “Don’t even try to pull that on me, Roger. I know you better than that. If you’re going to find this guy, I’m going with you.”
“I can’t stop you.”
“That’s right. Let me just tell Tammy that we’ll be back in a while.” She went upstairs to talk to their other daughter. Now, their only daughter.
Roger could hardly think of how hard this was on Tammy. She went up and down, crying, then so angry. He knew the feeling. She wanted to blame someone for what had happened to her sister. She wanted to get revenge. He did too.
Roger thought of leaving without Emily. The truck was parked right outside the house. He could be gone before she
got downstairs. But then he decided that she deserved to be in on whatever happened.
This guy was going down one way or another.
***
6 p.m.
Jared managed to sneak out of the house when his mother was watching TV with Davy. In his stocking feet, he slipped out the side door and went around the back, then cut into the neighbor’s yard, staying low until he made it to the trees. He tucked himself into the grove of cedar trees by the mailbox to wait for Meg.
He saw this old truck barreling down the road and stepped out of the trees. Meg rolled to a stop and he jumped in.
When he got into the cab with her, she sniffed. He wondered if he was still giving off the smell of meth. His mother had told him he smelled like vinegar. He knew what she was talking about although he had always thought the smell was ranker than that, more like battery acid.
Jared couldn’t believe how out of shape he was. Even that short walk took it out of him. He slumped against the car door.
“You okay?” she asked, slowing down.
“Don’t worry about me. Just get out of here.” He waved at her to get going.
“Calm down.”
Jared gave a snort. “I wish I could.”
Meg put the truck in gear, drove down the hill and then pulled into an old cemetery. “Let’s talk.” “This isn’t far enough away.”
“Your mom’s not going to follow you. Even if she figures out you’re gone.”
“You don’t understand.” “Tell me.”
Jared didn’t want to stay at the cemetery. He didn’t want to stop for anything. He felt like shaking Meg. “I know a place to go where we’ll be safe. It’s a house not too far from here.”
“Right here is fine for now. I want to know a few things before I take you any further.” Meg touched his shoulder. “So tell me what happened to Krista.”
He resigned himself to telling Meg something. “Where do you want me to start?” he asked.
“At the beginning.”
“Have you ever done meth?” he asked.
“Are you wacko? No.”
“Well, let me explain what it’s like,” he said.
Jared told her everything. Once he started, he couldn’t stop himself. All the stories had built up inside of him for so long that it burst out. He’d had nothing to do for days but think about his life and what had happened. His mom didn’t want to hear it. She just wanted him to get better. Whatever that meant.
He told Meg what it was like to take meth for the first time, how he had felt so strong and so on top of the world. The world shrunk and he grew and he never wanted to stop growing. His body encompassed the universe. He could do anything. He told her about that and she listened.
Then he told her how he started to do it once or twice a week, hoping to get back to that feeling, but it never quite happened again. How he needed to take a hit every couple days or he felt crushed. As if something was stepping on top of him, stomping him down.
She stared at him, but he didn’t care. He wanted to explain, he wanted someone to know how it felt.
“Finally I couldn’t live without it. Nothing else matters.”
“Nothing else? Not even your friends? Like Krista? All I want to know is what happened to Krista that night.”
“Just one of those things.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know. Heard about the party and thought we’d see what was going on. When we got there, Krista was upset about something. She wanted to leave. She and I used to have a little thing a couple years ago. Before Curt. She said she wanted to go to the Maiden Rock. She always had a thing about that place. Special to her.” Jared stopped talking, afraid he would say too much. His legs started jiggling and he rubbed the tops of them to calm down.
“I know that. Then what?”
“The usual. We parked. We had some beer. We were all drinking. Then we did some meth. She wanted to try it.” “I don’t believe you.”
Jared hated that Meg didn’t believe him. It mad
e him talk even more forceful about that night. “For real. We didn’t make her do it. She was into it. She asked for it.” Jared wanted to believe this, needed to believe it.
“Why didn’t you stop her? You know what it’s like, what it can do to people.”
Jared shook his head. “She grabbed it away from me, then snorted some. I could tell it hit her hard. Man, she was flying.” Even talking about it, reminded him of how good it could be, made him sweat for some.
“How do you know?”
“You could tell by looking at her eyes. Couldn’t stand still. Started dancing around.”
“Then what happened?”
Now Jared needed Meg to do what he wanted her to do. He had to get her to take him to Hitch. Even if Hitch wasn’t there, the people who was staying with would probably have some meth.
“We need to go see him. Hitch. All I know is that the two of them ran off toward the Maiden Rock together.” Jared put the hook in, “And Hitch came back alone.”
***
6:15 p.m.
Amy and Bill walked over to a squad car and then both stopped about ten feet away from it. Amy knew that Bill liked to drive. She had told him that she thought they should trade off when they partnered together, but she wasn’t sure he heard her, or liked the sound of that. Men could be so controlling.
“Is it your turn to drive?” Bill asked with a note of sarcasm.
He must have heard her. “Sure, I’ll drive.”
Bill still hesitated. “Do you think you’ll be able to keep up with Claire?”
Claire was getting into the car parked next to theirs. She had said she wanted two cars at the scene, not knowing what they would encounter.
Amy snorted, and then was embarrassed that she had made such a geeky sound. “I could drive circles around her.”
They got in the car. Amy followed Claire out of the parking lot.
“This isn’t going to be fun,” Bill said.
“I know that.”
“Until you’ve done the real thing, you don’t know.”
There he went again, being so darn patronizing. She didn’t know if he did it because he liked her or he just wanted to lord it over her. “Well, then obviously you can’t tell me about it. I’ll just have to go through it.”
Bill looked out the window.
She wondered what he was thinking about. They had gone to the shooting range together last night, but it hadn’t gone so well. Amy said, “I’m sorry if I’m a better shot than you are.”
“I don’t give a shit about that.”
“Well, then why have you been so pissy around me since my score at the range was higher than yours?”
“If you want to know, I’m not unhappy about you having a better score. I just thought it was a little inconsiderate of you to brag about it so much.”
Amy whooped.
Bill said, “Keep both hands on the wheel.”
“All I did was tell Dirk that I hit the target twice as often as you.”
“See, there you go again. If you want to know—deputy sheriffs don’t do that. We don’t brag about what we do right. It’s our job. We just do it. I’ve shot much better than I did that day and kept it to myself. If you want to know the truth, I had kind of a hard time concentrating ‘cause of you.”
“You did?” Amy liked the sound of that. “Really?”
“Yeah. You squirm around so much.”
That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Or maybe it was. “You know where we’re going, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but don’t lose Claire.”
“With you talking so much, I lost track of where we were.”
They drove for a mile in silence. Amy was more excited than scared. She hadn’t seen what she would call “action” since she had started working as a deputy.
“Let Claire and I go in first,” Bill said. “Why? You worried about me?”
“Seniority,” Bill said, then added, “And I don’t want you to get in the way.”
CHAPTER 16
6:15 p.m.
Arlene kept her car at a distance behind the truck that Jared had climbed into. She didn’t want to be seen. Not easy to do on country roads because there weren’t any other cars to hide behind. When the truck stopped at the cemetery, she pulled in behind a grove of trees and waited. When the truck pulled out onto the road and went down the hill, she followed.
What she had most feared was coming to pass: Jared hooking up with one of his old cronies and getting back into that evil stuff. She would not let it happen again. She would put a stop to it once and for all. She would call the cops if she had to, but she hated to get them involved. Her son didn’t need to go to jail; he just needed to get off that poisonous stuff.
Arlene had thought it was worth a try to see if she could help him get off the meth at home. Obviously that wasn’t going to work when his source was so close at hand.
Davy sat in the back seat of the car, coloring in a book. His small head bobbed up and down with the movement of the car. She couldn’t believe she was about to raise another child. He looked up and asked, “Where’s Mommy gone to?” “Your mom is gone far, far away.” A sadness come on her. She had hardly had time to mourn her sister’s death. But then
Letty’s demise had been going on for so long. Terrible to watch a woman waste away a day at a time for over five years now. “Oh. She coming back?”
Davy hadn’t asked much about his mother. He had become so used to staying at Arlene’s house it had become a second home for him. Arlene didn’t believe in heaven and didn’t like to lie to children. “That’s a hard question. I don’t think so.”
“She can come to your house. We live at your house.”
“Why?”
“There’s not so much icky smells.”
Arlene had made an appointment with the doctor to check Davy out for exposure to chemicals. She wasn’t looking forward to finding out how all that poison had affected the small boy. She hoped he had somehow avoided the worst of the contamination. He was such a good, quiet child. But that worried her too. Wasn’t he too quiet? Shouldn’t he have more energy?
Right now he was scribbling away at the coloring book, but often he just laid on the couch and watched TV.
He asked, “Where’s Jared?”
“We’re following him.”
“How come?”
“To make sure he doesn’t do something he shouldn’t do.”
“Oh.”
***
6:20 p.m.
“That’s his motorcycle,” Jared said.
Meg saw the black motorcycle parked by the side of the gingerbread house and felt her muscles tightening across her chest. “Do you think he will really tell us what happened?”
“Why not? He doesn’t care about stuff like that. I don’t think he’ll lie. Takes too much energy.”
Even though Jared hadn’t meant to be funny, Meg laughed. That was when she felt how scared she was. The tension bands around her body would hardly allow her to breathe.
They got out of the truck and she stuffed the truck keys deep in her pocket. The gingerbread house was small and ordinary-looking, painted a soft sage-green with white trim.
She noticed Jared was having trouble standing. He was shaking harder than he had in the truck.
“Are you okay?” She put out a hand to help him.
“Get out of my way,” he said, jerking away and walking ahead of her.
She grabbed at him, but he pulled away again. “What’re you going to do, Jared?”
He didn’t say anything. When they got to the door, he banged on it harder than Meg would have believed he had the power to.
A voice from inside yelled, “Yah?”
“Hitch, it’s me, Jared. You got any?”
Now Meg knew why Jared had wanted to come here.
She hadn’t seen it coming. She thought she was using Jared to bring her to the dealer, when in fact he had been using her for the same purpose.
What would it be like to try tha
t magic drug that made the world something you could hold in your hand while you flew away from it? What had Krista felt as she soared off the earth?
Why did Jared fight so hard to take it again? Meg wondered how it would make her feel.
The door opened. A gaunt old man stood looking out at them with big, bottomless eyes and a smile that was a black hole.
“Hitch, man, you got any stuff?” Jared asked.
But the thin man just stared past Jared at Meg. “What’ve we got here? Another lovely maiden?”
***
6:22 p.m.
As they drove down to Fort St. Antoine—heading toward a meth house, Roger said—Emily wondered how other mothers survived when their kids were killed. She felt as if she had joined a club she had never known existed before. Before she heard the words that told her Krista was dead.
Roger had his anger. It saved him.
Emily felt like all she had was her sorrow and it was endless. She was swimming in it and there was no shore in sight. She might never touch solid ground again. But she had to stay in the world. Her other daughter needed her. Roger needed her.
Never before had she known how much she had needed Krista.
***
6:30 p.m.
All he had wanted to do was finish brewing the batch. That’s all.
But these people had to come knocking at the door, bugging him, asking him about the girl.
He didn’t want to think about the girl. It wasn’t his fault she couldn’t handle the drug. He tried to tell them that. But they wouldn’t listen.
There had been a fight.
When the knife went in him, Hitch thought that he had been kicked. Then he knew what had happened. He recognized the pain—thin and sweet.
He fell to the floor, his legs giving out. All he could see was the haze of the air. Another moment of life pulling away from him.
